Lockerbie father calls for restraint

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2001, four days after the aircraft attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It reads as follows:]

The father of one of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster has called for caution in any retaliation for the US terror attacks.

John Mosey, a leading member of the Lockerbie support group, wrote to the prime minister to express support for action, but also of his concerns.

The UK Families Flight 103 group wrote to Tony Blair after he pledged unqualified support for any reprisals the US should take.

It reminded Mr Blair of the 1988 tragedy, in which 270 people were killed, and said care should be taken so that more innocent people are not hurt.

Mr Mosey's daughter Helga, 19, was among the victims when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie.

''The utmost care must be taken that whatever path is eventually pursued is successful and does not harm innocent people thus producing another batch of terrorists,'' Mr Mosey wrote.

He said the civilised world clearly had to support the US in taking ''drastic and effective action to root out this network of evil''.

But he added: "We must find a better way of dealing with our international differences than simply picking up a bigger stick with which to beat the other guys."

Mr Mosey said his daughter and those who died in Lockerbie were victims of ''aggressive American foreign policies'' either in the Gulf or Tripoli.

He also expressed the sadness felt by the Lockerbie support group over the US terror attacks and for the victims' families.

''Our feelings go out to the many in whose homes there is an empty place today, who are eagerly watching their TV screens and waiting desperately for information regarding someone who is missing."

Mr Mosey said he wrote ''as an individual whose family has been a victim of a terrorist attack''.

Tuesday's attacks in the US brought back memories of 13 years ago to the families of victims and residents of Lockerbie.

Pamela Dix, whose brother Peter died in the Lockerbie bomb, said: "It's times like this that those of us who have experienced something of this nature are drawn together.''

Arab League set to back Libya on Lockerbie trial

[This is the headline over a Reuters news agency report from this date in 1998, as published on Safia Aoude’s Pan Am 103 Crash Website. It reads as follows:]

Arab League foreign ministers are expected to throw their diplomatic weight behind Libya this week in their first meeting since Britain and the United States agreed to hold the Lockerbie trial in a neutral country.

“The Lockerbie issue is on the front burner,” said an Arab official of the two days of talks starting on Wednesday.

“It is a priority based on the degree of attention which will be given not only in the official work of the council but on the sidelines as well.”

The Arab official said the Arab League was expected to call for clarification through UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“The Libyans are worried Holland might be used as a conveyor belt,” he said.

“There is already an environment of mistrust and the language of take-it-or-leave-it is not helpful.

“So the work of the League will focus on supporting Libya's legitimate rights to seek more clarification and guarantees. We believe this will strengthen the Libyan position,” he said.

In their last talks in March, the foreign ministers of the 22-member League renewed support for Libya's call for an end to the UN sanctions imposed on Libya after it refused to give up for trial the suspects in the bombing which killed 270 people.

But Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apparently wants more than lip service this time.

On Sunday, the Libyan news agency said Libya had abolished its ministerial portfolio charged with promoting Arab unity and emphasised that Libya belonged to the African continent.

The last task for Libya's Unity Affairs Minister Jomaa al-Fezzani will be to attend this week's Arab League meeting. Diplomats saw the move as timed to pressure the Arab League into backing up words with deeds, as African states have done.

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in May [RB: actually June] called for an end to the sanctions and this month seven African leaders broke the embargo by flying into Libya without UN permission.

No Arab country has followed suit. Asked to comment, the Arab official said: “I would understand sometimes it's frustrating, but we are not competing with the OAU and Arabs cannot violate UN resolutions collectively. It should be decided country by country,” he said. “We have given strong collective diplomatic support to Libya.”

