The Holyrood inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber will not consider whether the Scottish government was right to free him. (...)
The parliament's justice committee said it would focus on the process followed by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. (...)
Announcing its remit into the inquiry, the justice committee said it would look into the application for Megrahi's release from Greenock Prison on compassionate grounds, as well as a request to send him home under a prisoner transfer agreement - which was rejected by Scottish ministers.
The cross-party committee said it "will not consider the question of whether the cabinet secretary was right to conclude that compassionate release was justified in the circumstances".
MSPs are likely to look into the timing of Mr MacAskill's decision, the advice he took and the circumstances surrounding Megrahi's much-criticised jubilant homecoming reception in Tripoli.
The committee will also question Mr MacAskill and a series of officials.
[The above are excerpts from a report on the BBC News website.]
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Monday, 28 September 2009
Angiolini backs away from semtex challenge
[This is the headline over an article on the website of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads in part:]
The Lord Advocate Elish Angioini has refused to engage with the semtex challenge backed by UN Special Observer Hans Kochler and Professor Robert Black QC, set by the Lockerbie Justice Group.
The group have tasked Angiolini to demonstrate that a fragment of circuit board can survive a semtex blast, as claimed by the Crown in the Lockerbie trial. The group say that this is not physically possible.
Despite repeated requests for a response, Angiolini has not acknowledged the group’s challenge, and refused to engage with the gauntlet that has been thrown down.
Angiolini has also refused to be interviewed by The Firm about the challenge.
The challenge itself coincides with the screening of dutch documentary "Lockerbie Revisited" at Holyrood tomorrow night, which focuses on the crucial piece of circuit board fragment alleged to have been found during the Lockerbie investigation. The film casts serious doubts over the credibility of this evidence. It has been nominated for best documentary at the [current] Netherlands ... Film Festival in Utrecht.
The challenge to the evidence has been emboldened by confirmation from semtex manufacturer Miroslav Štancl of Explosia a.s, who says the temperature at the point of explosion of “plastic explosives Semtex” is between 3,800 and 3,870° C, depending upon the type and composition.
Aitken Brotherston, who tested circuit boards as an engineer at Ferranti says that such boards will combust at temperatures equivalent to that produced by a Swan Vesta match, and “nothing would survive” within a semtex blast bright spot.
“The proposal that fragments of the board, of sufficient size to permit identification, packed with the bomb had survived a temperature environment of more than 3000 degree C in the explosion is to me just not credible,” he says.
In 2007, MEBO engineer Ulrich Lumpert submitted an affidavit stating that the circuit board fragment produced in court at Zeist was part of a non-operational demonstration circuit board that he himself had removed from the premises of MEBO and had handed over to an investigator on 22 June 1989, six months after the destruction of Pan Am 103.
“If this is true, then it totally demolishes the prosecution version of how the aircraft was destroyed, as well, of course, as demonstrating deliberate fabrication of evidence laid before the court,” Professor Black said at the time. (...)
Earlier this year a test conducted by Dr Ludwig De Braeckeleer and researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to penetrate a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occurred in the hold as the Crown claimed. They concluded that the Crown’s case, which maintained only one pound of semtex destroyed Pan Am 103 was "scientifically implausible".
The Lord Advocate Elish Angioini has refused to engage with the semtex challenge backed by UN Special Observer Hans Kochler and Professor Robert Black QC, set by the Lockerbie Justice Group.
The group have tasked Angiolini to demonstrate that a fragment of circuit board can survive a semtex blast, as claimed by the Crown in the Lockerbie trial. The group say that this is not physically possible.
Despite repeated requests for a response, Angiolini has not acknowledged the group’s challenge, and refused to engage with the gauntlet that has been thrown down.
Angiolini has also refused to be interviewed by The Firm about the challenge.
The challenge itself coincides with the screening of dutch documentary "Lockerbie Revisited" at Holyrood tomorrow night, which focuses on the crucial piece of circuit board fragment alleged to have been found during the Lockerbie investigation. The film casts serious doubts over the credibility of this evidence. It has been nominated for best documentary at the [current] Netherlands ... Film Festival in Utrecht.
The challenge to the evidence has been emboldened by confirmation from semtex manufacturer Miroslav Štancl of Explosia a.s, who says the temperature at the point of explosion of “plastic explosives Semtex” is between 3,800 and 3,870° C, depending upon the type and composition.
Aitken Brotherston, who tested circuit boards as an engineer at Ferranti says that such boards will combust at temperatures equivalent to that produced by a Swan Vesta match, and “nothing would survive” within a semtex blast bright spot.
“The proposal that fragments of the board, of sufficient size to permit identification, packed with the bomb had survived a temperature environment of more than 3000 degree C in the explosion is to me just not credible,” he says.
In 2007, MEBO engineer Ulrich Lumpert submitted an affidavit stating that the circuit board fragment produced in court at Zeist was part of a non-operational demonstration circuit board that he himself had removed from the premises of MEBO and had handed over to an investigator on 22 June 1989, six months after the destruction of Pan Am 103.
“If this is true, then it totally demolishes the prosecution version of how the aircraft was destroyed, as well, of course, as demonstrating deliberate fabrication of evidence laid before the court,” Professor Black said at the time. (...)
Earlier this year a test conducted by Dr Ludwig De Braeckeleer and researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to penetrate a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occurred in the hold as the Crown claimed. They concluded that the Crown’s case, which maintained only one pound of semtex destroyed Pan Am 103 was "scientifically implausible".
Lockerbie relatives meet Gaddafi in New York
The sister of an American soldier who was killed in the Lockerbie bombing said that she had met Colonel Muammar Gaddafi during his visit to New York to offer him forgiveness.
Lisa Gibson, 39, and another Lockerbie family met the Libyan leader after his rambling speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. (...)
Ms Gibson’s brother, Kenneth, a US soldier stationed in Germany, was returning home for Christmas on Pan Am Flight 103 when it was blown up on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people in the jet and on the ground. (...)
“When I met with him face-to-face I did not even feel any kind of anger. I was quite at peace.
“He was speaking through a translator. As it was conveyed to us, he said thanks for us coming and he is sorry for what happened to us.”
She said that she did not ask the leader whether he had ordered the attack on the London-New York aircraft. “I did not think it was appropriate,” she said. “They have always said they did not do it. I did not even want to go there. I wanted to focus on reconciliation.” (...)
She and Raymond Pagnucco, whose father, Robert, was killed in the bombing, spent ten minutes with Colonel Gaddafi at Libya’s UN mission.
Before leaving, Ms Gibson gave him a handwritten card telling him that she had forgiven and had been praying for him. “There is more peace with forgiveness. That would be my advice to family members,” she said. (...)
Colonel Gaddafi described the encounter as friendly. “I offered my condolences for the families who lost them. They also expressed their condolences for my daughter who was killed from the American raid in 1986,” he told CNN. He called the Lockerbie bombing a catastrophe but again denied responsibility.
[The above are excerpts from a report in today's edition of The Times.]
Lisa Gibson, 39, and another Lockerbie family met the Libyan leader after his rambling speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. (...)
Ms Gibson’s brother, Kenneth, a US soldier stationed in Germany, was returning home for Christmas on Pan Am Flight 103 when it was blown up on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people in the jet and on the ground. (...)
“When I met with him face-to-face I did not even feel any kind of anger. I was quite at peace.
“He was speaking through a translator. As it was conveyed to us, he said thanks for us coming and he is sorry for what happened to us.”
She said that she did not ask the leader whether he had ordered the attack on the London-New York aircraft. “I did not think it was appropriate,” she said. “They have always said they did not do it. I did not even want to go there. I wanted to focus on reconciliation.” (...)
She and Raymond Pagnucco, whose father, Robert, was killed in the bombing, spent ten minutes with Colonel Gaddafi at Libya’s UN mission.
Before leaving, Ms Gibson gave him a handwritten card telling him that she had forgiven and had been praying for him. “There is more peace with forgiveness. That would be my advice to family members,” she said. (...)
Colonel Gaddafi described the encounter as friendly. “I offered my condolences for the families who lost them. They also expressed their condolences for my daughter who was killed from the American raid in 1986,” he told CNN. He called the Lockerbie bombing a catastrophe but again denied responsibility.
[The above are excerpts from a report in today's edition of The Times.]
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Ex-editor's Megrahi release rant
[The Sunday Times today publishes an article on the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The author is Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of The Sun, the UK's most down-market tabloid daily. Apart from the fact that both papers are part of the Rupert Murdoch empire, I can think of no reason for a semi-respectable paper like The Sunday Times to be giving column space to this rant. The following are excerpts.]
Alex Salmond’s government has been exposed as a shocking collection of lickspittles unfit for office.
Its catastrophic decision to release the mass murderer convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was the worst piece of politics I have seen in a long time.
But it is not an argument for a trade boycott of Scotland; it is an argument for a boycott of the SNP at the next election.
The Scottish first minister may have wanted to act the big world statesman taking on the United States before a massive worldwide audience but in his desperation to prove he was not part of a UK-based club he fell flat on his face and the consequences of his administration’s actions will haunt him. (...)
