Eleventh anniversary of Libyan settlement offer to Lockerbie families

[From CNN’s report Libya offers $2.7 billion Pan Am 103 settlement:]

Libya has offered $2.7 billion to settle claims by the families of those killed in the Pan Am 103 bombing, with payments tied to the lifting of US and UN sanctions, according to lawyers representing some families.

The proposed settlement would work out to $10 million per family, according to a letter from the families' lawyer detailing the offer. It includes relatives of those killed on the ground in the Scottish town of Lockerbie. But compensation would be paid piecemeal, with installments tied to the lifting of sanctions.

The letter says 40 percent of the money would be released when UN sanctions are lifted; another 40 percent when US commercial sanctions are lifted; and the remaining 20 percent when Libya is removed from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Jim Kreindler, of Kreindler & Kreindler, the firm representing 118 victims' families said the families are "seriously considering" the Libyan offer.

[From the Compensation from Libya section of the Wikipedia

article Pan Am Flight 103:]

On 29 May 2002, Libya offered up to US$2.7 billion to settle claims by the families of the 270 killed in the Lockerbie bombing, representing US$10 million per family. The Libyan offer was that:

• 40% of the money would be released when United Nations sanctions, suspended in 1999, were cancelled;
• another 40% when US trade sanctions were lifted; and
• the final 20% when the US State Department removed Libya from its list of states sponsoring terrorism. (...)

Compensation for the families of the PA103 victims was among the steps set by the UN for lifting its sanctions against Libya. Other requirements included a formal denunciation of terrorism—which Libya said it had already made—and "accepting responsibility for the actions of its officials".

On 15 August 2003, Libya's UN ambassador, Ahmed Own, submitted a letter to the UN Security Council formally accepting "responsibility for the actions of its officials" in relation to the Lockerbie bombing. The Libyan government then proceeded to pay compensation to each family of US$8 million (from which legal fees of about US$2.5 million were deducted) and, as a result, the UN cancelled the sanctions that had been suspended four years earlier, and US trade sanctions were lifted. A further US$2 million would have gone to each family had the US State Department removed Libya from its list of states regarded as supporting international terrorism, but as this did not happen by the deadline set by Libya, the Libyan Central Bank withdrew the remaining US$540 million in April 2005 from the escrow account in Switzerland through which the earlier US$2.16 billion compensation for the victims' families had been paid. The United States announced resumption of full diplomatic relations with Libya after deciding to remove it from its list of countries that support terrorism on 15 May 2006.

On 24 February 2004, Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem stated in a BBC Radio 4 interview that his country had paid the compensation as the "price for peace" and to secure the lifting of sanctions. Asked if Libya did not accept guilt, he said, "I agree with that." He also said there was no evidence to link Libya with the April 1984 shooting of police officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London. Gaddafi later retracted Ghanem's comments, under pressure from Washington and London.

[It is for negotiating this compensation settlement that former Foreign Minister Abdel Ati al-Obeidi and former London ambassador Mohammed Belqasem al-Zwai are awaiting trial in Tripoli for wasting state funds.]

Gaddafi-era officials go on trial accused over Lockerbie case

[This is the headline over a report published today by the Reuters news agency.  It reads in part:]

Two senior officials under late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi went on trial on Monday accused of wasting public money by facilitating a compensation payment of more than $2 billion to families of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

The trial of the two men - former Foreign Minister Abdel-Ati al-Obeidi and former Secretary General of the General People's Congress [RB: and Libyan ambassador in London following restoration of diplomatic relations in 2001] Mohammed Zwai - was swiftly adjourned to give their legal team more time to prepare.

Zwai was the head of the legislature under Gaddafi, who was overthrown after an uprising last year and later killed.

Libya's new rulers, who aim to draw up a democratic constitution, are keen to try Gaddafi's family members and loyalists to show the country's citizens that those who helped Gaddafi stay in power for 42 years are being punished.

But human rights activists fret a weak central government and a relative lack of rule of law mean legal proceedings will not meet international standards.

The two men's appearance in the dock - 14 months after they were arrested - was brief.

"I refute these charges against me," Zwai told the court. Obedi also denied the charges.

The judge, whose name was not given, read out the charges against the duo, saying they were accused of arranging compensation worth $2.7 billion for the families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing to try to get them to drop charges against Libya.

