THE ISLAMIST terrorist who was the key source of the false intelligence used to trigger the US and UK 2003 military invasion of Iraq has been found dead in a Libyan prison cell.
Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi allegedly commited suicide by hanging in the prison where he was being held in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. His death followed a visit by a team from Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading independent organisations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.
The al-Libi affair opens a window on an extraordinarily close espionage link that existed between the government of the former US president, George Bush, and the authoritarian Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.
Al-Libi was the unnamed source that Bush, his former secretary of state, Colin Powell, and other administration officials relied upon prior to the Iraq invasion to assert that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was helping a terrorist organisation run by al-Qaeda. Al-Libi was known to Powell and Bush by the codename "Curveball".
Powell's speech to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003 was largely based on al-Libi's coerced testimony - which was extracted from him in Egyptian torture chambers - even though many US intelligence officials questioned it at the time and later dismissed it completely. In his address, aimed at drumming up support for the invasion, Powell said he could "trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda".
He added: "Fortunately, this operative is now detained." Powell did not identify "Curveball" by name, but CIA officials - and a Senate Intelligence Committee report - later confirmed he was referring to al-Libi.
The Bush administration argued that the invasion of Iraq was necessary because the country was concealing weapons of mass destruction from international inspectors and could have shared those weapons with terrorists. No such stockpiles were found after the invasion.
http://www.sundayherald.com/international/shinternational/display.var.2508623.0.0.php
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