Libyan prisoner transfer

The United Kingdom Government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding relating to a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya. The Scottish Government had requested Westminster to ensure that Abdelbaset Megrahi was specifically excluded from the agreement. This request has been rejected. Although Megrahi is covered by the agreement between the UK and Libya, it will be for the Scottish Ministers (not the UK Government) to decide if he should ever be transferred to Libya to serve the remainder of his sentence. If Mr Megrahi's current appeal (a procedural hearing in which is to be held this morning) is successful, the question of prisoner transfer will never, of course, arise: he will return to Libya as a free man. For the stories in The Scotsman and The Herald, see
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Libya-deal-on-eve-of.3607023.jp and
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-herald/20071220/281543696589891

It will be recalled that when news of the prisoner transfer discussions between the Westminster Government and Libya broke in the early summer, UK Government ministers stated that the proposed agreement did not cover Mr Megrahi and, hence, they had had no duty to inform the Scottish Government of them. This was untrue. As I know from Libyan officials who participated in the negotiations, Mr Megrahi's position was at the forefront of the minds of all concerned. This is today amply corroborated by the refusal of the Scottish Government's request that he should be excluded from the agreement.

Congress Delays Administration's Detente with Libya

This is the title of a post by David Schenker on the Counterterrorism Blog. The text reads as follows:

"Yesterday I had an op ed in the Christian Science Monitor about the Administration's problems in moving ahead with the rehabilitation of relations with Libya. Intitially, Congress did not allocate the $108 million requested by the Administration to fund a new US Embassy in Libya. Furthermore, Congress said it would not hold confirmation hearings for the Administration's ambassador designate.

Congress refused to provide funding because Libya has not paid out the last $2 million per family as stipulated in the Lockerbie settlement. Financial closure on the LaBelle Disco bombing terrorism case has proved elusive as well. In September 2006, Representatives of the LaBelle victims, the Government of Libya, and the US State Department met and hammered out a settlement that was filed in US courts. Inexplicably, though, Libya also subsequently reneged on this agreement--on June 30, 2006--the day the Administration removed Libya from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.

Yesterday, though, the House acceded to the Administration's request to fund the US Embassy. However, Congress did say that it will not allow the Administration to provide any financial aid to or run any programs in Libya.

The text of yesterday's Conference Report (SEC. 654) reads as follows: (a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance for Libya. (b) The prohibition of subsection (a) shall no longer apply if the Secretary of State certifies to the Committees on Appropriations that the Government of Libya has made the final settlement payments to the Pan Am 103 victims' families, paid to the LaBelle Disco bombing victims the agreed upon settlement amounts, and is engaging in good faith settlement discussions regarding other relevant terrorism cases. (c) Not later than 180 days after enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall submit a report to the Committees on Appropriations describing (1) actions taken by the Department of State to facilitate a resolution of these cases; and (2) United States commercial activities in Libya's energy sector.

Essentially, Congress will prohibit State Department from administering $1.15 million in programs in Libya next year. Congressional staffers suggest that Congress will for the time being also continue to oppose confirmation of an ambassador.

On January 3rd by the Libyan foreign minister will visit Washington."

See http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/12/congress_delays_administration.php

Crown refuses to reveal secret Lockerbie paper

This is the title of a front-page article in The Herald by Lucy Adams. Whereas I on this blog on 14 December merely speculated that the reason for this week's procedural hearing might be that the Crown had refused to hand over to Mr Megrahi's legal team the document relating to timers seen by the SCCRC, Lucy Adams (whose sources are usually impeccably reliable) states as a fact that this is the reason why the hearing has been called. She writes:

"Two months ago, the Crown Office was instructed to pass on the document or provide substantial reasons as to why it could not be given to the defence.

However, The Herald can reveal the Crown has since opposed the petition and suggested it has no duty to disclose. It has refused to reveal, even to the defence, the country from which the document originated, or its full reasons for not sharing the information.

The defence team is understood to be seeking the document which relates to supply of timers and an additional paper."
For the full story, see
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12452904.crown-refuses-to-reveal-secret-lockerbie-paper/

The Edinburgh Evening News has picked up the story:
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/scotland/Crown-refuses-to-reveal-secret.3599269.jp

And here is a link to Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer's commentary on OhmyNews:
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=381263&rel_no=1

It looks, therefore, as if the Crown is claiming Public Interest Immunity in relation to the document, on the basis of the public interest in maintaining good relations with the foreign country which supplied the document with the condition that its confidentiality be preserved. What the judges of the High Court will be required to do, in deciding whether to order the document to be handed over, is to balance that aspect of the public interest against the public interest in a fair trial (protected, inter alia by article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights) which involves an accused person having access to all evidence that might assist his case.

If this is indeed what the procedural hearing will be concerned with, I, for one, will find it interesting to hear the the Lord Advocate's representative arguing that maintaining good relations with a foreign country is a matter that should take precedence over the fairness of Scottish criminal proceedings.

Lockerbie Bomber: Scots Jail Like Being On Mars

Today's Daily Record has a lengthy story about a visit to Mr Megrahi in HMP Greenock by Paddy Hill, one of the Birmingham Six. Mr Hill gives details of his discussions with Megrahi and provides an insight into the latter's views about the forthcoming appeal, about his family circumstances and about his reactions to his imprisonment in Scotland. See
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2007/12/17/lockerbie-bomber-scots-jail-like-being-on-mars-86908-20258304/

Mobdi Goben and Paul Foot

Ed's Blog City has a recent post on the Goben Memorandum, speculating that it may be the mysterious foreign document that Megrahi's legal team has been calling on the Crown to hand over. See http://edsblogcity.blogspot.com/2007/12/goben-memorandum.html. It also reprints Paul Foot's classic Private Eye article "Three Lords A Leaping.....To Conclusions." See
http://edsblogcity.blogspot.com/2007/12/three-lords-leapingto-conclusions.html.

