Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Lockerbie

[The following are excerpts from an article in today's edition of The Sunday Telegraph:]

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was his father's favourite son. Until the start of the Libyan revolution, he was also feted by the West, as the arch-moderniser who would supposedly guide the oil and gas rich north African country along the path of democracy.

He was influential in his father's decision to give up weapons of mass destruction that brought Libya in from the cold in 2004 and helped to negotiate the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish jail in 2009.

Saif's extensive contacts included the Duke of York, Tony Blair and Lord Mandelson.  (...)

By about 2002, he was becoming a regular visitor to London and within a year is said to have fixed up a meeting between the Libyan regime and MI6 that would lead to Libya's public abandonment of its nuclear and chemical weapons programme, paving the way for Tony Blair to embrace Muammar Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent in March 2004 – the now infamous "deal in the desert". (...)

He was hugely influential in controlling the Libyan Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund with billions of pounds to spend in the UK and elsewhere.

The fund was used as leverage to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

Saif and others let it be known that if al-Megrahi died of cancer in a British jail, then all business deals with the UK would be cancelled. Saif was entrusted with accompanying Megrahi back to Tripoli for a hero's welcome.

[An article written by Saif in The New York Times about this supposed "hero's welcome" can be read here.

A report in The Sunday Times (behind the paywall) contains the following:]

His trial could prove deeply embarrassing if he chooses to reveal details of his once-cosy relations with British politicians including Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary.

Mohammed al-Alagi, Libya’s interim justice minister, said yesterday that Gadaffi will be placed on trial in Libya and faces the death penalty.

With little to lose, Gadaffi may decide from his desert prison in Zintan to spill the beans on business deals and political promises made to the regime over the past decade.

Blair, who was described by Gadaffi Jr as a close personal friend of the family, may face searching questions if Gadaffi goes ahead and reveals the secrets of their deals including oil contracts and the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.

Gadaffi was his father’s point man on the settlement of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which killed 270 people. His detailed knowledge of the negotiations that involved British diplomats and Musa Kusa, his father’s chief of intelligence, could prove explosive. The questions of who knew what, and who did what, have never been answered.(...)

Blair, Prince Andrew, Mandelson and the Rothschild banking family are among those who could be cited by Gadaffi in court.

They were among Establishment figures who courted him in the belief that Libya would pursue a reformist agenda while lucrative business contracts were on the agenda. Among the secrets he could unlock are the machinations that may have gone on under the former Labour government ahead of the release of Megrahi.

Gadaffi Jr greeted Megrahi’s flight from Glasgow to Tripoli when he was freed by the Scottish authorities on “humanitarian” grounds in August 2009. [RB: Saif did not greet the flight.  He was on board it.] Megrahi is still alive even though doctors claimed he would die within three months from cancer.

The release happened after Blair’s notorious “deal in the desert” with Muammar Gadaffi paving the way for multi- million-pound oil contracts with Shell and BP.

Gadaffi Jr claimed that the former prime minister acted as a consultant to the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Blair vehemently denies this. However, he has visited Libya at least six times since leaving office.

Five meetings with Muammar Gadaffi took place in the 14-month period prior to Megrahi’s release. On at least two occasions Blair flew on a private jet paid for by Gadaffi. But he denies influencing the Scottish government’s decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.

Just a week before Megrahi’s release, Mandelson discussed his case with Gadaffi Jr while on holiday at a villa in Corfu owned by the Rothschilds. Mandelson later met Gadaffi at a shooting party at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Rothschild family seat.

[The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (footnotes omitted):]

He was also negotiating with the United States in order to conclude a comprehensive agreement making any further payments for American victims of terror attacks that have been blamed on Libya – such as the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing – conditional upon U.S. payment of compensation for the 40 Libyans killed and 220 injured in the 1986 United States bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. On 14 August 2008, the U.S.-Libya Comprehensive Claims Settlement Agreement was signed in Tripoli. Former British Ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles described the agreement as "a bold step, with political cost for both parties" and wrote an article in the online edition of The Guardian querying whether the agreement is likely to work.

In an August 2008 BBC TV interview, Saif Gaddafi said that Libya had admitted responsibility (but not "guilt") for the Lockerbie bombing simply to get trade sanctions removed. He further admitted that Libya was being "hypocritical" and was "playing on words", but Libya had no other choice on the matter. According to Saif, a letter admitting "responsibility" was the only way to end the economic sanctions imposed on Libya. When asked about the compensation that Libya was paying to the victims' families, he again repeated that Libya was doing so because it had no other choice. He went on to describe the families of the Lockerbie victims as "trading with the blood of their sons and daughters" and being very "greedy": "They were asking for more money and more money and more money".

Interviewed by French newspaper Le Figaro on 7 December 2007, Saif said that the seven Libyans convicted for the Pan Am Flight 103 and the UTA Flight 772 bombings "are innocent". When asked if Libya would therefore seek reimbursement of the compensation paid to the families of the victims (US$2.33 billion), Saif replied: "I don't know." Saif led negotiations with Britain for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Pan Am 103 conspirator.

Man who could hold answers to Lockerbie atrocity found in Qatar

[This is the headline over a report published today on the website of the Birmingham Post.  It reads in part:]

The man who the father of a Midland Lockerbie victim believes could hold crucial answers about the atrocity has been traced to a luxury resort in Qatar.

Musa Kusa is believed to have been an intelligence officer at the time of the 1988 Lockerbie bomb in which 270 people were killed.

