USS Vincennes and IR 655

[On this date in 1988 Iran Air flight 655 was shot down by the USS Vincennes. What follows is taken from an article on the Mail Online website. A great deal more about this shameful event can be found here.]

On July 3, 1988 an Iranian passenger jet was shot down by an American naval warship patrolling the Persian Gulf, killing all on board.

Iran Air flight 655 had been travelling from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Dubai when it was shot down by the USS Vincennes, resulting in the deaths of 290 civilians from six countries, including 66 children.

The USS Vincennes had tracked the plane electronically and warned it to keep away. When it did not the ship fired two surface-to-air missiles at the Airbus A300 B2-203, carrying many Iranians on their way to Mecca.

The attack still has the highest death toll of any aviation incident involving an Airbus A300, and any such incident in the Indian Ocean.

An official inquiry carried out by the US attributed the mistake to human error, saying that the crew had incorrectly identified the plane as a F-14 Tomcat fighter, and that the flight did not identify itself otherwise.

However, the Iranian government has always disputed the American version of events, with many claiming that the attack was purposeful, and a sign that the US can not be trusted in its dealings with the country.

The black box flight recorder on board the Airbus was never found, so it is unknown whether the crew ignored the American warnings via distress frequencies, or did not hear them.

It was only in 1992 that the US officially admitted that the vessel had been in Iranian waters after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats for operating within Iranian territory.

In 1996 the US agreed to pay Iran $61.8 million in compensation for the 248 Iranians killed, plus the cost of the aircraft and legal expenses.

It had already paid a further $40 million to the other countries whose nationals were killed. To date a formal apology has not been issued by the US for the tragedy.

Some believe the Lockerbie bombing, carried out six months later in December 1988, was masterminded by Iranians in revenge for the Airbus tragedy, although a Libyan man was convicted and jailed in 2001.

Going against an informal convention to discontinue flight numbers associated with aviation tragedies, Iran Air continues to use flight number IR655 on the route as a memorial to the victims.

Remembering Iran Air Flight 655

[This is the headline over an article just published on the Iranian FARS News Agency website.  It reads in part:]

On July 3, 1988, an Iranian aircraft registered on the radar screen of the USS Vincennes. The US Navy officers on the bridge identified the approaching aircraft as an Iranian Air Force F-14 Tomcat. Though they would later claim that they tried to reach the aircraft on military and civilian frequencies, they failed to try air traffic control, which would have probably cleared the air. Instead, as the aircraft drew nearer, the Americans fired two guided missiles at their target: a civilian Airbus A300B2, killing 290 civilians, including 66 children, en route to Dubai.

Twenty-five years ago, the Iran-Iraq war was well into its eighth bloody year. Then, as now, Iran was considered the foe; and Iraq, the ally. The US government never published a complete report of the investigation and continued to assert that the crew of the USS Vincennes mistakenly identified the aircraft as a fighter jet and acted in self defense. While it expressed its regrets, the United States failed to condemn what happened and never apologized to the Iranian people. The Iranian government asked several times -- rhetorically -- how a guided missile cruiser, such as the USS Vincennes, equipped with the latest in electronic technology, was unable to distinguish a slowly ascending Airbus from a much smaller fighter jet. After Iran sued the United States in the International Court of Justice, the Americans agreed to pay $61.8 million in compensation to the victims' families. However, it did not escape any Iranian that the United States extracted $1.7 billion, a sum 30 times greater, from Libya as compensation for the victims of the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing, which took place the same year. (...)

In fact, for many Iranians, the shooting down of IR655 reminded them of how defenseless they were in their own region and in their own waters and airspace. The military has capitalized on this. Since the end of war with Iraq, Iran's military leadership operates on the presumption that it is incapable of winning a conventional war against a superpower. It also assumes that should such a conflict occur, Iran should not expect any sympathy or help from the international community. The silence over IR655, though convenient at the time for many US allies, continues to haunt many Iranians. Predictably, it has been used by state media to convince segments of the public that Iran stands to gain little or no justice from engaging with the rest of the world. Many Iranian hardliners continue to use the tragedy to argue for a buildup and a militarily powerful Iran. They also use it to underscore the West's dual standards, should anyone forget.

