Thursday 3 September 2009

Megrahi was framed

[This is the heading over an article by John Pilger on the New Statesman's website. The following are extracts.]

The trial of the “Lockerbie bomber” was worse than a travesty of justice. Evidence that never came to court proves his innocence

The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Britain. From Gordon Brown's "repulsion" to Barack Obama's "outrage", the theatre of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"

Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power". Amen. (...)

No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests".

“The endgame came down to damage limitation," said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, "because the evidence amassed by [Megrahi's] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice." New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft - he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognise him in the courtroom.

The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside and said to have been in Megrahi's suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was "transferred" through two airports undetected to Flight 103. (...)

Megrahi was convicted by three Scottish judges sitting in a courtroom in "neutral" Holland. There was no jury. One of the few reporters to sit through the long and often farcical proceedings was the late Paul Foot, whose landmark investigation in Private Eye exposed it as a cacophony of blunders, deceptions and lies: a whitewash. The Scottish judges, while admitting a "mass of conflicting evidence" and rejecting the fantasies of the CIA informer [Majid Giaka], found Megrahi guilty on hearsay and unproven circumstance. Their 90-page "opinion", wrote Foot, "is a remarkable document that claims an honoured place in the history of British miscarriages of justice". (His report, Lockerbie - the Flight from Justice, can be downloaded from www.private-eye.co.uk for £5.) (...)

In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi's case for appeal. "The commission is of the view," said its chairman, Graham Forbes, "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."

The words "miscarriage of justice" are entirely missing from the current furore, with Kenny MacAskill reassuring the baying mob that the scapegoat will soon face justice from that "higher power". What a disgrace.

[An article entitled "It was Megrahi’s appeal, not his health, that concerned the US and Britain" by American commentator William Blum appears in the Online Journal. The following are brief extracts:

'Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was “highly objectionable.” (...) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “angry and repulsed,” while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images “deeply upsetting.” Miliband warned: “How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya’s reentry into the civilized community of nations.”

'Ah yes, “the civilized community of nations,” that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. (...)

'In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. “If he goes back to Libya,” Swire says, “it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. . . . I’ve lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.”

'And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.']

13 comments:

  1. MISSION LOCKERBIE:

    Dear Prime Minister Gordon Brown,

    das Problem was Great Britain und Scotland mit der legalen und überfälligen Freilassung des unschuldigen Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi erschüttert, ist nur der Anfang und nicht das Ende vor einem politischen Erdbeben in United Kingdom!

    Könnte UK mit gutem Gewissen ein *'Miscarriage of Justice', im "Lockerbie-Fall" ausschliessen (*möglich nach SCCRC, in 6 Punkten) wäre es im Interesse der Opfer von PanAm 103 und der ganzen Weltöffentlichkeit gewesen, dass Sie als Prime Minister, nach der seltenen Erteilung eines neuen Appeals, eine von Scotland unabhängige Untersuchung bei UN oder EU beantragt hätten!

    Es ist heute offensichtlich, dass UK und Scotland glaubten mit der legalen Freilassung des
    unschuldigen Mr. Megrahi (nicht Lockerbie-Bomber) dem politischen "Lockerbie-Betrug" zu Lasten von Mr. Megrahi und Libya ein Ende zu setzen !
    Aus Angst vor den politischen Folgen, musste für dieses fragwürdige Vorhaben mit allen Mitteln erreicht werden, dass Mr.Megrahi, wollte er legal frei kommen, das Erfolg versprechende Appeal fallen läst! Dies wurde offensichtlich durch seine psychische und physische Notlage erreicht ?...

    Mr. Prime Minister, wenn Sie keine Angst vor der Aufdeckung der kriminellen Handlungen Ihrer eigenen Offiziellen und der "Secrets" im Lockerbie-Fall haben, steht es in Ihrer Macht, mit dem vorbereiteten juristischen Material des gestoppten Appeals, eine Beweis Untersuchung, beschränkt auf die 6 Punkte der SCCRC, zu starten!

