The Scottish government has defended its decision to release the Lockerbie bomber, amid mounting criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.
It follows an attack by the head of the FBI, who said freeing Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi made a "mockery of justice". (...)
The Scottish Government said last night the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had reached his conclusions on the basis of Scotland's "due process, clear evidence, and the recommendations from the parole board and prison governor".
The comments came in response to a letter from Robert Mueller, chief of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, who said the action made a "mockery of the rule of law" and "gave comfort to terrorists".
Mr Mueller is a former prosecutor who played a key role in investigating the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people. (...)
But in its statement, the Scottish government said: "The US authorities indicated although they were opposed to both prisoner transfer and compassionate release, they made it clear they regarded compassionate release as far preferable to the transfer agreement, and Mr Mueller should be aware of that.
"Mr Mueller was involved in the Lockerbie case, and therefore has strong views, but he should also be aware that while many families have opposed Mr MacAskill's decision many others have supported it."
[The above are excerpts from a report on the BBC News website.]
Sunday, 23 August 2009
A Maltese perspective
[The Malta Independent on Sunday carries an article and an editorial on what should happen now that Abdelbaset Megrahi has returned to Libya after abandoning his appeal (in which one of the issues would have been whether the trial court was entitled to conclude that the suitcase containing the bomb was ingested at Luqa Airport in Malta). The article reads as follows:]
Lockerbie case expert Professor Robert Black has added his name to a growing school of thought that prescribes Malta should demand a separate enquiry into the Lockerbie bombing so as to clear its name as the bomb’s point of departure.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person to have been found guilty of the 1988 terrorist attack that brought down a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland – killing 270 people in the process – was freed from a Scottish prison on Thursday on compassionate grounds, a move allowed under Scottish law for terminally ill prisoners.
But before his release and his subsequent return to Libya was approved, Mr al-Megrahi had dropped an upcoming appeal against his conviction – an appeal that he himself as well as many observers felt he would have won, had it been heard.
But now that the appeal has been dropped, it appears increasingly likely that the victims’ families will never know the truth behind the attack, nor could Malta expect to have its name cleared as the bomb’s staging post.
Contacted by The Malta Independent on Sunday, Professor Black, a former Scottish judge and the architect of the original Lockerbie trial, stressed his conviction that Malta should be demanding a separate enquiry into the bombing so as to remove the blemish on the country and its airport security. Such an enquiry, he suggests, could be carried out by the European Union at Malta’s behest.
“I think the Maltese government should be pressing very hard within the EU for an enquiry into Lockerbie,” Professor Black comments.
“The evidence that the bomb started out its fatal progress from Luqa Airport was some of the weakest in the Zeist trial but it was swallowed by the judges – it had to be, if they were going to convict Megrahi.
“The evidence established that security and baggage reconciliation systems at the airport were of a high international standard – much higher than those then operative at Heathrow. Yet the judges, on the flimsiest of evidence – a dubious interpretation of a computer print-out from Frankfurt Airport – held that Malta was the point of ingestion.
“This unwarranted slur on Maltese airport security should not be allowed to remain. I would strongly encourage the Government of Malta to take such steps as membership of the EU accords it to have this stigma removed.”
Mr al-Megrahi’s appeal had been granted after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found the reliability of Maltese evidence used to convict the former Libyan intelligence agent of carrying out as highly questionable and recommended he be granted an appeal.
Professor Black, himself from Lockerbie, had drawn up the framework for al-Megrahi’s trial, held in the Netherlands under Scottish law, which led to his conviction in 2001. Since then, Professor Black has continually criticised the court’s verdict, contending that al-Megrahi was innocent and that Malta was not the bomb’s point of departure.
[The editorial headed "The appeal that should have been heard" reads in part:]
Now that the appeal lodged by the convicted Lockerbie bomber has been dropped once and for all, the families of the 270 victims of what was the worst terrorist attack in history on British soil stand a very good chance of never knowing how, why and by whom their loved ones were taken from them so tragically just four days before Christmas in 1988.
Nor will Malta’s name ever be cleared by a court of law over its apparent role, as the bomb’s point of departure, in the tragedy. The country has been dogged over the last 21 years by the Lockerbie prosecution’s contention that the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland on 21 December 1988 began its deadly journey on an Air Malta flight out of Luqa Airport.
Indeed, the only hope of answers for the families on both sides of the Atlantic, which incidentally hold very different views on the guilt of the convicted bomber, of learning the truth lies in the possibility of a separate enquiry into the case.
Malta would also have much to gain from such an enquiry – having been branded as the place where the bomb began its travels, and with both underlying and outright implications of lax airport security and the country’s association, however distant, with such a heinous act of terrorism.
As one of the Lockerbie case’s leading authorities points out in today’s issue, the evidence presented during the trial that the bomb had originated at Luqa Airport was some of the weakest of the entire proceedings, and Malta has a good case to bring to the European Union for such an enquiry.
Malta also deserves some concrete answers about its role in the tragedy, and it should be lobbying at all levels for an investigation that would, albeit outside a court of law, at least hear out the new evidence and arguments that were to have been presented by the defence team at the appeal, which mainly dealt with the weaknesses in the Maltese testimony that led to the conviction.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a former employee with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta and the only person to have been found guilty of the terrorist attack, was convicted largely on the basis of evidence supplied by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci – of the now infamous Mary’s House on Tower Road, Sliema.
In his evidence, Mr Gauci identified Mr al-Megrahi as the purchaser of articles of clothing and an umbrella found in the suitcase containing the bomb – placed on an Air Malta flight and transferred to the ill-fated Pan Am flight in Frankfurt.
But in reviewing the request for an appeal, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988” – the very argument that had sealed the indictment against Mr al-Megrahi.
In recommending that the appeal be heard, the Commission found that although it had been proven that Mr al-Megrahi had been in Malta on several occasions during the month in question, it was determined through the new evidence submitted that 7 December 1988 was the only date on which he would have had the opportunity to make the purchases from Mary’s House.
The evidence that was not heard at the trial concerned the date on which Christmas lights had been illuminated in Sliema near Mary’s House which, taken together with Mr Gauci’s evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, indicates the purchase of the incriminating items had taken place before 6 December 1988 – when no evidence had been presented at trial to the effect that Mr al-Megrahi was in Malta before 6 December. (...)
Mr al-Megrahi’s lawyers have also claimed that Mr Gauci had given contradictory evidence, including differing dates of purchase and his account of the sale itself, and that, on one occasion, he had even identified Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Talb as the purchaser.
And then there are the other allegation made by Mr al-Megrahi’s defence team that Scottish detectives had coached Mr Gauci on at least 23 occasions, sometimes over alleged fishing trips on the Scottish lochs, and that he also received up to US$2 million in return for his testimony.
A delegation from the Scottish Crown was also due to travel to Malta to seek consent for the disclosure of sensitive documents related to the case, specifically statements given to the police in September 1989 by a friend of Mr Gauci attesting the former’s concern that Mr Gauci had identified the wrong man – evidence the defence team had argued could have exonerated their client but which had never been presented in court or handed over to the defence team.
Mr Gauci’s friend had apparently raised concerns over the fact that he made a transaction at the shop that bore a remarkable resemblance to the sale to the two men Mr Gauci described in his testimony.
There are so many questions about the case that are still lingering or, rather, festering, that one questions whether the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing will ever be known.
Perhaps it is up to Malta, which has found itself right in the middle of the controversy for over two decades now and through no fault of its own, to find a way to force that truth to come out.
[The Sunday Times of Malta publishes an article headed "Malta had 'no connection' with Lockerbie bomb - government". It contains the following:]
Malta had "no connection" with the bomb that exploded aboard an aircraft over Lockerbie in 1988, Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg told The Sunday Times yesterday.
"The position of the government has never changed on this matter - Malta was not involved in this incident. The bomb never left from Malta," Dr Borg said in the first government reaction since the controversial release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi. (...)
But Dr Borg said that the withdrawal by Mr Al-Megrahi of the second appeal before the Scottish courts meant that no new light could now be shed on the incident.
Asked if he believed Mr Al-Megrahi was innocent, the Foreign Minister said: "The Scottish [Criminal Cases] Review [Commission] said there were sufficient grounds which could have led to the reopening of the case. Unfortunately this hasn't happened."
Lockerbie case expert Professor Robert Black has added his name to a growing school of thought that prescribes Malta should demand a separate enquiry into the Lockerbie bombing so as to clear its name as the bomb’s point of departure.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person to have been found guilty of the 1988 terrorist attack that brought down a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland – killing 270 people in the process – was freed from a Scottish prison on Thursday on compassionate grounds, a move allowed under Scottish law for terminally ill prisoners.
But before his release and his subsequent return to Libya was approved, Mr al-Megrahi had dropped an upcoming appeal against his conviction – an appeal that he himself as well as many observers felt he would have won, had it been heard.
But now that the appeal has been dropped, it appears increasingly likely that the victims’ families will never know the truth behind the attack, nor could Malta expect to have its name cleared as the bomb’s staging post.
Contacted by The Malta Independent on Sunday, Professor Black, a former Scottish judge and the architect of the original Lockerbie trial, stressed his conviction that Malta should be demanding a separate enquiry into the bombing so as to remove the blemish on the country and its airport security. Such an enquiry, he suggests, could be carried out by the European Union at Malta’s behest.
“I think the Maltese government should be pressing very hard within the EU for an enquiry into Lockerbie,” Professor Black comments.
“The evidence that the bomb started out its fatal progress from Luqa Airport was some of the weakest in the Zeist trial but it was swallowed by the judges – it had to be, if they were going to convict Megrahi.
“The evidence established that security and baggage reconciliation systems at the airport were of a high international standard – much higher than those then operative at Heathrow. Yet the judges, on the flimsiest of evidence – a dubious interpretation of a computer print-out from Frankfurt Airport – held that Malta was the point of ingestion.
“This unwarranted slur on Maltese airport security should not be allowed to remain. I would strongly encourage the Government of Malta to take such steps as membership of the EU accords it to have this stigma removed.”
Mr al-Megrahi’s appeal had been granted after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found the reliability of Maltese evidence used to convict the former Libyan intelligence agent of carrying out as highly questionable and recommended he be granted an appeal.
Professor Black, himself from Lockerbie, had drawn up the framework for al-Megrahi’s trial, held in the Netherlands under Scottish law, which led to his conviction in 2001. Since then, Professor Black has continually criticised the court’s verdict, contending that al-Megrahi was innocent and that Malta was not the bomb’s point of departure.
[The editorial headed "The appeal that should have been heard" reads in part:]
Now that the appeal lodged by the convicted Lockerbie bomber has been dropped once and for all, the families of the 270 victims of what was the worst terrorist attack in history on British soil stand a very good chance of never knowing how, why and by whom their loved ones were taken from them so tragically just four days before Christmas in 1988.
Nor will Malta’s name ever be cleared by a court of law over its apparent role, as the bomb’s point of departure, in the tragedy. The country has been dogged over the last 21 years by the Lockerbie prosecution’s contention that the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland on 21 December 1988 began its deadly journey on an Air Malta flight out of Luqa Airport.
Indeed, the only hope of answers for the families on both sides of the Atlantic, which incidentally hold very different views on the guilt of the convicted bomber, of learning the truth lies in the possibility of a separate enquiry into the case.
Malta would also have much to gain from such an enquiry – having been branded as the place where the bomb began its travels, and with both underlying and outright implications of lax airport security and the country’s association, however distant, with such a heinous act of terrorism.
As one of the Lockerbie case’s leading authorities points out in today’s issue, the evidence presented during the trial that the bomb had originated at Luqa Airport was some of the weakest of the entire proceedings, and Malta has a good case to bring to the European Union for such an enquiry.
Malta also deserves some concrete answers about its role in the tragedy, and it should be lobbying at all levels for an investigation that would, albeit outside a court of law, at least hear out the new evidence and arguments that were to have been presented by the defence team at the appeal, which mainly dealt with the weaknesses in the Maltese testimony that led to the conviction.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a former employee with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta and the only person to have been found guilty of the terrorist attack, was convicted largely on the basis of evidence supplied by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci – of the now infamous Mary’s House on Tower Road, Sliema.
In his evidence, Mr Gauci identified Mr al-Megrahi as the purchaser of articles of clothing and an umbrella found in the suitcase containing the bomb – placed on an Air Malta flight and transferred to the ill-fated Pan Am flight in Frankfurt.
But in reviewing the request for an appeal, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988” – the very argument that had sealed the indictment against Mr al-Megrahi.
In recommending that the appeal be heard, the Commission found that although it had been proven that Mr al-Megrahi had been in Malta on several occasions during the month in question, it was determined through the new evidence submitted that 7 December 1988 was the only date on which he would have had the opportunity to make the purchases from Mary’s House.
The evidence that was not heard at the trial concerned the date on which Christmas lights had been illuminated in Sliema near Mary’s House which, taken together with Mr Gauci’s evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, indicates the purchase of the incriminating items had taken place before 6 December 1988 – when no evidence had been presented at trial to the effect that Mr al-Megrahi was in Malta before 6 December. (...)
Mr al-Megrahi’s lawyers have also claimed that Mr Gauci had given contradictory evidence, including differing dates of purchase and his account of the sale itself, and that, on one occasion, he had even identified Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Talb as the purchaser.
And then there are the other allegation made by Mr al-Megrahi’s defence team that Scottish detectives had coached Mr Gauci on at least 23 occasions, sometimes over alleged fishing trips on the Scottish lochs, and that he also received up to US$2 million in return for his testimony.
A delegation from the Scottish Crown was also due to travel to Malta to seek consent for the disclosure of sensitive documents related to the case, specifically statements given to the police in September 1989 by a friend of Mr Gauci attesting the former’s concern that Mr Gauci had identified the wrong man – evidence the defence team had argued could have exonerated their client but which had never been presented in court or handed over to the defence team.
Mr Gauci’s friend had apparently raised concerns over the fact that he made a transaction at the shop that bore a remarkable resemblance to the sale to the two men Mr Gauci described in his testimony.
There are so many questions about the case that are still lingering or, rather, festering, that one questions whether the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing will ever be known.
Perhaps it is up to Malta, which has found itself right in the middle of the controversy for over two decades now and through no fault of its own, to find a way to force that truth to come out.
