London’s preponderant financial interest in crushing Gaddafi’s nationalist, Pan-Arabist rule was openly admitted before he was even sodomised to death with a bayonet by fighters of the Western-backed National Transitional Council that October.

The previous month, then-British Foreign Secretary William Hague began lobbying the UN to lift arms restrictions on Tripoli, to facilitate London’s sale of weapons to the NTC, including its military wing and self-appointed national police force.

Not long after, junior defense minister Gerald Howard explicitly declared, “We liberated Libya from a tyrant, frankly, I want to see UK business benefit from the liberation we’ve given to their people.” Chief among the intended beneficiaries was BP, a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London.