Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Aljazeera "if not Megrahi then who?". Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Aljazeera "if not Megrahi then who?". Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday, 14 December 2013
Aljazeera documentary "If not Megrahi, then who?" postponed
Reliable sources inform me that the Aljazeera documentary If not Megrahi, then who? will not now be broadcast on Sunday, 15 December and the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Amongst other reasons for postponement, are (a) the fact that important new material has come to light which must be incorporated into the film and (b) Aljazeera’s decision that the programme should be made available in more geographical areas than was originally planned, including the USA and the Middle East. It is hoped that the documentary can still be shown on or before the 25th anniversary of the Pan Am 103 disaster on 21 December.
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
Lockerbie bombing "commissioned by Iran" - bomb loaded at Heathrow not Malta
[Today’s edition of the Daily Telegraph contains a long article headlined Lockerbie bombing: are these the men who really brought down Pan Am 103? based on the material in Aljazeera’s new documentary. It reads as follows:]
Evidence gathered for the aborted appeal against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction points finger at Iran and Syrian-based terrorist group
In the 25 years that have passed since Pan Am 103 blew up in the sky over Lockerbie, one of the only facts that has remained uncontested is that a bomb concealed in a Samsonite suitcase exploded at 7.02pm on December 21, 1988, causing the loss of 270 lives.
From the day Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, the UK’s smallest police force, began investigating the country’s worst terrorist atrocity, the truth about who was responsible has been hidden by a fog of political agendas, conspiracy theories and unreliable evidence.
The 2001 conviction of the Libyan suspect Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, (and the acquittal of his co-defendant Khalifah Fhimah) only served to raise more questions than were answered.
Quite apart from a number of problems with the prosecution’s case was the question of who else took part in the plot. All sides agreed that Megrahi had not acted alone, even if he was guilty.
Yet some of the investigators who sifted through the wreckage of the Boeing 747 and studied intelligence dating from the months before the attack have never wavered in their belief that it was Iran, not Libya, that ordered it, and that a Syrian-based terrorist group executed it.
Now, following a three-year investigation by a team of documentary-makers working for Al Jazeera television, a new and compelling narrative has emerged, in which previously troublesome evidence suddenly fits together like the parts of a Swiss clock.
It begins in Malta nine months before the bombing and winds its way through Beirut, Frankfurt and London leaving a trail of evidence that pointed to Iran, before a phone call from George H W Bush to Margaret Thatcher allegedly switched the focus of the investigation to Libya.
In March 1988, intelligence officers from Iran, Syria and Libya met in the back room of a baker’s shop owned by Abdul Salaam, the head of the Malta cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).
They shared a common cause, and agreed to “join together in a campaign against Israeli and American targets”, according a witness who was at the meeting.
Classified US intelligence cables obtained by Al Jazeera suggest America was aware of the meeting. A Defence Intelligence Agency signal said that “Iran, Libya and Syria have signed a co-operation treaty for future terrorist acts”.
At that stage they did not have a specific target in mind, but three months later, on July 3, 1988, Iran’s hatred of America reached a new high after Iran Air flight 655 was shot down by the USS Vincennes, which was protecting merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.
During a skirmish with Iranian gunboats the American warship mistook the Airbus A300 on its radar for a fighter jet, and fired two radar-guided missiles which downed the aircraft in the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children.
Iran’s leaders were convinced the aircraft had been shot down deliberately, and proclaimed that there would be “a real war against America”.
By the time the Iranian, Syrian and Libyan plotters next met in Malta in October 1988, their target was clear: to blow up an American airliner as payback for Flight 655.
A source who was present at the meetings was tracked down by Jessica de Grazia, a former Manhattan District Attorney who was hired by Megrahi’s defence team to explore alternative theories over the bombing. Her findings would have formed the basis of Megrahi’s appeal hearing, which he abandoned after he was released from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds in 2009.
She said that among those present were “hard core terrorist combatants” trained in explosives, guns and military matters”.
One of those present was Mohammed Abu Talb, who headed the Swedish cell of PFLP-GC, and would later become one of the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing before the focus shifted to Megrahi.
Robert Baer, a CIA agent who investigated the Lockerbie bombing, told Al Jazeera that the PFLP-GC and Iran quickly became the main suspects.
He claims that six days after Flight 655 was downed by the USS Vincennes, at a meeting in Beirut representatives of the Iranian regime turned to Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian officer and head of the PFLP-GC, and tasked him with bringing down five American jets.
Jibril, who enjoyed the protection of the Syrian regime, had masterminded aircraft bombings in the past, and the DIA was aware of his mission.
According to another cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team: “The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmed Jibril…money was given to Jibril upfront in Damascus for initial expenses – the mission was to blow up a Pan Am flight.”
Jibril placed one of his most trusted deputies, a Palestinian PFLP-GC member called Hafez Dalkamoni, in charge of the terrorist cell, and he travelled to Germany to prepare the attack with Marwan Khreesat, an expert bomb-maker.
While Khreesat busied himself making his devices, Dalkamoni flew to Malta for another meeting in the baker’s shop. Also present was Abu Talb. Their presence in October 1988 was reported by a Maltese newspaper, tipped off that members of the PFLP-GC were in town.
According to the witness spoken to by Miss de Grazia, the meeting was convened to discuss how to get a bomb on board a US passenger jet.
Malta would also become key to the prosecution case against Megrahi, after the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb was found to contain clothes bought in a shop in Malta.
One of the key prosecution witnesses at Megrahi’s trial was Tony Gauchi [sic], owner of Mary’s House boutique, who identified Megrahi as buying clothes from him before the bombing. His evidence was later thrown into doubt after it emerged he had seen a picture of Megrahi in a magazine before he picked him out at an ID parade. He was also paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice.
On his deathbed, Megrahi said: “As God is my witness, I was never in that shop. This is the truth.”
Intriguingly, the papers assembled by Megrahi’s defence team for his aborted appeal show that before Megrahi was ever in the frame, Mr Gauchi identified another of his customers from a list of initial suspects. That man was Abu Talb, who bears a clear resemblance to an artist’s impression of a dark-skinned man with an afro hairstyle which was drawn from Mr Gauchi’s initial recollections.
So was Abu Talb, who Tony Gauchi said had bought clothes in his shop, the man who put the bomb on Pan Am 103?
According to the judges who found Megrahi guilty, the bomb was placed on a flight from Luqa airport in Malta to Frankfurt, and then transferred onto a feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow, where it was finally transferred onto Pan Am 103. But there was another problem for the prosecution: they acknowledged that they had no evidence of Megrahi putting the bomb on board the Air Malta flight at Luqa.
John Bedford, a Heathrow baggage handler, told the Megrahi trial that after he took a tea break on the day of the bombing, he recalled seeing a brown hard-shell case on a cargo trolley that had not been there when he left. He saw the case an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed at Heathrow. There had also been a break-in at Heathrow the night before: security guard Ray Manly told Megrahi's appeal that he found a padlock on a baggage store cut.
Cell leader Dalkamoni and bomb-maker Khreesat had been arrested by the time of the bombing, after German police rounded up terrorist suspects in two cities. But Talb was still at large.
When Talb was arrested until the following year over unrelated terrorist offences police who searched his home found clothing bought in Malta, circuitry and other potential bomb-making materials. For now, his exact role, if any, remains a mystery.