Thurman and the FBI laboratory

[On this date in 1995 the FBI crime laboratory was the subject of a highly critical television programme broadcast on the ABC network. It followed disclosures by one of the laboratory’s scientists, Dr Frederic Whitehurst, about the methods adopted by some of his colleagues, including Tom Thurman. The scandal later became the subject of a book, Tainting Evidence, by John Kelly and Phillip Wearne. The relevance of this to the Lockerbie case becomes apparent in this extract from a 2008 article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer:]

Thomas Thurman worked for the FBI forensics laboratory in the late 80s and most of the 90s. Thurman has been publicly credited for identifying a tiny fragment as part of a MST-13 timer produced by the Swiss company Mebo.

“When that identification was made, of the timer, I knew that we had it,” Thurman told ABC in 1991. “Absolute, positively euphoria! I was on cloud nine.”

Again, his record is far from pristine. The US attorney general [RB: through the Department of Justice’s Inspector General] has accused him of having altered lab reports in a way that rendered subsequent prosecutions all but impossible. He has been transferred out the FBI forensic laboratory. Thurman has since left the FBI and joined the faculty at the School of Criminal Justice, Eastern Kentucky University.

The story sheds some light on his formation. The [Inspector General’s] report says “Williams and Thurman merit special censure for their work. It recommends that Thurman, who has a degree in political science, be reassigned outside the lab and that only scientists work in its explosives section.”

“For what it’s worth the best information on Lockerbie came long after Zeist, when the investigation was closed. I’ve always been curious about this case and never stopped looking into it, until the day I left the CIA in December 1997,” Robert Baer told me.

“The appeals commission posed the question to me about someone planting or manipulating evidence only to cover all the bases. I told them I did not think there was an organized attempt to misdirect the investigation, although I was aware that once it was decided to go after Libya, leads on Iran and the PFLP-GC were dismissed. Often in many investigations of this sort, the best intelligence comes out long after the event,” Baer added.

“I’m fascinated to know precisely why the Scots referred the case back to the court, although they did tell me the FBI and Scotland Yard have manipulated the evidence for the prosecution,” Baer told me.

Forensic analysis of the circuit board fragment allowed the investigators to identify its origin. The timer, known as MST-13, is fabricated by a Swiss Company named MeBo, which stands for Meister and Bollier.

The company has indeed sold about 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military (machine-made nine-ply green boards), as well as a few units (hand-made eight-ply brown boards) to a Research Institute in Bernau, known to act as a front to the Stasi, the former East German secret police. (...)

The CIA’s Vincent Cannistraro is on the record stating that no one has ever questioned the Thurman credentials. Allow me.

“He’s very aggressive, but I think he made some mistakes that needed to be brought to the attention of FBI management,” says Frederic Whitehurst, a former FBI chemist who filed the complaints that led to the inspector general’s report.

“We’re not necessarily going to get the truth out of what we’re doing here,” concluded Whitehurst who now works as an attorney at law and forensic consultant.

Dr Whitehurst has authored something like 257 memos to the FBI and Justice Department with various complaints of incompetence, “fabrication of evidence” and perjury of various examiners in the FBI Laboratory (primarily Explosives Unit examiners).

“What I had to say about Tom Thurman and the computer chip was reported to the US attorney general’s inspector general during the investigation of wrongdoing in the FBI lab in the 1990s. I acquired all that information and the inspector general’s report from a law suit under the Freedom of Information Act and therefore the information provided under that FOIA request is in the public sector,” Whitehurst told me.

“I reported to my superiors up to and including the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US attorney general, members of the US Congress and US Senate as well as the Office of the President of the United States that FBI Supervisory Special Agent Thomas Thurman altered my reports for five years without my authorization or knowledge. This is public information. Thurman holds an undergraduate degree in political science and I hold a PhD in chemistry.”

“Thurman was not recognized by the FBI or anyone else as having expertise in complex chemical analysis and I was. When confronted with this information Thurman did not deny it but argued that my reports could and/or would hurt prosecutors’ cases. I was very concerned about the fact that wrong information in the final reports could hurt individuals and deny citizens of this country right to a fair trial. When I raised my concerns with my managers at the FBI laboratory, all except for one of them reminded me that Thurman was the “hero” behind determining the perpetrators of the Pan Am 103 disaster.”

