Justice was never done, says top US international law professor

[What follows is excerpted from an article entitled “We Came! We Saw! He Died!”: Reflections On Libya by Professor Francis A Boyle published yesterday on the Countercurrents website:]

After the Bush Senior administration came to power, in late 1991 they opportunistically accused Libya of somehow being behind the 1988 bombing of the Pan American jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. I advised Libya on this matter from the very outset. Indeed, prior thereto I had predicted to Libya that they were going to be used by the United States government as a convenient scapegoat over Lockerbie for geopolitical reasons.

Publicly sensationalizing these allegations, in early 1992 President Bush Senior then mobilized the US Sixth Fleet off the coast of Libya on hostile aerial and naval maneuvers in preparation for yet another military attack exactly as the Reagan administration had done repeatedly throughout the 1980s. I convinced Colonel Qaddafi to let us sue the United States and the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the Lockerbie bombing allegations; to convene an emergency meeting of the World Court; and to request the Court to issue the international equivalent of temporary restraining orders against the United States and the United Kingdom so that they would not attack Libya again as they had done before. After we had filed these two World Court lawsuits, President Bush Senior ordered the Sixth Fleet to stand down. There was no military conflict between the United States and Libya. There was no war. No one died. A tribute to international law, the World Court, and its capacity for the peaceful settlement of international disputes.

Pursuant to our World Court lawsuits, in February of 1998 the International Court of Justice rendered two Judgments against the United States and the United Kingdom that were overwhelmingly in favor of Libya on the technical, jurisdictional and procedural elements involved in these two cases. It was obvious from reading these Judgments that at the end of the day Libya was going to win its World Court lawsuits against the United States and the United Kingdom over the substance of their Lockerbie bombing allegations. These drastically unfavorable World Court Judgments convinced the United States and the United Kingdom to offer a compromise proposal to Libya whereby the two Libyan nationals accused by the US and the UK of perpetrating the Lockerbie bombing would be tried before a Scottish Court sitting in The Hague, the seat of the World Court. Justice was never done. (...)

Colonel Qaddafi ruled Libya like the traditional Arab Shaikh of a Bedouin tribe. Indeed, Libya as a state consisted of an amalgamation of disparate Arab and Tuareg tribes that Qaddafi had melded together into his Jamahiriya system, a state of the masses. The jury is still out on whether or not this now discombobulation of tribes living in Libya can ever be reconstituted as a functioning state after the US/NATO war. Libya stands on the verge of a statehood crack-up, as was the US/NATO intention from the get-go.

A convenient scapegoat over Lockerbie

What follows is an item first posted on this blog on this date two years ago:

"Justice was never done"

[Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Reverse the Qaddafi Revolution is the title of a book by Professor Francis A Boyle which is due to be published on 28 February 2013.  A blurb on the Amazon website reads as follows:]

It took three decades for the United States government -- spanning and working assiduously over five different presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama) -- to overthrow and reverse the 1969 Qaddafi Revolution in order to resubjugate Libya, seize control over its oil fields, and dismantle its Jamahiriya system. This book tells the story of what happened, why it happened, and what was both wrong and illegal with what happened from the perspective of an international law professor and lawyer who tried for over three decades to stop it. Francis Boyle, who served as Qaddafi's lawyer at the World Court, provides a comprehensive history and critique of American foreign policy toward Libya from when the Reagan administration came to power in January of 1981 up to the NATO war on Libya that ultimately achieved the US goal of regime change. He deals with the repeated series of military conflicts and crises between the United States and Libya over the Gulf of Sidra and the fraudulent US claims of Libyan instigation of international terrorism during the eight years of the neoconservative Reagan administration. He reveals the flimsy factual basis and legal machinations behind the Lockerbie bombing allegations against Libya initiated by the Bush administrations I and II. In 2011, under the guise of the UN R2P "responsibility to protect” doctrine newly-contrived to provide legal cover for Western intervention into third world countries, and override the UN Charter commitment to prevention of aggression and state sovereignty, the NATO assault led to 50,000 Libyan casualties and the complete breakdown of law and order. Boyle analyzes and debunks the doctrines of R2P and its immediate predecessor, "humanitarian intervention”, in accordance with the standard recognized criteria of international law. This book provides an excellent case study of the conduct of US foreign policy as it relations to international law.

