Dirty deals and unprincipled politics http://www.tni.org/interview/dirty-deals-and-unprincipled-politics

Anyway, the compensation deals clearly led to a cosy relationship between Koussa’s men and the CIA, and the US “extraordinary rendition” policy was duly extended to that country. Libya became another proxy in a policy of ghost prisons and kidnap and torture of detainees on behalf of the US. The Americans even invited Libyan intelligence to Guantanamo Bay to interrogate Libyan detainees, who had strongly supported the insurgency in Iraq. Is this another factor which may come back to haunt the current coalition?Can you tell us something more about Libya’s role as the EU’s “migration buffer” state. And its impact on African migrants?

Yasha [Maccanico] has been documenting this for Statewatch for the past seven years. We have basically presided over a situation in which we outsourced responsibility for migrants and refugees bound to Europe from Africa to that very same torturous regime. As long as Libya prevented people reaching Europe, agreed to take back those people we expelled, and to police the Mediterranean on our behalf, we turned a blind eye to the appalling treatment they meted out.  In fact, more than that, we were complicit in that treatment. The EU provided technical assistance on border controls, the processing of refugees and the facilitation of repatriations to and from Libya (so-called “readmission agreements”). European money flowed into Libya to fund immigration controls, build detention centres and train and equip border guards.