Sir, I was a member of the team of lawyers who acted for Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi in his claim against the UK of breach of the right to a fair trial under the European Human Rights Convention. I met him in prison and, after carefully studying the transcripts of his trial and the judgments of the Scottish courts, came to the conclusion that he had been the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice.
The European Court of Human Rights rejected his claim without even communicating it to the Government, but the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was sufficiently concerned to refer the case back to the Scottish judiciary.
I express no opinion about the decision to allow Mr al-Megrahi to return to die in Libya. But in my view, it is a misfortune that he has been induced to abandon his appeal. Had the appeal proceeded, it would have given him the opportunity to clear his name not only for his sake but also for the sake of the families bereaved by the mass murder at Lockerbie.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC
House of Lords
[The above is the text of a letter published in Friday's edition of The Times. The European Court of Human Rights rejected Mr Megrahi's claim, not on the merits, but because he had not exhausted domestic remedies.]
Thursday, 3 September 2009
US 'given bomber jail assurance'
[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
The US had a clear understanding that the Lockerbie bomber would serve his full jail term in the UK, a former British ambassador has said.
Sir Christopher Meyer was speaking to the BBC about his time as ambassador in Washington during the 1998 negotiations over Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's trial. He said there was a "clear political and diplomatic understanding" Megrahi would remain in jail in Scotland. (...)
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said Hillary Clinton had stressed to him that there was a "clear understanding" that Megrahi would serve out his term in jail in Scotland if convicted.
Mr MacAskill said he contacted the UK government and they informed him that no assurances had been given to the US government at the time.
Outlining his decision to free Megrahi last month, the justice secretary said the US government and American families believed there had been agreements made, prior to trial, "regarding the place of imprisonment of anyone convicted".
Speaking to the BBC, Sir Christopher Meyer said: "One thing I do remember very, very clearly was that it was very important to them [the US] to get a commitment out of us that if Megrahi and the other guy were found guilty, they would serve the full term of their sentence in a UK jail.
"For the Americans that was a vital selling point for the relatives and friends of the Americans who died in the blowing up of the Pan Am flight."
[On the same issue, the Daily Mail has an article headlined "Brown the betrayer: U.S. fury over Britain's bare-faced lies and our broken promises to keep Lockerbie bomber in jail" which quotes certain somewhat inflammatory (but nevertheless accurate) remarks by me.]
The US had a clear understanding that the Lockerbie bomber would serve his full jail term in the UK, a former British ambassador has said.
Sir Christopher Meyer was speaking to the BBC about his time as ambassador in Washington during the 1998 negotiations over Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's trial. He said there was a "clear political and diplomatic understanding" Megrahi would remain in jail in Scotland. (...)
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said Hillary Clinton had stressed to him that there was a "clear understanding" that Megrahi would serve out his term in jail in Scotland if convicted.
Mr MacAskill said he contacted the UK government and they informed him that no assurances had been given to the US government at the time.
Outlining his decision to free Megrahi last month, the justice secretary said the US government and American families believed there had been agreements made, prior to trial, "regarding the place of imprisonment of anyone convicted".
Speaking to the BBC, Sir Christopher Meyer said: "One thing I do remember very, very clearly was that it was very important to them [the US] to get a commitment out of us that if Megrahi and the other guy were found guilty, they would serve the full term of their sentence in a UK jail.
"For the Americans that was a vital selling point for the relatives and friends of the Americans who died in the blowing up of the Pan Am flight."
[On the same issue, the Daily Mail has an article headlined "Brown the betrayer: U.S. fury over Britain's bare-faced lies and our broken promises to keep Lockerbie bomber in jail" which quotes certain somewhat inflammatory (but nevertheless accurate) remarks by me.]
Megrahi was framed
[This is the heading over an article by John Pilger on the New Statesman's website. The following are extracts.]
The trial of the “Lockerbie bomber” was worse than a travesty of justice. Evidence that never came to court proves his innocence
The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Britain. From Gordon Brown's "repulsion" to Barack Obama's "outrage", the theatre of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"
Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power". Amen. (...)
No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests".
“The endgame came down to damage limitation," said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, "because the evidence amassed by [Megrahi's] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice." New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft - he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognise him in the courtroom.
The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside and said to have been in Megrahi's suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was "transferred" through two airports undetected to Flight 103. (...)
Megrahi was convicted by three Scottish judges sitting in a courtroom in "neutral" Holland. There was no jury. One of the few reporters to sit through the long and often farcical proceedings was the late Paul Foot, whose landmark investigation in Private Eye exposed it as a cacophony of blunders, deceptions and lies: a whitewash. The Scottish judges, while admitting a "mass of conflicting evidence" and rejecting the fantasies of the CIA informer [Majid Giaka], found Megrahi guilty on hearsay and unproven circumstance. Their 90-page "opinion", wrote Foot, "is a remarkable document that claims an honoured place in the history of British miscarriages of justice". (His report, Lockerbie - the Flight from Justice, can be downloaded from www.private-eye.co.uk for £5.) (...)
In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi's case for appeal. "The commission is of the view," said its chairman, Graham Forbes, "based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice."
The words "miscarriage of justice" are entirely missing from the current furore, with Kenny MacAskill reassuring the baying mob that the scapegoat will soon face justice from that "higher power". What a disgrace.
[An article entitled "It was Megrahi’s appeal, not his health, that concerned the US and Britain" by American commentator William Blum appears in the Online Journal. The following are brief extracts:
'Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was “highly objectionable.” (...) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “angry and repulsed,” while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images “deeply upsetting.” Miliband warned: “How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya’s reentry into the civilized community of nations.”
'Ah yes, “the civilized community of nations,” that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. (...)
'In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. “If he goes back to Libya,” Swire says, “it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. . . . I’ve lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.”
'And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.']
The trial of the “Lockerbie bomber” was worse than a travesty of justice. Evidence that never came to court proves his innocence
The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Britain. From Gordon Brown's "repulsion" to Barack Obama's "outrage", the theatre of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"
Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power". Amen. (...)
No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests".
“The endgame came down to damage limitation," said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, "because the evidence amassed by [Megrahi's] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice." New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft - he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognise him in the courtroom.
The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside and said to have been in Megrahi's suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was "transferred" through two airports undetected to Flight 103. (...)
Megrahi was convicted by three Scottish judges sitting in a courtroom in "neutral" Holland. There was no jury. One of the few reporters to sit through the long and often farcical proceedings was the late Paul Foot, whose landmark investigation in Private Eye exposed it as a cacophony of blunders, deceptions and lies: a whitewash. The Scottish judges, while admitting a "mass of conflicting evidence" and rejecting the fantasies of the CIA informer [Majid Giaka], found Megrahi guilty on hearsay and unproven circumstance. Their 90-page "opinion", wrote Foot, "is a remarkable document that claims an honoured place in the history of British miscarriages of justice". (His report, Lockerbie - the Flight from Justice, can be downloaded from www.private-eye.co.uk for £5.) (...)
In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi's case for appeal. "The commission is of the view," said its chairman, Graham Forbes, "based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice."
The words "miscarriage of justice" are entirely missing from the current furore, with Kenny MacAskill reassuring the baying mob that the scapegoat will soon face justice from that "higher power". What a disgrace.
[An article entitled "It was Megrahi’s appeal, not his health, that concerned the US and Britain" by American commentator William Blum appears in the Online Journal. The following are brief extracts:
'Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was “highly objectionable.” (...) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “angry and repulsed,” while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images “deeply upsetting.” Miliband warned: “How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya’s reentry into the civilized community of nations.”
'Ah yes, “the civilized community of nations,” that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. (...)
'In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. “If he goes back to Libya,” Swire says, “it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. . . . I’ve lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.”
'And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.']
The Megrahi debate
[This is the headline over an editorial in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]
The defeat of the SNP government by the combined forces of the opposition achieved little more than token dissent, since there was no intention to move to a vote of no confidence. Given the strong feelings engendered by Megrahi's release and the international attention on the decision-making process in Scotland, this formal public demonstration of both the division of Scottish opinion and the scrutiny of the process was important.
Gordon Brown finally broke his silence on the situation to declare "there was no double-dealing, no deal on oil, no attempt to instruct Scottish ministers, no private assurances by me to Colonel Gaddafi". That should have come sooner. More significantly politically, however, was his emphasis that he respected the right of Scottish ministers to make the decision - and the decision itself. Respect does not necessarily imply approval or agreement, but the wording laid embarrassingly bare the inconsistencies between the UK Labour government and Labour in Scotland. With the debate itself failing to elicit any more information than had already emerged from the documents published on Tuesday, Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray called for a "forensic" examination of Mr MacAskill's handling of the case in an inquiry by the Justice Committee. Such an inquiry would revisit the questions regarded as unanswered by the opposition parties: the necessity of Mr MacAskill's visit to Megrahi in jail, whether he took a sufficiently wide range of medical opinion and whether Megrahi could have remained in Scotland. All these issues will no doubt bear further scrutiny, but an inquiry is unlikely to reveal anything of real significance, and Mr Gray's call for one suggests that his interest is motivated by party-political point-scoring.
The same charge can be levelled at [UK Conservative Party leader David] Cameron's enthusiasm for an inquiry. Who said what to whom and when is not the main issue here. The further deterioration in Megrahi's condition yesterday reinforces the truth that he is terminally ill. There is no doubt that his release featured in diplomatic and commercial negotiations between the UK and Libya, but despite considerable coalescing of issues from some political interests, we should not lose sight of the fact that he was not released under the prisoner transfer agreement, but on compassionate grounds. The inquiry that is necessary is one that will finally uncover the truth behind the bombing of Pan Am 103 in December 1988.
[Unlike the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament, the UK Labour Government supports Kenny MacAskill's decision to release Mr Megrahi. As reported in today's edition of The Guardian:
'Gordon Brown risked alienating the Obama administration and British public opinion, when he finally admitted that he agreed with the Scottish executive's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds. (...)