Perhaps we should have expected little else from Scottish devolution and a parliament of lower league players. As David Starkey warned last week Scotland is now governed by a bunch of idiots who might not even make county councillors in England.
But what of the reaction to the Scots themselves to the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? I was astonished that there wasn’t a bigger uprising by the Scottish people against their government as they watched Megrahi’s hero’s welcome in a sea of Saltires in Tripoli.
I’m not anti-Scottish. If I were trying to paint a picture of a Scottish person I would say they are somewhat cynical and fiercely bright. I just cannot understand how an intelligent, knowledgeable anti-establishment race are just taking it all on the chin and accepting it without turning on the SNP. (...)
Lockerbie was massive and still we have not seen anything quite like it. Even 7/7, shocking as it was, killed only a fifth of the number of the number wiped out in the Pan Am Flight 103 attack so why aren’t Scots as angry about this as I am?
What is it in the Scottish psyche that says this is somehow the correct thing? It’s quite easy to have views about other people’s pain when you haven’t suffered it yourself. No-one has carried out a poll in Lockerbie. I wonder if the people there feel the same way about Megrahi. Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, looked like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights when he announced his release and blethered about Scottish compassion. Where was the compassion for the victim’s families who are so enraged and were chanting protests outside the United Nations last week. Does anyone care about these people? Who speaks for them? Not the SNP leader or its justice minister and not the Prime Minister of the UK. These people are just left to twist in the wind, they are of no account. (...)
So much for the Scots being poorly served. The Lockerbie bomber killed, by my estimation, around 31 English people, including an entire family living down the road from me. Gordon Brown should have been offering succour and support. He is after all supposed to represent the whole nation, not just those in his Scottish birthplace.
But no. He managed to find time to enquire after the health of Susan Boyle but cannot find time to pick up the phone to the relatives of the Lockerbie victims, let alone address the public, to explain it. Instead they are viewed as a problem who have to be handled in a cunning and disgusting manner.
It’s Brown whose gut-wrenching cowardice really aggravates me. His every decision is masked in deceit. Why didn’t he just stand up and say whether he agreed with what was going on and what would come of it? (...)
If the people of Scotland really believe that Megrahi should have been sent home then they are so detached from the people of England that it is probably best that they set off on their own path to independence sooner rather than later.
Alex Salmond’s government has been exposed as a shocking collection of lickspittles unfit for office.
Its catastrophic decision to release the mass murderer convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was the worst piece of politics I have seen in a long time.
But it is not an argument for a trade boycott of Scotland; it is an argument for a boycott of the SNP at the next election.
The Scottish first minister may have wanted to act the big world statesman taking on the United States before a massive worldwide audience but in his desperation to prove he was not part of a UK-based club he fell flat on his face and the consequences of his administration’s actions will haunt him. (...)
Perhaps we should have expected little else from Scottish devolution and a parliament of lower league players. As David Starkey warned last week Scotland is now governed by a bunch of idiots who might not even make county councillors in England.
But what of the reaction to the Scots themselves to the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? I was astonished that there wasn’t a bigger uprising by the Scottish people against their government as they watched Megrahi’s hero’s welcome in a sea of Saltires in Tripoli.
I’m not anti-Scottish. If I were trying to paint a picture of a Scottish person I would say they are somewhat cynical and fiercely bright. I just cannot understand how an intelligent, knowledgeable anti-establishment race are just taking it all on the chin and accepting it without turning on the SNP. (...)
Lockerbie was massive and still we have not seen anything quite like it. Even 7/7, shocking as it was, killed only a fifth of the number of the number wiped out in the Pan Am Flight 103 attack so why aren’t Scots as angry about this as I am?
What is it in the Scottish psyche that says this is somehow the correct thing? It’s quite easy to have views about other people’s pain when you haven’t suffered it yourself. No-one has carried out a poll in Lockerbie. I wonder if the people there feel the same way about Megrahi. Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, looked like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights when he announced his release and blethered about Scottish compassion. Where was the compassion for the victim’s families who are so enraged and were chanting protests outside the United Nations last week. Does anyone care about these people? Who speaks for them? Not the SNP leader or its justice minister and not the Prime Minister of the UK. These people are just left to twist in the wind, they are of no account. (...)
So much for the Scots being poorly served. The Lockerbie bomber killed, by my estimation, around 31 English people, including an entire family living down the road from me. Gordon Brown should have been offering succour and support. He is after all supposed to represent the whole nation, not just those in his Scottish birthplace.
But no. He managed to find time to enquire after the health of Susan Boyle but cannot find time to pick up the phone to the relatives of the Lockerbie victims, let alone address the public, to explain it. Instead they are viewed as a problem who have to be handled in a cunning and disgusting manner.
It’s Brown whose gut-wrenching cowardice really aggravates me. His every decision is masked in deceit. Why didn’t he just stand up and say whether he agreed with what was going on and what would come of it? (...)
If the people of Scotland really believe that Megrahi should have been sent home then they are so detached from the people of England that it is probably best that they set off on their own path to independence sooner rather than later.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
No deal on Megrahi, says Gaddafi
[This is the heading over a report on the BBC News website. The following are excerpts.]
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has denied any deal was done to secure the release of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
Megrahi has terminal cancer and is said not to have long to live.
In a TV interview with Al Jazeera Colonel Gaddafi said he now considers the matter closed and that there was no deal done.
He said: "This problem ended. It is not possible anymore to talk about clearing Libya or not - whatever happened, the problem is over.
"Abdelbasset was the only person who had the right to appeal to the European Court, but as I said because of his illness and release it seems that there is no need for an appeal."
Asked about any deal over the release, Col Gaddafi said: "No, no, it is very clear, he had this illness and consequently they were compelled to release him because of this disease. There was no deal or anything else."
He was interviewed in New York, where he has addressed the United Nations General Assembly.
Libya has formally accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and has paid billions of dollars in compensation to families of the victims.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has denied any deal was done to secure the release of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
Megrahi has terminal cancer and is said not to have long to live.
In a TV interview with Al Jazeera Colonel Gaddafi said he now considers the matter closed and that there was no deal done.
He said: "This problem ended. It is not possible anymore to talk about clearing Libya or not - whatever happened, the problem is over.
"Abdelbasset was the only person who had the right to appeal to the European Court, but as I said because of his illness and release it seems that there is no need for an appeal."
Asked about any deal over the release, Col Gaddafi said: "No, no, it is very clear, he had this illness and consequently they were compelled to release him because of this disease. There was no deal or anything else."
He was interviewed in New York, where he has addressed the United Nations General Assembly.
Libya has formally accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and has paid billions of dollars in compensation to families of the victims.
The spectre over Lockerbie
This is the heading over a section of the column Richard Ingrams's Week in today's edition of The Independent. It reads as follows:]
Have we now heard the last of the so-called Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? The Government, and particularly the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, must be praying that we have.
Five weeks ago, I suggested that the prime reason for releasing Mr Megrahi, in spite of the inevitable protest from all corners of the earth, was to bring an end to his appeal – nothing to do with Libyan oil, or secret deals done by Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson.
The danger from Mr Straw's point of view was that it might eventually be shown that Mr Megrahi, convicted of the most terrible of crimes – the bombing of 270 innocent people – was not only innocent but had been framed with the connivance of the British and American security services.
Mr Straw, I pointed out, was old enough to remember the damage done to the reputation of the police and the courts by the wrongful conviction of several innocent men and women during the IRA bombing campaign in the 1970s.
And now, thanks to a long article reprinted this week in The Independent on Sunday by the indefatigable lawyer Gareth Peirce, we learn that two of the government scientists who were accused of giving suspect evidence against those innocent Irishmen also gave evidence against Mr Megrahi in his trial before three Scottish judges.
Using the words "astounding", "shameful" and "profoundly shocking" to describe the Lockerbie investigation and subsequent trial, Ms Peirce has raised the spectre of a miscarriage of justice far more serious than anything in the 1970s. Mr Straw must be hoping that, in these degenerate days, nobody will be paying very much attention to her.
Have we now heard the last of the so-called Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? The Government, and particularly the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, must be praying that we have.
Five weeks ago, I suggested that the prime reason for releasing Mr Megrahi, in spite of the inevitable protest from all corners of the earth, was to bring an end to his appeal – nothing to do with Libyan oil, or secret deals done by Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson.
The danger from Mr Straw's point of view was that it might eventually be shown that Mr Megrahi, convicted of the most terrible of crimes – the bombing of 270 innocent people – was not only innocent but had been framed with the connivance of the British and American security services.
Mr Straw, I pointed out, was old enough to remember the damage done to the reputation of the police and the courts by the wrongful conviction of several innocent men and women during the IRA bombing campaign in the 1970s.
And now, thanks to a long article reprinted this week in The Independent on Sunday by the indefatigable lawyer Gareth Peirce, we learn that two of the government scientists who were accused of giving suspect evidence against those innocent Irishmen also gave evidence against Mr Megrahi in his trial before three Scottish judges.
Using the words "astounding", "shameful" and "profoundly shocking" to describe the Lockerbie investigation and subsequent trial, Ms Peirce has raised the spectre of a miscarriage of justice far more serious than anything in the 1970s. Mr Straw must be hoping that, in these degenerate days, nobody will be paying very much attention to her.
