Megrahi case review may not provide closure but there are people who might be able to

[This is part of the headline over an article by Kenny MacAskill in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads as follows:]

The Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission’s decision to refer the Megrahi case back to the courts really isn’t a surprise. Issues of concern in the Lockerbie bombing trial include not least the witness payments to Tony Gauci.

That isn’t a criticism of those who presided at the Camp Zeist Trial as that wasn’t known to them. But it’s unacceptable in Scottish trials for a witness to be paid. Moreover, the judges then were caustic in comments about another witness who had been rewarded by the CIA. [RB: It is interesting that Mr MacAskill chooses to focus on the payment to Gauci rather than the (much more important) SCCRC finding that no reasonable trial court could have held on the evidence led at the trial that the case against Megrahi was proved beyond reasonable doubt.]

So back the case goes and while it may resolve some aspects relating to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, I won’t hold my breath that it’ll cast any more light on Lockerbie.

That’s a travesty as since the fall of former Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi both new information and more importantly new witnesses, if not accused, have come to light.

As the regime collapsed, MI6 got the Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa out and back to London where he was debriefed, firstly by them and then by the Americans.

He’s now living an opulent life in Qatar whilst others that he served with rot in jails in Tripoli. They include Gaddafi’s henchman Abdullah Senussi and even the man believed by many to have been the bomber.

They’ll have been spoken to by the Americans if not the British and other bit-part players were also extracted. Will the information they provided be heard and will any of them even be charged?

Sadly, this review will clarify some questions regarding Megrahi, but I very much doubt it’ll provide closure on Lockerbie.

[RB: Kenny MacAskill is clearly sticking to his position that Lockerbie was a Libyan operation, whether or not Abdelbaset Megrahi was wrongfully convicted. His views, originally expressed in his book, have been cogently crticised, not least by John Ashton here and James Robertson here.]

Lockerbie bomber’s conviction may well collapse

[This is the headline over an article by Kenny MacAskill in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]

The Lockerbie saga continues and, as with the assassination of John F Kennedy, conspiracy theories will run for ever. It’s unsurprising that the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) has passed it through the first stage of their process, as Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s conviction is questionable to say the least.

As the SCCRC found on the last occasion when they considered this a decade ago, there are issues to investigate. Not least the evidence of Tony Gauci, a man who it’s since been disclosed received substantial sums of money for his testimony. Of course, it doesn’t mean he was a liar, I’ve heard many say he was just a simple man who tried to help and only later discovered there was a reward available. 

However, given that it’s unprecedented in Scots Law and that the court in the same trial castigated the evidence of a paid CIA informer, it’s hard to see how it can be accepted. If it falls, then the case against Megrahi almost certainly collapses.

That doesn’t mean that those who prosecuted him or convicted him were at fault. In my view, all involved sought to act appropriately in what was an extremely difficult case. Nor does it necessarily follow that the court will exculpate Megrahi as I’ve always he had a peripheral role but wasn’t the bomber. It’s one thing to argue the conviction was unsafe but quite another to say that he had no involvement. 

It’ll also be interesting if it does return to court to see if new evidence is rolled out by the Crown. Since the fall of Gaddafi, the CIA and MI6 have obtained documentation from Libya, as well as locating key witnesses and removing them from the failed state. They’re now available but will they be produced? In particular will Moussa Koussa, Libya’s former Foreign Minister, appear? He defected with the help of MI6 and now lives in Qatar.

Conspiracy theories abound about who perpetrated the Lockerbie bombing, most are absurd though a few have more legitimacy. However, it’s surprising that people still question Libya’s involvement in the atrocity and the reasons are threefold. Firstly, all the evidence points to it. Secondly, Colonel Gaddafi admitted it, stating that they hadn’t planned it but accepting that they’d taken over its delivery. [RB: The only evidence that tenuously supports this claim is an account by Arnaud de Borchgrave of a private conversation with Gaddafi. On no other occasion is he ever reported as having accepted Libyan involvement in Lockerbie.]  He explained that if had they conceived it they wouldn’t have used Malta as the airport to place the fatal case on board, given its known use by Libyans. Thirdly, those who have succeeded Gaddafi in whatever semblance of government that has followed in that country have also accepted culpability, though they blamed it on the former despot’s regime.

