Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic who have been outraged at the release of the mass-murdering “Lockerbie bomber” should take time to read the many hundreds of pages of evidence and argument in the case, expected to be released by his lawyers over the next few weeks.
Even the most vociferous critic might be left in some doubt about the conviction of Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, freed from a Scottish jail to die with his family in Libya, and suspect that the Libyan was the victim of the most dreadful miscarriage of justice.
The fact that the wrong man was in the dock was evident to those few independent observers who sat through the entire travesty of a trial in the Netherlands nearly 10 years ago. One of those was Dr Hans Koechler, appointed by the United Nations, who concluded: "There is not one single piece of material evidence linking [Megrahi] to the crime… the guilty verdict appears to be arbitrary, even irrational.”
Flawed and glaringly contradictory evidence
Koechler’s report was a damning indictment of the three Scottish trial judges who sat without a jury. The bulk of their judgment pointed to a not proven verdict – and then they convicted Megrahi anyway.
As Eye readers will know, there were alterations to crucial forensic exhibits supposedly linking Libya and Megrahi to the bomb, for which police and scientists could give no proper explanation; there was a succession of flawed and glaringly contradictory evidence from key witnesses, at least two of whom were paid by the CIA; there was evidence of the striking similarity to the modus operandi of a Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist cell, operating out of Frankfurt, caught with devices equipped to bring down planes – one of which was missing. And then, of course, there was the crucial “identification” of Megrahi by Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothes identified as being packed in the suitcase with the bomb. In all his statements and evidence, Gauci only ever says that Megrahi bore a “resemblance” to the man who purchased the clothes – never that he was the man.
The judges performed a number of extraordinary leaps of logic to overcome these and all the other problems with the prosecution case, and it was evident to Dr Koechler even then that “foreign governments and secret governmental agencies”, directly or indirectly, influenced the trial.
[The above are the first two sections of Private Eye's most recent article on Lockerbie. The remaining two sections are also worth reading.]
Wednesday 30 September 2009
Row after Lockerbie film shown at Holyrood
[This is the headline over a brief report in today's edition of The Scotsman. The first Holyrood showing of the film took place in April. The account of that event on this blog can be read here. The film itself can be viewed through the Tegenlicht website. The Scotsman's report reads as follows:]
A row erupted last night when a controversial documentary claiming to challenge the evidence that led to the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber was shown at Holyrood.
Christine Grahame, the SNP MSP who believes Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is innocent, arranged a showing of Lockerbie Revisited, by Dutch documentary-maker Gideon Levy, that raises questions about evidence linking the bomb to Libya.
The film – never screened on mainstream British TV – suggests a fragment of the device left the UK without permission and was examined in the US – a move which could have led to contamination of evidence.
Last night Richard Marquise, the FBI agent who led the US side of the Lockerbie investigation questioned whether it was helpful to show the film.
"I'm still certain the evidence was righteous," Mr Marquise said.
A Crown Office spokesman said: "The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court."
[The screening of the film most certainly is not helpful to Mr Marquise or the FBI or the Crown Office, amongst others. What it is helpful to, is the ascertainment of the truth regarding the propriety of Abdelbaset Megrahi's conviction.]
A row erupted last night when a controversial documentary claiming to challenge the evidence that led to the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber was shown at Holyrood.
Christine Grahame, the SNP MSP who believes Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is innocent, arranged a showing of Lockerbie Revisited, by Dutch documentary-maker Gideon Levy, that raises questions about evidence linking the bomb to Libya.
The film – never screened on mainstream British TV – suggests a fragment of the device left the UK without permission and was examined in the US – a move which could have led to contamination of evidence.
Last night Richard Marquise, the FBI agent who led the US side of the Lockerbie investigation questioned whether it was helpful to show the film.
"I'm still certain the evidence was righteous," Mr Marquise said.
A Crown Office spokesman said: "The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court."
[The screening of the film most certainly is not helpful to Mr Marquise or the FBI or the Crown Office, amongst others. What it is helpful to, is the ascertainment of the truth regarding the propriety of Abdelbaset Megrahi's conviction.]
Tuesday 29 September 2009
Justice Committee inquiry into Megrahi release process
The Holyrood inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber will not consider whether the Scottish government was right to free him. (...)
The parliament's justice committee said it would focus on the process followed by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. (...)
Announcing its remit into the inquiry, the justice committee said it would look into the application for Megrahi's release from Greenock Prison on compassionate grounds, as well as a request to send him home under a prisoner transfer agreement - which was rejected by Scottish ministers.
The cross-party committee said it "will not consider the question of whether the cabinet secretary was right to conclude that compassionate release was justified in the circumstances".
MSPs are likely to look into the timing of Mr MacAskill's decision, the advice he took and the circumstances surrounding Megrahi's much-criticised jubilant homecoming reception in Tripoli.
The committee will also question Mr MacAskill and a series of officials.
[The above are excerpts from a report on the BBC News website.]
The parliament's justice committee said it would focus on the process followed by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. (...)
Announcing its remit into the inquiry, the justice committee said it would look into the application for Megrahi's release from Greenock Prison on compassionate grounds, as well as a request to send him home under a prisoner transfer agreement - which was rejected by Scottish ministers.
The cross-party committee said it "will not consider the question of whether the cabinet secretary was right to conclude that compassionate release was justified in the circumstances".
MSPs are likely to look into the timing of Mr MacAskill's decision, the advice he took and the circumstances surrounding Megrahi's much-criticised jubilant homecoming reception in Tripoli.
The committee will also question Mr MacAskill and a series of officials.
[The above are excerpts from a report on the BBC News website.]
Monday 28 September 2009
Angiolini backs away from semtex challenge
[This is the headline over an article on the website of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads in part:]
The Lord Advocate Elish Angioini has refused to engage with the semtex challenge backed by UN Special Observer Hans Kochler and Professor Robert Black QC, set by the Lockerbie Justice Group.
The group have tasked Angiolini to demonstrate that a fragment of circuit board can survive a semtex blast, as claimed by the Crown in the Lockerbie trial. The group say that this is not physically possible.
Despite repeated requests for a response, Angiolini has not acknowledged the group’s challenge, and refused to engage with the gauntlet that has been thrown down.
Angiolini has also refused to be interviewed by The Firm about the challenge.
The challenge itself coincides with the screening of dutch documentary "Lockerbie Revisited" at Holyrood tomorrow night, which focuses on the crucial piece of circuit board fragment alleged to have been found during the Lockerbie investigation. The film casts serious doubts over the credibility of this evidence. It has been nominated for best documentary at the [current] Netherlands ... Film Festival in Utrecht.
The challenge to the evidence has been emboldened by confirmation from semtex manufacturer Miroslav Štancl of Explosia a.s, who says the temperature at the point of explosion of “plastic explosives Semtex” is between 3,800 and 3,870° C, depending upon the type and composition.
Aitken Brotherston, who tested circuit boards as an engineer at Ferranti says that such boards will combust at temperatures equivalent to that produced by a Swan Vesta match, and “nothing would survive” within a semtex blast bright spot.
“The proposal that fragments of the board, of sufficient size to permit identification, packed with the bomb had survived a temperature environment of more than 3000 degree C in the explosion is to me just not credible,” he says.
In 2007, MEBO engineer Ulrich Lumpert submitted an affidavit stating that the circuit board fragment produced in court at Zeist was part of a non-operational demonstration circuit board that he himself had removed from the premises of MEBO and had handed over to an investigator on 22 June 1989, six months after the destruction of Pan Am 103.
“If this is true, then it totally demolishes the prosecution version of how the aircraft was destroyed, as well, of course, as demonstrating deliberate fabrication of evidence laid before the court,” Professor Black said at the time. (...)
Earlier this year a test conducted by Dr Ludwig De Braeckeleer and researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to penetrate a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occurred in the hold as the Crown claimed. They concluded that the Crown’s case, which maintained only one pound of semtex destroyed Pan Am 103 was "scientifically implausible".
The Lord Advocate Elish Angioini has refused to engage with the semtex challenge backed by UN Special Observer Hans Kochler and Professor Robert Black QC, set by the Lockerbie Justice Group.
The group have tasked Angiolini to demonstrate that a fragment of circuit board can survive a semtex blast, as claimed by the Crown in the Lockerbie trial. The group say that this is not physically possible.
Despite repeated requests for a response, Angiolini has not acknowledged the group’s challenge, and refused to engage with the gauntlet that has been thrown down.
Angiolini has also refused to be interviewed by The Firm about the challenge.
The challenge itself coincides with the screening of dutch documentary "Lockerbie Revisited" at Holyrood tomorrow night, which focuses on the crucial piece of circuit board fragment alleged to have been found during the Lockerbie investigation. The film casts serious doubts over the credibility of this evidence. It has been nominated for best documentary at the [current] Netherlands ... Film Festival in Utrecht.
The challenge to the evidence has been emboldened by confirmation from semtex manufacturer Miroslav Štancl of Explosia a.s, who says the temperature at the point of explosion of “plastic explosives Semtex” is between 3,800 and 3,870° C, depending upon the type and composition.
Aitken Brotherston, who tested circuit boards as an engineer at Ferranti says that such boards will combust at temperatures equivalent to that produced by a Swan Vesta match, and “nothing would survive” within a semtex blast bright spot.
“The proposal that fragments of the board, of sufficient size to permit identification, packed with the bomb had survived a temperature environment of more than 3000 degree C in the explosion is to me just not credible,” he says.
In 2007, MEBO engineer Ulrich Lumpert submitted an affidavit stating that the circuit board fragment produced in court at Zeist was part of a non-operational demonstration circuit board that he himself had removed from the premises of MEBO and had handed over to an investigator on 22 June 1989, six months after the destruction of Pan Am 103.
“If this is true, then it totally demolishes the prosecution version of how the aircraft was destroyed, as well, of course, as demonstrating deliberate fabrication of evidence laid before the court,” Professor Black said at the time. (...)
Earlier this year a test conducted by Dr Ludwig De Braeckeleer and researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to penetrate a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occurred in the hold as the Crown claimed. They concluded that the Crown’s case, which maintained only one pound of semtex destroyed Pan Am 103 was "scientifically implausible".
Lockerbie relatives meet Gaddafi in New York
The sister of an American soldier who was killed in the Lockerbie bombing said that she had met Colonel Muammar Gaddafi during his visit to New York to offer him forgiveness.
Lisa Gibson, 39, and another Lockerbie family met the Libyan leader after his rambling speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. (...)
Ms Gibson’s brother, Kenneth, a US soldier stationed in Germany, was returning home for Christmas on Pan Am Flight 103 when it was blown up on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people in the jet and on the ground. (...)
“When I met with him face-to-face I did not even feel any kind of anger. I was quite at peace.
“He was speaking through a translator. As it was conveyed to us, he said thanks for us coming and he is sorry for what happened to us.”
She said that she did not ask the leader whether he had ordered the attack on the London-New York aircraft. “I did not think it was appropriate,” she said. “They have always said they did not do it. I did not even want to go there. I wanted to focus on reconciliation.” (...)
She and Raymond Pagnucco, whose father, Robert, was killed in the bombing, spent ten minutes with Colonel Gaddafi at Libya’s UN mission.
Before leaving, Ms Gibson gave him a handwritten card telling him that she had forgiven and had been praying for him. “There is more peace with forgiveness. That would be my advice to family members,” she said. (...)
Colonel Gaddafi described the encounter as friendly. “I offered my condolences for the families who lost them. They also expressed their condolences for my daughter who was killed from the American raid in 1986,” he told CNN. He called the Lockerbie bombing a catastrophe but again denied responsibility.
[The above are excerpts from a report in today's edition of The Times.]
Lisa Gibson, 39, and another Lockerbie family met the Libyan leader after his rambling speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. (...)
Ms Gibson’s brother, Kenneth, a US soldier stationed in Germany, was returning home for Christmas on Pan Am Flight 103 when it was blown up on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people in the jet and on the ground. (...)
“When I met with him face-to-face I did not even feel any kind of anger. I was quite at peace.
“He was speaking through a translator. As it was conveyed to us, he said thanks for us coming and he is sorry for what happened to us.”
She said that she did not ask the leader whether he had ordered the attack on the London-New York aircraft. “I did not think it was appropriate,” she said. “They have always said they did not do it. I did not even want to go there. I wanted to focus on reconciliation.” (...)
She and Raymond Pagnucco, whose father, Robert, was killed in the bombing, spent ten minutes with Colonel Gaddafi at Libya’s UN mission.
Before leaving, Ms Gibson gave him a handwritten card telling him that she had forgiven and had been praying for him. “There is more peace with forgiveness. That would be my advice to family members,” she said. (...)
Colonel Gaddafi described the encounter as friendly. “I offered my condolences for the families who lost them. They also expressed their condolences for my daughter who was killed from the American raid in 1986,” he told CNN. He called the Lockerbie bombing a catastrophe but again denied responsibility.
[The above are excerpts from a report in today's edition of The Times.]
Sunday 27 September 2009
Ex-editor's Megrahi release rant
[The Sunday Times today publishes an article on the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The author is Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of The Sun, the UK's most down-market tabloid daily. Apart from the fact that both papers are part of the Rupert Murdoch empire, I can think of no reason for a semi-respectable paper like The Sunday Times to be giving column space to this rant. The following are excerpts.]
Alex Salmond’s government has been exposed as a shocking collection of lickspittles unfit for office.
Its catastrophic decision to release the mass murderer convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was the worst piece of politics I have seen in a long time.
But it is not an argument for a trade boycott of Scotland; it is an argument for a boycott of the SNP at the next election.
The Scottish first minister may have wanted to act the big world statesman taking on the United States before a massive worldwide audience but in his desperation to prove he was not part of a UK-based club he fell flat on his face and the consequences of his administration’s actions will haunt him. (...)
Perhaps we should have expected little else from Scottish devolution and a parliament of lower league players. As David Starkey warned last week Scotland is now governed by a bunch of idiots who might not even make county councillors in England.
But what of the reaction to the Scots themselves to the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? I was astonished that there wasn’t a bigger uprising by the Scottish people against their government as they watched Megrahi’s hero’s welcome in a sea of Saltires in Tripoli.
I’m not anti-Scottish. If I were trying to paint a picture of a Scottish person I would say they are somewhat cynical and fiercely bright. I just cannot understand how an intelligent, knowledgeable anti-establishment race are just taking it all on the chin and accepting it without turning on the SNP. (...)
Lockerbie was massive and still we have not seen anything quite like it. Even 7/7, shocking as it was, killed only a fifth of the number of the number wiped out in the Pan Am Flight 103 attack so why aren’t Scots as angry about this as I am?
What is it in the Scottish psyche that says this is somehow the correct thing? It’s quite easy to have views about other people’s pain when you haven’t suffered it yourself. No-one has carried out a poll in Lockerbie. I wonder if the people there feel the same way about Megrahi. Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, looked like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights when he announced his release and blethered about Scottish compassion. Where was the compassion for the victim’s families who are so enraged and were chanting protests outside the United Nations last week. Does anyone care about these people? Who speaks for them? Not the SNP leader or its justice minister and not the Prime Minister of the UK. These people are just left to twist in the wind, they are of no account. (...)
So much for the Scots being poorly served. The Lockerbie bomber killed, by my estimation, around 31 English people, including an entire family living down the road from me. Gordon Brown should have been offering succour and support. He is after all supposed to represent the whole nation, not just those in his Scottish birthplace.
But no. He managed to find time to enquire after the health of Susan Boyle but cannot find time to pick up the phone to the relatives of the Lockerbie victims, let alone address the public, to explain it. Instead they are viewed as a problem who have to be handled in a cunning and disgusting manner.
It’s Brown whose gut-wrenching cowardice really aggravates me. His every decision is masked in deceit. Why didn’t he just stand up and say whether he agreed with what was going on and what would come of it? (...)
If the people of Scotland really believe that Megrahi should have been sent home then they are so detached from the people of England that it is probably best that they set off on their own path to independence sooner rather than later.
Alex Salmond’s government has been exposed as a shocking collection of lickspittles unfit for office.
Its catastrophic decision to release the mass murderer convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was the worst piece of politics I have seen in a long time.
But it is not an argument for a trade boycott of Scotland; it is an argument for a boycott of the SNP at the next election.
The Scottish first minister may have wanted to act the big world statesman taking on the United States before a massive worldwide audience but in his desperation to prove he was not part of a UK-based club he fell flat on his face and the consequences of his administration’s actions will haunt him. (...)
Perhaps we should have expected little else from Scottish devolution and a parliament of lower league players. As David Starkey warned last week Scotland is now governed by a bunch of idiots who might not even make county councillors in England.
But what of the reaction to the Scots themselves to the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? I was astonished that there wasn’t a bigger uprising by the Scottish people against their government as they watched Megrahi’s hero’s welcome in a sea of Saltires in Tripoli.
I’m not anti-Scottish. If I were trying to paint a picture of a Scottish person I would say they are somewhat cynical and fiercely bright. I just cannot understand how an intelligent, knowledgeable anti-establishment race are just taking it all on the chin and accepting it without turning on the SNP. (...)