'In a statement, Brown said: " I respect the right of the Scottish ministers to make the decision, and the decision." Number 10 acknowledged that his remarks were an endorsement of the early release.
'In a further embarrassment for the Labour party, Brown's support for the release was flushed out of him on the day that his Scottish Labour party colleagues helped pass a motion in the Scottish parliament condemning the release by 73 votes to 50.'
The Official Report (Hansard) on yesterday's debate can be read here.]
The defeat of the SNP government by the combined forces of the opposition achieved little more than token dissent, since there was no intention to move to a vote of no confidence. Given the strong feelings engendered by Megrahi's release and the international attention on the decision-making process in Scotland, this formal public demonstration of both the division of Scottish opinion and the scrutiny of the process was important.
Gordon Brown finally broke his silence on the situation to declare "there was no double-dealing, no deal on oil, no attempt to instruct Scottish ministers, no private assurances by me to Colonel Gaddafi". That should have come sooner. More significantly politically, however, was his emphasis that he respected the right of Scottish ministers to make the decision - and the decision itself. Respect does not necessarily imply approval or agreement, but the wording laid embarrassingly bare the inconsistencies between the UK Labour government and Labour in Scotland. With the debate itself failing to elicit any more information than had already emerged from the documents published on Tuesday, Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray called for a "forensic" examination of Mr MacAskill's handling of the case in an inquiry by the Justice Committee. Such an inquiry would revisit the questions regarded as unanswered by the opposition parties: the necessity of Mr MacAskill's visit to Megrahi in jail, whether he took a sufficiently wide range of medical opinion and whether Megrahi could have remained in Scotland. All these issues will no doubt bear further scrutiny, but an inquiry is unlikely to reveal anything of real significance, and Mr Gray's call for one suggests that his interest is motivated by party-political point-scoring.
The same charge can be levelled at [UK Conservative Party leader David] Cameron's enthusiasm for an inquiry. Who said what to whom and when is not the main issue here. The further deterioration in Megrahi's condition yesterday reinforces the truth that he is terminally ill. There is no doubt that his release featured in diplomatic and commercial negotiations between the UK and Libya, but despite considerable coalescing of issues from some political interests, we should not lose sight of the fact that he was not released under the prisoner transfer agreement, but on compassionate grounds. The inquiry that is necessary is one that will finally uncover the truth behind the bombing of Pan Am 103 in December 1988.
[Unlike the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament, the UK Labour Government supports Kenny MacAskill's decision to release Mr Megrahi. As reported in today's edition of The Guardian:
'Gordon Brown risked alienating the Obama administration and British public opinion, when he finally admitted that he agreed with the Scottish executive's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds. (...)
'In a statement, Brown said: " I respect the right of the Scottish ministers to make the decision, and the decision." Number 10 acknowledged that his remarks were an endorsement of the early release.
'In a further embarrassment for the Labour party, Brown's support for the release was flushed out of him on the day that his Scottish Labour party colleagues helped pass a motion in the Scottish parliament condemning the release by 73 votes to 50.'
The Official Report (Hansard) on yesterday's debate can be read here.]
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
More from Jonathan Mitchell QC
Jonathan Mitchell's most recent blog post on the Megrahi release is entitled "Compassionate release in Scotland: the actual policy and the law". It is a masterly exposition of the law and the policy relating to compassionate release. It should have been, but unfortunately was not, required reading for those MSPs who took part in today's debate in the Scottish Parliament. The following are brief excerpts:
"[O]n the published facts of Megrahi’s case, had the Scottish Government refused to allow compassionate release in terms of a policy which had been applied by it and its Lib-Lab predecessors, and before them by Labour and Conservative Secretaries of State alike, it would have been open to legal challenge with excellent prospects of success. That’s the way the law works; it doesn’t suddenly cease to operate because the person claiming its benefits is criminal, or a foreigner, or because release is politically undesirable. Still less because of the improbable suggestion that Americans will boycott Scotland and all its works if Scots law is applied impartially and judicially. (...)
"I cannot imagine that the release of Megrahi will in a few years be seen as a worse decision than the UK Government’s decision to release seventy-eight murderers who had collectively murdered far more people than were murdered at Lockerbie; or the US Government's decision to release a murderer of (per his conviction) twenty-two after three and a half years house arrest; or the UK Government’s decision that Pinochet should never face murder charges because of his supposedly poor health.
"But had the decision been to abrogate the law so that Megrahi would die in prison while Musa Kusa and Colonel Gaddafi himself are fawned on by Washington and London, that would, I think, have come to be seen as shameful."
"[O]n the published facts of Megrahi’s case, had the Scottish Government refused to allow compassionate release in terms of a policy which had been applied by it and its Lib-Lab predecessors, and before them by Labour and Conservative Secretaries of State alike, it would have been open to legal challenge with excellent prospects of success. That’s the way the law works; it doesn’t suddenly cease to operate because the person claiming its benefits is criminal, or a foreigner, or because release is politically undesirable. Still less because of the improbable suggestion that Americans will boycott Scotland and all its works if Scots law is applied impartially and judicially. (...)
"I cannot imagine that the release of Megrahi will in a few years be seen as a worse decision than the UK Government’s decision to release seventy-eight murderers who had collectively murdered far more people than were murdered at Lockerbie; or the US Government's decision to release a murderer of (per his conviction) twenty-two after three and a half years house arrest; or the UK Government’s decision that Pinochet should never face murder charges because of his supposedly poor health.
"But had the decision been to abrogate the law so that Megrahi would die in prison while Musa Kusa and Colonel Gaddafi himself are fawned on by Washington and London, that would, I think, have come to be seen as shameful."
The debate in the Scottish Parliament
A minute-by minute account of today's Scottish Parliament debate on the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi can be read on the politics blog of The Guardian. Regrettably, the blogger appears to know very little about the Scottish political scene.
The debate has ended, but the vote will not be taken until 17.00.
"MSPs voted by 73 to 50 with one abstention to pass amendments criticising the Scottish Government."
[The sentence immediately above is from the BBC News website. Given that the SNP forms a minority government, with only 47 seats in the 129 seat parliament, this outcome can be counted some kind of success. And as Magnus Linklater (the Scotland Editor of The Times) writes in his Holyrood Sketch:
"Like most of the “big” subjects that the Holyrood Parliament has dealt with, this one brought out occasional eloquence, and not a little passion. And though the SNP government, perhaps inevitably, lost the vote, it did not necessarily lose the argument."]
The debate has ended, but the vote will not be taken until 17.00.
"MSPs voted by 73 to 50 with one abstention to pass amendments criticising the Scottish Government."
[The sentence immediately above is from the BBC News website. Given that the SNP forms a minority government, with only 47 seats in the 129 seat parliament, this outcome can be counted some kind of success. And as Magnus Linklater (the Scotland Editor of The Times) writes in his Holyrood Sketch:
"Like most of the “big” subjects that the Holyrood Parliament has dealt with, this one brought out occasional eloquence, and not a little passion. And though the SNP government, perhaps inevitably, lost the vote, it did not necessarily lose the argument."]
The Megrahi dossier: why he was set free
[The above is the headline over the main article on the release of Abdelbaset Megrahi in The Herald. The following are excerpts.]
[O]n even the most controversial aspect of the process, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's visit to Greenock Prison, there appeared to be no real hostages to fortune, while minutes and reports of the prison governor, the Parole Board, the police and medical examiners, as well as correspondence with the Westminster Government and the Libyans, appeared to leave Mr MacAskill unscathed by the process.
And while the Scottish Government appears to have emerged as having at least followed due process, the real question marks remain over the US Government for its refusal to sanction release of material yesterday and the UK Government for continuing to say little. (...)
The Greenock visit
One question mark that remains relates to Mr MacAskill's decision to visit Megrahi in Greenock Prison. An eight-page document by a senior civil servant in the justice department advises the minister: "Mr Megrahi, as a subject of the transfer request, should be given opportunity to make his own representation on the proposal."
That advice concludes with the recommendation: "The groups and individuals identified should be offered short meetings with you to present their representations."
That Mr MacAskill inferred from this that he should go to meet the prisoner at Greenock is still being challenged by opponents, but the advice appears sufficiently robust to entitle him to say he was acting on advice.
There are then two documents relating to the meeting at HMP Greenock on August 6 - the official minute from the government side and Mr Megrahi's own handwritten note of his presentation to the meeting. (...)
The minute records, in dry official language, the prisoner's insistence that he had been unjustly convicted and his sympathy for the "terrible loss" of the victims' families. The minute adds, as Megrahi told The Herald in Tripoli last week: "He feels there is little prospect that his appeal will be concluded before his death, and that his dreams of returning home cleared no longer exist."
While the minute records Mr MacAskill advising Megrahi that prison transfer could only take place if there were no court proceedings ongoing, there is no specific mention that compassionate release would not require this. However, aides pointed out last night that the meeting was specifically about prisoner transfer, not compassionate release.
The handwritten note from Megrahi states: "I'm a very ill person. The disease that I have is incurable. All the personnel are agreed that I have little chance of living into next year. The last report which I received some weeks ago from consultant reaches the view that I have a short time left. I have a burning desire to clear my name. I think now that I will not witness that ultimate conclusion."
And in words that echoed Mr MacAskill's later reference to a "higher authority", he stated: "As I turn now to face my God, to stand before him, I have nothing to fear."
The prison reports
The release of Megrahi almost a fortnight ago was accompanied by part of a section of official prison paperwork, involving the report by Dr Andrew Fraser, the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care.
But yesterday most of the rest of that document was released and it fully backs Mr MacAskill's version of events.
Most emphatically, the document requires Prison Governor Malcolm McLennan to answer a straight question: "Do you consider that the prisoner should be released early? YES.