Although no one speaks of IR655 in the United States, it poses a simple and important question about engagement in Iran to almost anyone who thinks of Iran. What does the United States want? A democratic Iran and a government that capitulates to it, or the one that serves its interests? Will the United States again sacrifice Iranian lives to force the Iranian government to accept a short-term political order?

For those with a longer memory span, it's difficult to dismiss some of these concerns particularly when you recall that the reckless behavior of the USS Vincennes commanding officer earned him the Legion of Merits, "a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements." For many Iranians, this is utterly incomprehensible.

[A typical formulation of the thesis that Pan Am 103 was destroyed in retaliation for the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus can be read here.]

At the start of the trial

[What follows is the text of an article by Steve James which was published on this date in 2000:]

On May 3, the trial began of the two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988.

Abdelbaset Ali Muhammad Al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah are charged with planting a Semtex-packed cassette recorder on board the Boeing 747, which destroyed the plane killing its 259 passengers and crew, as well as 11 Lockerbie residents.

For years it was assumed that no legal proceedings into the Lockerbie tragedy would ever be held, as Libya would be unlikely to give up the accused individuals. That the case has come to court is the outcome of a significant shift in political and economic relations internationally. The European Union (EU) has led efforts to normalise relations with Libya in order to gain access to the country's considerable oil resources.

The accession of Blair's Labour government to office in 1997 provided a means for Britain—concerned that French and Italian oil companies were reaping the benefits of the USA-UK embargo on Libya—to develop its interests in the country. After protracted negotiations with South Africa's Nelson Mandela and UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, Libyan leader Colonel Gadhaffi agreed to hand over Al-Megrahi and Fhimah last year—provided they would not be tried on US or British soil. They have been held in the Netherlands ever since.

Once the suspects were handed over, the EU lifted its sanctions against Libya, and a considerable trade in oil, natural gas, and machinery has opened up, from which the US remains largely excluded. A steady stream of EU ministers have also visited the Libyan capital Tripoli. Only the awkward business of Flight 103 remained to be resolved for business as usual to be resumed.

For the purposes of the trial, Camp Zeist, a former US military base in the Netherlands, was designated as Scottish territory. The proceedings, expected to last many months, are being held in accordance with Scottish law and will involve hearing thousands of witnesses. It is the first time that a British court has sat outside British territory. This arrangement was agreed after protracted negotiations between the Libyan, British, US and Dutch governments, and also involved Scottish legal officials and the families and friends of those killed in the crash. Four Scottish judges, sitting without a jury, are hearing the case. The prosecutor is Scotland's Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd.

The trial began with the indictment against the two men being read out. They are charged with murder, conspiracy to murder, and a breach of the 1982 Aviation Security Act. The two pleaded not guilty and the clerk to the court read out a list of Arabic names of people he said the defence would allege were the real Lockerbie bombers. This included members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) and the Palestine Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) — the two groups originally suspected of the bombing.

The Pan Am jumbo Maid of the Seas blew up on December 21, 1988, shortly after taking off from London's Heathrow airport. The plane disintegrated in mid-air, shedding debris over a wide area. The bulk of the wreckage impacted on and around the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, also killing 11 local residents.

Early investigations into the atrocity by Dumfries and Galloway police pointed to the bomb having been a reprisal for the US navy's shooting down of an Iranian Airbus in the Persian Gulf six months earlier. On July 3, 1988 the US warship the Vincennes was operating within Iranian waters, providing military support for Iraq in the ongoing Iran/Iraq war. During a one-sided battle against a small number of lightly armed Iranian gunboats, the Vincennes fired two missiles at the Airbus, which was on a routine civilian flight. All 290 civilians onboard were killed.

This act of mass murder by the US has never resulted in any court case. The captain and crew of the Vincennes were militarily decorated. Attempts by relatives of the victims to bring legal action against the American government were rejected by the US Supreme Court in 1993. Despite the fact that the vast majority of victims were Iranian, the US paid $2.9 million in compensation only to non-Iranian victims of the shooting.

The Iranian government promised revenge attacks at the time and it is alleged that it reached an agreement with the PFLP[-GC] to this end, which was led by ex-Syrian army captain, Ahmed Jibril and had links with the Syrian government.