Lockerbie was massive and still we have not seen anything quite like it. Even 7/7, shocking as it was, killed only a fifth of the number of the number wiped out in the Pan Am Flight 103 attack so why aren’t Scots as angry about this as I am?
What is it in the Scottish psyche that says this is somehow the correct thing? It’s quite easy to have views about other people’s pain when you haven’t suffered it yourself. No-one has carried out a poll in Lockerbie. I wonder if the people there feel the same way about Megrahi. Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, looked like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights when he announced his release and blethered about Scottish compassion. Where was the compassion for the victim’s families who are so enraged and were chanting protests outside the United Nations last week. Does anyone care about these people? Who speaks for them? Not the SNP leader or its justice minister and not the Prime Minister of the UK. These people are just left to twist in the wind, they are of no account. (...)
So much for the Scots being poorly served. The Lockerbie bomber killed, by my estimation, around 31 English people, including an entire family living down the road from me. Gordon Brown should have been offering succour and support. He is after all supposed to represent the whole nation, not just those in his Scottish birthplace.
But no. He managed to find time to enquire after the health of Susan Boyle but cannot find time to pick up the phone to the relatives of the Lockerbie victims, let alone address the public, to explain it. Instead they are viewed as a problem who have to be handled in a cunning and disgusting manner.
It’s Brown whose gut-wrenching cowardice really aggravates me. His every decision is masked in deceit. Why didn’t he just stand up and say whether he agreed with what was going on and what would come of it? (...)
If the people of Scotland really believe that Megrahi should have been sent home then they are so detached from the people of England that it is probably best that they set off on their own path to independence sooner rather than later.
Saturday 26 September 2009
No deal on Megrahi, says Gaddafi
[This is the heading over a report on the BBC News website. The following are excerpts.]
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has denied any deal was done to secure the release of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
Megrahi has terminal cancer and is said not to have long to live.
In a TV interview with Al Jazeera Colonel Gaddafi said he now considers the matter closed and that there was no deal done.
He said: "This problem ended. It is not possible anymore to talk about clearing Libya or not - whatever happened, the problem is over.
"Abdelbasset was the only person who had the right to appeal to the European Court, but as I said because of his illness and release it seems that there is no need for an appeal."
Asked about any deal over the release, Col Gaddafi said: "No, no, it is very clear, he had this illness and consequently they were compelled to release him because of this disease. There was no deal or anything else."
He was interviewed in New York, where he has addressed the United Nations General Assembly.
Libya has formally accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and has paid billions of dollars in compensation to families of the victims.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has denied any deal was done to secure the release of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
Megrahi has terminal cancer and is said not to have long to live.
In a TV interview with Al Jazeera Colonel Gaddafi said he now considers the matter closed and that there was no deal done.
He said: "This problem ended. It is not possible anymore to talk about clearing Libya or not - whatever happened, the problem is over.
"Abdelbasset was the only person who had the right to appeal to the European Court, but as I said because of his illness and release it seems that there is no need for an appeal."
Asked about any deal over the release, Col Gaddafi said: "No, no, it is very clear, he had this illness and consequently they were compelled to release him because of this disease. There was no deal or anything else."
He was interviewed in New York, where he has addressed the United Nations General Assembly.
Libya has formally accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and has paid billions of dollars in compensation to families of the victims.
The spectre over Lockerbie
This is the heading over a section of the column Richard Ingrams's Week in today's edition of The Independent. It reads as follows:]
Have we now heard the last of the so-called Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? The Government, and particularly the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, must be praying that we have.
Five weeks ago, I suggested that the prime reason for releasing Mr Megrahi, in spite of the inevitable protest from all corners of the earth, was to bring an end to his appeal – nothing to do with Libyan oil, or secret deals done by Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson.
The danger from Mr Straw's point of view was that it might eventually be shown that Mr Megrahi, convicted of the most terrible of crimes – the bombing of 270 innocent people – was not only innocent but had been framed with the connivance of the British and American security services.
Mr Straw, I pointed out, was old enough to remember the damage done to the reputation of the police and the courts by the wrongful conviction of several innocent men and women during the IRA bombing campaign in the 1970s.
And now, thanks to a long article reprinted this week in The Independent on Sunday by the indefatigable lawyer Gareth Peirce, we learn that two of the government scientists who were accused of giving suspect evidence against those innocent Irishmen also gave evidence against Mr Megrahi in his trial before three Scottish judges.
Using the words "astounding", "shameful" and "profoundly shocking" to describe the Lockerbie investigation and subsequent trial, Ms Peirce has raised the spectre of a miscarriage of justice far more serious than anything in the 1970s. Mr Straw must be hoping that, in these degenerate days, nobody will be paying very much attention to her.
Have we now heard the last of the so-called Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? The Government, and particularly the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, must be praying that we have.
Five weeks ago, I suggested that the prime reason for releasing Mr Megrahi, in spite of the inevitable protest from all corners of the earth, was to bring an end to his appeal – nothing to do with Libyan oil, or secret deals done by Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson.
The danger from Mr Straw's point of view was that it might eventually be shown that Mr Megrahi, convicted of the most terrible of crimes – the bombing of 270 innocent people – was not only innocent but had been framed with the connivance of the British and American security services.
Mr Straw, I pointed out, was old enough to remember the damage done to the reputation of the police and the courts by the wrongful conviction of several innocent men and women during the IRA bombing campaign in the 1970s.
And now, thanks to a long article reprinted this week in The Independent on Sunday by the indefatigable lawyer Gareth Peirce, we learn that two of the government scientists who were accused of giving suspect evidence against those innocent Irishmen also gave evidence against Mr Megrahi in his trial before three Scottish judges.
Using the words "astounding", "shameful" and "profoundly shocking" to describe the Lockerbie investigation and subsequent trial, Ms Peirce has raised the spectre of a miscarriage of justice far more serious than anything in the 1970s. Mr Straw must be hoping that, in these degenerate days, nobody will be paying very much attention to her.
Friday 25 September 2009
TIME editors interview Gaddafi
[The website of Time magazine contains an interview conducted yesterday with Colonel Gaddafi in New York. It can be read here. What follows is the one question and answer relating to Lockerbie.]
Q: I know that the Lockerbie case has come to a legal end, but there are people in the United States who would still say, in 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for its officials but it would be wonderful if it was a heartfelt expression of remorse and an apology for what happened. That might help thaw the ice.
A: It was always said that it is not us who did that and they don't accept the fact that they have a responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. And all the nonaligned nations used to support the Libyan claim. But we go through the resolutions adopted by ... more than 150 countries, both of the resolutions of the Arab League, all of the resolutions adopted by the African Union, all of the organizations ... conflict resolutions.
But of course, Americans, Libyans, the whole world express sympathy or regret over such tragedies. No one would be happy over such tragedies, no one would welcome such a tragedy, indeed, of course. Do the American people feel happy, are the American people happy over the killing of the Libyan citizens in 1986? And is the world happy about the Gaza massacre? By the same token none of us are happy over the tragedy of Lockerbie. Up to now, if you visit the house that was bombed in the American raid, you will find a picture of my daughter, a picture of the daughter of Jim Swire, in a frame there, and everybody goes there. Our children are all victims. I mean, these pictures, just to say the fact that we are all fathers of victims.
[The report in The Times on Gaddafi's New York visit and his appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations contains the following:
"A day after losing his tent and complaining of jet leg, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi yesterday skipped a summit meeting of the UN body he has dubbed the “Terror Council”.
"The Libyan leader was the only one of the 15 Security Council statesmen to miss the meeting, which was chaired by President Obama. His no-show came as a relief to Mr Obama and Gordon Brown, who were spared having to shake his hand.
"A diplomatic source said that the notoriously unpredictable “Brother Leader of the Libyan Revolution” had decided on Wednesday to give the Security Council a miss after he delivered a long speech to the 192-nation General Assembly, in which he complained of jet lag. He did reappear last night at the Council on Foreign Relations, a high-powered American foreign policy association. In his address he denied that Libya ever had a hand in the Lockerbie bombing."
The report in The Tripoli Post contains the following:
"With regard to Lockerbie case, the Leader of the Revolution said Thursday that Libya has not accepted culpability, and only took responsibility for the actions of its citizens. "We never acknowledged any guilt ... and Libya was never indicted in any court as responsible," he said in Arabic. His remarks translated into English."]
Q: I know that the Lockerbie case has come to a legal end, but there are people in the United States who would still say, in 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for its officials but it would be wonderful if it was a heartfelt expression of remorse and an apology for what happened. That might help thaw the ice.
A: It was always said that it is not us who did that and they don't accept the fact that they have a responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. And all the nonaligned nations used to support the Libyan claim. But we go through the resolutions adopted by ... more than 150 countries, both of the resolutions of the Arab League, all of the resolutions adopted by the African Union, all of the organizations ... conflict resolutions.
But of course, Americans, Libyans, the whole world express sympathy or regret over such tragedies. No one would be happy over such tragedies, no one would welcome such a tragedy, indeed, of course. Do the American people feel happy, are the American people happy over the killing of the Libyan citizens in 1986? And is the world happy about the Gaza massacre? By the same token none of us are happy over the tragedy of Lockerbie. Up to now, if you visit the house that was bombed in the American raid, you will find a picture of my daughter, a picture of the daughter of Jim Swire, in a frame there, and everybody goes there. Our children are all victims. I mean, these pictures, just to say the fact that we are all fathers of victims.
[The report in The Times on Gaddafi's New York visit and his appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations contains the following:
"A day after losing his tent and complaining of jet leg, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi yesterday skipped a summit meeting of the UN body he has dubbed the “Terror Council”.
"The Libyan leader was the only one of the 15 Security Council statesmen to miss the meeting, which was chaired by President Obama. His no-show came as a relief to Mr Obama and Gordon Brown, who were spared having to shake his hand.
"A diplomatic source said that the notoriously unpredictable “Brother Leader of the Libyan Revolution” had decided on Wednesday to give the Security Council a miss after he delivered a long speech to the 192-nation General Assembly, in which he complained of jet lag. He did reappear last night at the Council on Foreign Relations, a high-powered American foreign policy association. In his address he denied that Libya ever had a hand in the Lockerbie bombing."
The report in The Tripoli Post contains the following:
"With regard to Lockerbie case, the Leader of the Revolution said Thursday that Libya has not accepted culpability, and only took responsibility for the actions of its citizens. "We never acknowledged any guilt ... and Libya was never indicted in any court as responsible," he said in Arabic. His remarks translated into English."]
When doing the Scottish thing backfires
[This is the headline over an article by Sarah Lyall in today's edition of The New York Times. It reads in part:]
Scots are very touchy these days about the decision to free the bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, and very worried about their international reputation.
Mr. Megrahi, the only person ever convicted in connection with the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, was freed from prison on compassionate grounds in August, having served less than a third of his 27-year sentence. Ill with terminal prostate cancer, he is now in intensive care at a hospital in Tripoli, his lawyer said. But the debate over his release rages on.
Indeed, there has been a great deal of talk about conspiracies and backdoor deals between Britain and Libya over Mr. Megrahi’s case. Britain wants to have better relations — both politically and financially — with Libya, and it is clear that the Megrahi issue came up repeatedly in discussions. As a condition of improved cooperation, Britain had to withdraw its demand to get Mr. Megrahi’s name removed as an exception when it negotiated a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
But the conspiracy theories ignore the parochial nature of Scottish politics, and also the political agenda of Alex Salmond, the leader of the governing Scottish National Party. Relations between Mr. Salmond and Gordon Brown, the British Labour prime minister, are said to be particularly frosty, and the last thing Mr. Salmond wants to do is appear to be taking orders from London.
He has enough troubles at home. In the Scottish Parliament, the justice committee is to conduct an inquiry into how the decision was reached, putting the nationalists on the defensive.
The National Party, which has a plurality but not a majority in Parliament and so clings to power tenuously, is at heart a single-issue organization: it believes that Scotland should be independent from Britain. As a result, its critics say, the party badly wants to prove itself, but has ended up looking foolish in the highest-profile decision of its governing time.
“They are desperate to be players on the international stage,” said Richard Baker, a member of the Scottish Parliament who is justice spokesman for the Labour Party here. “But there’s a huge arrogance within the S.N.P. in claiming that they speak for Scotland.” (...)
Even some people who believe Mr. Megrahi was unfairly imprisoned and deserved to be free are annoyed at the way the government handled his release. (...)
Although it means little to outsiders, particularly families of the victims of Flight 103, the Scottish government insists that there is a huge distinction between releasing Mr. Megrahi under the prisoner transfer agreement — which London may have tacitly supported had it happened, but which Scotland refused to allow — and releasing him on compassionate grounds, an extremely Scottish move.
In Scotland, opinion polls show a mixed reaction to the Megrahi release. A BBC poll found the majority were opposed to the decision. But polls in local newspapers found heavy majorities applauding it, and in an Internet poll conducted by the Firm, a magazine for lawyers, judges and others in the legal profession, some 69 percent of responders said they supported the release.
And, as a complicating factor, many Scots — including influential members of the legal establishment — feel that Mr. Megrahi was unjustly convicted and should never have been imprisoned in the first place.
Among them are Robert Black, the lawyer who helped broker the deal to hold the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands rather than in Scotland; and Hans Kochler, the United Nations observer at the trial, who called the guilty verdict “inconsistent” and “arbitrary,” and has been a harsh critic of Scottish justice.
Mr. Megrahi has always maintained his innocence. His first appeal failed, but an influential group called the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission then referred his case back for another appeal, saying that it believed he “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”
Mr. Megrahi dropped the appeal in August, a tactic that he thought would help his chances of being released early, his lawyer said. But he has begun publishing on the Internet the legal arguments he had planned to use, as a way toward establishing his innocence.
In the Scottish Parliament, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice secretary, defended his decision to release Mr. Megrahi on compassionate grounds, saying that humanity “is viewed as a defining characteristic” of Scotland.
In fact, releasing terminally ill prisoners is fairly standard practice in Scotland. Since 1997, 31 prisoners, including Mr. Megrahi, have applied for compassionate release. Twenty-four have had their applications granted; the remaining seven did not meet the medical criteria, in which, generally, the prisoner is deemed likely to die within three months.
“Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed but compassion be available,” Mr. MacAskill told Parliament. “Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown.”
On the Royal Mile, Gordon Nicolson, who owns a kiltmaking shop, said that Mr. MacAskill’s efforts had backfired.
“They’re trying to show that Scotland can be politically independent,” he said. “But if this is the kind of decision they make, this calls into question Scotland’s ability to make good decisions.”
Scots are very touchy these days about the decision to free the bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, and very worried about their international reputation.
Mr. Megrahi, the only person ever convicted in connection with the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, was freed from prison on compassionate grounds in August, having served less than a third of his 27-year sentence. Ill with terminal prostate cancer, he is now in intensive care at a hospital in Tripoli, his lawyer said. But the debate over his release rages on.
Indeed, there has been a great deal of talk about conspiracies and backdoor deals between Britain and Libya over Mr. Megrahi’s case. Britain wants to have better relations — both politically and financially — with Libya, and it is clear that the Megrahi issue came up repeatedly in discussions. As a condition of improved cooperation, Britain had to withdraw its demand to get Mr. Megrahi’s name removed as an exception when it negotiated a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
But the conspiracy theories ignore the parochial nature of Scottish politics, and also the political agenda of Alex Salmond, the leader of the governing Scottish National Party. Relations between Mr. Salmond and Gordon Brown, the British Labour prime minister, are said to be particularly frosty, and the last thing Mr. Salmond wants to do is appear to be taking orders from London.
He has enough troubles at home. In the Scottish Parliament, the justice committee is to conduct an inquiry into how the decision was reached, putting the nationalists on the defensive.
The National Party, which has a plurality but not a majority in Parliament and so clings to power tenuously, is at heart a single-issue organization: it believes that Scotland should be independent from Britain. As a result, its critics say, the party badly wants to prove itself, but has ended up looking foolish in the highest-profile decision of its governing time.
“They are desperate to be players on the international stage,” said Richard Baker, a member of the Scottish Parliament who is justice spokesman for the Labour Party here. “But there’s a huge arrogance within the S.N.P. in claiming that they speak for Scotland.” (...)
Even some people who believe Mr. Megrahi was unfairly imprisoned and deserved to be free are annoyed at the way the government handled his release. (...)
Although it means little to outsiders, particularly families of the victims of Flight 103, the Scottish government insists that there is a huge distinction between releasing Mr. Megrahi under the prisoner transfer agreement — which London may have tacitly supported had it happened, but which Scotland refused to allow — and releasing him on compassionate grounds, an extremely Scottish move.
In Scotland, opinion polls show a mixed reaction to the Megrahi release. A BBC poll found the majority were opposed to the decision. But polls in local newspapers found heavy majorities applauding it, and in an Internet poll conducted by the Firm, a magazine for lawyers, judges and others in the legal profession, some 69 percent of responders said they supported the release.
And, as a complicating factor, many Scots — including influential members of the legal establishment — feel that Mr. Megrahi was unjustly convicted and should never have been imprisoned in the first place.