"Please state your reasons: The prognosis for Mr Megrahi is extremely bleak. Clinical advice would confirm that his death is likely to occur within a very short period. At present he is visibly displaying signs of ageing and pain during normal daily routine.
"He regularly refers to himself as a dying man and his mood can be described at times as extremely low. Release of Mr Megrahi will offer him and his family the opportunity to spend his remaining time in his country. This will mean he will have access to his close family at a time when his health is deteriorating." (...)
The police advice
There was much controversy over the course of last week over what advice had been received from Strathclyde Police about the possibility of releasing Megrahi to live in the family house in Newton Mearns, as had been pushed for by Conservatives.
Among yesterday's documents was a minute of a discussion between justice department civil servants and Deputy Chief Constable Neil Richardson on Friday, August 14, six days before the decision was announced and the day on which the final pieces of expert advice were received.
Assuming Megrahi would be deemed to be a "protected person," that note states: "Bluntly: the implication would be of extreme significance to the police force," and adding: "Simply to remain in house, with no movement or family staying (basic level) would require a total of 48 officers to sustain close protection. Cost of maintaining this level of protection would be around £100,000 per week.
"The police numbers and cost would be ramped up for trips to hospital requiring convoys, and would be higher still if his extended family stayed at the house where, the minute adds: "Children in particular could pose a kidnap threat." (...)
Holyrood-Westminster relations
The big question for UK ministers arising from documents released yesterday is simply this: Did UK ministers tell the Libyans that Gordon Brown did not want Megrahi to die in a Scottish jail?
According to the minute of a meeting in Glasgow with Libyans on March 12 this year, Abdulati Alobidi [RB: the normal English transliteration of this name is al-Obeidi], minister for Europe, spoke of a visit to Tripoli the previous month by Foreign Minister Bill Rammell at which it was pointed out that if Megrahi died in custody it would have "catastrophic effects" on Libyan-UK relations.
Mr Alobidi was minuted as saying: "Mr Rammell had stated that neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign Secretary would want Mr Megrahi to pass away in prison but the decision on transfer lies in the hands of the Scottish Ministers."
That remains a clearer statement of the Prime Minister's opinion than Mr Brown has since been prepared to offer in public.
[The accuracy of Mr al-Obeidi's statement has now been confirmed by David Miliband in a radio interview. According to a report on The Times website:
"The Foreign Secretary admitted that it was true that Bill Rammell, a Foreign Office minister, had told his Libyan counterpart back in February that the Prime Minister did not want Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi to pass away in Greenock prison."]
Medical evidence
One area where no further detailed information has been released is in terms of medical evidence.
The main report remains that of Dr Andrew Fraser, director of health and care at the Scottish Prison Service, who summarised the views of four Scottish consultants directly involved in the case, plus the prison doctor.
His report, released on the day Mr MacAskill announced the Megrahi decision, attracted ferocious criticism from Labour's Dr Richard Simpson, who insisted that a second opinion should have been sought from another cancer consultant on whether Megrahi definitely had less than three months to live.
Dr Fraser's original report had attached to it, in a sealed envelope, the relevant medical reports on which he had based his opinion and there was pressure from critics for these to be released.
But the government refused to bow to that pressure, insisting that these detailed medical reports remain private.
There are, however, scattered across other documents released yesterday, other references to Megrahi's condition, including one, dated March 12, which made clear that by then the prisoner was already "receiving treatment and visits from a palliative care specialist", adding: "A consultant oncologist monitors Mr Megrahi's condition and he is also receiving support from a nurse who is trained in counselling."
Palliative care and a nurse trained in counselling are strong indications that by then he was being treated as terminally ill.
[An editorial in the same newspaper contains the following paragraphs:]
Justice Secretary Jack Straw emerges from all this little better. Having sought to exclude Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, he then performed a U-turn on the basis of "the overwhelming interests" of the United Kingdom. The strict answer to the question "deal or no deal?" may be "no deal" but there now can be little doubt that the Labour government allowed the man convicted of Britain's worst mass murder to become a pawn in the much desired rapprochement with the Gaddafi regime. The U-turn coincided uncomfortably with a major oil exploration deal for BP.
It was always unlikely that there was any sort of deal between the Scottish and Westminster Governments on this case, and the correspondence supports the claims that proper procedures were followed. And while First Minister Alex Salmond's letters betray a distasteful and inappropriate point-scoring approach, it is hard to fault his Justice Secretary. Mr MacAskill's visit to Megrahi's cell was, frankly, a faux pas but his painstaking consultations with all the relevant authorities, as well as victims' relatives, do him credit. And, given that all the official advice pointed one way, release on compassionate grounds still seems the right and logical decision, despite the repulsive hero's welcome Megrahi received in Tripoli.
Pursuing the political minutiae of this case any further would be futile. However, Lockerbie is not history, as Colonel Gaddafi's son claimed last week. For those who lost loved ones, it remains a gaping wound and an unexplained mystery. Stabilising relations with Libya and allowing a dying man to return to his family must not come at the cost of finding out what happened on the night of December 21, 1988, over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
[The principal article on the subject in The Times is well worth reading. As far as I can discover it is the only media article that mentions the letter of 24 August 1998 which gives the lie to the UK Foreign Office assertion that no "definitive commitment" had been given that anyone convicted would serve his whole sentence in Britain.]
[O]n even the most controversial aspect of the process, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's visit to Greenock Prison, there appeared to be no real hostages to fortune, while minutes and reports of the prison governor, the Parole Board, the police and medical examiners, as well as correspondence with the Westminster Government and the Libyans, appeared to leave Mr MacAskill unscathed by the process.
And while the Scottish Government appears to have emerged as having at least followed due process, the real question marks remain over the US Government for its refusal to sanction release of material yesterday and the UK Government for continuing to say little. (...)
The Greenock visit
One question mark that remains relates to Mr MacAskill's decision to visit Megrahi in Greenock Prison. An eight-page document by a senior civil servant in the justice department advises the minister: "Mr Megrahi, as a subject of the transfer request, should be given opportunity to make his own representation on the proposal."
That advice concludes with the recommendation: "The groups and individuals identified should be offered short meetings with you to present their representations."
That Mr MacAskill inferred from this that he should go to meet the prisoner at Greenock is still being challenged by opponents, but the advice appears sufficiently robust to entitle him to say he was acting on advice.
There are then two documents relating to the meeting at HMP Greenock on August 6 - the official minute from the government side and Mr Megrahi's own handwritten note of his presentation to the meeting. (...)
The minute records, in dry official language, the prisoner's insistence that he had been unjustly convicted and his sympathy for the "terrible loss" of the victims' families. The minute adds, as Megrahi told The Herald in Tripoli last week: "He feels there is little prospect that his appeal will be concluded before his death, and that his dreams of returning home cleared no longer exist."
While the minute records Mr MacAskill advising Megrahi that prison transfer could only take place if there were no court proceedings ongoing, there is no specific mention that compassionate release would not require this. However, aides pointed out last night that the meeting was specifically about prisoner transfer, not compassionate release.
The handwritten note from Megrahi states: "I'm a very ill person. The disease that I have is incurable. All the personnel are agreed that I have little chance of living into next year. The last report which I received some weeks ago from consultant reaches the view that I have a short time left. I have a burning desire to clear my name. I think now that I will not witness that ultimate conclusion."
And in words that echoed Mr MacAskill's later reference to a "higher authority", he stated: "As I turn now to face my God, to stand before him, I have nothing to fear."
The prison reports
The release of Megrahi almost a fortnight ago was accompanied by part of a section of official prison paperwork, involving the report by Dr Andrew Fraser, the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care.
But yesterday most of the rest of that document was released and it fully backs Mr MacAskill's version of events.
Most emphatically, the document requires Prison Governor Malcolm McLennan to answer a straight question: "Do you consider that the prisoner should be released early? YES.
"Please state your reasons: The prognosis for Mr Megrahi is extremely bleak. Clinical advice would confirm that his death is likely to occur within a very short period. At present he is visibly displaying signs of ageing and pain during normal daily routine.
"He regularly refers to himself as a dying man and his mood can be described at times as extremely low. Release of Mr Megrahi will offer him and his family the opportunity to spend his remaining time in his country. This will mean he will have access to his close family at a time when his health is deteriorating." (...)
The police advice
There was much controversy over the course of last week over what advice had been received from Strathclyde Police about the possibility of releasing Megrahi to live in the family house in Newton Mearns, as had been pushed for by Conservatives.
Among yesterday's documents was a minute of a discussion between justice department civil servants and Deputy Chief Constable Neil Richardson on Friday, August 14, six days before the decision was announced and the day on which the final pieces of expert advice were received.
Assuming Megrahi would be deemed to be a "protected person," that note states: "Bluntly: the implication would be of extreme significance to the police force," and adding: "Simply to remain in house, with no movement or family staying (basic level) would require a total of 48 officers to sustain close protection. Cost of maintaining this level of protection would be around £100,000 per week.
"The police numbers and cost would be ramped up for trips to hospital requiring convoys, and would be higher still if his extended family stayed at the house where, the minute adds: "Children in particular could pose a kidnap threat." (...)
Holyrood-Westminster relations
The big question for UK ministers arising from documents released yesterday is simply this: Did UK ministers tell the Libyans that Gordon Brown did not want Megrahi to die in a Scottish jail?
According to the minute of a meeting in Glasgow with Libyans on March 12 this year, Abdulati Alobidi [RB: the normal English transliteration of this name is al-Obeidi], minister for Europe, spoke of a visit to Tripoli the previous month by Foreign Minister Bill Rammell at which it was pointed out that if Megrahi died in custody it would have "catastrophic effects" on Libyan-UK relations.
Mr Alobidi was minuted as saying: "Mr Rammell had stated that neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign Secretary would want Mr Megrahi to pass away in prison but the decision on transfer lies in the hands of the Scottish Ministers."
