Colonel Gaddafi, who sent hitmen to Britain to assassinate Libyan émigrés in the 1980s, posed the gravest state-sponsored terrorism threat to this country during that period, the authorised history of MI5 says.

By the spring of 1980, MI5’s F Branch, responsible for counter-terrorism, “possessed conclusive evidence that the Libyan embassy in London — renamed the Libyan People’s Bureau — was directing operational and intelligence-gathering activities against Libyan dissidents”.

In The Defence of the Realm, published today, Christopher Andrew highlights the killings authorised by Tripoli. The first was Muhammad Ramadan, shot dead outside the Regent’s Park mosque in April 1980. Two Libyans were arrested. Two weeks later “another of Gaddafi’s assassins” murdered the dissident lawyer Mahmoud Abbu Nafa in his Kensington office.

Colonel Gaddafi, who is now courted by Britain after his renunciation of weapons of mass destruction, is portrayed in MI5’s official history as running a vain and “vicious” leadership. “Its more vicious side was shown by a determination to hunt down critics of his personal dictatorship who had taken refuge abroad.”

Times Archive, 1980: Gaddafi tells exiles to return or be killed

Colonel Gaddafi has issued a 'final warning' to Libyans living abroad to return home of 'be liquidated'

• Libyan lawyer shot in Kensington office

• Arab shot dead at London mosque

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In October 1980, F Branch received intelligence that the People’s Bureau in London had poison in powder form with which to assassinate dissidents. The first Libyan hitman to try to use the poison appears to have been Hosni Sed Farhat, reported to be targeting Libyans in Portsmouth.

“Though F Branch was aware of Farhat’s activities, it had no means of predicting that his first target would be Farj Shaban Ghesouda and his British wife Heather Clare who were not members of any dissident group and appeared to be low in the rank order of Gaddafi’s emigre opponents,” the book says.

Farhat had previously met the Ghesoudas and gained entrance to their home on the pretext of a social call. He offered to go into the kitchen to make coffee, which aroused suspicion. Fearing a poisoning attempt, the couple declined but accepted a packet of peanuts. According to files revealed in The Defence of the Realm, the peanuts were laced with thallium and, when the Ghesouda’s children ate them, “their central nervous systems were affected, their hair fell out, and only prompt diagnosis and treatment saved their lives”.

In 1984, Gaddafi ordered a new campaign against Libyan dissidents, and when an anti-Gaddafi group started a demonstration outside the People’s Bureau, MI5 learnt that the “diplomats” had contacted Tripoli with three options: to clash with the demonstrators outside the bureau, to fire on them from inside the building or to prevent the protest by diplomatic pressure. Although a diplomatic approach was initially made, Tripoli authorised the second option. WPC Yvonne Fletcher was killed by machinegun fire from a first-floor window.

The Lockerbie bomb on December 21, 1988, marked the “climax of Libyan terrorism against Western targets”. “Without the Security Service’s analysis of intelligence leads and use of its international liaison contacts, there would have been insufficient evidence to convict [Abdel Baset Ali] al-Megrahi,” the official history says. Megrahi was released from prison in August.

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