He made a high-profile defection to Britain in March and was interviewed by police and Scottish prosecutors investigating the bombing.

He left the country following an EU decision to lift sanctions against him, meaning he no longer faces travel restrictions or an asset freeze. (...)

The Foreign Office said Kusa was a “private individual” who had been interviewed voluntarily.

Dr Jim Swire, from Worcestershire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the bombing, said that if anyone could offer any insight into the “huge questions still unanswered” on Libya’s role in Lockerbie, it would be Mr Kusa.

He said: “When I met Musa Kusa in Libya in 1991 it was clear to me he was the guy who was central to the Gaddafi administration.

“He could tell us just as much as Gaddafi about Lockerbie as he was at the core of the regime.

“He was a very, very key figure and we need answers as to why he was allowed to fly back and any probing over his crimes should be done by the International Criminal Court.”

Pamela Dix, who lost her 35-year-old brother Peter in the atrocity, said she was “incensed” at Mr Kusa being allowed to leave Britain in the first place.

She said: “We cannot turn a politically pragmatic blind eye.

“I do not know what Musa Kusa knows or does not know about Lockerbie but he needs to come back to answer those questions.

“I condemn the attitude of the UK Government in the strongest possible terms. A political hands-off attitude is inappropriate.”

The botched defection of Moussa Koussa

[What follows is from an article by David Ignatius published today on the Washington Post website.]

The botched defection several months ago of Musa Kusa, Libya’s former foreign minister, illustrates the uncertain strategy that has plagued the NATO campaign against Col. Moammar Gaddafi. But even so, the Gaddafi regime is feeling enough pressure to send an emissary to Washington this week to explore a possible negotiated settlement.

Kusa, a prominent member of Gaddafi’s inner circle, fled to Britain on March 30. His departure was initially touted as a major blow to the Libyan regime. But new details suggest it was an ill-planned rush job that has backfired. Kusa left Britain in mid-April and is now under wraps in Doha, Qatar. (...)

The Libya standoff is prompting the new interest in a political settlement. Gaddafi’s intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi, sent an emissary who will meet this week with a senior representative of the Obama administration. The message is that Gaddafi will give up power and retreat into the desert, while technocrats in his regime work with the TNC to form a transitional government. Senussi, widely feared in Libya, would apparently also withdraw from power. The US response couldn’t be learned.

The Kusa defection is a classic case of covert confusion. The Libyan official had originally planned to defect to France. A French intelligence officer is said to have contacted him on March 10 during a meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A French intelligence official met him again on March 29 at the Royal Garden Hotel in Djerba, Tunisia, and pitched him about defecting, promising residency, financial help and legal immunity.

The French plan faltered the next morning after Paris demanded that, as part of the deal, Kusa appear publicly with President Nicolas Sarkozy when he arrived in Paris and denounce Gaddafi. Kusa refused, and initiated frantic contacts with MI6 representatives in London about fleeing there. The British first asked for three days to work out details, but when Kusa said he had to leave immediately, MI6 hammered out the basics in several hours, and the Libyan flew to Farnborough Airport, southwest of London.

Kusa’s escape to Britain got off to a bad start. MI6 officers met him at the airport, but his visa paperwork wasn’t ready for several hours. The British weren’t demanding that Kusa publicly renounce Gaddafi, but they weren’t offering him immunity from prosecution, either, in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and 1984 shooting of a British policewoman. His debriefing at a safe house on the southern coast was rocky, in part because of the media frenzy about his defection — with Kusa reading tabloid headlines such as the Daily Mail’s description of him as Gaddafi’s “Fingernail-Puller-in-Chief.”

When Kusa’s passport was returned to him in mid-April, he promptly left for Qatar, nominally to attend a meeting of the “contact group” opposing Libya. He hasn’t left Doha since. The defection mishaps have been a “laughingstock” back in Libya and undermined hopes of other recruitments, according to one intelligence source.

Moussa Koussa gets UK visa and access to his oil millions

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

Colonel Gaddafi’s terror chief Moussa Koussa was yesterday granted an asylum seeker’s visa to stay in the UK – and full access to the millions he has stashed away in secret bank accounts.

MPs and Lockerbie families condemned the move to allow Libya’s “envoy of death” the right to come and go as he pleases for six months after a request to the Home Office by Foreign Secretary William Hague.

And the decision, ordered by the EU, to lift sanctions on the spy chief’s frozen assets – thought to contain millions from Libya’s booming oil sales – was branded as “astonishing”.

The move is understood to have been proposed by Mr Hague when he met European counterparts on Tuesday in an effort to encourage others to quit Gaddafi’s regime. A Treasury source said: “It sends a powerful signal to other potential defectors that, if they are currently on a list, they could be taken off that list if they do things differently.” But Tory MP Robert Halfon, whose family fled Libya when Gaddafi seized power, said: “I am astonished that the EU has decided to give immunity from sanctions to an alleged war criminal.

“The only place Mr Koussa should be travelling is to the Hague to face prosecution at the international court for war criminals.

“Many British people will be hugely concerned that these privileges are being granted to this man.”

Defending Koussa’s visa, a senior Whitehall source insisted there was “no deal, no immunity”. He added: “Koussa may be a nasty piece of work, but he could be key to Gaddafi’s removal. He needs temporary security here so he will work with us.” The Home Office has given Koussa a “Discretionary Leave to Remain” visa offered to asylum seekers pursuing their case to obtain a legitimate refugee status.

