[This is the headline over an article published today on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads as follows:]
The secretary of the Justice for Megrahi Committee, who currently have a petition before the Justice Committee calling for an inquiry into the Pan Am 103 event, has derided the Crown Office's attempts to advance the investigation by interviewing Libyan intelligence chief Moussa Koussa as a sham.
Robert Forrester, writing exclusively for The Firm argues that the whole exercise has been undertaken in the knowledge by the Crown that the Libyan regime were not responsible for the Lockerbie event.
"It is extremely unlikely that anything was learned in the interview that wasn’t already known, namely: that Libya didn’t do it," he says.
"Nevertheless, representatives of the Crown and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary were put up in a hotel in London for a week before eventually meeting Mr Koussa. Having concluded their interview they refused to divulge its content since to do so might compromise their on-going investigation. One must bear in mind here that, despite Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini’s persistent abuse of the word ‘team’ to describe the number of officers working on the on-going Lockerbie case, until the arrival of Mr Koussa, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary had allocated an entire ‘team’ to the job consisting of just one officer."
Forrester argues that Koussa appears to have travelled to the UK as a negotiator with diplomatic protection in place before the trip was made.
"This appears to be confirmed as he has now departed the UK for a conference in Qatar completely unhindered. The UK authorities say that he is welcome to return when ever he wishes," Forrrester says.
"Where then does this leave the talk of interviewing him on the subject of Lockerbie by the Crown and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary? It is all looking very embarrassing.
"The Crown will maintain that to talk publicly about the interview could damage the ‘investigation’. The long and the short of it is that if they had had any road to Damascus experience in London, they’d have been singing it from the roof tops."
Forrester adds that the Crown Office had expended a great deal of effort into "obfuscation and the blocking of any moves to have Mr al-Megrahi’s conviction independently investigated", leading Forrester, Dr Jim Swire, Robert Black QC, Iain Mckie and others to form the Justice for Megrahi committee.
"[It] was founded around the back end of 2008 precisely because it was felt that it was no longer sufficient to depend solely on applying judicial pressure in the hope of addressing this problem, particularly given the way in which the Crown had planned to hear Mr al-Megrahi’s second appeal. In short, it was time to become more political."
Forrester's remarks can be read in full, here.
Cracker of an article, Robert.
ReplyDeleteExcellent article Robert!
ReplyDeleteSurely the UK authorities and Scottish crown investigators weren't simply going through the motions required to maintain the charade that was the Zeist verdict?..
Perhaps anyone would do well to also ponder on these questions:
Why did the US and Scottish prosecutors present witness Mr Giaka knowing his testimony had been procured by financial inducement and fabrication?
Why did their Lordships choose to ignore the blatant transgressions of the prosecution at Zeist who sought to suppress this evidence from the court?
Why was the Zeist court denied the evidence that Mr Gauci and his brother not only actively sought rewards during interviews but were furnished with inducements by investigators throughout?
Why did the police and crown suppress evidence of a critical breach of security at Heathrow on 21 Dec 1988?
Why was the policeman, Derek Henderson, who had reconciled the luggage of Interline passengers at Heathrow, and gave evidence at the FAI in 1991 that no passenger either owned or was in possession of a 'Brown Samonsite Hardshell' suitcase, not called at Zeist nor his evidence presented?
Why, in 2007, did the SCCRC refer Mr Megrahi's case to the appeal court, stating six reasons but withholding the entire details?
Why are the US, UK and Scottish govt content to see this appeal left wanting?
Why are the Scottish government anxious that the full statement of reasons concluded by the SCCRC not be published?
Why the continuous efforts of successive govts determined that no public enquiry into the conviction should be held?
Why was Mr Kousa not arrested on arrival in the UK in connection to the attack attributed to Mr Megrahi and others, presumably those in the Libyan intelligence?
Why has Mr Kousa been allowed to leave UK and the jurisdiction of Scottish authorities despite the insistence for over 20 years that Libya had carried out this atrocity "without involvement of any other state"?
Also, why aren`t the Americans seeking to interview him over there? They were loud and strident in their criticisms of the Scottish and English legal systems just a few months ago.Given that Megraghi`s crimes were committed with others, according to the verdict, Mousa Kousa must have, at the very least, been very close to the guilty men at the top of the conspiracy.Or its all just a big masquerade.....
ReplyDelete[Crazy, nearly £1.5M spent on judges' chauffeur driven cars ! (e.g. a Rolls Royce??). No wonder these guys are detached from reality.]
ReplyDeleteGood article btw Robert F., a great summary of the current dynamics.
Thanks one and all. Going to be slightly out of touch for the next week due to net connection difficulties.
ReplyDelete