[Two weeks ago The Sunday Times ran, as if it were news, a report based on a seventeen year old US State Department press release claiming that Abdelbaset Megrahi was involved in Libya'a WMD programme. No evidence to this effect was led at his trial. His lawyer, Tony Kelly, commented that the documents were “unsubstantiated and unattributed intelligence rumours. If there was any evidence backing any of this up I am absolutely certain it would have been introduced at trial, and it wasn’t,” he said.
Today The Sunday Times carries a report stating that the UK Parliament's Scottish Affairs Committee has asked the newspaper to provide it with a copy of the documents. It reads in part:]
A Westminster committee investigating the circumstances surrounding the release of the Lockerbie bomber has asked for documents obtained by The Sunday Times that appear to implicate the Libyan in the purchase of chemical weapons.
The papers will form part of the Scottish Affairs committee’s inquiry into the decision earlier this year to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds.
The committee will examine the arrangements between the UK and Scottish governments, and has invited Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister who granted Megrahi his freedom, Alex Salmond and Jack Straw, the UK justice secretary, to give evidence. (...)
The papers, dated 1992, were based on information gathered by the CIA to bolster the case against Libya for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people.
Ben Wallace, the [Conservative] MP for Lancaster and Wyre and a committee member, said the Megrahi deal had damaged relations with the US. “I am trying to demonstrate to people that Megrahi was a seriously bad man and that this government decided Libyan trade was more important than American trade,” said Wallace.
“These documents will feature because we’ll be asking government officials why they wanted someone like this, who was engaged in terrorist activities, not to die in prison, yet have allowed 140 people in the UK to die in prison of cancer since 2001?”
So Ben Wallace was an intelligence officer. This is what is on his website:
ReplyDeleteDuring his military career he served in the posts of Platoon Commander, Company Commander, Operations Officer and as an Intelligence Officer in Northern Ireland. In 1991 he was Mentioned in Despatches.
I suspect Mr Wallace is still working or has ties with the intelligence services. Is he smearing Megrahi so that we think, 'Oh what a bad man Megrahi was' and forget how the evidence appears to implicate the police, the prosecution service, the judges etc to have conspired to convict an innocent man.
Moreover, is Mr Wallace on the Committee to help direct any investigation away from what really happened in Megrahi's release? I suspect so.
Even more to the point, Ruth, Ben Wallace MP was employed, until the General Election of 2005, by QinetiQ as their Overseas Director in the Security & Intelligence Division.
ReplyDeleteIn 2001, QinetiQ (which President Bush's Carlyle Group partly owned) was "gifted" the Fort Halstead site, where Alan Feraday and Dr Thomas Hayes used to work (fabricating Lockerbie bombing evidence) in RARDE's explosives laboratory (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Halstead#Evolution_to_DERA).
In February 2006, QinetiQ was privatised and raised £1.3bn, Carlyle Group having bought a third of the business for £42m, which grew in value to £372m in less than four years (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QinetiQ).
Former prime minister John Major was the Carlyle Group's European representative, and current Shadow Security Adviser Pauline Neville-Jones was non-executive chair of QinetiQ from 2002 to 2005 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Neville-Jones).
Lots of snouts in troughs!
I think this sort of stuff casts light on why Megrahi (and Libya) were blamed for Lockerbie. (see Lockerbie - Criminal Justice or War by Other Means? at http://e-zeecon.blogspot.com.)
ReplyDeleteBen Wallace MP states that he is trying to demonstrate to people that "Mr Megrahi was a seriously bad man". I suppose if you believe him to be a mass murderer that really goes without saying. It would seem superfluous to try to smear him further.
How did Caustic Logic manage to remove miladawley's post from view
ReplyDelete( miladawley above translates on babelfish as
Road passing ~ guess one
if Japanese
Passed by ~ to push one
if Chinese
The blue stuff is all cam spam. Delete that. And then this.) ?
That's impressive!
Curiosity and Altavista Babelfish TM
ReplyDeleteI was merely alerting Professor Black who may have taken it as a statement of support from the East, rather than spam. He did the deleting, I presume.
:)
It's a fair cop, guv. It was me wot done it (based on the info supplied by Caustic Logic).
ReplyDelete