Pretext for War in Afghanistan haunts Bush and Blair 10 years on.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/europe/16551-the-man-who-haunts-bush-and-blair

Yvonne Ridley

However, today, Middle East Monitor can publish the real story about the man who was used so ruthlessly to start the war in Iraq; it was his evidence, extracted under torture, which George W Bush and Tony Blair exploited to push for the invasion.

Powell revealed that the source for this information was a top asset, the most senior Al-Qaida operative in captivity. While he did not name him at the time it transpired that the intelligence had come from a Libyan man called Ibn Al-Shaikh Al-Libi. The details he passed over would turn out to be a tissue of lies and an embarrassment to US and UK spy agencies the following year.

It was the Libyan's evidence that had led to reports about the Ricin Plot when, just a few weeks earlier, sections of the British media scared the hell out of readers by revealing that anti-terror police had raided an Al-Qaida "factory of death" where equipment to make the deadly poison ricin had been found. One of the tabloid newspapers had a map of Britain plastered over its front page with a massive skull and crossbones in the middle just to make sure that readers realised the real horror of the situation. British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that, "The danger is present and real and with us now."

Yet the truth is that within 48 hours of the police raid Blair knew that the "poison-making equipment" was actually a coffee pot; scientists from the government's Porton Down "military science" laboratories informed Downing Street and the police that the suspicious substance was nothing more dangerous than coffee granules. Nevertheless, Tony Blair continued to let the British public believe that Al-Qaida was out to get them.

Blair also:

• Remained silent and allowed Colin Powell to brief the UN on a lie;
• Remained silent and allowed the public to continue to be terrified;
• Remained silent and allowed a group of innocent Algerians to be locked up for more than two years until their trial; and
• Remained silent when the trial collapsed after the jury at the Old Bailey discovered that there was no ricin and there was no plot.

When I tracked Ibn Al-Shaikh's family down to their home in Ajdabiya in north east Libya they told me that they believed that their son's death was some sort of macabre gift from Muammar Gaddafi to Bush and Blair. Of course, such an allegation is difficult to prove but there is no doubt that the news of his death will have come as a relief to those who were uneasy that the "man who started a war" was no longer alive and able to tell the world his account of what had happened in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.

What I have established is that Ibn Al-Shaikh did not take his own life; he was actually killed on the direct orders of the then Libyan leader Gaddafi. The date given to world was true, but the cause of death was not; Ibn Al-Shaikh did not commit suicide. People to whom I spoke who had met him in Abu Salim doubted the suicide story, as did his parents.

After the Libyan regime was toppled, one of the most senior prison guards accused of carrying out some of the most heinous crimes against inmates in Abu Salim was captured. I was allowed to meet him in a prison in Zawiyah, where he was being held anonymously and for his own safety; hundreds of ex-prisoners and their families wanted to mete out their own form of justice without his vile torture and abuse ever being discussed in an open court.

This man had nothing to lose by speaking to me and he met me freely and of his own accord. He told me quietly and in detail that Ibn Al-Shaikh had indeed been murdered. He described his injuries and explained that his body was left hanging by a bed sheet in his cell to give the impression that he had committed suicide.

It remains to be seen if any letters of thanks from Western governments to Gaddafi surface among the thousands of documents recovered from Libyan government offices following the 2011 revolution yet to be translated and read. Only recently did it emerge that Blair had written to Gaddafi thanking him for the "excellent cooperation" between the two countries after British and Libyan counter-terrorism agencies had worked together to arrange for Libyan dissidents to be kidnapped and flown to Tripoli, along with their families.

That letter was written in 2007 at the end of a period during which the dictator's intelligence officers were permitted to operate in Britain. According to the Guardian newspaper, they were approaching and intimidating Libyan refugees in an attempt to persuade them to work as informants for both countries.