Britain’s intelligence services are under pressure to spell out the full extent of their links with Colonel Muammer Gaddafi’s former regime in Libya after it emerged that the UK was complicit in a successful US plot to transfer an Islamist terror suspect to Tripoli seven years ago.

As Libya’s rebel movement takes control of Tripoli after Colonel Gaddafi’s fall, the discovery of a huge cache of documents in the capital has thrown a spotlight on the intelligence links which the former regime enjoyed with Britain as well as the US. The papers were found in the offices of Moussa Koussa, Libya’s head of external security, who defected to Tunisia, and then the UK in late March.

They show that the UK provided intelligence to the Libyan authorities in 2004 on a terror suspect, Abdul Hakim Belhadj, who is now a commander in the victorious rebel forces.