[This is part of the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2011. It reads in part:]
The man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has told the Reuters news agency the truth would emerge soon.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was interviewed in his home in Tripoli where he has lived since being sent home from a Scottish prison. (...)
Megrahi is seen in the Reuters interview in bed with oxygen containers beside him, although he was not wearing an oxygen mask.
He told the interviewer he had only a few months to live at best.
Megrahi also described how he was running short of vital medicine and said he had only enough pills to last four days.
"I have a problem with medicine," he said.
"Now there is a Tunisian person who is trying to find alternative medicine. I have only four tablets and after this it will finish. It will finish in four days.
"My friends and family are trying to bring me the medicine from outside.
"Why is this the way I am treated? I did not harm anyone. I never harmed anyone in my life."
The convicted bomber has previously claimed he would release new information about the atrocity but little new has emerged.
He told Reuters: "The facts (about the Lockerbie bombing) will become clear one day and hopefully in the near future. In a few months from now, you will see new facts that will be announced.
Good of the BBC to spend time and treasure in going to interview a dying man.
ReplyDelete"You will see new facts that will be announced". But did the BBC report any of the new facts? Or did they regurgitate from a computer screen statements by Scottish police and Crown Office?
The "new facts", in the words of a now retired senior editor from The Independent newspaper, are not news.
270 murders and a tainted trial no longer matter. All that matters is the reputation of retired judges and lawyers, and those soon to retire.
I've never really known what to make of this wrinkle in the case. If Megrahi actually had nothing at all to do with the atrocity, as seems perfectly probable, what "new information" could he possibly release? He couldn't give any information about the crime without essentially confirming he was involved in some capacity - which I doubt he would have admitted to even if he was.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, do we actually know what he said? What language was he speaking in and has it been properly translated? Remember the "my role in the bombing was exaggerated" thing, which was latched on to as a confession, and it turned out he had actually said "they exaggerated my name." Meaning, they had portrayed him as some sort of high-level Libyan spook when he was no such thing.
My best guess as to what he meant in this instance is that he was referring to the revelations about the metallurgy of the timer fragment, which were published in John Ashton's book in January 2012. Megrahi had known all about this since 2009 and he co-operated with the Ashton book. He gave John Ashton the documents used in the book. In October 2011 the book would have been in the final stages of editing, proofreading and so on, ready for the January 2012 publication date. I think Megrahi was referring to the revelation that PT/35b had never been part of one of the timers supplied to Libya, but his words were given a bit of a spin by people anxious to hype up the possibility of new revelations regarding "how Gaddafi did it" and a deathbed confession from Megrahi.