[The Sunday Times of Malta publishes an article headed "Malta had 'no connection' with Lockerbie bomb - government". It contains the following:]
Malta had "no connection" with the bomb that exploded aboard an aircraft over Lockerbie in 1988, Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg told The Sunday Times yesterday.
"The position of the government has never changed on this matter - Malta was not involved in this incident. The bomb never left from Malta," Dr Borg said in the first government reaction since the controversial release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi. (...)
But Dr Borg said that the withdrawal by Mr Al-Megrahi of the second appeal before the Scottish courts meant that no new light could now be shed on the incident.
Asked if he believed Mr Al-Megrahi was innocent, the Foreign Minister said: "The Scottish [Criminal Cases] Review [Commission] said there were sufficient grounds which could have led to the reopening of the case. Unfortunately this hasn't happened."
$2m witness payment, bogus forensic evidence and Pentagon memo blaming Iran: How Lockerbie bomber appeal threatened Scottish justice
[This is the headline over a long and highly detailed article in the Mail on Sunday. The following are excerpts:]
In a submission to the Court of Appeal running to thousands of words, Megrahi’s lawyers list 20 grounds of appeal which include:
* Details of a catalogue of deliberately undisclosed evidence at the original trial.
* Allegations of ‘tampering’ with evidence.
* A summary of how American intelligence agencies were convinced that Iran, not Libya, was involved but that their reports were not open to the 2001 trial.
[Note by RB: I strongly suspect that what is being referred to is the submission made on Mr Megrahi's behalf in 2003 to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, not the Grounds of Appeal lodged with the Criminal Appeal Court once the SCCRC had referred the case back.]
The closely guarded submission was obtained by Ian Ferguson, an investigative journalist and co-author of the book Cover-up of Convenience - The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie.
But the evidence will never be tested in open court after the dying Libyan abandoned it last week to spend his final days with his family.
Mr Ferguson, who has had 100 hours of unprecedented access to the 57-year-old former Libyan intelligence agent during his eight years in jail, claimed last night: ‘From the start there was a determination to try to prevent this appeal being heard.
'It opened but never got off the ground, with stall after stall as each month Megrahi weakened with the cancer that was killing him.
‘There was rejoicing in the Crown Office in Edinburgh when he was released and the appeal abandoned.
'There may well be political manoeuvres behind his release but at the heart was a decision to save the face of the Scottish judiciary - in particular the Crown Prosecution, who would have been shown to have been involved in an abuse of process by non-disclosure of witness statements.’
It took the use of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to unlock the full intelligence documents which are now highlighted in the appeal submission.
They show memos from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which suggested the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people in 1988, was in response to the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by the American warship USS Vincennes five months earlier.
In a memo dated September 24, 1989, and reproduced in the appeal submission, the DIA states: ‘The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, Iran’s former interior minister.
‘The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad [Jibril], Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command [PFLP-GC] leader, for a sum of $1million [£600,000.
‘$100,000 of this money was given to Jibril up front in Damascus by the Iranian ambassador to Sy [Syria], Muhammed Hussan [Akhari] for initial expenses.
'The remainder of the money was to be paid after successful completion of the mission.’ (...)
The memos and reports, denied in full to the original trial, were available to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which, two years ago, cast doubt on the safety of Megrahi’s conviction based on six separate counts of the legal argument.
Their view opened the way for a second appeal. That report has never been made public.
Mr Ferguson said: ‘Megrahi was made the scapegoat for whatever reason and from that point everything went in reverse to try to make the crime fit.’
Central to Megrahi’s conviction was the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who claimed that Megrahi had bought clothes allegedly found in the suitcase bomb.
Lawyers were due to claim that Gauci was paid a $2million reward for his evidence, which followed more than 20 police interviews, and that many of the often wildly conflicting statements taken on each occasion were withheld from the defence.
Mr Ferguson says that, although too late for the submission, lawyers were planning to spring a witness called David Wright, an English builder who was on holiday in Malta and who is said to have information about the clothes shop.
He would have produced evidence as to the date and buyer of the clothes, seriously undermining Gauci’s reliability and credibility.
It is now believed that Gauci has moved to Australia.
Other new evidence listed in the grounds for appeal would have called in new witnesses to prove that the fragment of circuit board from a timing device found near the crash and pointing to Libyan involvement simply could not have survived such an explosion.
Subsequent analysis carried out by an independent forensic scientist found no trace of explosive on the tiny piece. (...)
Also due to be called was a witness who would allegedly discredit the accepted account that the suitcase in which the bomb was placed had somehow travelled unchecked and unaccompanied from Malta to Frankfurt and on to the Pan Am flight.
Questions would have been asked as to how a fragment of cloth - believed to be from the clothing wrapped around the bomb - subsequently came to be packed with material linking it direct to the bomb.
Mr Ferguson added: ‘Had this appeal gone ahead and witnesses recalled and cross-examined, I believe it would be shown that some had most definitely perjured themselves or deliberately misled the court.
‘It is no wonder that some people were hoping Megrahi would die before certain witnesses were called.
'The release on compassionate grounds is a blessed release for them, as much as it was for him.’
Mr Ferguson, who now lives in France but continues to pursue ‘leads’ in the case, first met Megrahi in 2002 and says he was a constant visitor over the years as they went over every aspect of the evidence against him.
‘From the start I was struck by his total, unchanging, quiet protestation of his innocence.
'He readily admitted that his job was sanction-busting for the Libyan government but never anything more sinister.
‘He frequently said he knew his government were involved in many things but always looked me straight in the eye and said: "I am not a killer".
Despite seeing the by then frail and faltering Megrahi only four weeks ago as he waited to hear if he could be sent home, Mr Ferguson insists he did not press him on any political dealings which may have been going on behind the scenes.
He added: ‘Politics may have got him into prison but I believed it was only evidence that could get him out.
'I never believed, though, that he would give up the appeal after so many years of fighting for it. That was all we focused on in our meetings - his refusal to give up.
'At the end, though, I agreed with his decision because, otherwise, he would not have been able to get what he most wanted - to live out his last days with his family.’
Megrahi was diagnosed with terminal cancer in September last year.
Mr Ferguson, who saw him two months later, said: ‘He already looked very different. His complexion was drawn and he’d lost a lot of weight.
'He cried as he told me how he had been called into the prison governor’s office and learnt his cancer was inoperable and ultimately untreatable.
‘He called his wife and they were both crying for 15 minutes. He wasn’t embarrassed to cry in front of me.
'I’d had cancer myself in 2002, so I knew what he was going through.
'I contacted a psychologist specialising in this disease who I hoped would help him deal with it.’
Since Megrahi’s diagnosis, Mr Ferguson has seen him four times.
He added: ‘Our visits were shortened because he couldn’t sit down for too long before being in pain.
'Because he is so religious he wasn’t scared of death but he was desperate to have his name cleared before he died.
‘I felt he was being blackmailed but he never admitted it.
'The Crown wouldn’t agree to transfer him unless he gave up his appeal and the longer they stalled the more fragile he became physically. In the end he just couldn’t continue.’
He first met Megrahi and his lawyer in Glasgow’s Barlinnie prison - and quickly became convinced that he was innocent.
He said: ‘The first thing I asked him was if he had had anything to do with the bombing.
'He insisted he hadn’t and was convinced from the start his conviction would be overturned. He seemed smart and intelligent without being arrogant and very angry.
'The evidence was purely circumstantial and came at a time when the West wanted to implicate Libya at a time when it was politically inconvenient to accuse the real culprits.’
Over the months the pair reached a tacit understanding: ‘It was never spoken outright but Megrahi knew I would never jeopardise his trust by writing about our meetings.’
In a submission to the Court of Appeal running to thousands of words, Megrahi’s lawyers list 20 grounds of appeal which include:
* Details of a catalogue of deliberately undisclosed evidence at the original trial.
* Allegations of ‘tampering’ with evidence.
* A summary of how American intelligence agencies were convinced that Iran, not Libya, was involved but that their reports were not open to the 2001 trial.
[Note by RB: I strongly suspect that what is being referred to is the submission made on Mr Megrahi's behalf in 2003 to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, not the Grounds of Appeal lodged with the Criminal Appeal Court once the SCCRC had referred the case back.]
The closely guarded submission was obtained by Ian Ferguson, an investigative journalist and co-author of the book Cover-up of Convenience - The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie.
But the evidence will never be tested in open court after the dying Libyan abandoned it last week to spend his final days with his family.
Mr Ferguson, who has had 100 hours of unprecedented access to the 57-year-old former Libyan intelligence agent during his eight years in jail, claimed last night: ‘From the start there was a determination to try to prevent this appeal being heard.
'It opened but never got off the ground, with stall after stall as each month Megrahi weakened with the cancer that was killing him.
‘There was rejoicing in the Crown Office in Edinburgh when he was released and the appeal abandoned.
'There may well be political manoeuvres behind his release but at the heart was a decision to save the face of the Scottish judiciary - in particular the Crown Prosecution, who would have been shown to have been involved in an abuse of process by non-disclosure of witness statements.’
It took the use of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to unlock the full intelligence documents which are now highlighted in the appeal submission.
They show memos from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which suggested the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people in 1988, was in response to the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by the American warship USS Vincennes five months earlier.
In a memo dated September 24, 1989, and reproduced in the appeal submission, the DIA states: ‘The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, Iran’s former interior minister.
‘The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad [Jibril], Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command [PFLP-GC] leader, for a sum of $1million [£600,000.
‘$100,000 of this money was given to Jibril up front in Damascus by the Iranian ambassador to Sy [Syria], Muhammed Hussan [Akhari] for initial expenses.
'The remainder of the money was to be paid after successful completion of the mission.’ (...)
The memos and reports, denied in full to the original trial, were available to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which, two years ago, cast doubt on the safety of Megrahi’s conviction based on six separate counts of the legal argument.
Their view opened the way for a second appeal. That report has never been made public.
Mr Ferguson said: ‘Megrahi was made the scapegoat for whatever reason and from that point everything went in reverse to try to make the crime fit.’
Central to Megrahi’s conviction was the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who claimed that Megrahi had bought clothes allegedly found in the suitcase bomb.
Lawyers were due to claim that Gauci was paid a $2million reward for his evidence, which followed more than 20 police interviews, and that many of the often wildly conflicting statements taken on each occasion were withheld from the defence.
Mr Ferguson says that, although too late for the submission, lawyers were planning to spring a witness called David Wright, an English builder who was on holiday in Malta and who is said to have information about the clothes shop.
He would have produced evidence as to the date and buyer of the clothes, seriously undermining Gauci’s reliability and credibility.
It is now believed that Gauci has moved to Australia.
Other new evidence listed in the grounds for appeal would have called in new witnesses to prove that the fragment of circuit board from a timing device found near the crash and pointing to Libyan involvement simply could not have survived such an explosion.
Subsequent analysis carried out by an independent forensic scientist found no trace of explosive on the tiny piece. (...)
Also due to be called was a witness who would allegedly discredit the accepted account that the suitcase in which the bomb was placed had somehow travelled unchecked and unaccompanied from Malta to Frankfurt and on to the Pan Am flight.
Questions would have been asked as to how a fragment of cloth - believed to be from the clothing wrapped around the bomb - subsequently came to be packed with material linking it direct to the bomb.
Mr Ferguson added: ‘Had this appeal gone ahead and witnesses recalled and cross-examined, I believe it would be shown that some had most definitely perjured themselves or deliberately misled the court.
‘It is no wonder that some people were hoping Megrahi would die before certain witnesses were called.
'The release on compassionate grounds is a blessed release for them, as much as it was for him.’
Mr Ferguson, who now lives in France but continues to pursue ‘leads’ in the case, first met Megrahi in 2002 and says he was a constant visitor over the years as they went over every aspect of the evidence against him.
‘From the start I was struck by his total, unchanging, quiet protestation of his innocence.
'He readily admitted that his job was sanction-busting for the Libyan government but never anything more sinister.
‘He frequently said he knew his government were involved in many things but always looked me straight in the eye and said: "I am not a killer".
Despite seeing the by then frail and faltering Megrahi only four weeks ago as he waited to hear if he could be sent home, Mr Ferguson insists he did not press him on any political dealings which may have been going on behind the scenes.
He added: ‘Politics may have got him into prison but I believed it was only evidence that could get him out.
'I never believed, though, that he would give up the appeal after so many years of fighting for it. That was all we focused on in our meetings - his refusal to give up.
'At the end, though, I agreed with his decision because, otherwise, he would not have been able to get what he most wanted - to live out his last days with his family.’
Megrahi was diagnosed with terminal cancer in September last year.
Mr Ferguson, who saw him two months later, said: ‘He already looked very different. His complexion was drawn and he’d lost a lot of weight.
'He cried as he told me how he had been called into the prison governor’s office and learnt his cancer was inoperable and ultimately untreatable.
‘He called his wife and they were both crying for 15 minutes. He wasn’t embarrassed to cry in front of me.
'I’d had cancer myself in 2002, so I knew what he was going through.
'I contacted a psychologist specialising in this disease who I hoped would help him deal with it.’
Since Megrahi’s diagnosis, Mr Ferguson has seen him four times.
He added: ‘Our visits were shortened because he couldn’t sit down for too long before being in pain.
'Because he is so religious he wasn’t scared of death but he was desperate to have his name cleared before he died.
‘I felt he was being blackmailed but he never admitted it.
'The Crown wouldn’t agree to transfer him unless he gave up his appeal and the longer they stalled the more fragile he became physically. In the end he just couldn’t continue.’
He first met Megrahi and his lawyer in Glasgow’s Barlinnie prison - and quickly became convinced that he was innocent.
He said: ‘The first thing I asked him was if he had had anything to do with the bombing.
'He insisted he hadn’t and was convinced from the start his conviction would be overturned. He seemed smart and intelligent without being arrogant and very angry.
'The evidence was purely circumstantial and came at a time when the West wanted to implicate Libya at a time when it was politically inconvenient to accuse the real culprits.’
Over the months the pair reached a tacit understanding: ‘It was never spoken outright but Megrahi knew I would never jeopardise his trust by writing about our meetings.’
O what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!
(Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, can VI, xvii)
The UK Government brazenly maintains that there were no "deals" or "understandings" between it and the Libyan Government in relation to the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi. That view is most assuredly not shared by high Libyan Government officials. The "deal in the desert" was intended to lead to Mr Megrahi's early return to Tripoli. But that was stymied by Downing Street and the Foreign Office's failure to appreciate that the decision on transfer of a prisoner in Scotland rested with the Scottish, not the UK, Government. And just to make matters worse, at the most inconvenient moment, the SNP had taken over the Scottish Government from Labour and so supine obedience to UK Labour Government wishes could no longer be guaranteed. That was when the deal started to fall apart, to the anger of the Libyans and the embarrassment of HMG.
Some of this is now coming into the public domain. An article in today's edition of The Sunday Times contains the following:
'Apart from the unfortunate Lockerbie families, everyone seems to have got what they wanted. Gadaffi and his son have their man. Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice secretary, who signed the release order, has burnished his humanitarian credentials. Gordon Brown has preserved Britain’s politically and economically valuable new relationship with Libya while avoiding any blame for the release. And American politicians have been able to bluster in protest while exercising none of their considerable clout to stop it happening.
'The whole exercise reeks of realpolitik and moral evasion.
'The reality is that Megrahi’s freedom is a product of the effort to bring Libya out of dangerous isolation. This is as much to America’s advantage as Britain’s, but Washington has too much baggage to be openly involved; it bombed Libya in 1986 in punishment for supporting terrorism, and Gadaffi remains a bogeyman to many Americans. So Britain takes the lead — except when it can devolve the dirty work onto a Scottish politician.
'A so-called “deal in the desert” reached between Gadaffi and Blair in a tent outside Tripoli in 2004 led to a broad rapprochement with Libya and a prisoner transfer agreement that Gadaffi saw, from the outset, as a means of bringing home Megrahi. The Libyans became increasingly angry, however, at what they regarded as British foot-dragging over the transfer.
'“They were furious with the Foreign Office because things were not panning out as they were told they would,” said a source close to the Scottish administration. “The Foreign Office had been telling the Libyans that they were confident the Scottish government would agree to their prisoner transfer request.”
'British officials strongly denied that they had put pressure on Scotland to release Megrahi — or signed the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya — in order to smooth the way for oil deals. But on the way home to Tripoli on Thursday, Saif seemed to contradict them. “In all commercial contracts for oil and gas with Britain, Megrahi was always on the negotiating table,” he said.
'There were anxieties in Edinburgh and Westminster when the Libyans raised the prospect of breaking off diplomatic relations, which in effect would have frozen all British dealings in Libya.
'“Look at what he’s done to Switzerland,” said Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya. “He [Gadaffi] can make life very unpleasant for us all.”
'Some of the secret background to Megrahi’s release has now emerged with the leak of a letter from Ivan Lewis, a junior minister at the Foreign Office, encouraging MacAskill to “consider” Libya’s application for Megrahi to be sent home. It is part of the political game of pass the parcel between Brown and Alex Salmond, the nationalist Scottish first minister.
'This began with a fiction that suited both sides. The prime minister claimed that the decision on whether to release the man convicted in a Scottish court of killing 270 people lay exclusively with ministers in the devolved Scottish administration.
'Brown, who has a Macavity reputation of knowing when to hide from no-win situations, realised his reputation could be damaged by any association with the decision on Megrahi’s fate. However, no political insider seriously believed that the Westminster government would leave a matter as sensitive to this to Salmond’s unpredictable justice minister. (...)
'Lewis’s leaked letter to MacAskill suggested otherwise. Writing on August 3, Lewis told MacAskill there was no legal reason not to accede to Libya’s request to transfer Megrahi into its custody under the terms of the treaty agreed between Tony Blair and Gadaffi in 2007.
'A source who saw the letter said Lewis added: “I hope on this basis you will now feel able to consider the Libyan application in accordance with the provisions of the prisoner transfer agreement.” The source said the Scottish government interpreted this as an attempt to influence MacAskill’s decision.'
A further article in The Sunday Times headed "Foreign Office ‘pushed for Lockerbie release’" is also worth reading in this context.
Tony Blair has now, of course, gone on record denying that there was any deal in the desert, at least as far as the repatriation of Megrahi was concerned. I know, because I've talked to them, that Libyan officials who took part came away with a different impression. If one wished to be generous to Mr Blair, one could perhaps adopt the view outlined in the following paragraph from an article in today's Scotland on Sunday:
'One senior Labour source suggested last night that while Blair would not have laid down the offer of Megrahi's release formally, he may have given that impression to Gaddafi. The source said: "Gaddafi wouldn't be the first person to have walked away from a meeting with Tony thinking a deal was on. Just ask Gordon Brown." Blair visited Libya in May 2007, during which UK energy giant BP signed a £450m exploration deal.'
An article in the same newspaper by Professor Hans Koechler, a UN-appointed observer at the Lockerbie trial, is also well worth reading. It contains the following sentence:
'What I do know is that the UK government was interested in having Megrahi returned to his homeland. There was this understanding between Libya and the UK, which was discussed in many confidential meetings. One of those recent meetings may have been the one between Lord Mandelson and the son of Colonel Gaddafi in Corfu.'
(Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, can VI, xvii)
The UK Government brazenly maintains that there were no "deals" or "understandings" between it and the Libyan Government in relation to the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi. That view is most assuredly not shared by high Libyan Government officials. The "deal in the desert" was intended to lead to Mr Megrahi's early return to Tripoli. But that was stymied by Downing Street and the Foreign Office's failure to appreciate that the decision on transfer of a prisoner in Scotland rested with the Scottish, not the UK, Government. And just to make matters worse, at the most inconvenient moment, the SNP had taken over the Scottish Government from Labour and so supine obedience to UK Labour Government wishes could no longer be guaranteed. That was when the deal started to fall apart, to the anger of the Libyans and the embarrassment of HMG.
Some of this is now coming into the public domain. An article in today's edition of The Sunday Times contains the following:
'Apart from the unfortunate Lockerbie families, everyone seems to have got what they wanted. Gadaffi and his son have their man. Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice secretary, who signed the release order, has burnished his humanitarian credentials. Gordon Brown has preserved Britain’s politically and economically valuable new relationship with Libya while avoiding any blame for the release. And American politicians have been able to bluster in protest while exercising none of their considerable clout to stop it happening.
'The whole exercise reeks of realpolitik and moral evasion.
'The reality is that Megrahi’s freedom is a product of the effort to bring Libya out of dangerous isolation. This is as much to America’s advantage as Britain’s, but Washington has too much baggage to be openly involved; it bombed Libya in 1986 in punishment for supporting terrorism, and Gadaffi remains a bogeyman to many Americans. So Britain takes the lead — except when it can devolve the dirty work onto a Scottish politician.
'A so-called “deal in the desert” reached between Gadaffi and Blair in a tent outside Tripoli in 2004 led to a broad rapprochement with Libya and a prisoner transfer agreement that Gadaffi saw, from the outset, as a means of bringing home Megrahi. The Libyans became increasingly angry, however, at what they regarded as British foot-dragging over the transfer.
'“They were furious with the Foreign Office because things were not panning out as they were told they would,” said a source close to the Scottish administration. “The Foreign Office had been telling the Libyans that they were confident the Scottish government would agree to their prisoner transfer request.”
'British officials strongly denied that they had put pressure on Scotland to release Megrahi — or signed the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya — in order to smooth the way for oil deals. But on the way home to Tripoli on Thursday, Saif seemed to contradict them. “In all commercial contracts for oil and gas with Britain, Megrahi was always on the negotiating table,” he said.
'There were anxieties in Edinburgh and Westminster when the Libyans raised the prospect of breaking off diplomatic relations, which in effect would have frozen all British dealings in Libya.
'“Look at what he’s done to Switzerland,” said Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya. “He [Gadaffi] can make life very unpleasant for us all.”
'Some of the secret background to Megrahi’s release has now emerged with the leak of a letter from Ivan Lewis, a junior minister at the Foreign Office, encouraging MacAskill to “consider” Libya’s application for Megrahi to be sent home. It is part of the political game of pass the parcel between Brown and Alex Salmond, the nationalist Scottish first minister.
'This began with a fiction that suited both sides. The prime minister claimed that the decision on whether to release the man convicted in a Scottish court of killing 270 people lay exclusively with ministers in the devolved Scottish administration.
'Brown, who has a Macavity reputation of knowing when to hide from no-win situations, realised his reputation could be damaged by any association with the decision on Megrahi’s fate. However, no political insider seriously believed that the Westminster government would leave a matter as sensitive to this to Salmond’s unpredictable justice minister. (...)
'Lewis’s leaked letter to MacAskill suggested otherwise. Writing on August 3, Lewis told MacAskill there was no legal reason not to accede to Libya’s request to transfer Megrahi into its custody under the terms of the treaty agreed between Tony Blair and Gadaffi in 2007.
'A source who saw the letter said Lewis added: “I hope on this basis you will now feel able to consider the Libyan application in accordance with the provisions of the prisoner transfer agreement.” The source said the Scottish government interpreted this as an attempt to influence MacAskill’s decision.'
A further article in The Sunday Times headed "Foreign Office ‘pushed for Lockerbie release’" is also worth reading in this context.
Tony Blair has now, of course, gone on record denying that there was any deal in the desert, at least as far as the repatriation of Megrahi was concerned. I know, because I've talked to them, that Libyan officials who took part came away with a different impression. If one wished to be generous to Mr Blair, one could perhaps adopt the view outlined in the following paragraph from an article in today's Scotland on Sunday:
'One senior Labour source suggested last night that while Blair would not have laid down the offer of Megrahi's release formally, he may have given that impression to Gaddafi. The source said: "Gaddafi wouldn't be the first person to have walked away from a meeting with Tony thinking a deal was on. Just ask Gordon Brown." Blair visited Libya in May 2007, during which UK energy giant BP signed a £450m exploration deal.'
An article in the same newspaper by Professor Hans Koechler, a UN-appointed observer at the Lockerbie trial, is also well worth reading. It contains the following sentence:
'What I do know is that the UK government was interested in having Megrahi returned to his homeland. There was this understanding between Libya and the UK, which was discussed in many confidential meetings. One of those recent meetings may have been the one between Lord Mandelson and the son of Colonel Gaddafi in Corfu.'
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Blame Megrahi's release on London, not Edinburgh
[This is part of the headline over an article on the website of The Telegraph by columnist Alan Cochrane. The following are excerpts:]
What is perhaps not widely understood is that the process behind Megrahi’s release began not with Alex Salmond’s devolved SNP administration in Edinburgh, but with the Labour government in London – or, more specifically, with Tony Blair. It was the then prime minister who brokered a secret prisoner transfer agreement with Gaddafi, as part of a general thawing of relations between the West and this former rogue state. It was linked to suggestions that massive new British, American and European investment in Libya’s vast oil and gas fields would be forthcoming if only the Libyans would mend their ways. The small matter of the Lockerbie bomber was a fly in the ointment.
Blair didn’t inform the authorities in Edinburgh of his deal, even though they were responsible for Megrahi’s conviction and incarceration. Salmond and the independent Scottish law officers only found out about it when they were tipped off by senior prison service officials. Downing Street then compounded the original error by trying to pretend that the deal done with Gaddafi did not concern Megrahi, even though he was the only Libyan held in any British jail.
Eventually, after furious protests from the Scots, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, was forced to issue a statement conceding that any decision on the Lockerbie bomber’s future was indeed a matter for Scottish ministers. But the damage, in terms of relations between the two administrations, had been done. Although the formalities over a prisoner transfer for Megrahi continued, the Scottish authorities, still smarting over Blair’s behaviour, were now firmly against such a move – until it became known that Megrahi was suffering from terminal cancer, and a release on compassionate grounds became an option. Those close to MacAskill reported that he was looking favourably on such a move; given that his instincts on the matter were well known in Downing Street and the Foreign Office, they sat tight, said nothing and waited for the release to take place.
[For an earlier post on this blog regarding the history of the prisoner transfer deal and UK Foreign Office economy with the truth, click here.]
What is perhaps not widely understood is that the process behind Megrahi’s release began not with Alex Salmond’s devolved SNP administration in Edinburgh, but with the Labour government in London – or, more specifically, with Tony Blair. It was the then prime minister who brokered a secret prisoner transfer agreement with Gaddafi, as part of a general thawing of relations between the West and this former rogue state. It was linked to suggestions that massive new British, American and European investment in Libya’s vast oil and gas fields would be forthcoming if only the Libyans would mend their ways. The small matter of the Lockerbie bomber was a fly in the ointment.
Blair didn’t inform the authorities in Edinburgh of his deal, even though they were responsible for Megrahi’s conviction and incarceration. Salmond and the independent Scottish law officers only found out about it when they were tipped off by senior prison service officials. Downing Street then compounded the original error by trying to pretend that the deal done with Gaddafi did not concern Megrahi, even though he was the only Libyan held in any British jail.
Eventually, after furious protests from the Scots, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, was forced to issue a statement conceding that any decision on the Lockerbie bomber’s future was indeed a matter for Scottish ministers. But the damage, in terms of relations between the two administrations, had been done. Although the formalities over a prisoner transfer for Megrahi continued, the Scottish authorities, still smarting over Blair’s behaviour, were now firmly against such a move – until it became known that Megrahi was suffering from terminal cancer, and a release on compassionate grounds became an option. Those close to MacAskill reported that he was looking favourably on such a move; given that his instincts on the matter were well known in Downing Street and the Foreign Office, they sat tight, said nothing and waited for the release to take place.
[For an earlier post on this blog regarding the history of the prisoner transfer deal and UK Foreign Office economy with the truth, click here.]
Letter to Kenny MacAskill from FBI Director Robert S Mueller
Dear Mr. Secretary:
Over the years I have been a prosecutor, and recently as the Director of the FBI, I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors, since only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision.
Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this case. I do so because I am familiar with the facts, and the law, having been the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991.
And I do so because I am outraged at your decision, blithely defended on the grounds of "compassion."
Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law.
Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that regardless of the quality of the investigation, the conviction by jury after the defendant is given all due process, and sentence appropriate to the crime, the terrorist will be freed by one man's exercise of "compassion."
