Monday 4 April 2016

Police officer recalls Lockerbie bomber arrest

[What follows is taken from a report just published on the BBC News website:]
A senior police officer has spoken of the moment he arrested the man later convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Mike Leslie, who has retired after 30 years service, said Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was "bewildered and dazed".
It took five hours to read the arrest warrant to the Libyan intelligence officer - but he gave no reaction. (...)
He was tried at a specially convened Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.
After serving eight years in prison, he was controversially released on compassionate grounds following a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Mr Leslie was one of three officers from Dumfries and Galloway who were at Camp Zeist when Al-Megrahi arrived there in 1999.
He said: "I think he was pretty bewildered, dazed by the events that were unfolding in front of him.
"I don't think ultimately he ever anticipated... that he would be handed over by Gaddafi.
"I actually read the warrant over to him.
"It took approximately five hours because you had to read the warrant over a line at a time, it went through an interpreter and also as part of that process, the 270 names of the victims had to be read over as well."
The former chief superintendent added: "There was never any reaction from him. It was very much staid and what you would expect from someone, I would imagine, that's been trained to give no reaction.
"But I think it boils down to the fact that he was pretty well bewildered by the fact that his country had handed him over."
Three years later, after Al-Megrahi lost an appeal against his conviction, Mr Leslie escorted him to a helicopter that was to fly him from the Netherlands to Scotland.
Mr Leslie said: "The most satisfying aspect for me was the fact that having been at Lockerbie on the night it happened, the aftermath and then arresting him, reading the warrant over to him and getting the opportunity to look him in the eyes when he was sitting there in front of me.
"I got a lot of satisfaction out of that and I got a lot of satisfaction for the families, I think - the fact that justice was being brought to him.
Mr Leslie recently retired as divisional commander of Police Scotland in Dumfries and Galloway.
[RB: Further versions of this story can be read here and here.]

1 comment:

  1. "I don't think ultimately he ever anticipated... that he would be handed over by Gaddafi."
    Mr. Leslie might otherwise have been a fine policemen, but here too much was asked from his investigative skills. Megrahi wasn't 'handed over'.

    If Scotland had been under an embargo with the expectable massive costs for the people, I wonder if Mr. Leslie would need to be forced to go to trial in another country if that would be what it took to lift the embargo?
    Would they have had to handcuff him and force him screaming to an airplane?

    "I actually read the warrant over to him."
    "It took approximately five hours because you had to read the warrant over a line at a time, it went through an interpreter and also as part of that process, the 270 names of the victims had to be read over as well."

    Naturally. The legal necessity and validity of a translator during a single five hours session translating a document and 270 names to an indicted should be clear to anyone, not only Mr. Leslie.

    "The former chief superintendent added: 'There was never any reaction from him. It was very much staid and what you would expect from someone, I would imagine, that's been trained to give no reaction.'"

    Agree.
    It is most suspicious if Megrahi didn't fall asleep during the five hours, drummed the table, or shouted 'What the F is this senseless hour-long bullshit supposed to be good for, if not for harassing me? How about a document that could have been reviewed by my lawyers, and that I could sign?'

    This must have taken very hard training, or possibly sedation, a sign of conspiracy to elude the justice we always seek.

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