Second procedural hearing on 20 December

A second procedural hearing in Mr Megrahi's appeal is to be held on Thursday, 20 December at 10am in Court 3 of the High Court Building, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh (the same courtroom as the first procedural hearing on 11 October).

I understand that the Crown has not disclosed to Megrahi's legal team the document (relating to timers) emanating from a foreign government that was seen by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission but which the Crown has refused to hand over to the appellant. (New readers should consult the postings on this blog on 11 and 12 October 2007 for background.) It may therefore be that this new procedural hearing has been called to enable the court to hear argument on, and then to decide, this issue. But this is simply speculation on my part.

Megrahi's legal team have until 21 December (ie one day later) to lodge his Grounds of Appeal. I would not therefore expect there to be any discussion on Thursday of whether any of those grounds should be excluded from the Appeal Court's consideration. The court did, however, indicate in October that it wished to have lodged in advance any grounds of appeal relating to inadequate representation by Megrahi's former lawyers. So it is just possible that, if this has been done, there might be some discussion of whether these grounds should go forward to the full appeal hearing. It is more likely, though, that all matters relating to the Grounds of Appeal will be deferred to a later procedural hearing, perhaps in January 2008.

UK Call for United Nations Inquiry into 1988 Lockerbie Bombing

This is the title of an article on the website of the Mathaba News Agency. It refers to Patrick Haseldine's online petition to the Prime Minister
( http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/UNInquiry/) to urge a United Nations inquiry into the death of the UN's Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, aboard Pan Am 103.

The article contains the following passage about the Lockerbie trial: 'However, the conduct of the trial and resignation of judges before it even began "due to political pressures [from the British government to have Libya found guilty]" led to much criticism, and did not throw any light on the truth of what happened.'

As far as I am aware, no judges allocated to the case resigned before the trial began, for reasons of "political pressure" or any other reasons. It may be that what is being alluded to is the resignation of the Lord Advocate (Scotland's chief prosecutor) Lord Hardie of Blackford QC, shortly before the trial started. I am sure that there was nothing sinister in this resignation (unlike many other aspects of the Lockerbie affair). Lord Hardie's resignation was due to his appointment as a judge and he was replaced by his second in command, the Solicitor General for Scotland, Colin Boyd QC, who had been intimately involved in the preparation of the Lockerbie prosecution and who had always been expected to exercise day to day supervision over it.

For the full Mathaba article, see http://mathaba.net/news/?x=574616

Senators call for Libya to complete payments to Lockerbie relatives

Agence France Presse has a story to the effect that Hillary Clinton and seven other US senators have written to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressing that the process of normalization of US relations with Libya should not proceed further until Libya has fully compensated, amongst others, the relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie disaster. See
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jxda-5ybZ7Gzj3OtpbouZ7vpDeUg

The inference in the senators' letter that Libya has reneged on its compensation undertakings is unwarranted. The agreement that was reached between the Lockerbie relatives' lawyers and Libya involved staged payments on the occurrence of certain events within a specified time frame. One of those events, which it was within the power of the United States -- not Libya -- to bring about, did not take place within the specified period. The final compensation payment was accordingly never triggered.

For details of the compensation agreement, see
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/08/13/lockerbie/

The story has now been picked up by the Albany NY Times Union whose website runs the following:

"Pressuring Libya

Three years after it committed to compensate victims of the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the Libyan government still hasn't paid all that was due. Ditto a 2006 promise to pay victims of a 1986 dance club bombing in Germany.

Now New York's U.S. senators want Libya to put its money where its mouth is. Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chuck Schumer are among eight senators who sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, calling on her to use an upcoming diplomatic visit to Libya to pressure that nation's longtime leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi.

"Congress has made it clear that the U.S. is not ready for full normalization of relations with Libya," the senators wrote. "If you do decide to travel there, we assume this is because you are confident that the Libyan government will fulfill the settlement obligations it has made with American victims of Libyan terrorism."

Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, en route from London to New York City. The attack killed 270 people on the plane and on the ground, including 35 Syracuse University students, and several people with ties to the Capital Region.

The Libyan government assumed responsibility for the attack and agreed to pay $10 million to each family killed. Part of the $2.7 billion has been paid. A final $2 million installment to each family is outstanding.

In addition to Schumer and Clinton, the letter was signed by Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menedez of New Jersey, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Chris Dodd, all Democrats, and Republican Norm Coleman of Minnesota."

See http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=647150&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=LOCAL&newsdate=12/15/2007

And here is a slightly more balanced paragraph from US News and World Report of 15 December 2007:

"The two cases that have the Senate's attention are the 1988 downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, and the 1986 bombing of the La Belle disco in West Berlin, which took the lives of two U.S. servicemen. The Pan Am families—some of whom find the U.S.-Libyan rapprochement scandalous—say Libya reneged on the last $2 million-per-family installment of a legal settlement. Libya says the United States missed a legal deadline for removing it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism—it did so later—thus freeing it from its obligation. On the La Belle case, Libya has not made any payments to American victims or their families, though a settlement was considered close last year."

See http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2007/12/13/libya-moves-back-into-circulation.html

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