The 1988 bombing of a PanAm flight over Lockerbie in Scotland killed 270 people. Libyan Abdel Basset al-Meghrahi, who always denied involvement in downing the jet, was convicted of the bombing. He was released from jail in 2009 amid huge controversy in Britain and died of cancer in May.

Most but not all of the compensation was paid out by Libya on condition that U.N. sanctions against it were cancelled and U.S. trade sanctions against it lifted.

The judge said the two men's action was a crime because "the compensation was a waste of public money especially when there was no guarantee the charges in the Lockerbie case would be dropped if the compensation was made".

The judge adjourned the men's trial until October 15 after Mustafa Kishlaf, the defense lawyer, said he needed access to certain files and more time to study the case.

On Sunday, war-time interim Justice Minister Mohammed Al-Alagy told reporters that the current trials of Gaddafi-era officials were "invalid" because the prosecutor general's office was not following the necessary legal steps.

Under Libyan law, the Indictment Chamber reviews cases and then refers them to the appropriate court. But Alagy said prosecutors were bypassing this body and demanded they review their procedures and the legality of those held in custody.

Buzeid Dorda, a former intelligence chief and the first former senior official from the Gaddafi era to be put on trial in Libya, said in July he had been denied the right to meet privately with a lawyer and had been subjected to illegal interrogations during his 10 months in detention.

His trial, which began on June 5, has been adjourned several times since for procedural reasons.

[A report on the Libyan Mathaba website contains the following:]

The Tripoli Appeals Court today Monday postponed the trial of senior officials of the derailed Jamahiriya to consider the issue of the defendants Mohammed Abu El-Gassem Yusuf al-Zwai, Secretary of the General People's Congress of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and Abdulati Ibrahim Muhammad al-Obeidi, Secretary of External Communications at the Congress until the 15th October at the request of their lawyers.

This was followed by the trial judge citing charges against the two accused, by the public prosecutor for first in 2004 as public officials for harming public money by granting compensation to the families of the victims of the Pan Am flight 103 "Lockerbie" case, of over two thousand seven hundred million dollars (2.7 billion),  exceeded the ceiling granted to them in a weak and fake case, since Libya was not responsible.

The second charge concerned treason of the suspects in taking part in negotiations with the lawyers of the families of the victims and agreeing to pay the compensation in exchange for the lifting of the unjust sanctions imposed upon Libya, instead of demanding compensation for those sanctions, which is still outstanding, and to remove Libya from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, while knowing that lawyers are not authorised to negotiate the conditions mentioned above by the US administration, which resulted in harm to the public money as applicable in the articles 2/9 of Law No. 2 of 1979 on economic crimes and articles 183 and 76 of the Penal Code.

Both the accused during the hearing rejected charges brought against them by the trial judge, and asked their defense counsel for for the copies of some papers and documents of the court with a request for the release of those documents, which was met by an objection by the prosecution. The court decided in its second public meeting today to defer consideration of the charges at the request of the defendants to give them more time so as to enable the defense lawers to interview their clients in accordance with legal procedures applicable and to see all documents permitted.

[Further information regarding the Lockerbie role of Obeidi can be found on this blog here; of Zwai here; and of Dorda here.]

Libya's Lockerbie compensation proposal

There have recently been a series of press reports about a Libyan proposal to resolve outstanding compensation issues regarding the La Belle disco bombing and the destruction of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie and UTA 772 over Niger. Here, reproduced from Mathaba.Net, is Patrick Haseldine's perceptive commentary:

'It is hardly surprising that details have not been revealed about the 'comprehensive settlement agreement' which Libya has proposed to resolve the question of compensation for the terrorist bombings of Berlin's La Belle discotheque in April 1986, Pan Am Flight 103 at Lockerbie in December 1988 and UTA Flight 772 over Niger, West Africa, in September 1989.

Libya has never admitted responsibility for the La Belle attack. Nonetheless, in August 2004, the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations (GIFCA) agreed with lawyers representing the German victims a final compensation figure of $35 million. US victims were presumably excluded from this agreement because of the USAF retaliatory air raid on Tripoli in June 1986, in which Muammar al-Gaddafi's adopted daughter Hannah was among dozens of casualties.