“I understood from that that the FBI would not expose these issues for fear that the investigation into the Pan Am 103 bombing would be seen as possibly flawed and this would open the FBI up to criticism and outside review.”

No government body has found that Mr. Thurman has done anything illegal. However he was relieved from his post in the FBI’s Explosives Unit and placed in charge of the FBI’s Bomb Data Center.

“Did Mr Thurman find the integrated circuit chip about which you have referred? After leaving the FBI, I was interviewed by Scottish defense attorneys for one of the individuals accused of bombing Pan Am 103. At that interview were two of my attorneys, two FBI attorneys and two Scottish attorneys and me. I was asked what I knew about the circuit chip. I can say that I was not interviewed because I agreed with the official version of the discovery of that integrated circuit chip,” Whitehurst wrote to me. (...)

In the world of Forensic Sciences, former FBI [special agent] William Tobin is a legend. To name but a few of his achievements, Tobin demonstrated, along with his NTSB colleagues, that TWA 800 had been destroyed by mechanical failure at the time when virtually the rest of the world strongly believed a terror act. Both the NTSB and the CIA subsequently presented compelling evidence demonstrating the scientific validity of Tobin’s conclusion.

After retiring, Tobin demonstrated that the Lead content bullet identification technique, used by the FBI for more than four decades, was flawed. Tobin was not allowed to work on this matter while at the FBI.

Tobin knows a few things about superhero Thomas Thurman. Tobin told me that, in his opinion, Thurman and other Explosives Unit examiners were prone to confirmation bias, an observer bias whereby an examiner is inclined to see what he is expected to see. Tobin’s opinion is based on “numerous interactions whereby Thurman and other examiners rendered conclusions supporting the prevailing investigative or prosecutorial theory but which were unsupported by scientific fact.

It was not uncommon to determine that items characterized as ‘chrome-plated’ were nickel-plated, ‘extrusions’ turned out to be drawn products, ‘castings’ turned out to be forgings, white residues characterized as explosive residue turned out to be corrosion products (generally Al2O3 or a non-stoichiometric form), bent nails claimed to be indicative of an explosion, and a truck axle was characterized as having fractured from an explosion (a conclusion rendered solely from an 8-1/2” x 11” photograph where the axle was a small fraction of the field of view and the fracture surface itself was not observable).

“I put no credence into any scientific or technical conclusions rendered by anyone without a suitable scientific background for that matter, until I can make an independent evaluation. Thurman was a history or political science major to my recollection,” Tobin added

“His habit, as with most Explosives Unit examiners with whom I interacted and based on numerous court transcript reviews and ‘bailout’ requests I received on several occasions (to ‘bail out’ an examiner who not only misrepresented an item of evidence but also was confronted with more accurate representations of the evidence in trial), was to seek someone else’s expertise and then present it as his own in a courtroom without attribution.”

“He would frequently come into my office, ask for a ‘quick’ assessment of something (but I would always indicate that my opinion was only a preliminary evaluation and that I would need to conduct proper scientific testing of the item(s)), then weeks later I would see the assessment in a formal FBI Laboratory report to the contributor (of the evidence) as his own ‘scientific’ conclusion,” Tobin remembers.

“I cannot imagine that he was acting alone. He was a mid-level manager without a great deal of authority and with severely limited credentials of which the FBI was fully aware,” Whitehurst answered when I asked him if he thought that Thurman had acted alone.

“The problem with having a scientific laboratory within an intelligence gathering organization is that scientists traditionally are seeking truth and at times their data is in direct contradiction to the wishes of a government that is not seeking truth but victory on battle fields.”

“The problem with the scientific data is that when one wishes to really determine what the government scientists or pseudo scientists could have known, one need only look at the data. So few citizens ever ask for or review that data. So few scientists wish to question the government that feeds them and gives security to their families.”