Dalkamoni and Khreesat had been kept under surveillance by German police, who were aware of their terrorist connections, and when the police raided 14 apartments in Frankfurt and Neuss in October 1988 the two men were among 17 suspects who were held.
The police discovered an arsenal of guns, grenades and explosives, and in the back of a Ford Cortina driven by Dalkamoni found a bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player.
The bomb was specifically designed to bring down an aircraft, as it had a barometric switch which would set off a timer when the aircraft reached a certain height. Its design had a striking peculiarity: the plastic explosives had been wrapped in silver foil from a Toblerone chocolate bar.
The German police found four bombs in total, but had reason to believe there had been five.
Was the fifth bomb placed on board Pan Am 103? Bomb fragments recovered from the crash site showed that the bomb had been concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette player identical to the one found in Germany.
Even more strikingly, the bomb fragments included tiny pieces of silver foil from a chocolate bar.
A German forensic officer told the Megrahi trial that the timer on the Lockerbie bomb was not switched on until seven minutes into the flight, suggesting a barometric switch had been used to set it off.
Despite so many pointers to Khreesat being the bomb-maker, he has never been charged over Lockerbie because the judges at the Megrahi trial said that there was “no evidence from which we could infer that [PFLP-GC] was involved in this particular act of terrorism”.
The suggestion of a barometric trigger did not fit the prosecution’s version of events, as they said Megrahi, the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, smuggled the bomb on board an Air Malta flight. But if a barometric switch had been used, the bomb would have detonated on take-off from Malta. Instead, the prosecution said the bomb was triggered at 31,000ft by a straightforward timer switch.
The forensic evidence against Megrahi depended on a tiny fragment of the bomb’s timer recovered from the crash site and said to be identical to a batch of 20 timers known to have been purchased by Libya.
But when Megrahi’s defence team obtained the bomb fragment and sent it to a metallurgist to be tested, he showed it was not one of the timers sold to Libya.
On December 5, 1988, a man with an Arab accent called the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, warning that a bomb would be planted on a Pan Am flight in two weeks time. Despite the warning, the bombers managed to smuggle their device on board Pan Am 103.
Another DIA cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team stated that in early 1989 a cheque from the Iranian Central Bank was written out by an Iranian minister and handed to a middle-man who gave it to Ahmed Jibril. The pay-off was $11 million (£6.5m), according to former CIA agent Robert Baer.
When Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary began its investigation into the bombing, it believed the PFLP-GC was involved. A report written in 1989 by Supt Pat Connor identified 15 members of the organisation he wanted arrested and questioned, and the then Transport Minister Paul Channon invited selected journalists to an off-the-record briefing to set out the case against Iran and the PFLP-GC, adding that arrests were imminent.
But by the middle of 1989 the investigation had suddenly changed tack, reportedly following a phone call between President George H W Bush and Baroness Thatcher in March 1989. The two leaders, it is claimed, were anxious not to antagonize the PFLP-GC’s guardian, Syria - a key strategic power in the Middle East - and decided that Libya, which had taken part in the meetings in Malta, should be the focus of the investigation.
The following year Syria joined forces with the US and Britain to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait during the Gulf War.
Mr Baer said the FBI began investigating Libya “in complete disregard to the intelligence” and suggested Libya’s pariah status made it a convenient scapegoat.
Al Jazeera tracked down alleged bomb-maker Khreesat to Amman in Jordan, where he is kept under surveillance by Jordanian intelligence. He refused to discuss the affair on camera but a source close to him later told Al Jazeera that the attack had indeed been commissioned by Iran and that the bomb was put on board at Heathrow.
Abu Talb now lives in Sweden, having been released from prison four years ago following a 20-year sentence for unrelated terrorist acts. His son said he had “nothing to do with Lockerbie”.
For the families of the Lockerbie victims, the wait for the truth goes on.
Lockerbie: What Really Happened? is on Al Jazeera English at 8pm on Tuesday, March 11, Freeview 83, Sky 514.
[An accompanying article in the same newspaper is headlined Lockerbie bombing: profiles of the men who were implicated before Libya took the blame; another is headlined Lockerbie bombing 'was work of Iran not Libya', says former [Iranian] spy.
A Press Association news agency report published on the Sunday Post website reads as follows:]
The Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran in retaliation for a US strike on an Iranian passenger plane, a documentary has claimed.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to be convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in which 270 people were killed more than 25 years ago.
Evidence gathered for the aborted appeal against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction points finger at Iran and Syrian-based terrorist group
In the 25 years that have passed since Pan Am 103 blew up in the sky over Lockerbie, one of the only facts that has remained uncontested is that a bomb concealed in a Samsonite suitcase exploded at 7.02pm on December 21, 1988, causing the loss of 270 lives.
From the day Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, the UK’s smallest police force, began investigating the country’s worst terrorist atrocity, the truth about who was responsible has been hidden by a fog of political agendas, conspiracy theories and unreliable evidence.
The 2001 conviction of the Libyan suspect Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, (and the acquittal of his co-defendant Khalifah Fhimah) only served to raise more questions than were answered.
Quite apart from a number of problems with the prosecution’s case was the question of who else took part in the plot. All sides agreed that Megrahi had not acted alone, even if he was guilty.
Yet some of the investigators who sifted through the wreckage of the Boeing 747 and studied intelligence dating from the months before the attack have never wavered in their belief that it was Iran, not Libya, that ordered it, and that a Syrian-based terrorist group executed it.
Now, following a three-year investigation by a team of documentary-makers working for Al Jazeera television, a new and compelling narrative has emerged, in which previously troublesome evidence suddenly fits together like the parts of a Swiss clock.
It begins in Malta nine months before the bombing and winds its way through Beirut, Frankfurt and London leaving a trail of evidence that pointed to Iran, before a phone call from George H W Bush to Margaret Thatcher allegedly switched the focus of the investigation to Libya.
In March 1988, intelligence officers from Iran, Syria and Libya met in the back room of a baker’s shop owned by Abdul Salaam, the head of the Malta cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).
They shared a common cause, and agreed to “join together in a campaign against Israeli and American targets”, according a witness who was at the meeting.
Classified US intelligence cables obtained by Al Jazeera suggest America was aware of the meeting. A Defence Intelligence Agency signal said that “Iran, Libya and Syria have signed a co-operation treaty for future terrorist acts”.
At that stage they did not have a specific target in mind, but three months later, on July 3, 1988, Iran’s hatred of America reached a new high after Iran Air flight 655 was shot down by the USS Vincennes, which was protecting merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.
During a skirmish with Iranian gunboats the American warship mistook the Airbus A300 on its radar for a fighter jet, and fired two radar-guided missiles which downed the aircraft in the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children.
Iran’s leaders were convinced the aircraft had been shot down deliberately, and proclaimed that there would be “a real war against America”.
By the time the Iranian, Syrian and Libyan plotters next met in Malta in October 1988, their target was clear: to blow up an American airliner as payback for Flight 655.
A source who was present at the meetings was tracked down by Jessica de Grazia, a former Manhattan District Attorney who was hired by Megrahi’s defence team to explore alternative theories over the bombing. Her findings would have formed the basis of Megrahi’s appeal hearing, which he abandoned after he was released from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds in 2009.