    Schiller Friedrich: "Wer wagt es, Rittersman oder Knapp zu tauchen in diesen Schlund"?

    Nur die Wahrheit kann eine endgültige Standortbestimmung zwischen Libya und Great Britain bringen...

    Some of the Scottish Officials are the true criminals in the Lockerbie Affair: Ex forensic scientist Dr Thomas Hayes (RARDE) UK, Ex forensic expert Allen Feraday (RARDE) UK and three known persons of the Scottish police are responsible for manipulating evidence in the Lockerbie Affair and are still protected by the Scottish Justice ! (They are not involved in the PanAm 103 bombing, but responsible for the conspiracy against Libya).

    Evidence and professional dates on our web site: www.lockerbie.ch

    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland

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  2. To Baz:

    Having done my homework from the earlier debate (Lockerbie:Drowning the facts) I am still a bit confused. In the Dimbleby Lecture of 1994 there is no mentioning of Mr. Megrahi or Mr. Fhimah and no information that it should have been the MI5 who indentified them as perpetrators.
    What can be found there is this assessment by Stella Rimington:
    “The service played a major part in the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, to the point where the atrocity was laid firmly at the door of Libya. As a result, Libya came under further significant international pressuere to cut its support fo terrorists, including the Provisional IRA, an of course to surrender the accused for trial.”
    I am still convinced that it was Mr. Giaka who pointed to Mr. Megrahi and Mr. Fhimah and connected them to Lockerbie. And he did it for very personal reasons.

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  3. John Pilger's interesting article highlights the telephone conversation between Margaret Thatcher and President Bush senior on 11 January 1990:

    [Paul] Foot reported that most of the staff of the US embassy in Moscow who had reserved seats on Pan Am flights from Frankfurt cancelled their bookings when they were alerted by US intelligence that a terrorist attack was planned. He named Margaret Thatcher the "architect" of the cover-up after revealing that she killed the independent inquiry her transport secretary Cecil Parkinson had promised the Lockerbie families; and in a phone call to President George Bush Sr on 11 January 1990, she agreed to "low-key" the disaster after their intelligence services had reported "beyond doubt" that the Lockerbie bomb had been placed by a Palestinian group, contracted by Tehran, as a reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a US warship in Iranian territorial waters. Among the 290 dead were 66 children. In 1990, the ship's captain was awarded the Legion of Merit by Bush Sr "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer" (see http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2009/09/pilger-megrahi-justice).

    What if Mrs Thatcher had actually agreed to "low-key" the disaster because UK/US intelligence had reported "beyond doubt" that apartheid South Africa (with the assistance of MI5/MI6 and the CIA) had carried out the Lockerbie bombing? Exactly a year before the Thatcher/Bush phone call, on 11 January 1989, the funeral service took place in Stockholm of Pan Am Flight 103's most prominent victim - UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson. This is an extract of a newspaper article published 12 March 1990 entitled "Stressed and nervous before aircrash" by Jan-Olof Bengtsson (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_talk:IDAG(1)12MAR90.jpg):

    The memorial service in the Folkets Hus in Stockholm on January 11, 1989 for Bernt Carlsson gathered most of our Heads of Government, representatives of the Namibia independence movement SWAPO and Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the UN Secretary General. When he died in the Pan Am bombing, Bernt Carlsson was less than 24 hours away from the fulfilment of his dreams - the signing of the Namibia agreement in New York which would finally pave the way to a free and independent Namibia. This was supposed to be the climax of his career with the UN, a career that began in December 1986 when he was appointed Commissioner for Namibia.

    Bernt Carlsson had great support from SWAPO but much less so from South Africa because of that country's substantial economic interests in Namibia: an interest in gold, uranium but above all in diamonds. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar in his speech at the memorial ceremony on a cold day in January last year described the last 24 hours in the life of Bernt Carlsson:

    "Bernt Carlsson was returning to New York following an official visit to Brussels where he had spoken to a Committee within the European Parliament about the Namibia agreement," Pérez de Cuéllar began. "He stopped briefly in London to honour a long-standing invitation by a non-governmental organization with interests in Namibia."
    Pérez de Cuéllar was wrong. True, Bernt Carlsson's trip to Brussels had been planned almost six months earlier. But his decision to return to New York via London was only made on December 16, 1988. The meeting in London was definitely not a long-standing invitation by Namibia sympathisers.


