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Socit Gnrale to Pay $1.1 Billion to Settle Dispute With Libya Fund Wall Street Journal (subscription) PARISSocit Gnrale SA said Thursday it had agreed to pay 963 million ($1.1 billion) to settle claims that it paid a middleman alleged bribes to secure business from Libya's sovereign-wealth fund during the final years of dictator Moammar Gadhafi ...

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Socit Gnrale to Pay $1.1 Billion to Settle Dispute With Libya Fund - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Sir Mark Allen was the head of counter-terrorism at MI6. He has always denied any wrongdoing. Photograph: YouTube

A legal attempt to prosecute the former senior MI6 officer Sir Mark Allen for his alleged role in the rendition and torture of Libyan dissidents may be heard partially in secret.

The decision by the director of public prosecutions (DPP), Alison Saunders, not to charge Allen is being challenged at the high court by lawyers for Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife, Fatima Boudchar, who was pregnant when they were both abducted in 2004.

The unusual procedure is being heard by the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and Mr Justice Popplewell. The court has not yet determined whether it is involved in a criminal or civil case.

Belhaj and another Libyan dissident Sami al-Saadi, who was also abducted in east Asia, were flown back by the CIA to Muammar Gaddafis Libya. Belhaj and Saadi claim they were frequently tortured. Their wives and children were forcibly returned to Libya along with them.

Evidence of MI6 involvement in their ordeal emerged in correspondence with Allen found inside the abandoned office of Moussa Koussa, Gaddafis foreign minister and former intelligence chief, after the regime fell in 2011.

Last June, after a four-year investigation by Scotland Yard that gathered 28,000 pages of evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it did not believe there were sufficient grounds for charging Allen, who had been head of counter-terrorism at MI6.

Lawyers for human rights organisation Reprieve, on behalf of the Libyan victims, are challenging the DPPs decision.

During the high court hearing, it emerged that the DPP had asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to intervene and seek a secret hearing a closed material procedure so sensitive security evidence can be seen by the judges but not the claimants.

Confidential CPS files relating to the case, the court was told, have been passed to the FCO so it can assess what should be allowed into the public domain. The FCO was Allens former employer.

Ben Jaffey QC, representing Belhaj and his wife, told the court Allen had sought political authority for some but not for all of his actions; he only disclosed some of what occurred to his political masters.

Rendition operations, Jaffey said, amount to misconduct in public office. A further hearing is due next month. Belhajs lawyers fear the proceedings will be repeatedly delayed by years of legal appeals and objections.

Commenting on the hearing, Cori Crider, a solicitor for rendition victims at Reprieve, said: When top MI6 officials and a former foreign secretary are investigated for rendition and torture, youd think prosecutors would sup with a very long spoon.

How are victims meant to have confidence in open, British justice when prosecutors ask the very department involved in the case to help them make an application for a secret trial?

Allen has always denied any wrongdoing.

The FCO is also being sued for the same events in a civil claim, where Belhaj and Boudchar are seeking an apology and a token 1 in damages.

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Libya rendition case against ex-MI6 officer may be held partly in ... - The Guardian

Rising U.S. production is holding oil prices down.(Photo: Getty Images)

The price of U.S. crude oil continued its tumble Tuesday as investors remain concerned about a global glut and developments in the Middle East that could add to the current supply.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil, the U.S. benchmark, fell 76 cents a barrel to $48.08, and is down 5.2% in the last month.

Brent crude oil, the benchmark for international oils, declined 51 cents a barrel to $51.01, its lowest since Nov. 29.

Signs that Libya is ramping up production may have spooked investors, says Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. Theres perception that oversupply is still a problem with Libya now able to produce around 750,000 barrels per day of crude, Kloza says, adding that's 250,000 more than what the country was producing recently.

Oil price falls below $50 as U.S. supplies hit record

Libyas production had been troubled by political unrest and fighting among militias and terrorist groups. But leaders of the two main factions in Libya have reached an agreement to set up a power-sharing presidential council, triggering hopes of political stability in the country, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.