That remains a clearer statement of the Prime Minister's opinion than Mr Brown has since been prepared to offer in public.
[The accuracy of Mr al-Obeidi's statement has now been confirmed by David Miliband in a radio interview. According to a report on The Times website:
"The Foreign Secretary admitted that it was true that Bill Rammell, a Foreign Office minister, had told his Libyan counterpart back in February that the Prime Minister did not want Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi to pass away in Greenock prison."]
Medical evidence
One area where no further detailed information has been released is in terms of medical evidence.
The main report remains that of Dr Andrew Fraser, director of health and care at the Scottish Prison Service, who summarised the views of four Scottish consultants directly involved in the case, plus the prison doctor.
His report, released on the day Mr MacAskill announced the Megrahi decision, attracted ferocious criticism from Labour's Dr Richard Simpson, who insisted that a second opinion should have been sought from another cancer consultant on whether Megrahi definitely had less than three months to live.
Dr Fraser's original report had attached to it, in a sealed envelope, the relevant medical reports on which he had based his opinion and there was pressure from critics for these to be released.
But the government refused to bow to that pressure, insisting that these detailed medical reports remain private.
There are, however, scattered across other documents released yesterday, other references to Megrahi's condition, including one, dated March 12, which made clear that by then the prisoner was already "receiving treatment and visits from a palliative care specialist", adding: "A consultant oncologist monitors Mr Megrahi's condition and he is also receiving support from a nurse who is trained in counselling."
Palliative care and a nurse trained in counselling are strong indications that by then he was being treated as terminally ill.
[An editorial in the same newspaper contains the following paragraphs:]
Justice Secretary Jack Straw emerges from all this little better. Having sought to exclude Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, he then performed a U-turn on the basis of "the overwhelming interests" of the United Kingdom. The strict answer to the question "deal or no deal?" may be "no deal" but there now can be little doubt that the Labour government allowed the man convicted of Britain's worst mass murder to become a pawn in the much desired rapprochement with the Gaddafi regime. The U-turn coincided uncomfortably with a major oil exploration deal for BP.
It was always unlikely that there was any sort of deal between the Scottish and Westminster Governments on this case, and the correspondence supports the claims that proper procedures were followed. And while First Minister Alex Salmond's letters betray a distasteful and inappropriate point-scoring approach, it is hard to fault his Justice Secretary. Mr MacAskill's visit to Megrahi's cell was, frankly, a faux pas but his painstaking consultations with all the relevant authorities, as well as victims' relatives, do him credit. And, given that all the official advice pointed one way, release on compassionate grounds still seems the right and logical decision, despite the repulsive hero's welcome Megrahi received in Tripoli.
Pursuing the political minutiae of this case any further would be futile. However, Lockerbie is not history, as Colonel Gaddafi's son claimed last week. For those who lost loved ones, it remains a gaping wound and an unexplained mystery. Stabilising relations with Libya and allowing a dying man to return to his family must not come at the cost of finding out what happened on the night of December 21, 1988, over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
[The principal article on the subject in The Times is well worth reading. As far as I can discover it is the only media article that mentions the letter of 24 August 1998 which gives the lie to the UK Foreign Office assertion that no "definitive commitment" had been given that anyone convicted would serve his whole sentence in Britain.]
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Foreign Office told Scotland it made no promises to US over how long Megrahi would stay in prison
[This is the headline over an article just published on The Guardian's website. The real point, of course, is not how long Mr Megrahi would stay in prison, but whether there was an undertaking that the whole of his sentence should be served in the UK. The article reads in part:]
The Foreign Office told the Scottish government that it had made no promises to America about how long the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi would spend in prison, according to letters published today. (...)
[A letter of 3 July 2009 to a Scottish Justice Department official] said the Foreign Office did not consider that the UN resolution covering the Lockerbie case, or any UK-US dealings, presented "an international law bar to such a transfer under the PTA [UK-Libyan prisoner transfer agreement] where it is consistent with Scots law".
The letter adds that, because the British government could not foresee how relations with Libya would evolve, it "consequently did not give the US an absolute commitment in relation to the future imprisonment of the Lockerbie accused."
It adds: "We do not consider that the UK entered into a definitive commitment, legal or otherwise, that now precludes Megrahi's transfer under the prisoner transfer agreement should Scottish ministers decide to approve that request."
The second letter is to MacAskill himself from Ivan Lewis, a Foreign Office minister, dated 3 August. It is a response to MacAskill's request for clarification of the first letter. It quotes the relevant paragraph from the earlier letter about there being no reason under international law why Megrahi could not be transferred, adding that this remained "the considered assessment of the UK government".
[Note by RB: As I have said before, there can be absolutely no doubt that an undertaking was given that anyone convicted in the Lockerbie case would serve his sentence in Britain. In paragraph 4 of their joint letter of 24 August 1998 to the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Acting Permanent Representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States said: "If found guilty, the two accused will serve their sentence in the United Kingdom." This letter is referred to in, and formed the basis of, UN Security Council Resolution 1192 (1998) which provided the international warrant for the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist.
The Foreign Office letters can accordingly be charitably described as being economical with the truth; and it is hardly surprising that Mr MacAskill found them unhelpful in clarifying the position, particularly if he sought his own legal advice on the matter.]
The Foreign Office told the Scottish government that it had made no promises to America about how long the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi would spend in prison, according to letters published today. (...)
[A letter of 3 July 2009 to a Scottish Justice Department official] said the Foreign Office did not consider that the UN resolution covering the Lockerbie case, or any UK-US dealings, presented "an international law bar to such a transfer under the PTA [UK-Libyan prisoner transfer agreement] where it is consistent with Scots law".
The letter adds that, because the British government could not foresee how relations with Libya would evolve, it "consequently did not give the US an absolute commitment in relation to the future imprisonment of the Lockerbie accused."
It adds: "We do not consider that the UK entered into a definitive commitment, legal or otherwise, that now precludes Megrahi's transfer under the prisoner transfer agreement should Scottish ministers decide to approve that request."
The second letter is to MacAskill himself from Ivan Lewis, a Foreign Office minister, dated 3 August. It is a response to MacAskill's request for clarification of the first letter. It quotes the relevant paragraph from the earlier letter about there being no reason under international law why Megrahi could not be transferred, adding that this remained "the considered assessment of the UK government".
[Note by RB: As I have said before, there can be absolutely no doubt that an undertaking was given that anyone convicted in the Lockerbie case would serve his sentence in Britain. In paragraph 4 of their joint letter of 24 August 1998 to the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Acting Permanent Representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States said: "If found guilty, the two accused will serve their sentence in the United Kingdom." This letter is referred to in, and formed the basis of, UN Security Council Resolution 1192 (1998) which provided the international warrant for the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist.
The Foreign Office letters can accordingly be charitably described as being economical with the truth; and it is hardly surprising that Mr MacAskill found them unhelpful in clarifying the position, particularly if he sought his own legal advice on the matter.]
Official documents relating to prisoner transfer and compassionate release
The Scottish Government has today released the documents relating to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice's decision to refuse the Libyan Government's application for Abdelbaset Megrahi's transfer to Libya under the UK-Libya Prisoner Transfer Agreement, but to grant Mr Megahi's application for compassionate release. The documents (which do not include medical reports) can be read here.
The United Kingdom Government has also released relevant documents. Those emanating from the Department of Justice can be read here and those from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office here.
Analysis of the UK Government documents by Political Editor Philip Webster for The Times under the heading "Libya must have felt it was pushing at an open door" (later changed to "Gordon Brown's Lockerbie view is an explosive revelation") can be read here.
The United Kingdom Government has also released relevant documents. Those emanating from the Department of Justice can be read here and those from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office here.
Analysis of the UK Government documents by Political Editor Philip Webster for The Times under the heading "Libya must have felt it was pushing at an open door" (later changed to "Gordon Brown's Lockerbie view is an explosive revelation") can be read here.
Meeting Megrahi in hospital
[What follows are excerpts from the blog post on
4 Snowblog by Jonathan Miller, one of the Channel 4 journalists who took the film of Abdelbaset Megrahi in hospital in Tripoli.]
At 4.30pm I met the Lockerbie bomber.
It looked to me as though Abdel Basset al-Megrahi wasn’t long for this world. If he was going to face sentencing “by a higher power,” I wanted to get in there first and fast.
His release on compassionate grounds denied him his chance to clear his name in court. He maintained his innocence, but he’d go down in history as the man who killed 270 people on a Pan Am Jumbo.
If he really was dying, this might be his very last chance to speak to the world.
But as I was soon to discover, Mr al-Megrahi really was dying. I think. (...)
I planned out my questions as we raced down wide avenues, hung with vast portraits of Brother Leader Muammar Gaddafi, Guide of the Revolution, King of Kings.
Our world exclusive would involve a searching interrogation and cross-examination of the Lockerbie bomber.
Arriving at the hospital, armed police amazingly waved us through barriers; we were escorted into the private wing. This really was happening.
In an anti-chamber with oversized faux-leather armchairs, under a monstrous flat screen TV showing looped images of Gaddafi’s heroic revolutionary exploits, we waited.
Khaled, the bomber’s friendly 22-year-old son walked in; followed by Mohammed, his son-in-law. He had a tartan strip on his shirt collar. “I spent a long time in Scotland,” he said.
“You will have to be fast,” he added, in perfect English. “He is very sick. Very tired. Oh, and no questions.”
No questions? What?
I followed Mohammed down the corridor, past the policeman on the door and into the darkened room, where in the green gloaming, the convicted bomber lay propped up by pillows, gasping and rasping into an oxygen mask. Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was clearly not at all well.
I stood for a moment taking in the scene.
If this was stage-managed to make it look like al-Megrahi wasn’t long for this world, it was pretty convincing.
Family loitering around the bedside, Mrs al-Megrahi in a black cloak and hijab, looking teary – looking like she was already in mourning.