    Megrahi's appeal against conviction having been dropped and without any prospect of an independent judicial inquiry, it seems to me that there now remains only one way for the truth to be uncovered. That is by means of a United Nations Inquiry into the death of UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing (see http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/UNInquiry/).

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  4. I have now learned from Baz that MI5´s Stella Rimington mentioned Megrahi and Fhimah in her lecture but the passage was later deleted from the official text.
    As there is no reasonable motive for such a move visible I dare to doubt.

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  5. Herr Bollier - this is precisely the point. You are quoting verbatim from the official transcript of the lecture posted on the MI5 website. (I quoted this in my artcle The Mysterious Life and Death of Ian Spiro.) This may have been what she was meant to say, her approved script. However what she actually said was that "it was MI5 who identified the two Libyan culprits". The official transcript is false.

    There was little in the content of John Pilger's article to support the title "Megrahi was Framed".
    Some people think this was a "miscarriage of justice" or that Megrahi was in the wrong place at the wrong time. (He was in the right place at the right time!) I thought he should have taken a stab at the question of who framed Megrahi and why?

    Pilger recommends Paul Foot's "Flight from Justice" (I wasn't aware Paul Foot sat through the trial however.) This was good but very limited in its scope. A lot of the coverage in Private Eye was dross and like many others Fott was a devotee of the "Drug Conspiracy" hoax. An example of the dross was the telephone call between Mrs Thatcher and George Bush quoted by Patrick Haseldine. How do we know there was such a call?

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  6. Before confusion spreads: Herr Bollier is certainly a very different person.

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  7. My apologies - I misread your comment as being an addition to to ebol comment. I understand you are a respected journalist.

    Mrs Rimington didn't use the words Megrahi and Fhimah but "the two Libyan culprits." Perhaps the transcript was prepared from her script, not a video of what she actually said. I note this was the last attempt at "glasnost" by MI5.

    May I refer you to an article on this blog dated the 23rd July 2009"Harris Book Sheds New Light on Lockerbie Bombing Case", in which author Paul Harris claims to have been investigating MEBO in the early 1970's. It actually does shred new light. (Don't these people sign the Official Secrets Act?)

    I don't think Giaka pointed to Mr Megrahi and Fhimah but rather Megrahi was picked or selected as the ideal candidate and was already of interest to the "intelligence services."

    In order to frame Megrahi and create the bogus "Malta scenario" two key events were co-ordinated with his travel movements. Firstly the alleged purchase of the clothing on the 7th December 1988. Secondly the bombing itself.If the plan to frame Megrahi predated the bombing then the "intelligence services" colluded in the bombing.

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  8. I have come to the same conclusion as baz: the intelligence services (including the NIS of apartheid South Africa) colluded in the bombing. And the motive, I believe, was revenge (for the explanation, see my latest comment at
    http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/07/harris-book-sheds-new-light-on.html).

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  9. We do not come to the same conclusion at all.

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  10. The Identification of Mr. Megrahi and Mr. Fhimah is, of course, crucial for the Lockerbie trial. So, when did it happen? And by whom? When I asked Mr. Marquise a few months ago he preferred not to answer and instead to point to the date when the indictment was issued. He must have had some reasons for that. Right, Mr. Marquise?

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  11. I think the identification of Fhimah and Megrahi was done by British intelligence months before the Lockerbie bombing, as per the discussion here: So, if we can't get them in revenge for the Brighton bombing, let's get them for the Lockerbie bombing!
    (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/07/harris-book-sheds-new-light-on.html).