Libyas been a wild card because of chaos there, Kloza says. Its production ramp-up means more oil in the market.

Meanwhile, U.S. shale production continues to grow, contributing to the bountiful crude inventories in the U.S.

Oil traders were also paying attention to the remarks by made Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman,in a Saudi TV interview,in which he indicated that the countrys austerity measures could continue if oil prices dropped further. He made some comments that were not really supportive of the market, Kloza says.

The market has been much weaker than what most investors would like it to be, Kloza says.

In November, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil-producing nations agreed to cut back on production for much of 2017 to boost prices. The move has helped to stabilize prices, and investors expect their agreement will be extended when OPEC countries meet later this month.

"The cuts have not meaningfully resulted in visibly lower crude oil inventories, especially in the U.S.," said Brian Kessens, Tortoise Capital'smanaging director and portfolio manager, in its podcast Monday.

Follow USA TODAY reporter Roger Yu on Twitter @ByRogerYu.

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Oil price falls on Libya, supply glut - USA TODAY

Since 2011, Libya has become a hot spot of illicit weapons sales, manyof which occur through messaging applications and social media networks, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report which tracks more than 1,300 attempted online sales from 2014 to 2015 was published by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, and uses data collected and analyzedby the group Armament Research Services. Although its authors say that the data set is only a small fractionof illicit arms sales in Libya, the report highlights trends in the growingtrade.

Weapons from 26 countries, including the United States, China, Belgium and Turkey, were found in the 1,346 tracked sales, according to the report. Although most of the small arms were for self-defense and sporting purposes, some of the people involved in the transfers had ties to Libyan militia groups.

[Who in Libya will the U.S. send weapons to? Its complicated, says a top general.]

Whilst online trades appear to account for only a small portion of the illicit arms trade in Libya, their relative anonymity, low barrier to entry, and distributed nature are likely to pose unique challenges to law enforcement and embargo monitoring operations, Nic Jenzen-Jones, the director ofArmament Research Services, said in an email.

Last year, using the preliminary data from parts of this Small Arms Surveyworking paper, the New York Times reported that militant groups and terrorists were using social media networks such as Facebook to traffic weapons from small arms to antiaircraft missiles in Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Facebooks policy toward weapon transfers appears to be unchanged since that article. The social media company prohibits arms sales but requires users to self-report pagesinvolved in the transfers. Because many groups are secret or closed to the public, the pages often gather thousands of members and operate for months before being shut down.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

The groups often make little effort to conceal the nature of their pages, according to the report, using pictures of weapons and names such as the now-removedLibyan Firearms Market. When a group is shut down, the report says, its core membership often starts another page and quickly resume trading.

The trades documented in the report are made mostly from individual sellers, although some of them are online extensions of physical arms bazaars in Libya. The report aside from monitoring the groups also draws on interviews from eight confidential sources that provide a samplingof the type of Libyans involved in the illicit arms market. Seven of them are younger than 35 and most are using the arms sales to supplement their incomes. At least one is selling weapons primarily Belgianhandguns to help pay for his education.

An engineer living in the suburbs of Tripoli and quoted in the report as Confidential Source 7 told the papersauthors that aside from the online market, weaponsare easy to get regardless of Internet connection.

With just a few phone calls, you can get a firearm starting from a 9mm to a rifle, the source said.

From 1992 to 2003, Libya was under a strict United Nations arms embargo following the countrys suspected involvement in the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the downing of a French airliner over Niger in 1989. According to the report, most of the weapons documented in the online trades are from the preembargo era, however some including potential covert arms supplied toMoammar Gaddafis regime also have appeared in social media groups.

[U.S. and allies ready to help arm Libyan forces against Islamic State]

Handguns, according to the report, were prevalentin the data because of Libyans desire to own concealableweapons. The report, however, stipulates that the pistols weredisproportionately represented in comparison with the majority of weapons on the Libyan small-arms market. More than 60 percentof the self-loading rifles documented were Kalashnikov variants, while 14 percent were Belgian-made FAL rifles.