She said that among those present were “hard core terrorist combatants” trained in explosives, guns and military matters”.
One of those present was Mohammed Abu Talb, who headed the Swedish cell of PFLP-GC, and would later become one of the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing before the focus shifted to Megrahi.
Robert Baer, a CIA agent who investigated the Lockerbie bombing, told Al Jazeera that the PFLP-GC and Iran quickly became the main suspects.
He claims that six days after Flight 655 was downed by the USS Vincennes, at a meeting in Beirut representatives of the Iranian regime turned to Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian officer and head of the PFLP-GC, and tasked him with bringing down five American jets.
Jibril, who enjoyed the protection of the Syrian regime, had masterminded aircraft bombings in the past, and the DIA was aware of his mission.
According to another cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team: “The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmed Jibril…money was given to Jibril upfront in Damascus for initial expenses – the mission was to blow up a Pan Am flight.”
Jibril placed one of his most trusted deputies, a Palestinian PFLP-GC member called Hafez Dalkamoni, in charge of the terrorist cell, and he travelled to Germany to prepare the attack with Marwan Khreesat, an expert bomb-maker.
While Khreesat busied himself making his devices, Dalkamoni flew to Malta for another meeting in the baker’s shop. Also present was Abu Talb. Their presence in October 1988 was reported by a Maltese newspaper, tipped off that members of the PFLP-GC were in town.
According to the witness spoken to by Miss de Grazia, the meeting was convened to discuss how to get a bomb on board a US passenger jet.
Malta would also become key to the prosecution case against Megrahi, after the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb was found to contain clothes bought in a shop in Malta.
One of the key prosecution witnesses at Megrahi’s trial was Tony Gauchi [sic], owner of Mary’s House boutique, who identified Megrahi as buying clothes from him before the bombing. His evidence was later thrown into doubt after it emerged he had seen a picture of Megrahi in a magazine before he picked him out at an ID parade. He was also paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice.
On his deathbed, Megrahi said: “As God is my witness, I was never in that shop. This is the truth.”
Intriguingly, the papers assembled by Megrahi’s defence team for his aborted appeal show that before Megrahi was ever in the frame, Mr Gauchi identified another of his customers from a list of initial suspects. That man was Abu Talb, who bears a clear resemblance to an artist’s impression of a dark-skinned man with an afro hairstyle which was drawn from Mr Gauchi’s initial recollections.
So was Abu Talb, who Tony Gauchi said had bought clothes in his shop, the man who put the bomb on Pan Am 103?
According to the judges who found Megrahi guilty, the bomb was placed on a flight from Luqa airport in Malta to Frankfurt, and then transferred onto a feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow, where it was finally transferred onto Pan Am 103. But there was another problem for the prosecution: they acknowledged that they had no evidence of Megrahi putting the bomb on board the Air Malta flight at Luqa.
John Bedford, a Heathrow baggage handler, told the Megrahi trial that after he took a tea break on the day of the bombing, he recalled seeing a brown hard-shell case on a cargo trolley that had not been there when he left. He saw the case an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed at Heathrow. There had also been a break-in at Heathrow the night before: security guard Ray Manly told Megrahi's appeal that he found a padlock on a baggage store cut.
Cell leader Dalkamoni and bomb-maker Khreesat had been arrested by the time of the bombing, after German police rounded up terrorist suspects in two cities. But Talb was still at large.
When Talb was arrested until the following year over unrelated terrorist offences police who searched his home found clothing bought in Malta, circuitry and other potential bomb-making materials. For now, his exact role, if any, remains a mystery.
Dalkamoni and Khreesat had been kept under surveillance by German police, who were aware of their terrorist connections, and when the police raided 14 apartments in Frankfurt and Neuss in October 1988 the two men were among 17 suspects who were held.
The police discovered an arsenal of guns, grenades and explosives, and in the back of a Ford Cortina driven by Dalkamoni found a bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player.
The bomb was specifically designed to bring down an aircraft, as it had a barometric switch which would set off a timer when the aircraft reached a certain height. Its design had a striking peculiarity: the plastic explosives had been wrapped in silver foil from a Toblerone chocolate bar.
The German police found four bombs in total, but had reason to believe there had been five.
Was the fifth bomb placed on board Pan Am 103? Bomb fragments recovered from the crash site showed that the bomb had been concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette player identical to the one found in Germany.
Even more strikingly, the bomb fragments included tiny pieces of silver foil from a chocolate bar.
A German forensic officer told the Megrahi trial that the timer on the Lockerbie bomb was not switched on until seven minutes into the flight, suggesting a barometric switch had been used to set it off.
Despite so many pointers to Khreesat being the bomb-maker, he has never been charged over Lockerbie because the judges at the Megrahi trial said that there was “no evidence from which we could infer that [PFLP-GC] was involved in this particular act of terrorism”.
The suggestion of a barometric trigger did not fit the prosecution’s version of events, as they said Megrahi, the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, smuggled the bomb on board an Air Malta flight. But if a barometric switch had been used, the bomb would have detonated on take-off from Malta. Instead, the prosecution said the bomb was triggered at 31,000ft by a straightforward timer switch.
The forensic evidence against Megrahi depended on a tiny fragment of the bomb’s timer recovered from the crash site and said to be identical to a batch of 20 timers known to have been purchased by Libya.
But when Megrahi’s defence team obtained the bomb fragment and sent it to a metallurgist to be tested, he showed it was not one of the timers sold to Libya.
On December 5, 1988, a man with an Arab accent called the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, warning that a bomb would be planted on a Pan Am flight in two weeks time. Despite the warning, the bombers managed to smuggle their device on board Pan Am 103.
Another DIA cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team stated that in early 1989 a cheque from the Iranian Central Bank was written out by an Iranian minister and handed to a middle-man who gave it to Ahmed Jibril. The pay-off was $11 million (£6.5m), according to former CIA agent Robert Baer.
When Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary began its investigation into the bombing, it believed the PFLP-GC was involved. A report written in 1989 by Supt Pat Connor identified 15 members of the organisation he wanted arrested and questioned, and the then Transport Minister Paul Channon invited selected journalists to an off-the-record briefing to set out the case against Iran and the PFLP-GC, adding that arrests were imminent.
But by the middle of 1989 the investigation had suddenly changed tack, reportedly following a phone call between President George H W Bush and Baroness Thatcher in March 1989. The two leaders, it is claimed, were anxious not to antagonize the PFLP-GC’s guardian, Syria - a key strategic power in the Middle East - and decided that Libya, which had taken part in the meetings in Malta, should be the focus of the investigation.
The following year Syria joined forces with the US and Britain to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait during the Gulf War.
Mr Baer said the FBI began investigating Libya “in complete disregard to the intelligence” and suggested Libya’s pariah status made it a convenient scapegoat.
Al Jazeera tracked down alleged bomb-maker Khreesat to Amman in Jordan, where he is kept under surveillance by Jordanian intelligence. He refused to discuss the affair on camera but a source close to him later told Al Jazeera that the attack had indeed been commissioned by Iran and that the bomb was put on board at Heathrow.
Abu Talb now lives in Sweden, having been released from prison four years ago following a 20-year sentence for unrelated terrorist acts. His son said he had “nothing to do with Lockerbie”.
