Justice Secretary denies agreeing to release of Lockerbie bomber in talks with BP lobbyist
Jack Straw was accused last night of trying to cover up details of talks he held with a BP lobbyist over an oil deal with Libya weeks before reversing a Government move to block the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
The Secretary of State for Justice has turned down a Freedom of Information request from a Commons select committee to reveal whether, during two phone calls with the lobbyist, he agreed to include Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in Britain's Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) with Libya.
Mr Straw has admitted having two conversations with Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 agent turned BP consultant, in the autumn of 2007. But he has insisted that "at no stage was any undertaking promised, hinted, given to the Libyans, that in return for an overall bilateral arrangement Mr Megrahi would be released". (...)
Megrahi, convicted for the 1988 bombing which killed 270, was released last August on compassionate grounds – rather than under the PTA – by the Scottish Executive.
But Mr Straw's discussions with BP are still contentious because MPs believe ministers gave a smooth path for the release in the interests of trade with the Libyan government.
In early 2007, BP signed a $900m (£562m) oil exploration deal with Libya but the energy giant was concerned that the ongoing stalemate over the PTA would damage the contract. Sir Mark, who was involved in the 2003 deal for Colonel Gaddafi to give up his weapons of mass destruction programme, left MI6 in 2004 to work for BP. He telephoned Mr Straw, whom he knew from the minister's time as Foreign Secretary, on 15 October and 9 November 2007. On 19 December 2007, Mr Straw wrote to Mr MacAskill informing him of the British government's change of position.
The Conservative MP and member of the Scottish affairs committee Ben Wallace has written to Mr Straw demanding to see notes of the calls.
During Mr Straw's appearance before the committee last Wednesday, Mr Wallace told him: "I think we should know to what extent HM Government gave commitments in exchange for trade and whether that included Megrahi."
Mr Straw replied: "There's been no secret about the fact that I took two telephone calls from Sir Mark Allen – I take telephone calls from all sorts of people. Sir Mark Allen is somebody I knew from my time in the Foreign Office. He actually had very extensive knowledge of the Middle East and in a role in the Foreign Office had been very much involved in these negotiations. I thought he was worth listening to. And that's what I did."
Asked by Mr Wallace whether he would release the notes, Mr Straw said tersely: "Decisions about the release of material under FOI are dealt with separately, with respect, all right?"
Mr Straw's spokesman said the request was turned down under section 35 of the FOI Act, which exempts ministerial communications. Mr Wallace is appealing on public interest grounds.
[The above are excerpts from a report in today's edition of The Independent on Sunday. Readers may also care to have a look at this blog post.]
The Conservative MP and member of the Scottish affairs committee Ben Wallace has written to Mr Straw demanding to see notes of the [telephone calls from Sir Mark Allen].
ReplyDeleteFor those who are unaware of his background, Shadow Scottish Secretary Ben Wallace MP was employed, until the General Election of 2005, by QinetiQ as their Overseas Director in the Security & Intelligence Division.
In 2001, QinetiQ (one-third owned by President Bush's Carlyle Group) 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.
In the three years (2002-2005) that former Prime Minister John Major was Chairman of Carlyle Europe, current Shadow Security Adviser Pauline Neville-Jones was non-executive chair of QinetiQ.
When QinetiQ was privatised in February 2006 the sale raised £1.3billion - netting the Carlyle Group a profit of £330 million in just four years.
In October 2006 former CIA chief, George Tenet, became a director of QinetiQ.
Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski has recently made the unlikely suggestion that, after the general election, the incoming government should hold a public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing.
Has he cleared this idea with Prime Minister-designate David Cameron and future ministerial colleagues, Ben Wallace and Pauline Neville-Jones, I wonder?
And will it be a 'cast-iron' election promise, or just an aspiration?