[An excerpt from the book on the same website reads as follows:]

After the Bush Senior administration came to power, in late 1991 they opportunistically accused Libya of somehow being behind the 1988 bombing of the Pan American jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. I advised Libya on this matter from the very outset. Indeed, prior thereto I had predicted to Libya that they were going to be used by the United States government as a convenient scapegoat over Lockerbie for geopolitical reasons. Publicly sensationalizing these allegations,in early 1992 President Bush Senior then mobilized the US Sixth Fleet off the coast of Libya on hostile aerial and naval maneuvers in preparation for yet another military attack exactly as the Reagan administration had done repeatedly throughout the 1980s. I convinced Colonel Qaddafi to let us sue the United States and the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the Lockerbie bombing allegations; to convene an emergency meeting of the World Court; and to request the Court to issue the international equivalent of temporary restraining orders against the United States and the United Kingdom that they not attack Libya again as they had done before. After we had filed these two World Court lawsuits, President Bush Senior ordered the Sixth Fleet to stand down. There was no military conflict between the United States and Libya. There was no war. No one died. A tribute to international law, the World Court, and their capacity for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Pursuant to our World Court lawsuits, in February of 1998 the International Court of Justice rendered two Judgments against the United States and the United Kingdom that were overwhelmingly in favor of Libya on the technical jurisdictional and procedural elements involved in these two cases. It was obvious from reading these Judgments that at the end of the day Libya was going to win its World Court lawsuits against the United States and the United Kingdom over the substance of their Lockerbie bombing allegations. These drastically unfavorable World Court Judgments convinced the United States and the United Kingdom to offer a compromise proposal to Libya whereby the two Libyan nationals accused by the US and the UK of perpetrating the Lockerbie bombing would be tried before a Scottish Court sitting in The Hague, the seat of the World Court. Justice was never done. This book tells the inside story of why not.

The architect of the cover-up of the Lockerbie bombing

[What follows is the text of a letter from Professor Francis A Boyle published today on the World Socialist Web Site:]

And be sure to add to your list of FBI cover-ups since 9/11/2001 the FBI covering up the DOD/CIA origins of the anthrax attacks in October 2001. See my book Biowarfare and Terrorism (2005). The retiring FBI Director Mueller was also the architect of the cover-up of the Lockerbie bombing, blaming Libya instead of whoever the real culprits were: see my book Destroying Libya and World Order (2013).  I would recommend your readers have a look at Swearingen, FBI Secrets (South End Press). There the author, a retired and decorated FBI agent, repeatedly calls the FBI “an American Gestapo.” The FBI/CIA also put me on all the US government’s terrorist watch lists when I refused to become an informant for them on my Arab and Muslim clients. QED.

Review of Prof F A Boyle's "Destroying Libya and World Order"

[A lengthy review on the website of the Albany Tribune of Professor Francis A Boyle’s recent book Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Reverse the Qaddafi Revolution by the distinguished German political scientist Dr Ludwig Watzal can be read here. Among the Lockerbie references in the review are the following:]

Since the early 1980s, Boyle visited Libya off and on and advised the government on international legal cases. He convinced Gaddafi to sue the United States and the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the Lockerbie bombing allegations. Before the filing of this lawsuit, US President Bush senior ordered the Sixth Fleet off the coast of Libya on hostile maneuvers in preparation of another illegal attack like his predecessor Ronald Reagan did.

After Boyle had filed these two World Court lawsuits, Bush senior ordered the warships to stand down. The author also tried to support Gaddafi during the US/NATO war of 2011 but to no avail. (...)

Boyle’s [critique] of the American foreign policy towards Libya is based on his functionalist, Fullerian, and anti-Hobbesian framework of analysis for international law and organizations. In two chapters, he describes the series of military conflicts and crisis between the US and Gaddafi over the Gulf of Sidra and the allegations of international terrorism during the Reagan presidency. In chapter four follows the description of the alleged Lockerbie bombing allegations and the dispute by the US and the United Kingdom against Libya over it.

