Bharat Rakshak

Why is that?

Religious and ideological support has been also provided by Hussein Shihata, a leading Sunni scholar of Islamic Economy at Cairo’s al-Azhar University. Mr. Shihata’s July 10, 2002, fatwa says: “We do not use the term ‘economic jihad’ as a mere motto or a resounding slogan with no action. Rather, we mean by it a practical jihad that requires action to turn it into an effective and concrete reality. The aim behind that is to benefit all Muslims and to challenge the aggression staged by the U.S. and Jews against Islam and Muslims.”

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who claims to abhor bin Laden, seems nevertheless eager to follow his agenda. In an interview with Arab News in May 2002, the prince said that if the Arabs “unite through economic interests,” they would achieve influence over the U.S. decision-makers. Since government sources estimate Saudi holdings in the United States at $400 billion to $800 billion, the matter warrants public attention.

The Saudi agenda extends far beyond policy-makers. In the late 1990s, the privately owned Massachusetts technology company, Ptech, designed software used to develop enterprise blueprints that held every important detail of a given concern. The company was financed with more than $22 million, by Saudi multi-millionaire Yasin al Qadi, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. The Saudis thus gained access to strategic information about many major U.S. corporations such as SYSCO, ENRON, and the U.S. Departments of Defense, Treasury, Justice, Energy, and even the White House. The extent of the damage, if it was investigated, remains a mystery.

Meanwhile, substantial Saudi and Gulf financial contributions “to bring the proper message to America’s brightest minds,” are pouring into U.S. educational institutions through Arab and Islamic centers and professorial chairs. Last month the prince gave $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities. According to the Center for Religious Freedom, the Saudis also supply textbooks for public libraries, schools and colleges, and provide the content concerning Islam to some U.S. textbook publishers.

The Saudis’ potential influence on U.S. and international media was recently illustrated by the prince’s purchase of 5.6 percent of voting shares in News Corp., the world’s largest publisher of English newspapers. Moreover, Reuters reported on Dec. 5 that the prince announced his plan to “spread the right message” via a new television channel, “The Message,” to broadcast to the U.S. within two years.

More On That $300 Million Saudi Investment In Twitter: It’s Not New
Erick Schonfeld
Monday, December 19th, 2011

The blogosphere and tech press is all atwitter about the news that Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal invested $300 million in Twitter. While the identity of the Saudi prince as an investor was not officially confirmed before, the investment itself is not new. The investment was part of the previously announced $800 million financing Twitter closed last September, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deal.

Fortune’s Dan Primack reports that the Saudi shares were a purchase of secondary shares. Indeed, half of that $800 million didn’t even go to Twitter. They were secondary shares purchased directly from employees and other existing investors. It appears that the Saudi prince took three quarters of the $400 million tranche set aside for secondary sales.

Twitter still had to approve these secondary sales, which provided a necessary release valve for employees with vested options. You could even argue that Twitter should allow employees to sell even more shares, given that some of them are leaving in order to do just that.

Big influence over Iran and access to all. Morals, growing military might, leverage over both parties.

India is the insurance policy for them given that there isn't anyone there to give military support. They'll help make us a super power, restrain pak, Jordan and morocco were rejected by UAE and Oman because they wont add anything to the GCC security. India is the new pillar. The infra deal is the SamE that US got which helped develop their economy.

Win win, more economic development, more tax into coffers to buy weapons. How do you think PRC defence budget got so large.

India is the insurance policy for them given that there isn't anyone there to give military support. They'll help make us a super power, restrain pak, Jordan and morocco were rejected by UAE and Oman because they wont add anything to the GCC security. India is the new pillar. The infra deal is the SamE that US got which helped develop their economy.

Win win, more economic development, more tax into coffers to buy weapons. How do you think PRC defence budget got so large.

The whole matter is straightforward.

You need 1 trillion plus for the infra push as has been announced by GOI time and again. A part of that money will come in from the GCC.

This is not a GOI brainwave by the way. it is very much being facilitated by India Inc based in western India.

It is an era where the GCC is being told that they should invest more into building highways in India rather than Madarsas.

