[What follows is an excerpt from a report published yesterday on the website of the Libya Herald:]
Court proceedings against former Foreign Minister Abdulati Ibrahim Al-Obeidi and former Secretary General of the General People’s Congress Mohammed Zwai have been adjourned yet again, for the fourth time.
The two were in court today, Monday, accused in connection with the $2.7 billion in compensation payments for families of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, charges they both deny. However, after the court heard defense witnesses the judge decided to adjourn the trial until 4 February.
[Previous related blogposts can be found here and here and here.]
MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2013:
ReplyDeleteLibyan prosecutor says payout of US$ 2.7 billion to Lockerbie victims "a waste of public money". Has "NewLibya" right ? Points to Ponder:
The manipulated MEBO MST-13 timer fragment is the only hard piece of evidence linking the "Lockerbie bombing" to Libya; a Scottish fraud !
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Communication Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch
It just doesn't get more absurd than this.
ReplyDeleteFrom one of the linked pages:
'The judge said the two men's action was a crime because "the compensation was a waste of public money especially when there was no guarantee the charges in the Lockerbie case would be dropped if the compensation was made"'.
Usually, an accused in a trial must have broken some law, that he was responsible for making himself aware of.
What law could possibly, with any reason, have covered a situation where Libya was being embargoed over Lockerbie, at the cost of tens of billions of dollars, with huge impact on the livelihood of the people?
What guarantees could possibly have been accepted? And in fact, the embargo was lifted.
Their acts were done during the Gadaffi government.
Are the laws from that era still valid, and those being applied? If so, do they also say anything about murdering a head of state, and the lawfulness of people now ruling as a result of an armed toppling of the government?
- - -
I have never given it a second of thought before in my life, but I just came to wonder about the Nuremberg trials, which raises similar questions: what law?
Again a little question my school teacher did not seem to concern herself with when she explained about the justice facing the Nazis, and which this little kid never thought about asking. Well, Google and wikipedia was 40 only years away.
From Wikipedia:
Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. "Jackson [Chief U.S. prosecutor] is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas."
To me, the statement is evidence of a fine character.
Most of us can agree to condemn the Nazis for their acts, but it shouldn't be that the our opinion of the legitimacy of a trial is dependent of how much we like the accused. (But here I am not naive: of course this is exactly how it works, and while none of us goes 100% free, some are better than others.)
I wonder if we will hear something similar from Eric Holder, who today has Stone's position? I doubt it. Somehow I think times have changed and not in a good way.
Poor devils.
Libya paid out because it was because the country was being crippled by sanctions. Furthermore for the "new" Libya to hold these two men responsible when ultimately they would have been following orders is just ludicrous.
ReplyDeleteAnd your "new" Libya's government is mostly made up of people who, once, were loyal to Gaddafi until the going got tough and they jumped ship claiming they had "evidence" to show Gaddafi's involvement in Lockerbie!
These men are being tried because the "new" Libyan government claims there was a deal that if Libya paid out then the charges would be dropped against Megrahi and Fimah. I find it impossible to accept any such deal existed. The money was paid out to get UN sanctions lifted. The trouble with liars is that they need darn good memories. Your "new" Libya government appears to be missing large chunks of theirs.
The irony of this ‘settling of scores’ court case is it’s a, perhaps unintended, but implicit declaration of innocence by the new rulers of Libya for Lockerbie.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a ‘back-hand’ Scottish Inquiry into Megrahi’s conviction, being held in the Libyan courts!
This is ironic, because the USA/NATO motive for the destruction of Libya and regime change was to close the Lockerbie file!
No wonder the matter is now being repeatedly adjourned?
Yes Dave but the trouble is they're changing their minds every two minutes. Initially they absolutely wanted to suggest Gaddafi was involved and were offering all sorts of titbits to the authorities along those lines. This suited the Crown Office here of course, and the UK in general. It, for the UK government, would "vindicate" their decision to back the Libyan rebels if info coming from the new government brought evidence that could kill this case stone dead.
ReplyDeleteNow Libya istaking this separate line with these two men.....they're also conveniently ignoring that some of THEM were involved with the Gaddafi regime which authorised the payments in order to get sanctions lifted. In the process they're implying there was a deal to get charges dropped in exchange for cash. There is no way that deal would have been available, let's face it.
The end result is they look like a bunch of eejits.