Lockerbie: we do know what didn't happen

[In an e-mail to Professor Francis A Boyle, thanking him for a signed copy of his book Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Reverse the Qaddafi Revolution, Dr Jim Swire writes:]

Chapter four closely follows what we have laboriously decoded from amongst the rubbish that we are peddled by the politicians and through the media. I would have greatly valued the opportunity of discussions with you many years ago. (...)

Now your book reinforces the knowledge that we do know what didn't happen, even if we must accept that we do not have much proof of what really did.

How can we hold up our heads as if we were citizens of truth and honesty espousing communities?

It might interest you to know that on one of my trips (in my naivety) to try to persuade Gaddafi to allow his citizens to be tried in what I then believed would be a fair Scottish court, I had a meeting with their chief justice.  He explained that Libya wished to act in conformity with the Montreal Convention [1971] but that they could not, because, would you believe, the West would not provide the evidence which they claimed to have against the two accused. I had already discussed Montreal with Rodney Wallis of ICAO, and could only sympathise with the Chief Justice's position. I accepted a carefully sealed packet from him, which he told me contained details of the Libyan position so that there should be no ambiguity about it in the British Foreign Office.

With some difficulty I persuaded the pilot on the flight back to the UK to radio ahead that I had a sealed package which I wanted to pass to a Foreign Office courier unopened upon landing at Heathrow. No one turned up. I delivered it myself in Whitehall immediately and of course nothing was ever heard about that package again.

Interesting how deceit is actually enacted amongst the humbler citizens who simply seek the truth, poor suckers that we are.

Anyway thank you again for sending the book, it has an honoured place in my Lockerbie library. I am satisfied that you were spot on in your positions over this disgraceful episode. 

[Professor Boyle’s e-mailed reply to Dr Swire contains the following:]

The purpose of my writing that book was to set the record straight from my perspective after the 2011 US/NATO war against Libya.  I owed it to Colonel Ghadafi, Libya, the Libyans, the victims of the Lockerbie Bombing, and their next-of-kin.  If and when Scotland obtains independence in the forthcoming referendum,  maybe we can get to the bottom of what really happened here: (1) who did it; and (2) the cover-up.

[Further references on this blog to Professor Boyle’s views on Lockerbie can be found here.]

Spurious Lockerbie bombing allegations

[What follows is a brief excerpt from an interview with Professor Francis A Boyle published yesterday on the CASMII website:]

q: Do you have any experience of helping other UN member states take legal action against the economic sanctions imposed upon them by the United States and other countries?

a: Well, I advised Colonel Gaddafi to sue the United States and Britain over the spurious Lockerbie bombing allegations at the world court and eventually Colonel Gaddafi was able to work his way out of those sanctions, yes. And at least at the time I was advising him, there was no military attack until 2011 that the United States and NATO decided to stab Colonel Gaddafi in the back. But I’ve done this work with Libya, and also with Bosnia.

[Futher items on this blog about the views on Lockerbie of Professor Boyle can be accessed here.]

You read it here first

The mainstream media are catching up with stories featured on this blog some time ago.  Yesterday it was The Sunday Times with Professor Francis A Boyle’s view, expressed in a forthcoming book, that Libya was not responsible for Lockerbie. Today it is the Daily Mail with a report, based on The New York Times’s profile of French novelist, journalist and editor Gérard de Villiers, that the US intelligence community has always known that Libya was not responsible. These stories were posted on this blog on 26 January and 2 February respectively.

Gadaffi lawyer says Libya probe is futile

[This is the headline over an article (behind the paywall) in today’s edition of The Sunday Times. It picks up on an item posted on this blog over a week ago.  The article (with its eccentric spelling of Gaddafi) reads in part:]

Colonel Gadaffi’s former lawyer has said that a Scottish police visit to Libya to investigate the Lockerbie bombing will yield no credible evidence implicating the country.

David Cameron announced last week that the Libyan government was to allow officers from Dumfries and Galloway to travel to north Africa to seek fresh evidence about Britain’s worst terrorist attack.

Scottish prosecutors believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan agent convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, could not have acted alone.

Investigators are interested in interviewing other Libyan suspects about the atrocity which killed 270 people and in viewing Libyan files relating to the attack.

However, Francis Boyle, a professor of international law who represented Gadaffi at the world court in the 1990s, said he was convinced that Libya was not responsible.