The new generation of GCC monarchs are responding positively because they know the power of India Inc. India-KSA could break new grounds only when a certain industrialist sitting in a certain high tower gave his assent to a certain something that KSA had wanted for a long time.

The topiwallahs or dhotiwallahs do not guide Indian foreign policy. India Inc drives it and that is exactly why India will also never give up on Iran. India vacuumed up a lot of cheap oil and is now "reducing" imports to avoid sanctions. That corridor to central asia is something that we will never give up. However the whole idea is to make sure that neither the GCC nor Iran think that they can take India's support for granted.

India Inc is also driving our naval expansion and the GCC knows who is on the verge of becoming top dog in the waters of their coast. While a lot of people in Unkil land think they might just be able to keep 10 CBGs the fact is, it is not happening. there will come a time in the next few decades when America will not be able to keep more than one CBG on station all the time in the Gulf.

And by the way, the recent UP election is essentially a caste assertion. Under Mayawati both Dalits as well as Arzals had become seriously empowered. this is something that was unpalatable to OBC samaj in both the majority and minority religions. Remember in the run up to the OBC reservation campaign OBC Muslim Samaj had played an important role in the whole thing.

in the final analysis the vote share of SP is not that much greater than BSP at all and in the years to come, SP will decline in UP owing to demographics and greater horizontal caste consolidation by the Dalits and Arzals ( who have better TFRs and declining mortality rates).


There is one very big difference between the middle ages and now. The arabs and central asia have stuff that *we* need rather than it being the case that only Hindustan is the sone ki chidiya. Hindustan is of course a land of great opportunity but it is also now a Gargantuan Garood that needs oil to wet its wings.

Come now, don't be so harsh on India inc.

and they don't own the navy, only use it. And this time its not about merchant bonhomie but about Chakras and Vikramadityas off the coast of various pure lands.

Things are different from the middle ages. We did not use horses to till our land now did we? Horse imports by the Rashratkutas or by Vijaynagar later on are an order of magnitude removed from our energy needs today which is at the core of sustaining growth.


trying to find analogues in history is fine. but I am sure you would agree that the cycle is tilted in the opposite direction.

What India is doing with the GCC is similar to what the West has done with it in the past four decades. Provide protection in return for investment and oil.

Posted: 16/04/2012 | Author: IISS Voices | Filed under: Alanoud Al Sharekh, Gulf and Middle East Security | Tags: dubai, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, UAE |Leave a comment »

A recent decision by the United Arab Emirates to withdraw the residence permits of 30 Syrian men who took part in an unlicensed protest against the regime of Bashar al-Assad outside the Syrian consulate in Dubai in February has provoked a war of words between a controversial Muslim Brotherhood figurehead and Dubai’s police chief. The dispute between Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi and Lieutenant-General Dahi al-Khalfan risks spiralling into a diplomatic confrontation between the UAE and its neighbours.

Speaking during an episode of his long-running popular al-Jazeera show ‘Shari’a and Life’ in early March, Qaradawi denounced UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan and his brother Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. Having previously been banned from entering the UAE himself for inciting dissent, the extremist cleric asserted that 100 Syrian families had in fact had their residence permits withdrawn and also attacked the UAE for revoking the citizenships of some Islamists in the country. Claiming to speak on behalf of Syrian National Council leader Burhan Ghalioun, Qaradawi threatened to incite Muslim rage against the UAE both on his show and during his Friday sermons.

In response, Khalfan threatened to issue an international arrest warrant for Qaradawi if he did not retract his threats to the UAE. Though he took pains to explain the UAE’s position on the Syrian protesters during various media appearances (a much smaller number of Syrians’ residence permits were revoked for other legal infringements besides the protest), he also delivered an anti-Muslim Brotherhood message, accusing it of conducting attacks on his country by means of social media and illicit political activities. That same week the UAE had arrested an Emirati imam and political activist associated with the Brotherhood in Ras al-Khaimah on charges of inciting dissent against its rulers in his sermon on the Syrian protesters.