On August 15, 2003, Libya's UN ambassador, Ahmed Own, submitted a letter to the UN Security Council formally accepting "responsibility for the actions of its officials" in relation to both aircraft bombings. The Libyan government offered $2.7 billion compensation to relatives of the 270 Lockerbie bombing victims and proceeded to pay each family $8 million (from which legal fees of about $2.5 million were deducted). As a result, the United Nations cancelled the sanctions that had been suspended four years earlier, and US trade sanctions were lifted. A further $2 million would have gone to each family had the US State Department removed Libya from its list of states regarded as supporting international terrorism, but as this did not happen before the deadline set by Libya, the Libyan Central Bank withdrew the remaining $540 million in April 2005 from the escrow account in Switzerland through which the earlier $2.16 billion compensation for the victims' families had been paid. A civil action against Libya continues on behalf of Pan Am, which went bankrupt partly as a result of the Lockerbie attack. The airline is seeking $4.5 billion for the loss of the aircraft and the effect on the airline's business.

In January 2004, the Libyan leader's son Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi signed an agreement on behalf of GIFCA with French relatives' group "Les familles du DC-10 d'UTA en colère" offering a compensation payment of $170 million, or $1 million for each of the 170 UTA victims. By May 2007, it was reported that 95% of this compensation money had been distributed. However, the families of the seven American victims refused to accept their $1 million awards and are pursuing the Libyan government through a federal court in Washington. On September 19, 2006, the court was asked to rule that the Libyan government and six of its agents were guilty of the September 19, 1989 destruction of UTA Flight 772. Damages of more than $2 billion were claimed for the loss of life and the destruction of the DC-10 jet. In April 2007, D.C. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy found Libya directly responsible for the bombing and presided over a three day bench trial from August 13 to August 15, 2007. On January 15, 2008 Judge Kennedy issued an order awarding $6 billion in damages to the families and owners of the airliner. Libya has appealed this decision.

There are, however, strong reasons for believing that Libya was "fitted up" for these two aircraft bombings. According to French investigative journalist, Pierre Péan, the FBI conspired to incriminate Libya for the sabotage of both Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772. Péan wrote an article published in 'Le Monde Diplomatique' in March 2001, just after the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial had ended with the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi on the strength of just one piece of hard evidence: a tiny fragment of a timing device manufactured by the Swiss firm Mebo.

Two years earlier, six Libyans were tried 'in absentia' and convicted in 1999 by a Paris court for the UTA Flight 772 bombing. Péan claimed there was something wrong:

"It is striking to witness the similarity of the discoveries, by the FBI, of the scientific proof of the two aircraft that were sabotaged: the Pan Am Boeing 747 and the UTA DC-10. Among the thousands or rather tens of thousands of pieces of debris collected near the crash sites, just one PCB fragment was found in each case, which carried enough information to allow its identification: Mebo for the Boeing 747 and "TY" (from Taiwan) for the DC-10."

Péan went on to accuse judge Jean-Louis Bruguière of ignoring the results of an analysis by Claude Colisti of the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire (DCPJ) – one of the world's foremost explosives experts – that the "TY" timer fragment had no trace of explosives residue, and could not therefore have been connected to the bomb that destroyed UTA Flight 772. Furthermore, neither a forensic inquiry by the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) nor an examination by the scientific laboratory of the Préfecture de Police (PP) could make any connection between the timer fragment and the bomb. According to Péan, judge Bruguière had therefore taken at face value the word of an FBI political operative (Thomas Thurman), who had been discredited in 1997 by the US Inspector-General, Michael Bromwich, and told never again to appear in court as an expert witness, rather than accept the findings of French forensic experts. It was revealed at the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial that the British scientist, Dr Thomas Hayes, had also failed to test the Mebo timer fragment for explosives residue. Such reckless disregard for the integrity of forensic evidence is likely to have the most profound effects upon the Scottish judicial process in relation to Megrahi's second appeal against conviction at the Edinburgh Appeal Court in 2008.

There have been suggestions that, if Megrahi's appeal is successful and his conviction is overturned, Libya could seek to recover the compensation that has already been paid. Interviewed by French newspaper 'Le Figaro' on December 7, 2007, Saif al-Gaddafi insisted that the seven Libyans convicted for the Pan Am Flight 103 and the UTA Flight 772 bombings "are innocent". When asked if Libya would therefore seek reimbursement of the compensation paid to the families of the victims ($2.33 billion in total), Saif al-Gaddafi replied: "I don't know".

