Libya Does Not Extradite Libyans

Is there any country quite as crass and craven as Britain? To have continued courting Moammar Gadhafi for the profits to be obtained for BP and for the country itself, through exploitative oil-drilling and hugely remunerative contracts in Libya, as a favoured supplicant. Despite knowing full well what a bestial tyrant, and supporter of terrorism the despot was.

Minimal irritants to be tolerated in favour of enriching the country. This oozes the oiliest kind of diplomacy, overlooking brutalities that no civilized country should countenance, in favour of obtaining business advantages. There was no secret about the lunacies of Col. Ghadafi and his funding of terrorism, nor even that members of the IRA received weapons and training from Libya.

And before there was the atrocity of Pan Am Flight 103 and the eventual, reluctantly bargained-for hand-over of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, there was the Libyan embassy in London episode in 1984, when confronted by non-violent anti-Gadhafi demonstrators, embassy staff fired a machine gun from inside the embassy, shooting and killing a British policewoman on duty at the guardhouse.

London police held the Libyan embassy staff at siege for eleven days without those responsible being handed over to stand before a court of justice. But Libyans do not surrender their own, and diplomatic immunity in this case extended even toward murder. The embassy staff was permitted to leave the embassy, and was then expelled from Britain.

Now Britain is asking the National Transitional Council to consider extraditing to Britain Matouk Mohammed Matouk, the only suspect in the case. Anticipating that the new Libyan government would be only too happy to co-operate with the Scotland Yard investigation, to obtain closure on behalf of WPc Yvonne Fletcher.

"We want to do everything we can to make sure that the friends and the family of Yvonne Fletcher - who have been mourning for years and years and years but must feel their loss even more sharply given recent events - are given answers and that the people who were responsible for that killing are brought to justice", orated Nick Clegg.

Evidently there is now no sign of Mr. Matouk at his palatial house in Tripoli. Like other privileged Libyans associated with the ruling regime, he has fled the advance of the rebels. But the incoming government like the outgoing one will in all likelihood refuse to extradite Libyan nationals abroad, irrespective of the crimes they may have committed abroad.

Britain's ambassador to Libya at the time of the shooting in 1984, claims he feels it to be "very unlikely" the Libyans would meekly surrender one of their own. That Britain and France were front and centre supporting the National Transitional Council against Gadhafi is merely incidental, demonstrating that fools keep rushing in where wise heads ponder deeply.