This is not the first time that Khalfan has had a run-in with the Muslim Brotherhood. He claims to have already been a target for its ire in 2011 when he accused the Brotherhood in Egypt of inciting insurgency to serve its own political ambitions and accepting foreign funding to that end. At the January 2012 Gulf Cooperation Council National and Regional Security Conference in Bahrain, Khalfan gave a long presentation covering the most urgent threats to GCC security and stability as he saw them. The Muslim Brotherhood, as part of a greater ‘US foreign policy plan to destabilise the area’, featured heavily among them, as did a nuclear-capable Iran. Khalfan cautioned that Saudi Arabia would most likely be the next target of the US’s ‘divide and conquer agenda’ following the fall of Syria.

Khalfan has since stated that Western intelligence leaks confirm his theory that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood is part of a systematic plan on the part of the US to dismantle the current ruling systems of the GCC by 2016. He has predicted that this movement will take off in Kuwait by 2013 since it is already leaning significantly towards political Islam, and from there spread throughout the Gulf states. He has also suggested that the Muslim Brotherhood poses a much larger threat to the GCC than Iran.

These statements pose a diplomatic dilemma for the UAE. Despite Khalfan’s claims that these are personal opinions, as a representative of the country’s security apparatus they imply state sanction. Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan warned that if an arrest warrant were issued against Qaradawi, ‘the entire Muslim world, and not only the Brotherhood, will take action against the Emirates’. The statement was condemned by GCC Secretary-General Abdul Latif al-Zayani, who deemed it ‘unwise and irresponsible’, as well as Arab League Secretary-General Nabeel al-Arabi. The Egyptian government quashed rumours that Foreign Minister Mohamed K. Amr had met the Emirati minister of state for foreign affairs, Dr Anwar Gargash, on the sidelines of the Russia–Arab League meeting in Cairo in order to explain the Egyptian government’s position with regards to Ghozlan’s threat. Ghozlan later conducted several media interviews in an attempt to smooth relations with the UAE and characterise his initial statement as a ‘misunderstanding’.

Kuwaiti-based members of the Muslim Brotherhood echoed Ghozlan’s initial sentiment, especially the prominent preacher Tarek al-Suwaidan, who was banned from entering the UAE in 2011, and is currently being sued in Kuwaiti courts by Khalfan for using an ‘unacceptable’ term to describe his actions towards Qaradawi. Saudi Islamist Sheikh Awadh al-Garni has also weighed in, reiterating the loyalty of GCC members to the Brotherhood.

However this war of words develops, it will have a great impact on the UAE’s relations with the new political leadership of many Arab countries. Khalfan has urged the GCC leadership to free Syria from its current regime while making sure it does not fall into the grips of the Muslim Brotherhood as ‘others have’.

B ji, all that is cool. But its a difficult accomplishment to get wealthy ME elites to buy Indian protection and invest in Indian infra (not just madrassahs). Its much easier to later turn around and kick them in the nuts if things get problematic.

Its a good thing, let the money come in at this crucial time in our development. You're worried about adharmik desi mercantile classes selling out the rashtriya interests, but we only need a vigilant nationalist core to wreck things for them if they choose not to buy into the civilizational vision.

As mentioned earlier, the Saudi royal family fears domestic terrorist groups, especially the Yemen-based branches of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) group. Most of AQAP members are Saudi whose aim is to topple the royal family. The March 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on Saudi Arabia details the Kingdom’s progress on its domestic al-Qaeda terrorists cells, [31] confirming the 2009 GAO’s finding that “U.S. and Saudi officials report progress on countering terrorism and its financing within Saudi Arabia.” However, the GAO report noted that there was hardly any efforts to prevent “funding for terrorism and violent extremism outside of Saudi Arabia” (Emphasis added).[32] Again, little has changed since Under Secretary Levey testimony before the Senate Finance Committee in 2008 that Saudi Arabia is “serious about fighting Al Qaeda in the kingdom…[but] the seriousness of purpose with respect to the money going out of the kingdom is not as high.”[33]