Friday, 25 September 2009
TIME editors interview Gaddafi
[The website of Time magazine contains an interview conducted yesterday with Colonel Gaddafi in New York. It can be read here. What follows is the one question and answer relating to Lockerbie.]
Q: I know that the Lockerbie case has come to a legal end, but there are people in the United States who would still say, in 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for its officials but it would be wonderful if it was a heartfelt expression of remorse and an apology for what happened. That might help thaw the ice.
A: It was always said that it is not us who did that and they don't accept the fact that they have a responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. And all the nonaligned nations used to support the Libyan claim. But we go through the resolutions adopted by ... more than 150 countries, both of the resolutions of the Arab League, all of the resolutions adopted by the African Union, all of the organizations ... conflict resolutions.
But of course, Americans, Libyans, the whole world express sympathy or regret over such tragedies. No one would be happy over such tragedies, no one would welcome such a tragedy, indeed, of course. Do the American people feel happy, are the American people happy over the killing of the Libyan citizens in 1986? And is the world happy about the Gaza massacre? By the same token none of us are happy over the tragedy of Lockerbie. Up to now, if you visit the house that was bombed in the American raid, you will find a picture of my daughter, a picture of the daughter of Jim Swire, in a frame there, and everybody goes there. Our children are all victims. I mean, these pictures, just to say the fact that we are all fathers of victims.
[The report in The Times on Gaddafi's New York visit and his appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations contains the following:
"A day after losing his tent and complaining of jet leg, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi yesterday skipped a summit meeting of the UN body he has dubbed the “Terror Council”.
"The Libyan leader was the only one of the 15 Security Council statesmen to miss the meeting, which was chaired by President Obama. His no-show came as a relief to Mr Obama and Gordon Brown, who were spared having to shake his hand.
"A diplomatic source said that the notoriously unpredictable “Brother Leader of the Libyan Revolution” had decided on Wednesday to give the Security Council a miss after he delivered a long speech to the 192-nation General Assembly, in which he complained of jet lag. He did reappear last night at the Council on Foreign Relations, a high-powered American foreign policy association. In his address he denied that Libya ever had a hand in the Lockerbie bombing."
The report in The Tripoli Post contains the following:
"With regard to Lockerbie case, the Leader of the Revolution said Thursday that Libya has not accepted culpability, and only took responsibility for the actions of its citizens. "We never acknowledged any guilt ... and Libya was never indicted in any court as responsible," he said in Arabic. His remarks translated into English."]
Q: I know that the Lockerbie case has come to a legal end, but there are people in the United States who would still say, in 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for its officials but it would be wonderful if it was a heartfelt expression of remorse and an apology for what happened. That might help thaw the ice.
A: It was always said that it is not us who did that and they don't accept the fact that they have a responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. And all the nonaligned nations used to support the Libyan claim. But we go through the resolutions adopted by ... more than 150 countries, both of the resolutions of the Arab League, all of the resolutions adopted by the African Union, all of the organizations ... conflict resolutions.
But of course, Americans, Libyans, the whole world express sympathy or regret over such tragedies. No one would be happy over such tragedies, no one would welcome such a tragedy, indeed, of course. Do the American people feel happy, are the American people happy over the killing of the Libyan citizens in 1986? And is the world happy about the Gaza massacre? By the same token none of us are happy over the tragedy of Lockerbie. Up to now, if you visit the house that was bombed in the American raid, you will find a picture of my daughter, a picture of the daughter of Jim Swire, in a frame there, and everybody goes there. Our children are all victims. I mean, these pictures, just to say the fact that we are all fathers of victims.
[The report in The Times on Gaddafi's New York visit and his appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations contains the following:
"A day after losing his tent and complaining of jet leg, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi yesterday skipped a summit meeting of the UN body he has dubbed the “Terror Council”.
"The Libyan leader was the only one of the 15 Security Council statesmen to miss the meeting, which was chaired by President Obama. His no-show came as a relief to Mr Obama and Gordon Brown, who were spared having to shake his hand.
"A diplomatic source said that the notoriously unpredictable “Brother Leader of the Libyan Revolution” had decided on Wednesday to give the Security Council a miss after he delivered a long speech to the 192-nation General Assembly, in which he complained of jet lag. He did reappear last night at the Council on Foreign Relations, a high-powered American foreign policy association. In his address he denied that Libya ever had a hand in the Lockerbie bombing."
The report in The Tripoli Post contains the following:
"With regard to Lockerbie case, the Leader of the Revolution said Thursday that Libya has not accepted culpability, and only took responsibility for the actions of its citizens. "We never acknowledged any guilt ... and Libya was never indicted in any court as responsible," he said in Arabic. His remarks translated into English."]
When doing the Scottish thing backfires
[This is the headline over an article by Sarah Lyall in today's edition of The New York Times. It reads in part:]
Scots are very touchy these days about the decision to free the bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, and very worried about their international reputation.
Mr. Megrahi, the only person ever convicted in connection with the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, was freed from prison on compassionate grounds in August, having served less than a third of his 27-year sentence. Ill with terminal prostate cancer, he is now in intensive care at a hospital in Tripoli, his lawyer said. But the debate over his release rages on.
Indeed, there has been a great deal of talk about conspiracies and backdoor deals between Britain and Libya over Mr. Megrahi’s case. Britain wants to have better relations — both politically and financially — with Libya, and it is clear that the Megrahi issue came up repeatedly in discussions. As a condition of improved cooperation, Britain had to withdraw its demand to get Mr. Megrahi’s name removed as an exception when it negotiated a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
But the conspiracy theories ignore the parochial nature of Scottish politics, and also the political agenda of Alex Salmond, the leader of the governing Scottish National Party. Relations between Mr. Salmond and Gordon Brown, the British Labour prime minister, are said to be particularly frosty, and the last thing Mr. Salmond wants to do is appear to be taking orders from London.
He has enough troubles at home. In the Scottish Parliament, the justice committee is to conduct an inquiry into how the decision was reached, putting the nationalists on the defensive.
The National Party, which has a plurality but not a majority in Parliament and so clings to power tenuously, is at heart a single-issue organization: it believes that Scotland should be independent from Britain. As a result, its critics say, the party badly wants to prove itself, but has ended up looking foolish in the highest-profile decision of its governing time.
“They are desperate to be players on the international stage,” said Richard Baker, a member of the Scottish Parliament who is justice spokesman for the Labour Party here. “But there’s a huge arrogance within the S.N.P. in claiming that they speak for Scotland.” (...)
Even some people who believe Mr. Megrahi was unfairly imprisoned and deserved to be free are annoyed at the way the government handled his release. (...)
Although it means little to outsiders, particularly families of the victims of Flight 103, the Scottish government insists that there is a huge distinction between releasing Mr. Megrahi under the prisoner transfer agreement — which London may have tacitly supported had it happened, but which Scotland refused to allow — and releasing him on compassionate grounds, an extremely Scottish move.
In Scotland, opinion polls show a mixed reaction to the Megrahi release. A BBC poll found the majority were opposed to the decision. But polls in local newspapers found heavy majorities applauding it, and in an Internet poll conducted by the Firm, a magazine for lawyers, judges and others in the legal profession, some 69 percent of responders said they supported the release.
And, as a complicating factor, many Scots — including influential members of the legal establishment — feel that Mr. Megrahi was unjustly convicted and should never have been imprisoned in the first place.
Among them are Robert Black, the lawyer who helped broker the deal to hold the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands rather than in Scotland; and Hans Kochler, the United Nations observer at the trial, who called the guilty verdict “inconsistent” and “arbitrary,” and has been a harsh critic of Scottish justice.
Mr. Megrahi has always maintained his innocence. His first appeal failed, but an influential group called the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission then referred his case back for another appeal, saying that it believed he “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”
Mr. Megrahi dropped the appeal in August, a tactic that he thought would help his chances of being released early, his lawyer said. But he has begun publishing on the Internet the legal arguments he had planned to use, as a way toward establishing his innocence.
In the Scottish Parliament, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice secretary, defended his decision to release Mr. Megrahi on compassionate grounds, saying that humanity “is viewed as a defining characteristic” of Scotland.
In fact, releasing terminally ill prisoners is fairly standard practice in Scotland. Since 1997, 31 prisoners, including Mr. Megrahi, have applied for compassionate release. Twenty-four have had their applications granted; the remaining seven did not meet the medical criteria, in which, generally, the prisoner is deemed likely to die within three months.
“Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed but compassion be available,” Mr. MacAskill told Parliament. “Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown.”
On the Royal Mile, Gordon Nicolson, who owns a kiltmaking shop, said that Mr. MacAskill’s efforts had backfired.
“They’re trying to show that Scotland can be politically independent,” he said. “But if this is the kind of decision they make, this calls into question Scotland’s ability to make good decisions.”
Scots are very touchy these days about the decision to free the bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, and very worried about their international reputation.
Mr. Megrahi, the only person ever convicted in connection with the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, was freed from prison on compassionate grounds in August, having served less than a third of his 27-year sentence. Ill with terminal prostate cancer, he is now in intensive care at a hospital in Tripoli, his lawyer said. But the debate over his release rages on.
