UK and US relations with Libya- before Arab Spring


• 1984 UK breaks off diplomatic relations with Libya after the Yvonne Fletcher killing in April outside the Libyan embassy
• 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 is brought down over Lockerbie, Scotland
• 1992 UN imposes sanctions in response to the Lockerbie bombing
• 1999 UK restores diplomatic relations
• 2003 UN lifts sanctions in response to Libya’s undertaking to pay compensation for Lockerbie and the UTA bombing in Chad
• 2004 Tony Blair visits Libya
• 2005 US energy companies return to Libya for an auction of oil exploration licenses
• 2006 US restores full diplomatic relations

• 2007 Tony Blair visits Libya
• 2008 Libya and the United Kingdom sign a prisoners transfer agreement, which allows the return of a prisoner to serve out his sentence in his home country where both jurisdictions are in agreement
• 2009 Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is released on compassionate grounds due to ill health and not as a prisoner transfer
• 2010 - US senators push for inquiry into claims that oil giant BP lobbied for Lockerbie bomber's release. BP begins drilling off Libyan coast.

Police and military training
The UK has been involved in training the Libyan police and military. The Home Office listed the number of police officers that had been sent to Libya since 2004 in a PQ answer:
• 2004: three police officers and one member of police staff from West Yorkshire police delivered a three-week programme on drugs investigation. This was part of a project coordinated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
• 2008: one police officer from South Wales police delivered a two-week Major Incident Command Programme organised by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA)
• 2008: two police staff members of the NPIA delivered a two-week forensic awareness training programme
• 2009: two police officers (one seconded to the NPIA) from the Police Service of Northern Ireland delivered a three-week Silver Command and Control Programme.44
Military personnel from Libya started training courses in the UK in 2008-09, along with personnel from 105 other countries.
According to a report in the Financial Times, Saadi Qaddafi, one of the Qaddafi sons, said recently that the British government had in 2010 sent SAS forces to eastern Libya to “train our special forces because they were expecting to fight al-Qaeda in this part of the country.”