Saif on Lockerbie

Le Figaro of Saturday, 8 December publishes a lengthy interview with Colonel Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam. Here is what he had to say about Lockerbie:

Le Figaro: Quelle est votre position sur Abd el-Basset al-Megrahi, le responsable des renseignements emprisonné en Écosse pour l’attentat de Lockerbie, et qui a obtenu le droit à faire appel ?

Saif: Nous pensons qu’il est innocent, et nous nous battrons jusqu’au bout pour qu’il rentre chez lui. Les preuves contre lui sont très faibles. Elles ont été manipulées.

Le Figaro: S’il est innocenté, la Libye demandera-t-elle le remboursement des compensations qu’elle a versées aux familles ?

Saif: Je ne sais pas.

For the full interview, see
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2007/12/07/01003-20071207ARTFIG00487-seif-el-islam-kadhafi-la-libye-sera-un-pays-heureux.php

Gaddafi's visit to France

A recent Agence France Presse report on the five-day visit to France next week by Colonel Gaddafi contains the following passage:

'Franco-Libyan relations have steadily improved since a 2004 accord on a Libyan compensation deal for the victims of a French DC-10 airliner bombing over Niger. The crash in 1989 killed 170 people, including 54 French.

The upturn paved the way for a visit by President Jacques Chirac in November 2004. The two countries resumed defence cooperation in February 2005.

The west's former bogey has for many years set about a policy of mending bridges with Europe and the United States, in 2003 announcing the end of Libya's illegal weapons programmes and accepting formal responsibility for the Lockerbie plane bombing over Scotland.

But opposition French politicians and intellectuals criticised the Kadhafi visit as an affront to victims of Libyan "terrorism".'

See http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5inMzZftJ5lv3LKDvO6fjcljpyiIQ

Abu Nidal

Ed's Blog City has posted a 2002 report from CNN (based on a story in the Al Hayat newspaper) in which, a matter of days after Abu Nidal shot himself in a hotel room in Iraq, a former top aide disclosed that, shortly after the disaster, Abu Nidal had stated at a meeting that his group was solely responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103. See
http://edsblogcity.blogspot.com/2007/12/abu-nidal-behind-lockerbie-says-aide.html

A German perspective

A lengthy article by Susanne Härpfer entitled "Versclusssache Lockerbie" has just been published on the German website Telepolis. The translated subtitle reads "When the case of the attack on flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie is reconsidered, the solution probably lies in Germany." The author relies on two books written by a former BND (German intelligence service) officer,Wilhem Dietl, and on the views of Dr David Thomas Schiller, an expert on terrorism and the Middle East. The "true" Lockerbie story, as related by Ms Härpfer, involves the familiar names of Khreesat, Dalkamoni and the Herbstlaub (Autumn Leaves) operation in Neuss. The article is long, detailed and closely argued, and should be particularly interesting to English-speaking readers in that it uses sources not familiar to those who have had to rely on English-language coverage of the affair. A full translation into English would be welcome for those who have no German or whose German, like mine, is rusty.

For the full German text, see
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/26/26718/1.html

Scotland's Legal Who's Who

To see "A full run down of the 100 most powerful and influential people in the Scottish justice system and legal profession as voted for by readers of The Firm" go to
http://www.firmmagazine.com/members/feature.php?id=350.

At no 11 (from nowhere in last year's rankings) is Dr Jim Swire and at no 29 (up from 74) is Tony Kelly, Mr Megrahi's solicitor. Evidence, I think, that the Scottish legal profession at least is getting the message about the Lockerbie miscarriage of justice.

Highest honour for Lord Cullen

"A former senior judge has been given Scotland's highest honour.Lord Cullen of Whitekirk has been appointed a Knight of the Thistle on St Andrew's Day.

He led inquiries into the Pipa Alpha disaster and the Dunblane shootings, and in March 2002 led the five-judge tribunal which heard the failed appeal of the Lockerbie bomber.

The Order of the Thistle represents the highest honour in Scotland, and is second only in precedence in the UK to the Order of the Garter.

It honours Scottish men and women who have held public office or who have contributed in a particular way to national life."

See http://www.midlothianadvertiser.co.uk/latest-scottish-news/Highest-honour-for-Lord-Cullen.3546370.jp

This story, which I could not previously find on any other Scottish or UK news website, has now (2 December) been picked up by Scotland on Sunday:
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1883612007

US Disinformation

A release dated 29 November 2007 from the US Department of State USINFO service entitled "Libya Lays Out Welcome Mat for U.S. Trade and Investment" contains the following paragraph:

"The warming in U.S. ties with Libya began in 2003 when Tripoli admitted blowing up a Pan American airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 and a French UTC airliner over Africa in 1989, and paid billions of dollars in compensation."