He added that the dictator’s personal files were “blown to hell” during the 2011 uprising which led to Gadaffi’s death in October that year.

Boyle said families of those who died in the 1988 attack stood a better chance of discovering the truth if Cameron ordered Britain’s intelligence agencies and police to release their own files.

Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, said he had warned Gadaffi’s regime that, while Iran was viewed as the prime suspect for the attack, Libya would be used by the American government as “a convenient scapegoat”.

He claims that British files held on the case before British and US investigators switched their focus on Libya “would get closer to what really happened in this terrible tragedy”.

“My client Muammar Gadaffi had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing, he was not involved with it, he did not order it and Libya had nothing to do with it. Megrahi was just a scapegoat,” said Boyle.

“The truth as understood by the British government is in the files of MI5, MI6 and Scotland Yard and I believe that is where the next stage of the investigation should be.

“David Cameron should order up a paper — what evidence did they have, what were their working premises prior to the decision to blame it all on Libya?”

Boyle said he believes Gadaffi’s presidential files were destroyed when his Bab al-Azizia military barracks and compound were reduced to rubble in the uprising. While he believes files from the foreign ministry, security minister and ministry for justice may remain, he also voiced concerns about the authenticity of any files found.

However, news of a likely visit by Scottish police next month was welcomed by Susan Cohen of New Jersey, whose daughter Theodora was killed in the atrocity.

Cohen, who is convinced Libya was to blame, said: “I am encouraged by it. I don’t know how many files monsters like Gadaffi kept but that the police are going is very good.” (...)

[A letter from William Burns in The Scotsman of Monday, 4 February reads as follows:]

The announcement by David Cameron (...) in a joint news conference in Tripoli, with his Libyan counterpart Ali Zeidan, that officers from Dumfries and Galloway constabulary had been granted permission to visit the country and examine all files relating to the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, looks like a thin excuse to try to find a loophole to vindicate bringing to trial Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah.

This new, apparently puppet-regime of the western powers in Libya should be demanding, more appropriately, that officers from Libya visit Scotland to examine all files relating to what was, in the eyes of many, and for all practical purposes, a “show trial” of two innocent Libyans.

It was well documented in the earliest days that the bombing was largely financed by Iran and carried out by Syrians. It was to Britain and America’s advantage to turn a blind eye to Iran’s involvement at the time because Iran sided with the so-called Allies in the Desert Storm offensive against Iraq. On the other hand, Libya’s Colonel Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi, verbally supported Iraq.

However, if the Prime Minister is allowed to use this ploy to pull the final curtain down on the Lockerbie trial, he will be doing a grave disservice to the victims of the bombing and to their families, and not least to the people in Scotland who are fighting to expose the deep-rooted corruption that permeates the Scottish legal system.

"Justice was never done"

[Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Reverse the Qaddafi Revolution is the title of a book by Professor Francis A Boyle which is due to be published on 28 February 2013.  A blurb on the Amazon website reads as follows:]

It took three decades for the United States government -- spanning and working assiduously over five different presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama) -- to overthrow and reverse the 1969 Qaddafi Revolution in order to resubjugate Libya, seize control over its oil fields, and dismantle its Jamahiriya system. This book tells the story of what happened, why it happened, and what was both wrong and illegal with what happened from the perspective of an international law professor and lawyer who tried for over three decades to stop it. Francis Boyle, who served as Qaddafi's lawyer at the World Court, provides a comprehensive history and critique of American foreign policy toward Libya from when the Reagan administration came to power in January of 1981 up to the NATO war on Libya that ultimately achieved the US goal of regime change. He deals with the repeated series of military conflicts and crises between the United States and Libya over the Gulf of Sidra and the fraudulent US claims of Libyan instigation of international terrorism during the eight years of the neoconservative Reagan administration. He reveals the flimsy factual basis and legal machinations behind the Lockerbie bombing allegations against Libya initiated by the Bush administrations I and II. In 2011, under the guise of the UN R2P "responsibility to protect” doctrine newly-contrived to provide legal cover for Western intervention into third world countries, and override the UN Charter commitment to prevention of aggression and state sovereignty, the NATO assault led to 50,000 Libyan casualties and the complete breakdown of law and order. Boyle analyzes and debunks the doctrines of R2P and its immediate predecessor, "humanitarian intervention”, in accordance with the standard recognized criteria of international law. This book provides an excellent case study of the conduct of US foreign policy as it relations to international law.