Thus, the proposed 'comprehensive settlement agreement' - that Libyan officials discussed in London last week with David Welch of the US State Department - is more likely to involve a refund of compensation to Libya, rather than any further payments by Libya.'

Here is an article on the compensation issue from The Wall Street Journal of 2 April 2008.

Libya minister says Lockerbie case is 'closed'

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph. It reads as follows:]

The new Libyan government has said that in its eyes the Lockerbie affair is a closed case and that now is not the time to dwell on the "past".

"The matter was settled with the Gaddafi regime. I am trying to work on the current situation rather than dig into the past," said Salah al-Marghani, the justice minister.

Hameda al-Magery, his deputy, said: "Britain and America are asking us to reopen this file. But this is something of the past. This is over. We want to move forward to build a new future and not to look back at Gaddafi's black history. This case was closed and both UK and US governments agreed to this. They had their compensation."

The development comes as British police conduct inquiries in Libya for the first time in an attempt to restart the investigation into the 1988 bombing that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland, killing 270 people.

David Cameron said last month he was "delighted" that detectives from Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary were going to the Libyan capital. The American government has also shown renewed interest in the case. Senior officials in the Libyan government have told The Daily Telegraph that they had been receiving regular visits from US diplomats.

One official said that the diplomats had sought permission to restart the Lockerbie investigation "from scratch". But these ambitions are likely to be frustrated by the lack of desire on the part of the Libyan authorities to reopen old wounds.

In 2003 the Libyan government paid $2.16 billion (£1.43 billion) in compensation to the families of the Lockerbie victims [RB: Most other sources give the figure as $2.7 billion], and Ahmed Own, Libya's then ambassador to the United Nations, submitted a letter to the Security Council formally accepting "responsibility for the actions of its officials" over the Lockerbie bombing.

The settlement came as part of an exchange for the removal of UN sanctions.

Today, the Libyan government is reticent about the reopening of the case, a position that comes from a fear that Britain and the US will use any new investigation as a way to demand further financial compensation, though officials admit this issue has not yet been broached.

A well-placed Libyan official said: "The Americans want to sue our government directly over Lockerbie. But this case has been closed and Americans had their compensation on that. We know they want more money from Libya and that is why we are being very careful."

Only one person has been convicted for the Lockerbie bombing. In 2001, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for the attack. In August 2009, the Scottish government released him on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Al-Megrahi proclaimed that he was innocent up to his death in May 2012.

Although Gaddafi accepted responsibility for the actions of his officials, he claimed he was not guilty of ordering the attack.

The man who may hold further answers to Lockerbie is Abdullah Senussi, a former Libyan intelligence chief now in a Tripoli jail. 

Britain and America, as part of separate inquiries, are both likely to want access to the man often called the "black box" of Libya's dictatorship.

When asked if Lockerbie investigators would be given access to Mr Senussi, Mr Marghani said that Libya and Britain had a "good relationship", but that "it is all legal issues, when it comes to investigations and police and courts you don't just walk in and start investigating things".

Other government officials have privately said that there was "no way" they would be allowed to speak directly to Mr Senussi.  They added that it was a matter of "national pride" and showing Libya's prowess as a sovereign state that they should not bow quickly to foreign demands.

Mr Marghani said: "Facts are important, so if there are any facts that someone wants to tell us about we will listen."

Mr Magery, added: "If they want to reopen the case, they have to agree to do it properly. For example, they have to promise not to ask for more compensation."

Libya's government also faces pressure from its own people not to reopen the case. The payment of such a huge settlement at a time when many believed there was not conclusive evidence that Libya was responsible for the terrorist attack caused a public outpouring of anger.

The transfer of the financial settlement is one of the charges listed against at least two former regime officials who are now in jail accused of "wasting public funds".

"Even if the government did want to open it they would face opposition from the local people. There would be protests in the streets," said one official in the Libyan Supreme Court.

[A shorter report in The Independent can be read here and one from the Daily Mail here.]

$2.7 billion Lockerbie settlement reached

[This is the headline over a report published on Aljazeera’s English language website on this date in 2003. It reads as follows:]

Libya has signed a deal with the families of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which Tripoli will shell out $2.7 billion in compensation.

Under the accord, Tripoli will pay each of the families $10 million in instalments, based on the lifting of United Nations and United States sanctions, said lawyers on Thursday.

Libya will also be removed from Washington’s list of nations which allegedly support “terrorism”.