The true position, of course, is that Tripoli made no such admission. What it did was accept responsibility for the actings of Libyan state servants. If it transpires that the conviction of Mr Megrahi constituted a miscarriage of justice and is quashed, then there is no Libyan admission whatsoever of any involvement at all in the destruction of Pan Am 103. See
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2007&m=November&x=20071129144104cpataruk0.800152

Another lockerbie blog

I am ashamed to say that until this morning I was unaware of Ed's Blog City which is advertised as containing "Notes, information, articles, opinions and other writings on the Pan Am 103 disaster at Lockerbie, 21st December 1988." It contains lots of useful material, much of it not easily accessible elsewhere. See
http://edsblogcity.blogspot.com/

Lockerbie evidence withheld from defence

This is the title of an article posted today on the Cossacks Breaking News website. Internal evidence suggests that it derives from The Scotsman but I have not been able to find the piece on that newspaper's website. Part of the story reads:

"Fresh doubt has been cast over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber after it emerged a document containing vital evidence about the bomb timer has never been shown to the defence.

The Scotsman has learned that the failure to disclose the classified document, which concerns the supply of timers identical to the one said to have been used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103, led a review body that examined the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to conclude a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

It was not previously known that doubts over the timer were grounds for an appeal.

The content of the document remains a mystery as sensitive details of the report seen by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) have been blacked out, or redacted. It is understood that security services also prevented the SCCRC from releasing the report, or disclosing any of its contents, to Megrahi or his lawyers, who are thought likely to seek a court order forcing the Crown Office to hand it over.

The document is among six points in the case which the SCCRC has concluded casts doubt over the reliability of Megrahi’s conviction. The SCCRC detailed some of these in a summary of its findings in June, but others, including the failure to disclose this document, remained secret."

For the full text, see
http://cossacks.org.uk/business/lockerbie-evidence-withheld-from-defence/

None of this seems terribly earth-shattering: those who attended, or followed proceedings at, the procedural hearing on 11 October had already reached the inevitable conclusion that the failure by the Crown to disclose the document relating to timers was one of the grounds upon which the SCCRC had referred the case back to the appeal court.

From Terrorism blog

Here are links to two posts, dated 07 September and 11 October 2007 respectively, that I have just discovered on the Terrorism blog. Both contain matter directly or indirectly relevant to Lockerbie.
http://spookterror.blogspot.com/2007/09/classic-false-flag-operation-disco-la.html
and
http://spookterror.blogspot.com/2007/10/lockerbie-truth-will-media-finally.html

As far as the information contained in the second item is concerned, it should be noted that Bill Taylor QC has not become a sheriff, but Alistair Duff has.

Another anniversary

On 24 November 2003, the High Court of Justiciary, sitting in Glasgow, determined that Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted on 31 January 2001 in the Scottish Court in The Netherlands for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, should serve 27 years in prison before becoming eligible for release on licence from his life sentence. The trial judges' original recommendation that he serve at least twenty years of the life sentence before being considered for release, required to be reconsidered following changes in Scots penal law following the incorporation into domestic law of the European Convention on Human Rights. The "punishment part" of 27 years now imposed (by the same three judges as had imposed the original sentence) was backdated to April 1999, when Megrahi was remanded in custody to await trial. Both the Crown and the defence have appealed the 27-year punishment part, but it is unlikely that these appeals will be heard unless and until Megrahi's new appeal is dismissed.

Some blogs we have been reading

This is the title of an entry made today on the Aangirfan blog. All of the blogs mentioned, and to which links are provided, relate to Lockerbie and to versions of the event other than the officially-approved one. See
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2007/11/some-blogs-we-have-been-reading.html

The town, nineteen years on

I am just back in Edinburgh after a brief trip to Stranraer to participate in a session, about the Lockerbie case amongst other things, in the Young Scotland Programme run by the Institute of Contemporary Scotland (http://www.contemporaryscotland.com/index.php). Most of the participants were only toddlers or very young primary school children in December 1988, but it was interesting to discover that most of them had clear memories of the incident.

After the YSP session, I took the opportunity to visit Lockerbie and to spend the night there -- the first time I had been back in my home town for a few years. The town seems to be thriving and the population expanding, with lots of new residential building in evidence. The disaster of 21 December 1988 has certainly not been forgotten, but it does not occupy the foreground of people's lives: the people of the town have resolutely got on with the business of living. This was entirely to be expected: one of my clearest recollections of the days and weeks following the tragedy was the descent upon the town of a team of "trauma counsellors" to provide support and assistance to such of the townsfolk as felt the need for it. The counsellors sat in glorious isolation. A close-knit Lowland Scottish country town like Lockerbie is not fertile ground for the counselling industry.

Libya Comes in From the Cold

This is the title of a lengthy and thoughtful article by Joseph Kirschke on the Worldpress website about relations between the United States and Libya. Considerable attention is paid to the continuing fallout from Lockerbie and Pan Am 103. The article is, however, marred by its blithely ignoring the SCCRC's reference back to the Appeal Court of Megrahi's conviction on the ground that it may have constituted a miscarriage of justice; and, consequently, by its complete failure to consider what the implications for US-Libyan relations would be if Megrahi's conviction were to be quashed and Libya's responsibility for the atrocity negated. See
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/2991.cfm

Bollier visit

Edwin Bollier has postponed his visit to Edinburgh until 21 December 2007 (the nineteenth anniversary of the Lockerbie tragedy and the date, incidentally, by which Megrahi's legal team have to lodge his Grounds of Appeal with the High Court of Justiciary).