Discussion between Dumfries and Galloway police and the West German police revealed that members of the PFLP had already been arrested in West Germany in possession of a bomb similar to the one blown up over Lockerbie. It was also discovered that four other bombs, disguised in cassette players, had been made but were unaccounted for. The suspicion grew that the PFLP had planted the bomb on Flight 103, or arranged for it to be planted, and that it was intended to blow up over Atlantic.

The suitcase containing the explosive device had been loaded at the Frankfurt airport. The bomb's timing mechanism was pressure activated and set to explode four hours after it first reached 8,000 feet. [RB: I have no idea where the author picked up this egregious error.] But Flight 103 was delayed at Heathrow before embarking on its transatlantic journey. As a result, the plane blew up over Lockerbie.

Several warnings were forwarded to American embassies and intelligence staff that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to New York would be attacked in December 1988. US intelligence staff based in Moscow and elsewhere scheduled to fly on Pan Am flights over that period cancelled their seats due to the warning. Many students took advantage of the cheap flights this made available. Flight 103 was only two-thirds full a mere four days before Christmas.

Crash investigators subsequently found more evidence indicating a possible link between the explosion and the PFLP. Clothing found in the case that had contained the bomb was identified as having been bought in Malta. A PFLP associate, Abu Talb, recently returned from Malta was later identified in the shop where the clothes were bought. By 1990, Dumfries and Galloway police announced they were on the brink of arrests. Talb is one of the individuals named by the Libyans' defence team.

Allegations have been made that what happened subsequently points to an attempt by the US government to divert police investigations away from Iran and Syria. According to the British journalist Paul Foot, in March 1989 US President George Bush rang the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to ask her to "cool it" on the Lockerbie case. Foot, in a 1994 review of the book Trail of the Octopus by Donald Goddard and ex-US intelligence agent Lester Coleman, noted that Paul Channon, the British Transport Minister, had briefed journalists that arrests were imminent just hours before Bush's call. Channon was sacked shortly after and no arrests were made. A US commission of inquiry into Lockerbie did not mention the PFLP.

In 1990, a timer fragment was belatedly recovered from the wreckage by US investigators. They identified this as coming from a batch of timers sold by the Swiss makers MEBO to Libya. MEBO subsequently insisted that the timer in question was part of a batch, which had never been electrically connected, sold to the East German secret police, the Stasi.

Goddard and Coleman's book outlined a scenario in which the US government was not only politically responsible for the Lockerbie bomb, vis-à-vis the Vincennes incident and their long-standing domination of the region, but were practically responsible for it having been placed on Flight 103.

According to Coleman, America's Defence Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and Drug Enforcement Agency were all active around the region looking for information on Middle Eastern factions, drug trafficking, and spying on each other. Coleman suggests that the CIA, on the assumption that it contained heroin, identified the bag with the bomb as being safe for transit. Goddard and Coleman suggest that PFLP members, who switched some drugs for the bomb, had infiltrated the drug-running operation.

Coleman and others, including an investigator Juval Aviv employed by the now defunct Pan Am, have subsequently been vilified, framed for petty misdemeanours, and/or generally harassed by the US state.

Coleman's allegations were repeated in a 1994 British TV programme, The Maltese Double Cross, produced by Channel 4. In 1997, the Libyan government showed the Channel 4 film at a hearing it had won before the UN International Court of Justice to protest against the sanctions imposed by the US in 1992. The impact of sanctions on Libya between 1992 and 1995 had been drastic, causing many deaths through lack of medical supplies and costing the country $6 billion in lost agricultural exports alone.

It is alleged that blame for the bombing was pinned on Libya in order to turn attention away from the Iranian regime, which the US was now developing as its ally in the Middle East as a counterweight to Iraq. By the late 1980s, longstanding US plans for a major escalation of their military involvement in the Persian Gulf, the world's leading oil-producing area, were coming to fruition. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 gave the US the pretext it required. The US and NATO were able to assemble a broad coalition of support for the intervention—from the Soviet Union, Europe and most of the bourgeois nationalist regimes in the Middle East.