Representatives of British families whose relatives were killed in the Pan Am flight 103 disaster over the Scottish town of Lockerbie that left 270 people dead, said the deal was “purely financial” and doubted the money would be paid.

“This is a financial deal for Libya. This is all Libya cares about, to extricate itself from the sanctions and re-enter the international, in particular US, market,” claimed Mark Zaid, a US lawyer for 50 of the families.

In 2001, Scottish court Camp Zeist, set up in the Netherlands, convicted Abd al-Basset Ali al-Megrahi, one of two Libyan agents charged with the bombing, and sentenced him to life in prison.

After signing the accord on Wednesday, family lawyers said they expected the compensation to be deposited with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) soon, and that Libya would be sending its letter accepting responsibility to the UN Security Council.

Diplomatic sources said on Tuesday that Libya had agreed to send a letter to the Security Council, either by Thursday or Friday, admitting it was behind the attack. [RB: Libya, of course, never did admit it was behind the attack: it accepted "responsibility for the acts of its citizens".]

The first $4 millions are expected to be paid to the victims’ families when world body sanctions against Tripoli are lifted, following its acceptance of responsibility.

The embargo was suspended but not llifted after Libya handed over the two former Libyan intelligence agents in the case.

Lifting UN sanctions will pave the way for talks between Washington and Tripoli about the lifting of separate US sanctions.

A further $4 million would be delivered to each family once US sanctions are lifted and the final $2 million would be handed over if Libya is removed from the US list of states allegedly supporting “terrorism”.

What Lockerbie meant for Libyans

[This is the headline over an article by Owen Schalk just published in the July/August 2025 issue of the Scottish Left Review. The following are excerpts:]

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit exploded over the rural Scottish town of Lockerbie, raining hellfire on the community’s inhabitants. Eleven people were killed by falling debris. All 259 of the plane’s occupants died.

The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom pointed the finger at Libya. In 1992, the United Nations Security Council imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Libya over the bombing, including an air embargo, an arms embargo, and a ban on the sale of oil equipment to the country. In 1996, the US Congress tightened sanctions by passing the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act. These sanctions deprived the Jamahiriya of billions in revenue and contributed to the Libyan leadership’s ill-fated decision to “open up” economically to the West in the early 2000s.

37 years after the Lockerbie bombing, two TV shows aired in Britain: Lockerbie: A Search for the Truth (Sky Studios) and The Bombing of Pan Am 103 (BBC). The production of two TV series about Lockerbie almost four decades after the bombing shows the continued public interest in the case’s many ins, outs, and inconsistencies. Despite this, the retrospectives around Lockerbie leave out one important piece of the story: the Libyans themselves, namely, how they experienced the economic sanctions that resulted from the Lockerbie bombing.

The bombing and the trial

Initial investigations into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 implicated members of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), based in Syria. The group had apparently executed the bombing on behalf of the Iranian government, which sought revenge for the destruction of Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian airbus shot down by the USS Vincennes on July 3, 1988. 290 civilians died in the US warship’s attack.

On November 13, 1991, the Lockerbie investigation abruptly shifted focus from the PFLP-GC/Iran to the Libyan government. Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing of Pan Am 103, recounted his shock at the sudden turn of events: “There were hints from various sources of surprises to come, but nothing has prepared me for this. Today Iran is forgotten; it’s all about Libya.”

An “official story” was provided to the public: the bombing was revenge for the Reagan administration’s assassination attempt against Muammar Qadhafi in 1986, a US attack that had killed dozens of civilians and the Libyan leader’s infant daughter Hana.

According to the main counternarrative of the Lockerbie bombing, the US and UK decided to shift blame for the attack to Libya because Libya, unlike Iran, was more vulnerable to destabilization and less likely to retaliate.

The Libyan government maintained its innocence. After years of diplomatic wrangling, a trial was held for the accused in the Hague. Two Libyans went to trial: Lamin Khalifah Fhimah and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Fhimah was acquitted. Circumstances surrounding the trial remain highly questionable.

The Lockerbie case is a window, albeit a cloudy one, into the tense relationship between the West and Qadhafi’s Libya. Readers in the West have a general awareness about what the case meant to the US and the UK. However, they have little knowledge of what Lockerbie meant for Libyans themselves.