For the families of the Lockerbie victims, the wait for the truth goes on.
Lockerbie: What Really Happened? is on Al Jazeera English at 8pm on Tuesday, March 11, Freeview 83, Sky 514.
[An accompanying article in the same newspaper is headlined Lockerbie bombing: profiles of the men who were implicated before Libya took the blame; another is headlined Lockerbie bombing 'was work of Iran not Libya', says former [Iranian] spy.
A Press Association news agency report published on the Sunday Post website reads as follows:]
The Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran in retaliation for a US strike on an Iranian passenger plane, a documentary has claimed.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to be convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in which 270 people were killed more than 25 years ago.
Megrahi, who was released from jail by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, died in 2012 protesting his innocence and h is family plan to appeal against his conviction.
But former Iranian intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi has told an Al Jazeera documentary that the bombing was ordered by Tehran and carried out by the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) in retaliation for a US navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier, in which 290 people died.
The US ship apparently mistook the plane for an F-14 fighter jet.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mr Mesbahi said: "Iran decided to retaliate as soon as possible. The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini.
"The target of the Iranian decision makers was to copy exactly what's happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly same, minimum 290 people dead. This was the target of the Iranian decision makers."
US Defence Intelligence Agency cables at the time reported that the leader of the PFLP-GC had been paid to plan the bombing, the broadcaster said.
The Crown Office has previously said the alleged involvement of the PFLP-GC was addressed at the original Lockerbie trial.
A successful application from Megrahi's family to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission could start the third appeal into the conviction.
Megrahi lost his first appeal in 2002, one year after he was found guilty of mass murder and jailed for life.
The SCCRC recommended in 2007 that Megrahi should be granted a second appeal against his conviction. He dropped his appeal two days before being released from prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds.
In December, the Libyan attorney general announced he had appointed two prosecutors to work on the case. For the first time they met Scottish and US investigators who are trying to establish whether there are other individuals in Libya who could be brought to trial for involvement in the attack.
Tuesday, 24 December 2013
Who was really behind the Lockerbie bombing?
[This is the headline over an item on the Aljazeera website about its current Inside Story programme. It reads as follows:]
As the world marks the 25th Lockerbie attack anniversary, we ask why there is no clarity on who was the perpetrator.
Commemorations have been held in the US, UK and Scotland to mark 25 years since Pan Am flight 103 crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. But after all these years, there are still questions about who was responsible for one the most infamous attacks in modern times.
The UK, US and Libyan governments have promised to work together to reveal the full facts of the bombing.
On December 21, 1988, the quaint Scottish town of Lockerbie was about to become the scene of one of the world's most infamous attacks.
The airliner had just left London's Heathrow airport – on its way to New York.
Less than half an hour after takeoff a bomb detonated, triggering an explosion and killing all 259 people on board. Most of the passengers were American while 11 others on the ground were also killed.
Three years later, a joint indictment by the US and Scotland implicated two Libyans for the bombing.
One of them was Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was accused of 270 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder and breach of aviation security.
In April 1999, the suspects, including al-Megrahi, surrendered and were flown from the Libyan capital, to the Netherlands, where the case was heard.
When the trial began in 2000, al-Megrahi pleaded not guilty but he was later convicted. In 2002, he re-launched an appeal which was unsuccessful and al-Megrahi started his life sentence behind bars in a Scottish prison.
The Libyan authorities formally accepted responsibility for the attack, and even paid out $2.7bn in compensation to the relatives of those killed. That move prompted the United Nations to lift its sanctions.
Six years into his prison sentence, it was revealed that al-Megrahi suffered from advanced prostate cancer. He was given just a short time to live, and on those grounds, a Scottish judge decided to free him. [RB: It was not a judge, but a Scottish Government minister.]
He arrived home to Libya to a hero's welcome, which upset people around the world and triggered international condemnation.
The last interview al-Megrahi gave, was while he was on his death bed in 2011.
He spoke about the man whose testimony helped convict him - Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper in Malta - who said Megrahi bought clothes in his store that were found wrapped around the bomb on the plane.
"If I have a chance to see him [Gauci] I am forgiving him. I would tell him that never in my entire life have I been in his shop. I never bought any clothing from him. And ... I would tell him ... that he dealt with me very wrongly," Megrahi said in his last interview.
Last year, the man known as the Lockerbie bomber died. Al-Megrahi has always said he is innocent, and his family, to this day, say they want an appeal against his sentence and demand the truth be revealed.
Last year, the man known as the Lockerbie bomber died. Al-Megrahi has always said he is innocent, and his family, to this day, say they want an appeal against his sentence and demand the truth be revealed.
As the world remembers Lockerbie 25 years on, divisions remain between those who believe he was really guilty of the crime and those who do not.
So do we know who was really behind the bombing? Have investigators failed to nail the perpetrator? Was al-Megrahi a scapegoat? And how strong were the evidences that convicted al-Megrahi?
To discuss this, Inside Story presenter Folly Bah Thibault is joined by guests: Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing and led a high-profile campaign for justice on behalf of the UK victims' relatives; Richard Marquise, then head of FBI's task force on the Lockerbie investigation; Morag Kerr, the author of Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies; and Anas el-Gomati, the director general of Libya's first public policy think-tank Sadeq Institute.
Friday, 14 August 2015
The verdict cannot possibly stand as a representation of historical fact
[The item that follows has been contributed by Dr Kevin Bannon:]
It appears that the vast majority of parliamentarians, jurists, academics and news editors in the UK - and their US equivalents - have very little idea of the extent of the affront to justice in the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people died on 21 December 1988.
Just to recount the basics, the crime-scene was the largest in law enforcement history and police investigations took about three years. By international arrangement, Al-Megrahi’s special trial under Scottish jurisdiction and his appeal were held at Kamp Zeist, Holland in 2000-2001. He served 10 years until his release because of his terminal cancer and following his agreement to drop his planned second appeal. Al-Megrahi died in May 2012.
Here is a summary of matters largely omitted from the general narrative about the Lockerbie atrocity:
Investigation and Evidence
It appears that the vast majority of parliamentarians, jurists, academics and news editors in the UK - and their US equivalents - have very little idea of the extent of the affront to justice in the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people died on 21 December 1988.
Just to recount the basics, the crime-scene was the largest in law enforcement history and police investigations took about three years. By international arrangement, Al-Megrahi’s special trial under Scottish jurisdiction and his appeal were held at Kamp Zeist, Holland in 2000-2001. He served 10 years until his release because of his terminal cancer and following his agreement to drop his planned second appeal. Al-Megrahi died in May 2012.
Here is a summary of matters largely omitted from the general narrative about the Lockerbie atrocity:
Investigation and Evidence
The most important item of hard evidence in the investigation was a centimetre square fragment of circuit-board, found, remarkably, within a debris field of hundreds of square miles. Just as fortunately, this was matched by its appearance to a commercially marketed circuit board from a timing device supplied to Libya. Despite that the fragment remains the only part of the explosive device found, no test for explosives residues was carried out on it – which one investigator described as “inconceivable” and “irrational”. In fact neither were such tests carried out on the fragments of the radio/cassette player housing the bomb, or the pieces of suitcase which had contained it – a series of evasions simply too outrageous to describe as an oversight.
