[This is the heading over a letter by Tom Minogue published in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]
Many of the huge number of online commentators on Eddie Barnes' article (17 July) were incensed by the possibility that Scotland's justice minister might be summoned to Washington to explain his decision to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
I was dismayed, but not surprised at the stance taken by the US as it is in keeping with the history of the Lockerbie trial.
Back in 2001 the United Nations-appointed independent observer to the trial at the Scots court in [the Netherlands], Professor Hans Koechler, voiced his serious concerns that senior US Justice Department officials were in the body of the court and appeared to be directing the Crown Office prosecution staff. (...)
Scotland has a history of subservient over-eagerness to do our American cousin's bidding - Alex Salmond's fawning over Donald Trump, for example - and if the Yanks were allowed to run the show at the Lockerbie trial, then it shouldn't surprise anyone if they attempt to interfere further in that saga by summoning our justice minister as if they were ordering a taxi.
If our legal system and officials have been tarnished by Lockerbie, then there is one redeeming aspect of the sorry affair and that is the fact that at long last one Scots lawyer, MSP Christine Grahame, has had the courage to point out that the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) found that there was serious doubt as to the safety of Megrahi's conviction - something that Salmond, McAskill, and Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini have studiously avoided mentioning.
Mrs Grahame is also calling for the US to take part in a full inquiry into all of the circumstances surrounding the Lockerbie trial. Good for her. She typifies the best qualities of our nation: independent and brave; telling it like it is, without fear of our powerful neighbour across the pond, or of her bosses at Holyrood.
I fear that her doubts about Megrahi's trial and conviction, like those of the UN observer and the SCCRC, will not be taken seriously by the powers that be.
[The four readers' letters on the subject published in today's edition of The Herald are also worth reading.]
Monday, 19 July 2010
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Tory MP calls on PM to hold inquiry into Megrahi release
A Tory MP has made a fresh call for a full public inquiry into the release of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
The chairman of Westminster's all-party group on Libya, Daniel Kawczynski, has written to the prime minister.
He urged David Cameron to hold Scottish ministers to account for their decision to allow Abdelbaset al-Megrahi home to Libya on compassionate grounds.
The Scottish government said an inquiry had already been held. (...)
The US Senate foreign relations committee said it would ask BP officials to testify after the company admitted lobbying the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) with Libya.
The Scottish government denied having any contact with BP before its decision.
A spokesman for Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond said the Scottish government had opposed the PTA between the UK and Libya, which was brokered by former prime minister Tony Blair.
The spokesman said Megrahi had been released on compassionate grounds.
"If the US Senate wants to get the truth about the 'deal in the desert' by the UK and Libyan governments in 2007, they should call Tony Blair to give evidence," the spokesman said.
"Blair was its architect - he would be the one who knows about an oil deal.
"Kenny MacAskill rejected Libya's prisoner transfer application for al-Megrahi and he based his decisions on both the PTA and the compassionate release application on strict justice criteria."
The spokesman added: "We have of course had an inquiry in the Scottish Parliament, and also by the Westminster Scottish Affairs Select Committee, which was very critical of the UK government for keeping Scottish ministers in the dark about Tony Blair's deal in the desert on a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya."
[From a report on the BBC News website.
I wonder precisely what powers Mr Kawczynski believes the Prime Minister (or, indeed, the UK Government) has to "hold Scottish ministers to account" in respect of a function (deciding on the compassionate release of a prisoner in a Scottish jail) that the law of the land confers upon the Scottish government. Or is this just a case of a British MP wanting to demonstrate that he can be just as daft and uninformed and publicity-hungry as a US senator?]
The chairman of Westminster's all-party group on Libya, Daniel Kawczynski, has written to the prime minister.
He urged David Cameron to hold Scottish ministers to account for their decision to allow Abdelbaset al-Megrahi home to Libya on compassionate grounds.
The Scottish government said an inquiry had already been held. (...)
The US Senate foreign relations committee said it would ask BP officials to testify after the company admitted lobbying the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) with Libya.
The Scottish government denied having any contact with BP before its decision.
A spokesman for Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond said the Scottish government had opposed the PTA between the UK and Libya, which was brokered by former prime minister Tony Blair.
The spokesman said Megrahi had been released on compassionate grounds.
"If the US Senate wants to get the truth about the 'deal in the desert' by the UK and Libyan governments in 2007, they should call Tony Blair to give evidence," the spokesman said.
"Blair was its architect - he would be the one who knows about an oil deal.
"Kenny MacAskill rejected Libya's prisoner transfer application for al-Megrahi and he based his decisions on both the PTA and the compassionate release application on strict justice criteria."
The spokesman added: "We have of course had an inquiry in the Scottish Parliament, and also by the Westminster Scottish Affairs Select Committee, which was very critical of the UK government for keeping Scottish ministers in the dark about Tony Blair's deal in the desert on a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya."
[From a report on the BBC News website.
I wonder precisely what powers Mr Kawczynski believes the Prime Minister (or, indeed, the UK Government) has to "hold Scottish ministers to account" in respect of a function (deciding on the compassionate release of a prisoner in a Scottish jail) that the law of the land confers upon the Scottish government. Or is this just a case of a British MP wanting to demonstrate that he can be just as daft and uninformed and publicity-hungry as a US senator?]
Did BP play a part in the release of the Lockerbie bomber?
[This is the headline over an article by Eddie Barnes in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. It reads in part:]
Bob Monetti laughs sarcastically. "This is the story that never goes away, huh?" Just before Christmas in 1988, Monetti was preparing to welcome his son Richard back home. (...) But Richard never made it home.
Thirty-eight minutes after taking off from Heathrow Airport, he was murdered when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up in the skies above Lockerbie.
Bob Monetti and the rest of the family drew some solace after his death from the links they formed here. "The only people who were heroes in this were the Scottish people. The people of Lockerbie were wonderful," he says. Then, just under year ago, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi - the man he is convinced killed his son - was released by Scottish ministers. His voice takes on a different tone. He sounds resigned to cynicism. "The Scots caved into the English so that these BP oil contracts could go ahead," he says. "BP does what BP does. They will make money any way they can. The thing that really has hurt is the Scottish reputation. They (the Scottish Government] have been fighting for independence and the first thing they do is cave in." (...)
The outrage felt in America last August when Al Megrahi was freed by Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, on compassionate grounds has re-emerged with a vengeance. Scottish and UK ministers are once again facing accusations of having let him go for all the wrong reasons. This week, David Cameron heads to Washington for his first talks in the White House with Barack Obama, with Lockerbie one of the issues being raised. The outcry over the case suggests that the relationship between the UK and the US is no longer quite so special. (...)
The latest burst of senatorial anger over Lockerbie does not have its roots in Scotland but in the oil-filled waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Last week, BP finally plugged the leak in its broken well off the coast of Louisiana, a full 87 days after it first exploded. (...)
Halfway around the world, it emerged that Libya had given approval for BP to start a well in the Gulf of Sirt off the African coast. With awful timing, the oil firm's 2007 deal with Libya to begin exploiting the rich reserves held by the country, was finally being realised.
This was the deal, the Americans remembered, that had been linked to an agreement between the UK and Libyan government to allow prisoners including Al Megrahi to be transferred from one country to the other. BP's oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico was not the only thing about to blow. Their sense of injustice already high as a result of the BP oil spill, senators Robert Menendez, Kirsten Gillibrand and Frank Lautenberg decided to open a new front. "The question we now have to answer is, was this corporation willing to trade justice in the murder of 270 innocent people for oil profit?" (...)
Of more interest to the senators are the stories which have emerged in the UK following Al Megrahi's release about the oil firm's alleged involvement. The company reached its agreement with Libya in late 2007, in the wake of Tony Blair's historic meeting with Colonel Muammar Gadaffi - the so-called "deal in the desert". It was here that the pair first discussed, among other things, a prisoner transfer agreement. Quite what the pair actually agreed upon is still a matter of conjecture. For the Libyans, however, the terms of the deal were clear - Al Megrahi was involved. Speaking on Libyan TV last year, Gadaffi's son, Saif al-Islam Gadaffi told Al Megrahi: "In all the trade, oil and gas deals which I have supervised, you were there on the table. When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table."
BP now makes no bones that it raised the question of the prisoner transfer agreement which Libya wanted signed before the oil exploration deal was agreed. Sir Mark Allan, a former MI5 spy and a consultant for BP, lobbied former Justice Secretary Jack Straw to get the matter dealt with. A spokesman for BP said last week the firm was "concerned about the slow progress that was being made" to resolve the deal. Sir Mark contacted Straw to try to push things along. As it emerged last year, Straw was persuaded; agreeing to include Al Megrahi as part of the PTA deal. Hence the conspiracy has grown legs.
But this view of the saga has several weak points. First, as Straw himself pointed out, he never had the power to actually release Al Megrahi in the first place. So, while intelligence sources insist that Al Megrahi almost certainly came up in the Libya-UK talks, talk of a deal to release him remains fanciful, relying as it does on the improbable scenario of the UK Labour government strong-arming the SNP-led Scottish Government into doing what it wanted.
The UK ambassador to the USA, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, took the unusual step of writing to Kerry on the Senate Committee last week, urging him to effectively tone it down. "The British Government worked with British business to promote legitimate commercial interests with Libya," he wrote. "But there was no link between those legitimate commercial activities and the Scottish Executive's decision to release Megrahi."
As for that decision, no-one yet has come up with any explanation beyond the obvious one stated at the time. Despite a huge amount of correspondence being published since, there is no evidence that Kenny MacAskill was influenced by any commercial interests. He actually refused to release Al Megrahi under the terms of the prisoner transfer agreement negotiated by the British, with Alex Salmond having already made plain his opposition to it. Instead, with Al Megrahi's plea for clemency ringing in his ears, the Justice Secretary decided to show him compassion. Within St Andrew's House MacAskill's aides understand that American relatives disagree with the decision to release Al Megrahi for compassionate reasons - particularly as he remains alive. But there is frustration they are being dragged into a conspiracy in which they played no part. One senior source says: "Where were these senators in 2007 when Blair did his deal in the desert and what did they think the PTA was all about? Instead, they gave him standing ovations in the Capitol." (...)
Many come from Frank Duggan, another relative, who represents the Victims of Flight 103 group. "So the Brits are now saying it was a mistake to release Megrahi, but we didn't do it the Scots did, and that BP did lobby us but didn't mention Megrahi by name," he wrote on Friday. "Meanwhile, Gaddafi's son says we always spoke of Megrahi during the negotiations with BP. The Scots, on the other hand, say we never talked to BP, it was the Brits. And we let him go because he was clearly terminally ill. And this had nothing to do with the prisoner transfer agreement. Don't you think there are some questions to answer?"
The questions now look set to be put, with both MacAskill and Straw among those who may be called for testimony in Washington next week. But whether families such as the Monettis (...) will get the answers they have long awaited, is another matter entirely.
[The same newspaper's editorial on the subject can be read here and an article in The Independent on Sunday here.]
