1. On 9 May 2008 an item appeared headed Iranian resistance group claims Iran responsible for Pan Am 103. Here is an excerpt:
'The NCRI [National Council of Resistance of Iran] unambiguously blames Tehran for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over the town of Lockerbie. On their official web site one can read the following.
'"The policy of kowtowing to the Iranians goes back a long way. It started in the late 1980s when Sir Geoffrey Howe, the then foreign secretary, attempted to establish a constructive dialogue with the mullahs in what proved a futile attempt to persuade Teheran to free British hostages in Lebanon.
'As part of this policy, the British government took the shameful decision to drop its claim that the Iranians had masterminded the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people in December 1988, even though British intelligence uncovered significant evidence of Iranian involvement."'
2. On 9 May 2009 there was posted an item headed Megrahi transfer row puts Salmond under pressure. The following are excerpts:
‘Alex Salmond yesterday came under mounting pressure not to send the Lockerbie bomber home to die as he insisted politics would play no part in any transfer.
‘The First Minister said the request to allow terminally ill Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi to serve the remainder of his sentence in Libya would be considered on “judicial grounds alone”.
‘Ministers have up to 90 days to reach a decision on the case under the terms of a controversial prisoner transfer agreement struck between then Prime Minister Tony Blair and Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi two years ago. American Susan Cohen, whose 20-year-old daughter Theodora was among those killed, last night said she had already e-mailed the Nationalist administration pleading for the request to be refused.
‘Ms Cohen said: “It would be a horrible slap in the face to the Scottish justice system if this man, who is a convicted mass murderer lest we forget, is allowed home. There are many conspiracy theories but not a single shred of evidence has come out saying anything other than the truth of Libyan involvement. He would be feted as a hero back in Libya.”’
3. On 9 May 2011 there appeared an item headed Judge at first Megrahi appeal retires. I commented: “The judge in question, Lord Osborne, asked many penetrating questions during the course of the appeal and had the Crown struggling to provide answers. Regrettably, the restricted compass within which Megrahi's then legal team chose to present the appeal meant that the court could not give effect to the weighty concerns raised by Lord Osborne and his colleague Lord Kirkwood.”
On and off I've been a long term reader of this blog.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do have to disagree with some of the statements in this post.
Britain & the US, dropped the case against Iran, because they were gearing up for war with Iraq and wanted Iran neutral. In my link below, see the bit where Transport Secretary was about to announce the suspects and a journalist broke the embargo and Channon stepped down, because Reagan phoned Maggie and said the plan had changed.
Salmond and MacAskill were desperate to stop the release of Megrahi. I don't have all the letters, where they were pleading with Westminster to stop the release. There was a prisoner transfer agreement and only Westminster could make exemptions and the Labour government refused to do that, in fact they were pro Libya/Gaddafi.
See the BBC PDF copy of the letter from Jack Straw in the same link below.
It is amazing to see how pro-Libya/Gaddafi was in 2008 and how they wanted to extend business interests.
Of course, the following year, Gaddafi announced that he wanted to nationalise the oil companies and how he was contemplating sell their oil in gold rather than USD. Once you upset the Western trans-national corporations, you're ripe for regime change.
http://road-hog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/lockerbie.html
The idea that American led military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa is driven by the ‘big oil’ lobby is based on the false idea that this is done to secure vital oil supplies.
ReplyDeleteFalse, because peaceful trade rather than conflict is the most effective and profitable way to secure oil supplies!
And yet America persists in undermining their national oil interest by inciting conflict in the Middle-East!
This happens because the ‘big oil’ lobby has been trumped by the ‘Military Industrial Complex and neo-con lobby’.
Whereas ‘big oil’ wants calm, this other lobby thrives on war rather than peace.
And the success of this war lobby in trumping the oil lobby has forced America to acquire new energy supplies that will soon make them energy independent of the Middle-East!
And this is why I think closing the Lockerbie Case rather than securing oil supplies was the motive for the destruction of Libya.
@Dave.
ReplyDeleteThen why was one of the first things that the UN and the rebel army do, even before the fighting had started in ernest, was to install a new central bank and form a new oil company?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/libyan-rebel-council-sets-up-oil-company-to-replace-qaddafi-s.html
That was on the 22-3-2011. If you're rebel army struggling to defeat the State, you wait until after you've got control to sort out those sort of things.
It is now a Rothschild style central bank. Look at these wiki links, before the date of that article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Central_Bank_of_Libya&oldid=419761242
Notice the first few lines, 100% State owned, as in owned by the people and the government.
Now look at the current entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_of_Libya
Notice the first few lines, enjoys the status of autonomous corporate body.
Yep, it's a private bank, do you want to know the few countries in the world that have State owned central banks.
Syria:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/01/07/syria-usa-banks-idUKL1E9C72M220130107
Iran:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/25/us-usa-iran-swift-idUSTRE81O01L20120225
The other two are North Korea and Cuba.
Do you see a pattern here?
Road Hog, you seem a bit confused about timings and stuff.
ReplyDeleteReagan's presidency ended on 20th January 1989 when Bush Snr tood over. The change of plan and telephone call alleged by Foot took place in March 1989. Channon was sacked by Thatcher in July 1989. The Gulf War against Iraq didn't begin until August 1990.
Salmond and MacAskill weren't "desperate to stop the release of Megrahi". In 2007 Blair had a sweet little deal cooked up with Gaddafi which would see Megrahi returned to Libya under a Prisoner Transfer Agreement. This could only happen with the consent of the Scottish parliament, but as McConnell was FM at the time and would do exactly what Blair told him to do, he thought he had that covered. Then in the middle of the arrangements McConnell lost the election leaving Salmond as FM. Salmond and MacAskill told Blair they had no intention of going along with his little scheme because they believed it ran contrary to undertakings given to the relatives of the Lockerbie victims. So the PTA wasn't going to happen.
Megrahi was released in 2009, more than two years after the "deal in the desert" under the compassionate release provisions, because he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008.
So I think you need to re-think your theories a little bit.
Road_Hog
ReplyDeleteI do not doubt that controlling state banks to maintain $ hegemony is a motive for American policy towards the named countries and elsewhere, but just not the prime motive for destroying Libya.
From the beginning the rebels were being asked to take responsibility for Lockerbie in exchange for regime change, by blaming the old regime.
But things never went to plan and instead of a quick assassination Gaddafi went into hiding and NATO was forced to bomb everywhere in the hope of killing him by accident, to ‘keep within the law’!
Except the whole operation was illegal under UN International and UK law, the NATO Charter and USA Constitution!
And the timing was to derail PE1370by saying ‘case closed’ except by the time Gaddafi was assassinated PE1370 had gained unanimous cross party support and remains a live legal issue in Scotland.