Of course, what gives some credence to conspiracy theories is that Libya neither acted alone nor initiated it. As a former senior police officer once told me, using that euphemism from the Iraq war, it was a “coalition of the willing”. And that included Iran who put up a bounty for an American airliner to be bombed, following the downing of their own civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes just months before. It also included the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, which accepted the contract and had been planning an atrocity before being intercepted by German police just weeks prior in possession of Pan Am air tags, timetables and similar bomb-making equipment. Others including Syria would have known or been involved. 

This coalition mirrors the investigation into the atrocity which included not just US and UK law enforcement and security services but many others including the Germans and Israelis. 

Now there are some who persist that Megrahi was just some innocent abroad who happened to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Really? Flying in on a false passport never to be used again, initially denying ever being there and apparently travelling without any luggage. 

The specific evidence against him may be limited but the circumstantial evidence is compelling. He was a senior Libyan intelligence agent – head of security at Libyan Arab airlines. Not only did he carry out covert work for the regime but he was both a member of the Gaddafi clan and married into the family of another senior regime leader. (...)

Some have argued that the bomb was placed aboard at Heathrow but that’s rejected by the evidence though it’s been unhelpful that the Crown have yet to publish the police report into. [RB: The sentence breaks off here, leaving us no wiser about just what police report Mr MacAskill is referring to. Could it possibly be the report on Operation Sandwood?] More compellingly Pan Am went bust as a result of their security failings at Malta and it’s inconceivable that if there were any doubt that wouldn’t have been challenged. Money talks as they say! [RB: The security failings that led to Pan Am going bust were not at Malta Airport. IF the bomb suitcase started from Malta, it went from Luqa to Frankfurt on an Air Malta Flight, NOT a Pan Am flight. Pan Am's security failings were at Frankfurt and/or Heathrow.]

The initial prosecution was also against many more than just Megrahi and his co-accused Fhimah. They included far more senior figures and included the man believed to be the bomb-maker. All requests even by the defence in due course to speak to him were rejected by the Libyans, just as all demands for more senior accused to be handed over were rejected. [RB: This is false. No charges were ever levelled at any time against any Libyans other than Megrahi and Fhimah. No request was ever made by the United Kingdom or the United States at any time for other Libyans to be handed over.]

For a deal had been brokered by the United Nations between the US/UK and Libya that not only would the trial be under Scots Law, though at a neutral venue, but that there would be no regime change. In a nutshell the two accused offered up by Libya were the highest-ranking accused that the Libyan regime was prepared to release and the lowest level that the UK/US were prepared to accept. 

But, there’s more evidence available now and others that can be prosecuted. So rather than looking back at Megrahi’s conviction, maybe it’s time to look at new evidence and at other accused.

[RB: Kenny MacAskill has made most of these points before. They have been comprehensively refuted by James Robertson here and John Ashton here.]

The prisoner transfer débâcle

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in The Guardian on this date in 2007:]

Scotland's justice secretary today labelled as "ludicrous" Westminster's claim that a prisoner exchange agreement with Libya did not cover the Lockerbie bomber.

Kenny MacAskill poured scorn on Downing Street's insistence that a memorandum of understanding signed last week during a trip by Tony Blair to Libya did not apply to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, has protested to Tony Blair over the agreement, which he suggested could lead to the Lockerbie bomber being transferred from Scotland to his homeland.

The SNP leader made an emergency statement in the Holyrood parliament complaining that "at no stage" had he been made aware of a British-Libyan agreement on extradition and prisoner release before it was signed.

The agreement has sparked the first major row between the government and the minority SNP administration in Holyrood.

