Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Abdul Hakim Belhaj: "I hope that it is a new page in history"

The UK government has apologised to a Libyan dissident and his wife after its actions contributed to their detention, transfer to Libya and his torture by Colonel Gaddafi's forces in 2004. Abdul Hakim Belhadj, a known opponent of Gaddafi’s regime, and his pregnant wife Fatima Boudchar were abducted by CIA agents in Thailand after a tip-off from British spies, then illegally transferred to Tripoli. The government has accepted the couple's account of what happened - and the settlement is the first time ministers have apologised for a specific act involving British security agencies. Neither of you should have been treated in this way,” Prime Minister Theresa May wrote to the couple in a letter made public on Thursday. "The UK government's actions contributed to your detention, rendition and suffering ... On behalf of Her Majesty's government, I apologise to you unreservedly," Theresa May, Britain's prime minister, said in a letter to Belhaj and his wife Fatima Boudchar, which was read out in parliament on Thursday by Jeremy Wright, the attorney general. The role that the UK’s overseas intelligence agency, MI6, played in facilitating their arrest in southeast Asia and subsequent rendition by the CIA to torture and detention in Libya first came to light in a trove of documents discovered by Human Rights Watch in Tripoli in September 2011, and later documented in exhaustive detail. In written statements sent by their lawyers shortly after the apology was made public, Belhadj and Boudchar thanked the British government. Read more from Dominic

'Humane' treatment assurances

Attorney General Jeremy Wright, who read out Mrs May's letter, said Mr Belhaj had not sought and would not receive financial compensation.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May apologises to the family of Abdul Hakim Belhaj, accepting the fact that the UK's actions led to his rendition to Libya where he was tortured. Belhaj was detained in Thailand by US authorities in 2004. His wife accepts the apology and £500,000.