Among them are Robert Black, the lawyer who helped broker the deal to hold the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands rather than in Scotland; and Hans Kochler, the United Nations observer at the trial, who called the guilty verdict “inconsistent” and “arbitrary,” and has been a harsh critic of Scottish justice.
Mr. Megrahi has always maintained his innocence. His first appeal failed, but an influential group called the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission then referred his case back for another appeal, saying that it believed he “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”
Mr. Megrahi dropped the appeal in August, a tactic that he thought would help his chances of being released early, his lawyer said. But he has begun publishing on the Internet the legal arguments he had planned to use, as a way toward establishing his innocence.
In the Scottish Parliament, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice secretary, defended his decision to release Mr. Megrahi on compassionate grounds, saying that humanity “is viewed as a defining characteristic” of Scotland.
In fact, releasing terminally ill prisoners is fairly standard practice in Scotland. Since 1997, 31 prisoners, including Mr. Megrahi, have applied for compassionate release. Twenty-four have had their applications granted; the remaining seven did not meet the medical criteria, in which, generally, the prisoner is deemed likely to die within three months.
“Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed but compassion be available,” Mr. MacAskill told Parliament. “Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown.”
On the Royal Mile, Gordon Nicolson, who owns a kiltmaking shop, said that Mr. MacAskill’s efforts had backfired.
“They’re trying to show that Scotland can be politically independent,” he said. “But if this is the kind of decision they make, this calls into question Scotland’s ability to make good decisions.”
Gadhafi says he 'comprehends' Lockerbie anger
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal. It reads in part:]
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said he could "comprehend" the anger directed at him by Americans who lost relatives in the Lockerbie bombing, trying to strike a conciliatory tone a day after calling the United Nations Security Council a "terror council."
In an hour-long interview, Col. Gadhafi said he hoped to build a new era of relations with U.S. President Barack Obama -- whom he called "my son" during the same U.N. address -- and said he wanted to place his nation's decades-long conflict with Washington in the past.
The Libyan strongman denied his government had purposefully stoked nationalist sentiment surrounding the return home of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Mr. al-Megrahi, who has cancer, was released by Scottish authorities last month on humanitarian grounds.
Lockerbie families have particularly criticized the British and Scottish governments for the release of Mr. al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer. Legislators in the U.S. and U.K. have called for inquiries into whether the move was tied to lucrative Libyan oil deals. Libyan and U.K. leaders have denied this.
Col. Gadhafi also said Mr. al-Megrahi's release came through proper legal channels. But he added that British companies have benefited in the past from the absence of U.S. firms inside Libya. Sanctions imposed on Libya after the Lockerbie bombing barred American oil companies from operating in the North African country until 2004.
"You see, Britain, even though it makes it look like it's in alliance with America, and being America's ally, kept its companies in Libya and they were doing business when the American companies left the Libyan market," Col. Gadhafi said.
He said he believed Mr. al-Megrahi's release, and the billions of dollars paid out by his government to the Lockerbie victims' families, could now allow U.S.-Libyan relations to move forward. "As a case, the Lockerbie question: I would say it's come to an end, legally, politically, financially, it is all over," Col. Gadhafi, wearing black boots and an ankle-length cape, said. "I would say, thank Allah that this problem has been solved to the satisfaction of all parties. We all feel the pain for such a tragedy."
Family members of the Lockerbie victims voiced outrage Thursday that Col. Gadhafi was allowed to visit New York this week, in the Libyan leader's first trip to the U.S. following decades of conflict with Washington.
"I don't think he's capable of remorse. I think he is the devil himself. He is a murderer," said Kara M. Weipz, whose brother died in the bombing. "This last month has been devastating to my family and myself."
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said he could "comprehend" the anger directed at him by Americans who lost relatives in the Lockerbie bombing, trying to strike a conciliatory tone a day after calling the United Nations Security Council a "terror council."
In an hour-long interview, Col. Gadhafi said he hoped to build a new era of relations with U.S. President Barack Obama -- whom he called "my son" during the same U.N. address -- and said he wanted to place his nation's decades-long conflict with Washington in the past.
The Libyan strongman denied his government had purposefully stoked nationalist sentiment surrounding the return home of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Mr. al-Megrahi, who has cancer, was released by Scottish authorities last month on humanitarian grounds.
Lockerbie families have particularly criticized the British and Scottish governments for the release of Mr. al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer. Legislators in the U.S. and U.K. have called for inquiries into whether the move was tied to lucrative Libyan oil deals. Libyan and U.K. leaders have denied this.
Col. Gadhafi also said Mr. al-Megrahi's release came through proper legal channels. But he added that British companies have benefited in the past from the absence of U.S. firms inside Libya. Sanctions imposed on Libya after the Lockerbie bombing barred American oil companies from operating in the North African country until 2004.
"You see, Britain, even though it makes it look like it's in alliance with America, and being America's ally, kept its companies in Libya and they were doing business when the American companies left the Libyan market," Col. Gadhafi said.
He said he believed Mr. al-Megrahi's release, and the billions of dollars paid out by his government to the Lockerbie victims' families, could now allow U.S.-Libyan relations to move forward. "As a case, the Lockerbie question: I would say it's come to an end, legally, politically, financially, it is all over," Col. Gadhafi, wearing black boots and an ankle-length cape, said. "I would say, thank Allah that this problem has been solved to the satisfaction of all parties. We all feel the pain for such a tragedy."
Family members of the Lockerbie victims voiced outrage Thursday that Col. Gadhafi was allowed to visit New York this week, in the Libyan leader's first trip to the U.S. following decades of conflict with Washington.
"I don't think he's capable of remorse. I think he is the devil himself. He is a murderer," said Kara M. Weipz, whose brother died in the bombing. "This last month has been devastating to my family and myself."
Thursday 24 September 2009
Crown challenged to prove semtex link to Pan Am 103
[This is the headline over an article published today on the website of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. The following are excerpts.]
[A] campaign initiated by the Lockerbie Justice Group ... challenges the Lord Advocate to openly demonstrate that Pan Am 103 could have been brought down by a semtex bomb, under controlled laboratory conditions.
The group state that fabric and circuit board fragments cannot survive a semtex explosion, and accordingly the entire Crown case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi falls. In 2007 Ulrich Lumpert of timer company MEBO released an affidavit stating he had manufactured the circuit board “evidence” relied upon by the Crown at the Zeist trial. Earlier this year a report by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer concluded that the Crown’s case was “scientifically implausible”.
“The Crown theory utterly depended upon Judges believing that this white-hot sphere with a temperature of 6,800F, travelling in all available directions at 20,000mph did not scorch, never mind totally annihilate, a printed circuit board and a fabric label, which it was able to wholly detach from the shirt. Our group finds this utterly incredible,” the group said.
“We, as members of the concerned Scottish public, invite the Crown to openly demonstrate their theory under controlled laboratory conditions. Either the circuit board survives with its legible ID and soft solder, or it is annihilated in a white-hot gas. In the event of PCB annihilation, we demand a proper and independent committee of inquiry into ‘What brought this plane down?’ Will you please publicly demonstrate your theory, ... Lord Advocate?”
The challenge has been backed by Dr Hans Koechler, who observed the trial [as a UN-appointed observer] and called for a full public inquiry afterwards.
“It is highly important to address this question to the Scottish prosecutor’s office and I shall add my name to such an initiative,” he said.
“It is equally important that an explosives expert with impeccable academic credentials, ideally a University professor from a European country, endorses this initiative or confirms the basic physical facts in writing. Under this condition I can join the initiative.”
De Braeckeleer and researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to destroy a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occurred in the hold as the Crown claimed
“As the explosion of one pound of Semtex H inside the luggage container does not generate a blast wave sufficiently powerful to fracture the skin of the fuselage, we have little choice but to conclude that the verdict appears scientifically very implausible,” they said.
The group’s initiative is bolstered by the new testimony of former Ferranti electrical engineer Aitken Brotherston, experienced in testing circuitry for use in military applications.
“Although no doubt there have been some advances in the construction of circuit boards the predominance of boards in current use are the same as those I tested. In most cases the boards would happily catch light with a flame source similar to that of a Swan Vesta (...)
“While we did not test them to the 3000 plus degrees C temperatures of a Semtex explosion bright spot, even as an apprentice electronics engineer with Ferranti, my experience at much lower temperatures would persuade me that nothing of the circuit boards would survive that environment.
“The proposal that fragments of the board, of sufficient size to permit identification, packed with the bomb had survived a temperature environment of more than 3000 degree C in the explosion is to me just not credible.
“What it does demonstrate is the extent to which anyone promulgating that theory believes us out here in the real world to be completely stupid.”
[A] campaign initiated by the Lockerbie Justice Group ... challenges the Lord Advocate to openly demonstrate that Pan Am 103 could have been brought down by a semtex bomb, under controlled laboratory conditions.
The group state that fabric and circuit board fragments cannot survive a semtex explosion, and accordingly the entire Crown case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi falls. In 2007 Ulrich Lumpert of timer company MEBO released an affidavit stating he had manufactured the circuit board “evidence” relied upon by the Crown at the Zeist trial. Earlier this year a report by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer concluded that the Crown’s case was “scientifically implausible”.
“The Crown theory utterly depended upon Judges believing that this white-hot sphere with a temperature of 6,800F, travelling in all available directions at 20,000mph did not scorch, never mind totally annihilate, a printed circuit board and a fabric label, which it was able to wholly detach from the shirt. Our group finds this utterly incredible,” the group said.
“We, as members of the concerned Scottish public, invite the Crown to openly demonstrate their theory under controlled laboratory conditions. Either the circuit board survives with its legible ID and soft solder, or it is annihilated in a white-hot gas. In the event of PCB annihilation, we demand a proper and independent committee of inquiry into ‘What brought this plane down?’ Will you please publicly demonstrate your theory, ... Lord Advocate?”
The challenge has been backed by Dr Hans Koechler, who observed the trial [as a UN-appointed observer] and called for a full public inquiry afterwards.
“It is highly important to address this question to the Scottish prosecutor’s office and I shall add my name to such an initiative,” he said.
“It is equally important that an explosives expert with impeccable academic credentials, ideally a University professor from a European country, endorses this initiative or confirms the basic physical facts in writing. Under this condition I can join the initiative.”
De Braeckeleer and researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to destroy a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occurred in the hold as the Crown claimed
“As the explosion of one pound of Semtex H inside the luggage container does not generate a blast wave sufficiently powerful to fracture the skin of the fuselage, we have little choice but to conclude that the verdict appears scientifically very implausible,” they said.
The group’s initiative is bolstered by the new testimony of former Ferranti electrical engineer Aitken Brotherston, experienced in testing circuitry for use in military applications.
“Although no doubt there have been some advances in the construction of circuit boards the predominance of boards in current use are the same as those I tested. In most cases the boards would happily catch light with a flame source similar to that of a Swan Vesta (...)
“While we did not test them to the 3000 plus degrees C temperatures of a Semtex explosion bright spot, even as an apprentice electronics engineer with Ferranti, my experience at much lower temperatures would persuade me that nothing of the circuit boards would survive that environment.
“The proposal that fragments of the board, of sufficient size to permit identification, packed with the bomb had survived a temperature environment of more than 3000 degree C in the explosion is to me just not credible.
“What it does demonstrate is the extent to which anyone promulgating that theory believes us out here in the real world to be completely stupid.”
Gaddafi's UN General Assembly speech
[Most of today's British newspapers contain accounts of Colonel Gaddafi's long speech to the UN General Assembly. None of the reports that I have seen (including the UN's own summary) indicates that he referred to Lockerbie or to Abdelbaset Megrahi. For an Arab perspective, there is a report on the English language website of Al Jazeera. The following are excerpts.]
Libya's president has attacked the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council during his first ever address to the UN General Assembly.
In a one-and-a-half hour speech in New York on Wednesday, Muammar Gaddafi said the veto-wielding nations of the Security Council were ignoring the views of the full 192 members of the General Assembly and the principles of the UN charter.
"The preamble [of the charter] says all nations are equal whether they are small or big," Gaddafi said in his address.
But he accused the permanent members of the council of undermining other states.
"The veto [held by the five permanent UN members] is against the charter, we do not accept it and we do not acknowledge it," he said.
"Veto power should be annulled."
In a speech that far exceeded the 15-minute slot he was allocated, Gaddafi read aloud sections from a paperback copy of the UN charter; at one point, he held it up and made a small tear in the cover, signalling his disdain.
"The Security Council did not provide us with security but with terror and sanctions," he said.
Gaddafi said the council, comprising the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, had failed to prevent or intervene in 65 wars that have taken place since the United Nations was established in 1945.
"How can we be happy about the world security if the world is controlled by four or five powers?" he complained. "We are just like a decor."
In his opinion, the General Assembly is the "the parliament of the world" - a 192-member body that should be dictating decisions to the Security Council. (...)
Gaddafi said adding more permanent seats would be counterproductive.
Instead, he called on regional federations and organisations, such as the Arab League, Organisation of American States, the African Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement to be given permanent seats at the Security Council.
The five permanent members should lose their veto, or the UN should expand the council with additional member states, Gaddafi said. (...)
Mohamed Ben-Madani, editor of the Maghreb Review, told Al Jazeera's that Gaddafi's speech was a "disaster" for the African Union and Arab and Muslim delegations at the General Assembly.
"I think the Libyans deserve much better than this. It is a disaster for Arab world opinion. Tearing up the UN charter is shocking, but this should have been expected from the beginning," he said.
"He said nothing about Libyan human rights and better education [for Libyans]. He said nothing about climate change or the environment."
As Gaddafi spoke, the US senate approved a [non-binding] resolution condemning the "lavish" welcome-home ceremony that Libya gave last month for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the bombing over a US passenger aircraft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1989.
The US senate demanded that Tripoli apologise for the celebration, which came after Scotland's justice minister released al-Megrahi, a former agent, on compassionate grounds.
Libya has a temporary seat on the Security Council until the end of 2010.
[Families of US victims of the Lockerbie disaster were amongst those at the UN headquarters in New York to protest at Gaddafi's attendance. The report on the demonstration in today's edition of The Times can be read here.]
Libya's president has attacked the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council during his first ever address to the UN General Assembly.
In a one-and-a-half hour speech in New York on Wednesday, Muammar Gaddafi said the veto-wielding nations of the Security Council were ignoring the views of the full 192 members of the General Assembly and the principles of the UN charter.
"The preamble [of the charter] says all nations are equal whether they are small or big," Gaddafi said in his address.
But he accused the permanent members of the council of undermining other states.
"The veto [held by the five permanent UN members] is against the charter, we do not accept it and we do not acknowledge it," he said.
"Veto power should be annulled."
In a speech that far exceeded the 15-minute slot he was allocated, Gaddafi read aloud sections from a paperback copy of the UN charter; at one point, he held it up and made a small tear in the cover, signalling his disdain.
"The Security Council did not provide us with security but with terror and sanctions," he said.
Gaddafi said the council, comprising the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, had failed to prevent or intervene in 65 wars that have taken place since the United Nations was established in 1945.
"How can we be happy about the world security if the world is controlled by four or five powers?" he complained. "We are just like a decor."
In his opinion, the General Assembly is the "the parliament of the world" - a 192-member body that should be dictating decisions to the Security Council. (...)
Gaddafi said adding more permanent seats would be counterproductive.
Instead, he called on regional federations and organisations, such as the Arab League, Organisation of American States, the African Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement to be given permanent seats at the Security Council.
The five permanent members should lose their veto, or the UN should expand the council with additional member states, Gaddafi said. (...)
Mohamed Ben-Madani, editor of the Maghreb Review, told Al Jazeera's that Gaddafi's speech was a "disaster" for the African Union and Arab and Muslim delegations at the General Assembly.
"I think the Libyans deserve much better than this. It is a disaster for Arab world opinion. Tearing up the UN charter is shocking, but this should have been expected from the beginning," he said.
"He said nothing about Libyan human rights and better education [for Libyans]. He said nothing about climate change or the environment."
As Gaddafi spoke, the US senate approved a [non-binding] resolution condemning the "lavish" welcome-home ceremony that Libya gave last month for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the bombing over a US passenger aircraft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1989.
The US senate demanded that Tripoli apologise for the celebration, which came after Scotland's justice minister released al-Megrahi, a former agent, on compassionate grounds.
Libya has a temporary seat on the Security Council until the end of 2010.
[Families of US victims of the Lockerbie disaster were amongst those at the UN headquarters in New York to protest at Gaddafi's attendance. The report on the demonstration in today's edition of The Times can be read here.]
Wednesday 23 September 2009
We need an open mind and a fresh start at the Crown Office
[This is the heading over an article in the online edition of the Scottish Review by its editor, Kenneth Roy. It reads in part:]
There is nothing to deplore
Part of the job of the Lord Advocate under the devolved settlement is to give legal advice to the Scottish Government; at the same time she is the chief prosecutor of Scotland, responsible for bringing the most serious charges to court. There has always been an inherent dichotomy between these two roles. How can the public prosecutor, committed to the pursuit of conviction, offer ministers impartial legal advice? The long years of the Lockerbie case have made this balancing act almost impossible. Lockerbie was big politics when Alex Salmond 'de-politicised' the post of Lord Advocate; it is bigger politics now; it is likely to remain a huge and troubling issue.