Libya opposed the bombardment of Iraq and was defined by the US as a "pariah" state. The US had bombed Tripoli in 1986, killing Libyan leader Gadhaffi's daughter, and had severed diplomatic relations with the country, accusing it of sponsoring international terrorism.

The leading statement of the Iran responsibility thesis

[Five years ago today OhmyNews International published a long article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer headed Former Iranian President Blames Tehran for Lockerbie. The following is merely a short excerpt:]

In an interview conducted on May 16 [2008], Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, told me that Tehran, not Libya, had ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103 in revenge for the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes a few months earlier.

On July 3, 1988, the navy cruiser USS Vincennes, also known as "Robocruiser," shot down Iran Air Flight 665 over the Persian Gulf. The civilian airliner was carrying mostly Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca -- 290 died, most Iranians.

According to Bani-Sadr, in the immediate aftermath of the Lockerbie tragedy, [Ali Akbar] Mohtashemi-Pur, the then minister of the interior, acknowledged in an interview that he had contracted Ahmad Jibril, the leader of a Palestinian organization, to bomb an American airliner. The interview was scheduled for publication the following day. Hours before distribution, the newspaper was shutdown.

In the aftermath of the USS Vincennes accident, top figures in the Iranian government held a series of meetings in Beirut with leaders of Ahmed Jibril's terror group, the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command).

"Everybody in US intelligence knew about Iran's intention to bomb an American airliner in response to the downing of one of its own only months earlier. We knew that," former CIA operative Robert Baer explains.

"There was a smoking gun in July '88 that Iran hired Jibril to knock down at least one American plane," Baer told me. And indeed, media have long reported that high-ranking Iranian officials held a meeting with [Hafez] Dalkamoni, a trusted lieutenant of Jibril and a man said to be only known by the CIA as Nabil. In late October '88, Dalkamoni and Ghadanfar, alias Nabil Massoud, were arrested in Frankfurt where they were running an operation to destroy airliners.

"I was assigned to Paris in 1988 running down leads with French police on both Pan Am 103 and UTA [Union des Transports Aeriens] -- I do not know the ultimate judgment on the leads we produced. Or why precisely the case is being reviewed by Scotland. Keep in mind in your research that intelligence and evidence are two separate domains. Often it's the case [that] compartmented intelligence is not shared with the FBI. I do not know what the FBI was given or not given," Baer added.

"There's a world of intercepts and information from sources that is never shared with the FBI. This is because the controller of the information doesn't want to compromise the source. At the CIA, we look at the FBI as trying to get convictions, while intelligence is to get at a proximate truth."

Reacting to the downing of Airbus 665, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur swore that there should be a "rain of blood" in revenge. Mohtashemi had been the Iranian ambassador in Damascus from 1982 to 1985. He is widely believed to have helped to found Hezbollah in Lebanon and had close connections with the terrorist groups of Beirut and the Bekaa Valley.

The National Security Agency intercepted and decoded a communication of Mohtashemi linking Iran to the bombing of Pan Am 103. One intelligence summary, prepared by the US Air Force Intelligence Agency, was requested by lawyers for the bankrupt Pan American Airlines through the Freedom of Information Act.

A classified document prepared for the Multi-National Force during the first Gulf War reads: "Mohtashemi is closely connected with the Al Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist groups. He is actually a long-time friend of Abu Nidal. He has recently paid $10 million in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrorist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus."

Caveat: Former FBI Special Agent Richard Marquise led the Lockerbie investigation. Marquise has told me that the document came from a source of unknown reliability. However, careful reading shows that the source makes a clear difference between rumours and facts.

While parts of the document reads: "Mohtashemi is said to [have done this or that]," the paragraph regarding Pan Am 103 is factual. It reads: "He has recently paid…"

The difference of style cannot be ignored.

Lockerbie, Iran and USS Vincennes

[On this date in 2008, an article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer headed Former Iranian President Blames Tehran for Lockerbie was published by OhmyNews International. The first few paragraphs read as follows:]

In an interview conducted on May 16, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, told me that Tehran, not Libya, had ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103 in revenge for the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes a few months earlier.

