The Great Game

They're our bastards until they aren't.

The case is based in large part upon a batch of documents discovered in an abandoned Libyan government office last September. These showed that the abductions were plotted with the help of MI6: it was all part of the rapprochement between Gaddafi and the UK and US that saw the dictator abandon his WMD programme and open oil and gas exploration opportunities to western firms.

When a researcher for Human Rights Watch stumbled upon the documents, no attempt was made to deny MI6 involvement in the rendition operations they described.

Instead, Whitehall sources immediately said the operations were part of "ministerially authorised government policy". The statement was intended as a clear signal that a secretary of state had signed off a "clause 7 authorisation" under the Intelligence Services Act.