The happy new year?

The Sunday Herald asked a number of Scots prominent in different fields for their views on what 2008 holds. Here is what Edinburgh-based human rights lawyer John Scott had to say about law and the legal system:

"Things are overwhelmingly pessimistic for 2008. Although Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has made it clear there are on-going consultations with the profession over the government's plans to reform legal aid, which could see accused people invited to represent themselves in court, there are going to be significant income reductions in legal aid for lawyers, and fewer young people coming into the profession at a time when few are already taking up jobs.

The number of cases going to be dealt with by the police and the fiscal, rather than going to court, is also worrying.

This is not a golden age for the law, particularly in relation to appeals and maintaining the principles of Scots law. We have some major appeals - including Luke Mitchell, William Beggs, and the Lockerbie appeal - that could determine what the law looks like. The system doesn't appear to have the fairness it used to have."

Shalgam's visit to the US, continued

Further coverage by The Washington Post of Libyan Foreign Minister Shalgam's visit to the United States:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/03/ST2008010303302.html

And here is a slightly different perspective from Middle East Online:
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=23761

Shalgam's visit to the United States

Here is a link to The Washington Post's coverage of the visit of Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam to the United States:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/02/AR2008010202832.html

As regards Lockerbie, the article states:

'Not all the old issues have been resolved, however, which limited Shalqam's White House visit to a sightseeing tour -- without any meetings with White House or National Security Council staff members, U.S. officials said. The Libyan delegation was hoping for a meeting with Vice President Cheney.

Libya has yet to pay $2 million per victim for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, for which two of Libyan intelligence agents were convicted. Families have been paid $8 million per victim, but the final installment was contingent on Libya being removed by a certain date from the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism. When the date passed, Libya withdrew the money.

The families have been pressing the Bush administration to pressure Gaddafi's regime to pay up. "The State Department betrayed us by not protesting the Libyan withdrawal of money from escrow in February 2005," said Rosemary Wolfe, a spokeswoman for the victims' families. "Their feet should be held to the fire."

The families had planned to protest outside the State Department today but decided that their actions would be lost in the focus on the Iowa caucuses, said Wolfe, who charged that the visit was deliberately timed to coincide with another major news event.

"There's still a lot to be done with respect to instituting basic freedoms within Libya. There's still some outstanding issues with respect to claims by U.S. citizens. Those need to be resolved," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is unlikely to visit Tripoli until the compensation issue has been resolved, U.S. officials said, despite her public statement that she was looking forward to a trip to Libya this year.'

Iain McKie on criminal justice

In The Scotsman today, Iain McKie (former police officer and father of Shirley) has an op-ed piece expressing grave concern about criminal justice in the United Kingdom, with particular reference to forensic scientific evidence. He writes:

“The Omagh bombing, the World's End Murders, the Templeton Woods murder and the SCRO fingerprint case have all shown that previously infallible evidence is indeed fallible and finally the prosecution system is being forced to review its whole forensic strategy.

While this is bad enough, Lockerbie and other cases have also revealed evidence of police and Crown Office incompetence, political intrigue and a court and legal system struggling to cope.

A system where justice takes forever and at a prohibitive cost. Slowly the realisation is dawning that we are faced with a justice system no longer fit for purpose. A system where there is very real danger of the innocent being found guilty and the guilty escaping punishment. Instead of the usual face saving 'first aid' aimed at preserving the power and privilege of those within the system, the time is long overdue for broad ranging public and political debate aimed at creating an open, accountable and accessible system.”

See http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/opinion/Alternative-take.3631585.jp

Rice to meet Shalgam

The following is from today's issue of The Scotsman:

'Thursday: Condoleezza Rice is due to meet Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Shalqam [sic; normally "Shalgam"] in Washington "to discuss unresolved issues concerning the bombing of Flight 103 on 21 December, 1988, over Lockerbie" among other issues. It will be the first time a Libyan foreign minister has been in Washington for 35 years.'

See
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Tense-forecast-for-Hogmanay-weather.3628798.jp

The "unresolved issues" presumably relate to the last tranche of the relatives' compensation, which did not fall to be paid over since the United States failed to remove Libya from its list of "state sponsors of terrorism" by the date prescribed in the compensation agreement.

