Britain's Plot To Kill Khadaffi
By Eric Margolis
August 20, 1998
The Toronto Sun
NICE, FRANCE - Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6,
tried to assassinate Libya's leader, Col. Muammar Khadaffi, in
1996, according to a defecting agent, now under arrest here in
France.
David Shayler, who held a mid-level position in MI5,
Britain's domestic security agency, told the BBC he learned MI6
channeled US $160,000 to an underground, Islamic fundamentalist
group in Libya to assassinate Khadaffi. Shayler was attached to
the joint MI5/MI6 joint Libyan task force.
Shayler claims the Libyan extremists planted a large bomb in
February, 1996,on a road along which the Libyan strongman's
motorcade was to travel. The bomb detonated under the wrong
vehicle. A considerable number of bystanders, government
officials, and security personnel were killed. Khadaffi escaped
unharmed.
A clearly embarrassed British government dismisses Shayler's
story was a total fabrication. Yet it urgently demanded France
arrest Shayler, who had fled to Paris after his interview, and
extradite him to England to face criminal charges under the
draconian Official Secrets Act. France promptly jailed Shayler
on 1 August. Curious treatment for a man making claims that
were, in the words of Britain's Foreign Secretary, `pure
fantasy.'
Shayler's charges come at a time when Britain and the US are
loudly denouncing terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, and have
just themselves suffered terror bombings in Northern Ireland and
Africa. Making matters worse, a MI6 agent, Richard Tomlinson,
who worked with Shayler on the MI5/MI6 Libyan task force,
defected to New Zealand. Tomlinson backed Shayler's charges, and
further accused MI6 of covering up blunders and criminal
activities by its agents. He was promptly arrested in Auckland,
and held for extradition to the UK.
An assassination attempt was, in fact, made on Khadaffi in
September, 1996 by Libyan fundamentalists. Britain harbors a
number of anti-Khadaffi exile groups. CIA and MI6 finances them
to overthrow the eccentric Libyan regime, which has long
financed anti-western groups, and some outright terrorists.
Khadaffi told me the British and Americans had mounted numerous
attempts to kill him.
Oil-rich Libya was a lucrative British protectorate until
1969, when Col. Khadaffi overthrew London's puppet ruler, King
Idris, kicked out the English, and had the impudence to raise
oil prices. Khadaffi further annoyed Washington and London by
loudly accusing the oil monarchs of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and
the Gulf of being US-British stooges who give away their
nation's only resources in exchange for western protection from
their own people.
My sources say Britain was, in fact, behind the 1996
assassination attempt. London's frantic, hamfisted reaction
certainly reinforces this belief. The US and Britain rarely use
their own agents to assassinate foreign opponents: they work
through local opposition groups, or friendly intelligence
services.
For example, CIA organized Iraqi opposition groups to try to
kill Saddam Hussein; and Iran's marxist underground,
`mujihadin-i-khalq,' to plant bombs that killed many members of
Iran's Islamic government. Afghan leader Gulbadin Hekmatyar told
me local agents paid by CIA tried to kill him in Peshawar using
powerful truck bomb. CIA got Lebanon's intelligence service, the
Deuxieme Bureau, to mount an unsuccessful attempt to kill Shia
leader, Sheik Fadlallah, with a car bomb that killed 100 people.
According to the highest French intelligence source, France's
spy agency, SDECE, was ordered to assassinate Khadaffi during
the brief conflict a decade ago between Paris and Tripoli over
Chad's Aozou Strip. French agents secreted an altitude-triggered
bomb in a fire extinguisher aboard Khadaffi's private jet. When
French Foreign Legionnaires disguised as Chadian tribesmen drove
the Libyans out of Chad, and relations between Paris and Tripoli
improved, SDECE agents were ordered to covertly remove the bomb.
In a tit for tat, Libya now demands France hand over Shayler
- just as the US, Britain, and France demand Libya extradite
agents suspected in bombing PanAm and UTA jetliners. It's all
enough to make one cynical.
[Eric Margolis is a syndicated foreign affairs columnist and
broadcaster based in Toronto, Canada.]
Copyright © 1998 Eric Margolis - All Rights Reserved