“Was Thurman ordered to do what he did? No one acts alone without orders in the FBI. We had clear goals which were clearly given to us in every document we received from anyone. If a police organization wished for us to provide them “proof” of guilt then they told us in many ways of their absolute belief that the perpetrators were those individuals they had already arrested. If the president of the United States tells the country in the national news that Dandeny Munoz Mosquera is one of the most fear assassins in the history of the world then every agent knows that he must provide information to support that statement. If leaders decide without concern for foundation of truth then most people will follow them,” Whitehurst said.

“Thurman did not act alone. The culture at the FBI was one of group think, don’t go against the flow, stay in line, ignore that data that does not fit the group think,” Whitehurst added.

His former colleague agrees. “I’ve seen so often where an individual who was at one time an independent thinker and had good powers of reasoning acquires the ‘us vs them,’ circle-the-wagons, public-relations at all costs mentality at the FBI,” Tobin says.

“As much as I loved the institution, I have never seen a worse case of spin-doctoring of any image-tarnishing facts or developments as I had at the FBI. Never! It seemed the guiding principle was ‘image before reality’ or ‘image before all else’ (including fact). Whatever you do, ‘don’t embarrass the Bureau’ and ‘the Bureau can do no wrong.’”

UN urged to investigate Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2009. It reads as follows:]

The UN General Assembly is being urged to hold an inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing, it has emerged.

Campaigners say they are optimistic the UN will put in place a commission to investigate the 1988 atrocity which resulted in the deaths of 270 people.

An appeal by Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi against his conviction for the bombing has been dropped, raising fears the whole truth of the case could be lost.

Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the original trial, backs the campaign.

Professor Robert Black, one of the original architects of the trial at Camp Zeist, is also supporting the campaign.

He said: "It's about trying to get an inquiry of some description into Lockerbie.

"Now that al-Megrahi has been released, that method of trying to secure some truth through an appeal has vanished and this is about trying to look at other methods."

Megrahi - who is the only person convicted over the bombing - is dying from cancer and was released from jail on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government last month.

He had been pursuing an appeal against conviction which campaigners hoped would have shed new light on the case, but he dropped this just before his release.

Prof Black said: "The original trial was set up through the UN and that's the reason that many countries other than UK co-operated.

"The obvious thing to do would be to ask the security council of the UN to hold an inquiry, but in realistic terms that's not going to happen, because the UK and US have vetoes and don't want it.

"They don't have vetoes on the General Assembly."

It comes as Libya prepares to take over the presidency of the Assembly later this month.

Prof Black said the move is being driven by the Justice for Megrahi campaign, but that it has the backing of Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the original trial, and Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy.

Father Patrick Keegans, the priest in Lockerbie at the time of the bombing, has also backed the move.

Asked about the chances of success, Prof Black added: "I think it's pretty good.

"There are a lot of countries that don't think we've seen the truth and would like to see that uncovered."

According to The Herald newspaper, Prof Hans Koechler, of the University of Innsbruck, said the General Assembly had set up such a commission in 1968 to look at Gaza.

He told the paper: "As the General Assembly is a deliberative body it has only moral authority and no coercive powers.

"It could however raise international awareness of the different issues involved and name and shame certain countries enough to ensure they do something about it. It could pressure Britain into holding an inquiry."

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who made the decision to free Megrahi, has said he would support a UK inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing, while Westminster has consistently refused.

Security breach in Heathrow baggage area revealed

[What follows is a report from The Mirror newspaper published on this date in 2001:]

Pan Am's Heathrow baggage area was broken into hours before Flight 103 was blasted apart over Lockerbie, The Mirror has found. But a statement on the incident made to police by security guard Ray Manly 12 years ago was lost and the crucial information never revealed in court. Mr Manly found a padlock cut open, leaving the way clear for a bomb to be planted in an area where luggage was ready to be loaded. The lock, which could yield clues, is also missing. Mr Manly, 63, said: "I can't believe the statement was lost. It's just incredible."

