[What follows is the text of an e-mail received by me this evening from the president of Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc, Frank Duggan (not himself a Lockerbie relative):]
Prof Black - this is a mind boggling list of reprehensible acts
performed by Gadhafi and his state-sponsored murderers - your clients. I
am sure this will not wind up on your fawning website, but you might
just peruse what he has done this year during his attempts to slaughter
the citizens who finally rose up against his rule.
This is disgraceful, and so are you.
Frank Duggan
Duggan is a clown, ignore him
ReplyDeleteInteresting that Mr Duggan fails to mention Gaddafi's support for the IRA and his supply of weapons to that organisation's campaign against the British presence in Northern Ireland. Selective memory, Mr Duggan? But whether his list of atrocities is incomplete, partial or inaccurate is irrelevant to the question of Mr Megrahi's guilt or innocence over Pan Am Flight 103. Mr Duggan's accusation that the Lockerbie Case site has been some kind of cheerleader for Colonel Gaddafi is both offensive and stupid.
ReplyDeleteProf, perhaps you should remind Mr Duggan of some nearer to his home who were closer to Gaddafi than you ever were.
ReplyDeleteCondoleeza Rice met Ghaddafi in Tripoli early in September 2008 telling him “We are working on a trade and investment agreement, a framework, which will allow the improvement of the climate for investment, which I know very many American firms wish to do.” By all accounts he refused to shake hands with her, she being a woman but Condy, trooper that she is, didn't let the fact that a bloodsoaked tyrant had publicly slighted her and her office. Not when petro-dollars were at stake!
And in August 2009, the newly elected American Democratic government sent a delegation to Libya led by John McCain, including Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins. McCain noted how “bilateral ties have taken a remarkable and positive turn in recent years.” What? Positive turn? What sort of evil hypocrites would dream of doing deals with the Lockerbie mastermind?
Well, earlier, in January 2008, Libyan government official Abdel-Rahman Shalqam (where is he now?) was wined and dined on Capitol Hill with executives from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Raythorn as well as officials from the US trade representatives office. If you think your getting a hard time from Frank Duggan for leading a campaign to have Megraghi's case re-examined, Prof, just think of the flak he giving the CEOs of companies involved in selling Gaddafi arms for oil!
And he will not spare the CIA! They are the ones who "rendered" that freedom loving Libyan liberator Abdel Hakim Belhaj, formerly of The Libyan Islamist Fighting Group( a kind of Benghazi-based tea party!) in Thialand and sent him back to Gaddafi for torture and imprisonment.
We cannot allow those criminals who collaborated with the evil Colonel to walk free, never mind profit from their evil deeds!
Go git 'em, Frank!
Actually it was the human rights groups that defended the Gadaffi forces, not Prof Black. Documents revealed just today did say it was NATO and rebels and some US interests that killed most of those people. So why is Mr Duggan defending them? And why is he coming out with both barrels firing now?
ReplyDeleteMr. Duggan,
ReplyDeletethe list appears tiny indeed, in comparison with the list of atrocities that your own country has committed in the same period.
I will not go into details regarding your own country's
- willingness to work with terrorists to destabilize a country
- total disregard for democratically elected governments, when they were in your way of political and corporate interests.
- institutionalization of torture, political murder and abduction, all to suppress the resistance of the people
- your presidents' willingness to break even your own laws in their pursuits
- your non-existing record of holding your state leaders responsible for their crimes done to other countries
With an asterix I have marked the events, where the governments you worked to topple (successfully in almost all cases) were democratically elected.
*Iran 1953, *Guatemala 1954, Cuba 1959, *Democratic Republic of the Congo 1960, Iraq 1963, *Brazil 1964, *Republic of Ghana 1966, Iraq 1968, *Chile 1973, Afghanistan 1973-74, Iraq 1973-75, *Argentina 1976, Afghanistan 1978-1980, Iran 1980, Nicaragua 1981-1990, El Salvador 1980-92, Cambodia 1980-95, *Angola 1980, Philippines 1986, Iraq 1992-1995, Guatemala 1993, Serbia 2000, *Venezuela 2002, *Haiti 2004, Somalia 2006-2007, *Iran 2001-present
Are you positive that the list like yours could not be made for each of these new regimes you helped to install, and supported?
- - -
Do you take your list at face value?
I selected one event by random for a bit of more research and immediately run into problems:
1980:
Gadaffi agent attempts to assasinate ... Faisal Zagallai ... he is left blind.
I googled the name "Faisal Zagallai", and out comes hundreds of pages saying something like
"Gaddafi's history of intimidation and assassinations
In 1980 a Libyan agent attempted to shoot dead dissident Faisal Zagallai..."
It took quite a bit of effort to find reports about the case itself.
The court did not accept the 'Libyan agent' postulate. BTW, elsewhere it says, that Zagallai only lost eyesight on one eye.
- - -
Mr. Duggan, don't you know a list where all the evidence we have against Megrahi, the person, is outlined?
My list is this:
A - He was on a false passport in Malta, at the same time as a plane took off to Germany, that may have carried a bomb.
B - MEBO had delivered bomb timers to his government (along with many others), and he knew MEBO personally. Such a bomb timer may have been used.
C - Two witnesses (Giaki and Gauci) implicated him in the crime.
Since you believe he is guilty you must agree to at least one of these:
(1) The list is incomplete, leaving out important pieces of evidence.
(2) The evidence given on the list is reliable enough to reach a guilty verdict
(3) Even if some of the evidence on the list is not reliable, the rest is enough to establish guilt
Can you elaborate on which one(s)?
- - -
I admit that I believe that I write this to a person whose beliefs can only be maintained by a refusal to look into the deeper matters of this case.
Does your quest for finding the truth go further than superficially grabbing statements that support the beliefs you already have?
I believe that you would never comment on what you think about your crown witness' history of testimonials. Where identifications of people come and go, and where purchased items are first excluded with certainty, then included with equal certainty. And how you feel about your country paying millions of dollars to people, that did nothing else than in a court say what you wanted them to?
You claim to represent a number of people who have lost their dear ones in the Lockerbie disaster. Are you living up to that responsibility?
Or is working on basis of a continuously evaluated truth maybe not so important anymore, for you and those you represent?
If so, you are not entitled to use the word "disgraceful" about anyone but yourself.
Mr Duggan, if you dig a little deeper you might find that it wasn't only the UK involved in the desperate bid to get Megrahi out of jail but your own country. For surely it was not just the Scottish judiciary that had acted corruptly fixing Megrahi up but the US too.
ReplyDeleteWe all know Gaddafi was brutal but then again in the context of the actions of the US and UK I don't know which is worse. We now have evidence that Gaddafi's victims were served up by the UK. Or do we look at the murder by the million of innocent citizens of Iraq and sadistic torture by your and our armed forces.
Mr Duggan, I think you're worried about something. Might it just be that the evidence against Megrahi committing the atrocity is non-existent and very soon with further evidence this may become generally accepted. So what will happen to the Libyan people's money paid to the Lockerbie relatives? Well, I suppose if Gaddafi is blackened enough then there won't be much problem with money remaining where it is.
Data is meaningless without comparison. When will Mr Duggan be providing the list of US crimes?
ReplyDelete