According to [The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/04/libyan-papers-show-uk-rendition) newspaper “Libyan papers show UK worked with Gaddafi in rendition operation: A secret CIA document [found in Tripoli in an abandoned government building] shows that British and Libyans worked together to arrange the removal of a terror suspect to Tripoli”. The NATO support for the Libyan rebels may turn out to be a shot in its own foot
Documents found by Human Rights Watch in a building in Tripoli contain evidence of collaboration of the British Government with the US rendition for torture program, in this case sending terror suspects to Libya for interrogation. The article states that “For several years, senior MI5 and MI6 officers have sought to deny that their agencies have been guilty even of complicity in the rendition operations mounted by the US after 9/11, and the subsequent torture of the victims…one of the victims, Abdul Hakim Belhaj – now commander of the anti-Gaddafi militia in Tripoli – demanded an apology from London and Washington and said he was considering suing over his rendition to Tripoli and subsequent torture.” Belhaj was a founding member and former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and although he states his desire for a free government in Libya many worry about how the new political system will pan out.
The confusing Foreign Policy that Britain has conducted over the years with respect to Gaddafi (now he’s bad, now we are friends, now he’s bad again and we’ll bomb him out of power) added to emerging evidence from several sources that British secret services were involved in rendition “torture by proxy” programmes create the need for an open inquiry into the workings of such agencies. Or at least more accountability to Parliament, given that we are not likely to really know what they are up to any time soon.
So, would James Bond “licence to kill” approve of “license to torture”? Far from being a figment of Ian Fleming imagination “Sir Richard Billing Dearlove, known as “C” when he headed MI6, told the Diana inquest the Secret Intelligence Service had the power to use “lethal force”. See [Mail Online](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-516712/Ex-MI6-chief-admits-agents-licence-kill-denies-executing-Diana.html#ixzz1X47r8Wle). This is of course shared by other secret services around the world. However it seems to be more important to disassociate from torture than from killing, as if fearing a higher level of public distaste.
If we continue to put exceptions to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is no longer Universal.