[Compare this with the following excerpt from a report headlined "Musa Kusa in UK snub" in today's edition of The Sun:]

Mad Dog Gaddafi's henchman Musa Kusa is refusing to return to Britain, it was claimed last night.

The tyrant's former spymaster has been handed back his passport and cash.

He was allowed to travel freely to Qatar on Wednesday and no longer has his assets frozen. And last night EU sanctions on him were formally lifted.

But Kusa - who defected from Gaddafi's regime last month - is refusing to quit Qatar in a bid to avoid prosecution over the Lockerbie bombing, say sources.

Kusa, 62, flew to the Arab state for international talks about Libya. Broadcaster Al Arabiya reported that Kusa fears the wrath of the families of the 270 Lockerbie victims who perished in the 1988 outrage.

American Susan Cohen, 72 - whose daughter Theo was on board the doomed flight - said: "I am not surprised. Kusa is an evil, evil man who effectively deserves to be hanged. He should not have been allowed to leave Britain."

The Foreign Office said Kusa is "a free individual who can travel to and from the UK", adding: "He has voluntarily agreed to assist all inquiries."

Gaddafi's former foreign minister to stay in Qatar

[This is the headline over a Deutsche-Presse Agentur news agency report on the Monsters and Critics website. It reads as follows:]

Libya's former foreign minister Musa Kusa has decided to stay in Qatar for the time being due to worries that the relatives of Libyan terror attack victims want him prosecuted, the Al Arabiya broadcaster said Thursday.

Kusa fled to London at the end of March, around six weeks after the start of the uprising against Moamer Gaddafi, and dissociated himself from the Libyan ruler.

It appears he initially thought he could play a role in the new Libya. But most opposition figures distrust him and Western countries are interested in information he could provide as former head of the intelligence service rather than cooperation with him.

After his arrival in London, Kusa was questioned about the bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 that killed 270 people. Gaddafi allegedly ordered the attack. Kusa was not detained.

Kusa's predecessor as foreign minister, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, described him as the 'black box' of the Gaddafi regime.

Britain's decision to allow Kusa to attend a meeting of the Libya Contact Group in Qatar on Wednesday was criticized by some human rights groups and relatives of terror attack victims.

[A report published today on the Sify website reads in part:]

The Libyan rebels have refused to talk to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa at a summit in Qatar, saying he has blood on his hands, having been part of Gaddafi's inner circle.

Koussa, who is accused of being involved in the Lockerbie bombing case, fled to Qatar yesterday for an international summit on Libya to talk to Arab leaders about how to oust Gaddafi.

But a spokesmen for rebels attendingthe meet made it clear that they want nothing to do with the former intelligence chief, who was an integral part of Gaddafi's inner circle until he fled to Britain earlier this month.

"We did not invite him here. He is not part of our delegation," the Daily Mail quoted rebel spokesman Mahmoud Shamman, as saying.

In Benghazi, opposition spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga said talks with Koussa were 'not on the agenda'.

Senior Government sources said he has only been granted a 'time-limited' visa to stay in Britain, meaning he could be gone within six months.

Moussa Koussa and the Scottish police and prosecutors

[The following is from a report in The Independent today:]

Libya's acting foreign minister flew into Athens last night on a mission from Muammar Gaddafi which his Greek government hosts said meant the regime was now seeking an end to the fighting.

Disilllusioned with what he sees as the betrayal by France, Britian and Italy because of the NATO-led military intervention, the Libyan leader may see Greece—with which he has long enjoyed good relations—as a possible diplomatic conduit to the West.

After Abdelati Obeidi met Prime Minister George Papandreou, Mr Obeidi's Greek counterpart, Dimitri Droutsas, said last night: "It seems that the Libyan authorities are seeking a solution." Though there were few details of what, if anything, the regime is proposing, Mr Papandreou has been in touch with Western governments over the past few days. Mr Obeidi is expected to travel on to Malta and Turkey. [RB: An article on the Aljazeera website on the Obeidi mission can be read here.]

Meanwhile, Scottish officials have arrived in London to question Libya's former foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, on what he knows about the Lockerbie bombing. The interview, which may take place today, comes as MPs and families of victims of the attack demand that Mr Koussa should not be granted immunity from prosecution, even if there have been attempts to encourage others in the Gaddafi regime to defect.

Despite reports that Mr Koussa is named in court documents as overseeing Libya's supply of Semtex explosive to the Provisional IRA, British officials will seek to delay any legal moves against him, arguing that the priority is to oust Colonel Gaddafi.

[The other UK media that I have been able to access online go no further than to state that Scottish officials will today discuss with UK Foreign Office officials the possibility of interviewing Moussa Koussa. There is no suggestion that any such interview will take place today or, indeed, any time soon. For example, the report on the BBC News website can be read here; that on the Sky News website can be read here; that in The Scotsman (which is misleadingly headlined) can be read here; and the Press Association news agency report here.

However, the report in the Daily Record contains the following:]

A young Scottish prosecutor is leading efforts to question the high-profile Libyan defector Musa Kusa over the Lockerbie bombing.

Lindsey Miller, head of the Crown Office Serious and Organised Crime Division, has been liaising with families of the Lockerbie victims and wrote to them promising to pursue Gaddafi's former spy chief.

Lawyers and police could start interviewing Kusa today.

Miller, 39, is the senior procurator fiscal heading the investigation into the terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 that killed 270 people.

