'West maintains close ties with dictators'

Thu Sep 15, 2011 3:8PM GMT

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Interview with Sabri Malek, from the Libyan Democratic Party in London

Recently, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found documents suggesting cooperation links between Libya's fugitive ruler Muammar Gaddafi, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the British MI6.

Among the documents found were rendition flights to Libya, and suggested questions to be used during interrogations, information on dissidents outside the country, and personal letters.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Spokesperson for Libya Democratic Party Sabri Malek to discuss Libya's current situation.

Press TV: How much of a concern is this for you as a Libyan who has been in opposition to colonel Gaddafi?

Malek: It has been of great concern. The problem we have in the Arab world is that there have always been very strong ties between western governments and western intelligence agencies and the dictators in the Arab world. This gave rise to fundamentalism and extremism in our part of the world, because extremists think that all bad things come from the West.

This is why we have al-Qaeda and similar organizations. I'm afraid what the West has done since, is that by giving even more support to these dictators and the episode of [the existence of] very cozy relationship between Gaddafi's Libyan intelligence service and Western intelligence services, gave rise to even more demands of Libya for severing ties with these agencies. So there is a lot of resentment in Libya and in the Arab world in general.

Press TV: What aspects of this did you find particularly distasteful? Amnesty called the rendition, the letters between [former Gaddafi spy chief] Musa Kousa, M. We think we know who is M, who now works for British Petroleum (BP), a really murky, disgraceful affair. Are you appalled by this or do you understand it in a way, because they wanted to bring Colonel Gaddafi in from the cold?

Malek: I don't think there is a such thing as “bringing him in from the cold”. Gaddafi has always had strong ties with the Western intelligence. This about nuclear weapons program in Libya is neither here nor there. The West was having lots of problems in Iraq, and they had to come up with something. So they went to Gaddafi and invented this whole thing. There was hardly any of the kind.

Press TV: It's also been revealed that as recently as December, the British ambassador in Tripoli was inviting a number of senior Libyan army officials to an arms fair to buy all kinds of high-tech equipment, including sniper rifles. It's now believed that some of these rifles were used against Libyan opposition, revolutionary forces and freedom fighters. How does that make you feel?

Malek: Very bad indeed. I'd like to mention a specific case. It is of a member of the Democratic Party, Mr. Ahmed Shaibani We found out that after the fall of Tripoli, that there were documents in the headquarters of Gaddafi of the British MI5, going into his flat in London and writing a report to Gaddafi's intelligence of very minor details of his life, including what kind of tea he drinks and what the color of his bedroom carpet is. I can assure you Shaibani is no terrorist or extremist and has no affiliations with al-Qaeda or any fundamentalist organizations, he's a democrat. Yet British intelligence is sending information like this to Gaddafi's intelligence. It's amazing. It's scandalous; it's worse than Watergate.

We have the documents. The question is what is happening now, Gaddafi's gone. Are Western intelligence services doing the same thing in Bahrain? Are they doing it to the Saudi regime? Of course Libya has a lot of wealth. Are the Saudi dissidents in London, Paris, and America facing the same treatment?

Press TV: There were investments in real strong leaders in Africa and the Middle East, and actually now things have changed. Maybe the people in Libya can trust their new friends who were previously friends with the man who kept them under chains for 42 years.

Malek: We always have this argument in the West. When something is found to be going wrong, we are told this was the past, but now things are going to change. This is not good enough. What is needed now is strong support for the democratic forces in the Arab world. The Arab Spring has shown that the Arab world wants good [peaceful] relations with West. We are fundamentalists. They are liberal and democratic, but Western governments are not supporting the democratic trend in the Arab world. What is needed is a foreign policy that puts human rights first and not economic interests.

SZH/JR