Despite a supposedly meticulous investigation, both the date of the fragment’s discovery and the identity of its discoverer remain contradictory and matters of dispute. Most suspiciously of all, the police evidence label pertaining to this item had been manifestly falsified, crucially altering its apparent provenance.
It was never discovered how a bomb was introduced at Malta’s Luqa airport, nor how it transited unaccompanied through Frankfurt and Heathrow - supposedly impossible under security protocols. Instead of solving such outstanding issues, the largest criminal investigation in history has left us with only uncertainties and discrepancies.
A day or two after the Lockerbie bombing, a relatively intact suitcase was removed from the debris field by US officials and taken by helicopter to an unknown destination where its contents were ‘handled’. The suitcase had belonged to a US intelligence official on the passenger list. Four days after the bombing, two Americans believed to be from the CIA, returned the suitcase to the exact position from where it had been removed – a manoeuvre not logged in police records.
In September 1989 a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, described to police the visit of a Libyan to his shop in late November 1988 to purchase several clothing items which matched pieces later found near Lockerbie; these items had apparently been adjacent to the bomb in ‘the primary suitcase’ aboard PA 103. Gauci appeared to have a magnificent memory, and in his first police interviews – nine months after the purchase – he recalled most of the items bought by the customer, the total bill and the weather at the time. Unfortunately, he described in detail someone entirely unlike al-Megrahi both facially and in stature. In any event, al-Megrahi was not in Malta in late November 1988. However, Gauci changed all of his initial evidence in subsequent interviews – changes which were more consistently harmonious with police suspicions and later with the Crown prosecution case. The purchaser’s visit was now revised to December 7 – the only day in the timeframe consistent with al-Megrahi’s movements.
In a ‘photo-session’ al-Megrahi’s picture had been shown to Gauci amongst 11 other photographs of individuals, some of which had been blatantly ‘doctored’ - supposedly to make them more similar to the suspect; even under these circumstances a senior investigating detective gave a plainly illegitimate prompt to Gauci who then chose al-Megrahi’s picture – already known as the ‘correct’ choice to police officers observing the procedure in the same room. This became the clinching identification of al-Megrahi and the basis of his eventual indictment. An identification line-up observed by Gauci was held only years later after al-Megrahi’s picture had been widely publicised, but in any event, the procedure was again improperly set-up in the Crown’s favour.
Two months before the Lockerbie bombing, an apparent Frankfurt-based plot to bomb an airliner had been uncovered by German police. Marwan Khreesat (possibly an alias) arrested as the supposed mastermind, was a Jordanian (i.e. pro-western) intelligence agent and was allowed to return home, despite being caught red-handed making bombs. One of these later exploded killing a German police investigator, but no reports of an investigation or a prosecution transpired; Khreesat has not been seen or heard in public since.
Just two weeks before the PA 103 attack, a telephone warning was received in Helsinki about a plan to bomb a Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt. Despite this being recognised as entirely spurious by investigators, US and airline security officials took it seriously. The caller’s identity remains oddly obscure to this day and he was not prosecuted for his ‘hoax’.
Both the German and UK investigators concluded that neither the Frankfurt set-up nor the Helsinki hoax had any link to the Lockerbie bombing but the obvious artificiality and official suppression of facts surrounding these incidents remains profoundly suspicious.
The Trial
Despite a supposedly meticulous investigation, both the date of the fragment’s discovery and the identity of its discoverer remain contradictory and matters of dispute. Most suspiciously of all, the police evidence label pertaining to this item had been manifestly falsified, crucially altering its apparent provenance.
It was never discovered how a bomb was introduced at Malta’s Luqa airport, nor how it transited unaccompanied through Frankfurt and Heathrow - supposedly impossible under security protocols. Instead of solving such outstanding issues, the largest criminal investigation in history has left us with only uncertainties and discrepancies.
A day or two after the Lockerbie bombing, a relatively intact suitcase was removed from the debris field by US officials and taken by helicopter to an unknown destination where its contents were ‘handled’. The suitcase had belonged to a US intelligence official on the passenger list. Four days after the bombing, two Americans believed to be from the CIA, returned the suitcase to the exact position from where it had been removed – a manoeuvre not logged in police records.
In September 1989 a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, described to police the visit of a Libyan to his shop in late November 1988 to purchase several clothing items which matched pieces later found near Lockerbie; these items had apparently been adjacent to the bomb in ‘the primary suitcase’ aboard PA 103. Gauci appeared to have a magnificent memory, and in his first police interviews – nine months after the purchase – he recalled most of the items bought by the customer, the total bill and the weather at the time. Unfortunately, he described in detail someone entirely unlike al-Megrahi both facially and in stature. In any event, al-Megrahi was not in Malta in late November 1988. However, Gauci changed all of his initial evidence in subsequent interviews – changes which were more consistently harmonious with police suspicions and later with the Crown prosecution case. The purchaser’s visit was now revised to December 7 – the only day in the timeframe consistent with al-Megrahi’s movements.
In a ‘photo-session’ al-Megrahi’s picture had been shown to Gauci amongst 11 other photographs of individuals, some of which had been blatantly ‘doctored’ - supposedly to make them more similar to the suspect; even under these circumstances a senior investigating detective gave a plainly illegitimate prompt to Gauci who then chose al-Megrahi’s picture – already known as the ‘correct’ choice to police officers observing the procedure in the same room. This became the clinching identification of al-Megrahi and the basis of his eventual indictment. An identification line-up observed by Gauci was held only years later after al-Megrahi’s picture had been widely publicised, but in any event, the procedure was again improperly set-up in the Crown’s favour.
Two months before the Lockerbie bombing, an apparent Frankfurt-based plot to bomb an airliner had been uncovered by German police. Marwan Khreesat (possibly an alias) arrested as the supposed mastermind, was a Jordanian (i.e. pro-western) intelligence agent and was allowed to return home, despite being caught red-handed making bombs. One of these later exploded killing a German police investigator, but no reports of an investigation or a prosecution transpired; Khreesat has not been seen or heard in public since.
Just two weeks before the PA 103 attack, a telephone warning was received in Helsinki about a plan to bomb a Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt. Despite this being recognised as entirely spurious by investigators, US and airline security officials took it seriously. The caller’s identity remains oddly obscure to this day and he was not prosecuted for his ‘hoax’.
Both the German and UK investigators concluded that neither the Frankfurt set-up nor the Helsinki hoax had any link to the Lockerbie bombing but the obvious artificiality and official suppression of facts surrounding these incidents remains profoundly suspicious.
The Trial
The Helsinki and Frankfurt incidents were referred to frequently in cross-examinations at Kamp Zeist, helping create a backdrop concerning Middle Eastern bomb threats in Europe, and reminding the court that such terrorists were devious and repeatedly escaped justice. Additional to this undercurrent were a cohort of invisible Crown witnesses: three CIA agents and three more from the former East German STASI - gave evidence concealed behind screens, under pseudonyms and with their voices disguised – all for unexplained reasons. Three more CIA agents, similarly pseudo-named, did not attend court but supplied written statements. Several other Crown witnesses were so vaguely identified in court as to remain obscure.