On July 3, 1988, the navy cruiser USS Vincennes, also known as "Robocruiser," shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf. The civilian airliner was carrying mostly Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca -- 290 died, most Iranians.

According to Bani-Sadr, in the immediate aftermath of the Lockerbie tragedy, [Ali Akbar] Mohtashami-Pur, the then minister of the interior, acknowledged in an interview that he had contracted Ahmad Jibril, the leader of a Palestinian organization [PFLP-GC], to bomb an American airliner. The interview was scheduled for publication the following day. Hours before distribution, the newspaper was shutdown.

[The remainder of the long and detailed article consists of the fruits of Dr De Braeckeleer’s search for evidence supporting or rebutting Bani-Sadr’s contention. He found quite a lot of the former and not much of the latter. The article merits close attention.]

Accept, apologise, punish the guilty

[An article about the MH17 tragedy published on the website of Newsweek magazine is yet another that makes an analogy to Pan Am 103 and Lockerbie. Unlike most others from American sources, it does refer to IR655 and the USS Vincennes.  The article reads in part:]

Just six months ago Putin’s international standing was at an all-time high as he presided over the Sochi Olympics and released imprisoned oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Pussy Riot group. But it began its precipitous descent with Russia’s occupation of Crimea – and now, Putin’s name and reputation have become inextricably linked to the tragedy of MH17. This is his Lockerbie moment.

“Politics is about ­control of the imaginary – and [MH17] plane has become symbolic of something deeper,” says Mark Galeotti of New York University. “It is becoming very difficult not to regard Putin’s Russia as essentially an aggressive, subversive and destabilising nation after this.”

It didn’t have to be like this. Unlike Muammar Gadaffi, whose agents ­knowingly blew up Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, killing 243 people, Putin didn’t order separatist militiamen near Donetsk to murder civilians. The evidence points to a tragic mistake by ill-trained and ill-disciplined militias to whom Russia rashly supplied deadly surface to air missiles. But the Kremlin didn’t have to own this disaster. Putin could have disowned the Donetsk rebel group responsible, agreed to cooperate with international investigators, call world leaders to share their shock and commitment to bring the guilty to justice.

Instead, he did the opposite. In the days after the tragedy the Kremlin obfuscated the facts, blamed Kiev and facilitated the Donetsk separatists’ hasty cover-up operations – from attempting to hide bodies that had tell-tale shrapnel wounds to hurriedly evacuating the BUK rocket launcher back across the border (a not-so-secret operation snapped by the camera phones of local residents and Kiev’s spies). Putin himself appeared on national television – twice – vaguely blaming the whole incident on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for not making peace with the rebels, a convoluted version of a child’s “he made me do it” argument. As a result of Putin’s KGB-trained instinct to deny everything, the tragedy of MH17 is, in the eyes of much of the world, now seen as Putin’s doing. (...)

But Putin has allowed himself to become a hostage to bad stuff happening, which is just bad politics. Cover-ups rarely work ­, as the US found in the aftermath of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, for instance, or the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf in 1988, just five months before Lockerbie, the smartest way to deal with such disasters is to accept, apologise, punish the guilty. 

[“Accept”: ‘The following day, the Pentagon held a news conference on the incident. After originally having flatly denied Iran's version of the event, saying that it had shot down an F-14 fighter and not a civilian aircraft, the State Department (after a review of the evidence) admitted the downing of Iran Air 655. It was claimed that the plane had "strayed too close to two US Navy warships that were engaged in a battle with Iranian gunboats" and, according to the spokesman, that the "proper defensive action" was taken (in part) because the "suspect aircraft was outside the prescribed commercial air corridor" (Washington Post).

