Security and intelligence - new material (19)
01 October 2011
Libyan victims of MI6, CIA rendition to Gaddafi file criminal complaint with British police. Reprieve Press Release 17.11.11. Sami al-Saudi, an opponent of the Gaddafi regime who was rendered to the country in 2004 by British intelligence, acting jointly with the CIA and Libya has, along with his family asked London’s Metropolitan Police to investigate charges of conspiracy to torture. The press release says: “Evidence of the mistreatment of Mr al-Saadi, his wife, and four children all aged 12 or under at the time emerged earlier this year after documents were found in the wake of the Libyan revolution, showing the UK’s key organisational role in the case. Letters were also found showing a close relationship between Moussa Koussa and ‘Mark in London’, thought to be MI6’s Mark Allen.”: http://www.reprieve.org.uk/investigations/ukcomplicity/history
Designing for Counter-Terrorism, Dr Jurek J A Tolloczko. Info 4 Security, 21.9.11. Outlines “the security challenges facing the UK” and “best practice to protect against terrorist attack”. Tolloczko, the business manager for defence and security at Tata Steel, notes that the last decade has seen significant focus on ensuring that crowded places are “better protected” from terrorists, often due to the work of government bodies such as the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO), both of whom “provide essential guidance on protecting the UK’s most vulnerable and valuable sites and assets, enhancing the UK’s resilience to terrorist attack and generally raising awareness of the terrorist threat and how we can prepare for, and protect ourselves, in the event of an attack taking place”. Reveals some of the ways in which ‘counter-terrorism’ ideas have been embedded, to varying degrees, into architecture and construction. Apparently, this is done in part by “Counter Terror Security Advisors (CTSAs) – a nationwide team of police security experts whose purpose is to advise on how best to protect against terrorist, and criminal, attacks.” http://www.info4security.com/story.asp?sectioncode=10&storycode=4128108&c=1
The CIA tried to gag me following its 9/11 failures. FT Weekend Magazine, 29.10.11. Ali Soufan was an FBI agent who has recently released a book about his time hunting Al Qaeda operatives following the 11 September attacks. The main thrust of the article is that Soufan may have been able to prevent the attacks from taking place, had the CIA been willing to share with the FBI numerous pieces of information it held on suspected Al Qaeda operatives. As a former agent, Soufan was legally obliged to let the FBI and CIA read his manuscript before publication – the CIA “redacted long passages. In the end, it was published with sections blacked out”.