The new evidence throws doubt on the murder conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, 49. Prosecutors said the Flight 103 bomb was flown from Malta to Heathrow. The defence said it was more likely the bomb was introduced at Heathrow. Heathrow security guard Mr Manly was stunned when his evidence of a potential bomb threat to Pan Am's Flight 103 was ignored by the Lockerbie trial. The reason was simple - a statement he made to police disappeared and his information was overlooked. As a result, neither prosecution or defence knew a break-in had taken place. Shocked Mr Manly discovered a professional had sliced through a heavy duty padlock protecting Pan Am's baggage area at Heathrow's Terminal Three hours before the doomed flight took off.

It left the way clear for terrorists to steal a luggage tag and plant a suitcase bomb among baggage already X-rayed and ready for loading. Although Mr Manly reported the break-in, it was NOT investigated before take-off. Anti-terrorist police only questioned him about the incident the next month and never questioned him again. And, 12 years later, there is no sign of the statement or padlock which could hold vital forensic clues. The new evidence could now play a crucial role in the appeal of convicted bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohamet Al Megrahi, 49, who is serving life for the outrage which killed 270. Mr Manly, 63 - who has since been questioned for three hours by prosecutors - told a friend: "I can't believe my evidence was not part of the trial and my statement went missing.

"A terrorist who wanted to put a bomb on that plane would have gained access to the perfect place. The luggage would not be checked again before being loaded on the plane. "Although police took a statement, I never heard from anyone afterwards. When there was no mention of my evidence at the trial I rang police who put me in touch with the defence. "They told me no one knew about my statement or the break-in. I find that just incredible. "My statement has disappeared and so has the padlock. No one can even tell me if it was tested for fingerprints. "This has been weighing on my mind for over 12 years. At last someone is taking it seriously." The Mirror has obtained copies of two sworn affidavits Mr Manly, who has arthritis, made to defence lawyers.

They will form a key part of Al Megrahi's appeal next year. Mr Manly may be called to give evidence. The guard discovered the security breach at 12.30am on December 21, 1988, seventeen and a half hours before Flight 103 was ripped apart at 31,000ft. At the time, he was in charge of four staff stationed at numbered control posts on the public side of the airport to ensure only those authorised could enter the airside section. One control post - CP2 - was on the ground floor of the terminal, less than 50ft from the Pan Am check-in desk. It was next to the entrance to a Pan Am baggage area on the airside used for luggage too big to be processed by normal check-in procedures. There was a door in a corridor linking the check-in area and the control post. But it was never locked. A guard would be posted outside the rubber doors of the baggage entrance at all times when they were unlocked. When there were no more bags to check in, the doors would be locked and a padlocked metal bar placed across. Mr Manly, of Surbiton, Surrey, was making his rounds when he found the broken padlock.

He said in his statement to lawyers: "Position CP2 had been interfered with. The doors were closed. "However, the padlock was on the floor to the left of the doors and had been cut through in a way which suggested bolt cutters had been used. I reported my discovery to my night duty officer, Phil Radley and stayed at the post until I could be relieved. "I did not search the area or enter into the airside through the door. No other person came to the scene. "In the area airside of CP2, baggage containers for use inside aircraft were left. Loose baggage tagged for loading on to flights would also be left. "In the check-in area Pan Am baggage labels of various types were left unsecured in desks. "I believe it would have been possible for an unauthorised person to obtain tags for a particular Pan Am flight then, having broken the CP2 lock, to have introduced a tagged bag into the baggage build up area."