There is a suggestion that Elish Angiolini was not fully consulted, if she was consulted at all, about the justice secretary's decision to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing – loosely described by the BBC and others as 'the bomber' – on compassionate grounds. Perhaps she feels aggrieved. Perhaps she is entitled to feel aggrieved. Whatever the explanation, last weekend she made a statement which indicated a loss of composure. She said she 'deplored' the attempt by Megrahi to challenge his conviction by releasing on the internet the papers he would have used in his abandoned appeal.
What is there to deplore? The case, from the point of view of the person whose behaviour is being deplored, is clear enough. He is in pain. He has been in prison for eight years. He says that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. He says that he is innocent of the crimes for which he has been convicted. He says that he has treated the judiciary of the country of his imprisonment with courtesy and respect at all times. But now, at the age of 57, he is dying. Who can tell when? Only God knows; or, in the absence of God, no one. The little gods of the media demand no less; within three months at that. His death will occur soon enough no doubt, with or without journalistic temptations of providence. He wishes to clear his name while there is still a little time left. That much should be understandable to any fully paid-up member of the human race.
The Lord Advocate declares that the appropriate forum for innocence or guilt to be decided is a court of law, and that it was Megrahi's decision to withdraw from the legal determination of his case. This claim ignores two realities of the situation. First, there have been too many grave miscarriages of justice in this country for the authority of the judicial system ever to be completely trusted. Earlier this week it was announced that, in the light of the release of Sean Hodgson after 27 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, DNA evidence having proved that he could not have committed it, no fewer than 240 murder and rape convictions are now being 'reviewed' in England and Wales. Second, the failure of Megrahi's appeal against conviction to be heard is not his fault, but the result of a succession of official delays which have never been satisfactorily explained.
Yet, audaciously, the Lord Advocate suggests that, in dropping the appeal, he has made his subsequent action deplorable. Consider the position in which he finds himself. He wishes to return to his own country, to his family, as any of us would wish to do. He believes that dropping the appeal will hasten this outcome. He drops the appeal. He achieves the desired outcome. But still he is anxious to tell the world what he would have said if the long-delayed hearing had ever gone ahead.
All this is simple humanity. It is how any of us might choose to defend the integrity of our life as it comes to an end. It is basic stuff. But I agree that it is essentially an emotional response, in the same way that Mrs Angiolini reached for a word of feeling, the word 'deplore'.
As it happens, however, it is not just simple humanity. It is not just basic stuff. The dying man's entitlement to do what he did last week is actually enshrined in a piece of legislation called the Human Rights Act 1998. Mrs Angiolini is more familiar with this act than most of us. In 1997, she ceased for a while to be a prosecutor in the criminal courts and joined the Crown Office as head of policy. One of her responsibilities was to prepare her department for the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998. I imagine that, a brief 11 years later, she will not have forgotten what it says.
She will not have forgotten, for example, Article 10 on free expression. Free expression, to which you and I have a human right, is defined in the legislation as the holding of views or opinions, the speaking of them aloud or their publication in articles or books or leaflets, or the broadcasting of them on television or radio, or their communication through the internet. Under Article 10, you and I may use language which others find offensive or shocking, so long as we are not doing so in a racial or ethnic context. This means that, although you and I may find the Lord Advocate's use of language last Friday slightly offensive, she is perfectly entitled to use such language. But the dying man is equally entitled to express his opinions and the law specifically permits him to use the internet as a medium for doing so.
Since, then, the dying man is exercising his legal entitlement under the Human Rights Act 1998, I must put the question again: what is there to deplore? The use of the word tells us more about the Lord Advocate than it does about the case. It is possible that Mrs Angiolini is so exasperated by the constant questioning of the Crown Office's motives and conduct during her years as Solicitor General (2001-06) and Lord Advocate (since 2006) that she could restrain herself no longer. The questioning, however, continues; it will not go away. An essay in the current edition of the London Review of Books by her fellow solicitor, Gareth Peirce, concludes after a devastating forensic deconstruction of the Lockerbie prosecution that there has been 'a form of death in this case – the death of justice'. Such perceptions do serious damage. What follows 'the death of justice'? From Mrs Angiolini or her successor we should hear no more talk of deploring. We need an open mind, a fresh start, a spirit of humility. But beyond that, a structural change is required. It is time to separate the two functions of the office of Lord Advocate, disempowering the holder of the office from any responsibility for public prosecutions. This change has long been mooted; it has become overdue. If it is too late to save the reputation of Megrahi, it should not be too late to save the reputation of Scottish justice.
There is nothing to deplore
Part of the job of the Lord Advocate under the devolved settlement is to give legal advice to the Scottish Government; at the same time she is the chief prosecutor of Scotland, responsible for bringing the most serious charges to court. There has always been an inherent dichotomy between these two roles. How can the public prosecutor, committed to the pursuit of conviction, offer ministers impartial legal advice? The long years of the Lockerbie case have made this balancing act almost impossible. Lockerbie was big politics when Alex Salmond 'de-politicised' the post of Lord Advocate; it is bigger politics now; it is likely to remain a huge and troubling issue.
There is a suggestion that Elish Angiolini was not fully consulted, if she was consulted at all, about the justice secretary's decision to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing – loosely described by the BBC and others as 'the bomber' – on compassionate grounds. Perhaps she feels aggrieved. Perhaps she is entitled to feel aggrieved. Whatever the explanation, last weekend she made a statement which indicated a loss of composure. She said she 'deplored' the attempt by Megrahi to challenge his conviction by releasing on the internet the papers he would have used in his abandoned appeal.
What is there to deplore? The case, from the point of view of the person whose behaviour is being deplored, is clear enough. He is in pain. He has been in prison for eight years. He says that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. He says that he is innocent of the crimes for which he has been convicted. He says that he has treated the judiciary of the country of his imprisonment with courtesy and respect at all times. But now, at the age of 57, he is dying. Who can tell when? Only God knows; or, in the absence of God, no one. The little gods of the media demand no less; within three months at that. His death will occur soon enough no doubt, with or without journalistic temptations of providence. He wishes to clear his name while there is still a little time left. That much should be understandable to any fully paid-up member of the human race.
The Lord Advocate declares that the appropriate forum for innocence or guilt to be decided is a court of law, and that it was Megrahi's decision to withdraw from the legal determination of his case. This claim ignores two realities of the situation. First, there have been too many grave miscarriages of justice in this country for the authority of the judicial system ever to be completely trusted. Earlier this week it was announced that, in the light of the release of Sean Hodgson after 27 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, DNA evidence having proved that he could not have committed it, no fewer than 240 murder and rape convictions are now being 'reviewed' in England and Wales. Second, the failure of Megrahi's appeal against conviction to be heard is not his fault, but the result of a succession of official delays which have never been satisfactorily explained.
Yet, audaciously, the Lord Advocate suggests that, in dropping the appeal, he has made his subsequent action deplorable. Consider the position in which he finds himself. He wishes to return to his own country, to his family, as any of us would wish to do. He believes that dropping the appeal will hasten this outcome. He drops the appeal. He achieves the desired outcome. But still he is anxious to tell the world what he would have said if the long-delayed hearing had ever gone ahead.
All this is simple humanity. It is how any of us might choose to defend the integrity of our life as it comes to an end. It is basic stuff. But I agree that it is essentially an emotional response, in the same way that Mrs Angiolini reached for a word of feeling, the word 'deplore'.
As it happens, however, it is not just simple humanity. It is not just basic stuff. The dying man's entitlement to do what he did last week is actually enshrined in a piece of legislation called the Human Rights Act 1998. Mrs Angiolini is more familiar with this act than most of us. In 1997, she ceased for a while to be a prosecutor in the criminal courts and joined the Crown Office as head of policy. One of her responsibilities was to prepare her department for the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998. I imagine that, a brief 11 years later, she will not have forgotten what it says.
She will not have forgotten, for example, Article 10 on free expression. Free expression, to which you and I have a human right, is defined in the legislation as the holding of views or opinions, the speaking of them aloud or their publication in articles or books or leaflets, or the broadcasting of them on television or radio, or their communication through the internet. Under Article 10, you and I may use language which others find offensive or shocking, so long as we are not doing so in a racial or ethnic context. This means that, although you and I may find the Lord Advocate's use of language last Friday slightly offensive, she is perfectly entitled to use such language. But the dying man is equally entitled to express his opinions and the law specifically permits him to use the internet as a medium for doing so.
Since, then, the dying man is exercising his legal entitlement under the Human Rights Act 1998, I must put the question again: what is there to deplore? The use of the word tells us more about the Lord Advocate than it does about the case. It is possible that Mrs Angiolini is so exasperated by the constant questioning of the Crown Office's motives and conduct during her years as Solicitor General (2001-06) and Lord Advocate (since 2006) that she could restrain herself no longer. The questioning, however, continues; it will not go away. An essay in the current edition of the London Review of Books by her fellow solicitor, Gareth Peirce, concludes after a devastating forensic deconstruction of the Lockerbie prosecution that there has been 'a form of death in this case – the death of justice'. Such perceptions do serious damage. What follows 'the death of justice'? From Mrs Angiolini or her successor we should hear no more talk of deploring. We need an open mind, a fresh start, a spirit of humility. But beyond that, a structural change is required. It is time to separate the two functions of the office of Lord Advocate, disempowering the holder of the office from any responsibility for public prosecutions. This change has long been mooted; it has become overdue. If it is too late to save the reputation of Megrahi, it should not be too late to save the reputation of Scottish justice.
Deception over Lockerbie?
[This is the title of a lengthy review article by Dr Malise Ruthven in the October 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books. The following are excerpts.]
After it became clear that Megrahi could not be excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement, it seems the Scottish and British governments actively encouraged him and his legal team to seek a release on compassionate grounds.
At stake, for the British, were contracts for oil and gas exploration worth up to £15 billion ($24 billion) for British Petroleum (BP), announced in May 2007, as well as plans to open a London office of the Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign fund with £83 billion ($136 billion) to invest. Libya refused to ratify the contracts until Straw abandoned his insistence on excluding Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement. Shortly after Brown's statement, Straw admitted—in apparent contradiction to his prime minister—that oil had been "a very big part" of his negotiations. British leaders were also warned that trade deals worth billions could be canceled. "The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage," Straw wrote to MacAskill in December 2007, "and in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom I have agreed that in this instance the PTA [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual." Within six weeks of the British government's concession, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalized in May of this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.
For the SNP government in Edinburgh, the "compassion loophole" made it possible to avoid authorizing Megrahi's release under an agreement negotiated by London. The decision was widely condemned in Scotland, with the minority SNP administration losing a vote by 73–50 in the Scottish parliament on a government motion that the release of Megrahi on compassionate grounds was "consistent with the principles of Scottish justice." But there was a further twist to this story. Before his release from Greenock prison near Glasgow and his flight to Tripoli in a chartered Libyan jet, Megrahi agreed to drop his appeal against the life sentence he received from the specially convened Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.
Megrahi has always insisted on his innocence, and doubts about his conviction have been expressed by several influential figures, most notably Dr. Jim Swire, a spokesman for the UK families of Flight 103, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, and Professor Hans Köchler, official UN observer at Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist. In his reports to the UN secretary-general, Köchler deplored the political atmosphere of the trial and the failure of the court to consider evidence of foreign (i.e., non-Libyan) government involvement that formed part of a special defense—inculpating others—that is available under Scottish law.
He was even more forthright in condemning the rejection of Megrahi's first appeal in March 2002—calling it a "spectacular miscarriage of justice"—which took place at the same time as discussions with Libya over compensation for the victims' families. The presence of a Libyan "defense support team" hampered the efforts of the Scottish defense lawyers, who failed to raise vital questions about the withholding of evidence and the reliability of witnesses. Two notable omissions Köchler highlighted were the alleged coaching of a key prosecution witness by Scottish police and the appeal court's failure to consider evidence of a break-in at the baggage storage area in London's Heathrow airport on the night before the bombing. (...)
A widely held suspicion at the beginning of the investigation pointed toward the culpability of a Palestinian faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC), working under the protection of Syria. The theory held that the PFLP-GC, who specialized in aircraft hijackings using semtex bombs concealed in tape recorders, may have been "sub- contracted" by Syria's Iranian allies to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, just months before the bombing of Flight 103.
At the time Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that the skies would "rain blood" in revenge for the loss of 290 civilian lives, including 66 children. Two defectors from Iranian intelligence agencies—or alleged defectors—subsequently accused the Iranian government of being behind the attacks for which the PFLP-GC was said to have been paid $10 million. Some analysts have argued that leads pointing toward the Palestinian-Syrian-Iranian connection were purposefully deflected after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when Syria became—albeit temporarily—a US coalition ally. Libya, the only Arab state to support Saddam's invasion, remained a more tenable target for exacting exemplary justice.
After a decade of sanctions and interventions by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and South African President Nelson Mandela, the Libyans in 1999 gave up Megrahi and his alleged associate Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who would later be acquitted. The case against Megrahi hinged on a fragment recovered at Lockerbie of a timing device traced to a Swiss manufacturer, Mebo. The firm had sold timers to Libya that differed in design from those allegedly used in cassette bombs of the type attributed to the PFLP-GC. The clothing in which the bomb was said to have been wrapped inside a suitcase was traced to a shop in Malta that Megrahi was alleged to have visited, traveling under an assumed name, on December 20–21, 1988.
Although the evidence was purely circumstantial (there was no direct evidence that either he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft), the judges wrote in their decision that the preponderance of the evidence led them to believe that Megrahi was guilty as charged. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum of twenty-seven years, to be served in a Scottish jail. A major reason for US anger at Megrahi's release has been the repeated assurances given by the British government that he would serve out his full term.
In December 2003, as part of its campaign to end UN sanctions and abandon its pariah status, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, and agreed to pay compensation to the victims' families—although it continued to maintain Megrahi's innocence, as he had done throughout his trial. His position divided observers: some see his continuing denial as the standard response of a professional intelligence officer, as summarized by the unofficial motto of the CIA's Office of Technical Services—"admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations."
Others, including a significant group of Scottish lawyers and laypersons, take a different view. In June 2007, after an investigation lasting nearly four years, the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission delivered an eight-hundred-page report—with thirteen annexes—that identified several areas where "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred" and referred Megrahi's case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. The commission considered evidence that cast doubt on the dates on which Megrahi was supposed to have been in Malta as well as the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to have sold clothing to Megrahi. He had changed his testimony several times, and had been shown Megrahi's photograph before picking him out of a line-up. It was expected that the fresh appeal would also consider new evidence about the timing device, as well as the reported break-in at Heathrow airport, which indicate that the bomb could have been planted in London rather than in a suitcase checked from Malta to New York, as the prosecution had claimed.
In July 2007, Ulrich Lumpert, a former engineer at Mebo and a key technical witness, admitted that he had committed perjury at the Camp Zeist trial. In a sworn affidavit he declared that he had stolen a handmade sample of an MST-13 Timer PC-board from Mebo in Zurich and handed it to an unnamed official investigating the Lockerbie case. He also affirmed that the fragment of the timer presented in court as part of the Lockerbie wreckage had in fact been part of this stolen sample. When he became aware that this piece was to be used as evidence for an "intentionally politically motivated criminal undertaking," he said, he decided to keep silent out of fear for his life.
Although it would have been necessary for Megrahi to drop his appeal under the prisoner transfer scheme, this was not a precondition for release on compassionate grounds. Nevertheless it seems likely that he was pressured into abandoning the appeal. Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, has suggested that the dropping of the appeal, rather than "a deal involving business," was the real quid pro quo behind Megrahi's release. According to Miles, Scottish legal sources had been talking of a mood of "growing anxiety in the Scottish justice department that a successful appeal...would severely damage the reputation of the Scottish justice system."
After it became clear that Megrahi could not be excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement, it seems the Scottish and British governments actively encouraged him and his legal team to seek a release on compassionate grounds.
At stake, for the British, were contracts for oil and gas exploration worth up to £15 billion ($24 billion) for British Petroleum (BP), announced in May 2007, as well as plans to open a London office of the Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign fund with £83 billion ($136 billion) to invest. Libya refused to ratify the contracts until Straw abandoned his insistence on excluding Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement. Shortly after Brown's statement, Straw admitted—in apparent contradiction to his prime minister—that oil had been "a very big part" of his negotiations. British leaders were also warned that trade deals worth billions could be canceled. "The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage," Straw wrote to MacAskill in December 2007, "and in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom I have agreed that in this instance the PTA [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual." Within six weeks of the British government's concession, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalized in May of this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.
For the SNP government in Edinburgh, the "compassion loophole" made it possible to avoid authorizing Megrahi's release under an agreement negotiated by London. The decision was widely condemned in Scotland, with the minority SNP administration losing a vote by 73–50 in the Scottish parliament on a government motion that the release of Megrahi on compassionate grounds was "consistent with the principles of Scottish justice." But there was a further twist to this story. Before his release from Greenock prison near Glasgow and his flight to Tripoli in a chartered Libyan jet, Megrahi agreed to drop his appeal against the life sentence he received from the specially convened Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.