In 2010 the Saudis dismantled 19 AQAP cells in the Kingdom. The operation included the seizure of 2.24 million riyals (over $600K) and the detention of 149 cell members—including 25 from other Arab, African, and South Asian countries.[34] The arrests foiled at least ten attacks by AQAP on government and military targets, and officials, according to the Saudis. [35] In June 2010 after exposing a 60-person fundraising cell for AQAP, the Saudis announced that they were reviewing their terrorism strategy.[36]

With self-preservation in mind, the Saudi intelligence services tipped off the American, British, and German governments of AQAP planned terror attacks in late 2010. In October after the burqa ban was enforced in France, the Saudis warned of a possible al-Qaeda attack on the country.[37] In November the Saudis scored political points and public recognition for revealing that AQAP had planted explosives on European cargo planes bound for the United States.[38]

However, the State Department’s leaked cables confirmed the GAO’s 2009 conclusion that the Saudis showed “progress on countering terrorism and its financing within Saudi Arabia, but noted challenges, particularly in preventing alleged funding for terrorism and violent extremism outside of Saudi Arabia.”[39]

Saudi Arabia is a theocracy dominated by Wahhabi power figures that (despite Saudi protestations to the contrary) control both governmental and non-governmental sectors of the country. The government/ruling family makes or breaks the wealth of all its subjects. Moreover, successive Saudi kings have created ”charitable” organizations to fund the worldwide spread of Wahhabbism and have on occasion organized several national campaigns encouraging citizens to support Sunni terror organizations outside the country.[42] Thus it would be wrong to distinguish between contributions to radical Sunni organizations by the ruling family, the Saudi government, and wealthy Saudi subjects.

Afghanistan’s financial intelligence unit FinTraca reported in May 2010 that Saudi contributors have funneled over $1.5 billion to Afghanistan through Pakistan since 2006. Most of the money has entered Afghanistan through Pakistani tribal areas, especially through North Waziristan, which is known as “al-Qaeda’s heartland.” Mohammed Mustafa Massoudi, the director general of US-trained Afghan intelligence in Kabul, said, “We can trace it back as far as an entry point in Waziristan” the uncontrolled tribal border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Then went on, “Why would anyone want to put such money into Waziristan? [for] Only one reason: terrorism.”[43] The likely destination of the money was thought to be the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Since 2006, these groups have killed at least 1,525 American soldiers in Afghanistan and maimed thousands more.[44] As former Under Secretary Levey declared in his April 2008 testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, “Saudi Arabia today remains the location from which more money is going to terror groups and the Taliban—Sunni terror groups and the Taliban—than from any other place in the world.”[45]

The Saudis also support Pakistan’s Laskhar-e Taiba (LET), a terrorist group most known in the West for perpetrating the Mumbai attacks in 2008, which killed over 200 people and injured over 300 more.[46] Pakistani police reported in 2009 that the Saudi al-Haramain Foundation—a charitable organization designated as a terrorist sponsor by both the US and Saudi governments[47]—gave $15 million to jihadists, including those responsible for suicide attacks in Pakistan and the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.[48]

The Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization’s (IIRO) Philippines branch, which was run until his death in 2007 by Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law until his death in 2007, was designated a terrorist sponsor by the US Treasury in August 2006 “for facilitating fundraising for al Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups.”[49]

This apparently did not stop Saudi support for the al-Qaeda-affiliated Abu Sayyaf Group. A Wikileaks-released cable from the US Embassy in Riyadh described the US Government’s concerns with the IIRO’s continuing Saudi funding of al-Qaeda-affiliated group in the Philippines.[50] Dated February 24, 2007, and classified as “secret,” the cable detailed a February 6, 2007 private meeting between US assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Francis Fragos Townsend and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. Townsend asked the foreign minister to stop the “involvement of the Saudi ambassador to the Philippines Muhammad Amin Waly in terrorism facilitation,” noting “his intervention to get two members of IIRO out of prison.” Prince Saud declared a belief that Waly’s actions “may have involved bad judgment rather than intentional support for terrorism” and Waly remained in his position until October 2009.[51]

Despite evidence of IIRO funding to radical Muslim groups the world over, the US Government has refrained from designating the IIRO in its entirety as a terrorist organization. As a result, the IIRO obtained membership in the United Nations’ Department of Public Information (DPI) in August 2010. This membership provides the IIRO the perfect cover from which to expand its reach.[52]

