NATO were wrong to bomb Libya and kill so many, but that does not make Gadaffi a good guy. He was not – he was cruel, avaricious, and a dictator and really was mentally unbalanced – I speak as someone who met him.

What I now hope for is that civil war ends in Libya and in short order there are genuinely free and fair elections, in which all who wish may participate, to elect the government the Libyan people want. I hope that NATO country interference in Libya now ends and that no commitments are made over Libya’s mineral resources until an elected government is in place to make them.

But I fear that future NATO power interference, starting with the elections, will be less obvious than the mass killings, but in the end even more damaging, and that Libya’s resources and its finance will be handed over to the big corporations lock, stock and barrel. Those who trumpet this as a triumph of “Liberal intervention” are going to have to show a great deal of progress very quickly, if they claim it outweighs the many civilians NATO killed in Sirte and elsewhere – if you believe such a stark utilitarian equation of dead children for democracy can ever have validity.

Mikel and Nina Malyshev’s family have been told by the UK Border Agency that they have been moved from Yarls Wood to an undisclosed location before deportation to Uzbekistan tomorrow. The UK government continues to refuse to acknowledge the terrible human rights situation in Uzbekistan in general, or the fate that awaits the Malyshevs in particular. No reply has to date been received to a fax to the European Court of Human Rights asking for a suspension.

Please take action – contact your MP, and contact William Hague and Teresa May. The UK government cannot be allowed to continue to pretend that it does not know about the human rights situation in Uzbekistan.

Please repost this and my appeal yesterday on any website on which you can.

UPDATE

Could someone kindly give Amnesty International a call and see if they will urgently contact the British government on this one? They have run cases recently against Uzbeks being deported back from the Ukraine and from Kazakhstan. I have to dash to a meeting on another asylum case.