Friday 29 March 2013

Memories of Moussa…

[This is the heading over an item posted yesterday on Ben Six’s blog Back Towards the Locus.  It reads as follows:]

Two years ago, Moussa Koussa, the Libyan Minister of Foreign Affairs, did something interesting. He drove into Tunisia, boarded a private jet and flew to Farnborough Airfield in England. Libyan sources insisted that he had left the country on a diplomatic mission but the British authorities claimed that he was disenchanted with his employers and considering his resignation.

Few Britons would have known who he was the day before but now they knew him as a figure of tremendous evil. Politicians and commentators suggested that his defection was similar to that of Rudolf Hess. He was, Libyan rebels told us, with apparent justice, a crook whose hands were stained with the blood of his countrymen. British sources also alleged that he had masterminded the Lockerbie bombings, and had been involved in the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher. It seemed that we had a man who was both big and bad. Boris Johnson summed up the feelings of the moment by going on Question Time and saying that if there was the slightest evidence against him, he should be arrested.

Koussa was interviewed by the intelligence services, and by Scottish investigators of the Pan Am bombing. Then the European Union, on the urgings of the British, lifted its travel and economic sanctions against the man and he promptly boarded a plane and flew to Qatar. There was a kind of dazed silence. Relatives of victims of the Lockerbie bombing complained bitterly but the press, having informed us that he was a murderer and probable terrorist, seemed to lose their interest in him. The Telegraph did track him down to a hotel in Doha, and found him swanning about under the protection of the Qataris; eating at expensive Italian restaurants and generally enjoying life.

We have heard almost nothing of the fellow since. The last that I heard, he was settling in Jordan.

Why Moussa Koussa was allowed in and out remains mysterious. He must have offered the government or its agencies something valuable. The Sunday Express alleged, while he was still in Britain, that he had a close working relationship with MI6, while theIndependent, noting the British and Libyan collaboration over “rendition” policies, suggested that he “held a ‘smoking gun’”. Neither they nor other papers pursued these accusations.

It seems very grubby that Koussa’s Libyan victims have been denied justice, especially if he won immunity through his work in some of the grubbiest episodes of the “War on Terror”. It seems very grubby that victims of Lockerbie were led to believe that he could answer the questions that have dogged them for almost a quarter of a century, only to see him disappear and leave more questions in his wake. Over eighteen months after the fall of Gadaffi, and with no evidence of Libyan guilt having emerged, the perpetrators of the bombings remain shrouded in mystery. If they could be found elsewhere, a chance to eliminate suspects has been thrown away. If they did come from the Maghreb it is quite possible that the state discarded not merely a chance to prove this to us but a chance to prosecute one of them. For what?

Who knows. What vexes me is not simply the fact that our government is engaged in such suspicious and discomfiting affairs but that the journalists whose task it is to explain such events have shown no interest in them. If, as they informed us, there were grounds on which to compare the man to Rudolf Hess it is as if Churchill, Eden and so on had let the one-time Deputy Führer sail off to Brazil, yet few of them complained and none of them seem to have made an effort to discover why they did it. How often, one has to ask, do they fail to make such efforts? As on other occasions, we are left with memory, and curiosity, and questions.

[The Lockerbie Case’s articles on the Moussa Koussa affair can be accessed by clicking here.]

6 comments:

  1. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2013:

    Why block the official in charge - in the "aura" around the crucial piece of circumstantial evidence of the MST-13 timer fragment
    *(PT/35) - a forensic after testing and a police prosecution because of evidence fraud ?
    *(The fragment "PT/35" was divided allegedly from forensic necessity in the parts "PT-35/b" and the
    "DP-31/a".
    What may be at least today (after 24 years) determined scientifically ?:

    1) How many layers of fiberglass (8 or 9), there is in the real MST-13 timer fragment PT-35; regarding as PT-35 / b and DP-31/a ?
    The MST-13 timers supplied to
    Libya, were equipped,​with 9 layers of fiberglass circuit boards; the prototype MST-13 Circuit Board, was consisting of 8 layers of fiberglass;

    2) Chemically forensic comparison of the composition of the solder, between the Circuit Board that came from Libya's "green" MST-13 timer and between the real MST-13 timer fragment (PT-35) allegedly discovered in Lockerbie;

    3) Forensic examination of traces of explosives.