Mr MacAskill told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland that Westminster's handling of the affair was "at minimum, discourteous to the first minister and the Scottish parliament".

Mr MacAskill continued: "There's no mention of al-Megrahi [in the memorandum] but we have many people in our prisons ... but we have only one Libyan national in our prisons.

"So when we're talking about the transfer of Libyan prisoners they are not secreted in Barlinnie, Saughton, Perth or anywhere else.

"We have only one Libyan national in custody and when we talk about the transfer of prisoners, frankly it is ludicrous to suggest that we are talking in a context other than this major atrocity that was perpetrated on Scottish soil and which was dealt with by a Scottish court and with a sentence provided by Scottish judges." (...)

No 10 denied Megrahi's case was covered by the document, saying: "There is a legal process currently under way in Scotland reviewing this case which is not expected to conclude until later this summer.

"Given that, it is totally wrong to suggest the we have reached any agreement with the Libyan government in this case.

"The memorandum of understanding agreed with the Libyan government last week does not cover this case."

But Mr MacAskill rejected any suggestion that the agreement would only apply to the transfer of al-Qaida suspects.

He said: "We haven't been given clarification [by Downing Street].

"All we've been told is that a memorandum of understanding has been signed.

"Mr al-Megrahi is not specifically excluded. It refers to the transfer of prisoners so this is London's interpretation of it.

"I doubt it very much if it's the interpretation being placed upon it by the government of Libya."

The row comes in the middle of an examination of Megrahi's case by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

The body will decide later this month whether to refer his conviction back to an appeal court.

Mr MacAskill said: "It [the memorandum] is undermining the fabric of the Scottish judicial system that has been independent long before the Scottish parliament was established.

David Mundell, the Tory MP whose Dumfriesshire constituency covers Lockerbie, said he was "appalled" by Mr Blair's handling of the matter.

"Not only has he ridden roughshod over Scotland's parliament and legal system, but his actions threaten to undermine a legal process which took years to put in place and was agreed with the United Nations and international community," he said.

[RB: Here is something previously written by me on this matter:]

It was on [29 May] 2007 that the “deal in the desert” was concluded between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi at a meeting in Sirte. This was embodied in a “memorandum of understanding” that provided, amongst other things, for a prisoner transfer agreement to be drawn up. In later years UK Government ministers, particularly Justice Secretary Jack Straw, sought to argue either (i) that the prisoner transfer element of the deal was not intended to apply to Abdelbaset Megrahi or (ii) that if it was intended to cover him, all parties appreciated that the decision on transfer would be one for the Scottish Government not the UK Government. Here is what I wrote about that on this blog:

According to Jack Straw "the Libyans understood that the discretion in respect of any PTA application rested with the Scottish Executive." This is not so. In meetings that I had with Libyan officials at the highest level shortly after the "deal in the desert" it was abundantly clear that the Libyans believed that the UK Government could order the transfer of Mr Megrahi and that they were prepared to do so. When I told them that the relevant powers rested with the Scottish -- not the UK -- Government, they simply did not believe me. When they eventually realised that I had been correct, their anger and disgust with the UK Government was palpable. As I have said elsewhere:

"The memorandum of understanding regarding prisoner transfer that Tony Blair entered into in the course of the "deal in the desert" in May 2007, and which paved the way for the formal prisoner transfer agreement, was intended by both sides to lead to the rapid return of Mr Megrahi to his homeland. This was the clear understanding of Libyan officials involved in the negotiations and to whom I have spoken.

"It was only after the memorandum of understanding was concluded that [it belatedly sunk in] that the decision on repatriation of this particular prisoner was a matter not for Westminster and Whitehall but for the devolved Scottish Government in Edinburgh, and that government had just come into the hands of the Scottish National Party and so could no longer be expected supinely to follow the UK Labour Government's wishes. That was when the understanding between the UK Government and the Libyan Government started to unravel, to the considerable annoyance and distress of the Libyans, who had been led to believe that repatriation under the PTA was only months away.