Bob Monetti laughs sarcastically. "This is the story that never goes away, huh?" Just before Christmas in 1988, Monetti was preparing to welcome his son Richard back home. (...) But Richard never made it home.
Thirty-eight minutes after taking off from Heathrow Airport, he was murdered when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up in the skies above Lockerbie.
Bob Monetti and the rest of the family drew some solace after his death from the links they formed here. "The only people who were heroes in this were the Scottish people. The people of Lockerbie were wonderful," he says. Then, just under year ago, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi - the man he is convinced killed his son - was released by Scottish ministers. His voice takes on a different tone. He sounds resigned to cynicism. "The Scots caved into the English so that these BP oil contracts could go ahead," he says. "BP does what BP does. They will make money any way they can. The thing that really has hurt is the Scottish reputation. They (the Scottish Government] have been fighting for independence and the first thing they do is cave in." (...)
The outrage felt in America last August when Al Megrahi was freed by Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, on compassionate grounds has re-emerged with a vengeance. Scottish and UK ministers are once again facing accusations of having let him go for all the wrong reasons. This week, David Cameron heads to Washington for his first talks in the White House with Barack Obama, with Lockerbie one of the issues being raised. The outcry over the case suggests that the relationship between the UK and the US is no longer quite so special. (...)
The latest burst of senatorial anger over Lockerbie does not have its roots in Scotland but in the oil-filled waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Last week, BP finally plugged the leak in its broken well off the coast of Louisiana, a full 87 days after it first exploded. (...)
Halfway around the world, it emerged that Libya had given approval for BP to start a well in the Gulf of Sirt off the African coast. With awful timing, the oil firm's 2007 deal with Libya to begin exploiting the rich reserves held by the country, was finally being realised.
This was the deal, the Americans remembered, that had been linked to an agreement between the UK and Libyan government to allow prisoners including Al Megrahi to be transferred from one country to the other. BP's oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico was not the only thing about to blow. Their sense of injustice already high as a result of the BP oil spill, senators Robert Menendez, Kirsten Gillibrand and Frank Lautenberg decided to open a new front. "The question we now have to answer is, was this corporation willing to trade justice in the murder of 270 innocent people for oil profit?" (...)
Of more interest to the senators are the stories which have emerged in the UK following Al Megrahi's release about the oil firm's alleged involvement. The company reached its agreement with Libya in late 2007, in the wake of Tony Blair's historic meeting with Colonel Muammar Gadaffi - the so-called "deal in the desert". It was here that the pair first discussed, among other things, a prisoner transfer agreement. Quite what the pair actually agreed upon is still a matter of conjecture. For the Libyans, however, the terms of the deal were clear - Al Megrahi was involved. Speaking on Libyan TV last year, Gadaffi's son, Saif al-Islam Gadaffi told Al Megrahi: "In all the trade, oil and gas deals which I have supervised, you were there on the table. When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table."
BP now makes no bones that it raised the question of the prisoner transfer agreement which Libya wanted signed before the oil exploration deal was agreed. Sir Mark Allan, a former MI5 spy and a consultant for BP, lobbied former Justice Secretary Jack Straw to get the matter dealt with. A spokesman for BP said last week the firm was "concerned about the slow progress that was being made" to resolve the deal. Sir Mark contacted Straw to try to push things along. As it emerged last year, Straw was persuaded; agreeing to include Al Megrahi as part of the PTA deal. Hence the conspiracy has grown legs.
But this view of the saga has several weak points. First, as Straw himself pointed out, he never had the power to actually release Al Megrahi in the first place. So, while intelligence sources insist that Al Megrahi almost certainly came up in the Libya-UK talks, talk of a deal to release him remains fanciful, relying as it does on the improbable scenario of the UK Labour government strong-arming the SNP-led Scottish Government into doing what it wanted.
The UK ambassador to the USA, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, took the unusual step of writing to Kerry on the Senate Committee last week, urging him to effectively tone it down. "The British Government worked with British business to promote legitimate commercial interests with Libya," he wrote. "But there was no link between those legitimate commercial activities and the Scottish Executive's decision to release Megrahi."
As for that decision, no-one yet has come up with any explanation beyond the obvious one stated at the time. Despite a huge amount of correspondence being published since, there is no evidence that Kenny MacAskill was influenced by any commercial interests. He actually refused to release Al Megrahi under the terms of the prisoner transfer agreement negotiated by the British, with Alex Salmond having already made plain his opposition to it. Instead, with Al Megrahi's plea for clemency ringing in his ears, the Justice Secretary decided to show him compassion. Within St Andrew's House MacAskill's aides understand that American relatives disagree with the decision to release Al Megrahi for compassionate reasons - particularly as he remains alive. But there is frustration they are being dragged into a conspiracy in which they played no part. One senior source says: "Where were these senators in 2007 when Blair did his deal in the desert and what did they think the PTA was all about? Instead, they gave him standing ovations in the Capitol." (...)
Many come from Frank Duggan, another relative, who represents the Victims of Flight 103 group. "So the Brits are now saying it was a mistake to release Megrahi, but we didn't do it the Scots did, and that BP did lobby us but didn't mention Megrahi by name," he wrote on Friday. "Meanwhile, Gaddafi's son says we always spoke of Megrahi during the negotiations with BP. The Scots, on the other hand, say we never talked to BP, it was the Brits. And we let him go because he was clearly terminally ill. And this had nothing to do with the prisoner transfer agreement. Don't you think there are some questions to answer?"
The questions now look set to be put, with both MacAskill and Straw among those who may be called for testimony in Washington next week. But whether families such as the Monettis (...) will get the answers they have long awaited, is another matter entirely.
[The same newspaper's editorial on the subject can be read here and an article in The Independent on Sunday here.]
The Sunday Herald on the BP/Megrahi furore
[The Sunday Herald contains a long article by James Cusick. The following are excerpts:]
In the current open season on oil company BP, a core of senators have switched their attentions from the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to BP’s exploration deals with Libya – and allegations that the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi helped BP secure a $900 million deal.
In his visit to Washington next week, Prime Minister David Cameron will discover if the senators are merely showboating ahead of their mid-term elections or whether they are serious about dissecting the role of international diplomacy and back-stage politics in the rehabilitation of oil-rich rogue states. For one leading energy consultant in London, who has commercial ties to oil and gas companies operating in the Middle East, showboating would be the preferred option.
“If Capitol Hill really wants the full, dark picture, they’ll need to do more than call in BP to answer a few questions,” he says.
“They might start with George Bush, Tony Blair and Condi Rice. Jack Straw would help; so would Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the United States. As well as BP, they should talk to Shell, Marathon, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, all of them. And, if they’ve time, Colonel Gaddafi’s son Seif and Musa Kusa, Libya’s former head of intelligence [and currently Foreign Minister]. This is a Pandora’s Box.”
Sir Nigel will be alongside Cameron in DC this week, just as he was alongside Tony Blair during his years as the British ambassador to the European Union, and later as Blair’s foreign policy adviser. Ahead of Cameron’s visit, it fell to Sir Nigel to state the coalition’s position on the release of Megrahi. “The new British Government is clear that Megrahi’s release was a mistake,” he said.
For Libyan diplomats, that will have come as a surprise. “Nigel and Tony” are regarded in Tripoli as the two figures who helped bring Megrahi home.
Operating behind the scenes and in direct contact with Gaddafi’s closest aides, it was Sir Nigel who – on Blair’s direct orders – helped broker the secret talks in 2003 between the UK and the US that eventually ended Libya’s exile and coaxed Gaddafi into ending his ambition to build a nuclear arsenal. After he and Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, had met Libyan officials, it was Sir Nigel who chaired a series of meetings in London with Libyan diplomats which sealed the deal.
In March the following year, Sir Nigel was with Blair when he visited Gaddafi’s tented complex in the desert outside Tripoli. One news paper report noted that it was 5,573 days since Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie. Blair was the first British prime minister to visit Tripoli since Churchill, and his job was to confer international respectability on the Gaddafi regime and to re-open the commercial opportunities in one of the world’s least explored oil territories. (...)
Lurking in the background, however, was one unresolved issue: one that regularly presented tribal difficulties for Gaddafi in internal Libyan politics. This was Megrahi’s imprisonment in Scotland. (...)
After Blair’s meeting with Gaddafi in 2004, pressure increased on both the UK and US governments to create the necessary conditions for further commercial activity. But Megrahi was still an unresolved part of the Libyan jigsaw – and, felt many in the Foreign Office, a vital one. Quietly, the prospect of a prisoner transfer deal crept on to the diplomatic agenda.
Gaddafi’s son Seif has said that Megrahi’s release was a constant reference point in any trade talks. And in a meeting with Megrahi after he returned to Tripoli last year, Seif told him: “When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table.”
According to a US embassy source in London, Seif would “scare the hell out of Capitol Hill” if he gave a witness testimony. It would not be what he had to say about BP – but what he could say about anyone from any country, including the US, trying to secure new and lucrative business with Libya. (...)
When Blair eventually returned to Tripoli in May 2007 to sign the so-called deal in the desert – a major step towards Libya’s international rehabilitation – it was Sir Nigel who had designed the “memorandum of understanding”. This included, for the first time, an outline of a legal agreement on prisoner transfer. On the same day that Blair and Gaddafi shook hands, both Blair and Sir Nigel travelled to the Libyan city of Sirt to watch BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward and the Libyan National Oil Company’s chairman Shokri Ghanem sign an exploration deal worth $900m.
Hayward knew he was delivering something big for BP. “Our agreement is the start of an enduring long-term and mutually beneficial partnership with Libya,” he said. “With its potentially large resources of gas, favourable geographic location and improving investment climate, Libya has an enormous opportunity to be a source of clean energy for the world.” (...)
BP expected the prisoner transfer agreement to be dealt with quickly by Westminster. But shortly after the signing ceremony between Hayward and Ghanem – which, although it looked formal enough, was still only an outline deal – Libyan officials were told by UK lawyers that there might be a problem with returning Megrahi to Tripoli. Transfer or release of prisoners from a Scottish jail was not a matter for Number 10 but for the devolved government at Holyrood.
According to a senior UK judicial source, when the prospect of delays in any prisoner transfer was suggested to Libya, it was dismissed as nonsense. One Libyan source claimed there would be no delay; that “Nigel and Tony have assured us”. This source also believed Megrahi would be back in Libya within six months.
But BP had begun to appreciate the Scottish problem. By the late autumn of 2007, the company was said to be worried about the slow progress being made in concluding the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
Last week BP officially acknowledged this concern. “We were aware this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan Government of BP’s exploration agreement,” the company said.
BP admits it lobbied the government, seeking to speed up the process of getting the transfer agreement into law. However, it denied it tried to intervene in the case of Megrahi in particular.
But Professor Black, the man who helped engineer the case at Zeist, says: “The prisoner transfer agreement and the potential release of Megrahi back to Libya have always been one and the same thing. It is disingenuous of BP to say they were different. Megrahi was always the name on the table. He was the only high-profile prisoner that mattered.”
