Lockerbie story heads to Hollywood

This is the headline over a story in Scotland on Sunday. In fact, what is revealed is the forthcoming publication of a novel, Flight 103, on 24 January 2008. This is a fictionalised account of the Lockerbie disaster by Juval Aviv, writing under the pseudonym Sam Green. It takes the line that Iran, not Libya, was responsible for the atrocity (which is not surprising given that Aviv was the author of the Interfor Report for Pan Am after the disaster, which arrived at the same conclusion). That a film based on the book might be made seems mere speculation. For the full story, see:
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland/Lockerbie-story-heads-to-Hollywood.3616402.jp

For more on Juval Aviv, see the 27 October post on this blog:
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007/10/juval-aviv.html

Justice is the casualty in this Britain of secrets

Here is an excerpt from an article with this title by Ian Bell in today's issue of The Herald:

"The IPCC [Independent Police Complaints Commission] will not now be taking action against four Met officers for their roles in the killing of [Jean Charles] De Menezes. As with Omagh, no-one is being held to account. Combine crude with legal, and you could say this: no-one did it. Yet, in the matter of Lockerbie, the biggest atrocity of all in these islands, we are offered the surreal converse: officially, one man did it. Except, of course, he did not.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi will be plucked from Scottish justice, and from his belated exoneration, in a deal whose existence was denied by our former Prime Minister while the Crown, citing a public interest it will not define, withholds a key document from a Scottish court. The document might demonstrate a miscarriage of justice. A reasonable person will ask, such being the case, why the Crown has elected to obstruct a court.

The truth is known to some, but not granted to all. On what authority? In each of these cases, judges have proved impotent and justice has been denied, blatantly, shamelessly. A pattern does not prove a theory. It certainly does not prove conspiracy. But this secret Britain has begun to stink, and stink badly."

See http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.1923252.0.Justice_is_the_casualty_in_this_Britain_of_secrets.php

As far as I am aware, the prisoner transfer agreement concluded between the Westminster Government and Libya does not exclude Mr Megrahi. But the ultimate decision, if any application for repatriation were made, would rest with the Scottish Ministers. I would be surprised if any behind-the-scenes arrangement to transfer Mr Megrahi had been arrived at with them. But, of course, I could be wrong. Otherwise, I find it difficult to dissent from Ian Bell's sentiments.

International Criminal Court requires new powers to catch up with terrorists

This is the headline over a letter in The Herald today from Dr Jim Swire. See
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/letters/display.var.1920671.0.International_Criminal_Court_requires_new_powers_to_catch_up_with_terrorists.php

Congressional Quarterly

I have often on this blog had occasion to bemoan the apparent blindness of the mainstream media and commentators in the United States to the shakiness of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi, to the weakness of the evidence on which it was based and to the fact that it has now been referred back to the High Court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission because there may have been a miscarriage of justice. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that I draw attention to an article on the Congressional Quarterly website, CQ Politics by their National Security Editor, Jeff Stein. In this article, he outlines the problems with the official US/UK version of events and explores the most compelling of the alternative scenarios, with quotes from US security and intelligence operatives who doubt the official version. A welcome transatlantic breath of fresh air. See
http://cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002648396

This story has been picked up by many other news media. One of these is The Malta Independent which is, of course, particularly interested in the admission by the US State Department that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, received a large reward for his evidence. See
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=62456

Scotland's "heavies" on the procedural hearing

Here are links to the coverage of the second procedural hearing by the Scottish "serious" daily newspapers, The Herald and The Scotsman:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1920715.0.Judge_raps_law_chiefs_for_delays_to_Lockerbie_document.php
and
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Angiolini-rapped-over-Lockerbie-file.3611641.jp

These stories must make dismal reading for the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini QC and the Advocate General for Scotland, Lord Davidson of Glen Clova QC, since they focus on the reprimand issued by the court over their respective failures to canvass fully and candidly, in their written answers to the appellant's application for disclosure of the withheld document, their reasons for opposing disclosure, thus causing unnecessary delay to the proceedings.