The sanctions period

In Libya, the Lockerbie sanctions resulted in constricted state revenues, which meant unpaid salaries, diminishing subsidies, and goods shortages. Inflation rose, public infrastructure decayed, while a growing number of smugglers and black marketeers sought to resell subsidized goods at higher prices in neighbouring countries. Corruption became increasingly normalized, a system of “favours” and “bribes” running through the public administration, damaging Libyans’ confidence in their socialist-oriented political system. As Matteo Capasso writes, the process of egalitarian development that characterized the early Jamahiriya was “abandoned in the 1990s. The structure of the dominant class started to change, the effectiveness of the newly democratic structures decreased and this affected the entire political edifice of al-Jamahiriyah, leading to the dramatic increase of socio-economic inequalities.”  

Estimates have been made regarding Libyan economic losses from the Lockerbie sanctions. One found that between 1992 and 1999, “the oil sector lost between $18 billion and $33 billion both as lost opportunities and lost revenue.” Meanwhile, $8 billion in overseas assets were frozen, “denying [Libya] the cash needed to buy all kinds of equipment, expertise, machinery, food and medicine.”

A former Libyan deputy foreign minister recalled that “steps were taken” by the Libyan government to compile data on economic losses. One Qadhafi-era minister said the Lockerbie losses file contained “everything including the number of deaths” caused by the sanctions. Some of these deaths resulted from a lack of medical care, which forced Libyans to take tortuous routes abroad for treatment. “Because of the sanctions,” writes Libyan academic Mustafa Fetouri, “people wishing to leave Libya had to drive to Djerba in Tunisia for example and take a flight from there.”

Libya’s Lockerbie losses file was destroyed during the 2011 NATO war. Fetouri estimates that the sanctions cost Libya nearly $100 billion. These losses hit the oil sector, aviation, healthcare, agriculture, and industry, and caused thousands of deaths. The daily price of food rose by an estimated 40 percent and the cost of medicine rose by 30 percent (though most medicines were free). In 2003, the Libyan government paid another $2.7 billion in compensation as part of the agreement to have the sanctions lifted.

In the context of massive economic losses caused by the Lockerbie sanctions, many in the Libyan leadership, including Muammar Qadhafi himself, became sympathetic to the idea of economic opening to the West. They believed such an opening would appease the imperialist powers while giving an economic boost to the Jamahiriya, thereby stabilizing the Libyan political system. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The failure of “opening up”

Libya’s “opening up” was a disastrous failure riven by internal tensions and external interventions, both overt and covert, by the US government. Unlike China’s reform and opening up after 1978, Libya’s was the result of economic strain imposed from the outside, namely, the Lockerbie sanctions and destabilizing interventions from imperialist powers. For an export-dependent, import-reliant country like Libya, these interventions had a wide-ranging impact. The liberalizing reforms would not have happened without the above factors. The sanctions in particular devastated Libya’s economy, hindered Libya’s revolutionary momentum, and set the bounds for internal debate on the Jamahiriya’s economic policy. In order to reach détente with the West and encourage foreign investment, Libya sacrificed its nuclear program and ended support for revolutionary activities abroad. The sanctions were lifted in the early 2000s.

Qadhafi and his allies viewed opening up as a means of encouraging foreign investment in the oil sector, while retaining majority state control, in order to strengthen the economy and thereby stabilize the Jamahiriya political system. Not all agreed with this approach. The reformists – including the Western-trained Mahmoud Jibril and Shukri Ghanem – sought wide-ranging privatizations that would undermine the leading role of the state. For his part, Ghanem declared the need to “change the thinking, the mentality and the culture of the [Libyan] people,” describing the Libyan mindset as “their general feeling that the state is their father and it is their guarantor that has to pay everything for them and provide them with housing, treatment, work and everything else.” In the context of desperation over massive economic losses, individuals like Ghanem were empowered within Libyan power structures.

The US government funded opposition civil society and established contacts with the reformist camp, whose economic policies would give US companies greater access to Libyan labour and resources. Persistent fissures between the revolutionary and reformist camps in the leadership weakened the Libyan state. When protests over housing policy in early 2011 avalanched into a NATO-backed revolution, prominent reformists including Jibril and Mustafa Abdul Jalil defected to the increasingly Islamist-led opposition. (,,,)

Lockerbie sanctions and the fall of the Jamahiriya

The Lockerbie sanctions cost Libya billions of dollars, and they led the Jamahiriya’s leadership to make security concessions to the West and liberalize the economy in order to encourage foreign investment. Various factions in the leadership had conflicting views on how far this liberalization should go, and in the context of continued Western interference in Libya, these divisions proved fatal. Indeed, the sanctions-imposed liberalization spelled the end of the Jamahiriya, leading directly to various wars that have caused thousands of deaths, impoverished hundreds of thousands and led hundreds of thousands more to flee the country.