Your action rewards a terrorist even though he never admitted to his role in this act of mass murder and even though neither he nor the government of Libya ever disclosed the names and roles of others who were responsible.
Your action makes a mockery of the emotions, passions and pathos of all those affected by the Lockerbie tragedy: the medical personnel who first faced the horror of 270 bodies strewn in the fields around Lockerbie, and in the town of Lockerbie itself; the hundreds of volunteers who walked the fields of Lockerbie to retrieve any piece of debris related to the breakup of the plane; the hundreds of FBI agents and Scottish police who undertook an unprecedented global investigation to identify those responsible; the prosecutors who worked for years - in some cases a full career - to see justice done.
But most importantly, your action makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988.
You could not have spent much time with the families, certainly not as much time as others involved in the investigation and prosecution.
You could not have visited the small wooden warehouse where the personal items of those who perished were gathered for identification - the single sneaker belonging to a teenager; the Syracuse sweatshirt never again to be worn by a college student returning home for the holidays; the toys in a suitcase of a businessman looking forward to spending Christmas with his wife and children.
You apparently made this decision without regard to the views of your partners in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the Lockerbie tragedy.
Although the FBI and Scottish police, and prosecutors in both countries, worked exceptionally closely to hold those responsible accountable, you never once sought our opinion, preferring to keep your own counsel and hiding behind opaque references to "the need for compassion."
You have given the family members of those who died continued grief and frustration. You have given those who sought to assure that the persons responsible would be held accountable the back of your hand.
You have given Megrahi a "jubilant welcome" in Tripoli, according to the reporting. Where, I ask, is the justice?
Sincerely yours,
Robert S. Mueller, III
Director
[Note by RB: On 6 August 2009, The Times published a report containing the following:
"The investigating officers who led the original inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing have made an unprecedented intervention in the case to argue against the release of the Libyan convicted of the attack.
"In a letter to the Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish police chief and the FBI boss who led the international investigation 20 years ago launch a powerfully worded plea against the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, who is serving a minimum sentence of 25 years for his part in the bombing.
"In the letter obtained by The Times, Stuart Henderson, the retired senior investigating officer at the Lockerbie Incident Control Centre, and Richard Marquise, the FBI special agent in charge of the US taskforce, whose detective work helped to convict Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, insist that he is guilty. They also argue that his release would “nullify the dedicated work of dozens of law enforcement and intelligence officials around the world”."
It is therefore untrue for the Director to suggest that the decision was taken without regard to, or in ignorance of, the views of the investigators (or at least some of them). His complaint (if he has one at all) therefore has to be that the ultimate decision was not one that they approved of.
In civilised countries decisions regarding liberation of prisoners are not placed in the hands of policemen and prosecutors, nor are they accorded a veto over those decisions. Mr Mueller (and Mr Marquise) would probably wish that this were otherwise. The rest of us can be grateful that it is not.]
Over the years I have been a prosecutor, and recently as the Director of the FBI, I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors, since only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision.
Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this case. I do so because I am familiar with the facts, and the law, having been the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991.
And I do so because I am outraged at your decision, blithely defended on the grounds of "compassion."
Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law.
Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that regardless of the quality of the investigation, the conviction by jury after the defendant is given all due process, and sentence appropriate to the crime, the terrorist will be freed by one man's exercise of "compassion."
Your action rewards a terrorist even though he never admitted to his role in this act of mass murder and even though neither he nor the government of Libya ever disclosed the names and roles of others who were responsible.
Your action makes a mockery of the emotions, passions and pathos of all those affected by the Lockerbie tragedy: the medical personnel who first faced the horror of 270 bodies strewn in the fields around Lockerbie, and in the town of Lockerbie itself; the hundreds of volunteers who walked the fields of Lockerbie to retrieve any piece of debris related to the breakup of the plane; the hundreds of FBI agents and Scottish police who undertook an unprecedented global investigation to identify those responsible; the prosecutors who worked for years - in some cases a full career - to see justice done.
But most importantly, your action makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988.
You could not have spent much time with the families, certainly not as much time as others involved in the investigation and prosecution.
You could not have visited the small wooden warehouse where the personal items of those who perished were gathered for identification - the single sneaker belonging to a teenager; the Syracuse sweatshirt never again to be worn by a college student returning home for the holidays; the toys in a suitcase of a businessman looking forward to spending Christmas with his wife and children.
You apparently made this decision without regard to the views of your partners in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the Lockerbie tragedy.
Although the FBI and Scottish police, and prosecutors in both countries, worked exceptionally closely to hold those responsible accountable, you never once sought our opinion, preferring to keep your own counsel and hiding behind opaque references to "the need for compassion."
You have given the family members of those who died continued grief and frustration. You have given those who sought to assure that the persons responsible would be held accountable the back of your hand.
You have given Megrahi a "jubilant welcome" in Tripoli, according to the reporting. Where, I ask, is the justice?
Sincerely yours,
Robert S. Mueller, III
Director
[Note by RB: On 6 August 2009, The Times published a report containing the following:
"The investigating officers who led the original inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing have made an unprecedented intervention in the case to argue against the release of the Libyan convicted of the attack.
"In a letter to the Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish police chief and the FBI boss who led the international investigation 20 years ago launch a powerfully worded plea against the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, who is serving a minimum sentence of 25 years for his part in the bombing.
"In the letter obtained by The Times, Stuart Henderson, the retired senior investigating officer at the Lockerbie Incident Control Centre, and Richard Marquise, the FBI special agent in charge of the US taskforce, whose detective work helped to convict Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, insist that he is guilty. They also argue that his release would “nullify the dedicated work of dozens of law enforcement and intelligence officials around the world”."
It is therefore untrue for the Director to suggest that the decision was taken without regard to, or in ignorance of, the views of the investigators (or at least some of them). His complaint (if he has one at all) therefore has to be that the ultimate decision was not one that they approved of.
In civilised countries decisions regarding liberation of prisoners are not placed in the hands of policemen and prosecutors, nor are they accorded a veto over those decisions. Mr Mueller (and Mr Marquise) would probably wish that this were otherwise. The rest of us can be grateful that it is not.]
Megrahi's release: Justice and geopolitics
The Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, may or may not have made the best decision possible, but the style in which he announced it suggested a desire, unfitting under the circumstances, to make the most of Scotland's moment in the international spotlight, and show the country to be capable of shaping, in this legal area at least, a halfway independent foreign policy. (...)
The British government, meanwhile, clearly wanted an outcome that would be satisfactory to Libya but has nevertheless felt able to criticise the Scots, thus hoping to appease both British and American public opinion. David Miliband's very precise emphasis on the constitutional proprieties has been in complete contrast to his vagueness when asked what he thinks should have been done.
The Obama administration has been no better. The United States has no desire to alienate an energy-rich nation hesitating between bestowing its favours on Russia, on the one hand, and various western countries, including America, on the other. But since it is Scotland that has had to take the decision, it has been safe enough for the American government to oppose it in principle.
Unhappily, what unites all these governments is a disinclination to pursue the truth – or to reveal it, if they know it – about the bombing of Pan Am 103. Distinguished lawyers have cast such doubts on the reliability of the evidence at his original trial that we cannot now say whether or not Megrahi was guilty of placing the bomb. Whether he was the instrument or not, we do not know who ordered the action, or facilitated it. And we do not therefore know which government, or governments, were ultimately responsible. We do not know, it can be argued, because we do not wish to know. Tracking the crime to the doors of the regimes in Syria, Iran or Libya, all possible culprits, some would say, would have repercussions threatening so many interests, in so many countries, that it is not worth doing.
It cannot be denied that those interests are important. They go well beyond securing commercial advantage for Britain, or overcoming bureaucratic obstacles faced by BP in Libya. Western efforts to end long-standing feuds with certain Middle Eastern states, undermined by many of the Bush administration's decisions but now placed on a better footing by President Obama, might well be endangered.
What remains of Obama's policy of engagement with Iran after Ahmadinejad's disputed victory in the presidential elections would be even more problematic. The slow rapprochement with Syria after the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri in Lebanon might be disrupted. Nor are considerations of this kind new in the Lockerbie affair. The switch in the focus of the investigations in the early years after the bombing from Syria to Libya was seen by many as more related to America's need to enlist Syria in the first Gulf war than to any new evidence.
...[I]t would have been foolish not to respond to Gaddafi's efforts to rehabilitate himself. That response brought benefits, some commercial, certainly, but others were more important, from the renunciation of nuclear arms to the release of imprisoned Bulgarian medics. The Libyan handover of Megrahi and another accused was part of this long process of rehabilitation. Most of these deals involved closing at least one eye to considerations of justice and truth. In that sense, this latest chapter is no different from what has gone before.
[The above are excerpts from a leading article in today's edition of The Guardian.]
The British government, meanwhile, clearly wanted an outcome that would be satisfactory to Libya but has nevertheless felt able to criticise the Scots, thus hoping to appease both British and American public opinion. David Miliband's very precise emphasis on the constitutional proprieties has been in complete contrast to his vagueness when asked what he thinks should have been done.
The Obama administration has been no better. The United States has no desire to alienate an energy-rich nation hesitating between bestowing its favours on Russia, on the one hand, and various western countries, including America, on the other. But since it is Scotland that has had to take the decision, it has been safe enough for the American government to oppose it in principle.
Unhappily, what unites all these governments is a disinclination to pursue the truth – or to reveal it, if they know it – about the bombing of Pan Am 103. Distinguished lawyers have cast such doubts on the reliability of the evidence at his original trial that we cannot now say whether or not Megrahi was guilty of placing the bomb. Whether he was the instrument or not, we do not know who ordered the action, or facilitated it. And we do not therefore know which government, or governments, were ultimately responsible. We do not know, it can be argued, because we do not wish to know. Tracking the crime to the doors of the regimes in Syria, Iran or Libya, all possible culprits, some would say, would have repercussions threatening so many interests, in so many countries, that it is not worth doing.
It cannot be denied that those interests are important. They go well beyond securing commercial advantage for Britain, or overcoming bureaucratic obstacles faced by BP in Libya. Western efforts to end long-standing feuds with certain Middle Eastern states, undermined by many of the Bush administration's decisions but now placed on a better footing by President Obama, might well be endangered.
What remains of Obama's policy of engagement with Iran after Ahmadinejad's disputed victory in the presidential elections would be even more problematic. The slow rapprochement with Syria after the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri in Lebanon might be disrupted. Nor are considerations of this kind new in the Lockerbie affair. The switch in the focus of the investigations in the early years after the bombing from Syria to Libya was seen by many as more related to America's need to enlist Syria in the first Gulf war than to any new evidence.
...[I]t would have been foolish not to respond to Gaddafi's efforts to rehabilitate himself. That response brought benefits, some commercial, certainly, but others were more important, from the renunciation of nuclear arms to the release of imprisoned Bulgarian medics. The Libyan handover of Megrahi and another accused was part of this long process of rehabilitation. Most of these deals involved closing at least one eye to considerations of justice and truth. In that sense, this latest chapter is no different from what has gone before.
[The above are excerpts from a leading article in today's edition of The Guardian.]
Robert Fisk: For the truth, look to Tehran and Damascus – not Tripoli
Forget all the nonsense spouted by our beloved Foreign Secretary. He's all too happy to express his outrage. The welcome given to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi in Tripoli was a perfect deviation from what the British Government is trying to avoid. It's called the truth, not that Mr Miliband would know much about it.
It was Megrahi's decision – not that of his lawyers – to abandon the appeal that might have told us the truth about Lockerbie. The British would far rather he return to the land of the man who wrote The Green Book on the future of the world (the author, a certain Col Muammar Gaddafi, also wrote Escape to Hell and Other Stories) than withstand the typhoon of information that an appeal would have revealed.
Brown and Gaddafi. Maybe they should set up as a legal company once their time is up. Brown and Gaddafi, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths. Not that the oaths would be truthful.
Megrahi's lawyers had delved deeply into his case – which rested on the word of a Maltese tailor who had already seen a picture of Megrahi (unrevealed to us at the time) so he could identify him in court – and uncovered some remarkable evidence from the German police.
Given the viciousness of their Third Reich predecessors, I've never had a lot of time for German cops, but on this occasion they went a long way towards establishing that a Lebanese who had been killed in the Lockerbie bombing was steered to Frankfurt airport by known Lebanese militants and the bag that contained the bomb was actually put on to the baggage carousel for checking in by this passenger's Lebanese handler, who had taken him to the airport, and had looked after him in Germany before the flight.
I have read all the interviews which the German police conducted with their suspects. They are devastating. There clearly was a Lebanese connection. And there probably was a Palestinian connection. How can I forget a press conference in Beirut held by the head of the pro-Syrian "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine" (they were known, then, as the "Lockerbie boys") in which their leader, Ahmed Jibril, suddenly blurted out: "I'm not responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. They are trying to get me with a kangaroo court."
Yet there was no court at the time. Only journalists – with MI6 and the CIA contacts – had pointed the finger at Jibril's rogues. It was Iran's revenge, they said, for the shooting down of a perfectly innocent Iranian passenger jet by the captain of the American warship Vincennes a few months earlier. I still happen to believe this is close to the truth.
But the moment Syria sent its tanks to defend Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, all the MI6 truth-telling turned into a claptrap of nonsense about Col Gaddafi. (...)
Of course, we must now forget the repulsive 2004 meeting that Blair arranged with Gaddafi after the latter had supposedly abandoned plans for nuclear weapons (not that his Tripoli engineers could repair a blocked lavatory in the Kebir Hotel), an act which the former foreign secretary Jack Straw called "statesmanlike". (...)
Thank God for Jack Straw. He cleaned up Gaddafi's face and left it to Miliband to froth on about his outrage at Megrahi's reception back in Tripoli.
Meanwhile the relatives of those who died at Lockerbie – and here I am thinking of a deeply sad but immensely eloquent letter that one of those relatives sent to me – will not know the truth.
I suspect that the truth (speak it not, Mr Miliband, for you do not wish to know) lies in Lebanon, in Damascus and in Tehran. Given your cosy new relationship with the last two cities, of course, there's not a whimper of a chance that you'll want to investigate this, Mr Foreign Secretary. And not much encouragement will "Mad Dog" Gaddafi give to such an undertaking, not after the gifts – oil deals, primarily, but let's not forget the new Marks & Spencer in Tripoli – which he has given us. (...)