Indeed, there has been a great deal of talk about conspiracies and backdoor deals between Britain and Libya over Mr. Megrahi’s case. Britain wants to have better relations — both politically and financially — with Libya, and it is clear that the Megrahi issue came up repeatedly in discussions. As a condition of improved cooperation, Britain had to withdraw its demand to get Mr. Megrahi’s name removed as an exception when it negotiated a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
But the conspiracy theories ignore the parochial nature of Scottish politics, and also the political agenda of Alex Salmond, the leader of the governing Scottish National Party. Relations between Mr. Salmond and Gordon Brown, the British Labour prime minister, are said to be particularly frosty, and the last thing Mr. Salmond wants to do is appear to be taking orders from London.
He has enough troubles at home. In the Scottish Parliament, the justice committee is to conduct an inquiry into how the decision was reached, putting the nationalists on the defensive.
The National Party, which has a plurality but not a majority in Parliament and so clings to power tenuously, is at heart a single-issue organization: it believes that Scotland should be independent from Britain. As a result, its critics say, the party badly wants to prove itself, but has ended up looking foolish in the highest-profile decision of its governing time.
“They are desperate to be players on the international stage,” said Richard Baker, a member of the Scottish Parliament who is justice spokesman for the Labour Party here. “But there’s a huge arrogance within the S.N.P. in claiming that they speak for Scotland.” (...)
Even some people who believe Mr. Megrahi was unfairly imprisoned and deserved to be free are annoyed at the way the government handled his release. (...)
Although it means little to outsiders, particularly families of the victims of Flight 103, the Scottish government insists that there is a huge distinction between releasing Mr. Megrahi under the prisoner transfer agreement — which London may have tacitly supported had it happened, but which Scotland refused to allow — and releasing him on compassionate grounds, an extremely Scottish move.
In Scotland, opinion polls show a mixed reaction to the Megrahi release. A BBC poll found the majority were opposed to the decision. But polls in local newspapers found heavy majorities applauding it, and in an Internet poll conducted by the Firm, a magazine for lawyers, judges and others in the legal profession, some 69 percent of responders said they supported the release.
And, as a complicating factor, many Scots — including influential members of the legal establishment — feel that Mr. Megrahi was unjustly convicted and should never have been imprisoned in the first place.
Among them are Robert Black, the lawyer who helped broker the deal to hold the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands rather than in Scotland; and Hans Kochler, the United Nations observer at the trial, who called the guilty verdict “inconsistent” and “arbitrary,” and has been a harsh critic of Scottish justice.
Mr. Megrahi has always maintained his innocence. His first appeal failed, but an influential group called the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission then referred his case back for another appeal, saying that it believed he “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”
Mr. Megrahi dropped the appeal in August, a tactic that he thought would help his chances of being released early, his lawyer said. But he has begun publishing on the Internet the legal arguments he had planned to use, as a way toward establishing his innocence.
In the Scottish Parliament, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice secretary, defended his decision to release Mr. Megrahi on compassionate grounds, saying that humanity “is viewed as a defining characteristic” of Scotland.
In fact, releasing terminally ill prisoners is fairly standard practice in Scotland. Since 1997, 31 prisoners, including Mr. Megrahi, have applied for compassionate release. Twenty-four have had their applications granted; the remaining seven did not meet the medical criteria, in which, generally, the prisoner is deemed likely to die within three months.
“Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed but compassion be available,” Mr. MacAskill told Parliament. “Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown.”
On the Royal Mile, Gordon Nicolson, who owns a kiltmaking shop, said that Mr. MacAskill’s efforts had backfired.
“They’re trying to show that Scotland can be politically independent,” he said. “But if this is the kind of decision they make, this calls into question Scotland’s ability to make good decisions.”
Gadhafi says he 'comprehends' Lockerbie anger
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal. It reads in part:]
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said he could "comprehend" the anger directed at him by Americans who lost relatives in the Lockerbie bombing, trying to strike a conciliatory tone a day after calling the United Nations Security Council a "terror council."
In an hour-long interview, Col. Gadhafi said he hoped to build a new era of relations with U.S. President Barack Obama -- whom he called "my son" during the same U.N. address -- and said he wanted to place his nation's decades-long conflict with Washington in the past.
The Libyan strongman denied his government had purposefully stoked nationalist sentiment surrounding the return home of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Mr. al-Megrahi, who has cancer, was released by Scottish authorities last month on humanitarian grounds.
Lockerbie families have particularly criticized the British and Scottish governments for the release of Mr. al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer. Legislators in the U.S. and U.K. have called for inquiries into whether the move was tied to lucrative Libyan oil deals. Libyan and U.K. leaders have denied this.
Col. Gadhafi also said Mr. al-Megrahi's release came through proper legal channels. But he added that British companies have benefited in the past from the absence of U.S. firms inside Libya. Sanctions imposed on Libya after the Lockerbie bombing barred American oil companies from operating in the North African country until 2004.
"You see, Britain, even though it makes it look like it's in alliance with America, and being America's ally, kept its companies in Libya and they were doing business when the American companies left the Libyan market," Col. Gadhafi said.
He said he believed Mr. al-Megrahi's release, and the billions of dollars paid out by his government to the Lockerbie victims' families, could now allow U.S.-Libyan relations to move forward. "As a case, the Lockerbie question: I would say it's come to an end, legally, politically, financially, it is all over," Col. Gadhafi, wearing black boots and an ankle-length cape, said. "I would say, thank Allah that this problem has been solved to the satisfaction of all parties. We all feel the pain for such a tragedy."
Family members of the Lockerbie victims voiced outrage Thursday that Col. Gadhafi was allowed to visit New York this week, in the Libyan leader's first trip to the U.S. following decades of conflict with Washington.
"I don't think he's capable of remorse. I think he is the devil himself. He is a murderer," said Kara M. Weipz, whose brother died in the bombing. "This last month has been devastating to my family and myself."
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said he could "comprehend" the anger directed at him by Americans who lost relatives in the Lockerbie bombing, trying to strike a conciliatory tone a day after calling the United Nations Security Council a "terror council."
In an hour-long interview, Col. Gadhafi said he hoped to build a new era of relations with U.S. President Barack Obama -- whom he called "my son" during the same U.N. address -- and said he wanted to place his nation's decades-long conflict with Washington in the past.
The Libyan strongman denied his government had purposefully stoked nationalist sentiment surrounding the return home of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Mr. al-Megrahi, who has cancer, was released by Scottish authorities last month on humanitarian grounds.
Lockerbie families have particularly criticized the British and Scottish governments for the release of Mr. al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer. Legislators in the U.S. and U.K. have called for inquiries into whether the move was tied to lucrative Libyan oil deals. Libyan and U.K. leaders have denied this.
Col. Gadhafi also said Mr. al-Megrahi's release came through proper legal channels. But he added that British companies have benefited in the past from the absence of U.S. firms inside Libya. Sanctions imposed on Libya after the Lockerbie bombing barred American oil companies from operating in the North African country until 2004.
"You see, Britain, even though it makes it look like it's in alliance with America, and being America's ally, kept its companies in Libya and they were doing business when the American companies left the Libyan market," Col. Gadhafi said.
He said he believed Mr. al-Megrahi's release, and the billions of dollars paid out by his government to the Lockerbie victims' families, could now allow U.S.-Libyan relations to move forward. "As a case, the Lockerbie question: I would say it's come to an end, legally, politically, financially, it is all over," Col. Gadhafi, wearing black boots and an ankle-length cape, said. "I would say, thank Allah that this problem has been solved to the satisfaction of all parties. We all feel the pain for such a tragedy."
Family members of the Lockerbie victims voiced outrage Thursday that Col. Gadhafi was allowed to visit New York this week, in the Libyan leader's first trip to the U.S. following decades of conflict with Washington.
"I don't think he's capable of remorse. I think he is the devil himself. He is a murderer," said Kara M. Weipz, whose brother died in the bombing. "This last month has been devastating to my family and myself."
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Crown challenged to prove semtex link to Pan Am 103
[This is the headline over an article published today on the website of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. The following are excerpts.]
[A] campaign initiated by the Lockerbie Justice Group ... challenges the Lord Advocate to openly demonstrate that Pan Am 103 could have been brought down by a semtex bomb, under controlled laboratory conditions.
The group state that fabric and circuit board fragments cannot survive a semtex explosion, and accordingly the entire Crown case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi falls. In 2007 Ulrich Lumpert of timer company MEBO released an affidavit stating he had manufactured the circuit board “evidence” relied upon by the Crown at the Zeist trial. Earlier this year a report by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer concluded that the Crown’s case was “scientifically implausible”.
“The Crown theory utterly depended upon Judges believing that this white-hot sphere with a temperature of 6,800F, travelling in all available directions at 20,000mph did not scorch, never mind totally annihilate, a printed circuit board and a fabric label, which it was able to wholly detach from the shirt. Our group finds this utterly incredible,” the group said.
