In Britain, another victim of CIA-tied rendition has been given a $3.5 million settlement from the British government. Sami al Saadi, a leading opponent of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, was forcibly sent to Libya along with his wife and four children in 2004. In a joint operation between the United States, Britain and the Gaddafi-ruled Libya, Saadi and his family were forced onto a plane in Hong Kong and sent back to Libya, where they were all imprisoned and Saadi himself was tortured. Kat Craig, legal director of the British charity Reprieve, said Britain played a critical role in Saadi’s ordeal.

Kat Craig: “It was British intelligence that led to the rendition and British officers who interrogated these individuals whilst they were being detained under the Gaddafi regime and whilst they were being tortured. Mr. al Saadi’s only motivation now is to find accountability and justice and to ensure that this will not happen again to others, that the British government stays within the bounds of law, as they failed to do in the case where they rendered and were complicit in the rendering of him and his family.”

Saadi was one of a number of Libyans rendered by the United States and Britain to Libya despite the knowledge they would be tortured. Evidence of the CIA’s collaboration with Gaddafi emerged after Gaddafi’s U.S.-backed ouster in 2011.