Ironically, Megrahi flew home to Tripoli on an Airbus A300 aircraft, exactly the same series as the Iranian plane the Americans shot down in 1988 – and about which Gaddafi never said anything.
It was Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri (once Khomeini's chosen successor but now a recluse under semi-house arrest who stands up for President Ahmadinejad's political opponents) who said in Iran in 1988 that he was "sure that if the Imam [Khomeini] orders, all the revolutionary forces and resistance cells, both inside and outside the country, will unleash their wrath on US financial, economic and military interests".
Remember that, Mr Miliband? No, of course you don't. Not even a whimper of outrage.
[The above are excerpts from Robert Fisk's column in today's edition of The Independent.]
It was Megrahi's decision – not that of his lawyers – to abandon the appeal that might have told us the truth about Lockerbie. The British would far rather he return to the land of the man who wrote The Green Book on the future of the world (the author, a certain Col Muammar Gaddafi, also wrote Escape to Hell and Other Stories) than withstand the typhoon of information that an appeal would have revealed.
Brown and Gaddafi. Maybe they should set up as a legal company once their time is up. Brown and Gaddafi, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths. Not that the oaths would be truthful.
Megrahi's lawyers had delved deeply into his case – which rested on the word of a Maltese tailor who had already seen a picture of Megrahi (unrevealed to us at the time) so he could identify him in court – and uncovered some remarkable evidence from the German police.
Given the viciousness of their Third Reich predecessors, I've never had a lot of time for German cops, but on this occasion they went a long way towards establishing that a Lebanese who had been killed in the Lockerbie bombing was steered to Frankfurt airport by known Lebanese militants and the bag that contained the bomb was actually put on to the baggage carousel for checking in by this passenger's Lebanese handler, who had taken him to the airport, and had looked after him in Germany before the flight.
I have read all the interviews which the German police conducted with their suspects. They are devastating. There clearly was a Lebanese connection. And there probably was a Palestinian connection. How can I forget a press conference in Beirut held by the head of the pro-Syrian "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine" (they were known, then, as the "Lockerbie boys") in which their leader, Ahmed Jibril, suddenly blurted out: "I'm not responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. They are trying to get me with a kangaroo court."
Yet there was no court at the time. Only journalists – with MI6 and the CIA contacts – had pointed the finger at Jibril's rogues. It was Iran's revenge, they said, for the shooting down of a perfectly innocent Iranian passenger jet by the captain of the American warship Vincennes a few months earlier. I still happen to believe this is close to the truth.
But the moment Syria sent its tanks to defend Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, all the MI6 truth-telling turned into a claptrap of nonsense about Col Gaddafi. (...)
Of course, we must now forget the repulsive 2004 meeting that Blair arranged with Gaddafi after the latter had supposedly abandoned plans for nuclear weapons (not that his Tripoli engineers could repair a blocked lavatory in the Kebir Hotel), an act which the former foreign secretary Jack Straw called "statesmanlike". (...)
Thank God for Jack Straw. He cleaned up Gaddafi's face and left it to Miliband to froth on about his outrage at Megrahi's reception back in Tripoli.
Meanwhile the relatives of those who died at Lockerbie – and here I am thinking of a deeply sad but immensely eloquent letter that one of those relatives sent to me – will not know the truth.
I suspect that the truth (speak it not, Mr Miliband, for you do not wish to know) lies in Lebanon, in Damascus and in Tehran. Given your cosy new relationship with the last two cities, of course, there's not a whimper of a chance that you'll want to investigate this, Mr Foreign Secretary. And not much encouragement will "Mad Dog" Gaddafi give to such an undertaking, not after the gifts – oil deals, primarily, but let's not forget the new Marks & Spencer in Tripoli – which he has given us. (...)
Ironically, Megrahi flew home to Tripoli on an Airbus A300 aircraft, exactly the same series as the Iranian plane the Americans shot down in 1988 – and about which Gaddafi never said anything.
It was Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri (once Khomeini's chosen successor but now a recluse under semi-house arrest who stands up for President Ahmadinejad's political opponents) who said in Iran in 1988 that he was "sure that if the Imam [Khomeini] orders, all the revolutionary forces and resistance cells, both inside and outside the country, will unleash their wrath on US financial, economic and military interests".
Remember that, Mr Miliband? No, of course you don't. Not even a whimper of outrage.
[The above are excerpts from Robert Fisk's column in today's edition of The Independent.]
Caught in the middle of a transatlantic storm
[What follows is the Saturday essay in The Herald by Ian Bell, in my opinion (and that of many others) Scotland's best and most distinguished columnist.]
Unless the doctors are very wrong, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi has almost served his life sentence. That's relevant. As things stand, prostate cancer will claim him before November's end. If he has escaped justice, however you care to define it, his victory will be brief. If he is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing, as he still insists, three months spent facing death among his family will be scant consolation.
Cancer is an actor, if that's the word, in this sorry tale. It rendered any hope the truth would be uncovered during Megrahi's second appeal meaningless long before Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, began to ponder compassion. The original prosecution case, encompassing six aspects of the trial pointing to a possible miscarriage of justice (at least according to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission), was never liable to be tested. A lot flows from the fact.
Who wanted the truth, in any case? The question is not meant to be callous or perverse. Washington's preferred outcome, it seems, was for Megrahi to die, and die soon, in Greenock prison. London, with a new friend in Tripoli, wanted the convicted mass murderer out of the way. A prisoner transfer deal, hatched by Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi two years ago, was the first choice. Compassionate release will do instead. Those left bereaved in the United States are, meanwhile, unswerving, in the main, in their belief that the convicted killer of 270 people has no right to compassion. Yet many of their British counterparts, no less grief-stricken, are deeply sceptical. They continue to ask questions.
Disputed identification evidence, withheld documents, allegedly suppressed warnings, arguments over timers, the loading of the bomb and a supposedly coincidental break-in at Heathrow: these issues amount to a divide as wide as the Atlantic. For most of the Americans, the truth has been established. For most of the Britons, the truth has been placed beyond reach. Someone is wrong.
In the middle of all this stands the Scottish Government. First, it had to assert its rights over Blair's deal then watch while, this spring, Jack Straw rushed the transfer agreement through parliament to avoid damaging "relations" with Libya. More recently, Edinburgh has been subjected to a barrage - suspiciously belated - from the big guns in Washington. Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Barack Obama: the attempt to bully a minor administration with clear jurisdiction has been explicit.
Things have been busy on the home front, too. MacAskill could not allow Megrahi's request for transfer because, for some reason, the Crown failed to withdraw its appeal against the original sentence. Yet when, on Thursday, the Justice Secretary decided to release the prisoner on compassionate grounds, Labour politicians attacked him for it.
The ink was scarcely dry on the transfer legislation that was intended to achieve the same end, in other words, but London elected to echo Washington's displeasure. As a footnote, it emerged that Lord Mandelson had "bumped into" Gaddafi's son on a yacht in Corfu recently. As one does.
MacAskill consulted all relevant parties. Who else can say the same? London first claimed that Blair's deal would not involve Megrahi, the only Libyan in the Scottish penal system, then changed its mind while granting Edinburgh a veto, of sorts. Yet while the veto was allowed, and while preparations for the second appeal were in train, the transfer treaty was ratified. Libya's government duly made application.
All this, we were asked to believe, came as news to the Americans. Washington claimed to have an assurance that Megrahi would serve out his time in Scotland. London said that no such agreement existed. Compassionate release, available in theory to any prisoner, became Edinburgh's only realistic choice short of retaining the prisoner in an institution incapable of providing proper care.
Simple facts and devious motives collide. London could go some way to satisfying bereaved British relatives by ordering a public inquiry. The Scottish Government has no such power. The questions involved are substantial and serious, at least according to the criminal cases review commission, yet no inquiry is forthcoming.
Then again, such an inquiry would doubtless involve further arguments over classified documents. In that regard, as Megrahi's lawyers know only too well, the Westminster government has form. So is that to be it? The truth about the worst mass murder on British soil or some version, neither justified nor explained, of the national interest?
Official American displeasure at MacAskill's decision also has a context. Successive US administrations have seen not the slightest problem with the original verdict. Alternative explanations for the destruction of Pan Am 103, with Syria and Iran as candidates, have not been pursued. The UN observer at Megrahi's trial condemned the entire proceedings, yet the White House is aroused over one man's whereabouts in the last three months of his life?
Scotland's SNP government has just had a lesson in geopolitical realities. Playing things by the book is construed as naivety. Defiance in the name of democratic rights tends to be punished. Twenty-one years after the event, it is worth recalling the arguments that once raged even over the idea that a Scottish court should even have jurisdiction: in the matter of Lockerbie, Scotland has been a nuisance to any number of people. The idea that we are better than terrorists and should act accordingly has, it appears, caused the most offence.
Appearances don't count for much. Prostate cancer does not render Megrahi innocent, but nor would his continued imprisonment settle the case against him beyond reasonable doubt. Nothing prevents him from publishing the evidence and arguments that would have supported his appeal. Equally, there is nothing to prevent the British government scrutinising such a document in a public inquiry. What are the chances?
One man who is said to have travelled to Malta under a false passport on the day of the bombing: that's about the size of it. Nevertheless, the governments of two major powers have been disinclined to take matters further, to put minds at rest, or to settle doubts, reasonable or otherwise. And, yet, the atrocities of 9/11 aside, the worst act of terrorism the west has seen is at stake, with the devolved administration of a small country left to hold the ring. Implausible, but true.
In these parts, meanwhile, the usual editorialising suspects have been assuring us that the Scottish Government - predictable, eh? - was not up to this job. Holyrood will return on Monday for more of those self-inflicted wounds.
An "ill-advised" minister visited a dying man in prison in order to reach a judgment. In this dark wood, attention has been fixed on some very small trees while London manoeuvres and Washington moralises.
I can't prove anything in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. I can, though, adduce reasons for real concern, and enough of them to reach an opinion. The review commission took more than three painstaking years to come to a similar conclusion. The fact that the case was referred yet again to the Court of Appeal should, you might think, make anyone pause. Strangely - or not so strangely - the larger forces which dominate our world prefer not to notice. A small country with a new parliament should draw a lesson from that.
Unless the doctors are very wrong, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi has almost served his life sentence. That's relevant. As things stand, prostate cancer will claim him before November's end. If he has escaped justice, however you care to define it, his victory will be brief. If he is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing, as he still insists, three months spent facing death among his family will be scant consolation.
Cancer is an actor, if that's the word, in this sorry tale. It rendered any hope the truth would be uncovered during Megrahi's second appeal meaningless long before Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, began to ponder compassion. The original prosecution case, encompassing six aspects of the trial pointing to a possible miscarriage of justice (at least according to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission), was never liable to be tested. A lot flows from the fact.
Who wanted the truth, in any case? The question is not meant to be callous or perverse. Washington's preferred outcome, it seems, was for Megrahi to die, and die soon, in Greenock prison. London, with a new friend in Tripoli, wanted the convicted mass murderer out of the way. A prisoner transfer deal, hatched by Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi two years ago, was the first choice. Compassionate release will do instead. Those left bereaved in the United States are, meanwhile, unswerving, in the main, in their belief that the convicted killer of 270 people has no right to compassion. Yet many of their British counterparts, no less grief-stricken, are deeply sceptical. They continue to ask questions.
Disputed identification evidence, withheld documents, allegedly suppressed warnings, arguments over timers, the loading of the bomb and a supposedly coincidental break-in at Heathrow: these issues amount to a divide as wide as the Atlantic. For most of the Americans, the truth has been established. For most of the Britons, the truth has been placed beyond reach. Someone is wrong.
In the middle of all this stands the Scottish Government. First, it had to assert its rights over Blair's deal then watch while, this spring, Jack Straw rushed the transfer agreement through parliament to avoid damaging "relations" with Libya. More recently, Edinburgh has been subjected to a barrage - suspiciously belated - from the big guns in Washington. Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Barack Obama: the attempt to bully a minor administration with clear jurisdiction has been explicit.
Things have been busy on the home front, too. MacAskill could not allow Megrahi's request for transfer because, for some reason, the Crown failed to withdraw its appeal against the original sentence. Yet when, on Thursday, the Justice Secretary decided to release the prisoner on compassionate grounds, Labour politicians attacked him for it.
The ink was scarcely dry on the transfer legislation that was intended to achieve the same end, in other words, but London elected to echo Washington's displeasure. As a footnote, it emerged that Lord Mandelson had "bumped into" Gaddafi's son on a yacht in Corfu recently. As one does.
MacAskill consulted all relevant parties. Who else can say the same? London first claimed that Blair's deal would not involve Megrahi, the only Libyan in the Scottish penal system, then changed its mind while granting Edinburgh a veto, of sorts. Yet while the veto was allowed, and while preparations for the second appeal were in train, the transfer treaty was ratified. Libya's government duly made application.
All this, we were asked to believe, came as news to the Americans. Washington claimed to have an assurance that Megrahi would serve out his time in Scotland. London said that no such agreement existed. Compassionate release, available in theory to any prisoner, became Edinburgh's only realistic choice short of retaining the prisoner in an institution incapable of providing proper care.
Simple facts and devious motives collide. London could go some way to satisfying bereaved British relatives by ordering a public inquiry. The Scottish Government has no such power. The questions involved are substantial and serious, at least according to the criminal cases review commission, yet no inquiry is forthcoming.
Then again, such an inquiry would doubtless involve further arguments over classified documents. In that regard, as Megrahi's lawyers know only too well, the Westminster government has form. So is that to be it? The truth about the worst mass murder on British soil or some version, neither justified nor explained, of the national interest?
Official American displeasure at MacAskill's decision also has a context. Successive US administrations have seen not the slightest problem with the original verdict. Alternative explanations for the destruction of Pan Am 103, with Syria and Iran as candidates, have not been pursued. The UN observer at Megrahi's trial condemned the entire proceedings, yet the White House is aroused over one man's whereabouts in the last three months of his life?