“We, as members of the concerned Scottish public, invite the Crown to openly demonstrate their theory under controlled laboratory conditions. Either the circuit board survives with its legible ID and soft solder, or it is annihilated in a white-hot gas. In the event of PCB annihilation, we demand a proper and independent committee of inquiry into ‘What brought this plane down?’ Will you please publicly demonstrate your theory, ... Lord Advocate?”
The challenge has been backed by Dr Hans Koechler, who observed the trial [as a UN-appointed observer] and called for a full public inquiry afterwards.
“It is highly important to address this question to the Scottish prosecutor’s office and I shall add my name to such an initiative,” he said.
“It is equally important that an explosives expert with impeccable academic credentials, ideally a University professor from a European country, endorses this initiative or confirms the basic physical facts in writing. Under this condition I can join the initiative.”
De Braeckeleer and researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to destroy a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occurred in the hold as the Crown claimed
“As the explosion of one pound of Semtex H inside the luggage container does not generate a blast wave sufficiently powerful to fracture the skin of the fuselage, we have little choice but to conclude that the verdict appears scientifically very implausible,” they said.
The group’s initiative is bolstered by the new testimony of former Ferranti electrical engineer Aitken Brotherston, experienced in testing circuitry for use in military applications.
“Although no doubt there have been some advances in the construction of circuit boards the predominance of boards in current use are the same as those I tested. In most cases the boards would happily catch light with a flame source similar to that of a Swan Vesta (...)
“While we did not test them to the 3000 plus degrees C temperatures of a Semtex explosion bright spot, even as an apprentice electronics engineer with Ferranti, my experience at much lower temperatures would persuade me that nothing of the circuit boards would survive that environment.
“The proposal that fragments of the board, of sufficient size to permit identification, packed with the bomb had survived a temperature environment of more than 3000 degree C in the explosion is to me just not credible.
“What it does demonstrate is the extent to which anyone promulgating that theory believes us out here in the real world to be completely stupid.”
[A] campaign initiated by the Lockerbie Justice Group ... challenges the Lord Advocate to openly demonstrate that Pan Am 103 could have been brought down by a semtex bomb, under controlled laboratory conditions.
The group state that fabric and circuit board fragments cannot survive a semtex explosion, and accordingly the entire Crown case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi falls. In 2007 Ulrich Lumpert of timer company MEBO released an affidavit stating he had manufactured the circuit board “evidence” relied upon by the Crown at the Zeist trial. Earlier this year a report by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer concluded that the Crown’s case was “scientifically implausible”.
“The Crown theory utterly depended upon Judges believing that this white-hot sphere with a temperature of 6,800F, travelling in all available directions at 20,000mph did not scorch, never mind totally annihilate, a printed circuit board and a fabric label, which it was able to wholly detach from the shirt. Our group finds this utterly incredible,” the group said.
“We, as members of the concerned Scottish public, invite the Crown to openly demonstrate their theory under controlled laboratory conditions. Either the circuit board survives with its legible ID and soft solder, or it is annihilated in a white-hot gas. In the event of PCB annihilation, we demand a proper and independent committee of inquiry into ‘What brought this plane down?’ Will you please publicly demonstrate your theory, ... Lord Advocate?”
The challenge has been backed by Dr Hans Koechler, who observed the trial [as a UN-appointed observer] and called for a full public inquiry afterwards.
“It is highly important to address this question to the Scottish prosecutor’s office and I shall add my name to such an initiative,” he said.
“It is equally important that an explosives expert with impeccable academic credentials, ideally a University professor from a European country, endorses this initiative or confirms the basic physical facts in writing. Under this condition I can join the initiative.”
De Braeckeleer and researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to destroy a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occurred in the hold as the Crown claimed
“As the explosion of one pound of Semtex H inside the luggage container does not generate a blast wave sufficiently powerful to fracture the skin of the fuselage, we have little choice but to conclude that the verdict appears scientifically very implausible,” they said.
The group’s initiative is bolstered by the new testimony of former Ferranti electrical engineer Aitken Brotherston, experienced in testing circuitry for use in military applications.
“Although no doubt there have been some advances in the construction of circuit boards the predominance of boards in current use are the same as those I tested. In most cases the boards would happily catch light with a flame source similar to that of a Swan Vesta (...)
“While we did not test them to the 3000 plus degrees C temperatures of a Semtex explosion bright spot, even as an apprentice electronics engineer with Ferranti, my experience at much lower temperatures would persuade me that nothing of the circuit boards would survive that environment.
“The proposal that fragments of the board, of sufficient size to permit identification, packed with the bomb had survived a temperature environment of more than 3000 degree C in the explosion is to me just not credible.
“What it does demonstrate is the extent to which anyone promulgating that theory believes us out here in the real world to be completely stupid.”
Gaddafi's UN General Assembly speech
[Most of today's British newspapers contain accounts of Colonel Gaddafi's long speech to the UN General Assembly. None of the reports that I have seen (including the UN's own summary) indicates that he referred to Lockerbie or to Abdelbaset Megrahi. For an Arab perspective, there is a report on the English language website of Al Jazeera. The following are excerpts.]
Libya's president has attacked the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council during his first ever address to the UN General Assembly.
In a one-and-a-half hour speech in New York on Wednesday, Muammar Gaddafi said the veto-wielding nations of the Security Council were ignoring the views of the full 192 members of the General Assembly and the principles of the UN charter.
"The preamble [of the charter] says all nations are equal whether they are small or big," Gaddafi said in his address.
But he accused the permanent members of the council of undermining other states.
"The veto [held by the five permanent UN members] is against the charter, we do not accept it and we do not acknowledge it," he said.
"Veto power should be annulled."
In a speech that far exceeded the 15-minute slot he was allocated, Gaddafi read aloud sections from a paperback copy of the UN charter; at one point, he held it up and made a small tear in the cover, signalling his disdain.
"The Security Council did not provide us with security but with terror and sanctions," he said.
Gaddafi said the council, comprising the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, had failed to prevent or intervene in 65 wars that have taken place since the United Nations was established in 1945.
"How can we be happy about the world security if the world is controlled by four or five powers?" he complained. "We are just like a decor."
In his opinion, the General Assembly is the "the parliament of the world" - a 192-member body that should be dictating decisions to the Security Council. (...)
Gaddafi said adding more permanent seats would be counterproductive.
Instead, he called on regional federations and organisations, such as the Arab League, Organisation of American States, the African Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement to be given permanent seats at the Security Council.
The five permanent members should lose their veto, or the UN should expand the council with additional member states, Gaddafi said. (...)
Mohamed Ben-Madani, editor of the Maghreb Review, told Al Jazeera's that Gaddafi's speech was a "disaster" for the African Union and Arab and Muslim delegations at the General Assembly.
"I think the Libyans deserve much better than this. It is a disaster for Arab world opinion. Tearing up the UN charter is shocking, but this should have been expected from the beginning," he said.
"He said nothing about Libyan human rights and better education [for Libyans]. He said nothing about climate change or the environment."
As Gaddafi spoke, the US senate approved a [non-binding] resolution condemning the "lavish" welcome-home ceremony that Libya gave last month for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the bombing over a US passenger aircraft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1989.
The US senate demanded that Tripoli apologise for the celebration, which came after Scotland's justice minister released al-Megrahi, a former agent, on compassionate grounds.
Libya has a temporary seat on the Security Council until the end of 2010.
[Families of US victims of the Lockerbie disaster were amongst those at the UN headquarters in New York to protest at Gaddafi's attendance. The report on the demonstration in today's edition of The Times can be read here.]
Libya's president has attacked the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council during his first ever address to the UN General Assembly.
In a one-and-a-half hour speech in New York on Wednesday, Muammar Gaddafi said the veto-wielding nations of the Security Council were ignoring the views of the full 192 members of the General Assembly and the principles of the UN charter.
"The preamble [of the charter] says all nations are equal whether they are small or big," Gaddafi said in his address.
But he accused the permanent members of the council of undermining other states.
"The veto [held by the five permanent UN members] is against the charter, we do not accept it and we do not acknowledge it," he said.
"Veto power should be annulled."
In a speech that far exceeded the 15-minute slot he was allocated, Gaddafi read aloud sections from a paperback copy of the UN charter; at one point, he held it up and made a small tear in the cover, signalling his disdain.
"The Security Council did not provide us with security but with terror and sanctions," he said.
Gaddafi said the council, comprising the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, had failed to prevent or intervene in 65 wars that have taken place since the United Nations was established in 1945.
"How can we be happy about the world security if the world is controlled by four or five powers?" he complained. "We are just like a decor."
In his opinion, the General Assembly is the "the parliament of the world" - a 192-member body that should be dictating decisions to the Security Council. (...)
Gaddafi said adding more permanent seats would be counterproductive.
Instead, he called on regional federations and organisations, such as the Arab League, Organisation of American States, the African Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement to be given permanent seats at the Security Council.
The five permanent members should lose their veto, or the UN should expand the council with additional member states, Gaddafi said. (...)
Mohamed Ben-Madani, editor of the Maghreb Review, told Al Jazeera's that Gaddafi's speech was a "disaster" for the African Union and Arab and Muslim delegations at the General Assembly.
