MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'

The Observer is a liberal Sunday broadsheet newspaper in the UK.

www.observer.co.uk...

MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'

Startling revelations by French intelligence experts back David Shayler's alleged 'fantasy'about Gadaffi plot

Martin Bright, home affairs editor
Sunday November 10, 2002
The Observer

British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.
The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya's fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden's trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the Government, which described similar claims by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler as 'pure fantasy'.

There are some quite interesting claims later in the piece.

john bull, do you use 'liberal' in a british sense? i'd like to clear this up before the right-wing americans dismiss it out of hand ...

- qo.

I use it in the British ,Slightly left of centre ,sense not in the US "reds under the beds" sense.

Don't assume what we will dismiss and won't. If it is a reputable paper and not Rense or RumorMills, it will certainly be looked upon as info.
(Oh, add CNN to the above list!)

no offence TC (suddenly got the Top Cat theme tune running through my head ...) but there have been several points in the past when certain posters here have dismissed the guardian out of hand after it was described as such. didn't want people doing it again. personally i consider the guardian as one of the best, most unbiased and informative papers in britain.

- qo.

Why do our own dirty work when we can pay some rebels a pitance to do it for us... sounds like a plan to me.

The West used mercenaries in Afghanistan and now it comes out that they were doing the same in Libya. I can't say that I'd care too much if the plan had worked and the fundamentalists had got the blame (or credit) because Gadafi is scum.

To halt the arrest of Bin Laden is just plain wrong, even though there is no evidence linking him to 911, there is plenty linking him to other attacks.

Anyhoo... where am I going with this?

Ok... well... I think it is dangerous to let our security operatives go public, but he should have been allowed to argue his case. It was a valid line of defence in my opinion.



[Edited on 12-11-2002 by Fantastic_Damage]

mercenaries or terrorists? that's a fine line. these were al-Qaeda members we're talking about here.

if they are terrorists, why did we support them?

if they are mercenaries, why are we waging a war on them now?

- qo.

It's the way of the world, now the West wants a whipping boy, it has Al-Qaeada. When it wants scum to take out scum, it supports what it thinks is the lesser evil at the time. I'm saying it is wrong, but would we be willing to use our own troops?

the real question is "should we use troops at all?"

- qo.

Look a who the president was at the time.