Last year, Megrahi was released from jail on compassionate grounds by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary. MacAskill said the Libyan was in the final stages of prostate cancer and was expected to die within three months. He added that he was bound by Scottish values to release him and allow him to die in his home country. The transfer agreement – which the Scottish Government had criticised as unconstitutional because it had not been consulted – did not figure in the minister’s deliberations. (...)
The senate committee in Washington will care little about the constitutional in-fighting between Edinburgh and London. The former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has said that if Westminster had wanted to stop Megrahi leaving, it had the power to do so. “The last time I looked, Scotland wasn’t independent and doesn’t have powers over foreign policy,” said Bolton.
Although Sir Nigel says the UK Government believes the release of Megrahi was a mistake, he does not say if he thought it was mistake.
[Also in the Sunday Herald is an article by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill. It reads in part:]
My decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi last August was, as I made clear at the time and many times since, the right decision for the right reasons.
It was a decision based entirely upon the application for compassionate release that I was duty bound to consider. As I said then, it was not a decision I chose to make, but one I was obliged to make as Scotland’s Justice Secretary.
Megrahi was sent home to die according to the due process of Scots law, based on the medical report of the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care, and the recommendations of the parole board and prison governor – all of which have been published by the Scottish Government.
However, I was also faced with another, separate decision, in respect of Megrahi. That was the application before me for a transfer from Scotland under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed by the UK and Libyan governments.
I rejected that application because the US Government and the families of Lockerbie victims in the US had been led to believe such a prisoner transfer would not be possible for anyone convicted of the atrocity.
The Scottish Government has always totally opposed the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated between the UK and Libyan governments. The memorandum that led to the Agreement was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes.
That is why we chose to reveal the secret talks between the then Labour Government and the Libyans, as soon as we learned of the “deal in the desert” between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi, with the First Minister making a statement to the Scottish Parliament on the issue as far back as June 2007. (...)
Let us be clear: the issues now being raised in the United States about BP refer to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the governments of the UK and Libya, and so have nothing to do with the decision on compassionate release, which was a totally different process based on entirely different criteria.
And the Scottish Government had no contact from BP in relation to Megrahi.
We would always look to assist any properly constituted inquiry – and indeed we very much support a wider UK public inquiry or United Nations investigation capable of examining all the issues related to the Lockerbie atrocity, which go well beyond Scotland’s jurisdiction. That remains the case.
In terms of the new UK Government’s position on the Megrahi issue, we have known the Prime Minister’s opinion since last August, and he knows the due process of Scotland’s independent legal system was followed.
We also now know Professor Karol Sikora has rejected news paper reports that misrepresented his comments about Megrahi’s condition.
I said last August that Megrahi may die sooner or may die later than the three-month prognosis the experts then deemed to be a reasonable estimate of life expectancy – that is something over which we have had no control.
What is certain is the man rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing remains terminally ill with prostate cancer.
[Mr MacAskill's opinion that Mr Megrahi was "rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" is one that many, including the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, do not share.]
In the current open season on oil company BP, a core of senators have switched their attentions from the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to BP’s exploration deals with Libya – and allegations that the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi helped BP secure a $900 million deal.
In his visit to Washington next week, Prime Minister David Cameron will discover if the senators are merely showboating ahead of their mid-term elections or whether they are serious about dissecting the role of international diplomacy and back-stage politics in the rehabilitation of oil-rich rogue states. For one leading energy consultant in London, who has commercial ties to oil and gas companies operating in the Middle East, showboating would be the preferred option.
“If Capitol Hill really wants the full, dark picture, they’ll need to do more than call in BP to answer a few questions,” he says.
“They might start with George Bush, Tony Blair and Condi Rice. Jack Straw would help; so would Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the United States. As well as BP, they should talk to Shell, Marathon, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, all of them. And, if they’ve time, Colonel Gaddafi’s son Seif and Musa Kusa, Libya’s former head of intelligence [and currently Foreign Minister]. This is a Pandora’s Box.”
Sir Nigel will be alongside Cameron in DC this week, just as he was alongside Tony Blair during his years as the British ambassador to the European Union, and later as Blair’s foreign policy adviser. Ahead of Cameron’s visit, it fell to Sir Nigel to state the coalition’s position on the release of Megrahi. “The new British Government is clear that Megrahi’s release was a mistake,” he said.
For Libyan diplomats, that will have come as a surprise. “Nigel and Tony” are regarded in Tripoli as the two figures who helped bring Megrahi home.
Operating behind the scenes and in direct contact with Gaddafi’s closest aides, it was Sir Nigel who – on Blair’s direct orders – helped broker the secret talks in 2003 between the UK and the US that eventually ended Libya’s exile and coaxed Gaddafi into ending his ambition to build a nuclear arsenal. After he and Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, had met Libyan officials, it was Sir Nigel who chaired a series of meetings in London with Libyan diplomats which sealed the deal.
In March the following year, Sir Nigel was with Blair when he visited Gaddafi’s tented complex in the desert outside Tripoli. One news paper report noted that it was 5,573 days since Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie. Blair was the first British prime minister to visit Tripoli since Churchill, and his job was to confer international respectability on the Gaddafi regime and to re-open the commercial opportunities in one of the world’s least explored oil territories. (...)
Lurking in the background, however, was one unresolved issue: one that regularly presented tribal difficulties for Gaddafi in internal Libyan politics. This was Megrahi’s imprisonment in Scotland. (...)
After Blair’s meeting with Gaddafi in 2004, pressure increased on both the UK and US governments to create the necessary conditions for further commercial activity. But Megrahi was still an unresolved part of the Libyan jigsaw – and, felt many in the Foreign Office, a vital one. Quietly, the prospect of a prisoner transfer deal crept on to the diplomatic agenda.
Gaddafi’s son Seif has said that Megrahi’s release was a constant reference point in any trade talks. And in a meeting with Megrahi after he returned to Tripoli last year, Seif told him: “When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table.”
According to a US embassy source in London, Seif would “scare the hell out of Capitol Hill” if he gave a witness testimony. It would not be what he had to say about BP – but what he could say about anyone from any country, including the US, trying to secure new and lucrative business with Libya. (...)
When Blair eventually returned to Tripoli in May 2007 to sign the so-called deal in the desert – a major step towards Libya’s international rehabilitation – it was Sir Nigel who had designed the “memorandum of understanding”. This included, for the first time, an outline of a legal agreement on prisoner transfer. On the same day that Blair and Gaddafi shook hands, both Blair and Sir Nigel travelled to the Libyan city of Sirt to watch BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward and the Libyan National Oil Company’s chairman Shokri Ghanem sign an exploration deal worth $900m.
Hayward knew he was delivering something big for BP. “Our agreement is the start of an enduring long-term and mutually beneficial partnership with Libya,” he said. “With its potentially large resources of gas, favourable geographic location and improving investment climate, Libya has an enormous opportunity to be a source of clean energy for the world.” (...)
BP expected the prisoner transfer agreement to be dealt with quickly by Westminster. But shortly after the signing ceremony between Hayward and Ghanem – which, although it looked formal enough, was still only an outline deal – Libyan officials were told by UK lawyers that there might be a problem with returning Megrahi to Tripoli. Transfer or release of prisoners from a Scottish jail was not a matter for Number 10 but for the devolved government at Holyrood.
According to a senior UK judicial source, when the prospect of delays in any prisoner transfer was suggested to Libya, it was dismissed as nonsense. One Libyan source claimed there would be no delay; that “Nigel and Tony have assured us”. This source also believed Megrahi would be back in Libya within six months.
But BP had begun to appreciate the Scottish problem. By the late autumn of 2007, the company was said to be worried about the slow progress being made in concluding the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
Last week BP officially acknowledged this concern. “We were aware this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan Government of BP’s exploration agreement,” the company said.
BP admits it lobbied the government, seeking to speed up the process of getting the transfer agreement into law. However, it denied it tried to intervene in the case of Megrahi in particular.
But Professor Black, the man who helped engineer the case at Zeist, says: “The prisoner transfer agreement and the potential release of Megrahi back to Libya have always been one and the same thing. It is disingenuous of BP to say they were different. Megrahi was always the name on the table. He was the only high-profile prisoner that mattered.”
Last year, Megrahi was released from jail on compassionate grounds by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary. MacAskill said the Libyan was in the final stages of prostate cancer and was expected to die within three months. He added that he was bound by Scottish values to release him and allow him to die in his home country. The transfer agreement – which the Scottish Government had criticised as unconstitutional because it had not been consulted – did not figure in the minister’s deliberations. (...)
The senate committee in Washington will care little about the constitutional in-fighting between Edinburgh and London. The former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has said that if Westminster had wanted to stop Megrahi leaving, it had the power to do so. “The last time I looked, Scotland wasn’t independent and doesn’t have powers over foreign policy,” said Bolton.
Although Sir Nigel says the UK Government believes the release of Megrahi was a mistake, he does not say if he thought it was mistake.
[Also in the Sunday Herald is an article by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill. It reads in part:]
My decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi last August was, as I made clear at the time and many times since, the right decision for the right reasons.
It was a decision based entirely upon the application for compassionate release that I was duty bound to consider. As I said then, it was not a decision I chose to make, but one I was obliged to make as Scotland’s Justice Secretary.
Megrahi was sent home to die according to the due process of Scots law, based on the medical report of the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care, and the recommendations of the parole board and prison governor – all of which have been published by the Scottish Government.
However, I was also faced with another, separate decision, in respect of Megrahi. That was the application before me for a transfer from Scotland under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed by the UK and Libyan governments.
I rejected that application because the US Government and the families of Lockerbie victims in the US had been led to believe such a prisoner transfer would not be possible for anyone convicted of the atrocity.
The Scottish Government has always totally opposed the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated between the UK and Libyan governments. The memorandum that led to the Agreement was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes.
That is why we chose to reveal the secret talks between the then Labour Government and the Libyans, as soon as we learned of the “deal in the desert” between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi, with the First Minister making a statement to the Scottish Parliament on the issue as far back as June 2007. (...)
Let us be clear: the issues now being raised in the United States about BP refer to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the governments of the UK and Libya, and so have nothing to do with the decision on compassionate release, which was a totally different process based on entirely different criteria.
And the Scottish Government had no contact from BP in relation to Megrahi.
We would always look to assist any properly constituted inquiry – and indeed we very much support a wider UK public inquiry or United Nations investigation capable of examining all the issues related to the Lockerbie atrocity, which go well beyond Scotland’s jurisdiction. That remains the case.
In terms of the new UK Government’s position on the Megrahi issue, we have known the Prime Minister’s opinion since last August, and he knows the due process of Scotland’s independent legal system was followed.
We also now know Professor Karol Sikora has rejected news paper reports that misrepresented his comments about Megrahi’s condition.
I said last August that Megrahi may die sooner or may die later than the three-month prognosis the experts then deemed to be a reasonable estimate of life expectancy – that is something over which we have had no control.
What is certain is the man rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing remains terminally ill with prostate cancer.
