Who are the rebels?

The case of Abdul Hakim Belhaj is nothing if not thought provoking.

What is alleged is that Belhaj was captured by the CIA in Thailand in 2004 following a tip off from Britain. It seems his associates told British diplomats in Malaysia that he wanted to claim asylum in the UK, that he got on a flight and was snatched by the Americans at Bangkok where he was tortured, and then flown to Tripoli where he suffered years of abuse in prison. He is now a rebel commander.

I am perhaps alone in the view that people get a little hysterical at the thought of torture. In this regard the chattering classes are not in the same place in the argument as the ordinary man: if someone knows of a plot to blow up a bus or train his daughter might be travelling on, the ordinary man wants the guy tortured.

In this regard Belhaj was a member of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, which had strong links to al-Qaeda. Whilst it is a little bit sneaky allowing the guy to board the plane in order to claim asylum – he had no visa – it was a bit sneaky of someone who had terrorist links to claim asylum in the UK in the first place.

The British and Americans wanted Belhaj removed from operations and who better than Gadaffi to do that: Belhaj was Libyan (albeit with a range of false passports) and the Colonel saw LIFG as a threat.

What I want to dwell on for a minute is that ‘Islamist’ in the title. Belhaj has renounced terrorism, he says, and severed links with al-Qaeda, but is he an Islamist, wanting, like the Taliban, to restrict individual liberty, by force if necessary, in conformity with their interpretation of the Koran?

I have written before that we don’t seem to know much about the people we are supporting, and this guy was not so long ago regarded as sufficiently nasty that we handed him over to Gadaffi.