It was like a scene from an oil painting of man on deathbed.
There was the big picture of the Colonel on the wall above, the Koran beside him. And al-Megrahi himself just lay there, literally croaking as monitors beeped and drips dripped.
I asked my question anyway and felt awkward to doing so; there was no answer; there would be no answers.
This was all we were ever meant to see. The message was the message.
Al-Megrahi was dying; he’d take his secrets with him to the grave; Libya would move on. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would no longer be have to be haunted by the inconvenient ghosts of the past.
4 Snowblog by Jonathan Miller, one of the Channel 4 journalists who took the film of Abdelbaset Megrahi in hospital in Tripoli.]
At 4.30pm I met the Lockerbie bomber.
It looked to me as though Abdel Basset al-Megrahi wasn’t long for this world. If he was going to face sentencing “by a higher power,” I wanted to get in there first and fast.
His release on compassionate grounds denied him his chance to clear his name in court. He maintained his innocence, but he’d go down in history as the man who killed 270 people on a Pan Am Jumbo.
If he really was dying, this might be his very last chance to speak to the world.
But as I was soon to discover, Mr al-Megrahi really was dying. I think. (...)
I planned out my questions as we raced down wide avenues, hung with vast portraits of Brother Leader Muammar Gaddafi, Guide of the Revolution, King of Kings.
Our world exclusive would involve a searching interrogation and cross-examination of the Lockerbie bomber.
Arriving at the hospital, armed police amazingly waved us through barriers; we were escorted into the private wing. This really was happening.
In an anti-chamber with oversized faux-leather armchairs, under a monstrous flat screen TV showing looped images of Gaddafi’s heroic revolutionary exploits, we waited.
Khaled, the bomber’s friendly 22-year-old son walked in; followed by Mohammed, his son-in-law. He had a tartan strip on his shirt collar. “I spent a long time in Scotland,” he said.
“You will have to be fast,” he added, in perfect English. “He is very sick. Very tired. Oh, and no questions.”
No questions? What?
I followed Mohammed down the corridor, past the policeman on the door and into the darkened room, where in the green gloaming, the convicted bomber lay propped up by pillows, gasping and rasping into an oxygen mask. Abdel Basset al-Megrahi was clearly not at all well.
I stood for a moment taking in the scene.
If this was stage-managed to make it look like al-Megrahi wasn’t long for this world, it was pretty convincing.
Family loitering around the bedside, Mrs al-Megrahi in a black cloak and hijab, looking teary – looking like she was already in mourning.
It was like a scene from an oil painting of man on deathbed.
There was the big picture of the Colonel on the wall above, the Koran beside him. And al-Megrahi himself just lay there, literally croaking as monitors beeped and drips dripped.
I asked my question anyway and felt awkward to doing so; there was no answer; there would be no answers.
This was all we were ever meant to see. The message was the message.
Al-Megrahi was dying; he’d take his secrets with him to the grave; Libya would move on. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would no longer be have to be haunted by the inconvenient ghosts of the past.
UK and Scottish governments ‘did deal’ over Lockerbie bomber release
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Times by Angus Macleod, the paper's Scottish Political Editor. The following are excerpts.]
Britain’s former ambassador to Tripoli said yesterday he believes that the Scottish and British governments did “some kind of deal” with Libya to release the Lockerbie bomber.
Oliver Miles told The Times that there was “something fishy” in the coincidence that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi’s lawyers applied to drop his appeal against conviction on the same day that news of his imminent release was leaked to the media.
“I cannot know what exactly happened but I believe that the UK and Scottish governments wanted the appeal to be dropped and somehow it was dropped”, said Mr Miles. (...)
Asked why the Scottish government would be keen to see the appeal dropped, Mr Miles said he had been told by Scottish sources that there was growing anxiety in the Scottish justice department that a successful appeal would severely damage the reputation of the Scottish justice system.
“I think there may have been some kind of deal,” Mr Miles said. “One part of the deal was to have the appeal dropped and the other part was the release on compassionate grounds. Somebody told the BBC.
“It may even have been the Libyans who leaked it because they wanted the Scots to deliver on their promise and this was a way of tying them in. I don’t think there was a deal involving business. I think on that ministers are telling the truth.”
Mohammed Siala, Libya’s Secretary for International Co-operation, told The Times he believed that al-Megrahi’s appeal would have proved his innocence. The Scottish government denied Mr Miles’s claim. Nicola Sturgeon, the Deputy First Minister, said: “The decision to drop the appeal was taken by al-Megrahi and his legal advisers. The Scottish government had no influence in that decision.”
Britain’s former ambassador to Tripoli said yesterday he believes that the Scottish and British governments did “some kind of deal” with Libya to release the Lockerbie bomber.
Oliver Miles told The Times that there was “something fishy” in the coincidence that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi’s lawyers applied to drop his appeal against conviction on the same day that news of his imminent release was leaked to the media.
“I cannot know what exactly happened but I believe that the UK and Scottish governments wanted the appeal to be dropped and somehow it was dropped”, said Mr Miles. (...)
Asked why the Scottish government would be keen to see the appeal dropped, Mr Miles said he had been told by Scottish sources that there was growing anxiety in the Scottish justice department that a successful appeal would severely damage the reputation of the Scottish justice system.
“I think there may have been some kind of deal,” Mr Miles said. “One part of the deal was to have the appeal dropped and the other part was the release on compassionate grounds. Somebody told the BBC.
“It may even have been the Libyans who leaked it because they wanted the Scots to deliver on their promise and this was a way of tying them in. I don’t think there was a deal involving business. I think on that ministers are telling the truth.”
Mohammed Siala, Libya’s Secretary for International Co-operation, told The Times he believed that al-Megrahi’s appeal would have proved his innocence. The Scottish government denied Mr Miles’s claim. Nicola Sturgeon, the Deputy First Minister, said: “The decision to drop the appeal was taken by al-Megrahi and his legal advisers. The Scottish government had no influence in that decision.”
Lockerbie: Drowning the facts
[This is the headline over an article in South Africa's leading weekly newspaper the Mail & Guardian by playwright, novelist and journalist Bryan Rostron. The following are extracts.]
The righteous fury vented this week over the compassionate release of the dying "Lockerbie bomber", Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, has drowned out the voice of reason. A cool appraisal of the evidence shows that he is almost certainly not guilty.
The Libyan appears to be a scapegoat of crude international realpolitik, dictated by the United States's need for new Middle Eastern allies during the first Gulf War.
South Africa has a powerful interest in seeing the truth exposed, as it was Nelson Mandela who brokered the 1999 deal that allowed al-Megrahi and his co-accused to be tried by a specially created court in Holland.
Hans Köchler, the legal observer nominated by the UN secretary general to monitor the trial, concluded that it took place "in a context of power politics". Damningly, he concluded: "There is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime. In such a context, the guilty verdict … appears to be arbitrary, even irrational."
The outrage in the US at al-Megrahi's "hero's welcome" in Libya also reveals a spectacular double standard. At first it was thought that the bomb that exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1998, killing 270 people, was revenge for the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner by a US warship six months before, which resulted in 290 deaths, including 66 children.
The US said this was a "mistake" but never formally apologised. Yet when Captain William C Rogers III, in command of the USS Vincennes, returned after his tour of duty President George Bush Snr awarded him the Legion of Merit medal.
For nearly two years after the Lockerbie tragedy both US and UK intelligence services were convinced that it was a revenge attack. Within months, the British minister of transport announced that the culprits were about to be arrested. Intelligence agencies continued to leak the names of suspects and point to a clear plot: that Iran had paid millions of dollars to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) -- supported and protected by Syria -- to carry out a revenge attack.
Detailed leaks continued until the eve of the first Gulf War. They identified PFLP leader Ahmed Jibril and, crucially, Abu Talb, by then in a Swedish prison for other terrorist offences, as having been in Malta when clothes were bought that were later wrapped around the device that blew up Flight 103.
In December 1989 the London Sunday Times reported: "During a 90-minute closed court session, Ulf Forsburg, the Uppsala district prosecutor, told the presiding magistrate that the owner of a boutique in Sliema, Malta, had identified Talb as the man to whom he sold the clothes."
All this was soon forgotten. And later the Maltese shopkeeper was to contradict his original evidence to suit the new scenario. What had changed was international politics. During the Iran-Iraq War, the West secretly backed Saddam Hussein and Iraq. As soon as that war ended, the US and the UK provided Hussein with massive trade credits and arms. In August 1990, however, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the West suddenly needed new allies in the region.
"Thus very quickly, in the summer and autumn of 1990, a sea change took place in the Gulf," wrote the British investigative journalist Paul Foot. "The US, UK and their allies started to negotiate with their former enemies. All this was completed quickly -- in November 1990 new deals were signed to neutralise Iran and bring Syrian forces into the combined operation against Saddam, already known as Desert Storm."
Clearly Syria and Iran could no longer be vilified as terrorist masterminds, or instigators of the Lockerbie bombing. Then president Bush Snr announced: "Syria took a bum rap on this." Another version was called for and supplied. "The first signs of change came as the opposing armies started to build up in the desert," wrote Foot in his 31-page special report for Private Eye, called "Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice". "In October 1990 a series of newspaper reports indicated that the guilty country responsible for Lockerbie was not Iran or Syria or even Palestine. The guilty country was Libya." (...)
Where did al-Megrahi's name surface? At the Camp Zeist trial in Holland it emerged that it was supplied by Majid Giaka, an unreliable Libyan informer for the CIA. Giaka produced the name only when his increasingly frustrated CIA handlers threatened to cut him off unless he provided something useful. At the Camp Zeist trial the judges summed up Giaka's evidence as "at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue".
But when investigators showed a photo of al-Megrahi to the Maltese shop owner, Tony Gauci, who had previously identified the Palestinian Talb, Gauci suddenly agreed he could have sold him clothes. In his initial testimony Gauci had stated that this man had been at least 1.8m tall and more than 50 years of age. Al-Magrahi is 1.7m and at the time of the supposed shop visit was 37.