[Mr MacAskill's opinion that Mr Megrahi was "rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" is one that many, including the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, do not share.]
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Lockerbie hearings set to open can of worms
[This is the headline over an article on the website of Canada's National Post which displays an appreciation of the facts relating to Megrahi's repatriation and of the UK/Scottish constitutional position that is sadly lacking in most US commentaries. It reads:]
A US Senate hearing into BP's alleged involvement in the release of the Lockerbie bomber may be based on a false premise, but it has all the potential to open up a can of worms.
Senior senators are demanding to know whether "justice and punishment for terrorism took a back seat to back-room deals for an oil contract." BP will be quizzed over whether they lobbied for the release of Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in exchange for trade deals.
BP has denied any such thing, but with its reputation already tarnished by the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, a Senate hearing will be another opportunity to continue to vilify the company in the eyes of Americans.
However, what is already clear is that while Megrahi was sitting in a jail cell in Scotland, his future and trade with Libya were inextricably linked.
And it is questions about that link which has the potential to cause embarrassment in some quarters.
For years, Libya had petitioned the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement, allowing prisoners to be exchanged and serve sentences in their home countries. As Colonel Muammar's Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, later explained, for Libya the PTA was only ever concerned with one prisoner.
He told the Scottish ... newspaper [The Herald] last year, "For the last seven to eight years we have been trying very hard to transfer Mr. Megrahi to Libya to serve his sentence here and we have tried many times in the past to sign the PTA without mentioning Megrahi, but it was obvious we were targeting Megrahi and the PTA was on the table all the time."
BP, it has admitted, was also lobbying the British government to conclude a PTA with Libya.
On Thursday, BP said in a statement, "It is matter of public record that in late 2007 BP told the U.K. government that we were concerned about the slow progress that was being made in concluding a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
"We were aware that this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan Government of BP's exploration agreement."
In May 2007, Britian and Libya agreed to sign a PTA. The agreement was ratified a year later in November 2008, at the time British prime minister Tony Blair signed the agreement he also witnessed the signing of a major BP exploration contract in Libya worth £500-million.
Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi told [T]he Herald, "It was part of the bargaining deal with the UK ... We signed an oil deal at the same time. The commerce and politics and deals were all with the PTA."
Scotland, meanwhile, had specifically asked for Megrahi to be excluded from the PTA, but Britain refused.
Months later, in May 2009, Libya applied to Scotland for Megrahi to be transferred under the PTA. Although Britian signed the PTA -- thus paving the way for any transfers under the deal -- it was up to Scotland whether they would agree to the transfer.
But Scotland found a major hurdle in the way.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney-General Eric Holder told Scotland that the US had been given assurances before Megrahi's trial that he would serve his full sentence in Scotland. Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill asked Britain for clarification about the assurances, but the government refused to answer.
It was because of those assurances that Mr. MacAskill decided not to agree to transfer Megrahi under the PTA.
At this point, it might appear that the efforts of BP and the British government -- who had both worked so hard to get a PTA signed -- had come to nought.
However, Mr. MacAskill then released Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
If, as Mr. MacAskill was told at the time, Megrahi only had a few months to live, it appears to have been the humanitarian thing to do.
But with reports that Megrahi might yet live another 10 years, the decision to release him and the background to it are going to come under severe scrutiny at the Senate hearing. It promises to be an uncomfortable time for some people.
A US Senate hearing into BP's alleged involvement in the release of the Lockerbie bomber may be based on a false premise, but it has all the potential to open up a can of worms.
Senior senators are demanding to know whether "justice and punishment for terrorism took a back seat to back-room deals for an oil contract." BP will be quizzed over whether they lobbied for the release of Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in exchange for trade deals.
BP has denied any such thing, but with its reputation already tarnished by the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, a Senate hearing will be another opportunity to continue to vilify the company in the eyes of Americans.
However, what is already clear is that while Megrahi was sitting in a jail cell in Scotland, his future and trade with Libya were inextricably linked.
And it is questions about that link which has the potential to cause embarrassment in some quarters.
For years, Libya had petitioned the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement, allowing prisoners to be exchanged and serve sentences in their home countries. As Colonel Muammar's Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, later explained, for Libya the PTA was only ever concerned with one prisoner.
He told the Scottish ... newspaper [The Herald] last year, "For the last seven to eight years we have been trying very hard to transfer Mr. Megrahi to Libya to serve his sentence here and we have tried many times in the past to sign the PTA without mentioning Megrahi, but it was obvious we were targeting Megrahi and the PTA was on the table all the time."
BP, it has admitted, was also lobbying the British government to conclude a PTA with Libya.
On Thursday, BP said in a statement, "It is matter of public record that in late 2007 BP told the U.K. government that we were concerned about the slow progress that was being made in concluding a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
"We were aware that this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan Government of BP's exploration agreement."
In May 2007, Britian and Libya agreed to sign a PTA. The agreement was ratified a year later in November 2008, at the time British prime minister Tony Blair signed the agreement he also witnessed the signing of a major BP exploration contract in Libya worth £500-million.
Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi told [T]he Herald, "It was part of the bargaining deal with the UK ... We signed an oil deal at the same time. The commerce and politics and deals were all with the PTA."
Scotland, meanwhile, had specifically asked for Megrahi to be excluded from the PTA, but Britain refused.
Months later, in May 2009, Libya applied to Scotland for Megrahi to be transferred under the PTA. Although Britian signed the PTA -- thus paving the way for any transfers under the deal -- it was up to Scotland whether they would agree to the transfer.
But Scotland found a major hurdle in the way.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney-General Eric Holder told Scotland that the US had been given assurances before Megrahi's trial that he would serve his full sentence in Scotland. Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill asked Britain for clarification about the assurances, but the government refused to answer.
It was because of those assurances that Mr. MacAskill decided not to agree to transfer Megrahi under the PTA.
At this point, it might appear that the efforts of BP and the British government -- who had both worked so hard to get a PTA signed -- had come to nought.
However, Mr. MacAskill then released Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
If, as Mr. MacAskill was told at the time, Megrahi only had a few months to live, it appears to have been the humanitarian thing to do.
But with reports that Megrahi might yet live another 10 years, the decision to release him and the background to it are going to come under severe scrutiny at the Senate hearing. It promises to be an uncomfortable time for some people.
Clinton seeks UK explanation on Megrahi
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]
Hillary Clinton last night urged the UK Government to explain to American politicians the circumstances that led to the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing after David Cameron described the decision as wrong.
The US Secretary of State, who is looking into claims from US senators that BP lobbied for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Megrahi’s release in August last year as part of an oil deal with Libya, made the suggestion in a call to Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Her spokesman said Clinton had indicated “it might be appropriate for the UK Government to communicate with Congress to make sure they fully understand ... what transpired a year ago”.
The Prime Minister said through his official spokesman that he believed it had been a mistake to free Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal cancer, repeating the view of Britain’s ambassador to Washington Sir Nigel Sheinwald.
Cameron’s spokesman said: “He has said in the past that he believes that the decision was wrong. Obviously he respects the process (that allowed the Scottish Government to release Megrahi) ... but he said at the time he thought it was wrong.”
Last night Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy, criticised the “mass hysteria” and “misunderstanding” in the US in relation to the decision to release Megrahi.
“The public attitude in the US is to seek revenge against BP and this is harming America’s image,” he told The Herald. “There is no surprise in the idea of BP lobbying the UK Government but that does not change the fact that the decision to release Megrahi was not made by the UK Government.
“I think there is a mass hysteria in the US. Pursuing this line that BP lobbied for Megrahi’s release comes perilously close to saying the UK Government somehow put pressure on Scotland to release him.”
Sheinwald had said the UK Government believed that the decision had been a mistake. He also said claims Megrahi was released because of an oil deal involving BP were not true.
Sheinwald served as Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser during the negotiations that led to the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya in 2007. The Herald revealed that as early as 2005 secret talks were ongoing between the UK, US and Libya to get Megrahi back to Libya. Sheinwald was present at these negotiations and helped agree the infamous deal in the desert.
The deal was denounced by the Scottish Government.
Scottish ministers released Megrahi on compassionate grounds 11 months ago because medical experts said he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and was not expected to live more than three months.
A separate application between the UK and Libyan governments under the terms of the PTA was rejected by Scottish ministers. However, US senators are angry that in 2007 BP also sealed a £590 million exploration agreement with Libya. (...)
[An editorial headed "Misunderstandings muddy the waters over Megrahi’s release" in the same newspaper reads:]
Still they do not get it. It should not be a surprise that the heightening clamour over the freeing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is founded on a massive misunderstanding of the circumstances leading to his release.
Facts can be conflated, manipulated or simply ignored when politics come into play. Such has happened in the case of Megrahi, who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, and the role of the Scottish Government in sanctioning his release on compassionate grounds some 11 months ago.
There is a debate to have, one that takes on a sharper focus the longer Megrahi lives, about whether that decision, based on a medical report taking account of the views of oncologists involved in his care, was correct. But there is no sustainable debate about BP being prepared to “trade justice for oil profits”, despite the best (or worst) efforts of certain American senators to push that line. The allegation, which cannot be separated from anger in the United States with BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, has no basis in fact, unless we have all been deceived on a massive scale (of which there is no evidence).
The claim BP lobbied the Scottish Government for Megrahi’s release is based on a failure to understand.
Perish the thought that such misunderstanding might also be wilful. BP has said it pressed Tony Blair’s government over the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) with the Libyans. But that deal had nothing to do with Megrahi’s release, a decision taken on separate grounds and by different means by an SNP administration that denounced the agreement. Yet it serves a purpose to conflate the two.
David Cameron had an opportunity to clarify matters ahead of meeting Barack Obama. By repeating his contention that Megrahi’s release was a mistake (also the President’s view) hours after Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Britain’s ambassador to the US, affirmed that was the UK Government’s position, the Prime Minister has failed to clarify matters. Singing from the same hymn sheet on Megrahi might serve the purposes of the special relationship but Sir Nigel’s role as Blair’s foreign policy adviser during the talks leading to the PTA has added to a sense of corrosive obfuscation. The choreography has been so rehearsed that we are now told Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, and William Hague, Foreign Secretary, agree Megrahi’s release was a mistake. That will play well in America, for all the wrong reasons. But it will serve no positive or substantive purpose in this country. If you must meddle, do so on the basis of fact.
[The Scotsman runs a report headlined "MacAskill could be summoned to Washington to testify on Megrahi". It can be read here. Once again, the readers' comments outshine the article.]
Hillary Clinton last night urged the UK Government to explain to American politicians the circumstances that led to the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing after David Cameron described the decision as wrong.
The US Secretary of State, who is looking into claims from US senators that BP lobbied for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Megrahi’s release in August last year as part of an oil deal with Libya, made the suggestion in a call to Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Her spokesman said Clinton had indicated “it might be appropriate for the UK Government to communicate with Congress to make sure they fully understand ... what transpired a year ago”.
The Prime Minister said through his official spokesman that he believed it had been a mistake to free Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal cancer, repeating the view of Britain’s ambassador to Washington Sir Nigel Sheinwald.