"I think the Libyans deserve much better than this. It is a disaster for Arab world opinion. Tearing up the UN charter is shocking, but this should have been expected from the beginning," he said.
"He said nothing about Libyan human rights and better education [for Libyans]. He said nothing about climate change or the environment."
As Gaddafi spoke, the US senate approved a [non-binding] resolution condemning the "lavish" welcome-home ceremony that Libya gave last month for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the bombing over a US passenger aircraft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1989.
The US senate demanded that Tripoli apologise for the celebration, which came after Scotland's justice minister released al-Megrahi, a former agent, on compassionate grounds.
Libya has a temporary seat on the Security Council until the end of 2010.
[Families of US victims of the Lockerbie disaster were amongst those at the UN headquarters in New York to protest at Gaddafi's attendance. The report on the demonstration in today's edition of The Times can be read here.]
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
We need an open mind and a fresh start at the Crown Office
[This is the heading over an article in the online edition of the Scottish Review by its editor, Kenneth Roy. It reads in part:]
There is nothing to deplore
Part of the job of the Lord Advocate under the devolved settlement is to give legal advice to the Scottish Government; at the same time she is the chief prosecutor of Scotland, responsible for bringing the most serious charges to court. There has always been an inherent dichotomy between these two roles. How can the public prosecutor, committed to the pursuit of conviction, offer ministers impartial legal advice? The long years of the Lockerbie case have made this balancing act almost impossible. Lockerbie was big politics when Alex Salmond 'de-politicised' the post of Lord Advocate; it is bigger politics now; it is likely to remain a huge and troubling issue.
There is a suggestion that Elish Angiolini was not fully consulted, if she was consulted at all, about the justice secretary's decision to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing – loosely described by the BBC and others as 'the bomber' – on compassionate grounds. Perhaps she feels aggrieved. Perhaps she is entitled to feel aggrieved. Whatever the explanation, last weekend she made a statement which indicated a loss of composure. She said she 'deplored' the attempt by Megrahi to challenge his conviction by releasing on the internet the papers he would have used in his abandoned appeal.
What is there to deplore? The case, from the point of view of the person whose behaviour is being deplored, is clear enough. He is in pain. He has been in prison for eight years. He says that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. He says that he is innocent of the crimes for which he has been convicted. He says that he has treated the judiciary of the country of his imprisonment with courtesy and respect at all times. But now, at the age of 57, he is dying. Who can tell when? Only God knows; or, in the absence of God, no one. The little gods of the media demand no less; within three months at that. His death will occur soon enough no doubt, with or without journalistic temptations of providence. He wishes to clear his name while there is still a little time left. That much should be understandable to any fully paid-up member of the human race.
The Lord Advocate declares that the appropriate forum for innocence or guilt to be decided is a court of law, and that it was Megrahi's decision to withdraw from the legal determination of his case. This claim ignores two realities of the situation. First, there have been too many grave miscarriages of justice in this country for the authority of the judicial system ever to be completely trusted. Earlier this week it was announced that, in the light of the release of Sean Hodgson after 27 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, DNA evidence having proved that he could not have committed it, no fewer than 240 murder and rape convictions are now being 'reviewed' in England and Wales. Second, the failure of Megrahi's appeal against conviction to be heard is not his fault, but the result of a succession of official delays which have never been satisfactorily explained.
Yet, audaciously, the Lord Advocate suggests that, in dropping the appeal, he has made his subsequent action deplorable. Consider the position in which he finds himself. He wishes to return to his own country, to his family, as any of us would wish to do. He believes that dropping the appeal will hasten this outcome. He drops the appeal. He achieves the desired outcome. But still he is anxious to tell the world what he would have said if the long-delayed hearing had ever gone ahead.
All this is simple humanity. It is how any of us might choose to defend the integrity of our life as it comes to an end. It is basic stuff. But I agree that it is essentially an emotional response, in the same way that Mrs Angiolini reached for a word of feeling, the word 'deplore'.
As it happens, however, it is not just simple humanity. It is not just basic stuff. The dying man's entitlement to do what he did last week is actually enshrined in a piece of legislation called the Human Rights Act 1998. Mrs Angiolini is more familiar with this act than most of us. In 1997, she ceased for a while to be a prosecutor in the criminal courts and joined the Crown Office as head of policy. One of her responsibilities was to prepare her department for the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998. I imagine that, a brief 11 years later, she will not have forgotten what it says.
She will not have forgotten, for example, Article 10 on free expression. Free expression, to which you and I have a human right, is defined in the legislation as the holding of views or opinions, the speaking of them aloud or their publication in articles or books or leaflets, or the broadcasting of them on television or radio, or their communication through the internet. Under Article 10, you and I may use language which others find offensive or shocking, so long as we are not doing so in a racial or ethnic context. This means that, although you and I may find the Lord Advocate's use of language last Friday slightly offensive, she is perfectly entitled to use such language. But the dying man is equally entitled to express his opinions and the law specifically permits him to use the internet as a medium for doing so.
Since, then, the dying man is exercising his legal entitlement under the Human Rights Act 1998, I must put the question again: what is there to deplore? The use of the word tells us more about the Lord Advocate than it does about the case. It is possible that Mrs Angiolini is so exasperated by the constant questioning of the Crown Office's motives and conduct during her years as Solicitor General (2001-06) and Lord Advocate (since 2006) that she could restrain herself no longer. The questioning, however, continues; it will not go away. An essay in the current edition of the London Review of Books by her fellow solicitor, Gareth Peirce, concludes after a devastating forensic deconstruction of the Lockerbie prosecution that there has been 'a form of death in this case – the death of justice'. Such perceptions do serious damage. What follows 'the death of justice'? From Mrs Angiolini or her successor we should hear no more talk of deploring. We need an open mind, a fresh start, a spirit of humility. But beyond that, a structural change is required. It is time to separate the two functions of the office of Lord Advocate, disempowering the holder of the office from any responsibility for public prosecutions. This change has long been mooted; it has become overdue. If it is too late to save the reputation of Megrahi, it should not be too late to save the reputation of Scottish justice.
There is nothing to deplore
Part of the job of the Lord Advocate under the devolved settlement is to give legal advice to the Scottish Government; at the same time she is the chief prosecutor of Scotland, responsible for bringing the most serious charges to court. There has always been an inherent dichotomy between these two roles. How can the public prosecutor, committed to the pursuit of conviction, offer ministers impartial legal advice? The long years of the Lockerbie case have made this balancing act almost impossible. Lockerbie was big politics when Alex Salmond 'de-politicised' the post of Lord Advocate; it is bigger politics now; it is likely to remain a huge and troubling issue.
There is a suggestion that Elish Angiolini was not fully consulted, if she was consulted at all, about the justice secretary's decision to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing – loosely described by the BBC and others as 'the bomber' – on compassionate grounds. Perhaps she feels aggrieved. Perhaps she is entitled to feel aggrieved. Whatever the explanation, last weekend she made a statement which indicated a loss of composure. She said she 'deplored' the attempt by Megrahi to challenge his conviction by releasing on the internet the papers he would have used in his abandoned appeal.
What is there to deplore? The case, from the point of view of the person whose behaviour is being deplored, is clear enough. He is in pain. He has been in prison for eight years. He says that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. He says that he is innocent of the crimes for which he has been convicted. He says that he has treated the judiciary of the country of his imprisonment with courtesy and respect at all times. But now, at the age of 57, he is dying. Who can tell when? Only God knows; or, in the absence of God, no one. The little gods of the media demand no less; within three months at that. His death will occur soon enough no doubt, with or without journalistic temptations of providence. He wishes to clear his name while there is still a little time left. That much should be understandable to any fully paid-up member of the human race.
The Lord Advocate declares that the appropriate forum for innocence or guilt to be decided is a court of law, and that it was Megrahi's decision to withdraw from the legal determination of his case. This claim ignores two realities of the situation. First, there have been too many grave miscarriages of justice in this country for the authority of the judicial system ever to be completely trusted. Earlier this week it was announced that, in the light of the release of Sean Hodgson after 27 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, DNA evidence having proved that he could not have committed it, no fewer than 240 murder and rape convictions are now being 'reviewed' in England and Wales. Second, the failure of Megrahi's appeal against conviction to be heard is not his fault, but the result of a succession of official delays which have never been satisfactorily explained.
Yet, audaciously, the Lord Advocate suggests that, in dropping the appeal, he has made his subsequent action deplorable. Consider the position in which he finds himself. He wishes to return to his own country, to his family, as any of us would wish to do. He believes that dropping the appeal will hasten this outcome. He drops the appeal. He achieves the desired outcome. But still he is anxious to tell the world what he would have said if the long-delayed hearing had ever gone ahead.
All this is simple humanity. It is how any of us might choose to defend the integrity of our life as it comes to an end. It is basic stuff. But I agree that it is essentially an emotional response, in the same way that Mrs Angiolini reached for a word of feeling, the word 'deplore'.
As it happens, however, it is not just simple humanity. It is not just basic stuff. The dying man's entitlement to do what he did last week is actually enshrined in a piece of legislation called the Human Rights Act 1998. Mrs Angiolini is more familiar with this act than most of us. In 1997, she ceased for a while to be a prosecutor in the criminal courts and joined the Crown Office as head of policy. One of her responsibilities was to prepare her department for the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998. I imagine that, a brief 11 years later, she will not have forgotten what it says.
