Lockerbie: we do know what didn't happen

[In an e-mail to Professor Francis A Boyle, thanking him for a signed copy of his book Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Reverse the Qaddafi Revolution, Dr Jim Swire writes:]

Chapter four closely follows what we have laboriously decoded from amongst the rubbish that we are peddled by the politicians and through the media. I would have greatly valued the opportunity of discussions with you many years ago. (...)

Now your book reinforces the knowledge that we do know what didn't happen, even if we must accept that we do not have much proof of what really did.

How can we hold up our heads as if we were citizens of truth and honesty espousing communities?

It might interest you to know that on one of my trips (in my naivety) to try to persuade Gaddafi to allow his citizens to be tried in what I then believed would be a fair Scottish court, I had a meeting with their chief justice.  He explained that Libya wished to act in conformity with the Montreal Convention [1971] but that they could not, because, would you believe, the West would not provide the evidence which they claimed to have against the two accused. I had already discussed Montreal with Rodney Wallis of ICAO, and could only sympathise with the Chief Justice's position. I accepted a carefully sealed packet from him, which he told me contained details of the Libyan position so that there should be no ambiguity about it in the British Foreign Office.

With some difficulty I persuaded the pilot on the flight back to the UK to radio ahead that I had a sealed package which I wanted to pass to a Foreign Office courier unopened upon landing at Heathrow. No one turned up. I delivered it myself in Whitehall immediately and of course nothing was ever heard about that package again.

Interesting how deceit is actually enacted amongst the humbler citizens who simply seek the truth, poor suckers that we are.

Anyway thank you again for sending the book, it has an honoured place in my Lockerbie library. I am satisfied that you were spot on in your positions over this disgraceful episode. 

[Professor Boyle’s e-mailed reply to Dr Swire contains the following:]

The purpose of my writing that book was to set the record straight from my perspective after the 2011 US/NATO war against Libya.  I owed it to Colonel Ghadafi, Libya, the Libyans, the victims of the Lockerbie Bombing, and their next-of-kin.  If and when Scotland obtains independence in the forthcoming referendum,  maybe we can get to the bottom of what really happened here: (1) who did it; and (2) the cover-up.

[Further references on this blog to Professor Boyle’s views on Lockerbie can be found here.]