For years US eavesdroppers could read encrypted messages without the least difficulty

The indefatigable Ludwig de Braeckeleer has another article on the OhMyNews website. It contends that for decades the US National Security Agency has been reading the most highly sensitive coded messages sent by most foreign governments. This is because it succeeded in subverting the Swiss company that manufactured the encryption machines that most countries use for this purpose, and thus ensured that the individual machines were rigged in such a way that the NSA could decipher any messages sent through them.

As regards the relevance of all this to the Lockerbie case, De Braeckeleer writes:

"After the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, 'Iran vowed that the skies would rain with American blood.' A few months later, on Dec. 21, a terrorist bomb brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Once more, NSA intercepted and decoded a communication of Iranian Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi linking Iran to the bombing of Pan Am 103.

One intelligence summary, prepared by the US Air Force Intelligence Agency, was requested by lawyers for the bankrupt Pan American Airlines through the Freedom of Information Act.

'Mohtashemi is closely connected with the Al Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist groups. He is actually a long-time friend of Abu Nidal. He has recently paid 10 million dollars in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrorist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus.'

Moreover, Israeli intelligence intercepted a coded transmission between Mohtashemi in Teheran and the Iranian Embassy in Beirut concerning the transfer of a large sum of money to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, headed by Ahmed Jibril, as payment for the downing of Pan Am 103.

The Iranians were now at a loss to explain how Western and Israeli intelligence agencies could so easily defeat the security of their diplomatic traffic. The ease with which the West was reading Iranian coded transactions strongly suggested that some may have possessed the decryption keys."

Later he comments:

"In 1991, the US and the U.K. indicted two Libyans for the bombing of Pan Am 103. To the surprise of many observers, the indictment did not mention those believed to have contracted the act of terror in spite of the fact that their guilt had been established by the interception of official communications by several intelligence agencies.

To many observers, justice was not served at the Lockerbie trial. Could it be that the US and U.K. governments decided to sacrifice the truth in order to preserve the (in)efficiency of their intelligence apparatus?"

For the full text, see http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=381337&rel_no=1

Secret Agreement Increases Odds That Convicted Pan Am 103 Bomber May Be Freed

Ambassador Andrew Killgore, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, has an article with this title in the December 2007 issue of the magazine. It is sceptical about the safety of Mr Megrahi's conviction. See
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/December_2007/0712013.html

It is instructive that influential US publications are now, at last, joining the consensus. See also http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007/12/congressional-quarterly.html

British Media Exploited by Intel Agencies

Dr Ludwig De Braeckeleer has a fascinating article with this title on the OhMyNews website. See

http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=381319&rel_no=1&back_url=

He tells the story of The Sunday Telegraph in 1995 running a story planted by known intelligence agents (but reported by the newspaper to emanate from a "British banking official") about Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. One paragraph reads: "The paper accused Col. Muammar Qaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, of running a major money laundering operation in Europe intended to fund weapons of mass destruction: Saif al-Islam is a 'thoroughly dishonest, unscrupulous and untrustworthy maverick against whom the international banking community has been warned to be on its guard.'"

Saif sued for libel. At the trial in 2002 the newspaper eventually admitted that the allegations had been untrue and that there had been no evidence to support them. However, at one stage the newspaper had pleaded the defence of qualified privilege; the lawyers argued that it was in the public interest to publish the articles even if they turned out to be untrue. Dr De Braeckeleer comments on this:

"For those who follow the Lockerbie farce -- the Megrahi second appeal over the Lockerbie judgment -- it is hard not to notice the irony of the last argument. Indeed, it seems that in the U.K., it is good for the public to be told lies while at the same time it is good for the same public not to be shown secret documents believed to be vital to unearthing the truth about the largest crime ever committed on U.K. soil."

Al-Megrahi May Come Home Very Soon

Today the Libyaonline website runs an article, apparently from the Tripoli Post, with this title. Again, it embodies the assumption that, because the United Kingdom Government and Libya have concluded a prisoner transfer agreement and because Mr Megrahi is not specifically excluded from its operation, therefore he will soon be heading home to Tripoli. This is a quite unwarranted assumption. It is the Scottish Government, not the UK Government, that must consent to any transfer. I have seen no indication anywhere that such consent is likely to be forthcoming or, indeed, that any approaches have been made to the Scottish Ministers to sound them out.

See http://www.libyaonline.com/news/details.php?id=1514

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