“Among the Libyan officials with whom I discussed this matter at the time were Abdulati al-Obeidi, Moussa Koussa and Abdel Rahman Shalgam.”

US lobbied to have Megrahi imprisoned in Libya

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2011.

WikiLeaks Megrahi cables in The Scotsman

[The Scotsman newspaper today runs a series of stories based on WikiLeaks cables covering US anticipation of and reaction to the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi in August 2009. The principal report, headlined Wikileaks: Inside story of Megrahi's return home, contains the following:]

Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi's motive for giving a hero's welcome to freed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is revealed today in secret US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and seen by The Scotsman.

The cables reveal that the regime's handling of the homecoming was heavily influenced by Col Gaddafi's simmering resentment towards the West over the case of six Bulgarian nurses freed from a Libyan jail in 2007.

The nurses had been jailed for life for allegedly infecting 400 Libyan children with the HIV virus. European Union diplomats negotiated their release - but then reneged on a deal that the nurses should serve the rest of their sentences in jail in Bulgaria.

Col Gaddafi's lingering anger at this diplomatic "insult" is revealed in a cable, written by a diplomat, describing a meeting in Tripoli between the colonel and US senator John McCain, shortly before Megrahi's release. The Libyan leader refused to give any guarantees about the tenor of Megrahi's homecoming, the cable reports, despite Mr McCain's warning that a hero's welcome could severely damage Libya's new friendship with the United States.

Col Gaddafi cited the celebrations that met the nurses in Bulgaria after their release. (...)

The US government has criticised The Scotsman for its tie-up with WikiLeaks, saying: "Any unauthorised disclosure of classified material is regrettable as it has the potential to harm individuals as well as efforts to advance foreign policy goals."

But the cables provide valuable new insights into one of the most iconic moments in recent Scottish history. They reveal:

* The United States tried to add conditions to the Scottish terms of Megrahi's release, demanding he be imprisoned for the rest of his life in Libya following his compassionate release.

* Megrahi's homecoming and how to handle it became a tussle within the Libyan regime, between reformers who favoured friendlier ties with the West and hardliners who saw such moves as a weakening of Libya's strongman status.

* Western diplomats who urged a low-key return for Megrahi believed they had an ally in Moussa Koussa, the Libyan foreign minister who subsequently defected to the West shortly after Nato sided by the rebels in the Libyan uprising this spring.

* The triumphant return of Megrahi to Libya was in fact a much lower-key welcome than some hardliners planned, with a crowd of many thousands scaled down to a few hundred at the last minute.

[Further related reports in the same newspaper can be accessed here, as can the cables themselves, including one headed Demarche delivered, in which US diplomats in Tripoli are to be found urging Moussa Koussa to secure that Megrahi is imprisoned in Libya, notwithstanding the fact that his return was under compassionate release, not prisoner transfer. Moussa is reported to have "raised his eyebrows" at this point.] 

A victim of injustice whose trial had been riddled with flawed evidence

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date five years ago:

NYT admits Lockerbie case flaws

[This is the headline over an article published today on the website of Consortiumnews.com.  It reads in part:]

Even in death, Libyan Ali al-Megrahi is dubbed “the Lockerbie bomber,” a depiction that proved useful last year in rallying public support for “regime change” in Libya. But The New York Times now concedes, belatedly, that the case against him was riddled with errors and false testimony, as Robert Parry reports.

From the Now-They-Tell-Us department comes The New York Times obit of Libyan agent Ali al-Megrahi, who was convicted by a special Scottish court for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. After Megrahi’s death from cancer was announced on Sunday, the Times finally acknowledged that his guilt was in serious doubt.

Last year, when the Times and other major US news outlets were manufacturing public consent for a new war against another Middle East “bad guy,” ie Muammar Gaddafi, Megrahi’s guilt was treated as flat fact. Indeed, citation of the Lockerbie bombing became the debate closer, effectively silencing anyone who raised questions about US involvement in another war for “regime change.”