In an email sent to relatives of the victims after Kusa arrived in Britain, Miller said her staff had notified the Foreign Office that "we wish to interview [Kusa] regarding any information he may have concerning the bombing of Pan Am flight 103."

She added that the bomb probe "remains open and we will pursue all relevant lines of inquiry in conjunction with our US counterparts". [RB: Regrettably, the Scottish police and prosecutors have a very narrow concept of what is "relevant" -- only material that supports the Malta-Frankfurt-Heathrow scenario.]

Representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary are to meet Foreign Office officials today to discuss access to the Libyan foreign minister.

Last night, Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill said: "They'll be seeking to interview him tomorrow.

"It's not for me to interfere with due process here. I have to stand back and leave that to the relevant authorities, but they've been there waiting in London since Friday." (...)

Foreign Secretary William Hague yesterday gave the green light to the Crown Office after denying there would be an amnesty deal with Kusa if he helped topple Gaddafi.

Hague said: "It is a good thing, of course, where the Crown Office in Scotland wish to talk to him about what's happened in the past such as at Lockerbie.

"My officials are discussing with the Crown Office how to go about that. That's not a bad thing either - we want more information about past events."

Hague insisted there is no deal with Kusa. He said: "The Prime Minister and I have made clear there is no immunity from prosecution, there will be no immunity, he hasn't asked for that, there isn't a deal."

MacAskill added: "I welcome the commitment of the Foreign Secretary to allow them access and I hope that this provides further clarity on the Lockerbie atrocity."

Talks about talks

[What follows is the text of a press release just issued by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.]

The following can be attributed to a Crown Office spokesperson:

"I can confirm that representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary have been in close contact with FCO officials over recent days and will be meeting with them on Monday to discuss the situation concerning Mr Musa Kusa further."

[As a former civil servant (briefly, I rejoice to say) I am only too well aware of how meetings serve as a substitute for, but can be represented as, action.]

The Sunday Herald on the BP/Megrahi furore

[The Sunday Herald contains a long article by James Cusick. The following are excerpts:]

In the current open season on oil company BP, a core of senators have switched their attentions from the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to BP’s exploration deals with Libya – and allegations that the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi helped BP secure a $900 million deal.

In his visit to Washington next week, Prime Minister David Cameron will discover if the senators are merely showboating ahead of their mid-term elections or whether they are serious about dissecting the role of international diplomacy and back-stage politics in the rehabilitation of oil-rich rogue states. For one leading energy consultant in London, who has commercial ties to oil and gas companies operating in the Middle East, showboating would be the preferred option.

“If Capitol Hill really wants the full, dark picture, they’ll need to do more than call in BP to answer a few questions,” he says.

“They might start with George Bush, Tony Blair and Condi Rice. Jack Straw would help; so would Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the United States. As well as BP, they should talk to Shell, Marathon, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, all of them. And, if they’ve time, Colonel Gaddafi’s son Seif and Musa Kusa, Libya’s former head of intelligence [and currently Foreign Minister]. This is a Pandora’s Box.”

Sir Nigel will be alongside Cameron in DC this week, just as he was alongside Tony Blair during his years as the British ambassador to the European Union, and later as Blair’s foreign policy adviser. Ahead of Cameron’s visit, it fell to Sir Nigel to state the coalition’s position on the release of Megrahi. “The new British Government is clear that Megrahi’s release was a mistake,” he said.

For Libyan diplomats, that will have come as a surprise. “Nigel and Tony” are regarded in Tripoli as the two figures who helped bring Megrahi home.

Operating behind the scenes and in direct contact with Gaddafi’s closest aides, it was Sir Nigel who – on Blair’s direct orders – helped broker the secret talks in 2003 between the UK and the US that eventually ended Libya’s exile and coaxed Gaddafi into ending his ambition to build a nuclear arsenal. After he and Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, had met Libyan officials, it was Sir Nigel who chaired a series of meetings in London with Libyan diplomats which sealed the deal.

In March the following year, Sir Nigel was with Blair when he visited Gaddafi’s tented complex in the desert outside Tripoli. One news paper report noted that it was 5,573 days since Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie. Blair was the first British prime minister to visit Tripoli since Churchill, and his job was to confer international respectability on the Gaddafi regime and to re-open the commercial opportunities in one of the world’s least explored oil territories. (...)

Lurking in the background, however, was one unresolved issue: one that regularly presented tribal difficulties for Gaddafi in internal Libyan politics. This was Megrahi’s imprisonment in Scotland. (...)

After Blair’s meeting with Gaddafi in 2004, pressure increased on both the UK and US governments to create the necessary conditions for further commercial activity. But Megrahi was still an unresolved part of the Libyan jigsaw – and, felt many in the Foreign Office, a vital one. Quietly, the prospect of a prisoner transfer deal crept on to the ­diplomatic agenda.

Gaddafi’s son Seif has said that Megrahi’s release was a constant reference point in any trade talks. And in a meeting with Megrahi after he returned to Tripoli last year, Seif told him: “When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table.”

According to a US embassy source in London, Seif would “scare the hell out of Capitol Hill” if he gave a witness testimony. It would not be what he had to say about BP – but what he could say about anyone from any country, including the US, trying to secure new and lucrative business with Libya. (...)

When Blair eventually returned to Tripoli in May 2007 to sign the so-called deal in the desert – a major step towards Libya’s international rehabilitation – it was Sir Nigel who had designed the “memorandum of understanding”. This included, for the first time, an outline of a legal agreement on prisoner transfer. On the same day that Blair and Gaddafi shook hands, both Blair and Sir Nigel travelled to the Libyan city of Sirt to watch BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward and the Libyan National Oil Company’s chairman Shokri Ghanem sign an exploration deal worth $900m.