‘That it "strayed" from its normal, scheduled flight path is factually incorrect. And so was the claim that it was heading right for the ship and "descending" toward it — it was ascending. Another "error" was the contention that it took place in international waters (it did not, a fact only later admitted by the government). Incorrect maps were used when Congress was briefed on the incident.’ http://chinamatters.blogspot.ca/2014/07/ukraine-mh-17-and-twilight-of.html

“Apologise”: ‘The US government issued notes of regret for the loss of human lives and in 1996 paid reparations to settle a suit brought in the International Court of Justice regarding the incident, but the United States never released an apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing. George H W Bush, the vice president of the United States at the time commented on the incident during a presidential campaign function (2 Aug 1988): "I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy."’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

“Punish the guilty”: ‘Despite the mistakes made in the downing of the plane, the men of the Vincennes were awarded Combat Action Ribbons for completion of their tours in a combat zone. Lustig, the air-warfare coordinator, received the Navy Commendation Medal. In 1990, The Washington Post listed Lustig's awards as one being for his entire tour from 1984 to 1988 and the other for his actions relating to the surface engagement with Iranian gunboats. In 1990, Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989." The award was given for his service as the commanding officer of the Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989, and the citation made no mention of the downing of Iran Air 655.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655]

Blame Iran, not Libya, for Pan Am Flight 103 bombing

[This is the headline over an article by Arthur F Bethea published today on the website of the Massachusetts newspaper South Coast Today. It reads as follows:]

In a late June press conference, President Obama said that Col Gadhafi, "prior to Osama bin Laden, was responsible for more American deaths than just about anybody on the planet."

Ignoring George Bush's needless invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of more than 4,400 US soldiers, Obama linked Gadhafi and bin Laden to deceive less-informed viewers into thinking that the two are one and the same. They aren't. In 1998, Libya issued the first official Interpol arrest warrant against bin Laden, and Gadhafi condemned 9/11. An enemy of bin Laden, Gadhafi opposes radical Islamic fundamentalism.

Obama was also alluding to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that murdered 189 Americans. This indirect smearing is reminiscent of Bush, who implied falsely (but never directly asserted) that Saddam sponsored 9/11. If Obama wants to accuse Gadhafi of Lockerbie, he should man up and state the charge directly.

Many people assume that Gadhafi is guilty of the Lockerbie bombing because a Libyan intelligence officer (Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi) was eventually convicted. What few Americans know is that the trial's fairness has been convincingly disputed. Key witnesses appear to have been paid for their testimony, evidence may have been fabricated, one crucial witness has admitted to perjury, and the witness who identified Megrahi has had his reliability attacked by the prosecutor who brought the original charges.

A former professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh University, Robert Black, said, "No reasonable tribunal, on the evidence heard at the original trial, should or could have convicted" Megrahi. The conviction was "an absolute disgrace and outrage." Megrahi is "an innocent man."

Some readers will protest, "But Gadhafi paid damages; he must be guilty." Yes, Libya paid more than $2.5 billion in reparations, but, according to one source, sanctions had cost the country $30 billion. Saif al-Islam, Gadhafi's son and former heir apparent, explained, "We wrote a letter to the Security Council saying we are responsible for the acts of our employees," but this "doesn't mean that we did it in fact." "What can you do?" he asked. "Without writing that letter we would not be able to get rid of sanctions."

Compelling evidence implicates Iran in the Lockerbie bombing. Thinking it was about to be attacked by a fighter jet, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airbus in July 1988, killing 290 people, most of them Iranians. Iran's religious dictator, the Ayatollah Khomeini, promised that the skies would rain with American blood. Iran offered a huge reward for revenge; a Palestinian terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, apparently accepted the offer; and 5½ months after the Vincennes disaster, 189 Americans were murdered.

A senior CIA officer in 1988, Robert Baer, worked the case from the start and concluded that Iran sponsored the bombing. According to Baer, now retired from the CIA, financial records indicate that Iran transferred $11 million to the Swiss bank account of the PFLP-GC two days after the bombing. Obviously, if Iran did transfer $11 million to a Palestinian terrorist group two days after the atrocity, this is overwhelming evidence of Iranian involvement. England's Sunday Herald said it saw the "CIA paperwork that supports" Baer's claims.

In 2009, Baer told England's Sunday Mail that the CIA had "hard evidence" of Iranian involvement "almost from the moment the plane exploded."

Another American intelligence organization also linked the bombing to Iran. A September 1989 memo from the Defense Intelligence Agency states: "The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorized and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, Iran's former interior minister."

There are many good reasons to oppose Obama's Libyan adventure but no good ones [to support it], including false revenge for Lockerbie.