She will not have forgotten, for example, Article 10 on free expression. Free expression, to which you and I have a human right, is defined in the legislation as the holding of views or opinions, the speaking of them aloud or their publication in articles or books or leaflets, or the broadcasting of them on television or radio, or their communication through the internet. Under Article 10, you and I may use language which others find offensive or shocking, so long as we are not doing so in a racial or ethnic context. This means that, although you and I may find the Lord Advocate's use of language last Friday slightly offensive, she is perfectly entitled to use such language. But the dying man is equally entitled to express his opinions and the law specifically permits him to use the internet as a medium for doing so.
Since, then, the dying man is exercising his legal entitlement under the Human Rights Act 1998, I must put the question again: what is there to deplore? The use of the word tells us more about the Lord Advocate than it does about the case. It is possible that Mrs Angiolini is so exasperated by the constant questioning of the Crown Office's motives and conduct during her years as Solicitor General (2001-06) and Lord Advocate (since 2006) that she could restrain herself no longer. The questioning, however, continues; it will not go away. An essay in the current edition of the London Review of Books by her fellow solicitor, Gareth Peirce, concludes after a devastating forensic deconstruction of the Lockerbie prosecution that there has been 'a form of death in this case – the death of justice'. Such perceptions do serious damage. What follows 'the death of justice'? From Mrs Angiolini or her successor we should hear no more talk of deploring. We need an open mind, a fresh start, a spirit of humility. But beyond that, a structural change is required. It is time to separate the two functions of the office of Lord Advocate, disempowering the holder of the office from any responsibility for public prosecutions. This change has long been mooted; it has become overdue. If it is too late to save the reputation of Megrahi, it should not be too late to save the reputation of Scottish justice.
Deception over Lockerbie?
[This is the title of a lengthy review article by Dr Malise Ruthven in the October 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books. The following are excerpts.]
After it became clear that Megrahi could not be excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement, it seems the Scottish and British governments actively encouraged him and his legal team to seek a release on compassionate grounds.
At stake, for the British, were contracts for oil and gas exploration worth up to £15 billion ($24 billion) for British Petroleum (BP), announced in May 2007, as well as plans to open a London office of the Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign fund with £83 billion ($136 billion) to invest. Libya refused to ratify the contracts until Straw abandoned his insistence on excluding Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement. Shortly after Brown's statement, Straw admitted—in apparent contradiction to his prime minister—that oil had been "a very big part" of his negotiations. British leaders were also warned that trade deals worth billions could be canceled. "The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage," Straw wrote to MacAskill in December 2007, "and in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom I have agreed that in this instance the PTA [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual." Within six weeks of the British government's concession, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalized in May of this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.
For the SNP government in Edinburgh, the "compassion loophole" made it possible to avoid authorizing Megrahi's release under an agreement negotiated by London. The decision was widely condemned in Scotland, with the minority SNP administration losing a vote by 73–50 in the Scottish parliament on a government motion that the release of Megrahi on compassionate grounds was "consistent with the principles of Scottish justice." But there was a further twist to this story. Before his release from Greenock prison near Glasgow and his flight to Tripoli in a chartered Libyan jet, Megrahi agreed to drop his appeal against the life sentence he received from the specially convened Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.
Megrahi has always insisted on his innocence, and doubts about his conviction have been expressed by several influential figures, most notably Dr. Jim Swire, a spokesman for the UK families of Flight 103, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, and Professor Hans Köchler, official UN observer at Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist. In his reports to the UN secretary-general, Köchler deplored the political atmosphere of the trial and the failure of the court to consider evidence of foreign (i.e., non-Libyan) government involvement that formed part of a special defense—inculpating others—that is available under Scottish law.
He was even more forthright in condemning the rejection of Megrahi's first appeal in March 2002—calling it a "spectacular miscarriage of justice"—which took place at the same time as discussions with Libya over compensation for the victims' families. The presence of a Libyan "defense support team" hampered the efforts of the Scottish defense lawyers, who failed to raise vital questions about the withholding of evidence and the reliability of witnesses. Two notable omissions Köchler highlighted were the alleged coaching of a key prosecution witness by Scottish police and the appeal court's failure to consider evidence of a break-in at the baggage storage area in London's Heathrow airport on the night before the bombing. (...)
A widely held suspicion at the beginning of the investigation pointed toward the culpability of a Palestinian faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC), working under the protection of Syria. The theory held that the PFLP-GC, who specialized in aircraft hijackings using semtex bombs concealed in tape recorders, may have been "sub- contracted" by Syria's Iranian allies to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, just months before the bombing of Flight 103.
At the time Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that the skies would "rain blood" in revenge for the loss of 290 civilian lives, including 66 children. Two defectors from Iranian intelligence agencies—or alleged defectors—subsequently accused the Iranian government of being behind the attacks for which the PFLP-GC was said to have been paid $10 million. Some analysts have argued that leads pointing toward the Palestinian-Syrian-Iranian connection were purposefully deflected after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when Syria became—albeit temporarily—a US coalition ally. Libya, the only Arab state to support Saddam's invasion, remained a more tenable target for exacting exemplary justice.
After a decade of sanctions and interventions by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and South African President Nelson Mandela, the Libyans in 1999 gave up Megrahi and his alleged associate Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who would later be acquitted. The case against Megrahi hinged on a fragment recovered at Lockerbie of a timing device traced to a Swiss manufacturer, Mebo. The firm had sold timers to Libya that differed in design from those allegedly used in cassette bombs of the type attributed to the PFLP-GC. The clothing in which the bomb was said to have been wrapped inside a suitcase was traced to a shop in Malta that Megrahi was alleged to have visited, traveling under an assumed name, on December 20–21, 1988.
Although the evidence was purely circumstantial (there was no direct evidence that either he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft), the judges wrote in their decision that the preponderance of the evidence led them to believe that Megrahi was guilty as charged. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum of twenty-seven years, to be served in a Scottish jail. A major reason for US anger at Megrahi's release has been the repeated assurances given by the British government that he would serve out his full term.
In December 2003, as part of its campaign to end UN sanctions and abandon its pariah status, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, and agreed to pay compensation to the victims' families—although it continued to maintain Megrahi's innocence, as he had done throughout his trial. His position divided observers: some see his continuing denial as the standard response of a professional intelligence officer, as summarized by the unofficial motto of the CIA's Office of Technical Services—"admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations."
Others, including a significant group of Scottish lawyers and laypersons, take a different view. In June 2007, after an investigation lasting nearly four years, the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission delivered an eight-hundred-page report—with thirteen annexes—that identified several areas where "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred" and referred Megrahi's case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. The commission considered evidence that cast doubt on the dates on which Megrahi was supposed to have been in Malta as well as the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to have sold clothing to Megrahi. He had changed his testimony several times, and had been shown Megrahi's photograph before picking him out of a line-up. It was expected that the fresh appeal would also consider new evidence about the timing device, as well as the reported break-in at Heathrow airport, which indicate that the bomb could have been planted in London rather than in a suitcase checked from Malta to New York, as the prosecution had claimed.
In July 2007, Ulrich Lumpert, a former engineer at Mebo and a key technical witness, admitted that he had committed perjury at the Camp Zeist trial. In a sworn affidavit he declared that he had stolen a handmade sample of an MST-13 Timer PC-board from Mebo in Zurich and handed it to an unnamed official investigating the Lockerbie case. He also affirmed that the fragment of the timer presented in court as part of the Lockerbie wreckage had in fact been part of this stolen sample. When he became aware that this piece was to be used as evidence for an "intentionally politically motivated criminal undertaking," he said, he decided to keep silent out of fear for his life.
Although it would have been necessary for Megrahi to drop his appeal under the prisoner transfer scheme, this was not a precondition for release on compassionate grounds. Nevertheless it seems likely that he was pressured into abandoning the appeal. Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, has suggested that the dropping of the appeal, rather than "a deal involving business," was the real quid pro quo behind Megrahi's release. According to Miles, Scottish legal sources had been talking of a mood of "growing anxiety in the Scottish justice department that a successful appeal...would severely damage the reputation of the Scottish justice system."
After it became clear that Megrahi could not be excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement, it seems the Scottish and British governments actively encouraged him and his legal team to seek a release on compassionate grounds.
At stake, for the British, were contracts for oil and gas exploration worth up to £15 billion ($24 billion) for British Petroleum (BP), announced in May 2007, as well as plans to open a London office of the Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign fund with £83 billion ($136 billion) to invest. Libya refused to ratify the contracts until Straw abandoned his insistence on excluding Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement. Shortly after Brown's statement, Straw admitted—in apparent contradiction to his prime minister—that oil had been "a very big part" of his negotiations. British leaders were also warned that trade deals worth billions could be canceled. "The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage," Straw wrote to MacAskill in December 2007, "and in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom I have agreed that in this instance the PTA [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual." Within six weeks of the British government's concession, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalized in May of this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.
