Mark Allen

Sir Mark John Spurgeon Allen KCMG (born 3 July 1950) is a British diplomat, intelligence officer, and businessman.

Early life Mark Allen was born on 3 July 1950. His father, Peter Muir Spurgeon Allen, was headmaster of Cokethorpe School in Oxfordshire. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and at Downside School, the Roman Catholic public school in Somerset.

In 2003, as head of MI6’s counter-terrorism unit, Allen and Stephen Kappes of the CIA led talks that resulted in an end of support for terrorist activity by Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi and of international sanctions against Libya.

Confidential documents discovered by Human Rights Watch in Libyan Government offices, following the fall of the Gaddafi regime, suggested the involvement of the British Government in rendition operations. These included a fax apparently sent from Sir Mark to the Libyan authorities in March 2004, saying:

After losing out to John Scarlett in his bid to become head of MI6, in which he was supported by his friend Jack Straw, Allen resigned in 2004.

After a six-month sabbatical, Allen became a senior advisor to the Monitor Group, a global consulting and private equity firm. In 2007, he helped broker the release of Bulgarian nurses imprisoned in Libya on charges of having injected HIV virus into children.

On 6 September 2011, The Independent newspaper claimed that Allen had been implicated in the arrest of Abdelhakim Belhaj in March 2004 in Thailand, and the subsequent torture of Belhaj by Gaddafi's regime in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, Libya. In 2014 Britain's Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge Allen for his role, on the grounds they had insufficient evidence, even though the Metropolitan Police had provided them with a 28,000 page dossier. found in the offices of Moussa Koussa the head of Muammar Gaddafi's Intelligence service, after those offices were stormed by opposition forces, when Gaddafi was overthrown.

Allen is a Senior Associate and honorary fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford,

Personal life Allen married Margaret Mary Watson in 1976 and has two children. He was inducted into the Order of St Michael and St George in 2002, and knighted in 2005. he lives in Westminster.

Books Arabs: A New Perspective, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006. With Hossein Amirsadeghi, Sky Hunters: The Passion of Falconry, Thames & Hudson, 24 November 2008 Tribes: Tribalism in the Arab World, Continuum International Publishing Group, due October 2009. First Holy Communion: With a foreword by His Excellency Archbishop Giovanni Tonucci