WORLD_ Moussa Koussa facing calls to return to Britain after being tracked down in Gulf

Moussa Koussa facing calls to return to Britain after being tracked down in Gulf

Moussa Koussa, Colonel Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief and foreign minister, is facing calls to return to Britain for prosecution after The Daily Telegraph tracked him down to a luxury hotel in the Gulf.

By Richard Spencer, Doha
6:00AM BST 27 Jun 2011

Mr Koussa has been living for several weeks in a 17th-floor penthouse suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Doha, the capital of Qatar, under the protection of Qatari security services.

He has been in the Gulf state, a close western ally which is also a conduit for support for the Libyan opposition, since being allowed to leave Britain in mid-April.

At the time officials said Mr Koussa was likely to return to the United Kingdom, where his grandchildren live.

But at the weekend he refused to say when he would leave Qatar, or even if would be allowed to. He is constantly trailed by a team of Qatari “minders”, who were summoned to escort The Daily Telegraph away when it approached him for an interview.

The Conservative MP for Harlow, Robert Halfon, called for Mr Koussa to be handed over to the International Criminal Court in the Hague and put on trial for his role in atrocities perpetrated over decades by the Libyan government under Col Muammar Gaddafi.

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“He was part of a grim regime,” said Mr Halfon, whose family’s roots are in Libya and whose grandfather fled Tripoli in the 1960s.

“It’s all very well and good that he defected, and that should be taken into account, but people like this should face court over their actions.”

Mr Koussa defected to Britain at the end of March, and was debriefed by MI6 and interviewed over the Lockerbie bombing by Dumfries and Galloway police.

He was deputy head of the Libyan intelligence service at the time Pan-Am 103 exploded in mid-air over the Scottish town, though he has always denied that Libya was responsible.

American families of the dead were furious he was allowed out of Britain two weeks after he arrived, to attend a meeting of Gulf leaders with an interest in the Libya conflict in Doha.

Last night, Rosemary Wolfe, whose stepdaughter Miriam died on Pan-Am 103, said: “There he is living in luxury in Qatar and probably thinks the West will forget but we haven’t forgotten.

“The British let him go, which never should have happened, and to make it worse the US had no reaction whatsoever. It’s an absolute outrage.” Mr Halfon said he had asked for an explanation from Downing Street as to why Mr Koussa was allowed to leave but received no reply.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “He’s a private individual who is free to travel to and from the UK. We don’t provide a running commentary on his movements or current activities.”

A senior official at the Qatari Foreign Ministry said he had “no new information” on Mr Koussa.