Wednesday 23 March 2011

Did Gaddafi really order the Lockerbie bombing?

[This is the headline over a letter from Thomas McLaughlin in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

You report that the unfolding debacle in Libya offers hope of further indictments of those involved in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 (“Conflict brings new hope of convicting others involved in Lockerbie attack”, The Herald, March 21).

The Lord Advocate should not hold her breath. Officers of the Dumfries and Galloway police force should not plan a trip to Libya soon, even if that country survives intact.

The source of these (false) hopes is Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Libya’s former justice minister who has claimed, “the orders were given by Gaddafi himself.” As Mandy Rice-Davis once remarked, “he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Jalil, now the Brother Leader’s sworn enemy and head of a provisional government, has courted Western sympathy, in competition with his former boss, using this claim as his trump card. Muammar Gadaffi’s counter-bid, that al Qaeda were trying to topple him (now seemingly in alliance with Crusaders), was deemed to lack credibility.

But truth, as “Blairaq” veterans know only too well, is the first casualty of war. If anyone has evidence of Libyan complicity then surely Libya’s own former justice minister has? It is, though, now a month since he made the claim. Where is the evidence? Has it yet to be manufactured –like so much else that helped convict Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi?

[A letter from Dr Jim Swire in yesterday's edition of The Herald reads as follows:]

In 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher colluded with US President Ronald Reagan in facilitating the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi – revenge for an alleged Libyan terrorist bomb in Germany.

Inspection of the Gaddafi family residence of the time, preserved as a ruin ever since, and seen on our screens again these days, makes it obvious that the US bomb which partially destroyed the residence had been intended to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi (“New Gaddafi blitz”, The Herald, March 21).

Instead the blast and shrapnel killed Gaddafi’s adopted daughter Hannah, aged 18 months, asleep in her bedroom. Some 30 Libyan civilians died too that night. Their relatives still grieve as we do.

In 1993, nearly two years after the publication of indictments of two Libyan citizens for their alleged part in causing the Lockerbie disaster, Lady Thatcher wrote, in praise of this action, in The Downing Street Years.

She wrote: “First it [the bombing raid] turned out to be a more decisive blow against Libyan-sponsored terrorism than I could ever have imagined … the much-vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place. Gaddafi had not been destroyed but he had been humbled. There was a marked decline in Libyan-sponsored terrorism in succeeding years.”

Two years later the Lockerbie tragedy occurred.

In 1991, when the indictments were issued, I first visited Gaddafi to beg him to allow his citizens to appear before a Scottish court. I also asked him to put up a picture of Flora on the wall of Hannah’s bedroom, beside one of Hannah. Beneath we put a message in Arabic and English. It was still there in 2010 when I was last in Tripoli.

It reads: “ The consequence of the use of violence is the death of innocent people.”

Even forbidden as we private citizens still are, to see the secret documents from those days, the sentiments of Flora’s message remain secure. I hope the plaque will not be destroyed in a second attempt at assassination. Libyans should decide their own future, as we ours.

[The uniformly bellicose views of a selection of US relatives of victims of the Lockerbie bombing can be found in an article by Brian Bolduc on the National Review website entitled Qaddafi Must Go: Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 demand the dictator’s ouster.]

13 comments:

  1. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2011, doc. nr.1087.rtf.
    Is the bombing of Libya the West's Revenge for the alleged participation Libya's on the Pan Am 103 atrocity ?
    Then please Preme Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron,
    give the order to the Scottish Parliament to open the fiiles of the Scottish Criminal Cases Reappeal Commission (SCCRC) and the document under National Security (PII).,
    If the documents speak against Libya, it would not be a problem for you to opening the secret files, right ?
    Mustafa Abdul Jalil ex Minister of Justice is a liar for momentane to keep his head position.
    He was (unofficially, the Secretary of the General People's Committee) under Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi and was known as an envious person (also against Al Megrahi)...
    Now the 'Scottish Fraud' in the 'Lockerbie-Affair' against Libya is forensically provable !
    The new forensic pictures from the highly respected “Forensic Institute of the Canton Police”, Zurich/Switzerland will be sent to Scotland to GSI. GOV. UK Criminal Law and Licensing, Mr. Walter Drummond-Murray.
    Evidence subject with digital photos to editing for publication soon, on URL: www.lockerbie.ch
    The honour of Mr. Al Megrahi and the prestige of people Libya's must be finally repaired. Libya and its Official Al Megrahi have nothing to do with the Lockerbie tragedy! The Scottish "Lockerbie-Trial" in Kamp van Zeist, was far from fair and proper...

