MI6 ‘halted bid to arrest bin Laden’
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,9174,837333,00.html
Startling revelations by French intelligence experts back David Shayler’s alleged ‘fantasy’about Gadaffi plot
Martin Bright, home affairs editor
Sunday November 10, 2002
The Observer
British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.
The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya’s fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden’s trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the Government, which described similar claims by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler as ‘pure fantasy’.
The allegations have emerged in the book Forbidden Truth , published in America by two French intelligence experts who reveal that the first Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden was issued by Libya in March 1998.
According to journalist Guillaume Dasqui