Cameron’s spokesman said: “He has said in the past that he believes that the decision was wrong. Obviously he respects the process (that allowed the Scottish Government to release Megrahi) ... but he said at the time he thought it was wrong.”
Last night Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy, criticised the “mass hysteria” and “misunderstanding” in the US in relation to the decision to release Megrahi.
“The public attitude in the US is to seek revenge against BP and this is harming America’s image,” he told The Herald. “There is no surprise in the idea of BP lobbying the UK Government but that does not change the fact that the decision to release Megrahi was not made by the UK Government.
“I think there is a mass hysteria in the US. Pursuing this line that BP lobbied for Megrahi’s release comes perilously close to saying the UK Government somehow put pressure on Scotland to release him.”
Sheinwald had said the UK Government believed that the decision had been a mistake. He also said claims Megrahi was released because of an oil deal involving BP were not true.
Sheinwald served as Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser during the negotiations that led to the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya in 2007. The Herald revealed that as early as 2005 secret talks were ongoing between the UK, US and Libya to get Megrahi back to Libya. Sheinwald was present at these negotiations and helped agree the infamous deal in the desert.
The deal was denounced by the Scottish Government.
Scottish ministers released Megrahi on compassionate grounds 11 months ago because medical experts said he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and was not expected to live more than three months.
A separate application between the UK and Libyan governments under the terms of the PTA was rejected by Scottish ministers. However, US senators are angry that in 2007 BP also sealed a £590 million exploration agreement with Libya. (...)
[An editorial headed "Misunderstandings muddy the waters over Megrahi’s release" in the same newspaper reads:]
Still they do not get it. It should not be a surprise that the heightening clamour over the freeing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is founded on a massive misunderstanding of the circumstances leading to his release.
Facts can be conflated, manipulated or simply ignored when politics come into play. Such has happened in the case of Megrahi, who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, and the role of the Scottish Government in sanctioning his release on compassionate grounds some 11 months ago.
There is a debate to have, one that takes on a sharper focus the longer Megrahi lives, about whether that decision, based on a medical report taking account of the views of oncologists involved in his care, was correct. But there is no sustainable debate about BP being prepared to “trade justice for oil profits”, despite the best (or worst) efforts of certain American senators to push that line. The allegation, which cannot be separated from anger in the United States with BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, has no basis in fact, unless we have all been deceived on a massive scale (of which there is no evidence).
The claim BP lobbied the Scottish Government for Megrahi’s release is based on a failure to understand.
Perish the thought that such misunderstanding might also be wilful. BP has said it pressed Tony Blair’s government over the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) with the Libyans. But that deal had nothing to do with Megrahi’s release, a decision taken on separate grounds and by different means by an SNP administration that denounced the agreement. Yet it serves a purpose to conflate the two.
David Cameron had an opportunity to clarify matters ahead of meeting Barack Obama. By repeating his contention that Megrahi’s release was a mistake (also the President’s view) hours after Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Britain’s ambassador to the US, affirmed that was the UK Government’s position, the Prime Minister has failed to clarify matters. Singing from the same hymn sheet on Megrahi might serve the purposes of the special relationship but Sir Nigel’s role as Blair’s foreign policy adviser during the talks leading to the PTA has added to a sense of corrosive obfuscation. The choreography has been so rehearsed that we are now told Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, and William Hague, Foreign Secretary, agree Megrahi’s release was a mistake. That will play well in America, for all the wrong reasons. But it will serve no positive or substantive purpose in this country. If you must meddle, do so on the basis of fact.
[The Scotsman runs a report headlined "MacAskill could be summoned to Washington to testify on Megrahi". It can be read here. Once again, the readers' comments outshine the article.]
Embarrassment all round as Megrahi lives
[This is the heading over a section of Richard Ingrams's column in today's edition of The Independent. It reads:]
By failing to die as predicted by Britain's top cancer specialist, the "Lockerbie bomber" Abdel Basset al-Megrahi has embarrassed David Cameron, who is now worried that the controversy over his release on compassionate grounds could cast a shadow over his visit to Washington next week. Accordingly, our ambassador in Washington, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, has issued an apparently heartfelt statement claiming that Megrahi's release was a mistake and is regretting "the continuing anguish" that it has caused to families of the Lockerbie victims. In addition, it is now claimed that BP was in some way responsible for Megrahi's release, as it helped to further good relations with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi.
While the media pursue these red herrings, the most likely reason for Megrahi's release will go unmentioned. It is generally forgotten that, at the time of his release, he was engaged in a lengthy appeal hearing against his original conviction. Evidence showing the flimsiness of the case against him would have been produced; well-founded allegations of the bribery of witnesses and the possible planting of evidence on the crash site by the CIA would have been aired. It could all have ended with the exposure of one of the most scandalous miscarriages of justice ever acknowledged in a British court. No wonder that in the circumstances the Justice Minister, Jack Straw, was so keen to see the back of Megrahi and the discontinuation of his appeal hearing.
By failing to die as predicted by Britain's top cancer specialist, the "Lockerbie bomber" Abdel Basset al-Megrahi has embarrassed David Cameron, who is now worried that the controversy over his release on compassionate grounds could cast a shadow over his visit to Washington next week. Accordingly, our ambassador in Washington, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, has issued an apparently heartfelt statement claiming that Megrahi's release was a mistake and is regretting "the continuing anguish" that it has caused to families of the Lockerbie victims. In addition, it is now claimed that BP was in some way responsible for Megrahi's release, as it helped to further good relations with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi.
While the media pursue these red herrings, the most likely reason for Megrahi's release will go unmentioned. It is generally forgotten that, at the time of his release, he was engaged in a lengthy appeal hearing against his original conviction. Evidence showing the flimsiness of the case against him would have been produced; well-founded allegations of the bribery of witnesses and the possible planting of evidence on the crash site by the CIA would have been aired. It could all have ended with the exposure of one of the most scandalous miscarriages of justice ever acknowledged in a British court. No wonder that in the circumstances the Justice Minister, Jack Straw, was so keen to see the back of Megrahi and the discontinuation of his appeal hearing.
Libyan oil official: Lockerbie wasn't part of BP talks
[This is the headline over a report on the CNN website. It reads in part:]
A top Libyan oil official on Friday denied allegations of an agreement to free the Lockerbie bomber in exchange for bolstered BP commercial interests in the country.
Britain and Libya had sparred over whether Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi should be included in a prisoner transfer agreement the two nations were negotiating. Under the agreement, Libyan prisoners in Britain would be transferred to Libya to serve out their sentences.
British officials and BP said the oil company's interests -- mainly, seeking a huge deal to drill for oil in Libya -- were a consideration in those talks.
In the end, al Megrahi was included in the transfer agreement, but he was never transferred to a Libyan jail. Instead, he was freed on what officials in Scotland said were humanitarian grounds separate from the agreement. (...)
"I was leading the negotiations on BP," said Shokri Ghanem, chairman of the National Oil Corp of Libya, [and a former prime minister] in an interview Friday with CNN's Richard Quest.
"I was the person who was negotiating the technical [points] and the whole agreement" for the oil company to drill off the Libyan coast, he said. "I never spoke on any political [issues], not did I accept any political interference."
Ghanem insisted Friday that the oil agreement was ratified in 2007 -- two years before al Megrahi's release. (...)
Earlier Friday, Britain's ambassador to the United States, Nigel Sheinwald, said the government believes it was wrong to let al Megrahi out of prison in August 2009 and return to his native Libya, but it was a decision taken by the Scottish executive, not the British government. Scotland has its own government that is responsible for most of the day-to-day issues there, including the justice system. (...)
The ambassador's statement came a day after the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced it will hold a hearing July 29 to examine whether BP may have played a role in lobbying for al Megrahi's release.
Ghanem dismissed the announcement as political posturing. "The US can do any hearing they want, this is their business," he said. "But we're a sovereign country. ... American Congress can do whatever they want, but senators, they have to give the impression they are US senators."
A top Libyan oil official on Friday denied allegations of an agreement to free the Lockerbie bomber in exchange for bolstered BP commercial interests in the country.
Britain and Libya had sparred over whether Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi should be included in a prisoner transfer agreement the two nations were negotiating. Under the agreement, Libyan prisoners in Britain would be transferred to Libya to serve out their sentences.
British officials and BP said the oil company's interests -- mainly, seeking a huge deal to drill for oil in Libya -- were a consideration in those talks.
In the end, al Megrahi was included in the transfer agreement, but he was never transferred to a Libyan jail. Instead, he was freed on what officials in Scotland said were humanitarian grounds separate from the agreement. (...)
"I was leading the negotiations on BP," said Shokri Ghanem, chairman of the National Oil Corp of Libya, [and a former prime minister] in an interview Friday with CNN's Richard Quest.
"I was the person who was negotiating the technical [points] and the whole agreement" for the oil company to drill off the Libyan coast, he said. "I never spoke on any political [issues], not did I accept any political interference."
Ghanem insisted Friday that the oil agreement was ratified in 2007 -- two years before al Megrahi's release. (...)
Earlier Friday, Britain's ambassador to the United States, Nigel Sheinwald, said the government believes it was wrong to let al Megrahi out of prison in August 2009 and return to his native Libya, but it was a decision taken by the Scottish executive, not the British government. Scotland has its own government that is responsible for most of the day-to-day issues there, including the justice system. (...)
The ambassador's statement came a day after the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced it will hold a hearing July 29 to examine whether BP may have played a role in lobbying for al Megrahi's release.
Ghanem dismissed the announcement as political posturing. "The US can do any hearing they want, this is their business," he said. "But we're a sovereign country. ... American Congress can do whatever they want, but senators, they have to give the impression they are US senators."
Friday, 16 July 2010
Hillary Clinton raises Lockerbie bomber concerns
[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
The US has raised concerns about the release of the Lockerbie bomber, after the foreign secretary said the decision to free him was "a mistake".
William Hague spoke to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said Britain may wish to explain the circumstances behind Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's release.
Four US senators believe oil giant BP lobbied for the move to secure a deal with Libya.
The Scottish government said Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds.
It has denied having any contact with BP before its decision last year to release the Libyan intelligence officer (...)
On Thursday, the US Senate foreign relations committee said it would ask BP officials to testify after the company admitted lobbying the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) with Libya.
It confirmed it did press for a PTA because it was aware that a delay might have "negative consequences" for UK commercial interests.
But the firm said it was not involved in any discussions regarding Megrahi's release.
The bomber was released in August by Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill because he was suffering terminal prostate cancer and was said to have as little as three months to live. (...)
Meanwhile, Britain's ambassador to the United States, Nigel Sheinwald, also said the new UK government disagreed with Scotland's decision to free the bomber.
However, he said the inaccuracies over the case were harmful to the UK.
A Scottish government spokesman said: "The Scottish government had no contact from BP in relation to Mr Al-Megrahi.
"The issues being raised in the United States at present regarding BP refer to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the governments of the UK and Libya, and therefore have nothing to do with the decision on compassionate release which is a totally different process, based on entirely different criteria.