Gauci's evidence, on which al-Megrahi's conviction really hangs, is riddled with discrepancies. After the trial the man responsible for the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and for indicting al-Megrahi, the former Scottish Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser, described Gauci as "not quite the full shilling" and "an apple short of a picnic".
One convenient advantage of al-Megrahi's compassionate release, because he is dying of cancer, is that his appeal against his 2001 conviction will now not be heard.
Lawyers representing the Libyan would have alleged that Gauci was "coached" and that the US paid him a $2-million dollar reward.
These charges, as well as all other flimsy or discredited evidence, will never be retested in court.
Camp Zeist trial observer Köchler noted several disquieting factors. He pointed out that, quite improperly, two representatives of the US justice department were seated next to the prosecution team, giving the impression of being "supervisors".
He concluded that foreign governments, or their agencies, may have been allowed to determine what evidence was made available, adding: "Virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility, in certain cases even having lied openly to the court."
In the recent international furore all this has been forgotten. Is al-Megrahi guilty? We don't know. But he clearly he did not get a fair trial.
The righteous fury vented this week over the compassionate release of the dying "Lockerbie bomber", Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, has drowned out the voice of reason. A cool appraisal of the evidence shows that he is almost certainly not guilty.
The Libyan appears to be a scapegoat of crude international realpolitik, dictated by the United States's need for new Middle Eastern allies during the first Gulf War.
South Africa has a powerful interest in seeing the truth exposed, as it was Nelson Mandela who brokered the 1999 deal that allowed al-Megrahi and his co-accused to be tried by a specially created court in Holland.
Hans Köchler, the legal observer nominated by the UN secretary general to monitor the trial, concluded that it took place "in a context of power politics". Damningly, he concluded: "There is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime. In such a context, the guilty verdict … appears to be arbitrary, even irrational."
The outrage in the US at al-Megrahi's "hero's welcome" in Libya also reveals a spectacular double standard. At first it was thought that the bomb that exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1998, killing 270 people, was revenge for the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner by a US warship six months before, which resulted in 290 deaths, including 66 children.
The US said this was a "mistake" but never formally apologised. Yet when Captain William C Rogers III, in command of the USS Vincennes, returned after his tour of duty President George Bush Snr awarded him the Legion of Merit medal.
For nearly two years after the Lockerbie tragedy both US and UK intelligence services were convinced that it was a revenge attack. Within months, the British minister of transport announced that the culprits were about to be arrested. Intelligence agencies continued to leak the names of suspects and point to a clear plot: that Iran had paid millions of dollars to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) -- supported and protected by Syria -- to carry out a revenge attack.
Detailed leaks continued until the eve of the first Gulf War. They identified PFLP leader Ahmed Jibril and, crucially, Abu Talb, by then in a Swedish prison for other terrorist offences, as having been in Malta when clothes were bought that were later wrapped around the device that blew up Flight 103.
In December 1989 the London Sunday Times reported: "During a 90-minute closed court session, Ulf Forsburg, the Uppsala district prosecutor, told the presiding magistrate that the owner of a boutique in Sliema, Malta, had identified Talb as the man to whom he sold the clothes."
All this was soon forgotten. And later the Maltese shopkeeper was to contradict his original evidence to suit the new scenario. What had changed was international politics. During the Iran-Iraq War, the West secretly backed Saddam Hussein and Iraq. As soon as that war ended, the US and the UK provided Hussein with massive trade credits and arms. In August 1990, however, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the West suddenly needed new allies in the region.
"Thus very quickly, in the summer and autumn of 1990, a sea change took place in the Gulf," wrote the British investigative journalist Paul Foot. "The US, UK and their allies started to negotiate with their former enemies. All this was completed quickly -- in November 1990 new deals were signed to neutralise Iran and bring Syrian forces into the combined operation against Saddam, already known as Desert Storm."
Clearly Syria and Iran could no longer be vilified as terrorist masterminds, or instigators of the Lockerbie bombing. Then president Bush Snr announced: "Syria took a bum rap on this." Another version was called for and supplied. "The first signs of change came as the opposing armies started to build up in the desert," wrote Foot in his 31-page special report for Private Eye, called "Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice". "In October 1990 a series of newspaper reports indicated that the guilty country responsible for Lockerbie was not Iran or Syria or even Palestine. The guilty country was Libya." (...)
Where did al-Megrahi's name surface? At the Camp Zeist trial in Holland it emerged that it was supplied by Majid Giaka, an unreliable Libyan informer for the CIA. Giaka produced the name only when his increasingly frustrated CIA handlers threatened to cut him off unless he provided something useful. At the Camp Zeist trial the judges summed up Giaka's evidence as "at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue".
But when investigators showed a photo of al-Megrahi to the Maltese shop owner, Tony Gauci, who had previously identified the Palestinian Talb, Gauci suddenly agreed he could have sold him clothes. In his initial testimony Gauci had stated that this man had been at least 1.8m tall and more than 50 years of age. Al-Magrahi is 1.7m and at the time of the supposed shop visit was 37.
Gauci's evidence, on which al-Megrahi's conviction really hangs, is riddled with discrepancies. After the trial the man responsible for the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and for indicting al-Megrahi, the former Scottish Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser, described Gauci as "not quite the full shilling" and "an apple short of a picnic".
One convenient advantage of al-Megrahi's compassionate release, because he is dying of cancer, is that his appeal against his 2001 conviction will now not be heard.
Lawyers representing the Libyan would have alleged that Gauci was "coached" and that the US paid him a $2-million dollar reward.
These charges, as well as all other flimsy or discredited evidence, will never be retested in court.
Camp Zeist trial observer Köchler noted several disquieting factors. He pointed out that, quite improperly, two representatives of the US justice department were seated next to the prosecution team, giving the impression of being "supervisors".
He concluded that foreign governments, or their agencies, may have been allowed to determine what evidence was made available, adding: "Virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility, in certain cases even having lied openly to the court."
In the recent international furore all this has been forgotten. Is al-Megrahi guilty? We don't know. But he clearly he did not get a fair trial.
Monday, 31 August 2009
Unanswered Lockerbie questions
[What follows is the text of a letter by Dr Jim Swire published in Tuesday's edition of The Times.]
Father of Lockerbie victim speaks out after release of al-Megrahi
Sir, So al-Megrahi has gone home and questions surround the propriety of his going. What about the question of his guilt? The official UN observer of the trial, Professor Hans Koechler of Vienna, has described the trial as a travesty of justice and the verdict as untenable. Even the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided there might have been a miscarriage of justice. The questions that are important to UK relatives of the Lockerbie victims are these: who was really behind the bombing? How was it carried out? Why did the Thatcher Government of the day ignore all the warnings it got before Lockerbie? Why did it refuse even to meet us to discuss the setting up of an inquiry? Why was the information about the Heathrow break-in concealed for 12 years so that the trial court could not hear of it till after the verdict?
Dr Jim Swire
Father of Lockerbie victim, Flora, and a member of the UK Families-Flight 103 group
[Two letters are published in Tuesday's edition of The Herald under the headline "The last thing governments want is truth of Lockerbie to emerge". They can be read here.
A letter from Dr Swire also appears in The Daily Telegraph. It is referred to here. The full text is as follows.]
Kenny MacAskill was thoughtful enough to listen to some of the UK relatives before he made his decision. I thought him a man of integrity and urged him, on humanitarian and Christian grounds to release the dying man under 'Compassionate Release', not 'Prisoner Transfer', which I saw as a political trap.
Unlike 'Prisoner Transfer' This would also have allowed Megrahi's appeal to continue, had the prisoner not withdrawn it. Megrahi had always told me that he was determined to clear his name before going home, but under the shadow of death, who can blame him for changing his mind, uncertain as he was that he could trust his captors? After 8 years jail his appeal had barely started and at a snail's pace even then, although Scotland's SCCRC had decided his trial might have been a miscarriage of justice.
Whatever the unsavoury concealment of the 'deal in the desert' may mean, there are a number of us who believe that wresting something good out of something as evil as Lockerbie is the way to go. Surely improving commercial ties is a good thing for the citizens of both countries, that is what good politicians do.
The media reaction to the release ignores a far far more important question: was he guilty anyway? Many believe he was not, the SCCRC thought he might not be. The UN's appointed observer, Prof. Hans Kochler of Vienna has described the verdict as incomprehensible and a parody of justice. Many others agree.If he was not guilty, then why was he prosecuted and the real perpetrators ignored?
What we the UK relatives need is the truth and answers to the following questions:
Who was behind the bombing? How was it carried out? Why did the Thatcher government of the day ignore all the warnings they got before Lockerbie? Why did they refuse even to meet us to discuss the setting up of this inquiry? Why was the information about the Heathrow break-in concealed for 12 years so that the trial court did not hear of it till after the verdict? Why were we constantly subjected to the ignominy of being denied the truth as to why our families were not protected in what even our crippled FAI (crippled because it too was denied the information about Heathrow) found to have been a preventable disaster?
The details of Mr Megrahi's release surely are of little significance compared with these questions.
Father of Lockerbie victim speaks out after release of al-Megrahi
Sir, So al-Megrahi has gone home and questions surround the propriety of his going. What about the question of his guilt? The official UN observer of the trial, Professor Hans Koechler of Vienna, has described the trial as a travesty of justice and the verdict as untenable. Even the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided there might have been a miscarriage of justice. The questions that are important to UK relatives of the Lockerbie victims are these: who was really behind the bombing? How was it carried out? Why did the Thatcher Government of the day ignore all the warnings it got before Lockerbie? Why did it refuse even to meet us to discuss the setting up of an inquiry? Why was the information about the Heathrow break-in concealed for 12 years so that the trial court could not hear of it till after the verdict?