Scotland's SNP government has just had a lesson in geopolitical realities. Playing things by the book is construed as naivety. Defiance in the name of democratic rights tends to be punished. Twenty-one years after the event, it is worth recalling the arguments that once raged even over the idea that a Scottish court should even have jurisdiction: in the matter of Lockerbie, Scotland has been a nuisance to any number of people. The idea that we are better than terrorists and should act accordingly has, it appears, caused the most offence.
Appearances don't count for much. Prostate cancer does not render Megrahi innocent, but nor would his continued imprisonment settle the case against him beyond reasonable doubt. Nothing prevents him from publishing the evidence and arguments that would have supported his appeal. Equally, there is nothing to prevent the British government scrutinising such a document in a public inquiry. What are the chances?
One man who is said to have travelled to Malta under a false passport on the day of the bombing: that's about the size of it. Nevertheless, the governments of two major powers have been disinclined to take matters further, to put minds at rest, or to settle doubts, reasonable or otherwise. And, yet, the atrocities of 9/11 aside, the worst act of terrorism the west has seen is at stake, with the devolved administration of a small country left to hold the ring. Implausible, but true.
In these parts, meanwhile, the usual editorialising suspects have been assuring us that the Scottish Government - predictable, eh? - was not up to this job. Holyrood will return on Monday for more of those self-inflicted wounds.
An "ill-advised" minister visited a dying man in prison in order to reach a judgment. In this dark wood, attention has been fixed on some very small trees while London manoeuvres and Washington moralises.
I can't prove anything in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. I can, though, adduce reasons for real concern, and enough of them to reach an opinion. The review commission took more than three painstaking years to come to a similar conclusion. The fact that the case was referred yet again to the Court of Appeal should, you might think, make anyone pause. Strangely - or not so strangely - the larger forces which dominate our world prefer not to notice. A small country with a new parliament should draw a lesson from that.
Why no outcry?
[This is the headline over an article by columnist David Frum posted today on the website of National Post. The following are extracts.]
I smell a rat in the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.
Here's what US President Barack Obama had to say about the release. "We thought it was a mistake."
In a written statement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pronounced herself "deeply disappointed."
Does that not seem like strangely mild language to use about the release of a man convicted in the worst international terrorist attack against US citizens before 9/11? (...)
So why such a mild response to the Scottish decision?
Two speculative possibilities.
POSSIBILITY 1: THE DEAL
Al-Megrahi and an associate were brought to trial in May 2000 as part of a complex deal with the Libyan government. The US and Britain agreed to drop sanctions against Libya, Libya agreed to pay compensation to the families of the murdered and to surrender two men identified as suspects by US and UK intelligence.
The suspects were tried by a panel of Scottish judges at a special court convened in the Netherlands. Al-Megrahi was convicted, his associate acquitted.
From the moment al-Megrahi entered a Scottish prison in March 2002, a campaign to release him gathered force. Nelson Mandela, who had helped broker the US-UK-Libya deal, urged in June that al-Megrahi be transferred to a prison in an Islamic country. In 2007, the UK and Libya reached a new agreement on prisoner exchanges. British authorities denied that the agreement would apply to al-Megrahi, but in May 2009, the Libyan authorities applied for his transfer anyway. In July, al-Megrahi (now suffering from prostate cancer) applied for release on compassionate grounds. In August he was released.
Question: Did UK or US authorities reach any bargain or tacit bargain about al-Megrahi with the Libyans at any point along this timeline? During the bargaining in the 1990s? Upon his extradition in 1999? As part of the deal to end the Libyan nuclear program in 2003?
POSSIBILITY 2: THE WRONG MAN
For years, many well-informed people in the intelligence community have doubted al-Megrahi's guilt in the Lockerbie bombing. They have argued that the bombing was the work of a Syrian based Palestinian group, the PFLP-GC, working for the government of Iran.
Among those who support the Iran-did-it theory are: (i) former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon; (ii) Robert Baer, the CIA official who worked directly on the Lockerbie case; (iii) Hans Koechler, the UN Security Council observer at al-Megrahi's trial; (iv) Robert Black, the Scottish lawyer who organized the trial proceedings; (v) Dr Jim Swire, the spokesman for the families of British Lockerbie victims who lost his own daughter aboard Pan Am Flight 103; and (vi) David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post.
The US and UK publicly identified Libya as the guilty party in 1990. Why might Britain and the US prefer to assert Libyan rather than Iranian and Syrian culpability at that time? Could it have been a thank you to Syria for joining the US-UK Gulf War coalition against Iraq? Or was it simply less embarrassing this way? Five months before Lockerbie, a US warship, the Vincennes, had mistakenly fired a missile at an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. If Iran downed Pan Am 103, some might cite the Vincennes incident as justification or excuse.
Question: Could it be that Hillary Clinton has come to believe the "wrong man" thesis? Here's what she had to say in a televised interview with the BBC on the eve of al-Megrahi's release:
"I just think it is absolutely wrong to release someone who has been imprisoned based on the evidence about his involvement in such a horrendous crime." That does not sound like ringing certainty about the man's guilt, does it?
Doubts about al-Megrahi's guilt might explain the limpness of the Obama/Clinton statements about his early release. But such doubts would not excuse that limpness. If al-Megrahi is the wrong man, then there has been a miscarriage of justice. In that situation, al-Megrahi would deserve much more than release and a few quietly murmured words of "disappointment": He would deserve pardon, apology and compensation.
I smell a rat in the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.
Here's what US President Barack Obama had to say about the release. "We thought it was a mistake."
In a written statement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pronounced herself "deeply disappointed."
Does that not seem like strangely mild language to use about the release of a man convicted in the worst international terrorist attack against US citizens before 9/11? (...)
So why such a mild response to the Scottish decision?
Two speculative possibilities.
POSSIBILITY 1: THE DEAL
Al-Megrahi and an associate were brought to trial in May 2000 as part of a complex deal with the Libyan government. The US and Britain agreed to drop sanctions against Libya, Libya agreed to pay compensation to the families of the murdered and to surrender two men identified as suspects by US and UK intelligence.
The suspects were tried by a panel of Scottish judges at a special court convened in the Netherlands. Al-Megrahi was convicted, his associate acquitted.
From the moment al-Megrahi entered a Scottish prison in March 2002, a campaign to release him gathered force. Nelson Mandela, who had helped broker the US-UK-Libya deal, urged in June that al-Megrahi be transferred to a prison in an Islamic country. In 2007, the UK and Libya reached a new agreement on prisoner exchanges. British authorities denied that the agreement would apply to al-Megrahi, but in May 2009, the Libyan authorities applied for his transfer anyway. In July, al-Megrahi (now suffering from prostate cancer) applied for release on compassionate grounds. In August he was released.
Question: Did UK or US authorities reach any bargain or tacit bargain about al-Megrahi with the Libyans at any point along this timeline? During the bargaining in the 1990s? Upon his extradition in 1999? As part of the deal to end the Libyan nuclear program in 2003?
POSSIBILITY 2: THE WRONG MAN
For years, many well-informed people in the intelligence community have doubted al-Megrahi's guilt in the Lockerbie bombing. They have argued that the bombing was the work of a Syrian based Palestinian group, the PFLP-GC, working for the government of Iran.
Among those who support the Iran-did-it theory are: (i) former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon; (ii) Robert Baer, the CIA official who worked directly on the Lockerbie case; (iii) Hans Koechler, the UN Security Council observer at al-Megrahi's trial; (iv) Robert Black, the Scottish lawyer who organized the trial proceedings; (v) Dr Jim Swire, the spokesman for the families of British Lockerbie victims who lost his own daughter aboard Pan Am Flight 103; and (vi) David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post.
The US and UK publicly identified Libya as the guilty party in 1990. Why might Britain and the US prefer to assert Libyan rather than Iranian and Syrian culpability at that time? Could it have been a thank you to Syria for joining the US-UK Gulf War coalition against Iraq? Or was it simply less embarrassing this way? Five months before Lockerbie, a US warship, the Vincennes, had mistakenly fired a missile at an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. If Iran downed Pan Am 103, some might cite the Vincennes incident as justification or excuse.
Question: Could it be that Hillary Clinton has come to believe the "wrong man" thesis? Here's what she had to say in a televised interview with the BBC on the eve of al-Megrahi's release:
"I just think it is absolutely wrong to release someone who has been imprisoned based on the evidence about his involvement in such a horrendous crime." That does not sound like ringing certainty about the man's guilt, does it?
Doubts about al-Megrahi's guilt might explain the limpness of the Obama/Clinton statements about his early release. But such doubts would not excuse that limpness. If al-Megrahi is the wrong man, then there has been a miscarriage of justice. In that situation, al-Megrahi would deserve much more than release and a few quietly murmured words of "disappointment": He would deserve pardon, apology and compensation.
Megrahi's appeal materials will be made public
[Today's edition of The Times carries an exclusive interview with Abdelbaset Megrahi. Reporter Martin Fletcher went to Megrahi's home in Tripoli yesterday, sent in his card and was invited inside. The following are extracts from his report.]
Is he the evil perpetrator of the deadliest terrorist attack in British history, or a sick old man, a loving father and grandfather, who has suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice? Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi put on a virtuoso performance when The Times came calling yesterday.
His house, in the Dimachk area of Tripoli, was not hard to find. Policemen stood guard outside. The road was lined with the BMWs of smartly dressed friends and relatives who had come to pay their respects. The high outer walls were festooned with fairy lights and with pictures of the Lockerbie bomber as he looked when he left Libya more than a decade ago. In the garden stood a marquee where he had evidently been welcomed home the previous night.
We sent in our business cards and waited, more in hope than expectation. But ten minutes later we were ushered into the spacious hall of the distinctly plush villa where chandeliers hung above a marble floor — a far cry from the Scottish prisons where al-Megrahi has spent the past eight years. His family bought the house a couple of years ago with help from the Libyan Government.
The man himself was waiting in a reception room at the top of a wide and curving staircase; the curtains were drawn against the fierce afternoon sun and tropical fish swam in illuminated tanks.
He looked weak and grey, far older than his 57 years and scarcely recognisable as the man I last saw at his trial in the Netherlands in 2001. He was supporting himself on a walking stick. Like everyone else he wore flowing Arab robes of spotless white — “not what I wore in prison”, he joked in a soft voice and fluent English. He was seeing us, he explained, “because you came to our house. It is our culture.”
We sat on sofas. No tea was offered because it is Ramadan. To be free, he said, was “something amazing. I’m very, very happy.” When the doctors had told him he had just a few months left to live “this was my hope and wish — to be back with my family before I pass away . . . I always believed I would come back if justice prevailed”. (...)
As al-Megrahi was flying home ... on Thursday, President Obama sought to add another condition. He said that al-Megrahi should live out his days under house arrest. Al-Megrahi laughed. “He knows I’m a very ill person. You know what kind of illness I have. The only place I have to go is the hospital for medical treatment. I’m not interested in going anywhere else. Don’t worry, Mr Obama — it’s just three months.”
He did not come across as bitter or angry but continued to insist on his innocence, as he has done from the day of his conviction. He abandoned his appeal, he said, not because he was guilty but to give himself the best possible chance of going home before he died. He had applied to be freed on compassionate grounds and also to be transferred to a Libyan prison under the terms of an agreement Britain and Libya signed in April. One of the conditions of the latter was that all legal proceedings had to be finished.
He denied reports that he had been pressured to drop the appeal by a Scottish or British government terrified that such a hearing would expose a grave miscarriage of justice, but he added: “If there is justice in the UK I would be acquitted or the verdict would be quashed because it was unsafe. There was a miscarriage of justice.”
Al-Megrahi promised that before he died he would present new evidence through his Scottish lawyers that would exonerate him. “My message to the British and Scottish communities is that I will put out the evidence and ask them to be the jury,” he said. He refused to elaborate. (...)
He said that he understood why many of the victims’ relatives were angry at his release. “They have hatred for me. It’s natural to behave like this,” he said, although he pointedly added that others had written to him in prison to say that they forgave him whether he was guilty or innocent. He appealed for the families’ understanding. “They believe I’m guilty which in reality I’m not. One day the truth won’t be hiding as it is now. We have an Arab saying: ‘The truth never dies’.”
Is he the evil perpetrator of the deadliest terrorist attack in British history, or a sick old man, a loving father and grandfather, who has suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice? Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi put on a virtuoso performance when The Times came calling yesterday.
His house, in the Dimachk area of Tripoli, was not hard to find. Policemen stood guard outside. The road was lined with the BMWs of smartly dressed friends and relatives who had come to pay their respects. The high outer walls were festooned with fairy lights and with pictures of the Lockerbie bomber as he looked when he left Libya more than a decade ago. In the garden stood a marquee where he had evidently been welcomed home the previous night.
We sent in our business cards and waited, more in hope than expectation. But ten minutes later we were ushered into the spacious hall of the distinctly plush villa where chandeliers hung above a marble floor — a far cry from the Scottish prisons where al-Megrahi has spent the past eight years. His family bought the house a couple of years ago with help from the Libyan Government.
The man himself was waiting in a reception room at the top of a wide and curving staircase; the curtains were drawn against the fierce afternoon sun and tropical fish swam in illuminated tanks.
He looked weak and grey, far older than his 57 years and scarcely recognisable as the man I last saw at his trial in the Netherlands in 2001. He was supporting himself on a walking stick. Like everyone else he wore flowing Arab robes of spotless white — “not what I wore in prison”, he joked in a soft voice and fluent English. He was seeing us, he explained, “because you came to our house. It is our culture.”
We sat on sofas. No tea was offered because it is Ramadan. To be free, he said, was “something amazing. I’m very, very happy.” When the doctors had told him he had just a few months left to live “this was my hope and wish — to be back with my family before I pass away . . . I always believed I would come back if justice prevailed”. (...)
As al-Megrahi was flying home ... on Thursday, President Obama sought to add another condition. He said that al-Megrahi should live out his days under house arrest. Al-Megrahi laughed. “He knows I’m a very ill person. You know what kind of illness I have. The only place I have to go is the hospital for medical treatment. I’m not interested in going anywhere else. Don’t worry, Mr Obama — it’s just three months.”
He did not come across as bitter or angry but continued to insist on his innocence, as he has done from the day of his conviction. He abandoned his appeal, he said, not because he was guilty but to give himself the best possible chance of going home before he died. He had applied to be freed on compassionate grounds and also to be transferred to a Libyan prison under the terms of an agreement Britain and Libya signed in April. One of the conditions of the latter was that all legal proceedings had to be finished.