Saudi funding to the US-designated Muslim Brotherhood Palestinian branch, the terrorist organization Hamas, has never stopped.[53] In March 2007 Israel notified the US that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh transferred a $1 million contribution he received in Saudi Arabia to Hamas’ “armed wing,” the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades.[54] On December 16, 2009, while Hamas was shelling Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip, Haniyeh told Al-Jazeera that he passed $1 million in funding from a Saudi donor to Hamas’ “armed wing.”[55]

The December 12, 2011 Iran’s Intelligence Minister Haydar Moslehi met with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Nayef in Riyadh. Two days later, at the OPEC meeting in Vienna, the Iranians reveled that the Saudis agreed not “to replace Iranian crude if Iran faces any sanctions."

Accommodating their supposedly biggest enemy - the radical Shiite regime in Iran - while betraying their self-proclaimed ally - the United States, is a long held Saudi strategy. Support of radical Islamic regimes and groups helped keep the House of Saud in command.

“Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) , and other terrorist groups, including Hamas,” read a cable dated December 30, 2009, from United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, This was one of the cables published by Wikileaks in late November 2010.[1]

Another leaked cable, sent from the US Embassy in Riyadh in February 2010, stated that the Saudi interior ministry “remains almost completely dependent on the CIA to provide analytic support and direction for its counterterrorism operations.”[2]

Officials in Saudi Arabia have reportedly executed eight Iranian sailors in the city of Dammam without any legal proceedings, a Saudi news channel reports.


According to Al-Tagheer, the eight Iranian nationals were executed in a prison in Dammam, the capital of Eastern Province, on April 15.

The channel also reported that the executions were carried out on the order of the Saudi Interior Ministry, which has been implicated in the unrest in Syria and the violence in Iraq.

Saudi officials have so far refused to make any statement about the issue.

The sailors were arrested on a fishing boat in the international waters near Saudi Arabia six years ago on charges of possessing drugs.

Meanwhile, the families of the sailors have called on Riyadh to provide information about their loved ones. The brother of one of the sailors said they have been informed by some sources in the city of Dammam that the detainees have been executed.

On Monday, Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Tehran Osama Ahmed Snoussi over concerns about a number of Iranian prisoners kept in the kingdom’s jails, after the ministry received worrying news about Iranian nationals jailed in Dammam.

Two Indian workers who were promised construction jobs in Saudi Arabia but were sold as slaves to a camel farm owner are languishing in the kingdom without food and money.


47-year-old A. Muniyasamy and 46-year-old M. Jagabar, who hail from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, had gone to Saudi Arabia in January, The Asian Age reported on Saturday.

They were promised construction work, but when they landed in Saudi Arabia, agents took them to a far-off desert where they were forced to work as slaves at a camel farm.

The two of them paid 300,000 rupees ($5,760) to local Indian agents to take them to Saudi Arabia. Their families told the media that the duo dreamt of making big money in the kingdom but they became “bonded laborers.”

The wife of one man said the local agent had promised a monthly salary of 12,000 rupees (US$230) for her husband and she sold her jewelry to pay the 150,000 rupees ($2,880).

“I had the shock of my life when my husband called two months after reaching Saudi that he was working as a slave in a camel farm,” she said before breaking into tears.

“We thought we will give better education to our children with his salary, but our dreams are shattered,” the woman lamented.

International human rights organizations routinely criticize the Saudi monarchy for failure to provide basic rights to guest workers from Asian countries.

Iran's propaganda mouthpiece PressTV is carrying this report at this time:

Two Indians enslaved in Saudi Arabia

By ROBERT VERKAIK, BARBARA JONES and DAVID ROSE
UPDATED 22 April 2012

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MI5 betrayed enemies of Colonel Gaddafi given refuge in Britain in a covert joint operation with Libyan spies working on UK soil, documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal.
Gaddafi’s secret agents were supplied by MI5 with intelligence, secure mobile phones and a luxurious safe house in the heart of London’s Knightsbridge.
The extraordinary revelations emerge from hundreds of secret documents unearthed from Libyan spymasters’ archives after the Gaddafi regime was toppled – with British military help – last year.
Shockingly, they reveal tactics of intimidation and coercion – and expose the British agents’ specific fears that their actions might be reported by the press in the UK.

