Friday 16 September 2011

The proverbial dog not barking

[The following are excerpts from a long article by Robert Parry published yesterday on the Consortium News website:]

During the six-month uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, major US news outlets repeated again and again that the Libyan dictator was behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and they ignored warnings that militant Islamists were at the core of the anti-Gaddafi rebel army. (...)

Only outside the mainstream press would you find significant questions asked about the certainty over Libya’s guilt in the Pan Am bombing and about the makeup of the rebels

Now, after the United States and its NATO allies have engineered the desired “regime change” in Libya – under the pretext of “protecting civilians” – those two points are coming more into focus.

The New York Times and The Washington Post on Thursday finally acknowledged that radical Islamists, including some with links to al-Qaeda, are consolidating their power inside the new regime in Tripoli.

And, the proverbial dog not barking – even as Libya’s secret intelligence files have been exposed to the eyes of Western journalists – is the absence of any incriminating evidence regarding Libya’s role in the Lockerbie case. Earlier interrogations of Libya’s ex-intelligence chief Moussa Koussa by Scottish authorities also apparently came up empty, as he was allowed to leave London for Qatar.

Since Gaddafi’s fall, news outlets also have reported that Libyan intelligence agent, Ali al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing by a Scottish court and was later released on humanitarian grounds because of terminal prostate cancer, is indeed gravely ill, bedridden and seemingly near death.

Megrahi’s trial in 2001 before a panel of Scottish judges was more a kangaroo court than any serious effort to determine guilt – even a Scottish appeals court [RB: Presumably it is the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that is being referred to] expressed concern about a grave miscarriage of justice – but the Western press continues to describe Megrahi, without qualification, as the “Lockerbie bomber.”

It also was common in the West’s news media to smirk at the notion that Megrahi was truly suffering from advanced prostate cancer since he hadn’t died as quickly as some doctors thought he might. After Gaddafi’s regime fell, Megrahi’s family invited BBC and other news organizations to see Megrahi struggling to breathe in his sick bed.

His son, Khaled al-Megrahi, also continued to insist on his father’s innocence. “He believes and we know that everybody will see the truth,” the younger Megrahi told the BBC. “I know my father is innocent and one day his innocence will come out.”

Asked about the people who died in the bombing, the son said: “We feel sorry about all the people who died. We want to know who did this bad thing. We want to know the truth as well.”

As more information becomes available inside Libya, the facts may finally be clarified about whether Gaddafi’s government did or did not have a hand in the bombing over Lockerbie. However, so far, the indications are that Megrahi may well have been railroaded by the Scottish judges who found a second Libyan defendant innocent and were under political pressure to convict someone for the crime.

After Megrahi’s curious conviction, the West imposed harsh economic sanctions on Libya, agreeing to lift them only if Libya accepted “responsibility” for the bombing and paid restitution to the families of the 270 victims. To get rid of the punishing sanctions, Libya accepted the deal although its officials continued to insist that Libya had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing.

However, amid this year’s propaganda campaign in support of the Libyan rebels, none of this uncertainty was mentioned in The New York Times, The Washington Post or other leading US news outlets. Gaddafi’s guilt for Lockerbie was simply stated as flat fact, much as the same news organizations endorsed false claims about Iraq’s WMD in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of that Arab country.

1 comment:

  1. "...but the fact that these premier American newspapers ignored ... doubts about Libya’s Lockerbie guilt..."

    Did they really "ignore"? Or is it just Robert Parry, for whatever reason, missing those articles that actually may inform about the voices against Megrahi's conviction?

    - - -

    Well, let's do some searches in Google, using the "site:" option:

    Washington Post

    lockerbie site:www.washingtonpost.com
    3,510 matches

    "lockerbie bomber" site:www.washingtonpost.com
    1760 matches
    The exact phrase "lockerbie bomber" exclusively refer to Megrahi in all articles examined.

    lockerbie sccrc "Scottish Criminal Cases Review" site:www.washingtonpost.com
    2 matches, from 2007

    lockerbie "Robert Black" site:www.washingtonpost.com
    0 matches

    lockerbie Swire site:www.washingtonpost.com
    5 articles, only 2 after the release of Megrahi, and while Swire is mentioned, he is not quoted as a dissident:

    “I think he is a potent source of information,” said Jim Swire, a British doctor who lost his 24-year-old daughter, Flora, in the attack. “But we should be extremely careful to interpret what he says,” said Swire, noting that Britain has repeatedly insisted that Kusa has not been offered immunity from prosecution. "
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/police-meet-with-libyan-defector-on-lockerbie-bombing/2011/04/08/AFBIU42C_story.html

    Conclusion:
    A complete blackout.

    - - -

    New York Times

    lockerbie site:www.nytimes.com
    2,180 matches

    "lockerbie bomber" site:www.nytimes.com
    108 matches
    Note: The exact phrase "lockerbie bomber" exclusively refers to Megrahi in all articles examined.

    lockerbie sccrc "Scottish Criminal Cases Review" site:www.nytimes.com
    13 matches, only a couple after 2007.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/world/europe/28cnd-lockerbie.html

    lockerbie "Robert Black" site:www.nytimes.com
    15 matches
    One match from 2009
    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/world/europe/25edinburgh.html
    the rest from before 2002(!)

    lockerbie Swire site:www.nytimes.com
    33 matches
    Saw only 2 articles from 2009, the rest older.

    Conclusion:
    Only slightly better than for WP.

    - - -

    Some example searches:

    lockerbie sccrc "Scottish Criminal Cases Review" site:www.cnn.com
    0 matches

    lockerbie swire site:www.cnn.com
    0 matches

    lockerbie site:www.bbc.co.uk
    22,400 matches

    lockerbie sccrc "Scottish Criminal Cases Review" site:www.bbc.co.uk
    20 matches

    - - -

    It is natural to interpret these results as:

    The chance the any american, reading only news from own news outlets, would have any idea about SCCRC's findings and the other voices raised against Megrahi's conviction is virtually 0.

    Ditto brits have only a slightly better chance.

    Robert Parry's statement is more than justifed.

    ReplyDelete