After all, who would “defend” the monsters involved in blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people, including 189 Americans? Again and again, the US-backed military intervention to oust Gaddafi in 2011 was justified by Gaddafi’s presumed authorship of the Lockerbie terrorist attack.

Only a few non-mainstream news outlets, like Consortiumnews.com, bothered to actually review the dubious evidence against Megrahi and raise questions about the judgment of the Scottish court that convicted Megrahi in 2001.

By contrast to those few skeptical articles, The New York Times stoked last year’s war fever by suppressing or ignoring those doubts. For instance, one March 2011 article out of Washington began by stating: “There once was no American institution more hostile to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s’s pariah government than the Central Intelligence Agency, which had lost its deputy Beirut station chief when Libyan intelligence operatives blew up Pan Am Flight 103 above Scotland in 1988.”

Note the lack of doubt or even attribution. A similar certainty prevailed in virtually all other mainstream news reports and commentaries, ranging from the right-wing media to the liberal MSNBC, whose foreign policy correspondent Andrea Mitchell would seal the deal by recalling that Libya had accepted “responsibility” for the bombing.

Gaddafi’s eventual defeat, capture and grisly murder brought no fresh doubts about the certainty of the guilt of Megrahi, who was simply called the “Lockerbie bomber.” Few eyebrows were raised even when British authorities released Libya’s former intelligence chief Moussa Koussa after asking him some Lockerbie questions.

Scotland Yard also apparently failed to notice the dog not barking when the new pro-Western Libyan government took power and released no confirmation that Gaddafi’s government indeed had sponsored the 1988 attack. After Gaddafi’s overthrow and death, the Lockerbie issue just disappeared from the news.

A Surprising Obit

So, readers of The New York Times’ obituary page might have been surprised Monday if they read deep into Megrahi’s obit and discovered this summary of the case:

“The enigmatic Mr Megrahi had been the central figure of the case for decades, reviled as a terrorist but defended by many Libyans, and even some world leaders, as a victim of injustice whose trial, 12 years after the bombing, had been riddled with political overtones, memory gaps and flawed evidence.”

If you read even further, you would find this more detailed examination of the evidence:

“Investigators, while they had no direct proof, believed that the suitcase with the bomb had been fitted with routing tags for baggage handlers, put on a plane at Malta and flown to Frankfurt, where it was loaded onto a Boeing 727 feeder flight that connected to Flight 103 at London, then transferred to the doomed jetliner.

“After a three-year investigation, Mr Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the Libyan airline station manager in Malta, were indicted on mass murder charges in 1991. Libya refused to extradite them, and the United Nations imposed eight years of sanctions that cost Libya $30 billion.  …

“Negotiations led by former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa produced a compromise in 1999: the suspects’ surrender, and a trial by Scottish judges in the Netherlands.

“The trial lasted 85 days. None of the witnesses connected the suspects directly to the bomb. But one, Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothing that forensic experts had linked to the bomb, identified Mr Megrahi as the buyer, although Mr Gauci seemed doubtful and had picked others in photo displays.

“The bomb’s timer was traced to a Zurich manufacturer, Mebo, whose owner, Edwin Bollier, testified that such devices had been sold to Libya. A fragment from the crash site was identified by a Mebo employee, Ulrich Lumpert.

“Neither defendant testified. But a turncoat Libyan agent testified that plastic explosives had been stored in Mr Fhimah’s desk in Malta, that Mr Megrahi had brought a brown suitcase, and that both men were at the Malta airport on the day the bomb was sent on its way.

“On Jan 31, 2001, the three-judge court found Mr Megrahi guilty but acquitted Mr Fhimah. The court called the case circumstantial, the evidence incomplete and some witnesses unreliable, but concluded that ‘there is nothing in the evidence which leaves us with any reasonable doubt as to the guilt’ of Mr Megrahi.