The Lockerbie bombing - the ultimate qisas barbarism

[What follows is excerpted from an article by barrister David Wolchover headlined The obscene rationale of random retaliation published today on the Jewish News website:]

Last week mainstream lovers of Israel doubtless watched in horror as crazed Israeli police were televised beating Palestinians with batons as they lay on the ground outside the Al Aqsa mosque.  

No “context” of security considerations could conceivably excuse such brutality, which sadly brought to mind similar footage of so-called “police” attacking demonstrators in that host of countries ruled over by oppressive regimes. The inflammatory effect it will have worked on the latest generation of Palestinian Arabs already poisoned by decades of the big naqba lie is not hard to imagine.

Yet as sickening as it was to observe the mishtara in action, it pales into insignificance compared with the random ambushing and murder of Anglo-Israeli sisters Rina and Maia Dee and their mother, who subsequently succumbed to her injuries.

It has been reported that Hamas “praised” the attack (and the Tel Aviv car attack) as “retaliation” for the Al Aqsa raids. If accurately reported it is noteworthy that Hamas did not cite Israel’s air attacks on Gaza as legitimating the Dee killings.

Presumably the air raids were accepted by Hamas as a response to the rockets launched from Gaza and Lebanon. Those followed the Al Aqsa raids and since the vast majority were neutralised by the Iron Dome shield, it may be deduced that the Dee murders and the Tel Aviv incident were deemed sanctionable as replacement retaliation.

Even according to the Islamic fundamentalist interpretation of Lex Talionis – the principle of tit-for-tat – the murders were of course utterly disproportionate. No one knows what might have been in the mind of the killer or killers but what is significant is that Hamas, as the official embodiment of would-be genocide, sought by praising them to draw an equivalence between non-fatal beating and homicide.

The episode demonstrates once again the haphazard and muddled rationale behind Islamic Fundamentalism, rooted as it is in the quasi-theocratic doctrine of qisas, the sacred duty to exact revenge in like measure. (...)

But qisas does not require vengeance to be directed personally at the supposedly deserving criminal. If you can’t kill that individual, any old soft target will do, provided they are loosely associated with the original perpetrator. It could be regimental colleagues, family members or friends, fellow citizens or members of the same community.

It might even stretch to people only tenuously connected. The ultimate barbarism here is the Lockerbie bombing. On July 4, 1988, an IranAir jet carrying 290 passengers and crew was shot down by the Vincennes, an American guided-missile cruiser patrolling in the Gulf of Iran, with the loss of all on board.

The Vincennes was engaged at the time in a skirmish with Iranian fast patrol boats and the relevant crew members incompetently mistook the jetliner for an Iranian F-14A Tomcat heading in to attack the ship. Yet no timely apology or offer of compensation was forthcoming; instead the Reagan administration’s lame attempts to excuse the disaster only added salt to the wound.

Incensed, Iran embarked on qisas by collaborating with a Palestinian terrorist faction in the detonating of a bomb on PanAm 103 over Lockerbie the following December 21 with the not quite equivalent loss of 270 lives on board.

Quite apart from the fact that the victims were presumptively innocent it mattered not to the Iranian government that among the passengers a great many were not even American citizens and the 11 killed by falling debris were Lockerbie residents.

Things which don't go away

[This is the heading over an article by William Blum on the Global Research website. The section on Pan Am 103 reads as follows:]

The British government recently warned Libya against celebrating the one-year anniversary of Scotland's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan who's the only person ever convicted of the 1988 blowing up of PanAm flight 103 over Scotland, which took the lives of 270 largely Americans and British. Britain's Foreign Office has declared: "On this anniversary we understand the continuing anguish that al-Megrahi's release has caused his victims both in the UK and the US. He was convicted for the worst act of terrorism in British history. Any celebration of al-Megrahi's release would be tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive to the victims' families."

John Brennan, President Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, stated that the United States has "expressed our strong conviction" to Scottish officials that Megrahi should not remain free. Brennan criticized what he termed the "unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision" to allow Megrahi's return to Libya on compassionate grounds on Aug 20, 2009 because he had cancer and was not expected to live more than about three months. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying that the United States "continues to categorically disagree" with Scotland's decision to release Megrahi a year ago. "As we have expressed repeatedly to Scottish authorities, we maintain that Megrahi should serve out the entirety of his sentence in prison in Scotland." The US Senate has called for an investigation and family members of the crash victims have demanded that Megrahi's medical records be released. The Libyan's failure to die as promised has upset many people.