Other accounts of procedural hearing

Here is the BBC's coverage of the hearing, timed 15.49:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7154283.stm

And The Herald website posted the following at 17.45:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1920355.0.Govt_blocks_release_of_vital_Lockerbie_appeal_document.php

Second procedural hearing

Today's procedural hearing before Lords Hamilton, Kingarth and Eassie was, as anticipated, largely concerned with the document in the hands of the Crown, seen and founded upon by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, that the appellant's legal team is seeking to have disclosed to it. On 11 October the Crown was given six weeks either to get the consent of the foreign country which supplied it to disclosure, or to lodge detailed written reasons as to why the document should not be handed over. The Advocate General for Scotland (who provides Scottish legal advice to the UK Government Departments in London) was also instructed, if so advised, to lodge written answers.

The Lord Advocate (who, as well as being head of the Scottish public prosecution system, is legal adviser to the Scottish devolved Government) lodged answers basically saying no more than that, for reasons that she did not see fit to vouchsafe, the document in question was not disclosable. The Advocate General's answers objected to disclosure on the basis of Public Interest Immunity (PII), but did not deign to disclose what aspects of the public interest would be prejudiced by the document's being handed to the appellant (it already, of course, having been seen by the SCCRC); nor had the Advocate General had the courtesy to lodge a Public Interest Immunity Certificate which would have provided at least some enlightenment.

Maggie Scott QC for Mr Megrahi argued that the Advocate General's PII objection should be dismissed without further argument given that he had not produced in his written answers any material to support it and because it had not been adopted by the Lord Advocate who, in the Scottish criminal justice system is the officer in whose hands alone rests the responsibility for protecting the wider public interest (subject, of course, to ultimate supervision by the High Court). Ronnie Clancy QC for the Crown, however, stated that although no mention of any public interest objection to disclosure was made in the Lord Advocate's answers, this was simply because she had decided that, on this issue, she should defer to the UK Government and the Advocate General since responsibility for foreign relations is non-devolved and rests with the UK Government and so that aspect of the public interest (ie preserving good relations with the foreign government that supplied the document and which has refused to consent to its being disclosed) should be ceded to the Advocate General.

The court, "with great reluctance" allowed the Lord Advocate and the Advocate General six weeks to provide full written reasons for their claim to PII and appointed all parties to lodge by that date a note of their legal arguments and the authorities supporting them on the PII issue. It then fixed a one day hearing for 20 February 2008 for the issue to be fully debated in open court. The Lord Justice General, Lord Hamilton, made it abundantly plain that the court regarded the conduct of both the Lord Advocate and the Advocate General in failing, within the generous period of six weeks allowed them on 11 October, to provide written answers that set out the substance of their objection to disclosure, with full supporting reasons, as highly unsatisfactory.

Two other matters were discussed at the hearing. The first was the scope of the appeal. The Crown had earlier stated that it would consider asking the court to exercise its discretion to refuse to allow to be argued all (or some) of the Grounds of Appeal that related to matters that had been investigated by the SCCRC but rejected by that body. Today Mr Clancy went considerably further: the Crown now wished to argue that, as a matter of law, the Appeal Court was not permitted to hear Grounds of Appeal that had not been accepted by the SCCRC. That is a legal issue that has already been decided by a three-judge bench who held in 2004 (http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/XC956.html) that there was no such restriction on the Grounds of Appeal that could be heard. Nothing daunted, Mr Clancy asked for a five-judge court to be convened to reconsider the matter. The court ordered the Lord Advocate to submit within one month a written note setting out her legal arguments and appointed the appellant to submit written answers within one month thereafter. A five-judge court would then be convened to hear oral argument.

The final issue raised was the problem the appellant's legal advisers have been encountering in gaining access to the productions used in the original trial. Dumfries and Galloway Police (who are the custodians of most of them) had apparently been advised by the Crown that the appellant could not have access without an order of the court. Mr Clancy indicated that the Crown did not wish to be obstructive and that he was sure that the matter could be resolved amicably. Ms Scott's rejoinder was that the Crown had been nothing but obstructive. The court indicated that if any further problems were encountered in this regard the matter should be brought back before the court.

Observers of the appeal process have speculated that one of the Crown's principal tactics would be to seek to delay the proceedings at every turn. If corroborative evidence of this were needed, today's hearing has supplied it in abundance.

Once again, there was a good attendance on the public benches. Among the relatives present was Dr Jim Swire and Ms Marina Larracoechea Azumendi. Also in attendance was Edwin Bollier, principal of MeBo, the Zürich company that manufactured the timer that is alleged to have detonated the bomb on board Pan Am 103. The acoustics of the courtroom were somewhat better than on the previous occasion. But they still leave a lot to be desired.

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