    "In my view, what Mr Miliband does not want revealed is the calculated wickedness of the US government and the collusion of certain parts of Whitehall in scapegoating Libya and Mr Megrahi for the heinous crime of bringing an airliner down over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988. There will always be the suspicion that the US made a Faustian pact with Iran," said Tam Dalyell (http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/lockerbie/Tam-Dalyell-Lockerbie-papers-may.5575560.jp).

    Following Tam Dalyell's line, the intelligence services (including the NIS of apartheid South Africa) must have colluded in the Lockerbie bombing by effectively selecting which American aircraft was to be sacrificed, against the shoot-down by USS Vincennes of Iran Air Flight 655.

    Initially, the West might have intended to blame Iran for taking its well-publicised revenge. Instead, early in 1989, Britain decided to exact its own revenge by blaming Libya, and by fitting-up MEBO, Megrahi and Fhimah, who had been under surveillance for some considerable time.

    Ostensibly, the biblical 'eye for an eye' in this case is IR655 vs PA103. The actual compensation paid by the US government for the 290 victims of IR655 was $61.8 million. After accepting responsibility for the actions of its officials, Libya went on to compensate the relatives of the 270 Lockerbie victims with $2.7 billion.

    There are still those such as Daniel Kawczynski MP who believe that Libya should go further and compensate victims of terrorism in Northern Ireland. (A compensation proposal by the British government was rejected by the Northern Ireland Assembly not long ago.)

    No one, so far as I am aware, has yet suggested Libya should pay compensation for the 1984 Brighton bombing!

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  12. It's amazing how topical the IRA compensation issue has become - see this extract from The Independent newspaper of 1 September 2009:

    Libya in talks over cash for IRA victims

    In a rare interview with a top Libyan official yesterday, the deputy minister for foreign affairs indicated that the IRA compensation claims were part of on-going discussions between Tripoli and London and that they could be approaching some form of agreement.

    Asked what was happening with the claims, Mohammed Siala, the Secretary for International Co-operation, said: "It is a special case. We have a good understanding with the UK" (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libya-in-talks-over-cash-for-ira-victims-1779867.html).


    Strangely, there's still no indication that Libyan compensation might be forthcoming in relation to the 1984 Brighton bombing which targeted prime minister Mrs Thatcher and her cabinet!

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  13. Apart from his obsession with bringing South Africa into it Patrick Haseldine has a fair handle on the situation.

    Mr Haseldine believes Mr Megrahi and Mr Fhimah were identified prior to the Lockerbie bombing but the intelligence services decided to blame them for Lockerbie in early 1989. As I pointed out if Megrahi was framed then the plan to do so must have predated the bombing. If they selected the plane they must also have arranged for Mr Megrahi to be in Malta at the right time or alternately targeted a plane that coincided with Megrahi being in Malta. (I suspect they also placed a bogus "extra" passenger on the flight.)

    He quotes Tam Dalyell speaking of the "calculated wickedness" in scapegoating Libya. As I explained in my article "Lockerbie - Criminal Justice or War by Other Means" (which refers to the Brighton bombing) blaming Libya for the purpose of imposing sanctions was a pretty good idea. It did however mean the real culprits were given a pass and that the authorities colluded in the bombing.

    I don't want to get into the side issue of compensation for the victims of IRA terrorism but I believe I was the first and only person to put into the public domain the relationship between Libyan support for the IRA and the indictment of two Libyans for the Lockerbie bombing.

    I would however note that the former CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson served 17 years for supplying 20 tons of C4 to Libya. (Wilson was freed on appeal in 2003). I would also warn the victims lobbying Libya to be wary of the "dedicated" FCO "support".

    Dr Swire recently quoted Margaret Thatcher's memoirs and her comments on the April 1986 raid on Tripoli. While claiming this to be "a far greater success than I could ever have imagined" and "led to a marked decline in Libyan sponsored terrorism for years to come"it was in reality a disaster and led to Libya resuming shipments of arms to the IRA (as could have been predicted.) The raid was ineffectual. Just as "9/11" was exploited for pre-existing political objectives Lockerbie was exploited as a weapon against Libya.

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