Under pressure: Tony Blair with Jack Straw in 2005, and some of the documents seen by the MoS, below

The documents disclose that MI5 betrayed the confidentiality that all refugees are promised when they apply for asylum, and told the Libyans that the targets could be threatened with deportation to Libya if they refused to co-operate.
The revelations will cause a political storm. David Davis, the senior Tory MP, said they made clear that the 2004 operation to arrange the ‘rendition’ of former Gaddafi opponent Abdel Hakim Belhadj from Bangkok to Tripoli was ‘merely the start of a continuing intelligence saga’.

More...
Now Blair could be sued over Libya torture claims by man who alleges MI6 sent him into the hands of Gaddafi's regime
How ironic! The ministers accused of backing torture now want even more secrecy in public life
He added: ‘The documents seem to say that British agencies exposed people who had been given refuge here to the very people they had fled. This is an appalling betrayal of Britain’s obligations and traditions, apparently for reasons of realpolitik, not national security. What the documents reveal is coercion at best, and at worst blackmail.’
He said it was ‘essential’ that the Scotland Yard investigation into the case of Mr Belhadj – who is suing former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for allegedly authorising his kidnap and rendition – is extended to include the joint MI5-Libya operations.
Experts in refugee law say the documents imply flagrant breaches of the Geneva Conventions on refugees, the Human Rights Act and the ordinary criminal law.
Lord Carlile, QC, the former reviewer of UK anti-terror laws, said the allegations were ‘serious’ and called for an inquiry.

Revelations: The documents were unearthed from Libyan spymasters' archives after Colonel Gaddafi was toppled with the help of British forces
A senior former intelligence officer said it was ‘difficult to imagine’ that the joint operations were not sanctioned by Ministers and it was likely that the Home and Foreign Secretaries were involved, as well as the Prime Minister – at the time, Tony Blair.
But the then Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said: ‘I don’t think I knew anything about this. I certainly have no recollection of it.’ She thought that as an ‘operational matter’ it would not have needed ministerial authorisation.
Lord Reid, who was Home Secretary, failed to return phone calls asking for comment. A spokesman for Mr Blair said he had ‘no recollection’ of the operations.
The documents reveal meetings between the British and Libyan services in both Tripoli and London, and visits by the Libyan agents to make ‘approaches’ to their targets in London and Manchester in August and October 2006.
They make clear that the Libyans had at least some success, and that some of the refugees they approached did agree to co-operate.
MI5, the documents say, wanted then to turn the refugees into sources of their own, in the belief that the body to which they belonged – the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – was linked to Al Qaeda, and a threat to UK national security.
But, according to the minutes of one meeting, MI5 also knew that its decision to do business with a regime that, despite having abandoned its WMD programme, was still torturing and murdering its opponents, was controversial and had to be kept secret.
Last night a security source defended co-operation with Libya, saying: ‘Many of Jihadist fighters picked up in Afghanistan after 2001 were Libyans. They posed a threat and had to be closely monitored.’
Just 700 yeards from Harrods, a covert rendezvous between Libyan spies and MI5 agent Caroline sparks demand for criminal inquiry
Special Investigation by Robert Verkaik, Barbara Jones and David Rose
As MI5 had promised, it had left nothing to chance. Waiting for the two Libyan intelligence officers as they got off the plane at Heathrow was Caroline, the charming Security Service operative they knew from her recent visit to Tripoli.
No need for the agents to wait in line at immigration: Caroline – whose full name, together with that of other UK officers, The Mail on Sunday has chosen not to publish – met them ‘airside’, and they bypassed the usual formalities.
She was carrying two, prepaid, secure mobile phones, one for each of the Libyans, Colonel Najmuddin Ajeli and Ahmed Abdanabi.