Hayward knew he was delivering something big for BP. “Our agreement is the start of an enduring long-term and mutually beneficial partnership with Libya,” he said. “With its potentially large resources of gas, favourable geographic location and improving investment climate, Libya has an enormous opportunity to be a source of clean energy for the world.” (...)

BP expected the prisoner transfer agreement to be dealt with quickly by Westminster. But shortly after the signing ceremony between Hayward and Ghanem – which, although it looked formal enough, was still only an outline deal – Libyan officials were told by UK lawyers that there might be a problem with returning Megrahi to Tripoli. Transfer or release of prisoners from a Scottish jail was not a matter for Number 10 but for the devolved government at Holyrood.

According to a senior UK judicial source, when the prospect of delays in any prisoner transfer was suggested to Libya, it was dismissed as nonsense. One Libyan source claimed there would be no delay; that “Nigel and Tony have assured us”. This source also believed Megrahi would be back in Libya within six months.

But BP had begun to appreciate the Scottish problem. By the late autumn of 2007, the company was said to be worried about the slow progress being made in concluding the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.

Last week BP officially acknowledged this concern. “We were aware this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan Government of BP’s exploration agreement,” the company said.

BP admits it lobbied the government, seeking to speed up the process of getting the transfer agreement into law. However, it denied it tried to intervene in the case of Megrahi in particular.

But Professor Black, the man who helped engineer the case at Zeist, says: “The prisoner transfer agreement and the potential release of Megrahi back to Libya have always been one and the same thing. It is disingenuous of BP to say they were different. Megrahi was always the name on the table. He was the only high-profile prisoner that mattered.”

Last year, Megrahi was released from jail on compassionate grounds by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary. MacAskill said the Libyan was in the final stages of prostate cancer and was expected to die within three months. He added that he was bound by Scottish values to release him and allow him to die in his home country. The transfer agreement – which the Scottish Government had criticised as unconstitutional because it had not been consulted – did not figure in the minister’s deliberations. (...)

The senate committee in Washington will care little about the constitutional in-fighting between Edinburgh and London. The former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has said that if Westminster had wanted to stop Megrahi leaving, it had the power to do so. “The last time I looked, Scotland wasn’t independent and doesn’t have powers over foreign policy,” said Bolton.

Although Sir Nigel says the UK Government believes the release of Megrahi was a mistake, he does not say if he thought it was mistake.

[Also in the Sunday Herald is an article by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill. It reads in part:]

My decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi last August was, as I made clear at the time and many times since, the right decision for the right reasons.

It was a decision based entirely upon the application for compassionate release that I was duty bound to consider. As I said then, it was not a decision I chose to make, but one I was obliged to make as Scotland’s Justice Secretary.

Megrahi was sent home to die according to the due process of Scots law, based on the medical report of the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care, and the recommendations of the parole board and prison governor – all of which have been published by the Scottish Government.

However, I was also faced with another, separate decision, in respect of Megrahi. That was the application before me for a transfer from Scotland under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed by the UK and Libyan governments.

I rejected that application because the US Government and the families of Lockerbie victims in the US had been led to believe such a prisoner transfer would not be possible for anyone convicted of the atrocity.

The Scottish Government has always totally opposed the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated between the UK and Libyan governments. The memorandum that led to the Agreement was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes.

That is why we chose to reveal the secret talks between the then Labour Government and the Libyans, as soon as we learned of the “deal in the desert” between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi, with the First Minister making a statement to the Scottish Parliament on the issue as far back as June 2007. (...)

Let us be clear: the issues now being raised in the United States about BP refer to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the governments of the UK and Libya, and so have nothing to do with the decision on compassionate release, which was a totally different process based on entirely different criteria.

And the Scottish Government had no contact from BP in relation to Megrahi.

We would always look to assist any properly constituted inquiry – and indeed we very much support a wider UK public inquiry or United Nations investigation capable of examining all the issues related to the Lockerbie atrocity, which go well beyond Scotland’s jurisdiction. That remains the case.

In terms of the new UK Government’s position on the Megrahi issue, we have known the Prime Minister’s opinion since last August, and he knows the due process of Scotland’s independent legal system was followed.

We also now know Professor Karol Sikora has rejected news paper reports that misrepresented his comments about Megrahi’s condition.

I said last August that Megrahi may die sooner or may die later than the three-month prognosis the experts then deemed to be a reasonable estimate of life expectancy – that is something over which we have had no control.

What is certain is the man rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing remains terminally ill with prostate cancer.

[Mr MacAskill's opinion that Mr Megrahi was "rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" is one that many, including the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, do not share.]

'Envoy of death'

[This is the headline over an article in the Embassy Row section of the website of The Washington Times. It reads in part:]

The Libyan foreign minister — linked to the Lockerbie bombing and an attack on a disco in Berlin that killed American soldiers and expelled from Britain for plotting to kill Libyan dissidents — will be honored this week in Washington by US and Arab business executives.

Musa Kousa [or Mousa Kousa or Mousa Kusa or Musa Kusa] is scheduled to discuss a recent Commerce Department mission to Libya and the new US-Libyan trade framework agreement when he attends a reception in his honor sponsored by the National US-Arab Chamber of Commerce on Thursday [3 June] at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel.

