al-Libi, who was tortured until he invented fictions that would provide the US with an excuse to invade Iraq, has conveniently died.
Scott Horton, the human rights lawyer, reports in his blog No Comment:
‘Ali Mohamed al-Fakheri, also known as Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, had died in a Libyan prison. The report stated that the death was an apparent suicide and that Libyan prosecutors had opened an investigation into it, but it went on to note that friends of al-Libi questioned the circumstances of his death…Al-Libi played a key role in the torture debate. He provided a perfect demonstration of the way torture techniques can produce dangerous misinformation. Here’s Peter Finn’s account of the focal role played by the al-Libi interrogation in efforts to make a case for war against Iraq from today’s Washington Post: “Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush Administration. He became the unnamed source, according to Senate investigators, behind Bush Administration claims in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda operatives. The claim was most famously delivered by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his address to the United Nations in February 2003. Powell later called the speech a “blot” on his record, saying he was not given all available intelligence and analysis within the government. The Defense Intelligence Agency and some analysts at the CIA had questioned the veracity of Libi’s testimony, which was obtained after the prisoner was transferred to Egyptian custody for questioning by the CIA, according to Senate investigators.”‘
Full story ‘A Convenient Death’, No Comment, 12 May 2009.