For the SNP government in Edinburgh, the "compassion loophole" made it possible to avoid authorizing Megrahi's release under an agreement negotiated by London. The decision was widely condemned in Scotland, with the minority SNP administration losing a vote by 73–50 in the Scottish parliament on a government motion that the release of Megrahi on compassionate grounds was "consistent with the principles of Scottish justice." But there was a further twist to this story. Before his release from Greenock prison near Glasgow and his flight to Tripoli in a chartered Libyan jet, Megrahi agreed to drop his appeal against the life sentence he received from the specially convened Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.
Megrahi has always insisted on his innocence, and doubts about his conviction have been expressed by several influential figures, most notably Dr. Jim Swire, a spokesman for the UK families of Flight 103, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, and Professor Hans Köchler, official UN observer at Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist. In his reports to the UN secretary-general, Köchler deplored the political atmosphere of the trial and the failure of the court to consider evidence of foreign (i.e., non-Libyan) government involvement that formed part of a special defense—inculpating others—that is available under Scottish law.
He was even more forthright in condemning the rejection of Megrahi's first appeal in March 2002—calling it a "spectacular miscarriage of justice"—which took place at the same time as discussions with Libya over compensation for the victims' families. The presence of a Libyan "defense support team" hampered the efforts of the Scottish defense lawyers, who failed to raise vital questions about the withholding of evidence and the reliability of witnesses. Two notable omissions Köchler highlighted were the alleged coaching of a key prosecution witness by Scottish police and the appeal court's failure to consider evidence of a break-in at the baggage storage area in London's Heathrow airport on the night before the bombing. (...)
A widely held suspicion at the beginning of the investigation pointed toward the culpability of a Palestinian faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC), working under the protection of Syria. The theory held that the PFLP-GC, who specialized in aircraft hijackings using semtex bombs concealed in tape recorders, may have been "sub- contracted" by Syria's Iranian allies to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, just months before the bombing of Flight 103.
At the time Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that the skies would "rain blood" in revenge for the loss of 290 civilian lives, including 66 children. Two defectors from Iranian intelligence agencies—or alleged defectors—subsequently accused the Iranian government of being behind the attacks for which the PFLP-GC was said to have been paid $10 million. Some analysts have argued that leads pointing toward the Palestinian-Syrian-Iranian connection were purposefully deflected after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when Syria became—albeit temporarily—a US coalition ally. Libya, the only Arab state to support Saddam's invasion, remained a more tenable target for exacting exemplary justice.
After a decade of sanctions and interventions by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and South African President Nelson Mandela, the Libyans in 1999 gave up Megrahi and his alleged associate Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who would later be acquitted. The case against Megrahi hinged on a fragment recovered at Lockerbie of a timing device traced to a Swiss manufacturer, Mebo. The firm had sold timers to Libya that differed in design from those allegedly used in cassette bombs of the type attributed to the PFLP-GC. The clothing in which the bomb was said to have been wrapped inside a suitcase was traced to a shop in Malta that Megrahi was alleged to have visited, traveling under an assumed name, on December 20–21, 1988.
Although the evidence was purely circumstantial (there was no direct evidence that either he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft), the judges wrote in their decision that the preponderance of the evidence led them to believe that Megrahi was guilty as charged. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum of twenty-seven years, to be served in a Scottish jail. A major reason for US anger at Megrahi's release has been the repeated assurances given by the British government that he would serve out his full term.
In December 2003, as part of its campaign to end UN sanctions and abandon its pariah status, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, and agreed to pay compensation to the victims' families—although it continued to maintain Megrahi's innocence, as he had done throughout his trial. His position divided observers: some see his continuing denial as the standard response of a professional intelligence officer, as summarized by the unofficial motto of the CIA's Office of Technical Services—"admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations."
Others, including a significant group of Scottish lawyers and laypersons, take a different view. In June 2007, after an investigation lasting nearly four years, the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission delivered an eight-hundred-page report—with thirteen annexes—that identified several areas where "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred" and referred Megrahi's case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. The commission considered evidence that cast doubt on the dates on which Megrahi was supposed to have been in Malta as well as the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to have sold clothing to Megrahi. He had changed his testimony several times, and had been shown Megrahi's photograph before picking him out of a line-up. It was expected that the fresh appeal would also consider new evidence about the timing device, as well as the reported break-in at Heathrow airport, which indicate that the bomb could have been planted in London rather than in a suitcase checked from Malta to New York, as the prosecution had claimed.
In July 2007, Ulrich Lumpert, a former engineer at Mebo and a key technical witness, admitted that he had committed perjury at the Camp Zeist trial. In a sworn affidavit he declared that he had stolen a handmade sample of an MST-13 Timer PC-board from Mebo in Zurich and handed it to an unnamed official investigating the Lockerbie case. He also affirmed that the fragment of the timer presented in court as part of the Lockerbie wreckage had in fact been part of this stolen sample. When he became aware that this piece was to be used as evidence for an "intentionally politically motivated criminal undertaking," he said, he decided to keep silent out of fear for his life.
Although it would have been necessary for Megrahi to drop his appeal under the prisoner transfer scheme, this was not a precondition for release on compassionate grounds. Nevertheless it seems likely that he was pressured into abandoning the appeal. Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, has suggested that the dropping of the appeal, rather than "a deal involving business," was the real quid pro quo behind Megrahi's release. According to Miles, Scottish legal sources had been talking of a mood of "growing anxiety in the Scottish justice department that a successful appeal...would severely damage the reputation of the Scottish justice system."
Gaddafi at the UN
[Most of today's London and Scottish newspapers carry reports on Colonel Gaddafi's attendance at the United Nations and the speech which he is to deliver later today at the 64th session of the General Assembly. The following are excerpts from the story in The Herald.]
Protests will greet Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as he heads to the United Nations in New York today.
The Libyan leader is due to address the general assembly in the morning session with demonstrations planned for outside the compound from relatives of the Lockerbie bombing and other terrorist atrocities. (...)
But it is the appearance of Mr Gaddafi so soon after the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - the man convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 - that is likely to draw most attention in the US.
Of the 270 lives lost when the plane crashed after exploding over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, 189 were American.
The release of the terminally ill Megrahi on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government drew widespread condemnation in the US.
As such, the appearance of Mr Gaddafi in New York could not have come at a more sensitive time. (...)
He arrived yesterday ahead of the UN meeting and anticipated associated demonstrations.
Attending today’s action will be relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing. They will march on the UN compound alongside others affected by terrorist atrocities, including loved ones of those killed in the September 11 attacks in New York.
Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103, said: “We are planning a massive demonstration in New York City when Gaddafi will arrive here - objecting to the presence of the Libyan leader on the US soil.
“I personally understand the motives of the US government in trying to bring Libya into the community of peaceful nations, but that does not mean that we have to roll out the red carpet for him to strut on.
“He delights in rubbing salt into our wounds, and he has already misled the UN as to his intentions.”
Protests will greet Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as he heads to the United Nations in New York today.
The Libyan leader is due to address the general assembly in the morning session with demonstrations planned for outside the compound from relatives of the Lockerbie bombing and other terrorist atrocities. (...)
But it is the appearance of Mr Gaddafi so soon after the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - the man convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 - that is likely to draw most attention in the US.
Of the 270 lives lost when the plane crashed after exploding over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, 189 were American.
The release of the terminally ill Megrahi on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government drew widespread condemnation in the US.
As such, the appearance of Mr Gaddafi in New York could not have come at a more sensitive time. (...)
He arrived yesterday ahead of the UN meeting and anticipated associated demonstrations.
Attending today’s action will be relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing. They will march on the UN compound alongside others affected by terrorist atrocities, including loved ones of those killed in the September 11 attacks in New York.
Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103, said: “We are planning a massive demonstration in New York City when Gaddafi will arrive here - objecting to the presence of the Libyan leader on the US soil.
“I personally understand the motives of the US government in trying to bring Libya into the community of peaceful nations, but that does not mean that we have to roll out the red carpet for him to strut on.
“He delights in rubbing salt into our wounds, and he has already misled the UN as to his intentions.”
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
MSPs to hold bomber release probe
[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
The Scottish Parliament's justice committee has announced it will hold a short inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill released Megrahi, who is terminally ill, on compassionate grounds last month.
Opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament later united in a vote to condemn the SNP minister's move.
Now the justice committee has voted by a majority to probe the decision. (...)
The decision to release him sparked outrage in the US, where many of the victims were from.
Tory justice spokesman and justice committee convener, Bill Aitken, said: "This inquiry will be an opportunity for the Scottish Government to allay the concerns which many hold regarding the processes followed in the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber - irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the decision itself."
The Scottish Parliament's justice committee has announced it will hold a short inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill released Megrahi, who is terminally ill, on compassionate grounds last month.
Opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament later united in a vote to condemn the SNP minister's move.
Now the justice committee has voted by a majority to probe the decision. (...)
The decision to release him sparked outrage in the US, where many of the victims were from.
Tory justice spokesman and justice committee convener, Bill Aitken, said: "This inquiry will be an opportunity for the Scottish Government to allay the concerns which many hold regarding the processes followed in the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber - irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the decision itself."
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