This is the headline over a long article in the US news magazine Newsday published to coincide with President Bush's phone call to Colonel Gaddafi expressing his satisfaction at the final Libyan payment into the compensation fund. It reads in part:
'For Siobhan Mulroy, who lost six relatives when a terrorist bomb ripped apart a Pan Am 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the final restitution from Libya doesn't bring relief, or satisfaction, or closure. The feeling, she said, is closer to revulsion.
'"It's kind of a repulsive situation to be in where people are offering money, I guess, to make you feel better," said Mulroy of East Northport, who lost her father, brother, sister-in-law, uncle, aunt and cousin. (...)
'"I'm glad that the president is satisfied with it. I'm certainly not," said Peter Lowenstein of Montauk, whose son, Alexander, was one of 35 Syracuse University students on the flight who had been in London for the semester. "I don't recall him losing a relative on Flight 103.
'"His interest is to satisfy the oil industry, who are major supporters of his. ... He wants what they want, which is to get Libyan oil."
'Daniel Tobin, who lost his brother Mark Tobin of Hempstead, said the money doesn't put the issue to rest.
'"So many have forgotten us. ... I'm still concerned that Exxon Mobil and other oil companies, that they're able to do business with Gadhafi," said Tobin, also of Hempstead. "They're allowed to do business with terrorists."'
The full article can be read here. Interestingly, it contains a timeline of significant events relating to the Lockerbie tragedy. It omits all reference to the fact that the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi has been referred back to the High Court on the ground that it may have constituted a miscarriage of justice. When are the media in the United States going to wake up to the fact that the officially-approved Libyan guilt scenario is under severe attack and is highly unlikely to survive?
1.< The deliberate statement by the media: Libyan August 2003, "Acceptance of Responsibility" for the bombing PanAm 103 is not correct!
ReplyDeleteI believe, the statement in the Letter, dated 15 August 2003, from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council , is cristal-clear: • It has facilitated the bringing to justice of the two suspects charged with the bombing of Pan Am 103 and accepts (only) the responsibility for the actions of its officials.
This explanation was signed in a logical way only on the condition of a legal condemnation by the court in Kamp van Zeist. NB: Mr Khalifa Fhimah (was not a official) has freely spoken.
2.< Libya was forced by Great Britain, the USA and the UN , to make this declaration. Without this explanation the suspended UN Embargo would have been taken against Libya again!
3.> The official Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, condemned to 27 years prison legally, does not have to do anything with the PanAm-103 assassination attempt! The upcoming second Appeal judgement at the High Court in Edinburgh will bring the truth to the day.
To the memory:
The trial under Scottish law, the accused Mr Al Megrahi was found guilty on Jannuary 31, 2001, of mass murder (270 killed) and is serving a life sentence (27 years) in Greenock prison at Glasgow in Scotland. Mr Megrahi and protests till today his innocence.
The Scottish judicial review commission (SCCRC) came across important relieve-evidence (some that was available to prosecutors but not the defense during Megrahi's trial) suggesting that the Libyan was framed and the the legal judgement was in all probability a miscariage of justice!
Entitled question for the Lockerbie victims Families group (PanAm 103 aircrash)?:
Which will happened with the 'compensation' money of US$ 2,7 billion from Libya Foundation, if Mr Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, of the same Scottish jurisdiction, as innocent revived?
I believe that the entire world population then expected, that then the unauthorized received 'compensation' will pay back to the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, Saif el Islam Gaddafi.
The reproach would be then incorrect that the survivors are greedy and have required on the back of their victims blood money.
by Edwin & Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd, Switzerland
Dear Bob,
ReplyDeleteOne of the bereaved mentioned the word "oil". The following may add to the information available.
EXTRACT: FOR FLORA, BY JIM SWIRE
"The hours rapidly passed towards the night time bombing of Tripoli, in which forty civilians would be killed and many injured. Still, to Thatcher what mattered was not the truth, nor the lives that would be lost by this - in Reagan's words - "precisely targeted strike", but the propaganda battle and the need to support America, whatever the cost to a British Prime Minister or European unity.
Tyrants existed around the world, yet tiny Libya, that ragged nation half a planet away, was a deadly threat that must be attacked, and the tyrannical regime replaced by a more amenable leader. Gaddafi was the irritation, the target, the obstacle to American intentions in the region.
With the benefit of information that emerged from U.S. Geological surveys reported and confirmed in 1994, and from those White House emails that still survive, it is now clear what American concern for Liberty and Democracy in Libya was all about; that is, the extraction and processing of oil.
A short missive written some months earlier within the Pentagon's Libyan planning group revealed that whatever might happen, American oil companies had to emerge from the 1986 Libyan attack with the capacity to resume production:
" [13th Jan 1986] 19:42:19. To: DONALD FORTIER. NOTE FROM: BOB PEARSON
SUBJECT: DISPOSAL OF ASSETS OF US OIL FIRMS IN LIBYA
The horse seems out of the barn already. Rod McDaniel found out from treasury that they have already told at least two of the four major oil companies in Libya that our preferred way for them to dispose of their assets their would be for them to turn them over to their European subsidiaries. If the goal of our sanctions was to cause dislocation in the Libyan oil economy, this certainly won't do the trick.
Is it morally and politically defensible to advise the companies instead to disable their assets in some key ways so that the Libyans can't just come in and use them effectively? Melodramatic military analogy would be a scorched earth policy.
In this high tech instance, maybe the companies could through [throw] a few spanners in the works, write off the assets as a response to force majeur conditions caused [by] the E.O., and then fix things up again if and when they return to a post-Qadhafi Libya."
[Source: White House Email, published 1995 National Security Archive of America, ed. Tom Blanton]
ENDS