Megrahi has always insisted on his innocence, and doubts about his conviction have been expressed by several influential figures, most notably Dr. Jim Swire, a spokesman for the UK families of Flight 103, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, and Professor Hans Köchler, official UN observer at Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist. In his reports to the UN secretary-general, Köchler deplored the political atmosphere of the trial and the failure of the court to consider evidence of foreign (i.e., non-Libyan) government involvement that formed part of a special defense—inculpating others—that is available under Scottish law.
He was even more forthright in condemning the rejection of Megrahi's first appeal in March 2002—calling it a "spectacular miscarriage of justice"—which took place at the same time as discussions with Libya over compensation for the victims' families. The presence of a Libyan "defense support team" hampered the efforts of the Scottish defense lawyers, who failed to raise vital questions about the withholding of evidence and the reliability of witnesses. Two notable omissions Köchler highlighted were the alleged coaching of a key prosecution witness by Scottish police and the appeal court's failure to consider evidence of a break-in at the baggage storage area in London's Heathrow airport on the night before the bombing. (...)
A widely held suspicion at the beginning of the investigation pointed toward the culpability of a Palestinian faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC), working under the protection of Syria. The theory held that the PFLP-GC, who specialized in aircraft hijackings using semtex bombs concealed in tape recorders, may have been "sub- contracted" by Syria's Iranian allies to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, just months before the bombing of Flight 103.
At the time Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that the skies would "rain blood" in revenge for the loss of 290 civilian lives, including 66 children. Two defectors from Iranian intelligence agencies—or alleged defectors—subsequently accused the Iranian government of being behind the attacks for which the PFLP-GC was said to have been paid $10 million. Some analysts have argued that leads pointing toward the Palestinian-Syrian-Iranian connection were purposefully deflected after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when Syria became—albeit temporarily—a US coalition ally. Libya, the only Arab state to support Saddam's invasion, remained a more tenable target for exacting exemplary justice.
After a decade of sanctions and interventions by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and South African President Nelson Mandela, the Libyans in 1999 gave up Megrahi and his alleged associate Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who would later be acquitted. The case against Megrahi hinged on a fragment recovered at Lockerbie of a timing device traced to a Swiss manufacturer, Mebo. The firm had sold timers to Libya that differed in design from those allegedly used in cassette bombs of the type attributed to the PFLP-GC. The clothing in which the bomb was said to have been wrapped inside a suitcase was traced to a shop in Malta that Megrahi was alleged to have visited, traveling under an assumed name, on December 20–21, 1988.
Although the evidence was purely circumstantial (there was no direct evidence that either he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft), the judges wrote in their decision that the preponderance of the evidence led them to believe that Megrahi was guilty as charged. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum of twenty-seven years, to be served in a Scottish jail. A major reason for US anger at Megrahi's release has been the repeated assurances given by the British government that he would serve out his full term.
In December 2003, as part of its campaign to end UN sanctions and abandon its pariah status, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, and agreed to pay compensation to the victims' families—although it continued to maintain Megrahi's innocence, as he had done throughout his trial. His position divided observers: some see his continuing denial as the standard response of a professional intelligence officer, as summarized by the unofficial motto of the CIA's Office of Technical Services—"admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations."
Others, including a significant group of Scottish lawyers and laypersons, take a different view. In June 2007, after an investigation lasting nearly four years, the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission delivered an eight-hundred-page report—with thirteen annexes—that identified several areas where "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred" and referred Megrahi's case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. The commission considered evidence that cast doubt on the dates on which Megrahi was supposed to have been in Malta as well as the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to have sold clothing to Megrahi. He had changed his testimony several times, and had been shown Megrahi's photograph before picking him out of a line-up. It was expected that the fresh appeal would also consider new evidence about the timing device, as well as the reported break-in at Heathrow airport, which indicate that the bomb could have been planted in London rather than in a suitcase checked from Malta to New York, as the prosecution had claimed.
In July 2007, Ulrich Lumpert, a former engineer at Mebo and a key technical witness, admitted that he had committed perjury at the Camp Zeist trial. In a sworn affidavit he declared that he had stolen a handmade sample of an MST-13 Timer PC-board from Mebo in Zurich and handed it to an unnamed official investigating the Lockerbie case. He also affirmed that the fragment of the timer presented in court as part of the Lockerbie wreckage had in fact been part of this stolen sample. When he became aware that this piece was to be used as evidence for an "intentionally politically motivated criminal undertaking," he said, he decided to keep silent out of fear for his life.
Although it would have been necessary for Megrahi to drop his appeal under the prisoner transfer scheme, this was not a precondition for release on compassionate grounds. Nevertheless it seems likely that he was pressured into abandoning the appeal. Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, has suggested that the dropping of the appeal, rather than "a deal involving business," was the real quid pro quo behind Megrahi's release. According to Miles, Scottish legal sources had been talking of a mood of "growing anxiety in the Scottish justice department that a successful appeal...would severely damage the reputation of the Scottish justice system."
Gaddafi at the UN
[Most of today's London and Scottish newspapers carry reports on Colonel Gaddafi's attendance at the United Nations and the speech which he is to deliver later today at the 64th session of the General Assembly. The following are excerpts from the story in The Herald.]
Protests will greet Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as he heads to the United Nations in New York today.
The Libyan leader is due to address the general assembly in the morning session with demonstrations planned for outside the compound from relatives of the Lockerbie bombing and other terrorist atrocities. (...)
But it is the appearance of Mr Gaddafi so soon after the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - the man convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 - that is likely to draw most attention in the US.
Of the 270 lives lost when the plane crashed after exploding over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, 189 were American.
The release of the terminally ill Megrahi on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government drew widespread condemnation in the US.
As such, the appearance of Mr Gaddafi in New York could not have come at a more sensitive time. (...)
He arrived yesterday ahead of the UN meeting and anticipated associated demonstrations.
Attending today’s action will be relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing. They will march on the UN compound alongside others affected by terrorist atrocities, including loved ones of those killed in the September 11 attacks in New York.
Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103, said: “We are planning a massive demonstration in New York City when Gaddafi will arrive here - objecting to the presence of the Libyan leader on the US soil.
“I personally understand the motives of the US government in trying to bring Libya into the community of peaceful nations, but that does not mean that we have to roll out the red carpet for him to strut on.
“He delights in rubbing salt into our wounds, and he has already misled the UN as to his intentions.”
Protests will greet Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as he heads to the United Nations in New York today.
The Libyan leader is due to address the general assembly in the morning session with demonstrations planned for outside the compound from relatives of the Lockerbie bombing and other terrorist atrocities. (...)
But it is the appearance of Mr Gaddafi so soon after the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - the man convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 - that is likely to draw most attention in the US.
Of the 270 lives lost when the plane crashed after exploding over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, 189 were American.
The release of the terminally ill Megrahi on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government drew widespread condemnation in the US.
As such, the appearance of Mr Gaddafi in New York could not have come at a more sensitive time. (...)
He arrived yesterday ahead of the UN meeting and anticipated associated demonstrations.
Attending today’s action will be relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing. They will march on the UN compound alongside others affected by terrorist atrocities, including loved ones of those killed in the September 11 attacks in New York.
Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103, said: “We are planning a massive demonstration in New York City when Gaddafi will arrive here - objecting to the presence of the Libyan leader on the US soil.
“I personally understand the motives of the US government in trying to bring Libya into the community of peaceful nations, but that does not mean that we have to roll out the red carpet for him to strut on.
“He delights in rubbing salt into our wounds, and he has already misled the UN as to his intentions.”
Tuesday 22 September 2009
MSPs to hold bomber release probe
[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
The Scottish Parliament's justice committee has announced it will hold a short inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill released Megrahi, who is terminally ill, on compassionate grounds last month.
Opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament later united in a vote to condemn the SNP minister's move.
Now the justice committee has voted by a majority to probe the decision. (...)
The decision to release him sparked outrage in the US, where many of the victims were from.
Tory justice spokesman and justice committee convener, Bill Aitken, said: "This inquiry will be an opportunity for the Scottish Government to allay the concerns which many hold regarding the processes followed in the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber - irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the decision itself."
The Scottish Parliament's justice committee has announced it will hold a short inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill released Megrahi, who is terminally ill, on compassionate grounds last month.
Opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament later united in a vote to condemn the SNP minister's move.
Now the justice committee has voted by a majority to probe the decision. (...)
The decision to release him sparked outrage in the US, where many of the victims were from.
Tory justice spokesman and justice committee convener, Bill Aitken, said: "This inquiry will be an opportunity for the Scottish Government to allay the concerns which many hold regarding the processes followed in the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber - irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the decision itself."
US State Department briefing
[What follows is an excerpt from yesterday's US State Department daily press briefing by Department spokesman Ian Kelly.]
QUESTION: Glenn Campbell from the BBC. Has the United States forgiven the Scottish Government for releasing the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing?
MR. KELLY: Well, our views on that issue, of course, are extremely well known. Again, we’ve passed these views both in private channels and in – also publicly. I think just about everything that we have said to the governments in London and Edinburgh through diplomatic channels have mirrored what we’ve said publicly. I don’t think it’s a matter of forgiving anybody. I think all along, we recognized that Mr. MacAskill had the right to do what he did. We objected extremely strenuously at many different levels and in many different channels to the release of Mr. Megrahi.
I think at this point, we’re looking to move on. We’re looking to continue the very important cooperation that we have with the United Kingdom and with Scotland. We have very deep and abiding ties with Scotland. These ties are cultural. They’re – we share political values. We have many family ties. My own father, as you probably can guess from my first name, is Scottish. He was born in Edinburgh. So we’re looking to move on. We’re looking for a – to continue this important relationship that we have with Scotland.
QUESTION: Is there any diplomatic price for the Scottish Government to pay?
MR. KELLY: We are very close allies, and I think allies – I don’t think we’re looking to punish anybody, per se. There’s no tit-for-tat here.
[Today's edition of the Financial Times runs an interview with Louis Susman, the new US ambassador to the UK, in which he expresses his views about the Megrahi release and the "special relationship".]
QUESTION: Glenn Campbell from the BBC. Has the United States forgiven the Scottish Government for releasing the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing?
MR. KELLY: Well, our views on that issue, of course, are extremely well known. Again, we’ve passed these views both in private channels and in – also publicly. I think just about everything that we have said to the governments in London and Edinburgh through diplomatic channels have mirrored what we’ve said publicly. I don’t think it’s a matter of forgiving anybody. I think all along, we recognized that Mr. MacAskill had the right to do what he did. We objected extremely strenuously at many different levels and in many different channels to the release of Mr. Megrahi.
I think at this point, we’re looking to move on. We’re looking to continue the very important cooperation that we have with the United Kingdom and with Scotland. We have very deep and abiding ties with Scotland. These ties are cultural. They’re – we share political values. We have many family ties. My own father, as you probably can guess from my first name, is Scottish. He was born in Edinburgh. So we’re looking to move on. We’re looking for a – to continue this important relationship that we have with Scotland.
QUESTION: Is there any diplomatic price for the Scottish Government to pay?
MR. KELLY: We are very close allies, and I think allies – I don’t think we’re looking to punish anybody, per se. There’s no tit-for-tat here.
[Today's edition of the Financial Times runs an interview with Louis Susman, the new US ambassador to the UK, in which he expresses his views about the Megrahi release and the "special relationship".]
Monday 21 September 2009
The Scotsman legal debate: Megrahi
With the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber still reverberating around the Scottish legal profession, it was unsurprising that the topic was first on the agenda for the annual Scotsman live legal debate held on Wednesday in Edinburgh. (...)
Marshalled by journalist and commentator Ian Fraser, the panellists were: Jonathan Mitchell QC, a member of the Faculty of Advocates' council; Ian Smart, the president of the Law Society of Scotland; Catriona Headley, the secretary of the Scottish Young Lawyers Association and Lorne Crerar, the chairman of Harper Macleod.
Has the Megrahi decision damaged the Scottish justice system?
Jonathan Mitchell: I don't believe anyone, a couple of years from now, in Scotland or anywhere else is going to have this near the front of their minds. Enough murderers have been freed in Scotland, England and elsewhere in Europe in recent years without anybody paying much attention. We freed 78 murderers in Northern Ireland following the Good Friday Agreement.
There might be an issue as to whether we should change policy in the future. We should perhaps follow the example of other countries and say ministers should not take the decision on compassionate release – this is something for judges, or the parole board. The parole board advised that Megrahi should be released, the governor of the prison advised he should be released, the medical advice was that he was terminally ill. I don't see how you can turn round and say: "you're just the parole board, you're just the governor of the prison, you're only doctors, I am an elected politician responsible to the electorate and I say you're wrong". That would be outrageous.
Ian Smart: All civilised legal systems have compassionate release. The minister made a decision based on the evidence that was presented to him and the law of Scotland. The theory that suggests he, Peter Mandelson, Colonel Gaddafi's son and others formed a conspiracy is just absurd. No sane person thinks he made the decision other than in good faith. We have to move on.
Lorne Crerar: I was very proud we dealt with it the way we did and that we are seen as being a nation of compassion rather than a nation of cruelty. I see it as being a positive that the Scottish legal system is seen as being robust and independent and has compassion as a part of what it does.
Catriona Headley: The problem with the Megrahi decision is it appears to have been made by a politician for political reasons. If you look at the guidance that was available and the legislation followed by the justice minister, I don't think there was any other option but to release Megrahi.
[From the report on the debate in today's edition of The Scotsman.]
Marshalled by journalist and commentator Ian Fraser, the panellists were: Jonathan Mitchell QC, a member of the Faculty of Advocates' council; Ian Smart, the president of the Law Society of Scotland; Catriona Headley, the secretary of the Scottish Young Lawyers Association and Lorne Crerar, the chairman of Harper Macleod.
Has the Megrahi decision damaged the Scottish justice system?
Jonathan Mitchell: I don't believe anyone, a couple of years from now, in Scotland or anywhere else is going to have this near the front of their minds. Enough murderers have been freed in Scotland, England and elsewhere in Europe in recent years without anybody paying much attention. We freed 78 murderers in Northern Ireland following the Good Friday Agreement.
There might be an issue as to whether we should change policy in the future. We should perhaps follow the example of other countries and say ministers should not take the decision on compassionate release – this is something for judges, or the parole board. The parole board advised that Megrahi should be released, the governor of the prison advised he should be released, the medical advice was that he was terminally ill. I don't see how you can turn round and say: "you're just the parole board, you're just the governor of the prison, you're only doctors, I am an elected politician responsible to the electorate and I say you're wrong". That would be outrageous.
Ian Smart: All civilised legal systems have compassionate release. The minister made a decision based on the evidence that was presented to him and the law of Scotland. The theory that suggests he, Peter Mandelson, Colonel Gaddafi's son and others formed a conspiracy is just absurd. No sane person thinks he made the decision other than in good faith. We have to move on.
Lorne Crerar: I was very proud we dealt with it the way we did and that we are seen as being a nation of compassion rather than a nation of cruelty. I see it as being a positive that the Scottish legal system is seen as being robust and independent and has compassion as a part of what it does.
Catriona Headley: The problem with the Megrahi decision is it appears to have been made by a politician for political reasons. If you look at the guidance that was available and the legislation followed by the justice minister, I don't think there was any other option but to release Megrahi.
[From the report on the debate in today's edition of The Scotsman.]
Over the top on Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's dossier
[This is the heading over an article by Marcel Berlins on The Guardian's Comment is free website. It reads as follows:]
Scotland's chief law officer, lord advocate Elish Angiolini, was wrong to "deplore the efforts by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to challenge his conviction through selective publication of his view of the evidence in the media".
A 298-page dossier has been published online, aimed at contesting Megrahi's conviction for the Lockerbie bombing. With further documents to be made public soon, the online material will amount to what would have been put to the Scottish court of appeal later this year had Megrahi not been returned to Libya on compassionate grounds.
Why is the lord advocate so exercised? "The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court," she says. Yes, of course – but that's never been a barrier to campaigns over purported miscarriages of justice before. Indeed, almost all the famous cases were first brought to public attention not in a courtroom but by way of a media drive.
It is true, as Angiolini points out, that Megrahi voluntarily abandoned his appeal. But he did so because he and his advisers believed that it would improve his chances of release. I do not know whether or not his actions had that effect, but it was always made clear that withdrawing the appeal was not to be taken as a lack of confidence, or an admission of guilt.
Angiolini reminds us that Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior Scottish judges, with the conviction unanimously upheld on appeal by five judges. She fails to add that the second appeal had been initiated by the independent Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which had referred the case back to the court of appeal in 2007 because it had doubts about the safety of Megrahi's conviction. The SCCRC does not reach such decisions lightly, and two-thirds of the cases it has referred to the court over the past few years have resulted in successful appeals.
In particular, the second appeal claimed that judges in the original trial had made errors in the way they treated the evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci – evidence that was crucial in linking Megrahi to the bombing. Gauci claimed to have identified Megrahi as the purchaser of clothing later found in the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb. That identification is at the centre of the doubt raised by the SCCRC.