Upmarket: MI5 accommodated the Libyan intelligence officers in a luxury serviced flat near Harrods in Knightsbridge, London
Naturally, Caroline had organised transport: an MI5 car in which she escorted them to MI5’s safe house – a luxury service flat at one of the best addresses in London, in the heart of Knightsbridge.
This was almost certainly in Egerton Place, a brief stroll from Harrods, and less than a mile from St James’s Square, where WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot by a Libyan diplomat in 1984.
Next day, August 10, 2006, the joint operation between MI5 and the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s External Security Organisation would begin. Meanwhile, Ajeli and Abdanabi were free to enjoy a night on the town.
Details of the two Libyans’ visit are contained in a new and extraordinary cache of documents, classified UK/Libya Secret, unearthed in Gaddafi’s archives after his regime was toppled – thanks in large part to RAF airstrikes – last year.
The documents reveal that collusion between the dictator’s security agency, a byword for torture, brutality and murder throughout the Middle East, and its British counterparts was far greater than hitherto realised.
The case of Abdel Hakim Belhadj, who is suing the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for allegedly authorising his illegal ‘rendition’ from Thailand to prolonged torture in Libya in 2004, has already become notorious.

Serious as the Belhadj case is, however, in that instance the British supplied intelligence only about his whereabouts: the actual rendition was done from a distant foreign country by the American CIA.
But the new documents disclose that for at least two years after that, MI5 and MI6 developed a close and active working relationship with the Libyans.
It extended to flagrant breaches of the law that is supposed to protect political refugees, and ‘joint operations’ in which such people – whose families and friends were vulnerable to savage reprisals in Libya – were cold-bloodedly ‘targeted’ on British soil, where they thought they were safe, by the Libyan service, with direct assistance from MI5.
This breaks every convention of acceptable behaviour between governments.
‘When you ask for asylum in Britain, the form you fill in promises that the mere fact of applying will be treated by the British Government as strictly confidential, since if it became known, your friends and family would be exposed to persecution,’ a top QC and refugee law expert said yesterday.
‘But these documents suggest that not only was this rule ignored, but refugees were threatened with deportation if they refused to co-operate with the very regime they had fled – a core breach of both the 1951 Geneva Convention, and the Human Rights Act. It also appears they were coerced. Any Britons involved could also have committed the offence of misconduct in a public office.’
The documents contain a detailed narrative of the 2006 operation mounted by Caroline, Ajeli, Abdanabi and their colleagues. It began with a meeting in Tripoli on May 17, attended by X, an MI6 officer stationed in Libya (whom The Mail on Sunday has agreed not to name), Caroline from MI5, and the two Libyans who came to London in August, along with others whose names are not recorded in the meeting’s minutes – which were taken in Arabic by a member of the Libyan service.
‘We are here with you to share some co-operation and suggestions to work with your secret department,’ Caroline explained. Right from the outset, she abandoned any pretence that asylum seekers should be protected.
According to the minutes, she said: ‘Target 2 could become a very good source and we can pressure him to work for us because he’s not a British citizen.’ Another individual is identified as a possible target because he is ‘very emotional’ and would be deeply affected if any of his friends were to be arrested. The document records: ‘He could be a good source because he works in a library inside a mosque and he has close links to Libyan Islamic Fighting Group [then a banned group which operated as a political party opposing Gaddafi, and from whose ranks many of last year’s revolutionary fighters were drawn].’