But how many of our wonderful leaders are upset that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi spent eight years in prison despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that he had anything to do with the bombing of flight 103? The Scottish court that convicted him knew he was innocent. To understand that just read their 2001 "Opinion of the Court", or read my analysis of it at killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm.

As to the British government being so upset about Libya celebrating Megrahi's release — keeping in mind that it strongly appears that UK oil deals with Libya played more of a role in his release than his medical condition did — we should remember that in July 1988 an American Navy ship in the Persian Gulf, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane, taking the lives of 290 people; i.e., more than died from flight 103. And while the Iranian people mourned their lost loved ones, the United States celebrated by handing out medals and ribbons to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. The shootdown had another consequence: It inspired Iran to take revenge, which it did in December of that year, financing the operation to blow up PanAm 103 (carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command).

[A similar piece also appears on the Consortium News website.]

Pan Am 103, Iran Air 655 and Christine Grahame MSP

[Christine Grahame MSP has over many years fought staunchly to have the truth about Lockerbie uncovered. Here is just one example taken from an item posted on this blog on this date in 2009:]

An SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament has called for an international inquiry to be established to examine the full circumstances that led to the blowing up of Pan Am 103 in December 1988 and the shooting down of Iranian Flight 655, by the US navy five months before the Lockerbie attack.

Christine Grahame MSP believes that the two incidents are “inextricably linked” and expressed a hope that an internationally backed inquiry would lead to the real perpetrators of both attacks being brought to justice. Ms Grahame said:

“Amongst all the furore surrounding Abdelbaset al Megrahi’s release from prison in August, the wider substantive issues have been left obscured.

“I and many others who have examined this case believe on the evidence we have seen that the murder of 270 people over Lockerbie in December 1988 was a revenge attack sponsored by the Iranians in response to the shooting down of one of their passenger jets, Flight 655, five months earlier by the US navy. That vessel, the USS Vincennes, entered Iranian waters in a deliberately provocative move, before firing a surface to air missile at a schedule passenger flight taking Iranian pilgrims [to] Mecca.

“The US claim that this incident was an ‘accident’ simply does not hold water. It was, like the attack on Pan Am 103 five months later, a crime against humanity that targeted civilians and in the Iranian incident led to the deaths of 290 passengers.

“I am today calling on an international inquiry to be established to consider and examine these two inter-related atrocities and I would hope that ultimately this may lead to some effort being made to bring to justice those responsible.

“I accept that the US failure to be a signatory to the International Court of Criminal Justice makes it unlikely that the officers of the USS Vincennes or their Commander in Chief at the time of the blowing up of Flight 655, will face any due legal process. That will also be the case for the Iranian Government officials who authorised and sponsored the attack on Pan Am 103. Nonetheless such an inquiry would help expose the reality of what took place and the hypocrisy of those who are arguing that justice has been served in the Pan Am 103 attack by the wrongful conviction of Abdelbaset al Megrahi.”

Ms Grahame has today (Monday) lodged a parliamentary motion at the Scottish Parliament which calls on an independent inquiry to be established and urges relevant Scottish public authorities, such as the Crown Office and police, to co-operate fully with it.

Text of parliamentary motion:

International Inquiry, Pan Am 103 and Flight 655

That the Parliament supports the establishment of an international inquiry into the circumstances that led to the blowing up of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 that murdered 270 passengers and urges all relevant Scottish authorities to co-operate with it; further supports that such an inquiry should also consider the relationship of that atrocity to the shooting down of Iranian flight 655 over the Straits of Hormuz five months before by a US warship, which claimed the lives of 290 passengers, and urges the international community to pursue, investigate and bring to justice all those ultimately responsible for these two terrorist attacks, which it considers constitute crimes against humanity.

[RB: The motion appears to have received support only from the following MSPs: Dave Thompson, Bill Wilson, Bob Doris, Bill Kidd, Jamie Hepburn.]