Angiolini says that the crown was "ready, willing and able" to fight the appeal. I'm sure that's so, and I'm sure she was confident of winning, but that doesn't explain or justify her inflated reaction to Megrahi's online dossier.
We will probably never know for sure whether Megrahi planted the bomb on Pan Am flight 103 more than 20 years ago. But it would have been more dignified and more effective had the lord advocate merely emphasised the one-sided nature of Megrahi's online campaign, rather than giving the impression that she would have preferred the opposing argument to have been banned altogether.
[Unlike Mr Berlins, I am not sure that the Lord Advocate was confident of winning the appeal. The relief in the Crown Office when Mr Megrahi abandoned it was palpable and undisguised. And the later stages of the appeal would have shone a light on prosecution failure to make available to the defence material that could have assisted them, which would have been embarrassing, to say the least, to the Crown Office.]
Scotland's chief law officer, lord advocate Elish Angiolini, was wrong to "deplore the efforts by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to challenge his conviction through selective publication of his view of the evidence in the media".
A 298-page dossier has been published online, aimed at contesting Megrahi's conviction for the Lockerbie bombing. With further documents to be made public soon, the online material will amount to what would have been put to the Scottish court of appeal later this year had Megrahi not been returned to Libya on compassionate grounds.
Why is the lord advocate so exercised? "The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court," she says. Yes, of course – but that's never been a barrier to campaigns over purported miscarriages of justice before. Indeed, almost all the famous cases were first brought to public attention not in a courtroom but by way of a media drive.
It is true, as Angiolini points out, that Megrahi voluntarily abandoned his appeal. But he did so because he and his advisers believed that it would improve his chances of release. I do not know whether or not his actions had that effect, but it was always made clear that withdrawing the appeal was not to be taken as a lack of confidence, or an admission of guilt.
Angiolini reminds us that Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior Scottish judges, with the conviction unanimously upheld on appeal by five judges. She fails to add that the second appeal had been initiated by the independent Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which had referred the case back to the court of appeal in 2007 because it had doubts about the safety of Megrahi's conviction. The SCCRC does not reach such decisions lightly, and two-thirds of the cases it has referred to the court over the past few years have resulted in successful appeals.
In particular, the second appeal claimed that judges in the original trial had made errors in the way they treated the evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci – evidence that was crucial in linking Megrahi to the bombing. Gauci claimed to have identified Megrahi as the purchaser of clothing later found in the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb. That identification is at the centre of the doubt raised by the SCCRC.
Angiolini says that the crown was "ready, willing and able" to fight the appeal. I'm sure that's so, and I'm sure she was confident of winning, but that doesn't explain or justify her inflated reaction to Megrahi's online dossier.
We will probably never know for sure whether Megrahi planted the bomb on Pan Am flight 103 more than 20 years ago. But it would have been more dignified and more effective had the lord advocate merely emphasised the one-sided nature of Megrahi's online campaign, rather than giving the impression that she would have preferred the opposing argument to have been banned altogether.
[Unlike Mr Berlins, I am not sure that the Lord Advocate was confident of winning the appeal. The relief in the Crown Office when Mr Megrahi abandoned it was palpable and undisguised. And the later stages of the appeal would have shone a light on prosecution failure to make available to the defence material that could have assisted them, which would have been embarrassing, to say the least, to the Crown Office.]
Sunday 20 September 2009
Legal doubt over Megrahi's guilt
[This is the headline over an article by Jason Allardyce in today's edition of The Sunday Times. The following are excerpts.]
The legal body charged with assessing the guilt of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing concluded his conviction may be unsafe because it relied on evidence provided by a discredited witness who had been paid by American intelligence services.
A report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), due to be published later this year, is said to suggest that the testimony of Abdul Majid Giaka, a paid informer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) should have been discounted by judges at Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s trial in the Hague in 2001. [Note by RB: This is a reference to the SCCRC's full 2007 report, only a brief summary of which has so far been published.]
Giaka testified that Megrahi was an agent for the Jamahiriya Security Organisation (JSO), the Libyan intelligence service. He claimed to have seen Megrahi carrying a suitcase containing the bomb used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988 killing 270 people, and to have discussed the plot with him.
However, declassified documents released during the trial revealed that American intelligence officials doubted Giaka’s claims to be connected to the highest level of Libyan intelligence and threatened to stop paying him $1,000 (£612) a month unless he provided better information.
The informant claimed that he worked in the secret files section of the JSO, but he was a garage mechanic. Giaka’s credibility was further undermined when he claimed to be related to royalty and that the Libyan leader was a freemason.
The defence alleged Giaka had been paid £1.6m by the American government to help secure a guilty verdict against Megrahi and his co-accused Lameen Fhima.
The judges at Camp Zeist in The Hague discounted most of Giaka’s testimony on the grounds that his co-operation with the American authorities was “largely motivated by financial considerations”. However, they accepted his testimony that Megrahi was a member of the JSO, a suggestion the accused denied. (...)
While the commission’s concerns about the reliability of Tony Gauci, a key Crown witness at Megrahi’s trial, have been made public, its doubts about Giaka’s testimony were kept secret.
A source who has seen the SCCRC document, told The Sunday Times: “The report says there was no sufficient explanation made of why the court discounted him as a credible witness yet seemed to accept elements within his evidence which asserted that Megrahi was a senior member of the Libyan intelligence service and was involved in the wider conspiracy.
“There was no actual evidence to support that, but the court accepted it. It undermined [sic; presumably "underlined" or "supported" is what is meant] the Crown’s narrative of the offence — that Megrahi was acting on behalf of Libyan intelligence. That information came from Giaka and all his other evidence was utterly discredited — yet they accepted that element.” (...)
At the trial, Megrahi’s defence team denied their client was employed by the JSO and dismissed Giaka’s testimony as “pure fantasy”.
The SCCRC’s concerns about Giaka’s testimony are shared by Michael Scharf, who was the counsel to the US counterterrorism bureau when Megrahi and Fhima were indicted for the bombing. He believes that the case should never have gone to trial.
He claimed the CIA had assured State Department officials that Giaka was “the perfect witness” and there was an “airtight” case against Megrahi and Fhima, who was cleared. “This is a bit like the OJ Simpson case, where the prosecution, together with the US government, tried to sex up the case and tried to hide the flaws,” he said.
“Unfortunately, because Megrahi’s appeal is not going to go forward we’ll never really know the full story.”
The commission’s full report, expected to be published in redacted (edited) form within weeks, is said to conclude that the failure to disclose a document thought to pertain to the bomb’s timer device, may have led to a miscarriage of justice. The evidence belonged to an unnamed foreign country, which refused to hand the material over. The British government at the time claimed public interest immunity against disclosure.
The legal body charged with assessing the guilt of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing concluded his conviction may be unsafe because it relied on evidence provided by a discredited witness who had been paid by American intelligence services.
A report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), due to be published later this year, is said to suggest that the testimony of Abdul Majid Giaka, a paid informer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) should have been discounted by judges at Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s trial in the Hague in 2001. [Note by RB: This is a reference to the SCCRC's full 2007 report, only a brief summary of which has so far been published.]
Giaka testified that Megrahi was an agent for the Jamahiriya Security Organisation (JSO), the Libyan intelligence service. He claimed to have seen Megrahi carrying a suitcase containing the bomb used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988 killing 270 people, and to have discussed the plot with him.
However, declassified documents released during the trial revealed that American intelligence officials doubted Giaka’s claims to be connected to the highest level of Libyan intelligence and threatened to stop paying him $1,000 (£612) a month unless he provided better information.
The informant claimed that he worked in the secret files section of the JSO, but he was a garage mechanic. Giaka’s credibility was further undermined when he claimed to be related to royalty and that the Libyan leader was a freemason.
The defence alleged Giaka had been paid £1.6m by the American government to help secure a guilty verdict against Megrahi and his co-accused Lameen Fhima.
The judges at Camp Zeist in The Hague discounted most of Giaka’s testimony on the grounds that his co-operation with the American authorities was “largely motivated by financial considerations”. However, they accepted his testimony that Megrahi was a member of the JSO, a suggestion the accused denied. (...)
While the commission’s concerns about the reliability of Tony Gauci, a key Crown witness at Megrahi’s trial, have been made public, its doubts about Giaka’s testimony were kept secret.
A source who has seen the SCCRC document, told The Sunday Times: “The report says there was no sufficient explanation made of why the court discounted him as a credible witness yet seemed to accept elements within his evidence which asserted that Megrahi was a senior member of the Libyan intelligence service and was involved in the wider conspiracy.
“There was no actual evidence to support that, but the court accepted it. It undermined [sic; presumably "underlined" or "supported" is what is meant] the Crown’s narrative of the offence — that Megrahi was acting on behalf of Libyan intelligence. That information came from Giaka and all his other evidence was utterly discredited — yet they accepted that element.” (...)
At the trial, Megrahi’s defence team denied their client was employed by the JSO and dismissed Giaka’s testimony as “pure fantasy”.
The SCCRC’s concerns about Giaka’s testimony are shared by Michael Scharf, who was the counsel to the US counterterrorism bureau when Megrahi and Fhima were indicted for the bombing. He believes that the case should never have gone to trial.
He claimed the CIA had assured State Department officials that Giaka was “the perfect witness” and there was an “airtight” case against Megrahi and Fhima, who was cleared. “This is a bit like the OJ Simpson case, where the prosecution, together with the US government, tried to sex up the case and tried to hide the flaws,” he said.
“Unfortunately, because Megrahi’s appeal is not going to go forward we’ll never really know the full story.”
The commission’s full report, expected to be published in redacted (edited) form within weeks, is said to conclude that the failure to disclose a document thought to pertain to the bomb’s timer device, may have led to a miscarriage of justice. The evidence belonged to an unnamed foreign country, which refused to hand the material over. The British government at the time claimed public interest immunity against disclosure.
Saturday 19 September 2009
Could the UK Government have stopped repatriation?
Gordon Brown's government could have used its powers under the Scotland Act to challenge the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber, it has emerged.
Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy could have overruled Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill and stopped the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi if the case was deemed to have breached "international obligations".
Senior diplomats have insisted there was a "clear understanding" between the UK and the US that Megrahi would serve out his sentence in Scotland. The US Justice and State departments have also insisted they had been given assurances in the 1990s that Megrahi would remain imprisoned under Scottish jurisdiction. (...)
The key part of the Scotland Act [section 58(1)] says: "If the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe that any action proposed to be taken by a member of the Scottish Executive would be incompatible with any international obligations, he may by order direct that the proposed action shall not be taken."
[The above are extracts from an article by Gerry Peev in tomorrow's edition of Scotland on Sunday.
The contention that this provision of Scotland Act 1998 could have been used by the UK Government to block Abdelbaset Megrahi's repatriation is quite false. There may have been (indeed, there was) an undertaking by the UK (in a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations) that anyone convicted in the Zeist trial would serve his sentence in Britain. But that is not what the Act means by an international obligation. What it does mean is a treaty obligation or an obligation directly imposed by a binding UN Security Council Resolution.
Moreover, while transfer of Mr Megrahi to serve the remainder of his sentence in Libya under the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement would have constituted a breach of this undertaking (which, as I have said, is not an "international obligation" within the meaning of the Act), this is not what Kenny MacAskill did. He rejected prisoner transfer precisely because he thought that this might breach an understanding legitimately held by the United States. What he did instead was to release Mr Megrahi from his sentence on compassionate grounds. The whole of the sentence that the law of Scotland required Mr Megrahi to serve was served in Scotland; and he was then released. There was accordingly no breach of the undertaking that the sentence would be served in Britain.]
Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy could have overruled Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill and stopped the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi if the case was deemed to have breached "international obligations".
Senior diplomats have insisted there was a "clear understanding" between the UK and the US that Megrahi would serve out his sentence in Scotland. The US Justice and State departments have also insisted they had been given assurances in the 1990s that Megrahi would remain imprisoned under Scottish jurisdiction. (...)
The key part of the Scotland Act [section 58(1)] says: "If the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe that any action proposed to be taken by a member of the Scottish Executive would be incompatible with any international obligations, he may by order direct that the proposed action shall not be taken."
[The above are extracts from an article by Gerry Peev in tomorrow's edition of Scotland on Sunday.
The contention that this provision of Scotland Act 1998 could have been used by the UK Government to block Abdelbaset Megrahi's repatriation is quite false. There may have been (indeed, there was) an undertaking by the UK (in a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations) that anyone convicted in the Zeist trial would serve his sentence in Britain. But that is not what the Act means by an international obligation. What it does mean is a treaty obligation or an obligation directly imposed by a binding UN Security Council Resolution.
Moreover, while transfer of Mr Megrahi to serve the remainder of his sentence in Libya under the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement would have constituted a breach of this undertaking (which, as I have said, is not an "international obligation" within the meaning of the Act), this is not what Kenny MacAskill did. He rejected prisoner transfer precisely because he thought that this might breach an understanding legitimately held by the United States. What he did instead was to release Mr Megrahi from his sentence on compassionate grounds. The whole of the sentence that the law of Scotland required Mr Megrahi to serve was served in Scotland; and he was then released. There was accordingly no breach of the undertaking that the sentence would be served in Britain.]
Misguided Magnus
For all Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi's protests about the fragility of the prosecution case against him, there are three crucial facts to be borne in mind in reading these documents.
First, there appears to be nothing new here. It is evidence that has already been tested and rejected in the course of two court hearings: the original trial and his first appeal.
Secondly, what al-Megrahi presents is, inevitably, only one side of the case. It would have been challenged point by point in front of three High Court judges if his next appeal had gone ahead. By abandoning that legal process and returning to Libya, al-Megrahi has sacrificed the opportunity of having his evidence properly heard in a forum that would have been recognised and respected.
Third, if he was so sure of the strength of his case, why was he not willing to see the appeal go ahead in his name, even though he himself was absent? The legal position is that the accused person does not need to be present for an appeal to be heard - he may even be dead.
Yet al-Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to ensure his speedy release from Greenock prison. Indeed, even at the original trial, he declined to give evidence in his own defence. That severely undermines his attempt to demonstrate that the prosecution case was flawed.
He now argues that the evidence against him was circumstantial and built on inference. But circumstantial evidence is very often at the heart of a prosecution case, and in Scottish law, an extra strand of corroborative proof is required before the evidence is accepted, and this would have happened in the al-Megrahi case.
What we are now asked instead to believe is that experienced judges and counsel ignored the custom and practice of Scottish law in the course of two full trials, and waved through unconvincing circumstantial evidence in order to ensure a conviction.
That is not only inherently improbable, it is insulting to the Scottish legal system and the lawyers who were involved in it. Only a full inquiry can unravel the truth, rather than the partial version we have been presented with here.
[The above is the full text of a comment in today's edition of The Times by Magnus Linklater, the paper's Scottish Editor. Apart from the very last sentence of the article, everything that Mr Linklater says is either factually incorrect or demonstrably misguided.
First: the released material has not been tested and rejected in two court hearings (the original trial and the first appeal). The released material advances the contentions that the evidence heard at the original trial was (a) insufficient in law to warrant a guilty verdict and (b) that no reasonable court, on that evidence, could have convicted Abdelbaset Megrahi. These contentions were not advanced at the Zeist trial or at the first appeal. As far as that appeal is concerned, the five judges stated in paragraph 369 of their Opinion:
“When opening the case for the appellant before this court Mr Taylor [senior counsel for Megrahi] stated that the appeal was not about sufficiency of evidence: he accepted that there was a sufficiency of evidence. He also stated that he was not seeking to found on section 106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act [verdict unreasonable on the evidence]. His position was that the trial court had misdirected itself in various respects. Accordingly in this appeal we have not required to consider whether the evidence before the trial court, apart from the evidence which it rejected, was sufficient as a matter of law to entitle it to convict the appellant on the basis set out in its judgment. We have not had to consider whether the verdict of guilty was one which no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have returned in the light of that evidence.”
The true position, as I have written elsewhere, is this:
"As far as the outcome of the appeal is concerned, some commentators have confidently opined that, in dismissing Megrahi’s appeal, the Appeal Court endorsed the findings of the trial court. This is not so. The Appeal Court repeatedly stresses that it is not its function to approve or disapprove of the trial court’s findings-in-fact, given that it was not contended on behalf of the appellant that there was insufficient evidence to warrant them or that no reasonable court could have made them. These findings-in-fact accordingly continue, as before the appeal, to have the authority only of the court which, and the three judges who, made them."
Second: "By abandoning that legal process and returning to Libya, al-Megrahi has sacrificed the opportunity of having his evidence properly heard in a forum that would have been recognised and respected. (...) [I]f he was so sure of the strength of his case, why was he not willing to see the appeal go ahead in his name, even though he himself was absent? The legal position is that the accused person does not need to be present for an appeal to be heard - he may even be dead. Yet al-Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to ensure his speedy release from Greenock prison."