"We were always totally opposed to the prisoner transfer agreement negotiated between the UK and Libyan governments.
"The memorandum that led to the PTA was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes."
The US has raised concerns about the release of the Lockerbie bomber, after the foreign secretary said the decision to free him was "a mistake".
William Hague spoke to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said Britain may wish to explain the circumstances behind Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's release.
Four US senators believe oil giant BP lobbied for the move to secure a deal with Libya.
The Scottish government said Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds.
It has denied having any contact with BP before its decision last year to release the Libyan intelligence officer (...)
On Thursday, the US Senate foreign relations committee said it would ask BP officials to testify after the company admitted lobbying the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) with Libya.
It confirmed it did press for a PTA because it was aware that a delay might have "negative consequences" for UK commercial interests.
But the firm said it was not involved in any discussions regarding Megrahi's release.
The bomber was released in August by Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill because he was suffering terminal prostate cancer and was said to have as little as three months to live. (...)
Meanwhile, Britain's ambassador to the United States, Nigel Sheinwald, also said the new UK government disagreed with Scotland's decision to free the bomber.
However, he said the inaccuracies over the case were harmful to the UK.
A Scottish government spokesman said: "The Scottish government had no contact from BP in relation to Mr Al-Megrahi.
"The issues being raised in the United States at present regarding BP refer to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the governments of the UK and Libya, and therefore have nothing to do with the decision on compassionate release which is a totally different process, based on entirely different criteria.
"We were always totally opposed to the prisoner transfer agreement negotiated between the UK and Libyan governments.
"The memorandum that led to the PTA was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes."
The Lockerbie bomber? A likely story . . .
[This is the headline over a post by John Ashmore on The Staggers, the New Statesman's rolling blog. It reads in part:]
In all the furore over Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, we have lost sight of one important fact.
So, the British ambassador to the US says that the government "deeply regrets" the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity. Meanwhile, US senators are calling for an inquiry into allegations that BP lobbied the British government to let Megrahi go in order to protect their interests in Libya.
News of his release on compassionate grounds a year ago prompted a similar wave of indignation. The papers bleated about Megrahi showing no compassion to his victims, that this was not "justice", and that the government was ignoring the victims of the bombing. (...)
What is rarely mentioned amid all the outrage is that there is considerable doubt over Megrahi's guilt.
As the late Paul Foot pointed out, having sat through the whole of Megrahi's trial at [Zeist] in 2001, the prosecution's case was farcical.
That Megrahi felt the need to write 300 pages about his innocence is odd -- one ought to have sufficed.
To summarise, Megrahi is meant to have planted a bomb on a plane in Malta, which then travelled on to Frankfurt, and then on again to Heathrow, before finally exploding on Pan Am Flight 103 in the sky above Lockerbie. We are supposed to believe, then, that the bomb got on to three planes in a row without being detected. It seems a lot more likely that the bomb was planted at London than anywhere else.
In their judgment, the three judges at the [Zeist] trial also pointed out that there was nothing that proved Megrahi had put a bomb on the plane in Malta. They noted: "The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta] is a major difficulty for the Crown case."
What's more, Megrahi was apparently aided by a conspirator, yet his co-accused at the Hague trial was unanimously acquitted.
The prosecution's star witness was Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper, who claimed to remember Megrahi buying clothes from his shop. These clothes apparently found their way into the case in which the bomb was concealed.
Gauci also said, however, that he remembered it raining on the day Megrahi came in, yet meteorological records show this was not the case. This does not discount Gauci's testimony, but it must give pause for thought.
His claim to be able to remember and identify a single customer many months after he apparently entered his shop is much more difficult to sustain. Again, the court expressed its reservations, saying that "Mr Gauci's initial description to DCI Bell would not in a number of respects fit the first accused" (Megrahi).
Perhaps those calling for an inquiry into the circumstances of this man's release should dig a little deeper into how he was convicted in the first place.
[The readers' comments that follow the post point out other problems that beset Megrahi's conviction.]
In all the furore over Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, we have lost sight of one important fact.
So, the British ambassador to the US says that the government "deeply regrets" the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity. Meanwhile, US senators are calling for an inquiry into allegations that BP lobbied the British government to let Megrahi go in order to protect their interests in Libya.
News of his release on compassionate grounds a year ago prompted a similar wave of indignation. The papers bleated about Megrahi showing no compassion to his victims, that this was not "justice", and that the government was ignoring the victims of the bombing. (...)
What is rarely mentioned amid all the outrage is that there is considerable doubt over Megrahi's guilt.
As the late Paul Foot pointed out, having sat through the whole of Megrahi's trial at [Zeist] in 2001, the prosecution's case was farcical.
That Megrahi felt the need to write 300 pages about his innocence is odd -- one ought to have sufficed.
To summarise, Megrahi is meant to have planted a bomb on a plane in Malta, which then travelled on to Frankfurt, and then on again to Heathrow, before finally exploding on Pan Am Flight 103 in the sky above Lockerbie. We are supposed to believe, then, that the bomb got on to three planes in a row without being detected. It seems a lot more likely that the bomb was planted at London than anywhere else.
In their judgment, the three judges at the [Zeist] trial also pointed out that there was nothing that proved Megrahi had put a bomb on the plane in Malta. They noted: "The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta] is a major difficulty for the Crown case."
What's more, Megrahi was apparently aided by a conspirator, yet his co-accused at the Hague trial was unanimously acquitted.
The prosecution's star witness was Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper, who claimed to remember Megrahi buying clothes from his shop. These clothes apparently found their way into the case in which the bomb was concealed.
Gauci also said, however, that he remembered it raining on the day Megrahi came in, yet meteorological records show this was not the case. This does not discount Gauci's testimony, but it must give pause for thought.
His claim to be able to remember and identify a single customer many months after he apparently entered his shop is much more difficult to sustain. Again, the court expressed its reservations, saying that "Mr Gauci's initial description to DCI Bell would not in a number of respects fit the first accused" (Megrahi).
Perhaps those calling for an inquiry into the circumstances of this man's release should dig a little deeper into how he was convicted in the first place.
[The readers' comments that follow the post point out other problems that beset Megrahi's conviction.]
BP, the USA and the repatriation of Megrahi
[Today's edition of The Herald contains two letters on the current furore over BP and its alleged role in the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The first, from Dr Jim Swire, reads:]
Any genuine attempt to uncover any aspect of the truth about the Lockerbie disaster and its aftermath is welcome (“Clinton to probe BP link to Megrahi”, The Herald, July 15).
But unless Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, believes that our new coalition government is so keen to castigate our previous administration that it would be glad to cooperate, she can hardly call upon the UK government to explain itself. Would that not be to put the fox in charge of the hencoop?
She would soon see how desperate Jack Straw (as Justice Minister) was to push through the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) in time for the start of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s second appeal, even overriding the request of the House of Commons Select Committee on Human Rights for more time.
She might then stop to wonder what the motivation might have been for Straw’s clumsy haste, and why the UK authorities seem to have been desperate to neutralise Megrahi’s attempts to overturn a verdict influenced by multiple instances of government and Crown Office withholding of documents from the defence and indeed the court.
Interference in criminal justice for political reasons would be a far more serious charge than a mere grubby oil deal, of which there are so many examples in both our and her own country’s history.
As her husband once commented: “It’s the economy, stupid”, and oil is central to the economies of both our nations but, currently, flogging BP is such a popular cause in the US.
Clinton would find that the PTA from “the deal in the desert” was not, in fact, used by Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary. He used the compassionate release route which was no part of that deal but is a precedent in our criminal law, and which did not dictate the withdrawal of Megrahi’s appeal. His decision weakens the scope for bashing BP. But, then, what influenced his choice?
The US is often accused of seeking to impose its own law overseas. Bill Clinton’s brave decision to allow the holding of the Lockerbie trial outwith the US removed the near certainty of a summary death penalty for Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima, his co-defendant. Subsequent doubts amplified by our Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission have amply justified that relief.
[The second, from Iain A D Mann, reads:]
Why do Americans always think they have a God-given right to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations? Pan-Am flight 103 fell to earth in Scotland, which, under international law, meant that all investigations and subsequent trials and criminal prosecutions came under the jurisdiction of Scots law.
If former barrister Tony Blair did not understand or ignored this when he made a deal with [Colonel] Gaddafi to release Megrahi (as I suspect he did), that does not alter the fact. And if the deal was made in exchange for Libyan oil concessions to BP (which I suspect it was), neither Blair nor the UK government was in a position to deliver the prisoner exchange. Many like me have concerns about the trial and conviction of Megrahi, but it was carried out under the independent Scottish justice system, as was the decision of Kenny MacAskill to release him on compassionate grounds.
What do the Americans find difficult to understand and accept about this? If the situation were reversed, would they be willing to let British politicians interfere in the US judicial process? I find distasteful the apparent American thirst for revenge and retribution, as if incarcerating one terminally-ill old man in a prison cell would make them feel better and somehow assuage the tragic loss of so many American (and Scottish) lives. Has it never occurred to them to wonder why Libya would have wanted to undertake such a massive operation against the United States, and why a low-ranking Libyan security officer would have been entrusted with the operation?
Is it not more likely that another country was responsible, in direct retaliation for the reckless shooting down of one of their civilian air liners by a US warship just five months earlier?
And is it not strange that the [Maltese] shopkeeper who provided virtually the only evidence of Megrahi’s involvement was later financed by the CIA and set up in a new life in Australia?
The American senators and Hillary Clinton would be better engaged in addressing some of the many short comings in their own criminal justice system, including holding untried foreigners for years at Guantanamo Bay and many convicted prisoners for 25 years on death row before executing them, rather than criticising the British and Scottish legal systems, which still try to uphold the principles of both justice and compassion.
Any genuine attempt to uncover any aspect of the truth about the Lockerbie disaster and its aftermath is welcome (“Clinton to probe BP link to Megrahi”, The Herald, July 15).
But unless Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, believes that our new coalition government is so keen to castigate our previous administration that it would be glad to cooperate, she can hardly call upon the UK government to explain itself. Would that not be to put the fox in charge of the hencoop?
She would soon see how desperate Jack Straw (as Justice Minister) was to push through the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) in time for the start of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s second appeal, even overriding the request of the House of Commons Select Committee on Human Rights for more time.
She might then stop to wonder what the motivation might have been for Straw’s clumsy haste, and why the UK authorities seem to have been desperate to neutralise Megrahi’s attempts to overturn a verdict influenced by multiple instances of government and Crown Office withholding of documents from the defence and indeed the court.
Interference in criminal justice for political reasons would be a far more serious charge than a mere grubby oil deal, of which there are so many examples in both our and her own country’s history.
As her husband once commented: “It’s the economy, stupid”, and oil is central to the economies of both our nations but, currently, flogging BP is such a popular cause in the US.
Clinton would find that the PTA from “the deal in the desert” was not, in fact, used by Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary. He used the compassionate release route which was no part of that deal but is a precedent in our criminal law, and which did not dictate the withdrawal of Megrahi’s appeal. His decision weakens the scope for bashing BP. But, then, what influenced his choice?