Mr Kousa's terrorist background extends to the 1980s when he was accused of sending hit men around the world to kill critics of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In London, he was known as the "envoy of death" when he was the head of the Libyan diplomatic mission to Britain, according to reports in the London newspapers, The Times and The Independent.

After his expulsion from Britain in 1980, Mr Kousa went on to serve as Mr Gadhafi's top spymaster for 15 years. Mr Kousa was reportedly complicit in the 1986 Berlin disco bombing that led to President Reagan's decision to attack Mr. Gadhafi's residence in Tripoli. He was also accused of plotting the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. One hundred ninety victims were Americans. (...)

The refurbishment of Mr Kousa's image began with his appointment as Libya's envoy to talks that led to a $2.7 billion compensation fund for the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster.

The foreign intelligence chief is also reported to have given London information on spies operating in Britain. (...)

President Obama sent career Foreign Service officer Gene A Cretz to serve as US ambassador in Tripoli in December 2008. Libyan Ambassador Ali Suileiman Aujali presented his credentials to Mr Obama in January 2009.

Lockerbie: Human rights lawyer states Megrahi was framed

[This is the headline over an article on the World Socialist Web Site. It consists largely of a summary of Gareth Peirce's recent contribution in the London Review of Books. The following are excerpts from the new article.]

Leading British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce has stated that, in her opinion Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the only man ... convicted of the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was framed.

Peirce has a long track record of defending those caught in the British legal system’s most notorious miscarriages of justice. Her clients have included the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and Judith Ward, all of whom were Irish people accused and wrongly convicted of IRA bomb attacks in the 1970s. More recently Peirce has taken up a number of high profile cases of individuals accused in the so-called “war on terror”, including the Tipton Three and Moazam Begg, held illegally by the US government in Guantánamo Bay. She has represented the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man shot dead by British police in Stockwell underground station in 2005.

Writing in the September edition of the London Review of Books, Peirce, of the law firm headed by Benedict Birnberg, summarises some of the most concerning, and well known, aspects of the entire Lockerbie disaster in which 270 people died, and the subsequent investigation. (...)

Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and his co-accused, Llamen Khalifa Fhimah, were handed over by the Libyan government in 1999. The trial opened at a converted US airbase in the Netherlands in 2000. The indictment against Megrahi read that an MST 13 bomb timer was made in Switzerland, by MEBO AG, and sold exclusively to Libya.

Identification of the timer rested on the efforts of Thomas Hayes and Alan Feraday of the Royal Armament and Development Establishment (RARDE), along with Thomas Thurman of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In 1997, following an investigation by the US inspector general, Michael Bromwich, Thurman was barred from being called as an expert witness. Bromwich described Thurman as “circumventing procedures and protocols, testifying to areas of expertise that he had no qualifications in...therefore fabricating evidence”.

Thomas Hayes claimed that on May 12, 1989, he found a fragment of circuit board in the collar of a shirt later traced to a Maltese shop. The fragment itself had been found in January 1989 by British police investigating the crash site.

Peirce states, “Even if one knew nothing of the devastating findings of the public inquiry in the early 1990s into the false science that convicted the Maguire Seven or of the succession of thunderous judgments in the Court of Appeal in case after case in which RARDE scientists had provided the basis for wrongful convictions, Hayes’s key evidence in this case on the key fragment should be viewed as disgraceful”.

“Hayes”, Peirce continues, “played his part in the most notorious [miscarriage case] of all, endorsing the finding of an explosive trace that was never there, and speculating that a piece of chalk mentioned to the police by Vincent Maguire, aged 16, and a candle by Patrick Maguire, aged 13, ‘fitted the description better’ of a stick of gelignite wrapped in white paper”.

Hayes’s information regarding this crucial piece of Lockerbie evidence was also flawed. Despite having carefully documented every other piece of evidence he found, Hayes had made no drawing of this particular item and had not assigned it a reference number on discovery. He had not carried out a test for explosives. Hayes said he had “no idea” when the pagination of his notes recording findings had been altered to include an additional page, and it was an “unfathomable mystery” as to why the alterations should have occurred. (...)

She describes the verdict delivered in 2001 by three experienced judges, upheld later by five appeal court judges as “profoundly shocking”, and makes the following devastating assessment:

“Al-Megrahi’s trial constituted a unique legal construct, engineered to achieve a political rapprochement, but its content was so manipulated that in reality there was only ever an illusion of a trial”.

Peirce concludes that there is “pressing need to investigate in details how it has come about that there has been a form of death in this case—the death of justice—and who should be found responsible”.

Subsequent to Peirce’s comments, more revelations have emerged about the crucial piece of MST 13 circuit board. Following a Freedom of Information request raised by Scottish Nationalist Member of the Scottish Parliament Christine Graham, the Scottish Crown Office has confirmed that evidence item PT-35, the piece of circuit board found by Hayes, was taken for examination to both Germany and the US. Graham claimed that this was done with the knowledge of the then chief prosecutor, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, who recently told a Dutch television company that he was unaware of the fragment’s movements.

Megrahi was released by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny Macaskill in August, allegedly on humanitarian grounds. It occurred at a time when the Libyan government had made clear that, if the terminally ill Megrahi had been allowed to die in Greenock prison, British oil contracts would have been imperilled. In addition, Megrahi had agreed to drop a long delayed appeal against his conviction in order to secure his release.