The above reality cannot be ignored in retrospectives on the Lockerbie bombing. The horror of subsequent tragedies in Libya (the civil war, the open-air slave markets, the Derna floods) may divert attention from Libyans’ experience of the 1990s, but one should remember the steps by which Libya reached its current situation of state collapse and internal conflict. The Lockerbie sanctions – which, it should be recalled, were imposed following dubious legal proceedings – had a significant impact on straining the Libyan economy, which led directly to “opening up” and the fall of the Jamahiriya.

This is what Lockerbie means to Libyans. It should be what Lockerbie means to people in the West too.

Court finds Obeidi and Zway not guilty; Attorney General to appeal

[This is the headline over a report published late yesterday on the website of the Libya Herald.  It reads as follows:]

Qaddafi regime Foreign Minister Abdulati Al-Obeidi and Mohamed Al-Zway, the former secretary of the General People’s Congress, were found not guilty by a Tripoli court today. However, the Attorney General says he is appealing against the decisions and has ordered the two men to be returned to prison pending the appeal.

The verdict is seen as important because it shows the impartiality and independence of the Libya courts at a time when many voices outside the country claim that a fair trial is impossible in Libya, in particular in the case of Saif Al-Islam and Abdullah Senussi. The impossibility of a fair trial is one of the main planks of the International Criminal Court’s demand that Libya hand over both men to it.

Obeidi and Zway were first arrested in July 2011. Obeidi had served as Prime Minister from 1977 to 1979, then as nominal head of state from 1979 to 1981 and finally as Qaddafi’s last Foreign Minister after Musa Kusa fled in March 2011.

Zway, a close friend of Qaddafi from schooldays in Sebha, was Libya’s ambassador to the UK. In 2010 was chosen by the dictator to be Secretary-General of his General People’s Congress.

Their trial opened on 10 September last year.  They were accused of poor performance of their duties while in office and of maladministration, specifically wasting of public funds in respect of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The prosecution claimed that it was wrong to organise a compensation deal of $2.7 billion to the victims’ families in return for having Libya removed from the list of the states sponsoring terrorism.

It also alleged that Obeidi and Zway had paid out double the amount originally planned – a charge at variance with claims by others linked to the compensation plan that the $2.7 billiion was itself never fully paid.

At the opening of the case, the judge said that the deal “was a waste of public money especially when there was no guarantee the charges in the Lockerbie case would be dropped if the compensation was made”.

Just before their trial, the former Justice Minister Mohamed Allagi who is president of Libya’s National Council for Civil Liberties and Human Rights, claimed that the trial and those of other Qaddafi officials were “invalid” because the law was not being properly implemented.

The charges against Zway and Obeidi surprised many observers at the time as they implied that the two should have been more effective in serving the Qaddafi regime and that the Lockerbie deal should never have happened.

Both men consistently denied the charges.

Today’s “Not Guilty” verdict was greeted with jubilation from the two men’s families. “We are satisfied that the verdict proves that Libyan justice is transparent and equal,” a nephew of Obeidi was quoted saying at the end of the proceedings. 

[The Herald today contains a report (with a quote from me) on the acquittal.]

Pan Am insurer suing US Government over Lockerbie pay-out

[What follows is a part of a brief report published yesterday on the website of The Insurance Insider:]

Lloyd's run-off vehicle Equitas is suing the US government for $97mn after it prevented insurers from pursuing the Libyan government for its involvement in terrorism attacks, including the Lockerbie bombing.

Lloyd's insurers, alongside US legacy carrier Aviation & General, paid out $55mn in 1988 after the Pan Am plane exploded over the small town in southern Scotland, killing 270 people.

[Part of the background to this story can be found in a 2003 report in the Scottish Daily Record newspaper:]

The Lockerbie bomber is being sued for £400 million by Pan Am's insurers. 

A record civil action will be raised at the Court of Session this week in Edinburgh against ex-Libyan secret agent Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi. 

Insurers acting on behalf of the now-defunct airline want compensation for the money they paid out to the victims of the disaster. 