“Much of the evidence was later challenged. It emerged that Mr Gauci had repeatedly failed to identify Mr Megrahi before the trial and had selected him only after seeing his photograph in a magazine and being shown the same photo in court. The date of the clothing sale was also in doubt.

“Investigators said Mr Bollier, whom even the court called ‘untruthful and unreliable,’ had changed his story repeatedly after taking money from Libya, and might have gone to Tripoli just before the attack to fit a timer and bomb into the cassette recorder. The implication that he was a conspirator was never pursued.

“In 2007, Mr Lumpert admitted that he had lied at the trial, stolen a timer and given it to a Lockerbie investigator. Moreover, the fragment he identified was never tested for residue of explosives, although it was the only evidence of possible Libyan involvement.

“The court’s inference that the bomb had been transferred from the Frankfurt feeder flight was also cast into doubt when a Heathrow security guard revealed that Pan Am’s baggage area had been broken into 17 hours before the bombing, a circumstance never explored.

“Hans Köchler, a United Nations observer, called the trial ‘a spectacular miscarriage of justice,’ words echoed by Mr Mandela. Many legal experts and investigative journalists challenged the evidence, calling Mr Megrahi a scapegoat for a Libyan government long identified with terrorism. While denying involvement, Libya paid $2.7 billion to the victims’ families in 2003 in a bid to end years of diplomatic isolation.”

Prosecutorial Misconduct

In other words, the case against Megrahi looks to have been an example of gross prosecutorial misconduct, relying on testimony from perjurers and failing to pursue promising leads (like the possibility that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, not transferred from plane to plane to plane, an unlikely route for a terrorist attack and made even more dubious by the absence of any evidence of an unaccompanied bag being put on those flights).

Also, objective journalists should have noted that Libya’s much-touted acceptance of “responsibility” was simply an effort to get punishing sanctions lifted and that Libya always continued to assert its innocence.

All of the above facts were known in 2011 when the Times and the rest of the mainstream US press corps presented a dramatically different version to the American people. Last year, all these questions and doubts were suppressed in the name of rallying support for “regime change” in Libya.

Victims' families “unduly influencing US policy”

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2011:

Libya: Britain told US not to intervene in Lockerbie bomber release

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Daily Telegraph. It reads in part:]

The British ambassador to the US told America it should not intervene to stop the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish prison, according to leaked diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to the Daily Telegraph.

Nigel Sheinwald told James Steinberg, the US Deputy Secretary of State, that he was "concerned" that the demands of victims' families were unduly influencing US policy.

His comments came during critical negotiations over whether Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the murder of 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103, should be switched to a Libyan jail to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Sir Nigel was Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser between 2003 and 2007 and played a key role, alongside the Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, in bringing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi back into the international fold. He was at Mr Blair's side for the first meeting with Colonel Gaddafi in 2007 that resulted in a substantial BP oil contract. [RB: Sheinwald was at Blair's side throughout the negotiations that resulted in the "deal in the desert".]

The cable, obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to the Daily Telegraph, is dated February 2009. It states: "Sheinwald asked that the US continue to consult with the UK in the possible transfer of ailing Pan Am bomber Abdel-Basset al-Megrahi from the UK to Libya. Specifically, he said HMG supported the discussions this week between UK and US officials to define a common strategy.

"Sheinwald cited concern that the Pan Am victims' families were asking for direct US intervention to stop the transfer. He asked that the United States delay "for a few days" any intervention with the Scottish authorities, who will ultimately decide on the transfer." [RB: At this stage, only repatriation under the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement was in issue. No application for compassionate release was made by Megrahi until several months later.]

He was firmly rebuffed by Deputy Secretary Steinberg. The cable states: "The Deputy said the UK government needed to understand the sensitivities in this case, and noted he was acutely aware of the concerns of Lockerbie victim's groups from his previous time in government."

Mr Megrahi was controversially released on compassionate grounds seven months later after being diagnosed with cancer.

Last night the victim's families were furious that British diplomats actively lobbied to stop the US intervening in Megrahi's release.

