Government lifts ban on Gaddafi plot details

THE REBEL former MI5 agent David Shayler's allegations of a secret plot by British security services to kill the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, were broadcast by the BBC last night.

An injunction blocking a BBC Panorama interview with Mr Shayler before his arrest in Paris last weekend was lifted by the Government after the Corporation submitted parts of the programme's text for vetting.

Mr Shayler told Panorama that in 1994 he was attached to the Libyan section of MI5 where he had regular meetings with an agent from MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service.

That agent told him the service had been giving cash to a "Libyan Islamist extremist group" which mounted a failed assassination attempt on Colonel Gaddafi by putting a bomb under a road on which the Libyan leader was travelling.

The bomb exploded, killing several people, but Colonel Gaddafi escaped unhurt.

Mr Shayler told the BBC: "I was absolutely astounded when I heard this was the case. Suddenly we were talking about tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money being used to attempt to assassinate a foreign head of state."

The officer, referred to in the programme as PT16B, told Mr Shayler the plan was so sensitive it needed to be authorised by ministers or by the Foreign Secretary. But the BBC said that they had been told by Tory ministers in office at the time that they had not authorised an attempt to kill Colonel Gaddafi.

In Paris yesterday, Mr Shayler met his lawyer for the first time since his arrest and announced that he was willing to stay in jail to prove his revelations about the intelligence service were in the public interest.

The statement was made by his lawyer, John Wadham, who spent an hour and half with Mr Shayler at La Sante prison in southern Paris.

The announcement came as it was revealed that police had searched the hotel room of the former MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson in New Zealand. Mr Tomlinson was served with an injunction earlier this week to prevent "damaging disclosures" about his four-year career with the intelligence service, which took him to Bosnia and Moscow.

The civil rights group Liberty said he was prevented from boarding an aircraft from New Zealand to Australia and returned to his hotel room as the search was carried out.

Britain wants to extradite Mr Shayler for disclosing information on MI5 operations to the Mail on Sunday newspaper. The Government obtained an injunction last August to stop the paper from publishing further articles.

Mr Shayler ,who left MI5 last year, is accused by the Government of breaching the Officials Secrets Act after reports that he was planning to divulge details of MI5 operations on the Internet and was working with Mr Tomlinson, a former MI6 agent who served a year in prison after admitting giving secret information to a publisher.

Mr Tomlinson was jailed for 12 months in December last year after admitting trying to sell his story to an Australian publisher. He was released on licence in April.

French authorities questioned him in Paris over the weekend, at the time of Mr Shayler's arrest. But Mr Tomlinson was released and travelled to New Zealand.