Four Crown witnesses were described as liars in open court without objection – because it was transparently obvious. A director of the company which supplied the Lockerbie bomb timer had been shown to have conspired to falsely implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing during the investigation. In another incident the same witness claimed to have contacted the CIA with another false story implicating Gaddafi and his security chief Abdullah Senoussi in the Lockerbie attack. These clumsy acts of espionage were justly treated as laughable by the Defence. For all practical purposes, witnesses at Kamp Zeist were free from risk of perjury charges which would normally be applicable in Criminal trials in Scotland.
One major Crown witness, Abu Talb, was serving a life sentence for a terrorist murder and two more (a Mr. ‘Wenzel’ and one Mansour El Saber) had each been party to preparing explosive devices for terrorist purposes – so it was claimed. Her Majesty’s prosecutors had never before been propped-up by such a motley collection of crooks and spooks.
The bomb’s introduction at Malta’s international airport was never established but the judges, like the police before them, decided that this is what must have happened because of al-Megrahi’s ‘identification’ by Tony Gauci. This highly improbable arrangement diverted the investigation away from straightforward, circumstantial evidence that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow – the most logical scenario, but of course entailing an entirely different conspiracy.
Despite facing 227 Crown witnesses, al-Megrahi, mild-mannered and of previous good character, was advised to say nothing in his defence – a suicidal defence strategy designed for jury trials of gangsters or otherwise ‘open and shut’ cases. Of only three witnesses who testified on behalf of the Defence, two were FBI men, whose organisation was backing the prosecution.
The trial and appeal, among the most extensive in the UK’s legal history, were made considerably more lengthy and costly by the attendance of irrelevant Crown witnesses and vast tracts of waffle on points of law and case citations emanating from al-Megrahi’s advocate, without any perceptible contribution to al-Megrahi’s defence. Stupendous weaknesses in the Crown case went unchallenged, in particular Gauci’s contradictory police statements, details of which were almost entirely evaded in cross-examination.
Al-Megrahi’s appeal was prepared in such a way that it was doomed to fail – as even the judges themselves emphasised in their verdict.
After the trial and appeal, Gauci was paid ‘in excess of $2 million’ by the US department of Justice for helping the investigation - his brother received $1 million despite not appearing in court - such payments are not legitimate under Scottish law and if a witness has been promised, or has formed expectations about receiving such payment it should be disclosed to the defence, having significant relevance to the witness’s credibility. Other witnesses received substantial benefits for their information or testimony, whether in the form of money from the US or fishing trips and fancy hotel stays in Scotland, laid on by the police.
The CIA’s witness
Four Crown witnesses were described as liars in open court without objection – because it was transparently obvious. A director of the company which supplied the Lockerbie bomb timer had been shown to have conspired to falsely implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing during the investigation. In another incident the same witness claimed to have contacted the CIA with another false story implicating Gaddafi and his security chief Abdullah Senoussi in the Lockerbie attack. These clumsy acts of espionage were justly treated as laughable by the Defence. For all practical purposes, witnesses at Kamp Zeist were free from risk of perjury charges which would normally be applicable in Criminal trials in Scotland.
One major Crown witness, Abu Talb, was serving a life sentence for a terrorist murder and two more (a Mr. ‘Wenzel’ and one Mansour El Saber) had each been party to preparing explosive devices for terrorist purposes – so it was claimed. Her Majesty’s prosecutors had never before been propped-up by such a motley collection of crooks and spooks.
The bomb’s introduction at Malta’s international airport was never established but the judges, like the police before them, decided that this is what must have happened because of al-Megrahi’s ‘identification’ by Tony Gauci. This highly improbable arrangement diverted the investigation away from straightforward, circumstantial evidence that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow – the most logical scenario, but of course entailing an entirely different conspiracy.
Despite facing 227 Crown witnesses, al-Megrahi, mild-mannered and of previous good character, was advised to say nothing in his defence – a suicidal defence strategy designed for jury trials of gangsters or otherwise ‘open and shut’ cases. Of only three witnesses who testified on behalf of the Defence, two were FBI men, whose organisation was backing the prosecution.
The trial and appeal, among the most extensive in the UK’s legal history, were made considerably more lengthy and costly by the attendance of irrelevant Crown witnesses and vast tracts of waffle on points of law and case citations emanating from al-Megrahi’s advocate, without any perceptible contribution to al-Megrahi’s defence. Stupendous weaknesses in the Crown case went unchallenged, in particular Gauci’s contradictory police statements, details of which were almost entirely evaded in cross-examination.
Al-Megrahi’s appeal was prepared in such a way that it was doomed to fail – as even the judges themselves emphasised in their verdict.
After the trial and appeal, Gauci was paid ‘in excess of $2 million’ by the US department of Justice for helping the investigation - his brother received $1 million despite not appearing in court - such payments are not legitimate under Scottish law and if a witness has been promised, or has formed expectations about receiving such payment it should be disclosed to the defence, having significant relevance to the witness’s credibility. Other witnesses received substantial benefits for their information or testimony, whether in the form of money from the US or fishing trips and fancy hotel stays in Scotland, laid on by the police.
The CIA’s witness
Crown witness Majid Giaka worked for the JSO (the Libyan external security organisation) and was on secondment with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta around the time of the bombing. He was also a CIA mole and as a former colleague of the accused he was regarded as a principal Crown witness at trial. Giaka’s evidence included his sight of a box of TNT in the office drawer of the second accused; the Libyan Consul in Malta seen handling the same explosives; Libyan senior security officials speaking of surreptitiously placing a bag on an ‘English’ aircraft, and the two accused couriering a Samsonite suitcase – the same as the suspect suitcase - into Malta’s Luca airport from Libya. This might have been damning evidence were it to have been credible.
In preparing their case, the Defence, acquired copies of 25 redacted CIA reports or ‘cables’ understanding that these represented all relevant material on Giaka, and believing that the redactions were mere security formalities. However, Defence advocates accidentally got wind of the fact that the Crown had been shown greatly extended versions of the CIA cables at a ‘secret’ meeting at the US embassy. This was against the rule of ‘equality of arms’ - fundamental to the principles of fairness in an adversarial trial. The failure to notify the defence and arrange for the exposed cables to be shared was a duplicitous and illegitimate act in any event. The chief prosecutor Lord Advocate Colin Boyd was then obliged to make a statement admitting his responsibility for the issue but he belittled the significance of the redactions – telling the court that “While they may have been of significance to the Central Intelligence Agency, they had no significance whatsoever to the case”.
This statement from the chief prosecutor, Scotland’s Lord Advocate, proved to be an outstanding misrepresentation. The court was left in the humiliating position of having to petition the CIA to reveal the redactions for the benefit of the Defence. After only a brief scan of the exposed passages Richard Keen QC for the second accused, was scathing about what had become ‘abundantly clear’:
‘…what is now disclosed is, in many instances, highly relevant to the Defence, and I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise…Some of the material, which is now disclosed, goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability but beyond...’
The revelations showed that the CIA themselves had considerable doubts about Majid Giaka, believing he was a smuggler, was milking them for thousands of dollars and supplying little useful information, but plenty which was implausible. It was revealed that a further 11 cables featuring Giaka’s behaviour had been withheld from the Defence. The judge’s conclusions describe the man who had been posited as second principal Crown witness in the trial of the century. Majid Giaka attempted to give a ‘false impression of his importance within the JSO’. He had told the CIA that he had been in the JSO ‘secret files section’ when in fact he was in ‘vehicle maintenance’. He falsely claimed to be on familiar terms with senior JSO officials – and to be related to Libya’s former King Idris – which he was not. Giaka’s claims were ‘at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue’ the judges noted, and he was ‘largely motivated by financial considerations’.
