Recoverd Files Show Close ties between C.I.A.Qaddafi's Spy Unit, NYT

TRIPOLI : According to documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster with new details of the close relations between American CIA and Libyan intelligence service, most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture, The New York Times Reported. 

The Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after it abandoned its program to build unconventional weapons in 2004, but the files left behind as Tripoli fell to rebels show that the cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and MI-6 the British Intelligence agency. 

Many documents indicate that the British agency was even willing to trace phone numbers for the Libyans, and another appears to be a proposed speech written by the Americans for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi about renouncing unconventional weapons. 

The documents were discovered Friday by journalists and Human Rights Watch. There were at least three binders of English-language documents, one marked C.I.A. and the other two marked MI-6, among a larger stash of documents in Arabic. 

The documents cover 2002 to 2007, with many of them concentrated in late 2003 and 2004, when Moussa Koussa was head of the External Security Organization. Mr. Koussa became Libya’s foreign minister before Gaddafi's government fell to rebels. 

The flurry of communications about renditions are dated after Libya’s renouncement of its weapons program.

In several of the cases, the documents explicitly talked about having a friendly country arrest a suspect, and then suggested aircraft would be sent to pick the suspect up and deliver him to the Libyans for questioning. One document included a list of 89 questions for the Libyans to ask a suspect. 

In the MI-6 binder, a document boasted of having turned over someone named Abu Abd Alla to the Libyans. “This was the least we could do for you to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over recent years,” an unsigned fax in 2004 said. “Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans to channel requests for information from Abu Abd through the Americans. I have no intention of doing any such thing.”