Now retired Mr Manly told his friend: "It was the most serious security breach that I came across in 17 years at Heathrow. "This was a professional job. It would have allowed an intruder direct access to the area where Pan Am bags were stored. "The bags had come from other flights and would already have been tagged and X-rayed." Mr Manly - who recorded the incident in a log book and an incident report form - reported back to his supervisor who alerted police at the airport. He was told to stay at CP2 until he was relieved two hours later. In that time, neither his supervisor or police arrived. Amazingly, Mr Manly was not interviewed by anti-terrorist police until the following month. He said: "I was interviewed by a Mr Robson who took a statement. He had the broken padlock in his possession."

After learning that his evidence was lost, Mr Manly was quizzed in March by a lawyer from Scottish prosecutors. He said: "He wanted to know why I hadn't come forward before. I told him I'd given my evidence to police and assumed it had gone forward to the court. "No one has been able to explain why that didn't happen. "It was lucky the airport authorities were able to find the log book and incident form I'd filled in. Otherwise I doubt anyone would have believed me."

Al Megrahi was jailed for a minimum 20 years in January by a Scottish court sitting in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. Alleged accomplice Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, 44, was cleared. Prosecutors claimed the Libyans placed a suitcase bomb on a flight from Luqa airport, in Malta, to Frankfurt. The case was then "interlined" on to a connecting flight to Heathrow where it was stored before being loaded on Flight 103. But Al Megrahi's defence, Bill Taylor QC, insisted there was no direct evidence of this. Instead, he said, a terrorist could have introduced the bomb at Heathrow as there would be less risk of the device being lost.

Peter Walker, Pan Am baggage supervisor at Heathrow, told the £66million hearing six interline bags were loaded on the flight along with luggage from Frankfurt and Heathrow passengers. At the time, Heathrow did not have guards based inside the airside baggage build-up area. There was also no system to prevent unaccompanied bags being loaded on planes. At first, it was believed Palestinian terrorists carried out the attack on the orders of Iran. Suspicion fell on Megrahi and Fhimah after the CIA received information from a Libyan spy. The Procurator Fiscal's Office in Edinburgh, which brought the case, said last night: "As an appeal is pending it is inappropriate to comment."

[RB: The concealment from Megrahi’s defence team of the evidence relating to the Heathrow break-in is the subject of one of Justice for Megrahi’s allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial that are currently under investigation by Police Scotland.]

World Court Lockerbie cases dropped

[On this date in 2003 the case brought by Libya against the United Kingdom in March 1992 over the call by the UK for the extradition of Megrahi and Fhima was by consent removed from the roll of the International Court of Justice. An identical action by Libya against the United States of America was similarly removed.

Here is what I have previously written about this chapter in the Lockerbie affair in an article headed “The Lockerbie Disaster” published in (1999) 3 Edinburgh Law Review 85-95:]

On 27 November 1991 the Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States each issued a statement calling upon the Libyan Government to hand over the two accused to either the Scottish or the American authorities for trial.  Requests for their extradition were transmitted to the Government of Libya by diplomatic channels.  No extradition treaties are in force between Libya on the one hand and the United Kingdom and United States on the other.

Libyan internal law, in common with the laws of many countries in the world, does not permit the extradition of its own nationals for trial overseas.  The Government of Libya accordingly contended that the affair should be resolved through the application of the provisions of the 1971 Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation, to which all three Governments are signatories.  Under article 7 of that Convention a state in whose territory persons accused of terrorist offences against aircraft are resident has a choice aut dedere aut judicare, either to hand over the accused for trial in the courts of the state bringing the accusation or to take the steps necessary to have the accused brought trial in its own domestic courts.  In purported compliance with the second of these options, the Libyan authorities arrested the two accused and appointed a Supreme Court judge as examining magistrate to consider the evidence and prepare the case against them.  Not entirely surprisingly, perhaps, the UK and US Governments have refused to make available to the examining magistrate the evidence that they claim to have amassed against the accused who, to this day, remain under house arrest.