The case is the biggest single damages action ever lodged in a Scottish court. 

Megrahi's former co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who was acquitted, the Libyan government and Libyan Airlines have also been named in the lawsuit. 

Last week, Megrahi, 51, was told at the High Court in Glasgow he must serve at least 27 years before he can be considered for parole. 

The action at the Court of Session has been tabled by Equitas of London, a subsidiary of Lloyd's of London. 

The legal move comes 15 years after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown to pieces by a bomb, killing 270 people. 

Equitas want to claw back some of the £600 million paid to their families. 

They are also trying to recover money on behalf of creditors of Pan Am, who went bust in 1991. Pan Am were sued by the families of the victims, including the 11 residents killed in Lockerbie. 

Claims were also made by residents whose homes were damaged. 

After the airline folded, power of attorney was transferred to Equitas. 

Equitas who have been pursuing Libya and the bombers since the 1990s have hired Edinburgh legal firm [Shepherd and Wedderburn] to represent them. 

A spokesman for Equitas said: “We are continuing to try and pursue our recoveries and the action in the Court of Session is part of that.'' 

Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi has agreed to pay £1.7 billion compensation to the victims' families after taking responsibility. [RB: The sum was $2.7 billion. The contingency fees of the lawyers representing the families swallowed up around one third of this.]

Equitas hope a win will put pressure on Libya to pay on behalf of the other parties, including Megrahi. 

Yesterday, Dr Iain Scobbie, a lecturer in international law at Glasgow University, said it would be difficult for Equitas to get compensation, even if they win. 

He said: “Under international law, a sovereign state is immune from any action of this kind.'' 

Megrahi's lawyer, Eddie McKechnie, said he could not comment, as he only represents his client on the criminal charge. 

[Another report, from June 2004, can be read here on the website of The Herald. The Court of Session action was settled on 18 February 2005: see Jonathan B Schwartz Dealing with a "rogue state": the Libya precedent, pages 568-69, footnote 92. It appears from an Associated Press news agency report on the website of The Washington Post that the settlement involved a payment in excess of US$31 million.

Given the various successful legal actions taken by Pan Am's insurers against Libya that the above sources specify, it is not immediately clear to me what their present action against the US Government relates to.]

Libyan PM denies Tripoli involved in Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a Reuters news agency report published on this date in 2004. It reads in part:]

Libyan Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem has denied his country's guilt in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people and says Tripoli has only agreed to pay damages to victims in order to "buy peace".

In comments which appear directly to contradict recent more conciliatory moves by Tripoli, Ghanem said Libya had refused to apologise for the attack because that was not part of the deal.

"We reached an agreement in which we feel that we bought peace," he told BBC radio in an interview on Tuesday.

In a deal reached after years of negotiations, Libya last year agreed to pay $2.7 billion (1.4 billion pounds) in compensation for Lockerbie victims -- many of whom were Britons and Americans travelling on Pan Am flight 103 when it was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

In response, United Nations Security Council voted in September to lift sanctions on Libya, first imposed in 1992.

Ghanem said the pressure of years of US and United Nations sanctions against Libya, and a desire to "put the whole case behind us" had forced Libya to agree to compensation.

"After the problems we had faced because of the sanctions ... we thought it was easier for us to buy peace," he said.

Asked whether that meant Libya did not see the compensation payments as an admission of guilt for the bombing, he said: "I agree with that, and that is why I say we bought peace." (...)

Ghanem's comments threaten to sour relations between Tripoli and Britain and the U.S at a time when Libya had been making efforts to reintegrate into the international community.

In a dramatic move last December, Libya promised to abandon plans to develop atomic and other mass destruction weapons.

The British government played a key diplomatic role in securing December's weapons agreement, which has given a huge boost to Libya's efforts to end its international isolation.

Washington has yet to lift economic sanctions, including a ban on travel by US citizens to Libya, but it agreed in January to take "tangible steps" towards improving relations with Libya if it honoured its pledge to give up banned weapons.

Britain has moved faster than the United States to restore ties and British Prime Minister Tony Blair is planning landmark talks with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi later this year.

Ghanem said he did not yet know when Blair's visit would take place, but hoped it would be soon. "I hope that he will be coming -- the sooner, the better -- he will be most welcome here," he said. "I think he will enjoy coming to Libya and he will find friends here."

[A BBC News report on the same matter can be read here.]