Abdelbaset Megrahi was terminally ill. He had only a few months to live. His absolute priority was to return to his homeland to die surrounded by his family. Two ways of achieving this were available: prisoner transfer and compassionate release. The first required that there be no ongoing legal proceedings (like his second appeal); the second did not. Applications for repatriation were made under both mechanisms. Megrahi did not know which, if either, of the mechanisms would be successful, and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice said from the outset that there would be no nods or winks. In order to keep open the possibility of benefiting from prisoner transfer Megrahi had to abandon his appeal. At the end of the day, Kenny MacAskill opted for compassionate release. But until it actually happened, Megrahi did not, and could not, know that. The decision to abandon was effectively forced upon him.
And, of course, it would all have been unnecessary if the Crown Office, the Advocate General for Scotland (representing the UK Foreign Secretary in his public interest immunity claims) and the Appeal Court had not reduced the progress of the second appeal to a pace that would have shamed a self-respecting snail.
Third: Megrahi is not complaining that the evidence against him was circumstantial. Everyone accepts that a conviction can properly be obtained on evidence which is wholly circumstantial. The true point being raised is that for proof beyond reasonable doubt to be achieved in a case based wholly on circumstantial evidence, the incriminating inferences that the court is asked to draw from the evidence must be the only reasonable inferences open on that evidence. It is the failure of the Crown to reach (or even approach) this standard at the Zeist trial that Megrahi is complaining about.]
First, there appears to be nothing new here. It is evidence that has already been tested and rejected in the course of two court hearings: the original trial and his first appeal.
Secondly, what al-Megrahi presents is, inevitably, only one side of the case. It would have been challenged point by point in front of three High Court judges if his next appeal had gone ahead. By abandoning that legal process and returning to Libya, al-Megrahi has sacrificed the opportunity of having his evidence properly heard in a forum that would have been recognised and respected.
Third, if he was so sure of the strength of his case, why was he not willing to see the appeal go ahead in his name, even though he himself was absent? The legal position is that the accused person does not need to be present for an appeal to be heard - he may even be dead.
Yet al-Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to ensure his speedy release from Greenock prison. Indeed, even at the original trial, he declined to give evidence in his own defence. That severely undermines his attempt to demonstrate that the prosecution case was flawed.
He now argues that the evidence against him was circumstantial and built on inference. But circumstantial evidence is very often at the heart of a prosecution case, and in Scottish law, an extra strand of corroborative proof is required before the evidence is accepted, and this would have happened in the al-Megrahi case.
What we are now asked instead to believe is that experienced judges and counsel ignored the custom and practice of Scottish law in the course of two full trials, and waved through unconvincing circumstantial evidence in order to ensure a conviction.
That is not only inherently improbable, it is insulting to the Scottish legal system and the lawyers who were involved in it. Only a full inquiry can unravel the truth, rather than the partial version we have been presented with here.
[The above is the full text of a comment in today's edition of The Times by Magnus Linklater, the paper's Scottish Editor. Apart from the very last sentence of the article, everything that Mr Linklater says is either factually incorrect or demonstrably misguided.
First: the released material has not been tested and rejected in two court hearings (the original trial and the first appeal). The released material advances the contentions that the evidence heard at the original trial was (a) insufficient in law to warrant a guilty verdict and (b) that no reasonable court, on that evidence, could have convicted Abdelbaset Megrahi. These contentions were not advanced at the Zeist trial or at the first appeal. As far as that appeal is concerned, the five judges stated in paragraph 369 of their Opinion:
“When opening the case for the appellant before this court Mr Taylor [senior counsel for Megrahi] stated that the appeal was not about sufficiency of evidence: he accepted that there was a sufficiency of evidence. He also stated that he was not seeking to found on section 106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act [verdict unreasonable on the evidence]. His position was that the trial court had misdirected itself in various respects. Accordingly in this appeal we have not required to consider whether the evidence before the trial court, apart from the evidence which it rejected, was sufficient as a matter of law to entitle it to convict the appellant on the basis set out in its judgment. We have not had to consider whether the verdict of guilty was one which no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have returned in the light of that evidence.”
The true position, as I have written elsewhere, is this:
"As far as the outcome of the appeal is concerned, some commentators have confidently opined that, in dismissing Megrahi’s appeal, the Appeal Court endorsed the findings of the trial court. This is not so. The Appeal Court repeatedly stresses that it is not its function to approve or disapprove of the trial court’s findings-in-fact, given that it was not contended on behalf of the appellant that there was insufficient evidence to warrant them or that no reasonable court could have made them. These findings-in-fact accordingly continue, as before the appeal, to have the authority only of the court which, and the three judges who, made them."
Second: "By abandoning that legal process and returning to Libya, al-Megrahi has sacrificed the opportunity of having his evidence properly heard in a forum that would have been recognised and respected. (...) [I]f he was so sure of the strength of his case, why was he not willing to see the appeal go ahead in his name, even though he himself was absent? The legal position is that the accused person does not need to be present for an appeal to be heard - he may even be dead. Yet al-Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to ensure his speedy release from Greenock prison."
Abdelbaset Megrahi was terminally ill. He had only a few months to live. His absolute priority was to return to his homeland to die surrounded by his family. Two ways of achieving this were available: prisoner transfer and compassionate release. The first required that there be no ongoing legal proceedings (like his second appeal); the second did not. Applications for repatriation were made under both mechanisms. Megrahi did not know which, if either, of the mechanisms would be successful, and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice said from the outset that there would be no nods or winks. In order to keep open the possibility of benefiting from prisoner transfer Megrahi had to abandon his appeal. At the end of the day, Kenny MacAskill opted for compassionate release. But until it actually happened, Megrahi did not, and could not, know that. The decision to abandon was effectively forced upon him.
And, of course, it would all have been unnecessary if the Crown Office, the Advocate General for Scotland (representing the UK Foreign Secretary in his public interest immunity claims) and the Appeal Court had not reduced the progress of the second appeal to a pace that would have shamed a self-respecting snail.
Third: Megrahi is not complaining that the evidence against him was circumstantial. Everyone accepts that a conviction can properly be obtained on evidence which is wholly circumstantial. The true point being raised is that for proof beyond reasonable doubt to be achieved in a case based wholly on circumstantial evidence, the incriminating inferences that the court is asked to draw from the evidence must be the only reasonable inferences open on that evidence. It is the failure of the Crown to reach (or even approach) this standard at the Zeist trial that Megrahi is complaining about.]
Friday 18 September 2009
Press release regarding publication of appeal documents
Mr Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who has returned to his homeland, Libya, today commences the release of information which he hopes will establish his innocence. Through the website megrahimystory.net he will release details of Grounds of Appeal 1 and 2 of his challenge to the conviction for involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.
Grounds 1 and 2 dealt with the challenge to the conviction on the grounds of legal sufficiency and reasonableness.
The detailed written submissions lodged by Mr Megrahi’s defence team insupport of the grounds, also published today, break down the various steps in the reasoning of the Trial Court it said led to the conclusion that it was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of Mr Megrahi.
In publishing this material Mr Megrahi made the following statement:
“I have returned to Tripoli with my unjust conviction still in place. As a resultof the abandonment of my appeal I have been deprived of the opportunity to clear my name through the formal appeal process. I have vowed to continue my attempts to clear my name. I will do everything in my power to persuade the public, and in particular the Scottish public, of my innocence.
Through my website I have published the material which featured in the first full hearing of my appeal namely the challenges under Grounds of Appeal 1 and 2 to the legal sufficiency and reasonableness of the Court’s findings. I hope that this can assist in the understanding of my case, especially for those who have been most profoundly affected by it. As can be seen from the documents released today some of the challenges mounted before the Court are supported by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Argument was heard upon these challenges but unfortunately the Court was not, by the time of my abandonment, in a position to provide its opinion. Thus, there is no Court judgement or adjudication upon these challenges”.
Mr Megrahi hopes to continue to publish details of his appeal challenge in the course of the forthcoming weeks.
[The above is the text of a press release issued at noon today by Abdelbaset Megrahi's Scottish solicitor, Tony Kelly. The Scotsman's report on the matter can be read here and The Times's here. The Times of Malta website contains a report focussing on what the documents have to say about the identification evidence of Tony Gauci and the evidence relating to ingestion of the bomb at Malta's Luqa Airport.
The Lord Advocate has issued a press release commenting on this development it reads:
'The Lord Advocate, the Right Honourable Elish Angiolini QC, has criticised the publication of selected material relating to his appeal by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber.
'Mrs Angiolini said:
'“I deplore the efforts by Abdelbaset Megrahi to challenge his conviction through selective publication of his view of the evidence in the media after he has abandoned his second appeal against conviction.
'“The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court. Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges following trial and his conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an Appeal Court presided over by the Lord Justice General, Scotland’s most senior judge. Mr Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history .
'“The Crown has supported the conviction vigorously and stood ready, willing and able to do so throughout the appeal process which Mr Megrahi abandoned.
'“As he and his legal team have made clear, the decision to discontinue the appeal proceedings was taken voluntarily by Mr Megrahi himself. He did not require to abandon his appeal. Having done so, he now seeks to retry his case in the media and criticise the evidence against him. Mr Megrahi exercised his right of silence throughout the judicial proceedings.
'“The only evidence that the trial court ever heard from Mr Megrahi was in the television interview which he gave, after publication of the criminal charges in 1991, to the veteran journalist Pierre Salinger. In that interview, which was played to the trial court by the prosecution, Mr Salinger put to him the detailed allegations and his responses on many important matters were disproved and discredited in the trial.”'
This is a bit rich coming from the person whose office was responsible for the lion's share of the outrageous delay in getting Mr Megrahi's second appeal to the stage of argument. This had the consequence that, given his terminal illness, there was no chance of his surviving until its conclusion and also ultimately led to his regrettable, but entirely understandable, decision to abandon the appeal to maximise his chances of repatriation by keeping open the prisoner transfer option. At the end of the day the Cabinet Secretary for Justice chose another option -- compassionate release -- but Megrahi had no way of knowing that that was going to happen.
Here is what I wrote on this blog almost a year ago, on 26 October 2008:
"More than sixteen months have passed since then. More than thirteen months have passed since the first procedural hearing in the new appeal was held. More than ten months have passed since the appellant’s full written grounds of appeal were lodged with the court. Why has no date yet been fixed for the hearing of the appeal? Why does it now seem impossible that the appeal can be heard and a judgement delivered by the twentieth anniversary of the disaster on 21 December 2008?
"The answer is simple: because the Crown, in the person of the Lord Advocate, and the United Kingdom Government, in the person of the Advocate General for Scotland, have been resorting to every delaying tactic in the book (and where a particular obstructionist wheeze is not in the book, have been asking the court to rewrite the book to insert it). These tactics include, to name but a few, raising difficulties about allowing the appellant access to productions used at the original trial; seeking to overturn previous appeal court decisions on the scope of the appeal in SCCRC references; and claiming public interest immunity on “national security” grounds in respect of documents which have been in the hands of the Crown for more than twelve years and which have been seen by the SCCRC. The judges on a number of occasions have expressed disquiet at the Crown’s dilatoriness; but have so far done little, if anything, meaningful to curb it."]
Grounds 1 and 2 dealt with the challenge to the conviction on the grounds of legal sufficiency and reasonableness.
The detailed written submissions lodged by Mr Megrahi’s defence team insupport of the grounds, also published today, break down the various steps in the reasoning of the Trial Court it said led to the conclusion that it was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of Mr Megrahi.
In publishing this material Mr Megrahi made the following statement:
“I have returned to Tripoli with my unjust conviction still in place. As a resultof the abandonment of my appeal I have been deprived of the opportunity to clear my name through the formal appeal process. I have vowed to continue my attempts to clear my name. I will do everything in my power to persuade the public, and in particular the Scottish public, of my innocence.
Through my website I have published the material which featured in the first full hearing of my appeal namely the challenges under Grounds of Appeal 1 and 2 to the legal sufficiency and reasonableness of the Court’s findings. I hope that this can assist in the understanding of my case, especially for those who have been most profoundly affected by it. As can be seen from the documents released today some of the challenges mounted before the Court are supported by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Argument was heard upon these challenges but unfortunately the Court was not, by the time of my abandonment, in a position to provide its opinion. Thus, there is no Court judgement or adjudication upon these challenges”.
Mr Megrahi hopes to continue to publish details of his appeal challenge in the course of the forthcoming weeks.
[The above is the text of a press release issued at noon today by Abdelbaset Megrahi's Scottish solicitor, Tony Kelly. The Scotsman's report on the matter can be read here and The Times's here. The Times of Malta website contains a report focussing on what the documents have to say about the identification evidence of Tony Gauci and the evidence relating to ingestion of the bomb at Malta's Luqa Airport.
The Lord Advocate has issued a press release commenting on this development it reads:
'The Lord Advocate, the Right Honourable Elish Angiolini QC, has criticised the publication of selected material relating to his appeal by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber.
'Mrs Angiolini said:
'“I deplore the efforts by Abdelbaset Megrahi to challenge his conviction through selective publication of his view of the evidence in the media after he has abandoned his second appeal against conviction.
'“The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court. Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges following trial and his conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an Appeal Court presided over by the Lord Justice General, Scotland’s most senior judge. Mr Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history .
'“The Crown has supported the conviction vigorously and stood ready, willing and able to do so throughout the appeal process which Mr Megrahi abandoned.
'“As he and his legal team have made clear, the decision to discontinue the appeal proceedings was taken voluntarily by Mr Megrahi himself. He did not require to abandon his appeal. Having done so, he now seeks to retry his case in the media and criticise the evidence against him. Mr Megrahi exercised his right of silence throughout the judicial proceedings.
'“The only evidence that the trial court ever heard from Mr Megrahi was in the television interview which he gave, after publication of the criminal charges in 1991, to the veteran journalist Pierre Salinger. In that interview, which was played to the trial court by the prosecution, Mr Salinger put to him the detailed allegations and his responses on many important matters were disproved and discredited in the trial.”'
This is a bit rich coming from the person whose office was responsible for the lion's share of the outrageous delay in getting Mr Megrahi's second appeal to the stage of argument. This had the consequence that, given his terminal illness, there was no chance of his surviving until its conclusion and also ultimately led to his regrettable, but entirely understandable, decision to abandon the appeal to maximise his chances of repatriation by keeping open the prisoner transfer option. At the end of the day the Cabinet Secretary for Justice chose another option -- compassionate release -- but Megrahi had no way of knowing that that was going to happen.
Here is what I wrote on this blog almost a year ago, on 26 October 2008:
"More than sixteen months have passed since then. More than thirteen months have passed since the first procedural hearing in the new appeal was held. More than ten months have passed since the appellant’s full written grounds of appeal were lodged with the court. Why has no date yet been fixed for the hearing of the appeal? Why does it now seem impossible that the appeal can be heard and a judgement delivered by the twentieth anniversary of the disaster on 21 December 2008?
"The answer is simple: because the Crown, in the person of the Lord Advocate, and the United Kingdom Government, in the person of the Advocate General for Scotland, have been resorting to every delaying tactic in the book (and where a particular obstructionist wheeze is not in the book, have been asking the court to rewrite the book to insert it). These tactics include, to name but a few, raising difficulties about allowing the appellant access to productions used at the original trial; seeking to overturn previous appeal court decisions on the scope of the appeal in SCCRC references; and claiming public interest immunity on “national security” grounds in respect of documents which have been in the hands of the Crown for more than twelve years and which have been seen by the SCCRC. The judges on a number of occasions have expressed disquiet at the Crown’s dilatoriness; but have so far done little, if anything, meaningful to curb it."]
Inquiry would clear up Megrahi muddle
[This is the heading over a letter in today's edition of The Scotsman from Benedict Birnberg. It reads in part:]
That many families of the victims of the Lockerbie outrage are distraught at a decision [the compassionate release of Megrahi] that denies them even the consolation of a sacrificial lamb is understandable. But the hysteria, as much in the UK as in the US, has masked the decision of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in June 2007, following its three-year investigation, to refer the conviction to the High Court. It bears emphasising that its statement of referral extended to more than 800 pages with 13 volumes of appendices and that in its press release it described the investigation as "the longest, most expensive and singularly most complex" in its history. And it concluded " … based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice".
Yet, with scant exceptions, comment in the UK media generally, although much less so in Scotland, has ignored the reference or anything that casts doubt on Megrahi's guilt and has focused rather on such matters as his reception back home and the ostensible realpolitik behind his release and repatriation. The assumption has been that, because Megrahi withdrew his appeal before his release while maintaining his innocence, the court cannot now consider the case.
I do not know whether the appeal would succeed. All I know is that the official body charged with investigating his case formed the view, after extensive consideration, that an innocent man may have been convicted.
As a solicitor whose firm has been in the vanguard in handling UK miscarriage of justice cases over the past 40 years, I believe justice cannot be done or be seen to be done unless there is a judicial trial.
To this end I have written to justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to question the circumstances in which Megrahi withdrew his appeal and I have said that, if indeed the court is functus officio (has discharged its duties], the Scottish Government ought, in the interests of the fair administration of justice in Scotland, to establish an independent public judicial inquiry to ensure that the case painstakingly prepared by the commission does not go by default but receives full, fair and dispassionate consideration.