Dr Jim Swire
Father of Lockerbie victim, Flora, and a member of the UK Families-Flight 103 group
[Two letters are published in Tuesday's edition of The Herald under the headline "The last thing governments want is truth of Lockerbie to emerge". They can be read here.
A letter from Dr Swire also appears in The Daily Telegraph. It is referred to here. The full text is as follows.]
Kenny MacAskill was thoughtful enough to listen to some of the UK relatives before he made his decision. I thought him a man of integrity and urged him, on humanitarian and Christian grounds to release the dying man under 'Compassionate Release', not 'Prisoner Transfer', which I saw as a political trap.
Unlike 'Prisoner Transfer' This would also have allowed Megrahi's appeal to continue, had the prisoner not withdrawn it. Megrahi had always told me that he was determined to clear his name before going home, but under the shadow of death, who can blame him for changing his mind, uncertain as he was that he could trust his captors? After 8 years jail his appeal had barely started and at a snail's pace even then, although Scotland's SCCRC had decided his trial might have been a miscarriage of justice.
Whatever the unsavoury concealment of the 'deal in the desert' may mean, there are a number of us who believe that wresting something good out of something as evil as Lockerbie is the way to go. Surely improving commercial ties is a good thing for the citizens of both countries, that is what good politicians do.
The media reaction to the release ignores a far far more important question: was he guilty anyway? Many believe he was not, the SCCRC thought he might not be. The UN's appointed observer, Prof. Hans Kochler of Vienna has described the verdict as incomprehensible and a parody of justice. Many others agree.If he was not guilty, then why was he prosecuted and the real perpetrators ignored?
What we the UK relatives need is the truth and answers to the following questions:
Who was behind the bombing? How was it carried out? Why did the Thatcher government of the day ignore all the warnings they got before Lockerbie? Why did they refuse even to meet us to discuss the setting up of this inquiry? Why was the information about the Heathrow break-in concealed for 12 years so that the trial court did not hear of it till after the verdict? Why were we constantly subjected to the ignominy of being denied the truth as to why our families were not protected in what even our crippled FAI (crippled because it too was denied the information about Heathrow) found to have been a preventable disaster?
The details of Mr Megrahi's release surely are of little significance compared with these questions.
The BBC and Kenny MacAskill
The BBC is prickly about criticism of itself, particularly by people who work for it. I have some form on this one. After I left its full-time payroll, I wrote weekly or daily columns for newspapers, while continuing to be used by the BBC as a freelance pundit. In December 1988, in one of these columns, I criticised its pseudo-lyrical coverage of the Lockerbie disaster (bodies falling on soft earth; that sort of awful stuff) and suggested that they should stick to the facts. I was warned from on high that these comments were unwelcome and that I should watch it. I paid no attention. A few years later, I wrote a column critical of some of the policies of Radio Scotland. My Sunday morning review of the papers was promptly cancelled and I was told that I would not be invited back. Someone – not I – leaked my dismissal to the tabloids, one of which ran the delicious headline BEEB BAD BOY BANNED, a masterwork of alliteration. Since the BBC paid buttons, I could afford to laugh. I have never been inside any of its studios since.
Partly because of this form, partly because I'm so vulnerable to accusations of sour grapes, it would be wonderful if I never had to mention the BBC again. But its conduct on the political crisis in Scotland is so questionable that it is no longer possible to remain silent.
Sheila Hetherington raised an important question in her contribution to SR [Scottish Review]'s Megrahi forum last week when she asked whether the BBC was always impartial in its reporting. She quoted bulletin intros such as 'Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, has been forced to defend the decision...' as indicative of a possible bias against the justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill. There was then the notorious Radio Scotland trailer which invited 'the silent majority' opposed to Megrahi's release to phone in. This gave a very poor impression of BBC neutrality, but on the programme itself it was explained that the reason for the appeal was that the calls received by the BBC to that date had been overwhelmingly in favour of Megrahi's release. Fair enough: although this did not excuse the partial slant of the trailer.
As the week went on, the hysteria of the initial media coverage of Mr MacAskill's decision abated somewhat. I noted on Thursday: 'There is a growing sense that the media and the political opposition may have misjudged the mood and spirit of a considerable number of thinking Scots.' The Scotsman quoted this the following day and endorsed it from the paper's own experience. The Scotsman's online poll, a larger one than any conducted so far, showed 57% in favour of Mr MacAskill's decision, while a poll in the Daily Mail showed a very slight majority against the decision. The results of both polls were in remarkable contrast to a poll conducted before the decision was announced, which had only 11% of Scots supporting release on compassionate grounds. Taken together, these polls pointed to a significant shift in opinion.
Late in the week, the apparent trend was undermined. A telephone poll commissioned by the BBC flatly contradicted the results of the earlier polls by indicating that 60% of Scottish voters opposed Mr MacAskill's decision. Even if the BBC poll was more accurate than the others (who knows?), it would still represent a shift in opinion, the tiny support for Mr MacAskill a few weeks ago having been converted into 32% of the Scottish electorate at worst, 57% at best. Given the irrational hostility of most of the press coverage (the Herald and Scotsman being honourable exceptions), even the lower figure feels like a triumph.
Unlike the Scotsman and the Daily Mail, which have a limited capacity to promote their own journalism, the BBC as a global broadcaster has enormous clout and influence across the civilised world. It has a responsibility, therefore, to be transparently fair in its reporting. Its own editorial guidelines insist that, in reporting the results of opinion polls, its journalists should be 'rigorous in applying due scepticism'. On this occasion, on a matter of the greatest sensitivity, it failed to respect these guidelines. Its extensive coverage of the poll gave the strong impression that the Scottish people are resolute in their opposition to Megrahi's release and that they believe Scotland's reputation to have been damaged. But in communicating this perception to the world, the BBC chose to ignore the results of other polls, the sympathetic editorial stance of both our quality daily newspapers, and the support of Scotland's churches for Mr MacAskill's decision. This may not be bias in intent, but it is bias in effect.
The lack of nuance and qualification was typified at the weekend in a blog by BBC Scotland's political editor, Brian Taylor. It is hard to see why an impartial BBC journalist – a lovely chap, but that is beside the point – should be given a privileged position on the BBC News website to air his views on Scottish politics. It is asking for trouble. The title of the blog, 'Blether with Brian', sounds designed to disarm. Look here, it says, don't take me too seriously; this is just a wee chat among pals. Needless to say, however, it is extremely influential, if only because it appears on such a widely read website.
In his blog on the results of his employer's poll, delivered in a folksy style in a succession of ultra-brief paragraphs, there was no acknowledgement of the serious doubts about Megrahi's conviction or of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's view that Megrahi may be the victim of a miscarriage of justice. No mention, either, of the substantial body of intelligent opinion behind Mr MacAskill. 'As things stand, Scotland is not happy,' he concluded. I suggest to Mr Taylor that this is a rather simplistic reading of the situation.
By yesterday, the BBC poll had become received wisdom in most of the Sunday newspapers. It was new and useful ammunition in the press campaign to discredit the justice secretary ahead of Wednesday's debate in the Scottish parliament; the attack dogs were out in force. Of course, the BBC will deny that it has contributed to this appalling atmosphere, but if it had to commission an opinion poll it should have reported its results with more scepticism and balance. The totality of its coverage in the last week has created the unpleasant feeling that, on the question of Mr MacAskill's political survival, the BBC is not a completely disinterested party.
[The above is the text of a column published today in the online edition of The Scottish Review by Kenneth Roy, the editor of the journal and Director of the Institute of Contemporary Scotland.]
Partly because of this form, partly because I'm so vulnerable to accusations of sour grapes, it would be wonderful if I never had to mention the BBC again. But its conduct on the political crisis in Scotland is so questionable that it is no longer possible to remain silent.
Sheila Hetherington raised an important question in her contribution to SR [Scottish Review]'s Megrahi forum last week when she asked whether the BBC was always impartial in its reporting. She quoted bulletin intros such as 'Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, has been forced to defend the decision...' as indicative of a possible bias against the justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill. There was then the notorious Radio Scotland trailer which invited 'the silent majority' opposed to Megrahi's release to phone in. This gave a very poor impression of BBC neutrality, but on the programme itself it was explained that the reason for the appeal was that the calls received by the BBC to that date had been overwhelmingly in favour of Megrahi's release. Fair enough: although this did not excuse the partial slant of the trailer.
As the week went on, the hysteria of the initial media coverage of Mr MacAskill's decision abated somewhat. I noted on Thursday: 'There is a growing sense that the media and the political opposition may have misjudged the mood and spirit of a considerable number of thinking Scots.' The Scotsman quoted this the following day and endorsed it from the paper's own experience. The Scotsman's online poll, a larger one than any conducted so far, showed 57% in favour of Mr MacAskill's decision, while a poll in the Daily Mail showed a very slight majority against the decision. The results of both polls were in remarkable contrast to a poll conducted before the decision was announced, which had only 11% of Scots supporting release on compassionate grounds. Taken together, these polls pointed to a significant shift in opinion.
Late in the week, the apparent trend was undermined. A telephone poll commissioned by the BBC flatly contradicted the results of the earlier polls by indicating that 60% of Scottish voters opposed Mr MacAskill's decision. Even if the BBC poll was more accurate than the others (who knows?), it would still represent a shift in opinion, the tiny support for Mr MacAskill a few weeks ago having been converted into 32% of the Scottish electorate at worst, 57% at best. Given the irrational hostility of most of the press coverage (the Herald and Scotsman being honourable exceptions), even the lower figure feels like a triumph.