The release triggered outrage from the US in particular and was attacked by President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the head of the FBI, and the US Joint Chief of Staff amongst many. Commentary went as far as suggesting that the so-called “special relationship” between British and US imperialism, and Scotland in particular, was imperiled.

All this has been forgotten. On September 21, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly informed the world that the US had “deep abiding ties with Scotland”. Kelly continued, “We are very close allies, and I don’t think we’re looking to punish anybody per se. There’s no tit for tat here”.

Three weeks later, speaking before a meeting with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Clinton stated, “I have a special relationship with the prime minister. And of course, I think it can’t be said often enough, we have a special relationship between our countries”.

What was said between the two regarding Lockerbie is not clear, but the meeting came immediately prior to the British government’s decision to send an additional 500 troops to Afghanistan. Brown has subsequently ruled out a public inquiry into the bombing, while the Scottish government have denied they had the power to hold an authoritative inquiry in the first place.

Clinton also called in the Libyan government, speaking for 15 minutes en route to Egypt with Libyan Foreign Minister and former intelligence chief Musa Kusa. According to US Assistant Secretary Philip Crowley, the two talked of “Sudan, Darfur, cooperation about terrorism and the possibility of advancing our relationship”.

Crowley claimed that Megrahi was not discussed, lamely stating that “the Libyans understand our concerns about Megrahi very, very well”.

Hillary meets Musa

Mrs Clinton also met Tuesday with Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa, formerly Tripoli's intelligence chief. Many US officials believe he had knowledge of the 1988 plot to blow up a US-bound airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. Mrs. Clinton didn't raise the Lockerbie case with Mr Kusa, a US official said, but focused on US cooperation with Libya on counterterror measures and efforts to stabilize Sudan.

[From an article on the Secretary of State's Middle East tour in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal. The following excerpt from a press briefing given by State Department spokesman PJ Crowley is taken from the Still4Hill website.]

MR CROWLEY: And then she met with Foreign Minister Musa Kusa — M-u-s-a, K-u-s-a – who’s a – he’s a graduate of Michigan State University. At one point, he said, Spartans and gave a thumbs up.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

QUESTION: Wasn’t Musa Kusa indicted for terrorism at one point? Can you check, because was the intelligence chief before he became the foreign minister?

QUESTION: I thought he was indicted for killing Americans.

QUESTION: Were you going to tell us about this? Can I have the next question?

QUESTION: Yeah.

QUESTION: Why was this not on the schedule and why was there no photo opportunity of this?

MR. CROWLEY: The short answer is it happened almost – let me back up. I mean, we had a limited time and we had a number of potential candidates for bilats. And in some cases, there were a couple countries that we were looking at bilats. And for example, and – but the Secretary was able to have pull-asides during the GCC meeting, for example. I mean, Libya is a country that we are – we have an emerging relationship with. And we think it’s best to continue talking to them and seeing where we can continue to advance the relationship.

And that – but I mean, it was something that – this was just a – kind of like a target of opportunity where the ministers found themselves with a similar hole and they got pulled into a room and sat for about 15 minutes.

QUESTION: Did they discuss the Lockerbie bomber’s recent release back home?

MR. CROWLEY: I was in the meeting; that did not come up. They –

QUESTION: She didn’t bring it up? I mean, you guys – excuse me, sorry. I mean, you and Ian were having to brief for about 10 days straight to us. Every single day we were asking you – hammering you guys with questions about the seeming welcome parade that he got and how upset people were about that, and you guys kept saying how upset the U.S. was about that. She didn’t bring that up when she had an opportunity?

MR. CROWLEY: We didn’t bring up the tent either. (Laughter.) Sorry.

QUESTION: The tent’s a little bit less of foreign policy issue.

MR. CROWLEY: No, the – I mean, Libya has a perspective on the region. They have been very helpful and integrally involved in developments in Sudan, so we did talk about Sudan, talked about Darfur. There has been cooperation from the countries on counterterrorism. And they continue to talk about advancing our relationship. But it was about a 10- or 15-minute meeting.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.) Sorry, you just said it was only 10 or 15 minutes. Was that the first time (inaudible)?

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MR. CROWLEY: I’ll check.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MR. CROWLEY: Yes, that’s the first time that they’ve met.

Revealed: Blair's role in Megrahi release

[This is the headline over an article in today's edition of The Independent on Sunday. It claims that, as early as December 2003, the UK and US Governments were involved in negotiations designed to lead eventually to the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi. What was sought in return was Libya's renunciation of its nuclear weapons programme, not trade or oil exploration concessions. The article reads in part:]

Tony Blair will be thrust into the controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi with questions in Parliament over a secret meeting the then Prime Minister orchestrated that brought Libya in from the cold.

MPs are set to demand the minutes of an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger summit in London between British, American and Libyan spies held three days before Mr Blair announced that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was surrendering his weapons of mass destruction programme.

At the time of the secret meeting in December 2003 at the private Travellers Club in Pall Mall, London – for decades the favourite haunt of spies – Libyan officials were pressing for negotiations on the status of Megrahi, who was nearly three years into his life sentence at a Scottish jail.

Whitehall sources said the issue of Megrahi's imprisonment was raised as part of the discussions, although it is not clear whether Britain or America agreed to a specific deal over his imprisonment, or a more general indication that it would be reviewed.

MPs are to investigate what was promised by Britain at the talks on 16 December, and the role that Mr Blair played in the affair. Until now, the controversy over Megrahi's release last month has centred on discussions between Gordon Brown's government and the Scottish executive and Libya since 2007, with Mr Blair apparently not involved in any way.

