Key defector expected to go to Libya conference in Qatar after being questioned over Lockerbie bombing
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Ian Black, Middle East editor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 April 2011 11.32 BST
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Libya's former foreign minister Moussa Koussa is expected to fly to Qatar after defecting to, and now being released by the UK. Photograph: Chris Helgren/Reuters
Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain, is being allowed to leave the country after being questioned by Scottish police about his role in the Lockerbie affair, the Guardian can reveal.
Koussa is expected in the Qatari capital of Doha on Wednesday where an international conference on the future of Libya is being held with representatives from the Benghazi-based opposition.
Koussa is said to be seeking to establish whether he has a role to play in the rebel movement along with other senior defectors from the Gaddafi regime – perhaps by brokering a deal between Tripoli and Benghazi.
It is believed he has links with some of the leading rebel figures including Mahmoud Jibril the opposition leader.
It is understood Koussa spent a week being debriefed by officials from MI6 at a safe house before being allowed to go free. He was questioned by Dumfries and Galloway police about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in which 270 people died, though was he was not a suspect.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, had insisted that Koussa would not be given immunity from prosecution.
He was helped to defect by MI6 after leaving Tripoli for Tunisia on what was initially described as a private visit.
It is expected that he will return to the UK in the next few days after the trip to the Middle East.
The hope in Whitehall is that Koussa's lenient treatment by the UK authorities will send a positive signal to other would-be Libyan defectors as part of a broader strategy of eroding Muammar Gaddafi's position.
On Monday Koussa made his first public statement since leaving Libya 12 days ago. "I ask everybody to avoid taking Libya into civil war," he told the BBC. "This would lead to so much blood and Libya would be a new Somalia. More than that, we refuse to divide Libya. The unity of Libya is essential to any solution and settlement."
Speaking in Arabic, Koussa made no reference in his statement to questions about his past and any knowledge or involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. It is understood he has a lawyer representing him.
Koussa's links to the UK go back to the period when he was deputy foreign mister in the mid 1990s and was involved in talks that revealed past support by the Gaddafi regime for the IRA. He was head of Libya's foreign intelligence service in the 1990s – after the Lockerbie bombing. He was involved in still inconclusive talks about the murder of Constable Yvonne Fletcher in 1984.
In 2003 he played a pivotal role in talks about surrendering Libya's programme for weapons of mass destruction – the decision which paved the way for Gaddafi's temporary rehabilitation with the west. In 2009 he took part in negotiations over the controversial return home of the convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbasset al-Megrahi.
In the early 1980s when he headed the London embassy, Koussa was thrown out of the UK after announcing plans to kill anti-Gaddafi dissidents.
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(Ben Curtis / ASSOCIATED PRESS ) - A young girl in Benghazi waves the opposition flag as an angry but peaceful crowd demonstrates outside the Tibesty Hotel, where an African Union delegation was meeting with opposition leaders Monday.
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