He denied reports that he had been pressured to drop the appeal by a Scottish or British government terrified that such a hearing would expose a grave miscarriage of justice, but he added: “If there is justice in the UK I would be acquitted or the verdict would be quashed because it was unsafe. There was a miscarriage of justice.”
Al-Megrahi promised that before he died he would present new evidence through his Scottish lawyers that would exonerate him. “My message to the British and Scottish communities is that I will put out the evidence and ask them to be the jury,” he said. He refused to elaborate. (...)
He said that he understood why many of the victims’ relatives were angry at his release. “They have hatred for me. It’s natural to behave like this,” he said, although he pointedly added that others had written to him in prison to say that they forgave him whether he was guilty or innocent. He appealed for the families’ understanding. “They believe I’m guilty which in reality I’m not. One day the truth won’t be hiding as it is now. We have an Arab saying: ‘The truth never dies’.”
Friday, 21 August 2009
Lockerbie, the Unanswered Questions
[This is the heading over a post on The New York Times news blog, The Lede. The author is Robert Mackey, the blog editor. The following are excerpts.]
Now that the Scottish government has released Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the murder of 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec 21, 1988, the appeal he had filed in a Scottish court will never be heard by a judge.
The firestorm of anger that greeted the decision to release Mr Megrahi, who is terminally ill, on compassionate grounds on Thursday is clearly based on the belief that he was responsible for the bombing, but doubts about his conviction, some of which formed the basis for the legal appeal he filed and then withdrew at the request of the Scottish government as a condition of his release, surfaced years ago. Despite what some readers of The Lede who posted comments yesterday seem to have assumed, those doubts existed outside the murky precincts of the Internet where wild conspiracy theories are spun out.
In a review of the case on Wednesday, the Scottish broadcaster STV reported that Mr Megrahi’s appeal was filed in 2007 after “a four-year review by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review [Commission] (SCCRC), who concluded that a miscarriage of justice could have occurred.”
On Wednesday, The Guardian published video of the Rev John Mosey, the father of one of the British victims of the bombing, who expressed his disappointment that halting Mr Megrahi’s appeal before it went to court meant that the public would never hear “this important evidence — the six separate grounds for appeal that the SCCRC felt were important enough to put forward, that could show that there’s been a miscarriage of justice.” Mr Mosey added, “We’d like to know what they are, where will they point?”
In an interview included in this video report from Britain’s Channel 4 News on Thursday, Mr Mosey called for a new public inquiry into the bombing and said of Mr Megrahi, “From the evidence I saw and heard in the court, and what I’ve read and seen, I doubt that he had any involvement in it at all.”
A Scottish reader of The Lede’s previous post on Mr Megrahi’s release drew our attention to this video, of a BBC interview with the father of another British victim of the bombing, Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed. Speaking as Mr Megrahi was being driven from prison, Dr Swire also called for a public inquiry and praised the Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill for his “brave” decision. He added: “I don’t believe for a moment that this man was involved, in the way that he was found to have been involved.”
Readers who want to know more about the case against Mr Megrahi, and the suggestions that he may have been wrongly convicted, can consult two documentaries: “Shadow Over Lockerbie,” made for American public radio by John Biewen and Ian Ferguson in 2000, and “Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie,” made for the BBC in 2008.
Now that the Scottish government has released Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the murder of 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec 21, 1988, the appeal he had filed in a Scottish court will never be heard by a judge.
The firestorm of anger that greeted the decision to release Mr Megrahi, who is terminally ill, on compassionate grounds on Thursday is clearly based on the belief that he was responsible for the bombing, but doubts about his conviction, some of which formed the basis for the legal appeal he filed and then withdrew at the request of the Scottish government as a condition of his release, surfaced years ago. Despite what some readers of The Lede who posted comments yesterday seem to have assumed, those doubts existed outside the murky precincts of the Internet where wild conspiracy theories are spun out.
In a review of the case on Wednesday, the Scottish broadcaster STV reported that Mr Megrahi’s appeal was filed in 2007 after “a four-year review by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review [Commission] (SCCRC), who concluded that a miscarriage of justice could have occurred.”
On Wednesday, The Guardian published video of the Rev John Mosey, the father of one of the British victims of the bombing, who expressed his disappointment that halting Mr Megrahi’s appeal before it went to court meant that the public would never hear “this important evidence — the six separate grounds for appeal that the SCCRC felt were important enough to put forward, that could show that there’s been a miscarriage of justice.” Mr Mosey added, “We’d like to know what they are, where will they point?”
In an interview included in this video report from Britain’s Channel 4 News on Thursday, Mr Mosey called for a new public inquiry into the bombing and said of Mr Megrahi, “From the evidence I saw and heard in the court, and what I’ve read and seen, I doubt that he had any involvement in it at all.”
A Scottish reader of The Lede’s previous post on Mr Megrahi’s release drew our attention to this video, of a BBC interview with the father of another British victim of the bombing, Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed. Speaking as Mr Megrahi was being driven from prison, Dr Swire also called for a public inquiry and praised the Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill for his “brave” decision. He added: “I don’t believe for a moment that this man was involved, in the way that he was found to have been involved.”
Readers who want to know more about the case against Mr Megrahi, and the suggestions that he may have been wrongly convicted, can consult two documentaries: “Shadow Over Lockerbie,” made for American public radio by John Biewen and Ian Ferguson in 2000, and “Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie,” made for the BBC in 2008.
Lord Advocate drops appeal against Megrahi sentence
Scotland's top prosecutor today dropped an appeal against the "lenient" jail term imposed on the Lockerbie bomber.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, 57, was freed from prison yesterday on compassionate grounds.
He had been jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum 27 years – a term which the Crown was appealing against as "unduly lenient".
The formal decision to drop the appeal was taken after studying medical reports, said the Crown Office.
The decision to drop the appeal was taken by Scotland's top law officer, Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini.
The Crown Office said: "The Lord Advocate has now had the opportunity to consider reports regarding Mr Megrahi's medical condition and prognosis.
"Mr Megrahi is now terminally ill."
The Lord Advocate had taken account of the fact that Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds and was no longer in Scotland.
"Had he remained in custody, he would have had no prospect of serving the current punishment part of his sentence, let alone any increased sentence that the Lord Advocate was seeking," said the Crown Office.
"That together with his release means that the outcome of any appeal could have no practical effect whatsoever for Mr Megrahi."
Megrahi successfully applied to judges on Tuesday to drop his second appeal against conviction for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people died.
At that hearing, senior judge Lord Hamilton said it was of the "utmost importance" that the Lord Advocate made an early decision on whether she intended to insist on the appeal.
[The above is the text of a report posted this afternoon on The Scotsman's website.
Trust the Crown Office to reach a decision only after it could have not the slightest significance in the real world (and after not very heavily disguised criticism from the judges at the court hearing on 18 August at which Abdelbaset Megrahi was given leave to abandon his appeal). The conduct of the Crown Office throughout the whole Lockerbie case is one of the strongest arguments for an independent enquiry following Mr Megrahi's abandonment of his appeal; and it is a topic on which the Scottish Government, under the devolution settlement, certainly has the powers to render such an enquiry meaningful.]
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, 57, was freed from prison yesterday on compassionate grounds.
He had been jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum 27 years – a term which the Crown was appealing against as "unduly lenient".
The formal decision to drop the appeal was taken after studying medical reports, said the Crown Office.
The decision to drop the appeal was taken by Scotland's top law officer, Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini.
The Crown Office said: "The Lord Advocate has now had the opportunity to consider reports regarding Mr Megrahi's medical condition and prognosis.
"Mr Megrahi is now terminally ill."
The Lord Advocate had taken account of the fact that Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds and was no longer in Scotland.
"Had he remained in custody, he would have had no prospect of serving the current punishment part of his sentence, let alone any increased sentence that the Lord Advocate was seeking," said the Crown Office.
"That together with his release means that the outcome of any appeal could have no practical effect whatsoever for Mr Megrahi."
Megrahi successfully applied to judges on Tuesday to drop his second appeal against conviction for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people died.
At that hearing, senior judge Lord Hamilton said it was of the "utmost importance" that the Lord Advocate made an early decision on whether she intended to insist on the appeal.
[The above is the text of a report posted this afternoon on The Scotsman's website.
Trust the Crown Office to reach a decision only after it could have not the slightest significance in the real world (and after not very heavily disguised criticism from the judges at the court hearing on 18 August at which Abdelbaset Megrahi was given leave to abandon his appeal). The conduct of the Crown Office throughout the whole Lockerbie case is one of the strongest arguments for an independent enquiry following Mr Megrahi's abandonment of his appeal; and it is a topic on which the Scottish Government, under the devolution settlement, certainly has the powers to render such an enquiry meaningful.]
No fury over Lockerbie release from American media
[This is the headline over a report just posted on the website of The Times. It reads in part:]
News of yesterday’s premature release of Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset al-Megrahi was met by American newspapers with a collective shrug.
Given the tepid response to the Scottish Justice minister’s decision from American officials — including President Obama — however, the reaction in the media is hardly surprising.
In a radio interview yesterday afternoon, Mr Obama reacted to al-Megrahi’s release with restraint, calling the decision “a mistake” and "not appropriate.” He went further, but not by much, in calling for al-Megrahi to be kept under house arrest by the Libyan government.
Mr Obama’s cool reaction seemed to be echoed in the pages of America’s elite newspapers. In The New York Times, the Lockerbie story commanded a tiny box of exactly 27 words in the bottom left corner of the newspaper’s front page. The actual story was pushed to page four and barely featured on the paper’s website.
In the Washington Post, al-Megrahi’s release received even less attention. The story was relegated to page 16, far beyond the space usually reserved for stories deemed important.
Only the Los Angeles Times featured the story prominently with a large front page photo with caption of al-Megrahi arriving in Libya to cheering throngs of supporters.
News of yesterday’s premature release of Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset al-Megrahi was met by American newspapers with a collective shrug.
Given the tepid response to the Scottish Justice minister’s decision from American officials — including President Obama — however, the reaction in the media is hardly surprising.
In a radio interview yesterday afternoon, Mr Obama reacted to al-Megrahi’s release with restraint, calling the decision “a mistake” and "not appropriate.” He went further, but not by much, in calling for al-Megrahi to be kept under house arrest by the Libyan government.
Mr Obama’s cool reaction seemed to be echoed in the pages of America’s elite newspapers. In The New York Times, the Lockerbie story commanded a tiny box of exactly 27 words in the bottom left corner of the newspaper’s front page. The actual story was pushed to page four and barely featured on the paper’s website.
In the Washington Post, al-Megrahi’s release received even less attention. The story was relegated to page 16, far beyond the space usually reserved for stories deemed important.
Only the Los Angeles Times featured the story prominently with a large front page photo with caption of al-Megrahi arriving in Libya to cheering throngs of supporters.
Release of the Lockerbie prisoner: the case is not closed
Statement by Dr. Hans Koechler, International Observer, appointed by the United Nations, at the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands
Vienna, 21 August 2009
P/RE/21831c-is
Dr. Hans Koechler has been appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as international observer at the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands. In two analytical reports, submitted to the United Nations in 2001 and 2002, about the trial and first appeal he had suspected a miscarriage of justice. Commenting on yesterday's release on compassionate grounds of the only person convicted in the Lockerbie case, the Libyan citizen Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, Dr. Koechler clarified certain important points in interviews for Austrian and international media.
Domestic and international legal aspects of the release
The decision by Scotland’s Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, was in conformity with Scots law and did not violate any international obligation of the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding other declarations, release on the basis of the recently ratified prisoner transfer agreement between the Libyan Jamahiriya and the United Kingdom would have violated the terms of an agreement concluded in 1991 (!) between the United Kingdom and the United States according to which the full sentence of any person convicted by the Scottish Court in the Netherlands would be served in a Scottish prison. Dr. Koechler who had listened to the reading of Mr. MacAskill’s statement, said that he is at a loss to explain how the Scottish authorities can say that they had no specific information on this legal matter because the UK authorities did not provide it to them. If he would have checked relevant documents in the public domain, he could have found – in the official records of the House of Commons – the text of a statement made by the then Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, the late Robin Cook, on 31 January 2001. Because of the importance of the issue in legal and political terms the respective part of the statement is reproduced below:
"I can give the right hon. Gentleman and the House an absolute assurance that there will be no deal with the Libyan Government on the sentence of Mr. Al Megrahi. I do not believe that any Scottish court would wear such a deal, even if we remotely contemplated striking one. As part of the terms of the agreement in 1991, it was agreed that the full sentence would be served in a Scottish prison. At that stage, we rejected the proposal that the person responsible might be sent to a prison in a third country. The United Nations will have access to his prison, because we have nothing to hide or to fear about the standard of Scottish prisons. I suspect that they will be better than those of Libyan prisons."
This was the Foreign Secretary’s answer to the following question by the Hon. Francis Maude, MP:
"Will the Government undertake that Al Megrahi will neither be released early as part of some deal with Libya, nor permitted to serve part of his sentence in Libya?"
In view of this official statement, made by the British Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons, it is crystal-clear that only release on compassionate grounds was in conformity with the United Kingdom’s international obligations - as Dr. Koechler had already stated on 5 August 2009 in an interview for the BBC London.
Dropping of the appeal by the convict
In an op-ed article for The Independent (London), Dr. Koechler has expressed serious doubts about the decision by Mr. Al Megrahi to withdraw his (second) appeal. His decision may have been made under duress and would thus be legally questionable, he said. According to Scots law, the termination of the ongoing appeal was not in any way required for compassionate release to be granted. The Scottish Justice Secretary will have to clarify vis-à-vis the Scottish, British and international public the exact circumstances under which the appeal was dropped. According to reports, Mr. Al Megrahi’s request was lodged through his defence team on 12 August 2009, in close proximity to the date of his release (20 August 2009) and just a few days after his meeting with the Justice Secretary. How are these coincidences to be explained?
It should have been obvious to the Scottish authorities that - in a case where an act international terrorism is suspected - it would be in the public interest of the country that has jurisdiction to continue with criminal proceedings and to exhaust all legal means to establish the truth about the incident. Why did the authorities satisfy themselves to deal with the question of criminal responsibility of two, later only one, suspect, and why did they accept the abrupt ending of the ongoing appeal of the only person convicted?
