Libya: returning Britons say rescue operation \'shambolic\'

25 Feb 2011



Andrew Briscoe, a former Army Sergeant Major from Hereford who arrived at Gatwick in the early hours of this morning, described the scenes at the airport in Tripoli.



The 44-year-old married father-of-two said: \"The atmosphere was very tense. There was mad panic.



\"The Libyan riot police were trying to keep people away. The whole human detritus was there.



\"The weather was cold, wet and miserable. There was hail and thunder.\"



He added: \"It was the worst weather Tripoli has seen in almost living memory, and we were stood in the rain for 13 hours.



\"If you were a prisoner, if you got arrested today and told to wait outside for 13 hours the human rights lawyers would be all over you.\"



Asked how he thought the evacuation operation had been organised by the British Government, he said: \"The one word I can think of is shambolic.\"



Speaking of the staff on the ground, he said they were poorly equipped and one team leader could not even project his voice to give people information.



He added: \"Not a brilliant result I would say.\"



Mr Briscoe did not say where he was working in Libya because it was \"commercially sensitive\" but he said a colleague told him the rest of Tripoli was \"normal\".



He said: \"The airport was the only place that was in chaos in Tripoli. The shops were open, the markets were open.



\"Everywhere was normal. Just the airport was total and utter chaos.\"



Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt insisted \'\'an awful lot\'\' of effort was being put into assisting the trapped oil workers.



\'\'You will appreciate there is a limited amount I can say about that. We are very conscious of their position,\'\' he told BBC News.



\'\'We have been in touch over the last couple of days with energy companies to try to identify where people might be.



\'\'They are not just in one central location, they are scattered around the country. There are not just UK nationals, they are with others as well.



\'\'And we are concerned about the situation with food, water and supplies.



\'\'So an awful lot of work is being done to make sure we know where people are and a lot of effort is being put into how best and what sort of methods can be used to get them safely out of the country.\'\'



Mr Burt said \'\'terrific\'\' work had been done yesterday in getting about 500 people back from Libya to the UK, some via Royal Navy frigate HMS Cumberland and a C130 Hercules military transporter.



He said a further charter flight would be able to return Britons still in Tripoli.



\'\'There are about 50 people left in Tripoli altogether. We are contacting them today because there is a further charter flight going out,\'\' he added.


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