After Caroline left Tripoli, plans were made for the August visit by the two Libyans. MI6’s officer X sent the details of its logistics in a memo to General Sadegh Krema, the head of the Libyan service’s external relations section, on August 8, the day before they left. As well as the safe house and the phones, MI5 would be providing lunch, and a series of meetings to formulate ‘operational plans’ for approaching their main target.
The Mail on Sunday is aware of the identity of this person, who was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) based in Didsbury, in Manchester, and an habitué of the Didsbury mosque, one of the main centres of anti-Gaddafi activity in Britain. We also have the minutes of the meeting held between the Libyans, Caroline, her colleague Tony and other MI5 staff at MI5 headquarters on August 11.
MI5 justified its participation in these operations by asserting that the LIFG was a jihadist group with links to Al Qaeda, and hence a threat to UK security – although it is a matter of record that the only Libyan ever arrested or charged with any terrorist offence committed in Britain was not from the opposition at all: the sole example is Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber freed on compassionate grounds nearly three years ago when he was said to have three months to live. In 2004, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that the LIFG was only interested in opposing Gaddafi – not mounting terrorist attacks in Britain.
Be that as it may, MI5 knew that by working so closely with Gaddafi’s agents it was taking a risk. According to the minutes, one of the MI5 staff said: ‘The target person has the right to make a complaint or seek police protection. British intelligence must be careful how they approach a target because this individual could call on human rights or the press and cause a security scandal that exposes the co-operation between British and Libyan secret services.’
The minutes suggest that MI5 preferred to use the carrot, rather than the stick, in inducing the target to start giving up information about his associates: ‘We might allow him to visit his family in Libya, then return to Britain. We could offer to help clear his name with Libyan authorities. We could offer to help with citizenship or residency. This could open the door to his co-operation. We could enter his office frequently, do business with him and open the door to further conversations.’
But if that didn’t work, then they could resort to coercion: ‘Libyan operatives could ask him [the target asylum seeker] about problems at home in Libya or in Britain.
‘They offer to help in return for giving information we want about other targets. If he refuses, British police will arrest him and accuse him of associating with Libyan secret agents. He will be told that as a non-resident of Britain he could be deported if found guilty.’
A memo dated September 27 from officer X to General Krema makes clear that the August operation had gone well, and suggests further activity against other targets in Didsbury. The Libyan agent Najmuddin Ajeli had ‘established contact’ with members of the Didsbury mosque, and the next step would be ‘joint casework between our services’.
On October 14, Ajeli and Abdanabi flew back to Britain. Another unnamed MI5 officer, says a further memo, was due to meet them, though if there were any problems, they could call Caroline.
This time, the plan was to set up further meetings with the target in Didsbury, with the hope of introducing him to MI5. The Libyans were not to stay at the safe house, however, but at the five-star City Inn Hotel, which conveniently is next to MI5’s headquarters on the Thames.
There the documentary record ends. But former Libyan dissidents who are now supporters of the revolution say they know of several individuals who were approached by Libyan intelligence and MI5 while refugees in Britain, and threatened in the ways the documents suggest.
Gareth Peirce, the solicitor who acted for several Libyan refugees, said yesterday: ‘This has been a common methodology. If you think someone is vulnerable, facing deportation, you exploit that. It is a common currency I have come across again and again.’

SPIED ON BY UK AGENTS WORKING FOR GADDAFI

Shaken: The accountant who was spied on
A Libyan accountant who lived in England for ten years was spied on by British Intelligence working with Colonel Gaddafi’s tyrannical regime.
Granted asylum here in 2002 as a member of Libya’s opposition, he has discovered his mobile phone was monitored and information about him and his wife sent to Libya’s External Security
Organisation (ESO) in a sinister exchange that ended only with Gaddafi’s death.
He believes one phone conversation he had with fellow Libyan dissident Abu Bakr Ighrebel led to Ighrebel’s arrest, imprisonment and torture for five years in Tripoli’s Abu Salim detention facility.
The accountant, who lived in Pinner, North London, wishes to remain anonymous because of security fears for family members in Britain.
He was shaken to discover a file containing his personal information and a photograph, which he recalls submitting for his British passport application in 2002, among documents taken from the ESO building after Tripoli fell last year.
The Mail on Sunday has seen the file and had it independently translated. A series of internal memos written in Arabic by Libyan agents gives feedback on meetings with their British counterparts. One memo reports a conversation the accountant had in 2007 with Ighrebel, who sought advice about seeking asylum in Britain.
Another, written at the ESO and dated December 16, 2007, reports the British as telling the Libyan agents: ‘We do not think you should take any action towards the Libyan user of this phone number because it may expose our operation monitoring this individual.’
The accountant said: ‘Libyan agents wrote back claiming I had been in Sudan working with Osama Bin Laden and that I had been seriously ill and Bin Laden had paid my hospital bills. This is totally untrue.’