Inviting the CIA to assist with the Lockerbie investigation was an extraordinary error of judgement by the Scottish authorities. If the Kamp Zeist bench imagined the CIA to be a bona fide intelligence agency gathering information about security threats, they were mistaken. The US defence department has considerably greater, genuine intelligence resources to inform its defence department and government of such threats. The CIA is in fact a civilian institution, specialising in clandestine operations serving the interests, including the political interests, of the White House. The CIA’s ambit includes disinformation and propaganda and it has been infamous for manipulating events solely in the interests of the USA. Its methods have involved bribery, intimidation and murder and various other criminal means. Historically the CIA has assisted in the overthrow of benign governments – even those of democratic states and NATO members – and to have helped replace them with ruthless military juntas or corrupt and murderous oligarchs.
The CIA’s contribution to the indictment of al-Megrahi was quite remarkable: the CIA came up with the commercial timing device brand which was matched to the circuit board fragment found near Lockerbie. The CIA also unearthed the photograph of al-Megrahi which led to his identification by the eyewitness. The CIA would also have supplied the court with the Crown’s principal witness but were exposed withholding the fact that Giaka was a liar.
The CIA, whose personnel had tampered with the crime scene itself, have no place whatsoever in either assisting police investigations or in the gathering of information for use as evidence in criminal trials, most especially those in foreign jurisdictions, and with political implications.
Expert views
In preparing their case, the Defence, acquired copies of 25 redacted CIA reports or ‘cables’ understanding that these represented all relevant material on Giaka, and believing that the redactions were mere security formalities. However, Defence advocates accidentally got wind of the fact that the Crown had been shown greatly extended versions of the CIA cables at a ‘secret’ meeting at the US embassy. This was against the rule of ‘equality of arms’ - fundamental to the principles of fairness in an adversarial trial. The failure to notify the defence and arrange for the exposed cables to be shared was a duplicitous and illegitimate act in any event. The chief prosecutor Lord Advocate Colin Boyd was then obliged to make a statement admitting his responsibility for the issue but he belittled the significance of the redactions – telling the court that “While they may have been of significance to the Central Intelligence Agency, they had no significance whatsoever to the case”.
This statement from the chief prosecutor, Scotland’s Lord Advocate, proved to be an outstanding misrepresentation. The court was left in the humiliating position of having to petition the CIA to reveal the redactions for the benefit of the Defence. After only a brief scan of the exposed passages Richard Keen QC for the second accused, was scathing about what had become ‘abundantly clear’:
‘…what is now disclosed is, in many instances, highly relevant to the Defence, and I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise…Some of the material, which is now disclosed, goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability but beyond...’
The revelations showed that the CIA themselves had considerable doubts about Majid Giaka, believing he was a smuggler, was milking them for thousands of dollars and supplying little useful information, but plenty which was implausible. It was revealed that a further 11 cables featuring Giaka’s behaviour had been withheld from the Defence. The judge’s conclusions describe the man who had been posited as second principal Crown witness in the trial of the century. Majid Giaka attempted to give a ‘false impression of his importance within the JSO’. He had told the CIA that he had been in the JSO ‘secret files section’ when in fact he was in ‘vehicle maintenance’. He falsely claimed to be on familiar terms with senior JSO officials – and to be related to Libya’s former King Idris – which he was not. Giaka’s claims were ‘at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue’ the judges noted, and he was ‘largely motivated by financial considerations’.
Inviting the CIA to assist with the Lockerbie investigation was an extraordinary error of judgement by the Scottish authorities. If the Kamp Zeist bench imagined the CIA to be a bona fide intelligence agency gathering information about security threats, they were mistaken. The US defence department has considerably greater, genuine intelligence resources to inform its defence department and government of such threats. The CIA is in fact a civilian institution, specialising in clandestine operations serving the interests, including the political interests, of the White House. The CIA’s ambit includes disinformation and propaganda and it has been infamous for manipulating events solely in the interests of the USA. Its methods have involved bribery, intimidation and murder and various other criminal means. Historically the CIA has assisted in the overthrow of benign governments – even those of democratic states and NATO members – and to have helped replace them with ruthless military juntas or corrupt and murderous oligarchs.
The CIA’s contribution to the indictment of al-Megrahi was quite remarkable: the CIA came up with the commercial timing device brand which was matched to the circuit board fragment found near Lockerbie. The CIA also unearthed the photograph of al-Megrahi which led to his identification by the eyewitness. The CIA would also have supplied the court with the Crown’s principal witness but were exposed withholding the fact that Giaka was a liar.
The CIA, whose personnel had tampered with the crime scene itself, have no place whatsoever in either assisting police investigations or in the gathering of information for use as evidence in criminal trials, most especially those in foreign jurisdictions, and with political implications.
Expert views
Most citizens understand that a criminal trial is supposed to include a transparent examination and exposition of facts. Whence a conviction is reached, there should not be lingering doubts about the verdict. Every jurist, lawyer, academic investigator or researcher who has examined or analysed al-Megrahi’s conviction has reasoned that it represent an outstandingly blatant and audacious miscarriage of justice. These include:
- Robert Black QC, Professor Emeritus of Scottish Law at Edinburgh University, former General Editor of The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia and frequently referred to as ‘the architect of the Lockerbie trial’ - has described its verdict as ‘a disgrace and an outrage’.
- Britain’s most celebrated defence lawyer Gareth Peirce, whose advocacy led to the overturn some of Britain’s most infamous miscarriages of justice, called the Lockerbie trial outcome ‘the death of justice’. As well as describing certain aspects of the forensic investigations as ‘disgraceful’ she refers to political interference, believing that al-Megrahi was returned to his home in Libya because it suited Britain: She wrote: ‘The political furore has been very obviously contrived, since both the British and American governments know perfectly well the history of how and for what reasons he came to be prosecuted’
- American media analyst and economist, Emeritus Prof. Edward S. Herman addressed the CIA’s attempt to withhold from the court, evidence about Giaka’s character: ‘Only under considerable court pressure did they produce a limited number of documents which showed Giaka to have been an incorrigible liar and the CIA, The United States and prosecuting attorneys, to be dishonest’.
- Former US international lawyer and jurist Professor Michael P. Scharf, who had worked with the State Department on preparations for the indictment of the Lockerbie suspects, later formed the opinion that these were not based so much on evidence ‘...but rather on representations from the CIA and FBI and the Department of Justice about what the case would prove, and did prove.’ About Majid Giaka he declared: “It wasn’t until the trial that I learned this guy was a nut-job and that the CIA had absolutely no confidence in him and that they knew he was a liar.”
- Dr. Hans Köchler is one of Europe’s most eminent authorities on international law, in which he has made major contributions to the development of legal infrastructure. Reporting on his observations of the entire Camp Zeist proceedings on behalf of the UN, he wrote: ‘…foreign governments or (secret) governmental agencies may have been allowed, albeit indirectly, to determine, to a considerable extent, which evidence was made available to the Court.’ Dr Köchler described the verdict as ‘totally incomprehensible…a spectacular case of a miscarriage of justice.’