The report documents three French MILAN antitank missiles, probably from a 2007 contract to Gaddafi, that were for sale online. Additionally, two German Heckler and Koch rifles, called G36s, appeared in the reports data. The serial numbers on the rifles have been removed and replaced with a numeric sequencethat doesnot match the manufacturers format and, according to Heckler and Koch, the company never shipped weapons of any type to Libya under Gaddafi.

After the Libyan revolution and NATOs intervention in 2011, the tightly controlled weapons stores of the Gaddafi regime were looted and the region was flooded withtens of thousands of small arms, including shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Aside from showing up on online arms markets, the weapons have appeared in conflict zones across the Middle East and northern Africa.

Related stories: U.S. established Libyan outposts with eye toward offensive against the Islamic State

Five years after uprising, Western nations prepare to intervene again in Libya

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Libya has become a hub for online arms trading, report says - Washington Post

By Ayman al-Warfalli | BENGHAZI, Libya

BENGHAZI, Libya Libya's eastern military commander met the head of its U.N.-backed government on Tuesday, ending a 16-month standoff that has undermined diplomatic efforts to unify a country riven by factional fighting since 2011.

Having previously spurned invitations to engage with the government, Khalifa Haftar held talks with Fayez Seraj in Abu Dhabi that one source close to Haftar said produced an agreement to hold elections early next year.

Regional and Western powers have for months been pushing the two men to discuss resetting a U.N.-mediated agreement that led to the creation of Seraj's Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. The deal was an attempt to end the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.

Haftar is the dominant figure for factions in eastern Libya that have rejected the GNA, contributing to its failure to expand its power in Tripoli and beyond. Rival armed factions in the west of the country have backed the government.

Tuesday's meeting could be a step toward ending a stalemate between competing loose alliances that pushed the country into open warfare in 2014. But any lasting deal would need backing from the numerous and powerful armed groups that have scuppered previous attempts to stabilize the oil-rich country.

There was no official statement as Tuesday's meeting ended, or comment from the GNA side.

Sources close to Haftar said he met Seraj one-on-one for two hours of talks they described as positive.

One sticking point has been a clause in the U.N.-mediated deal giving the GNA's leadership immediate control over military appointments, which eastern factions fear will weaken Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA).

Libya's 218 channel, a pro-Haftar TV station, said they had agreed to propose cancelling the clause, and to form a restructured unity government.

"It was agreed to open permanent channels of communication and to form two working groups to complete an agreement on the details of the formation of a government and the military arrangements between officers from all regions," one source close to Haftar in Abu Dhabi who asked not to be named told Reuters.

There was also an agreement to hold presidential and parliamentary elections no later than March 2018, the source said.

DIVISIVE FIGURE

It was the first time Seraj and Haftar had met since the start of last year.

An expected meeting in Cairo in February fell through, though a roadmap for eastern and western parliamentary delegations to revive a peace process was agreed.

Haftar, a former Gaddafi ally, is a divisive figure who opponents suspect of seeking to return the country to authoritarian rule.

With backing from foreign powers including Egypt, the UAE and Russia, he has gained ground militarily since last year, taking control of several key oil ports and advancing in a long campaign against Islamist-led rivals in Benghazi, Libya's second city.

Haftar has also indicated that he expected to take Tripoli, though many observers doubt he has the capacity to do so.

As the LNA and its allies have pushed west in recent months, they have clashed repeatedly with GNA-aligned opponents around the oil ports and in the southern desert regions of Sabha and Jufra.

Haftar and his supporters have previously rejected the GNA because they say it is beholden to the militias that hold sway in Tripoli and the rest of western Libya.

(Writing by Aidan Lewis; editing by Patrick Markey and John Stonestreet)

PARIS France's presidential rivals, centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right's Marine Le Pen, go head-to-head on Wednesday in a televised debate in which sparks are sure to fly as they fight their corner in a last encounter before Sunday's runoff vote.

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday moved to ease the tension from U.S. air strikes in April against Russian ally Syria, expressing a desire for a Syrian ceasefire and safe zones for the civil war's refugees.

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Rival Libyan kingpins break the ice in Abu Dhabi | Reuters - Reuters