    +++

    Wieso blockieren die offiziellen Verantwortlichen - in der "Aura" um das entscheidende Indizien Beweisstück des MST-1 Timerfragment *(PT/35) - eine forensische Nachuntersuchung und eine polizeiliche Strafvervolgung wegen Beweisbetrug ?
    *(Das Fragment PT/35, wurde angeblich aus forensischer Notwendigkeit, aufgeteilt in die Teilstücke PT-35/b und DP-31/a).
    Was kann mindestens heute (auch nach 24 Jahren) wissenschaftlich bestimmt werden?:

    1.) Aus wieviel Fiberglas Lagen
    (8 oder 9) besteht das reale MST-13 Timerfragment PT-35; bezugsweise PT-35/b und DP-31/a ?
    Die nach Libyen gelieferten MST-13 Timer, waren mit Circuit Boards aus 9 Lagen Fiberglas bestückt; die Prototyp MST-13 Circuit Board bestehen aus 8 Lagen Fiberglas.

    2.) Chemisch forensischer Vergleich der Zusammensetzung des Lötzinns, zwischen den Circuit Board's der nach Libyen gelieferten "grünen" MST-13 Timer und des realen, angeblich in Lockerbie aufgefundenen MST-13 Timerfragment (PT-35;

    3.) Forensische Überprüfung von Sprengstoff Spuren.

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Telecommunication Ltd, Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch

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  2. The media is a tool of the state to condemn and promote as required when sensitive issues arise.

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  3. Another strange twist to this is that the Libyan government, in spite of Moussa allegedly having blood on his hands, have not as far as I know, requested his extradition.

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  4. The wonders of forensics in solving crime has been popularised by TV shows like CSI and is used to promote the need for expensive DNA data-bases.

    But in truth forensic evidence is just a useful tool with most crime solved from witness statements and confessions.

    Therefore to put your trust in forensics and leave it to the experts is a big mistake for any defence team to allow.

    That does not mean the forensic experts are wrong, but you would expect corroboration from real people providing witness statements and confessions, if what is alleged to have happened, actually took place.

    I know that Rolfe looks at the blast damage like a clairvoyant reading the tea leaves and solves the crime, but where are the witness statements and (death-bed) confessions from those people who must have been involved.

    The absence of this evidence over so many years puts the official story in doubt.

    Or is Lockerbie the only case where there has been no double-dealing; betrayal and spilling the beans for profit, revenge or to save a soul?

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  5. While forensic evidence must be viewed critically it is not as useless as you suggest, Dave. The explosives traces, the nearly eviscerated cases and clothing and the charring on them have to have some explanation. But, although I much prefer Rolfe's clairvoyance to your faulty cabin door theory, I do think you might be onto something regarding the apparent absence of first or even credible second-hand accounts of what happened.
    Terrorists tend to boast about their exploits, especially terrorists with God on their side. But there has been no serious account at all, by anyone, of how the bag was put on 103 or its feeders at Heathrow, Frankfurt or Malta.
    This doesn't suggest a cabin door falling off to me. It suggests a professional government agency and a sophisticated one at that, with no outside involvement which might come back to bite it years or even decades down the line.

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  6. Grendal

    An examination of forensics and possible motive helps Police find the culprits who then confess or implicate others and this solves the crime.

    And no organisation is water-tight regarding the leaking of information. It may not reach the mass-media, but it will get into specialist magazines and websites.

    Also the truth should be known to intelligence agencies and this is why Libya was scapegoated, because what Government is prepared to face the wrath of America to assist that small and defenceless country?

    Admittedly Russia and China regret that now.

    And pointing the finger at Iran is one thing, but no official complaint will be made, because that would trigger a UN sponsored public enquiry, that the blaming of Libya was intended to avoid.

    The faulty cargo door may not be true, but it would explain the absence of corroboration evidence from real people.

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