Kathleen Flynn, whose son John Patrick died in the bombing, said: "It is disgraceful that the British were complicit in his release. This man was a killer who took 270 innocent lives but was allowed go free and live the life of riley in Tripoli."

Sir Nigel Sheinwald also reportedly gave Gaddafi's son, Saif, help with his PhD thesis. The doctorate awarded him by the London School of Economics was already thought suspect because he followed it with a £1.5 million donation. Mr Sheinwald denied the allegation, saying he met Saif Gaddafi while he was writing his thesis but had not helped him. (...)

Senior Labour Cabinet ministers always denied being involved in any backstairs deals over the release in August 2009, yet a secret Foreign Office memo referred to a "game plan" to facilitate Megrahi's move to Libya.

Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, said in an analysis of the papers: "Once Megrahi had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in September 2008, (government) policy was based upon an assessment that UK interests would be damaged if Megrahi were to die in a UK jail."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We do not comment on leaked documents."

Moussa Koussa appointed Foreign Minister of Libya

[On this date in 2009 Moussa Koussa was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in a ministerial reshuffle announced by the Libyan parliament. What follows is excerpted from a report published on The Telegraph website in March 2011:]

The former Libyan intelligence chief who has defected to Britain has been implicated in the Lockerbie bombing and a number of other atrocities conducted by the regime of Col Muammar Gaddafi.

However, in recent years he has also become an important contact for both MI6 and the CIA as they attempted to rehabilitate the regime, according to sources and leaked US diplomatic cables.

The Daily Telegraph understands that MI6 had discussed his desire to leave Libya in recent days but was not expecting his escape.

Moussa Muhammad Koussa is the man closest to Col Muammar Gaddafi to have defected, arriving in Britain a week after his 62nd birthday.

Western educated, he attended Michigan State University, earning a degree in sociology in 1978 before working in various Libyan embassies across Europe, probably as an intelligence officer.

He was appointed as Libya's Ambassador to Britain in 1980 but soon afterwards he was expelled from the country after claiming, on the steps of the embassy, that the Gaddafi regime had decided the night before to kill two dissidents in Britain, apparently adding: "I approve of this." (...)

Western intelligence agencies have claimed Mr Koussa was involved in the planning of the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie which killed 270 people. (...)

Western intelligence agencies have claimed Mr Koussa was involved in the planning of the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie which killed 270 people.

He has also been accused of complicity in the destruction of a French airliner over Niger in 1989, the bombing of a disco in Germany, and supplying arms to the IRA as Gaddafi’s regime wreaked havoc across the world.

Always involved in secret intelligence, he served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1992 to 1994 and then as the head of the Libyan intelligence agency from 1994 to 2009.

However, a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Mr Koussa led a delegation to London for talks with MI6 and CIA officials.

He went on to become a key figure in the normalisation of relations between Libya, Britain and the US as Libya abandoned its chemical weapons and paid compensation to the victims of their attacks. In that role and as head of Libyan intelligence, he also became well-known to his counterparts.

He was also central to securing the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, after meeting officials from the government and Scottish executive in October 2008 and January 2009.

US diplomatic cables published by the WikiLeaks website and seen by the Daily Telegraph, reveal that Mr Koussa told the British Ambassador Sir Vincent Fean that the bomber of Flight 103 was a “a very ill man, too ill for anything but a quiet return to his family”, days before he was released.

Mr Koussa also promised that the bomber’s reception would be low key – later admitting it was a “big mistake” when he was given a hero’s welcome.

A communiqué sent in late May 2009, relates how Mr Koussa boasted to a visiting US general of his connections with the CIA.

In another cable from May 2009, a US diplomat said: “Kusa [sic] is one of the most influential figures in the regime and has been a proponent of improved ties with the United States…

“Kusa is the rare Libyan official who embodies a combination of intellectual acumen, operational ability and political weight. Promoting specific areas of cooperation with him is an opportunity to have him cast that message in terms palatable to Libya’s leadership.”