The United Nations Security Council first became involved in the Lockerbie affair  on 21 January 1992 when it passed Resolution 731 strongly deploring the Government of Libya's lack of co-operation in the matter and urging it to respond to the British and American requests contained in their statements of 27 November 1991.  This was followed by Security Council Resolution 748 (31 March 1992) requiring Libya to comply with the requests within a stipulated period of time, failing which a list of sanctions specified in the Resolution would be imposed.  Compliance was not forthcoming and the sanctions duly came into  effect.  On 11 November 1993 the Security Council, by Resolution 883, further extended the range and application of the sanctions.  The imposition of sanctions under the last two Resolutions was justified by the Security Council by reference to Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations on the basis that Libya's failure to extradite the accused constituted a threat to peace.

On 3 March 1992 (after the passing of Security Council Resolution 731, but before Resolutions 748 and 883), Libya presented applications to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for declarations that she was entitled under Article 7 of the 1971 Montreal Convention to put the accused on trial in Libya and that the United Kingdom and the United States were in breach of their obligations under that Convention in insisting upon trial in the UK or the USA.  The Governments of the United Kingdom and United States sought to have these applications dismissed without a hearing on the merits on the grounds inter alia that (1) the ICJ had no jurisdiction to consider them and (2) the Security Council Resolutions of 31 March 1992 and 11 November 1993, imposing upon Libya an international obligation contended by the UK and the USA to be superior to that embodied in Article 7 of the Montreal Convention, had rendered the applications pointless.  On 27 February 1998 the judges of the ICJ by substantial majorities [RB: 13 to 3] (and with the American and British judges dissenting) rejected the submissions of the UK and the USA, thereby clearing the way for decisions at some time in the future on the merits of Libya's applications.

[RB: This judgement was followed within six months by the UK and US volte face whereby they agreed to a neutral venue trial; and after that trial and the subsequent appeal were concluded the ICJ cases were quietly dropped. This is regrettable since the cases might well have led to a finding that the ICJ had authority judicially to review the legality of acts of the UN Security Council, which would have significantly reduced the influence of the Council's permanent members, including the USA and UK, and might possibly, for example, have judicially stymied the invasion of Iraq.]

France delays removal of UN sanctions against Libya

[What follows is the text of a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2003:]

The United Nations Security Council has postponed until Friday a vote to lift more than a decade of sanctions against Libya, following French objections.

The draft resolution - tabled by Britain and Bulgaria - calls for an immediate end to a ban on arms sales and air links with Tripoli, imposed after the bombing of an aircraft over Scotland in 1988.

Libya has admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing, and has offered $2.7bn to relatives of the 270 victims.

But France asked the Council to delay the vote over what it described as inadequate compensation from Libya for the bombing of a French airliner in 1989.

"In the absence of a fair agreement between the families and the Libyan side - which seems at this stage to be within reach - France would have no other choice than to oppose the draft resolution," a French foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement before the Council met.

Both Britain and the United States have said Libya has met all the requirements to have the sanctions removed.

The sanctions were suspended in 1999 after Libya handed over two men accused of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the town of Lockerbie in which 270 people died.

Libya agreed on a settlement for the victims' families, but the figure overshadowed the $33m compensation Tripoli awarded relatives of 170 people killed when a French UTA flight was bombed over Niger in September, 1989.

French authorities have been negotiating with Libya for an improved deal and have threatened to block the resolution unless an agreement is struck.

"What we hope is that the vote will be a little bit more delayed to obtain a settlement, and if the British insist on calling for a vote, we hope that France will veto the resolution," said Francoise Rudetzki, a representative of the French victims' families.

The French foreign ministry has said the victims' relatives will have the final say on any deal.

The vote had already been delayed to give France more time to resolve the issue.

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been hoping for an end to the sanctions, which have isolated Libya from the international community for many years.

Libya has never accepted responsibility for the downing of the UTA flight, but agreed to pay compensation after a Paris court convicted six Libyans of the bombing in absentia.

[RB: The sanctions were eventually lifted by the Security Council on 12 September 2003.]