The US is often accused of seeking to impose its own law overseas. Bill Clinton’s brave decision to allow the holding of the Lockerbie trial outwith the US removed the near certainty of a summary death penalty for Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima, his co-defendant. Subsequent doubts amplified by our Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission have amply justified that relief.
[The second, from Iain A D Mann, reads:]
Why do Americans always think they have a God-given right to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations? Pan-Am flight 103 fell to earth in Scotland, which, under international law, meant that all investigations and subsequent trials and criminal prosecutions came under the jurisdiction of Scots law.
If former barrister Tony Blair did not understand or ignored this when he made a deal with [Colonel] Gaddafi to release Megrahi (as I suspect he did), that does not alter the fact. And if the deal was made in exchange for Libyan oil concessions to BP (which I suspect it was), neither Blair nor the UK government was in a position to deliver the prisoner exchange. Many like me have concerns about the trial and conviction of Megrahi, but it was carried out under the independent Scottish justice system, as was the decision of Kenny MacAskill to release him on compassionate grounds.
What do the Americans find difficult to understand and accept about this? If the situation were reversed, would they be willing to let British politicians interfere in the US judicial process? I find distasteful the apparent American thirst for revenge and retribution, as if incarcerating one terminally-ill old man in a prison cell would make them feel better and somehow assuage the tragic loss of so many American (and Scottish) lives. Has it never occurred to them to wonder why Libya would have wanted to undertake such a massive operation against the United States, and why a low-ranking Libyan security officer would have been entrusted with the operation?
Is it not more likely that another country was responsible, in direct retaliation for the reckless shooting down of one of their civilian air liners by a US warship just five months earlier?
And is it not strange that the [Maltese] shopkeeper who provided virtually the only evidence of Megrahi’s involvement was later financed by the CIA and set up in a new life in Australia?
The American senators and Hillary Clinton would be better engaged in addressing some of the many short comings in their own criminal justice system, including holding untried foreigners for years at Guantanamo Bay and many convicted prisoners for 25 years on death row before executing them, rather than criticising the British and Scottish legal systems, which still try to uphold the principles of both justice and compassion.
Lockerbie: unfinished business
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe production of this one-man play runs from 4 to 29 August at the Gilded Balloon Teviot venue. Further details can be obtained here -- go to page 267.
The Lockerbie Conspiracy
[This is the headline over a long article by Alex Massie in his blog on the website of The Spectator. It reads in part:]
First things first: it is extremely inconvenient, even embarrassing, that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is still alive nearly a year after he was released from Greenock Prison on the grounds that he was believed to have not much more, and perhaps fewer, than three months to live. Nevertheless, the fact that he has lived longer than expected does not advance or give any greater credence to the notion that there was some conspiracy designed to free him come what may and regardless of any other considerations.
Nor is there any evidence, despite recent press reports, that BP (everyone's favourite whipping boy now) played any role in Kenny MacAskill's decision to send him back to Libya. One may reasonably think, as the British government does, that MacAskill's decision was a mistake but that does not mean that, as matters were understood at the time, the Justice Secretary was either wrong or acting on behalf of other interests.
I'd go further: the fact that Megrahi is still alive does not enhance conspiracy theories, it makes them even less probable than their previous improbability suggested. But, wait, there's an oil company "involved"! And it's BP! QED!
There are two seperate issues that, unfortunately, continue to be conflated by people who ought to know better. Unsurprisingly this company includes several members of the United States Senate whose grandstanding is equalled only by their ignorance. Senators Schumer, Gillibrand, Lautenberg and Menendez have written to Hillary Clinton demanding some kind of pointless investigation into "links" between BP and the decision to release Megrahi.
Unfortunately their request is predicated upon nonsense and, for that matter, riddled with errors. Among them:
1. No "Scottish court" ordered that Megrahi be released. It was a matter for the Justice Secretary and him alone.
2. The prognosis given by Karel Sikora and the other doctors paid by the Libyan government played no part in MacAskill's decision. He never saw Sikora's report. The decision was made on the basis of reports compiled by Dr Andrew Fraser, the senior doctor in the Scottish Prison Service. These drew on the findings of at least two other independent consultants.
3. If BP really was lobbying the British government for Megrahi's "release" it was lobbying the wrong people since the British government did not have competence in this matter. Again, and evidently this still needs to be spelt out, London could no more approve Megrahi's release than could Timbuktu. (...)
John F Burns is a great journalist but the opening paragraph of his most recent New York Times report helps demonstrate why so many people remain so confused:
"The oil giant BP faced a new furor on Thursday as it confirmed that it had lobbied the British government to conclude a prisoner-transfer agreement that the Libyan government wanted to secure the release of the only person ever convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing over Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans."
But a Prisoner Transfer Agreement says nothing about releasing prisoners. On the contrary it is, as the name suggests, an agreement about transferring inmates from prison in one jurisdiction to prison in another. That is, even the Libyans weren't lobbying for Megrahi's release. They merely wanted him to be eligible to be transferred to a Libyan gaol where he could serve the rest of his sentence.
So what do we have here? Let's review the matter one more time:
1. Libya and the UK wanted to sign a PTA as part of the normalisation of relations between the two countries.
2. Libya made it clear to BP that a PTA would help BP's commercial interests in the Gulf of Sidra.
3. BP also pointed out to HMG (Her Majesty's Government) that signing the PTA would be very useful.
4. The Scottish Government was keen to exclude Megrahi from the terms of any such agreement.
5. The Libyans told London that it would be absurd to have a PTA that excluded the only high-profile Libyan in British custody.
6. Despite Edinburgh's concerns, London came around to agreeing with the Libyans and so, when signed, the PTA contained no clause excluding Megrahi from its provisions.
7. Signing the PTA most probably did help BP's commercial interests in Libya. Then again, BP's initial deal with Libya was signed in 2007 - well before any of the Megrahi business came to a head and well before there could be any consideration of releasing him.
8. So what if BP did benefit? The existence of the PTA did nothing to improve Megrahi's chances of being released. (Here I would note that Edinburgh's desire for a Megrahi Exception made little sense since the decision on his future would, as it always had been, remain a matter for Edinburgh. London gave Tripoli something Tripoli wanted badly but London did not have to give up anything in return since, again, what Tripoli wanted was not in London's gift.)
9. Libya made an application to the Scottish Government asking that Megrahi be transferred to serve the remainder of his sentence in a Libyan prison.
10. The Scottish Government considered this application and then, based in part upon its understanding that assurances had been given to the United States that Megrahi would serve his entire sentence in Scotland, rejected Libya's application.
11. Again, signing a PTA with Libya - which London was keen to do - is an entirely seperate issue from the decision to free Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
12. We are now in the odd position that those who think there was a conspiracy need Megrahi to live for years while those who think MacAskill made the decision honestly would be relieved if he died next week.
13. Not a single credible report has emerged disputing that MacAskill made his decision according to the medical facts as he saw and understood them at the time.
14. The fact that Megrahi has "outperformed" medical expectations says much more about medical science than it does about Kenny MacAskill.
15. If much of the press reporting is to be given credence we are asked to suppose that MacAskill would have released Megrahi come what may. This, of course, is because of BP and HMG and all the rest of it. But for this to be true we have to believe that if the doctors had said Megrahi's prostate cancer was not so serious and he'd live for another year at least MacAskill would have said, Well that doesn't matter I'm going to release him anyway and so what if this rides roughshod over both established practice and the law? I want to be a Big Boy playing on the big stage. I suggest that this is implausible.
16. For there to be a conspiracy we need to believe that two (three if you include Libya) jurisdictions were involved and that this included several government departments and the Scottish Prison Service and at least two independent consultants. And BP of course. Again, I suggest that this is not credible. For a conspiracy to have any credence you need to believe that Edinburgh was determined to release Megrahi at any or all costs. There is precisely zero evidence to support this notion.
None of this means there aren't perfectly good grounds upon which to oppose or criticise MacAskill's decision. Good people may disagree in good faith upon this question. But that's a long way from supposing that there was some conspiracy or that the medical evidence was fabricated or that BP was secretly running the entire show.
This blog's Lockerbie archive is here and, more or less, I stand by pretty much everything I wrote nearly a year ago. Megrahi's survival is inconvenient and, yes, embarrassing but that doesn't mean there was any conspiracy to release him. Nor does it in and of itself suggest that MacAskill was acting in anything other than good faith at any point in proceedings.
Yet, again, for there to have been a conspiracy you need to believe that if the doctors had told MacAskill that Megrahi would live for another year he'd have been released anyway. Never mind that, as I understand it, this would have been beyond his purview it makes no sense even if you want to believe in it.
You can certainly argue that convicted terrorists should never be released but that's an entirely different question. But cock-up - or rather the vagaries of medical prognosis - is a likelier explanation of all this than conspiracy not least because there is precisely no evidence of there being any conspiracy.
First things first: it is extremely inconvenient, even embarrassing, that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is still alive nearly a year after he was released from Greenock Prison on the grounds that he was believed to have not much more, and perhaps fewer, than three months to live. Nevertheless, the fact that he has lived longer than expected does not advance or give any greater credence to the notion that there was some conspiracy designed to free him come what may and regardless of any other considerations.
Nor is there any evidence, despite recent press reports, that BP (everyone's favourite whipping boy now) played any role in Kenny MacAskill's decision to send him back to Libya. One may reasonably think, as the British government does, that MacAskill's decision was a mistake but that does not mean that, as matters were understood at the time, the Justice Secretary was either wrong or acting on behalf of other interests.
I'd go further: the fact that Megrahi is still alive does not enhance conspiracy theories, it makes them even less probable than their previous improbability suggested. But, wait, there's an oil company "involved"! And it's BP! QED!
There are two seperate issues that, unfortunately, continue to be conflated by people who ought to know better. Unsurprisingly this company includes several members of the United States Senate whose grandstanding is equalled only by their ignorance. Senators Schumer, Gillibrand, Lautenberg and Menendez have written to Hillary Clinton demanding some kind of pointless investigation into "links" between BP and the decision to release Megrahi.
Unfortunately their request is predicated upon nonsense and, for that matter, riddled with errors. Among them:
1. No "Scottish court" ordered that Megrahi be released. It was a matter for the Justice Secretary and him alone.
2. The prognosis given by Karel Sikora and the other doctors paid by the Libyan government played no part in MacAskill's decision. He never saw Sikora's report. The decision was made on the basis of reports compiled by Dr Andrew Fraser, the senior doctor in the Scottish Prison Service. These drew on the findings of at least two other independent consultants.
3. If BP really was lobbying the British government for Megrahi's "release" it was lobbying the wrong people since the British government did not have competence in this matter. Again, and evidently this still needs to be spelt out, London could no more approve Megrahi's release than could Timbuktu. (...)
John F Burns is a great journalist but the opening paragraph of his most recent New York Times report helps demonstrate why so many people remain so confused:
"The oil giant BP faced a new furor on Thursday as it confirmed that it had lobbied the British government to conclude a prisoner-transfer agreement that the Libyan government wanted to secure the release of the only person ever convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing over Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans."