[An excerpt from the book on the same website reads as follows:]

After the Bush Senior administration came to power, in late 1991 they opportunistically accused Libya of somehow being behind the 1988 bombing of the Pan American jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. I advised Libya on this matter from the very outset. Indeed, prior thereto I had predicted to Libya that they were going to be used by the United States government as a convenient scapegoat over Lockerbie for geopolitical reasons. Publicly sensationalizing these allegations,in early 1992 President Bush Senior then mobilized the US Sixth Fleet off the coast of Libya on hostile aerial and naval maneuvers in preparation for yet another military attack exactly as the Reagan administration had done repeatedly throughout the 1980s. I convinced Colonel Qaddafi to let us sue the United States and the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the Lockerbie bombing allegations; to convene an emergency meeting of the World Court; and to request the Court to issue the international equivalent of temporary restraining orders against the United States and the United Kingdom that they not attack Libya again as they had done before. After we had filed these two World Court lawsuits, President Bush Senior ordered the Sixth Fleet to stand down. There was no military conflict between the United States and Libya. There was no war. No one died. A tribute to international law, the World Court, and their capacity for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Pursuant to our World Court lawsuits, in February of 1998 the International Court of Justice rendered two Judgments against the United States and the United Kingdom that were overwhelmingly in favor of Libya on the technical jurisdictional and procedural elements involved in these two cases. It was obvious from reading these Judgments that at the end of the day Libya was going to win its World Court lawsuits against the United States and the United Kingdom over the substance of their Lockerbie bombing allegations. These drastically unfavorable World Court Judgments convinced the United States and the United Kingdom to offer a compromise proposal to Libya whereby the two Libyan nationals accused by the US and the UK of perpetrating the Lockerbie bombing would be tried before a Scottish Court sitting in The Hague, the seat of the World Court. Justice was never done. This book tells the inside story of why not.

Francis Boyle on diplomacy through legal action

There is an interesting article on The Huffington Post retailing the views of Francis A Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, on the utility of a state's taking action in the World Court where it is threatened with direct military action by the United States and its allies. Professor Boyle refers to the precedent of Libya. The article reads in part:

'Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, proposes that Iran sue the United States, Britain, and Israel in the World Court, seeking the "international equivalent of a temporary restraining order" to compel the U.S. to abandon threats to attack. Boyle notes that threats to attack Iran violate the UN Charter, and that there is a relevant precedent for effective action by the World Court:

'There is a precedent here; [in]1992 ...the Bush Senior administration started to blame Libya for the Lockerbie bombing ... in 1988...President Bush Senior then sent the Sixth Fleet on hostile maneuvers off the coast of Libya, [and] had US jet fighters penetrating into Libyan airspace in order to provoke ... a confrontation...

'..we filed papers with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, on behalf of Libya against the US and the UK, we demanded an emergency hearing of the world court, and a temporary restraining order against the US and the UK, prohibiting the threat and use of force...after we filed the papers, and the court made it clear we were going to get our hearing, President Bush Senior ordered the 6th Fleet to stand down. They ended their hostile military maneuvers off the coast of Libya, the matter was submitted to the ICJ, there were hearings, a lawsuit, a judgment. And eventually that World Court judgment led to a peaceful negotiated solution of the Lockerbie dispute between the US and Britain on one hand and Libya on the other. And today there is normal diplomatic relations between these three countries... I think the same could be done here...

'Furthermore, Professor Boyle notes that the lawsuit itself could force the commencement of real negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, as it did in the Libyan case:

'If the United States government is not prepared to engage in reasonable direct unconditional good faith negotiations with Iran, then my advice is the Iranian government go forward with these lawsuits...if someone isn't going to talk to you, you sue them. And then they have to talk to you. And indeed it was during the course of the World Court lawsuit proceedings with Libya that the proceedings themselves were used to start negotiating a peaceful resolution of that dispute between the lawyers handling the lawsuit, because there were no diplomatic relations at that time between the United States, Britain, and Libya. So, again, the same could happen here...'

The full article can be read here.