More on Hana Gaddafi

[The Sunday Telegraph is running a story headed Emails show British Government knew Hana Gaddafi was still alive. It reads in part:]

Documents found in the British embassy in Tripoli and seen by The Sunday Telegraph show that Hana Gaddafi, supposedly killed 25 years ago, was actually granted a two-year visa to come to Britain as recently as October last year. The UK even paid her application fee. 

For the relatives of the Lockerbie victims it is a terrible betrayal. Gaddafi had used Hana’s alleged death, aged 18 months, as a propaganda coup and to suggest to the British families that he too had suffered as they had.

Dr Jim Swire, whose 24-year-old daughter Flora was blown up on Pan Am flight 103, was even shown — by Gaddafi himself — a photograph of Hana, covered in blood and on the verge of death, lying on a hospital trolley. That meeting took place in Tripoli 20 years ago and had a profound effect on Dr Swire and his attitude towards the Libyan dictator. 

That the British Government never bothered to inform Dr Swire and the other Lockerbie relatives what really happened to Hana has simply added to the sense of betrayal. 

“If the Government knew the story about Hana was phoney then it makes me angry,” said Dr Swire. “The Foreign Office has always kept me in the dark. In an ideal world the CIA and the people from MI6 should have sat down with relatives and said 'we cannot make this public, but this is what really happened’. But nothing of that sort ever happened. That is a source of considerable anger for me.” 

Dr Swire flew to Tripoli in 1991 to persuade Gaddafi to hand over Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for trial for the Lockerbie bombing – still the biggest single terrorist atrocity committed in the UK. Dr Swire, incidentally, no longer believes al-Megrahi is guilty and is convinced of his innocence. 

“It may well be Gaddafi was lying when he talked to me about Hana. The fable I was asked to believe was she was killed not outright but that she died of shrapnel injuries. I have no idea if it was true or false,” said Dr Swire. 

He had even taken with him on the trip a photograph of Flora at 18 months – the same age as Hana when she was purportedly killed – as a kind of emotional leverage in his appeal to Gaddafi to hand over Megrahi. With the photograph of Flora, he gave Gaddafi an inscription in English and Arabic which read: “The consequence of the use of violence is the death of innocent people” which was placed on a wall beside a photograph of Hana in what was said to be Hana’s bedroom. The inscription was still there when Dr Swire revisited Libya last year, though the picture of Hana had been replaced by one of Gaddafi’s mother. 

Pam Dix, whose brother died on the Pan Am flight, said: “If the British authorities knew Hana had not been killed it is yet another example of them creating a story to suit themselves. For some unknown reason they decided to allow this mystery to continue. Why was this kept a secret? 

 “The whole thing smells badly of a cover-up. It is deeply hurtful. The British Government has been buying into Gaddafi’s deceit.” (...)

A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: “There was no evidence to suggest Hana Gaddafi had not been killed and that the Hana Gaddafi in Tripoli was anything other than a different person. Gaddafi adopted many children and Hana was a common name.” 

[The same newspaper also publishes reports headlined Tony Blair's six secret visits to Gaddafi and Series of talks before Megrahi’s release about trips to Libya in the three years following Blair's departure from Downing Street.

The Mail on Sunday jumps on the bandwagon with a report headlined Blair had secret meeting with Gaddafi aide at his home... a month before Lockerbie bomber’s release.]