Unlike the Scotsman and the Daily Mail, which have a limited capacity to promote their own journalism, the BBC as a global broadcaster has enormous clout and influence across the civilised world. It has a responsibility, therefore, to be transparently fair in its reporting. Its own editorial guidelines insist that, in reporting the results of opinion polls, its journalists should be 'rigorous in applying due scepticism'. On this occasion, on a matter of the greatest sensitivity, it failed to respect these guidelines. Its extensive coverage of the poll gave the strong impression that the Scottish people are resolute in their opposition to Megrahi's release and that they believe Scotland's reputation to have been damaged. But in communicating this perception to the world, the BBC chose to ignore the results of other polls, the sympathetic editorial stance of both our quality daily newspapers, and the support of Scotland's churches for Mr MacAskill's decision. This may not be bias in intent, but it is bias in effect.
The lack of nuance and qualification was typified at the weekend in a blog by BBC Scotland's political editor, Brian Taylor. It is hard to see why an impartial BBC journalist – a lovely chap, but that is beside the point – should be given a privileged position on the BBC News website to air his views on Scottish politics. It is asking for trouble. The title of the blog, 'Blether with Brian', sounds designed to disarm. Look here, it says, don't take me too seriously; this is just a wee chat among pals. Needless to say, however, it is extremely influential, if only because it appears on such a widely read website.
In his blog on the results of his employer's poll, delivered in a folksy style in a succession of ultra-brief paragraphs, there was no acknowledgement of the serious doubts about Megrahi's conviction or of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's view that Megrahi may be the victim of a miscarriage of justice. No mention, either, of the substantial body of intelligent opinion behind Mr MacAskill. 'As things stand, Scotland is not happy,' he concluded. I suggest to Mr Taylor that this is a rather simplistic reading of the situation.
By yesterday, the BBC poll had become received wisdom in most of the Sunday newspapers. It was new and useful ammunition in the press campaign to discredit the justice secretary ahead of Wednesday's debate in the Scottish parliament; the attack dogs were out in force. Of course, the BBC will deny that it has contributed to this appalling atmosphere, but if it had to commission an opinion poll it should have reported its results with more scepticism and balance. The totality of its coverage in the last week has created the unpleasant feeling that, on the question of Mr MacAskill's political survival, the BBC is not a completely disinterested party.
[The above is the text of a column published today in the online edition of The Scottish Review by Kenneth Roy, the editor of the journal and Director of the Institute of Contemporary Scotland.]
Compassion, conviction and lingering doubt
[This is the headline over a column in today's edition of The Guardian by lawyer, legal commentator, broadcaster and columnist, Marcel Berlins. It reads as follows.]
What if Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was innocent of the Lockerbie bombing? The furore over his release has concentrated on two issues: whether or not he deserved to be freed on compassionate grounds – the reason given by the Scottish justice secretary – and whether, behind the scenes, lurked the real motive for granting his freedom, which was all about oil and Britain's trading relationship with Libya.
Megrahi's return to Libya seemed conveniently to have sidelined another potentially embarrassing question: was he the victim of a miscarriage of justice? Was the decision to free him at least partly based on the Scottish desire to avoid having that question answered? Of course, no one connected with the decision, whether in Scotland, Whitehall or Downing Street, could admit, or even hint, that guilt or innocence was a factor. Officially, he was a properly convicted prisoner, no question.
It is not just Megrahi himself insisting on his innocence. For many years, the case has induced unease in the Scottish legal world. Evidence has emerged that appears to cast some doubt on the verdict. No one is saying the material absolutely proves Megrahi's innocence, but it has been enough to raise the possibility of wrongful conviction.
Jim Swire, the father of one of the Lockerbie victims, who led the campaign of bereaved British relatives to discover the truth about the tragedy, now believes that an injustice occurred – so do many families of British victims (though this doubt is not shared by families on the American side).
Robert Black QC, one of Scotland's most eminent advocates, who has studied the case, is of the same view. More importantly, in 2007, the independent Scottish criminal cases review commission (SCCRC) referred the Megrahi case to the Scottish appeal court, finding sufficient grounds to suggest a miscarriage. The court would not have been obliged to grant the appeal, but it has usually done so on previous SCCRC referrals. The court was due to hear the appeal later this year, but Megrahi formally withdrew it during the flurry of activity leading to his release.
His lawyer has made it clear that he did so because it was felt that continuing the appeal – which would have gone on after his death – might have prejudiced his chances of being sent home. In the last few days Megrahi himself has reiterated his claim to innocence.
If he was wrongly convicted, all sorts of new questions arise, not least who was the real bomber and whether Libya was the instigator of the attack. It is probably too late to uncover the whole truth, but should we not try? If he didn't do it, there would at least be a sort of vindication of the decision to release him, even if for the wrong reasons.
Is there any way still open to consider the evidence which might have overturned Megrahi's conviction? His Scottish lawyer says he will make the dossier public. But who would evaluate it? It would not be satisfactory to leave matters in uncertainty. There is a strong case for an independent inquiry.
[The following is one of the reader comments on Mr Berlins's column:
Maidmarion
31 Aug 09, 9:15am
'Much has been made of a BBBC poll, mostly by the BBBC, about the hostility in Scotland to the release of Mr Megrahi.
'I have yet to find more than one person who believes that he should not have been released.
'If you care to peruse these poll results from newspapers in Scotland, particularly the one from Lockerbie, you, too, might be puzzled by the BBBC poll results.
'Those For first number, those Against second number
Dumfries & Galloway Standard 88.4% 11.6%
Annandale Observer 73% 27% (Lockerbie paper)
Perthshire Advertiser 90.6% 8.4%
Ross-shire Journal 87% 13%
Scotsman 58% 42% (despite Edinburgh Evening News claims!)
Lennox Herald 80.5% 19.5%
Oban Times 89% 11%
Kilmarnock Standard 72.5% 28.5%
East Kilbride News 71% 29%
West Lothian Courier 75.2% 24.8%
Hamilton Advertiser 60.3% 39.7%
Airdrie Advertiser 56.1% 43.9%
Wishaw Press 83% 17%
Paisley Daily Express 62.23% 37.7%
You can add on a Reuters poll which gives a fairly even split and a Daily Mail poll also!
'The much trumpetted BBBC poll must have serious flaws, or someone manipulated the questions in such a way to get the result required.
'Otherwise, if you were aware of the above poll results, in all honesty one would have to start again, would one not?']
What if Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was innocent of the Lockerbie bombing? The furore over his release has concentrated on two issues: whether or not he deserved to be freed on compassionate grounds – the reason given by the Scottish justice secretary – and whether, behind the scenes, lurked the real motive for granting his freedom, which was all about oil and Britain's trading relationship with Libya.
Megrahi's return to Libya seemed conveniently to have sidelined another potentially embarrassing question: was he the victim of a miscarriage of justice? Was the decision to free him at least partly based on the Scottish desire to avoid having that question answered? Of course, no one connected with the decision, whether in Scotland, Whitehall or Downing Street, could admit, or even hint, that guilt or innocence was a factor. Officially, he was a properly convicted prisoner, no question.
It is not just Megrahi himself insisting on his innocence. For many years, the case has induced unease in the Scottish legal world. Evidence has emerged that appears to cast some doubt on the verdict. No one is saying the material absolutely proves Megrahi's innocence, but it has been enough to raise the possibility of wrongful conviction.
Jim Swire, the father of one of the Lockerbie victims, who led the campaign of bereaved British relatives to discover the truth about the tragedy, now believes that an injustice occurred – so do many families of British victims (though this doubt is not shared by families on the American side).
Robert Black QC, one of Scotland's most eminent advocates, who has studied the case, is of the same view. More importantly, in 2007, the independent Scottish criminal cases review commission (SCCRC) referred the Megrahi case to the Scottish appeal court, finding sufficient grounds to suggest a miscarriage. The court would not have been obliged to grant the appeal, but it has usually done so on previous SCCRC referrals. The court was due to hear the appeal later this year, but Megrahi formally withdrew it during the flurry of activity leading to his release.
His lawyer has made it clear that he did so because it was felt that continuing the appeal – which would have gone on after his death – might have prejudiced his chances of being sent home. In the last few days Megrahi himself has reiterated his claim to innocence.
If he was wrongly convicted, all sorts of new questions arise, not least who was the real bomber and whether Libya was the instigator of the attack. It is probably too late to uncover the whole truth, but should we not try? If he didn't do it, there would at least be a sort of vindication of the decision to release him, even if for the wrong reasons.
Is there any way still open to consider the evidence which might have overturned Megrahi's conviction? His Scottish lawyer says he will make the dossier public. But who would evaluate it? It would not be satisfactory to leave matters in uncertainty. There is a strong case for an independent inquiry.
[The following is one of the reader comments on Mr Berlins's column:
Maidmarion
31 Aug 09, 9:15am
'Much has been made of a BBBC poll, mostly by the BBBC, about the hostility in Scotland to the release of Mr Megrahi.
'I have yet to find more than one person who believes that he should not have been released.
'If you care to peruse these poll results from newspapers in Scotland, particularly the one from Lockerbie, you, too, might be puzzled by the BBBC poll results.
'Those For first number, those Against second number
Dumfries & Galloway Standard 88.4% 11.6%
Annandale Observer 73% 27% (Lockerbie paper)
Perthshire Advertiser 90.6% 8.4%
Ross-shire Journal 87% 13%
Scotsman 58% 42% (despite Edinburgh Evening News claims!)
Lennox Herald 80.5% 19.5%
Oban Times 89% 11%
Kilmarnock Standard 72.5% 28.5%
East Kilbride News 71% 29%
West Lothian Courier 75.2% 24.8%
Hamilton Advertiser 60.3% 39.7%
Airdrie Advertiser 56.1% 43.9%
Wishaw Press 83% 17%
Paisley Daily Express 62.23% 37.7%
You can add on a Reuters poll which gives a fairly even split and a Daily Mail poll also!
'The much trumpetted BBBC poll must have serious flaws, or someone manipulated the questions in such a way to get the result required.
'Otherwise, if you were aware of the above poll results, in all honesty one would have to start again, would one not?']
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