Rendition questions

Your editorial on the case of Abdel Hakim Belhaj ( Rendition: Straw in the wind , 19 April) overlooks the obvious question: how, when, and why did the British and other European governments stop thinking that Belhaj – named by the then prime minister of Spain as a suspect in the Madrid bombings – was an international terrorist who fought with the Taliban against their own troops, and start thinking he was a democratic "dissident", whom they should provide with massive military support? Perhaps we western taxpayers and voters (and users of public transport) might be given some kind of explanation for this extraordinary volte-face? And no such tale of power and corruption would be complete, surely, without an account of how a "no-fly zone" turned into a billion-dollar, seven-month bombardment of Libya, and an account of the human impact of a campaign which bombed multiple civilian targets and besieged and destroyed entire cities, such as Sirte. Peter McKenna Liverpool