A MAN SUSPECTED of being behind al-Qaeda attacks on a hotel and two Christian churches in Pakistan in 2002 was working for Britain’s foreign intelligence service at the time the attacks took place.
US documents published by the New York Times and the Guardian, relating to prisoners at the controversial military prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, show that Adil Hadi al-Jazairi Bin Hamlili – detained in 2003 and taken to Guantánamo in 2004 – was working as an informant for MI6 and for Canada’s secret service at the same time.
The US papers describe bin Hamlili, an Algerian national, as a “facilitator, courier, kidnapper and assassin for al-Qaeda” – but also share the CIA’s belief that he was an apparent triple agent.
“Upon his transfer to US authorities, the CIA, after numerous custodial interviews with detainee, found detainee to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS) and British Secret Intelligence Service (BSIS) (for whom he served as a HUMINT [human intelligence] source,” the documents – dated July 2008 – read.
Bin Hamlili told interrogators he admitted to killing another member of the Islamic terrorist organisation in order to enforce a more extreme interpretation of sharia law.
The US also believed he was involved in a plot to attack a US consulate in Pakistan, and may have been the leader of a cell that attacked a string of civilian targets in 2002.
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