- Len Murray, now retired as one of Scotland’s most distinguished and experienced lawyers, found it inexplicable that the Court could ‘have drawn so many adverse inferences against the accused when there were other explanations that were just as likely...’. Mr. Murray believed that the court’s finding of the crucial date - on which the eyewitness controversially identified al-Megrahi - was established by a means which ‘bordered on the perverse’.
- Eddie MacKechnie, solicitor to al-Megrahi’s acquitted co-accused said: ‘This case was intelligence driven and the conduct of the CIA and other clandestine bodies had a very significant impact…the supposed evidence….was wholly inadequate and contrived’.
- Ian Hamilton QC. Former rector of Aberdeen University wrote: ‘‘I don’t think there’s a lawyer in Scotland who now believes that Mr. Megrahi was justly convicted’.
These eminent people are experts in their fields and mostly involved either directly with the Lockerbie case itself or with special knowledge of Scottish law, international law or terrorist trials.
Undeniably, other jurists, terrorism experts or commentators have made public statements in support of al-Megrahi’s conviction, but these have avoided factual analyses, offering instead their confidence in due process of law:
- Anthony Aust was legal adviser to the UK’s UN Mission and later to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office department. Writing in a law journal he applauded the ‘ingenious use of international law’ in bringing the accused to justice - in fact the Kamp Zeist court was specifically an application of Scotland’s municipal law to an international case. Mr. Aust describes the trial as ‘This example of what can be achieved in the cause of justice...’
- Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, Scotland’s chief prosecutor in the Lockerbie trial, took a very similar view: “…these proceedings have demonstrated what the judicial process can achieve when the international community acts together…I hope that this can be the enduring legacy of the Lockerbie trial. It is one that cannot and must not be forgotten”.
- Stephen Emerson, a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and author is Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism which focuses on ‘Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups’. While describing the Lockerbie forensic investigation as ‘meticulous’ Emerson frankly outlined his analytical priorities: ‘Rather than detail the actual components of the investigation, it is helpful to step back and consider the Pan Am 103 investigation and trial from a cost-benefit analysis perspective to determine whether U.S. interests were ultimately served’.
More recently Prime Minister David Cameron referred to Stephen Emerson as ‘a complete idiot’ for describing Birmingham, UK as “...totally Muslim where non-Muslims just don’t go in” on a US News broadcast.
Those who knew al-Megrahi personally have testified as to his good character. Investigative journalist John Ashton researched for a TV documentary about the Lockerbie bombing in the 90s and co-authored two seminal books about the affair and did research for Al-Megrahi’s legal team in preparation for his second appeal. He attested to the decency and integrity of al-Megrahi in August 2011:
‘I am as certain as I can be that al-Megrahi is innocent. His good manners and cooperative behavior won him respect from prison officers and inmates alike and he strongly desires to clear his name.’
Former Scottish Police Detective George Thomson researched for and interviewed contributors to the Al Jazzera film documentary Lockerbie: Case closed, including al-Megrahi himself. Thompson’s emotional, affectionate portrayal of al-Megrahi in the opening and closing minutes of the film fully substantiates the magnanimous, forgiving statements of al-Megrahi himself from his deathbed. I strongly recommend anyone to see Lockerbie Case closed and judge for themselves the sincerity of al-Megrahi’s comments.
Those who knew al-Megrahi personally have testified as to his good character. Investigative journalist John Ashton researched for a TV documentary about the Lockerbie bombing in the 90s and co-authored two seminal books about the affair and did research for Al-Megrahi’s legal team in preparation for his second appeal. He attested to the decency and integrity of al-Megrahi in August 2011:
‘I am as certain as I can be that al-Megrahi is innocent. His good manners and cooperative behavior won him respect from prison officers and inmates alike and he strongly desires to clear his name.’
Former Scottish Police Detective George Thomson researched for and interviewed contributors to the Al Jazzera film documentary Lockerbie: Case closed, including al-Megrahi himself. Thompson’s emotional, affectionate portrayal of al-Megrahi in the opening and closing minutes of the film fully substantiates the magnanimous, forgiving statements of al-Megrahi himself from his deathbed. I strongly recommend anyone to see Lockerbie Case closed and judge for themselves the sincerity of al-Megrahi’s comments.
See: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/2012/02/20122286572242641.html
Al-Megrahi’s conviction was not merely based on weak circumstantial evidence but on a collection of stark falsehoods and transparent absurdities. Once the imaginary ‘identification’ evidence against al-Megrahi had been authorised, the remaining case was constructed around it - in particular the evidence pertaining to the fragment of the bomb itself, which is contradictory in every aspect of its appearance throughout the investigation.
In the context of the conspicuous improprieties in both investigation and trial - the falsification of evidence and documents, the gaps in the forensic evidence, the contradictory testimony, the unknown witnesses, and the extent of circumstantial and hearsay evidence - the verdict cannot possibly stand as a representation of historical fact.
Unlike most criminal trials, the outcome of the Lockerbie trial has had profound connotations for the development of foreign and security policies of the UK and the USA. It has strongly influenced popular and governmental attitudes to Middle Eastern terrorism, Islam, and the Arabic-speaking peoples in general. Based on the obvious discrepancies pervading the Lockerbie case, then even history itself appears to have been bent and continues on a perilously misguided course.
I invite any jurist or expert to be the first to defend the conviction of al-Megrahi on a factual, analytical basis. I also invite members of the SCCRC or the Scottish Judiciary to respond informally or otherwise, to matters raised here, which are based entirely on either reputable, published sources or from notes made from the Kamp Zeist trial transcript or extracts from it.
Hopefully, in the name of justice and humanity - and common sense - the Scottish or UK authorities will soon make a courageous decision leading to a root-and-branch review of this case. Taking no action is the most perilous option.
Al-Megrahi’s conviction was not merely based on weak circumstantial evidence but on a collection of stark falsehoods and transparent absurdities. Once the imaginary ‘identification’ evidence against al-Megrahi had been authorised, the remaining case was constructed around it - in particular the evidence pertaining to the fragment of the bomb itself, which is contradictory in every aspect of its appearance throughout the investigation.
In the context of the conspicuous improprieties in both investigation and trial - the falsification of evidence and documents, the gaps in the forensic evidence, the contradictory testimony, the unknown witnesses, and the extent of circumstantial and hearsay evidence - the verdict cannot possibly stand as a representation of historical fact.
Unlike most criminal trials, the outcome of the Lockerbie trial has had profound connotations for the development of foreign and security policies of the UK and the USA. It has strongly influenced popular and governmental attitudes to Middle Eastern terrorism, Islam, and the Arabic-speaking peoples in general. Based on the obvious discrepancies pervading the Lockerbie case, then even history itself appears to have been bent and continues on a perilously misguided course.
I invite any jurist or expert to be the first to defend the conviction of al-Megrahi on a factual, analytical basis. I also invite members of the SCCRC or the Scottish Judiciary to respond informally or otherwise, to matters raised here, which are based entirely on either reputable, published sources or from notes made from the Kamp Zeist trial transcript or extracts from it.
Hopefully, in the name of justice and humanity - and common sense - the Scottish or UK authorities will soon make a courageous decision leading to a root-and-branch review of this case. Taking no action is the most perilous option.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)