That many families of the victims of the Lockerbie outrage are distraught at a decision [the compassionate release of Megrahi] that denies them even the consolation of a sacrificial lamb is understandable. But the hysteria, as much in the UK as in the US, has masked the decision of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in June 2007, following its three-year investigation, to refer the conviction to the High Court. It bears emphasising that its statement of referral extended to more than 800 pages with 13 volumes of appendices and that in its press release it described the investigation as "the longest, most expensive and singularly most complex" in its history. And it concluded " … based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice".
Yet, with scant exceptions, comment in the UK media generally, although much less so in Scotland, has ignored the reference or anything that casts doubt on Megrahi's guilt and has focused rather on such matters as his reception back home and the ostensible realpolitik behind his release and repatriation. The assumption has been that, because Megrahi withdrew his appeal before his release while maintaining his innocence, the court cannot now consider the case.
I do not know whether the appeal would succeed. All I know is that the official body charged with investigating his case formed the view, after extensive consideration, that an innocent man may have been convicted.
As a solicitor whose firm has been in the vanguard in handling UK miscarriage of justice cases over the past 40 years, I believe justice cannot be done or be seen to be done unless there is a judicial trial.
To this end I have written to justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to question the circumstances in which Megrahi withdrew his appeal and I have said that, if indeed the court is functus officio (has discharged its duties], the Scottish Government ought, in the interests of the fair administration of justice in Scotland, to establish an independent public judicial inquiry to ensure that the case painstakingly prepared by the commission does not go by default but receives full, fair and dispassionate consideration.
Marquise's response to Peirce
[The following response by Richard Marquise to Gareth Peirce's article in The London Review of Books was sent to me by Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc.]
The recent piece written by Gareth Peirce entitled “The Framing of al – Megrahi” had numerous errors of fact and the record needs to be corrected. I will ask her these questions-- How many days of the trial did you attend? How many trial transcripts have you read? What do you know—first hand—about the investigation? I think I know the answer to those questions. If I am right, her credibility should be in doubt. There has been so much misinformation published about the Lockerbie case over the past several years. It is time individuals get information from real sources rather than the internet and bloggers. If one of these people who call themselves historians, architects, observers and experts would spend some time with those of us who were there and know the facts, I think a different record develop.
I found I only agreed with Ms. Peirce on one topic. The release of Mr. Megrahi was based on greed—the wishes of officials in the United Kingdom to access Libyan oil and business ventures. My own Government is no better. In 2004, when Gaddafi “accepted responsibility for the actions of his agents,” the United States allowed that to stand as his formal admission of guilt for the Lockerbie attack. It should be noted that he told a reporter, “off the record,” as far back as 1993 that his government was involved in the plot to blow up Pan Am Flight 103. Unfortunately, this “real” admission has received little publicity.
The rest of Ms. Peirce’s lengthy article had so many errors of fact that I will try and address them in “bullet” form to make it easier to follow:
• Ms. Peirce says the investigation should have been conducted by Scottish police alone without interference from other agencies or countries. Clearly she lacks a basic understanding of the world. There is no way the police in Scotland could or should have carried out the investigation alone. We live (and did in 1988) in a global society. Good police and intelligence relationships are key if we are to protect our society from those who would do us harm. These relationships were not as advanced in 1988 resulting in many missteps but we worked through the process of understanding the nuances of each system. This case would not have been solved without the FBI, Scottish police and officers from Germany, Malta, Sweden, Switzerland and England working together, as a team. No one agency could have done it alone.
• Ms. Peirce indicates this investigation should have been conducted with “utter integrity.” I and my colleagues take great exception to this slander. The investigation was conducted with integrity and we only followed the facts and presented them to a court which found Mr. Megrahi guilty.
• There is discussion of unauthorized people (FBI and CIA) at the crime scene in Scotland. This scene which would encompass over 1400 square kilometers could not effectively be secured and police had to constantly tell local citizens not to pick up debris. However, although much has been reported, not one “confirmed” sighting of an American walking unattended has ever been documented (see trial transcripts). The Americans who would eventually come to the site were those who were helping identify bodies and if one went into the field, they were accompanied by a police officer. To believe that both the CIA and FBI had the bureaucratic ability to send large numbers of people to the scene immediately and then to spirit away luggage (assuming one knew where to look in this massive crime scene) is just incomprehensible. Yes, and then there were the helicopters…..also unbelievable.
• There is much discussion about the “original” suspects—the PFLP-GC. Based on available public source information at the time, they indeed were our original suspects. This suspicion was enhanced when a piece of circuit board of a Toshiba radio was found at the crash site. PFLP-GC terrorists had used a similar (but not the same) brand of radio before. However, although this avenue was pursued for over two years, no evidence of any PFLP-GC involvement was ever found. The key word is evidence and I believe Ms. Peirce, as an attorney, knows, that is what one needs to have a court reach a finding of guilty.
• Although not said specifically, it is implied that the shopkeeper in Malta who sold clothing which had been found in the wreckage (by very capable Scottish officers) identified Abu Talb, a Palestinian terrorist living in Sweden, as the purchaser of the clothing. This is just not true. This shopkeeper only identified one photograph in a police photo array—Mr. Megrahi—in February 1991. When the shopkeeper was interviewed in 1989 he had said the purchaser had a “Libyan accent.”
• Ms. Peirce may recall that although Iran and the PFLP-GC were our original suspects and the media reported as much in early 1989, an (at the time) unidentified individual walked into the US Embassy in Austria (January 1989) and left a message for the Ambassador. In it he said that Libya was responsible for the bombing. His note said he had been in Tripoli in December 1988 and believed that if he could believe what he was reading in the press—we were focused on Iran and Palestinians—then we were wrong and investigators should look at Libya. This man would be identified nearly two years later as Edwin Bollier, the man whose company built the timer which was part of the bomb.
• The investigation would prove that only 20 of these timers had ever been made and all had been delivered to Libyan intelligence officials. A statement made nearly 20 years later by Ulrich Lumpert, a technician who worked for Bollier that he had stolen one of the circuit boards from his company and made it available to “someone who was investigating the Lockerbie case” in 1989, has no credibility. No one associated with the Lockerbie investigation had ever heard of the MEBO Company in 1989. We did not find them until late 1990. Bollier and Lumpert each testified in 1990 that they only purchased a small number of the circuit boards and made 20 or 21 timers. When the Libyans came looking for additional timers in December 1988, Bollier had none. Bollier now says he was offered $4 million to link Libya to the attack. That is not true because by the time he alleges this happened he had already linked Libya to his timers at a magistrate hearing in Switzerland. Lumpert and Bollier’s change of heart became clear in 2008. Bollier said on a BBC special he hoped to get up to $200 million from Libya if he helped free Megrahi. Lumpert, before he filed an affidavit stating he had lied at the trial made it clear that he had sought legal advice and determined he could not be prosecuted for these earlier “false statements.”
• One remark (actually interspersed throughout the piece) stated that the CIA took control of the investigation. When I shared that with my colleagues in Scotland, they were amused because somehow, no one had ever relayed that message to them. The Scottish police were always in charge. Yes, we negotiated and often disagreed about what we would do next, but the FBI and Scottish police worked together, neither side forgetting where the crime scene was and who had “primary” jurisdiction. At no time was the CIA (or any intelligence service) “in charge” of the investigation. They supported the police in Scotland, just as the FBI and the other police agencies around the world did. Vincent Cannistraro did retire in 1990—before the EVIDENCE led us to Libya and he did not come back. In fact, if you speak with any police officer in Scotland, I doubt any of them ever met him and I only recall him being at one meeting involving this case. It was not in a leadership capacity.
• A number of assertions were made about the type of timer which was used at Lockerbie. We had initially assumed it was a barometric timer favored by the PFLP-GC. This timer would have exploded after reaching an altitude above 15000 feet. The timing mechanism was erratic (based on examination of similar devices found in Germany) and could have exploded from 1 minute and as long as an hour after being triggered, if it exploded at all. We believed the timer used as part of the bomb was one manufactured by MEBO and given to Libyan officials.
• Ms. Peirce’s attack on the FBI laboratory had more erroneous information. Tom Thurman was not barred from the FBI laboratory and was used as an expert witness after the IG report was written; however, I have no intention of using this forum to do what I consider a needless defense of him. The issue is the FBI lab. The identification of the fragment which led to the MEBO timer was done by Mr. Thurman based on a photograph. As an investigator—something most lab examiners are not—he was able to figure out where to go to look for a possible match to the fragment recovered by Scottish police officers. Once he identified the fragment, he asked Alan Feraday to come to Washington. Feraday brought the original fragment of the timer with him and they both examined it under a microscope. They independently agreed it was identical to the MEBO timer. The fragment was never out of the control of Mr. Feraday and returned with him to the lab at RARDE.
• I am not an attorney and have no idea what Hans Kochler saw at the trial which caused him to doubt the verdict. I do know he is neither a policeman nor is he an attorney. The case which was presented was circumstantial and these cases are often more reliable than those having eyewitness identification
I have only addressed part of Ms. Peirce’s concerns. However, for all of these “circumstances” to have been true as accepted by the three original trial judges, the overall case must have been credible. In order for it all to be wrong, there would have to have been a conspiracy of the grandest order and I will state without hesitation—that is false! Wrong! To somehow believe that dedicated law enforcement officers would somehow take world politics (US-UK intervention in Kuwait) to make a case against an innocent party does not know what makes us who we are. We followed the evidence. To state or even imply otherwise is an insult to all of us who only sought a righteous solution and justice for the victims.
The recent piece written by Gareth Peirce entitled “The Framing of al – Megrahi” had numerous errors of fact and the record needs to be corrected. I will ask her these questions-- How many days of the trial did you attend? How many trial transcripts have you read? What do you know—first hand—about the investigation? I think I know the answer to those questions. If I am right, her credibility should be in doubt. There has been so much misinformation published about the Lockerbie case over the past several years. It is time individuals get information from real sources rather than the internet and bloggers. If one of these people who call themselves historians, architects, observers and experts would spend some time with those of us who were there and know the facts, I think a different record develop.
I found I only agreed with Ms. Peirce on one topic. The release of Mr. Megrahi was based on greed—the wishes of officials in the United Kingdom to access Libyan oil and business ventures. My own Government is no better. In 2004, when Gaddafi “accepted responsibility for the actions of his agents,” the United States allowed that to stand as his formal admission of guilt for the Lockerbie attack. It should be noted that he told a reporter, “off the record,” as far back as 1993 that his government was involved in the plot to blow up Pan Am Flight 103. Unfortunately, this “real” admission has received little publicity.
The rest of Ms. Peirce’s lengthy article had so many errors of fact that I will try and address them in “bullet” form to make it easier to follow:
• Ms. Peirce says the investigation should have been conducted by Scottish police alone without interference from other agencies or countries. Clearly she lacks a basic understanding of the world. There is no way the police in Scotland could or should have carried out the investigation alone. We live (and did in 1988) in a global society. Good police and intelligence relationships are key if we are to protect our society from those who would do us harm. These relationships were not as advanced in 1988 resulting in many missteps but we worked through the process of understanding the nuances of each system. This case would not have been solved without the FBI, Scottish police and officers from Germany, Malta, Sweden, Switzerland and England working together, as a team. No one agency could have done it alone.
• Ms. Peirce indicates this investigation should have been conducted with “utter integrity.” I and my colleagues take great exception to this slander. The investigation was conducted with integrity and we only followed the facts and presented them to a court which found Mr. Megrahi guilty.
• There is discussion of unauthorized people (FBI and CIA) at the crime scene in Scotland. This scene which would encompass over 1400 square kilometers could not effectively be secured and police had to constantly tell local citizens not to pick up debris. However, although much has been reported, not one “confirmed” sighting of an American walking unattended has ever been documented (see trial transcripts). The Americans who would eventually come to the site were those who were helping identify bodies and if one went into the field, they were accompanied by a police officer. To believe that both the CIA and FBI had the bureaucratic ability to send large numbers of people to the scene immediately and then to spirit away luggage (assuming one knew where to look in this massive crime scene) is just incomprehensible. Yes, and then there were the helicopters…..also unbelievable.
• There is much discussion about the “original” suspects—the PFLP-GC. Based on available public source information at the time, they indeed were our original suspects. This suspicion was enhanced when a piece of circuit board of a Toshiba radio was found at the crash site. PFLP-GC terrorists had used a similar (but not the same) brand of radio before. However, although this avenue was pursued for over two years, no evidence of any PFLP-GC involvement was ever found. The key word is evidence and I believe Ms. Peirce, as an attorney, knows, that is what one needs to have a court reach a finding of guilty.
• Although not said specifically, it is implied that the shopkeeper in Malta who sold clothing which had been found in the wreckage (by very capable Scottish officers) identified Abu Talb, a Palestinian terrorist living in Sweden, as the purchaser of the clothing. This is just not true. This shopkeeper only identified one photograph in a police photo array—Mr. Megrahi—in February 1991. When the shopkeeper was interviewed in 1989 he had said the purchaser had a “Libyan accent.”
• Ms. Peirce may recall that although Iran and the PFLP-GC were our original suspects and the media reported as much in early 1989, an (at the time) unidentified individual walked into the US Embassy in Austria (January 1989) and left a message for the Ambassador. In it he said that Libya was responsible for the bombing. His note said he had been in Tripoli in December 1988 and believed that if he could believe what he was reading in the press—we were focused on Iran and Palestinians—then we were wrong and investigators should look at Libya. This man would be identified nearly two years later as Edwin Bollier, the man whose company built the timer which was part of the bomb.
• The investigation would prove that only 20 of these timers had ever been made and all had been delivered to Libyan intelligence officials. A statement made nearly 20 years later by Ulrich Lumpert, a technician who worked for Bollier that he had stolen one of the circuit boards from his company and made it available to “someone who was investigating the Lockerbie case” in 1989, has no credibility. No one associated with the Lockerbie investigation had ever heard of the MEBO Company in 1989. We did not find them until late 1990. Bollier and Lumpert each testified in 1990 that they only purchased a small number of the circuit boards and made 20 or 21 timers. When the Libyans came looking for additional timers in December 1988, Bollier had none. Bollier now says he was offered $4 million to link Libya to the attack. That is not true because by the time he alleges this happened he had already linked Libya to his timers at a magistrate hearing in Switzerland. Lumpert and Bollier’s change of heart became clear in 2008. Bollier said on a BBC special he hoped to get up to $200 million from Libya if he helped free Megrahi. Lumpert, before he filed an affidavit stating he had lied at the trial made it clear that he had sought legal advice and determined he could not be prosecuted for these earlier “false statements.”
• One remark (actually interspersed throughout the piece) stated that the CIA took control of the investigation. When I shared that with my colleagues in Scotland, they were amused because somehow, no one had ever relayed that message to them. The Scottish police were always in charge. Yes, we negotiated and often disagreed about what we would do next, but the FBI and Scottish police worked together, neither side forgetting where the crime scene was and who had “primary” jurisdiction. At no time was the CIA (or any intelligence service) “in charge” of the investigation. They supported the police in Scotland, just as the FBI and the other police agencies around the world did. Vincent Cannistraro did retire in 1990—before the EVIDENCE led us to Libya and he did not come back. In fact, if you speak with any police officer in Scotland, I doubt any of them ever met him and I only recall him being at one meeting involving this case. It was not in a leadership capacity.
• A number of assertions were made about the type of timer which was used at Lockerbie. We had initially assumed it was a barometric timer favored by the PFLP-GC. This timer would have exploded after reaching an altitude above 15000 feet. The timing mechanism was erratic (based on examination of similar devices found in Germany) and could have exploded from 1 minute and as long as an hour after being triggered, if it exploded at all. We believed the timer used as part of the bomb was one manufactured by MEBO and given to Libyan officials.
• Ms. Peirce’s attack on the FBI laboratory had more erroneous information. Tom Thurman was not barred from the FBI laboratory and was used as an expert witness after the IG report was written; however, I have no intention of using this forum to do what I consider a needless defense of him. The issue is the FBI lab. The identification of the fragment which led to the MEBO timer was done by Mr. Thurman based on a photograph. As an investigator—something most lab examiners are not—he was able to figure out where to go to look for a possible match to the fragment recovered by Scottish police officers. Once he identified the fragment, he asked Alan Feraday to come to Washington. Feraday brought the original fragment of the timer with him and they both examined it under a microscope. They independently agreed it was identical to the MEBO timer. The fragment was never out of the control of Mr. Feraday and returned with him to the lab at RARDE.
• I am not an attorney and have no idea what Hans Kochler saw at the trial which caused him to doubt the verdict. I do know he is neither a policeman nor is he an attorney. The case which was presented was circumstantial and these cases are often more reliable than those having eyewitness identification
I have only addressed part of Ms. Peirce’s concerns. However, for all of these “circumstances” to have been true as accepted by the three original trial judges, the overall case must have been credible. In order for it all to be wrong, there would have to have been a conspiracy of the grandest order and I will state without hesitation—that is false! Wrong! To somehow believe that dedicated law enforcement officers would somehow take world politics (US-UK intervention in Kuwait) to make a case against an innocent party does not know what makes us who we are. We followed the evidence. To state or even imply otherwise is an insult to all of us who only sought a righteous solution and justice for the victims.
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