THE CIA and other Western intelligence agencies worked closely with the ousted regime of Muammar Gaddafi, sharing tips and cooperating in handing over terror suspects for interrogation to a regime known to use torture, according to security documents discovered after the fall of Tripoli.
The revelations provide new details on the West's efforts to turn Libya's mercurial leader from foe to ally and provide an embarrassing example of the US administration's collaboration with authoritarian regimes in the war on terror.
The documents, among tens of thousands found in an external security building in Tripoli, show an increasingly warm relationship, with CIA agents proposing to set up a permanent Tripoli office, addressing their Libyan counterparts by their first names and giving them advice.
The agencies were known to cooperate as the longtime Libyan ruler worked to overcome his pariah status by stopping his quest for weapons of mass destruction and renouncing support for terrorism.
But the new details show a more extensive relationship than was previously known, with Western agencies offering lists of questions for specific detainees and the text for a Gaddafi speech.
They also offer a glimpse into the inner workings of the now-defunct CIA programme of extraordinary rendition, through which terror suspects were secretly detained.
The documents mention a half dozen names of people targeted for rendition, including Tripoli's new rebel military commander, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj.
Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, which helped find the documents, called the ties between Washington and Gadhafi's regime "A very dark chapter in American intelligence history".
The findings could cloud relations between the West and Libya's new leaders, although Belhaj said he holds no grudge. Nato airstrikes have helped the rebels advance throughout the six-month civil war and continue to target regime forces as rebels hunt for Gaddafi.
Belhaj is the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a now-dissolved militant organisation that sought to assassinate Gaddafi.
Belhaj says CIA agents tortured him in a secret prison in Thailand before he was returned to Libya and locked in the notorious Abu Salim prison.
Two documents from March 2004 show American and Libyan officials arranging Belhaj's rendition.
Referring to him by his nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq, the documents said he and his pregnant wife were due to travel to Thailand, where they would be detained.
The memo also requested that Libya, a country known for decades for torture and ill-treatment of prisoners: "Please be advised that we must be assured that al-Sadiq will be treated humanely and that his human rights will be respected."
The documents coincide with efforts by the Gaddafi regime over the last decade to emerge from international isolation, even agreeing to pay compensation to relatives of each of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.
The documents show the CIA and MI6 advising the regime on how to work to rescind its designation as a state sponsor of terror.
The validity of the documents, not written on official letterhead, could not be independently verified, but their content seems consistent with what has been previously reported about intelligence activities during the period - Sapa-AFP