Muammar Gaddafi's son, Mutassim, was taught at London's Soas while the
charity of another son donated £1.5m to the LSE
Rajeev Syal and Jeevan Vasagar
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 March 2011 21.57 GMT
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's charity made a controversial £1.5m donation to
the London School of Economics. Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters
Potentially embarrassing details of links between the Gaddafi regime
and British universities have emerged, including revelations that one
of the Libyan dictator's sons was tutored in the UK.
Mutassim Gaddafi, who has been described as a "war criminal" by Libyan
anti-government protesters, was given private lessons at the School of
Oriental and African Studies in the summer of 2006. Four years later
Soas, which is part of the University of London, announced a lucrative
deal with a Libyan university.
It has also emerged that another British university formed a
partnership with a Libyan government ministry to reform the country's
prisons. But the university did not gain access to Libya's two most
notorious jails.
The deal with the centre for prison studies at King's College London
was facilitated by the Gaddafi foundation, the charity run by another
of the dictator's sons, Saif al-Islam. The foundation also made a
controversial £1.5m donation to the London School of Economics.
The prisons project received funding from both governments. According
to a conference paper on the programme published by two staff at the
centre, the Gaddafi foundation "created the essential links that made
the project a reality".
Universities have come under increasing pressure in recent days over
Libyan links. Sir Howard Davies, the LSE's director, resigned last
week over accepting the Gaddafi donation and the university announced
an independent inquiry.
Robert Halfon, Conservative MP for Harlow, called for an independent
inquiry into the last government's Libyan links. He said in the
Commons on Monday that British universities' links with Libya "were
facilitated by the last government and... the fish rots from the head
down".
Gaddafi's fourth son, Mutassim, 34, attended an English course at
Soas. His studies were organised by Sue Yates, then Soas's director of
business development. She said: "The young man was just there for four
weeks maximum. His family, or whoever it was who arranged it, felt
that this young man should do some work [on] the sophistication in his
language use. This is not unusual at all for members of prominent
families. "It was special tuition for someone from a high profie
background."Subsequently, Soas signed a £188,024 agreement with al-
Fateh university in Tripoli in 2010 to teach an MSc in finance, though
a Soas spokesman said the links predated Mutassim's course. Mutassim
is now believed to run a special forces unit.
It has also emerged that staff from the centre for prison studies at
King's College London visited Libyan jails and found "a clear overall
improvement" in prisons run by the judicial police, who they helped
train in awareness of human rights.
But the project did not include the Abu Salim and Ain Zara prisons,
which are used to detain political prisoners, who are held for years
without trial. According to Human Rights Watch, "Libyan prisons still
contain hundreds of political prisoners who have not engaged in
violent acts or advocated violence. Many of those imprisoned in Abu
Salim belong to Islamist groups. Although some have advocated
violence, many have not and none have received fair trials."
ProfAndrew Coyle, director of the prison studies centre, which has
recently moved from King's to Essex University, said: "Always when we
work in problematic countries one of the first questions we ask is,
are these people serious about change, or are we simply a figleaf for
a regime? They were serious about reform, and one of the first
indications of this was that they accepted the suggestion that the
prisons system should move from the ministry of public security to the
ministry of justice." International human rights standards required
that prisons should be run separately from the interior ministry,
Coyle said.
He said the funding for all the centre's activities came from the
Foreign Office, and was worth £680,000 over six years, while the
Libyan government funded Libyan officials' involvement.
The centre went to Libya at the invitation of the Foreign Office, he
added.
The King's connection is an illustration of the moral complexities of
engaging with the Gaddafi regime. While the Gaddafi foundation helped
set it up, it involved improving standards in prisons run by Mostafa
Abdeljelil, the minister of justice, who was praised at the time by
human rights campaigners and has subsequently been identified as a
provisional leader of Libyan cities under rebel control. The project
was due to conclude in February this year.
Coyle said: "In many countries in the world we have had to make
difficult decisions and on this occasion we made the decision that the
benefits of working in all the ministry of justice prisons outweighed
the disadvantages of not having access to [Abu Salim and Ain Zara]
prisons."
The spotlight on academia prompted a statement from Liverpool John
Moores University on Monday in which it listed Libyan connections
involving its business school, health faculty and a course on neonatal
care for which it received £14,000.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
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