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland

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  2. They give Obama the Noble Peace Prize for being elected President. What will they give Dr Jim Swire for his perseverance in seeking justice for many, for his compassion for his fellow man and for the dignified way he conducts his business in the face of so many doubters.

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  3. Dr Swire said: In 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher colluded with US President Ronald Reagan in facilitating the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi – revenge for an alleged Libyan terrorist bomb in Germany.

    Three months ago, in a video conference link to staff and students at the London School of Economics, Colonel Gaddafi accused Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan of conspiring to target Pan Am Flight 103 of 21 December 1988.

    If Gaddafi is right about this Thatcher/Reagan conspiracy, then the youthful David Cameron must also have been a party to it.

    Which of course explains why we are now at war with Libya, and why Gaddafi is apparently a legitimate target for the Crusaders!

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  4. They should give Swire an award for stealing 10 million dollars to which he himself says he has no right. They should award him for lying, as he did when he attributed things to Gaddafi that the latter never said. And the should award him for kissing the ass of a mass murder by pinning a badge on his chest, recognizing a mass murderer as a truth seeker. Those who bestow accolades of dignity and honor on Swire do not know either one.

    Patrick: You must also be going for a (British) dignity award. Gaddafi never said Reagan and Thatcher conspired to "target" the Pan Am flight. Here is what he said:

    "توني بلير" ليس له علاقة بقضية لوكربي يعني قضية لوكربي خُلقت خلقا وتلفيقاً وتزويراً من قبل إدارة المدعو "ريغان" والمدعوة "مارغريت تاتشر" هما اللذان صاغا هذه المؤامرة

    That says: "Tony Blair has no relation to the Lockerbie Case, meaning the Lockerbie case was created falsely by the administration of the one called Reagan and the one called Margaret Thatcher, they are the ones who formulated this conspiracy."

    That alleges the two administrations conspired to fabricate the Lockerbie case, not to down the Pan Am 103 plane.

    Source: http://www.ljbc.net/sections/politic/details.php?news_id=15255

    If you don't like my translation, get your own. But please stop bending the lunatic Gaddafi's word to suit your own "reality," unless you are trying to add another example of British scholarship, or another example of British dignity. In my view, however, you are fabricating things as you go along, and you are nakeder than a chimpanzee on a French beach.

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  5. Burning.....

    "What will they give Dr Jim Swire for his perseverance in seeking justice for many...."

    If only the answer to that question was, finally, justice.

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  6. Plus déshabillé qu'un chimpanzé à la plage en France, Suliman?

    I'm not fabricating anything - simply stating the obvious: Megrahi/Gaddafi/Libya didn't do it.

    Iran/PFLP-GC/apartheid South Africa did Lockerbie!

    Please take a look: Lockerbie: Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime.

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  7. Reagan stopped being president very soon after Lockerbie. Bush was already running a lot of things behind the scenes even then. Most people think Bush had much more involvement than Reagan in fabricating the case against Libya.

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  8. In writing "two years later the Lockerbie tradegy occurred" Dr Swire of course means two years after the bombing and not two years after Mrs Thatcher wrote those words.

    Of course Mrs Thatcher's claims were demonstrably untrue. There was not a marked decline in Libyan sponsored terrorism in the years following the 1986 bombing. Possibly in revenge for the bombing Libya shipped copious quantities of arms to the IRA. The Eksund was seized in November 1987 the fifth shipment of weaponry to the IRA. It was a condition of the UN sanctions imposed from January 1992 (subsequent to the November 1991 indictment)being dropped that Libya "renounce all support for the Provisional IRA and provide the UK authorities with all information in that regard". The object of the indictment was not a trial but sanctions.

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  9. ps. Apart from his astonishing gift for prophesy (his predictions are always completely and 100% wrong) Mr Haseldine has a knack for telling lies about what people actually said. I recall his claim that Gaddafi had (as he had predicted) called for a UN enquiry into the murder of Carllson. He had of course said no such thing.

    As Sulliman describes what he actually said Colonel Gaddafi seems to have a reasonable handle on the situation although I think it preposterous that President Reagan and Mrs Thatcher personally "formulated this conspiracy".

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  10. @Baz: Mr Haseldine's predictions are always completely and 100% wrong.

    I predict that Baz will never accept that UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, was targeted on Pan Am Flight 103.

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  11. That is not a prediction unless in time I succumb to dimentia.

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  12. Not spelling it correctly is the first symptom of it...

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