Omission by Scotland's Justice Secretary of any reference to the decision of Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
Mr. MacAskill was right, in political as well as legal terms, in releasing Mr. Al Megrahi on compassionate grounds. However, in yesterday’s statement explaining his decision, he failed the test of statesmanship or judicial expertise. Upon concluding his statement he appeared more like a Prosecutor in a trial, suddenly assuming a vindictive tone and trying to convince the court of the guilt of the indicted, not like the Secretary of Justice who has to make a decision that is not related to the question of guilt or innocence (as is the case with “release on compassionate grounds” according to Scots law).
It is noteworthy that, in his statement, the Justice Secretary did not in any way take note of the fact that - in the years since the trial court's decision on 31 January 2001 - serious doubts have arisen about the guilty verdict and that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) – after four (!) years of painstaking investigations – had stated (in June 2007) that it suspects a miscarriage of justice and had, thus, referred the case back to the appeal court. He did – obviously deliberately – overlook the finding of the SCCRC according to which “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase [by Mr. Al Megrahi] of the items [clothes] from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988.” It does not need special intellectual skills to realize that the entire verdict collapses if there is no proof for the assertion that Mr. Al Megrahi was the person who bought clothes on that particular day in that particular shop in Malta.
In view of the appeal now having been aborted, the work of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission will have been in vain. The least that is to be expected from the Scottish judicial authorities is that they publish the full report of the Commission. Up to the present moment, not only the full report has not been released into the public domain, several grounds of appeal given by the Commission are being kept secret.
Public inquiry and possible role of the United Nations
As matters stand in Scotland, there may be no further criminal proceedings or investigations. However, establishing the truth about the midair explosion of an airliner and identifying the perpetrators is in the supreme public interest of any polity that is built on the rule of law. The legitimacy of any state is closely connected to a state’s willingness and ability to investigate and prosecute sine ira et studio each and every incident such as that which caused the death of 270 innocent people on the PanAm plane and in Lockerbie, Dr. Koechler said. In an exclusive interview with Al-Jazeera’s Felicity Barr the former UN-appointed observer reiterated his call for a public inquiry to be mandated by the British House of Commons. He further explained that, absent a decision by the House of Commons, the United Nations General Assembly may consider establishing an international commission of inquiry into the Lockerbie incident on the basis of Art. 22 of the UN Charter. Since the United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, has decided on 12 September 2003 to remove the Lockerbie issue “from the list of matters of which the Security Council is seized,” the General Assembly would undoubtedly have authority to deal with the issue.
About alternative theories
In all conversations with media representatives and in an interview, moderated from London and broadcast live on Al-Jazeera TV shortly after Mr. Al-Megrahi’s release, Dr. Koechler has made clear that, as a United Nations-appointed observer as well as a scholar, he does not engage in any speculation about the perpetrators as long as no alternative theory about the incident can be built beyond a reasonable doubt. He added that, if the Scottish judges at Camp Zeist would have respected that criterion, they could not have reached the guilty verdict in the case of Mr. Al Megrahi.
[In an article headed "I saw the trial – and the verdict made no sense" in today's edition of The Independent Dr Koechler writes the following:]
I am always surprised when people refer to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi as the Lockerbie bomber. Even if he is guilty – something which, personally, I do not believe – he would only be a Lockerbie bomber, just one of many people who carried out a crime which would have taken a large network of people and lots of money to carry out. It amazes me that the British and American governments act as if the investigation into the bombing is somehow complete.
But I welcome the release of Megrahi, because I firmly believe that he is innocent of the charges made against him. Believe me, if I thought he was guilty I would not be pleased to see him released from jail.
His decision to drop his appeal, however, is deeply suspicious – I believe Megrahi made that decision under duress. Under Scottish law he did not need to abandon his appeal in order to be released on compassionate grounds. So why did he do it? It makes no sense that he would suddenly let it go.
In my time as the UN's observer at Megrahi's trial, I watched a case unfold that was based on circumstantial evidence. The indictment against him and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah went to great lengths to explain how they supposedly planted a bomb on Flight 103, and yet Fhimah was acquitted of all the charges against him. It made no sense that Megrahi was guilty when Fhimah was acquitted.
The prosecution produced key witnesses that lacked credibility or had incentives to bear false witness against Megrahi. Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who supposedly sold him the clothes that went around the bomb, had been fêted by the Scottish police who took him fishing. The Americans paid him cash following his testimony. The weakness of that testimony would have been a key component of Megrahi's appeal.
We will probably never really know who caused the Lockerbie bombing. So much key information was withheld from the trial. A luggage storage room used by Pan Am at Heathrow was broken into on the night of the bombing, and yet this information was withheld. The British have yet satisfactorily to explain why.
I want to know when the bomb was placed on the plane and by whom. We have to look more closely into the "London theory" – that the bomb was placed on the plane at Heathrow and not in Malta.
It would be childish to be satisfied with the conviction of just one person for a crime that clearly involved a large number of people. I find it very difficult to understand why there seems to be so little pressure from the British and American public on their governments to investigate the bombing properly.
The UK regularly talks of the need to pursue all terrorist atrocities. Yet how can the Government assure the public they really believe that, when they have virtually abandoned their investigation into the worst terrorist attack in the country's history?
We have to know what happened and the only way is a full public inquiry, either mandated by the House of Commons or by an investigative commission voted for by the UN's General Assembly. Time is of the essence. This crime is already 21 years old. To find out the truth we must act now.
Vienna, 21 August 2009
P/RE/21831c-is
Dr. Hans Koechler has been appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as international observer at the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands. In two analytical reports, submitted to the United Nations in 2001 and 2002, about the trial and first appeal he had suspected a miscarriage of justice. Commenting on yesterday's release on compassionate grounds of the only person convicted in the Lockerbie case, the Libyan citizen Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, Dr. Koechler clarified certain important points in interviews for Austrian and international media.
Domestic and international legal aspects of the release
The decision by Scotland’s Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, was in conformity with Scots law and did not violate any international obligation of the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding other declarations, release on the basis of the recently ratified prisoner transfer agreement between the Libyan Jamahiriya and the United Kingdom would have violated the terms of an agreement concluded in 1991 (!) between the United Kingdom and the United States according to which the full sentence of any person convicted by the Scottish Court in the Netherlands would be served in a Scottish prison. Dr. Koechler who had listened to the reading of Mr. MacAskill’s statement, said that he is at a loss to explain how the Scottish authorities can say that they had no specific information on this legal matter because the UK authorities did not provide it to them. If he would have checked relevant documents in the public domain, he could have found – in the official records of the House of Commons – the text of a statement made by the then Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, the late Robin Cook, on 31 January 2001. Because of the importance of the issue in legal and political terms the respective part of the statement is reproduced below:
"I can give the right hon. Gentleman and the House an absolute assurance that there will be no deal with the Libyan Government on the sentence of Mr. Al Megrahi. I do not believe that any Scottish court would wear such a deal, even if we remotely contemplated striking one. As part of the terms of the agreement in 1991, it was agreed that the full sentence would be served in a Scottish prison. At that stage, we rejected the proposal that the person responsible might be sent to a prison in a third country. The United Nations will have access to his prison, because we have nothing to hide or to fear about the standard of Scottish prisons. I suspect that they will be better than those of Libyan prisons."
This was the Foreign Secretary’s answer to the following question by the Hon. Francis Maude, MP:
"Will the Government undertake that Al Megrahi will neither be released early as part of some deal with Libya, nor permitted to serve part of his sentence in Libya?"
In view of this official statement, made by the British Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons, it is crystal-clear that only release on compassionate grounds was in conformity with the United Kingdom’s international obligations - as Dr. Koechler had already stated on 5 August 2009 in an interview for the BBC London.
Dropping of the appeal by the convict
In an op-ed article for The Independent (London), Dr. Koechler has expressed serious doubts about the decision by Mr. Al Megrahi to withdraw his (second) appeal. His decision may have been made under duress and would thus be legally questionable, he said. According to Scots law, the termination of the ongoing appeal was not in any way required for compassionate release to be granted. The Scottish Justice Secretary will have to clarify vis-à-vis the Scottish, British and international public the exact circumstances under which the appeal was dropped. According to reports, Mr. Al Megrahi’s request was lodged through his defence team on 12 August 2009, in close proximity to the date of his release (20 August 2009) and just a few days after his meeting with the Justice Secretary. How are these coincidences to be explained?
It should have been obvious to the Scottish authorities that - in a case where an act international terrorism is suspected - it would be in the public interest of the country that has jurisdiction to continue with criminal proceedings and to exhaust all legal means to establish the truth about the incident. Why did the authorities satisfy themselves to deal with the question of criminal responsibility of two, later only one, suspect, and why did they accept the abrupt ending of the ongoing appeal of the only person convicted?
Omission by Scotland's Justice Secretary of any reference to the decision of Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
Mr. MacAskill was right, in political as well as legal terms, in releasing Mr. Al Megrahi on compassionate grounds. However, in yesterday’s statement explaining his decision, he failed the test of statesmanship or judicial expertise. Upon concluding his statement he appeared more like a Prosecutor in a trial, suddenly assuming a vindictive tone and trying to convince the court of the guilt of the indicted, not like the Secretary of Justice who has to make a decision that is not related to the question of guilt or innocence (as is the case with “release on compassionate grounds” according to Scots law).
It is noteworthy that, in his statement, the Justice Secretary did not in any way take note of the fact that - in the years since the trial court's decision on 31 January 2001 - serious doubts have arisen about the guilty verdict and that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) – after four (!) years of painstaking investigations – had stated (in June 2007) that it suspects a miscarriage of justice and had, thus, referred the case back to the appeal court. He did – obviously deliberately – overlook the finding of the SCCRC according to which “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase [by Mr. Al Megrahi] of the items [clothes] from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988.” It does not need special intellectual skills to realize that the entire verdict collapses if there is no proof for the assertion that Mr. Al Megrahi was the person who bought clothes on that particular day in that particular shop in Malta.
In view of the appeal now having been aborted, the work of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission will have been in vain. The least that is to be expected from the Scottish judicial authorities is that they publish the full report of the Commission. Up to the present moment, not only the full report has not been released into the public domain, several grounds of appeal given by the Commission are being kept secret.
Public inquiry and possible role of the United Nations
As matters stand in Scotland, there may be no further criminal proceedings or investigations. However, establishing the truth about the midair explosion of an airliner and identifying the perpetrators is in the supreme public interest of any polity that is built on the rule of law. The legitimacy of any state is closely connected to a state’s willingness and ability to investigate and prosecute sine ira et studio each and every incident such as that which caused the death of 270 innocent people on the PanAm plane and in Lockerbie, Dr. Koechler said. In an exclusive interview with Al-Jazeera’s Felicity Barr the former UN-appointed observer reiterated his call for a public inquiry to be mandated by the British House of Commons. He further explained that, absent a decision by the House of Commons, the United Nations General Assembly may consider establishing an international commission of inquiry into the Lockerbie incident on the basis of Art. 22 of the UN Charter. Since the United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, has decided on 12 September 2003 to remove the Lockerbie issue “from the list of matters of which the Security Council is seized,” the General Assembly would undoubtedly have authority to deal with the issue.
About alternative theories
In all conversations with media representatives and in an interview, moderated from London and broadcast live on Al-Jazeera TV shortly after Mr. Al-Megrahi’s release, Dr. Koechler has made clear that, as a United Nations-appointed observer as well as a scholar, he does not engage in any speculation about the perpetrators as long as no alternative theory about the incident can be built beyond a reasonable doubt. He added that, if the Scottish judges at Camp Zeist would have respected that criterion, they could not have reached the guilty verdict in the case of Mr. Al Megrahi.
[In an article headed "I saw the trial – and the verdict made no sense" in today's edition of The Independent Dr Koechler writes the following:]
I am always surprised when people refer to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi as the Lockerbie bomber. Even if he is guilty – something which, personally, I do not believe – he would only be a Lockerbie bomber, just one of many people who carried out a crime which would have taken a large network of people and lots of money to carry out. It amazes me that the British and American governments act as if the investigation into the bombing is somehow complete.
But I welcome the release of Megrahi, because I firmly believe that he is innocent of the charges made against him. Believe me, if I thought he was guilty I would not be pleased to see him released from jail.
His decision to drop his appeal, however, is deeply suspicious – I believe Megrahi made that decision under duress. Under Scottish law he did not need to abandon his appeal in order to be released on compassionate grounds. So why did he do it? It makes no sense that he would suddenly let it go.
In my time as the UN's observer at Megrahi's trial, I watched a case unfold that was based on circumstantial evidence. The indictment against him and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah went to great lengths to explain how they supposedly planted a bomb on Flight 103, and yet Fhimah was acquitted of all the charges against him. It made no sense that Megrahi was guilty when Fhimah was acquitted.
The prosecution produced key witnesses that lacked credibility or had incentives to bear false witness against Megrahi. Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who supposedly sold him the clothes that went around the bomb, had been fêted by the Scottish police who took him fishing. The Americans paid him cash following his testimony. The weakness of that testimony would have been a key component of Megrahi's appeal.
We will probably never really know who caused the Lockerbie bombing. So much key information was withheld from the trial. A luggage storage room used by Pan Am at Heathrow was broken into on the night of the bombing, and yet this information was withheld. The British have yet satisfactorily to explain why.
I want to know when the bomb was placed on the plane and by whom. We have to look more closely into the "London theory" – that the bomb was placed on the plane at Heathrow and not in Malta.
It would be childish to be satisfied with the conviction of just one person for a crime that clearly involved a large number of people. I find it very difficult to understand why there seems to be so little pressure from the British and American public on their governments to investigate the bombing properly.
The UK regularly talks of the need to pursue all terrorist atrocities. Yet how can the Government assure the public they really believe that, when they have virtually abandoned their investigation into the worst terrorist attack in the country's history?
We have to know what happened and the only way is a full public inquiry, either mandated by the House of Commons or by an investigative commission voted for by the UN's General Assembly. Time is of the essence. This crime is already 21 years old. To find out the truth we must act now.
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