It has also focused on claims that the deal was related to oil deals, with Jack Straw admitting yesterday that BP's interests in Libya played a "big part". But authoritative sources said the seeds for Megrahi's release were sown in 2003, when Libya made the historic agreement to end its status as a pariah, and that the focus on oil and trade was a "red herring".

Yesterday the Libyan Foreign Minister, Musa Kusa – who himself was present at the Travellers Club meeting – told The Times that Megrahi's release was "nothing to do with trade".

Two days after the meeting Mr Blair and Col Gaddafi held direct talks by telephone; and the next day, 19 December, the historic announcement about Libyan WMD was made by Mr Blair and President Bush. (...)

Nine top-level MI6, Foreign Office, CIA and Libyan officials were present for the negotiations at the Travellers Club. The revelation that two senior American officials were present risks causing embarrassment to the White House, as Washington has made clear its criticism of the release of Megrahi by the Scottish government last month. (...)

Last night, a spokesman for Mr Blair could not be drawn on the December 2003 meeting. In fact, The Independent on Sunday has established that Mr Blair's involvement with the Travellers Club meeting was at arm's length, via his then foreign affairs envoy, the current ambassador to Washington Sir Nigel Sheinwald. (...)

Sir Nigel was in Downing Street and was kept informed of negotiations. He in turn kept the Prime Minister up to date. Full details of the meeting, and the identities of those present, have not been revealed until now.

Mr Kusa, the Libyan head of external intelligence, was at the time banned from entering Britain after allegedly plotting to assassinate Libyan dissidents. But because of his closeness to Col Gaddafi, he was essential to the talks and was given safe passage to London. Also in the Libyan delegation was Abdulati [al-Obeidi], now the minister for Europe, who extracted the assurance from Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell this year that Mr Brown did not want Megrahi to die in a Scottish jail. Mr [al-Obeidi] said last week: "In my negotiations with the British and the Scottish, I didn't mention anything about trade relations."

For the Americans, Stephen Kappes, the CIA deputy director of operations, and Robert Joseph, counter-proliferation chief, led the talks. Britain was represented by William Ehrman, Foreign Office director general for defence and intelligence, and David Landsman, then the head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office. A CIA source said last night that a Lebanese businessman, while not at the meeting, was the key go-between, bringing together Libyan officials and British and US spies. The same businessman also put together a team of private investigators on Lockerbie to undermine the case against Megrahi.

An official with knowledge of the talks said of the Travellers Club meeting: "That was where the real negotiations were made."

[The same newspaper also publishes a leading article on the subject entitled "Megrahi: a small piece in the game".]

Libyan Foreign Minister defends UK Government over Lockerbie

A top Libyan official once expelled from Britain for plotting the deaths of exiled dissidents rode to the defence of the British Government over Lockerbie yesterday.

In one of the few interviews he has given, Musa Kusa, the Libyan Foreign Minister and long-time member of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle, told The Times that he was astonished by the controversy over the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.

“Where is the human rights, the compassion and mercy? The man is on the verge of death,” Mr Kusa said in a midnight conversation in his plush, chilled office in the centre of baking Tripoli.

He flatly denied any link between al-Megrahi’s release and British commercial interests in his oil-rich state and said that Libya was grateful to the British and Scottish governments for their humanity. “You should not do an injustice to the British Government. It was nothing to do with trade,” he said. “If we wished to bargain we would have done it a long time ago.”

Mr Musa, likewise, said that the row over al-Megrahi’s rapturous reception at Tripoli airport was the result of a cultural misunderstanding: such greetings were a Libyan custom. “I can’t say to [al-Megrahi’s] friends and tribe, ‘Don’t go there’,” he said. Not one Libyan official went to the airport, he added, and the reception was, by Libyan standards, “low key”. (...)

He flatly denied that al-Megrahi or Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. “Libya is a victim ... It’s a preconception of the Western media that Libya was the one,” he said.

[The above are excerpts from a report in Saturday's edition of The Times.]

More from Jonathan Mitchell QC

Jonathan Mitchell's most recent blog post on the Megrahi release is entitled "Compassionate release in Scotland: the actual policy and the law". It is a masterly exposition of the law and the policy relating to compassionate release. It should have been, but unfortunately was not, required reading for those MSPs who took part in today's debate in the Scottish Parliament. The following are brief excerpts:

"[O]n the published facts of Megrahi’s case, had the Scottish Government refused to allow compassionate release in terms of a policy which had been applied by it and its Lib-Lab predecessors, and before them by Labour and Conservative Secretaries of State alike, it would have been open to legal challenge with excellent prospects of success. That’s the way the law works; it doesn’t suddenly cease to operate because the person claiming its benefits is criminal, or a foreigner, or because release is politically undesirable. Still less because of the improbable suggestion that Americans will boycott Scotland and all its works if Scots law is applied impartially and judicially. (...)

"I cannot imagine that the release of Megrahi will in a few years be seen as a worse decision than the UK Government’s decision to release seventy-eight murderers who had collectively murdered far more people than were murdered at Lockerbie; or the US Government's decision to release a murderer of (per his conviction) twenty-two after three and a half years house arrest; or the UK Government’s decision that Pinochet should never face murder charges because of his supposedly poor health.

"But had the decision been to abrogate the law so that Megrahi would die in prison while Musa Kusa and Colonel Gaddafi himself are fawned on by Washington and London, that would, I think, have come to be seen as shameful."