But a Prisoner Transfer Agreement says nothing about releasing prisoners. On the contrary it is, as the name suggests, an agreement about transferring inmates from prison in one jurisdiction to prison in another. That is, even the Libyans weren't lobbying for Megrahi's release. They merely wanted him to be eligible to be transferred to a Libyan gaol where he could serve the rest of his sentence.
So what do we have here? Let's review the matter one more time:
1. Libya and the UK wanted to sign a PTA as part of the normalisation of relations between the two countries.
2. Libya made it clear to BP that a PTA would help BP's commercial interests in the Gulf of Sidra.
3. BP also pointed out to HMG (Her Majesty's Government) that signing the PTA would be very useful.
4. The Scottish Government was keen to exclude Megrahi from the terms of any such agreement.
5. The Libyans told London that it would be absurd to have a PTA that excluded the only high-profile Libyan in British custody.
6. Despite Edinburgh's concerns, London came around to agreeing with the Libyans and so, when signed, the PTA contained no clause excluding Megrahi from its provisions.
7. Signing the PTA most probably did help BP's commercial interests in Libya. Then again, BP's initial deal with Libya was signed in 2007 - well before any of the Megrahi business came to a head and well before there could be any consideration of releasing him.
8. So what if BP did benefit? The existence of the PTA did nothing to improve Megrahi's chances of being released. (Here I would note that Edinburgh's desire for a Megrahi Exception made little sense since the decision on his future would, as it always had been, remain a matter for Edinburgh. London gave Tripoli something Tripoli wanted badly but London did not have to give up anything in return since, again, what Tripoli wanted was not in London's gift.)
9. Libya made an application to the Scottish Government asking that Megrahi be transferred to serve the remainder of his sentence in a Libyan prison.
10. The Scottish Government considered this application and then, based in part upon its understanding that assurances had been given to the United States that Megrahi would serve his entire sentence in Scotland, rejected Libya's application.
11. Again, signing a PTA with Libya - which London was keen to do - is an entirely seperate issue from the decision to free Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
12. We are now in the odd position that those who think there was a conspiracy need Megrahi to live for years while those who think MacAskill made the decision honestly would be relieved if he died next week.
13. Not a single credible report has emerged disputing that MacAskill made his decision according to the medical facts as he saw and understood them at the time.
14. The fact that Megrahi has "outperformed" medical expectations says much more about medical science than it does about Kenny MacAskill.
15. If much of the press reporting is to be given credence we are asked to suppose that MacAskill would have released Megrahi come what may. This, of course, is because of BP and HMG and all the rest of it. But for this to be true we have to believe that if the doctors had said Megrahi's prostate cancer was not so serious and he'd live for another year at least MacAskill would have said, Well that doesn't matter I'm going to release him anyway and so what if this rides roughshod over both established practice and the law? I want to be a Big Boy playing on the big stage. I suggest that this is implausible.
16. For there to be a conspiracy we need to believe that two (three if you include Libya) jurisdictions were involved and that this included several government departments and the Scottish Prison Service and at least two independent consultants. And BP of course. Again, I suggest that this is not credible. For a conspiracy to have any credence you need to believe that Edinburgh was determined to release Megrahi at any or all costs. There is precisely zero evidence to support this notion.
None of this means there aren't perfectly good grounds upon which to oppose or criticise MacAskill's decision. Good people may disagree in good faith upon this question. But that's a long way from supposing that there was some conspiracy or that the medical evidence was fabricated or that BP was secretly running the entire show.
This blog's Lockerbie archive is here and, more or less, I stand by pretty much everything I wrote nearly a year ago. Megrahi's survival is inconvenient and, yes, embarrassing but that doesn't mean there was any conspiracy to release him. Nor does it in and of itself suggest that MacAskill was acting in anything other than good faith at any point in proceedings.
Yet, again, for there to have been a conspiracy you need to believe that if the doctors had told MacAskill that Megrahi would live for another year he'd have been released anyway. Never mind that, as I understand it, this would have been beyond his purview it makes no sense even if you want to believe in it.
You can certainly argue that convicted terrorists should never be released but that's an entirely different question. But cock-up - or rather the vagaries of medical prognosis - is a likelier explanation of all this than conspiracy not least because there is precisely no evidence of there being any conspiracy.
Senate panel sets hearing on BP-Lockerbie case
[This is the headline over a report on the website of the Reuters news agency. It reads in part:]
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a July 29 hearing into last year's release of a Libyan convicted for the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and related actions by BP.
The committee said on Thursday it will ask officials of BP plc to testify after the UK-based oil giant acknowledged that it had lobbied the British government in 2007 to agree to transfer Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to Tripoli. The company said it was concerned that his continued imprisonment in Scotland could negatively affect an offshore oil drilling deal with Libya.
"BP told the UK government that we were concerned about the slow progress that was being made in concluding a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya," BP said in a statement.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, who had opposed Megrahi's release, said "details that have emerged in recent days in the press have raised new concerns."
Britain's ambassador to Washington sent a letter to Kerry on Thursday "to explain the facts" surrounding the circumstances of Megrahi's release.
"Under Scottish law, Megrahi was entitled to be considered for release on compassionate grounds. Whilst we disagreed with the decision to release him, we have to respect the independence of the process," Sir Nigel Sheinwald said in the letter.
"I am troubled by the claims made in the press that Megrahi was released because of an oil deal involving BP, and that the medical evidence supporting his release was paid for by the Libyan government. Both of these allegations are untrue," Sheinwald added.
Sheinwald said he hoped his letter would help to set the record straight and correct inaccuracies that he said were harmful to the United Kingdom. (...)
The Senate panel said it will ask "government experts" to testify at the hearing, but did not release details on witnesses it plans to invite.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would look into a request by several senators that her agency investigate.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a July 29 hearing into last year's release of a Libyan convicted for the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and related actions by BP.
The committee said on Thursday it will ask officials of BP plc to testify after the UK-based oil giant acknowledged that it had lobbied the British government in 2007 to agree to transfer Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to Tripoli. The company said it was concerned that his continued imprisonment in Scotland could negatively affect an offshore oil drilling deal with Libya.
"BP told the UK government that we were concerned about the slow progress that was being made in concluding a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya," BP said in a statement.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, who had opposed Megrahi's release, said "details that have emerged in recent days in the press have raised new concerns."
Britain's ambassador to Washington sent a letter to Kerry on Thursday "to explain the facts" surrounding the circumstances of Megrahi's release.
"Under Scottish law, Megrahi was entitled to be considered for release on compassionate grounds. Whilst we disagreed with the decision to release him, we have to respect the independence of the process," Sir Nigel Sheinwald said in the letter.
"I am troubled by the claims made in the press that Megrahi was released because of an oil deal involving BP, and that the medical evidence supporting his release was paid for by the Libyan government. Both of these allegations are untrue," Sheinwald added.
Sheinwald said he hoped his letter would help to set the record straight and correct inaccuracies that he said were harmful to the United Kingdom. (...)
The Senate panel said it will ask "government experts" to testify at the hearing, but did not release details on witnesses it plans to invite.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would look into a request by several senators that her agency investigate.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Sheinwald: mistake to free Lockerbie bomber
[What follows is an Agence France Presse news agency report:]
The government believes that the decision by Scotland to free the Lockerbie bomber was a mistake, London's envoy to the United States said Thursday.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi is the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US Pan Am jumbo jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which left 270 people dead.
"The new British government is clear that Megrahi's release was a mistake," ambassador Nigel Sheinwald said, stressing that under the country's laws power over justice issues have been devolved to Scotland.
Megrahi was released from jail in Scottish prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was said to be suffering from terminal cancer and had only three months to live. Reports have now emerged that he could live at least another 10 years.
On Tuesday, four US senators also called for an inquiry into allegations that energy giant BP lobbied the British government to free Megrahi in order to protect a lucrative oil deal with Libya.
[The ambassador to Washington DC, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, was Foreign Policy and Defence Adviser to the prime minister, Tony Blair, from 2003 to 2007. It is a matter for mild cynical amusement that Sheinwald was present at, and intimately involved in, the negotiation of the deal in the desert which was intended to pave the way for Abdelbaset Megrahi's early repatriation under a prisoner transfer agreement. The UK negotiators did not realise that the power to allow transfer would rest, not with the UK but with the Scottish, Government. Or if the negotiators did realise this, they signally failed to inform their Libyan counterparts, to the disgust of the latter when they discovered what the true position was.
There is a related long report on the Channel 4 News website and another one on The Guardian website. This also contains a clarification of Professor Karol Sikora's views on Megrahi's survival prospects:]
New York Democrat senators Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer and New Jersey Democrat Senator Robert Menendez called for an inquiry, after reports that a cancer expert, who backed the three-month prognosis, now believed Megrahi could live for 10 or 20 years.
But yesterday, Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartners UK, said his words were taken out of context, and that the chances of Megrahi surviving for a decade were "less than 1%".
He said: "There was a greater than 50% chance, in my opinion, that he would die within the first three months then gradually as you go along the chances get less and less.
"So the chances of living 10 years is less than 1%, something like that."
The government believes that the decision by Scotland to free the Lockerbie bomber was a mistake, London's envoy to the United States said Thursday.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi is the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US Pan Am jumbo jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which left 270 people dead.
"The new British government is clear that Megrahi's release was a mistake," ambassador Nigel Sheinwald said, stressing that under the country's laws power over justice issues have been devolved to Scotland.
Megrahi was released from jail in Scottish prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was said to be suffering from terminal cancer and had only three months to live. Reports have now emerged that he could live at least another 10 years.
On Tuesday, four US senators also called for an inquiry into allegations that energy giant BP lobbied the British government to free Megrahi in order to protect a lucrative oil deal with Libya.
[The ambassador to Washington DC, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, was Foreign Policy and Defence Adviser to the prime minister, Tony Blair, from 2003 to 2007. It is a matter for mild cynical amusement that Sheinwald was present at, and intimately involved in, the negotiation of the deal in the desert which was intended to pave the way for Abdelbaset Megrahi's early repatriation under a prisoner transfer agreement. The UK negotiators did not realise that the power to allow transfer would rest, not with the UK but with the Scottish, Government. Or if the negotiators did realise this, they signally failed to inform their Libyan counterparts, to the disgust of the latter when they discovered what the true position was.
There is a related long report on the Channel 4 News website and another one on The Guardian website. This also contains a clarification of Professor Karol Sikora's views on Megrahi's survival prospects:]
New York Democrat senators Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer and New Jersey Democrat Senator Robert Menendez called for an inquiry, after reports that a cancer expert, who backed the three-month prognosis, now believed Megrahi could live for 10 or 20 years.
But yesterday, Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartners UK, said his words were taken out of context, and that the chances of Megrahi surviving for a decade were "less than 1%".
He said: "There was a greater than 50% chance, in my opinion, that he would die within the first three months then gradually as you go along the chances get less and less.
"So the chances of living 10 years is less than 1%, something like that."
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