Libyan troops flown home as Cameron scraps UK training camp
Camp was intended to train 2,000 soldiers to bolster security in Libya but indiscipline - including rape charges - was rife
Robert Booth, Diane Taylor and Richard Norton-Taylor
Wed 5 Nov 2014 12.44 EST Last modified on Thu 30 Nov 2017 00.55 EST
Sign on the fence at Bassingbourn barracks in Cambridgeshire. Photograph: Matthew Power/SWNS.com
A group of Libyan troops has been flown out of the UK as David Cameron, described the failure to maintain discipline at their Ministry of Defence training camp as "completely unacceptable" and confirmed the scheme to train them in the UK had been permanently scrapped.
Some of the recruits were allowed to take part in a hastily convened passing-out parade at Bassingbourn barracks, Cambridgeshire, where the training scheme had collapsed in disarray after a breakdown in discipline and charges for sexual assaults. An MoD spokeswoman described the graduation ceremony as small and low-key.
The first group of 45 trainees flew out from RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, on Wednesday morning and the remaining cohort of around 250 will be sent back in the coming days, she said. Discipline among some of the Libyans had fallen apart in the camp, which was intended to train up 2,000 soldiers to bolster security in the war-torn north African state. Two cadets were last week charged with raping a man in Cambridge, two others pleaded guilty to sexual assault and a fifth has been charged with the same offence.
Local residents said they feared for their safety and reported seeing Libyans jumping over the camp's perimeter fence, hiding on their property and buying up alcohol from local shops. The army had to send reinforcements to the camp to cope with the problems.
The prime minister told the House of Commons he had ordered a report from the chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nicholas Houghton.
"What has happened at Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire is completely unacceptable," he said. "These are criminal actions and I have asked the chief of the defence staff for a report into this. A decision was taken at the national security council, which I chaired, on 28 October to end this training altogether. The trainees will be returning to Libya in the coming days and in the meantime all unescorted visits from the camp have been stopped altogether."
General Sir Nicholas Carter, the head of the British Army, told a select committee that the behaviour of some of the Libyan cadets was "completely beyond the pale" and argued that granting any of the cadets asylum would be inappropriate.
Several of the recruits are understood to have tried to claim asylum, but Cameron indicated this would not be granted.
Carter told the Commons defence committee that the remaining cadets of an initial batch of about 300 would leave "within days". He said the army was working closely with Cambridgeshire police.
However, questioned by the Labour MP Gisela Stuart before the Commons defence committee, Carter distanced himself from the project. It was "a policy decision" and not one he was well qualified to advise on, Carter told the MPs.
He described Bassingbourn barracks as "extraordinarily difficult to control". The army trainers' task of trying to control the Libyans was quite challenging, he said, adding that it was not surprising, given the increasingly unstable situation in Libya.
The army had done "as much training as we can in the circumstances", Carter said. He added that 80%-90% of the first batch of a battalion of about 300 cadets had "had a good training experience and go back to Libya as better soldiers".
Andrew Lansley, the MP for South Cambridgeshire, wrote to local community leaders on Wednesday saying the government had now scrapped the programme.
He said: "I understand that the trainees currently stationed at the barracks will be repatriated to Libya in the coming days, and that the subsequent tranches who were due to follow them will now not arrive. The MoD will now review how best to support the Libyan government in other ways. I do not expect any further tranches of Libyan troops to come to Bassingbourn."
Libyan cadet
One of the Libyan soldiers, Omar Al-Mukhtar, who was not involved in any of the allegations of criminality, told the BBC on Wednesday that there had been only one fight between Libyan cadets but "several" between Libyans and British soldiers. He denied claims that any of the soldiers had claimed asylum, and said they were only allowed out of the base for three hours a week accompanied by British soldiers and that when they were they had been offered drugs, alcohol and sex for money.
He said many of the troops had made progress: "Even the generals here say we did really well," he said.
But Mukhtar said the British government had "not offered a comfortable way of living here [at the barracks]", and that some people were "trying to ruin the reputation of the Libyan army".
On the curtailing of their training and its causes he said: "It was the British from the beginning. They should have sought a solution and finished the training well. They didn't tell us about British law and what's the difference between right and wrong here."
Peter Robinson, chairman of Bassingbourn parish council, said the community was relieved that the first troops had flown out.
He said that at a community meeting on Tuesday night, locals had voiced fears "that [the attacks that] happened to people in Cambridge may happen to them".
"It was nice to alleviate their fears and say that it looked like it was the end of the affair," he said.
Meanwhile it has emerged that members of the local community have written to senior civil servants at the MoD about the "capricious and intransigent manner" in which they handled the closure of the barracks before reopening it to house the Libyans.
Several local sports clubs used facilities on the barracks site, including a golf course, fishing lakes and a dry ski slope, but they were given a notice to quit on 31 March. They were told the barracks would be mothballed and when the clubs tried to negotiate with the MoD they were given "an emphatic no".
Des Downey, a golf club committee member complained to the MoD that "intransigence, risk adverse behaviour and what seemed to be a lack of understanding on how the issues could be resolved was the order of the day".
But less than three months after the quit notice was enforced, the barracks was re-opened for the Libyans.
"The MoD failed to exercise good communication, negotiation, flexibility and respect for the communities where the leisure assets are located," Downey complained. "To compound it all, taxpayers see within their community leisure assets to the value of perhaps £1m destroyed."
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