Monday, 26 July 2010
The letter to Alex Salmond from the US embassy
The US State Department has been shamed into releasing the letter to the First Minister dated 12 August 2009, referring to (and appending the text of) a letter sent three days earlier to the Scottish Government Justice Department. It can be read here.
Senators want UK officials at Lockerbie hearing
[This is the headline over a report from Associated Press just published on the website of The Washington Post. It reads in part:]
British and Scottish officials who have declined to appear at a hearing this week on the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi should reconsider in order to dispel "a cloud of suspicion" over the issue, two US senators said Monday.
US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Sen Robert Menendez of New Jersey, standing in Times Square along with relatives of some of those killed in the bombing, said it was important to get the facts surrounding the circumstances of al-Meghrahi's 2009 release. The senators are probing whether an oil exploration deal between oil giant BP and Libya influenced the decision. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
"The abundance of incredible coincidences surrounding al-Megrahi's release deserves a real open, transparent hearing," Menendez said Monday.
"A cloud of suspicion will hang over the entire issue at least until all the looming questions are answered," he added.
[Does anyone think for even an instant that "a real open, transparent hearing" could be obtained before a committee composed of these grandstanding clowns?]
British and Scottish officials who have declined to appear at a hearing this week on the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi should reconsider in order to dispel "a cloud of suspicion" over the issue, two US senators said Monday.
US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Sen Robert Menendez of New Jersey, standing in Times Square along with relatives of some of those killed in the bombing, said it was important to get the facts surrounding the circumstances of al-Meghrahi's 2009 release. The senators are probing whether an oil exploration deal between oil giant BP and Libya influenced the decision. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
"The abundance of incredible coincidences surrounding al-Megrahi's release deserves a real open, transparent hearing," Menendez said Monday.
"A cloud of suspicion will hang over the entire issue at least until all the looming questions are answered," he added.
[Does anyone think for even an instant that "a real open, transparent hearing" could be obtained before a committee composed of these grandstanding clowns?]
Lockerbie and the USA
[This is the heading over a press release just issued by the Scottish Government. It reads:]
First Minister Alex Salmond has today written to Senator Robert Menendez of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, responding to his five questions in relation the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing which Senator Menendez is chairing on Thursday (July 29).
Last week, Mr Salmond issued a substantive letter to Senator John Kerry, which Senator Kerry described as "thoughtful and thorough". (...)
The letter is below:
_____________________________
Dear Senator Menendez
Thank you for your letters of 22 and 23 July 2010 to the Scottish Government.
I wrote to Senator Kerry in his role as Chairman of the Committee on 21 July 2010, setting out the Scottish Government's position on the key issues that have been raised in recent weeks, and Senator Kerry has noted his appreciation for what he described as a "thoughtful and thorough" reply. I have given permission for my letter to be entered into the official record of the hearing on 29 July 2010. I have also made available Scottish Government staff in Washington to answer questions from staff of Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee, and I am grateful for your acknowledgement of this and our offer of further assistance.
You have asked for further information in a number of areas. I have asked officials to respond to your requests, and responses can be found in the attached Annex.
The Scottish Government would be happy to write to you with answers to any further questions you may have. As I indicated to Senator Kerry, the Scottish Government is respectfully declining your invitations to attend the hearing.
Alex Salmond
ANNEX
SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO AL-MEGRAHI
1. Any documents including communications to and from Scottish Government officials, relating to the decision to release Al Megrahi or negotiations to release Al Megrahi. This request includes any communications between Scottish Commerce Secretary for Justice Kenneth MacAskill and UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw.
The Scottish Government has released all correspondence from the Scottish Government to the UK Government relating to these issues. Within these documents there are some redactions to protect the confidentiality of the US and UK Governments. We would be happy to remove the redactions with the agreement of the US and UK Governments.
Correspondence from the Scottish Government to the UK Government
The UK Government has released correspondence from it to the Scottish Government relating to these issues.
Ministry of Justice - correspondence
Foreign and Commonwealth Office - correspondence
In addition to the above, there is a range of documents relating to the release of Mr Al-Megrahi, for example the PTA application and process, the compassionate release application and process, correspondence, and the announcement of the decision. The link below provides access to these documents.
www.scotland.gov.uk/lockerbie
Please note that Kenny MacAskill is the Cabinet Secretary for Justice in the Scottish Government, not the "Scottish Commerce Secretary for Justice".
2. Any documents, including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the Justice Committee investigation of the Al Megrahi release, the Scottish Parliament investigation of the Al Megrahi release, or any other investigation of the Al Megrahi case and release.
There have been two Parliamentary inquiries into these issues:
Scottish Parliament Justice Committee: Below are links to the Committee's papers, the Committee's final report and the Scottish Government's response.
The Cabinet Secretary for Justice's evidence to the committee - is available in the official report from the Committee's meeting of 1 December 2009
UK Parliament Scottish Affairs Committee - Committee's final report on Scotland and the UK: cooperation and communication between governments
3. Any documents, including communications to or from senior Scottish Government officials, relating to BP's negotiations for or interest in oil exploration in Libya.
There are no such documents.
4. Any documents, including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the British Government's position on Al Megrahi's release or transfer to Libyan custody.
All exchanges between the Scottish and UK Governments have been published where we have been given permission to do so.
The UK Government's position regarding the release of Mr Al Megrahi was stated by the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, in the UK House of Commons on 12 October 2009:
"British interests, including those of UK nationals, British businesses and possibly security co-operation, would be damaged - perhaps badly - if Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison. Given the risk of Libyan adverse reaction, we made it clear .... that as a matter of law and practice it was not a decision for the UK Government and that as a matter of policy we were not seeking Megrahi's death in Scottish custody".
5. Any documents including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the US government's position on Al Megrahi's release or transfer to Libyan custody.
The US Government has refused publication of various documents. The link below contains the correspondence with the US Government about this. The Scottish Government cannot breach the long-standing practice of holding in confidence government to government communications, by publishing this material without the permission of the US Government. The Senate Committee may wish to pursue these issues. The material related to the US Government includes representations by the US Government regarding the release of Mr Al-Megrahi and notes of meetings between the Scottish and US Governments over the period 2008-9.
Correspondence with the US Government regarding publication of documents
First Minister Alex Salmond has today written to Senator Robert Menendez of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, responding to his five questions in relation the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing which Senator Menendez is chairing on Thursday (July 29).
Last week, Mr Salmond issued a substantive letter to Senator John Kerry, which Senator Kerry described as "thoughtful and thorough". (...)
The letter is below:
_____________________________
Dear Senator Menendez
Thank you for your letters of 22 and 23 July 2010 to the Scottish Government.
I wrote to Senator Kerry in his role as Chairman of the Committee on 21 July 2010, setting out the Scottish Government's position on the key issues that have been raised in recent weeks, and Senator Kerry has noted his appreciation for what he described as a "thoughtful and thorough" reply. I have given permission for my letter to be entered into the official record of the hearing on 29 July 2010. I have also made available Scottish Government staff in Washington to answer questions from staff of Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee, and I am grateful for your acknowledgement of this and our offer of further assistance.
You have asked for further information in a number of areas. I have asked officials to respond to your requests, and responses can be found in the attached Annex.
The Scottish Government would be happy to write to you with answers to any further questions you may have. As I indicated to Senator Kerry, the Scottish Government is respectfully declining your invitations to attend the hearing.
Alex Salmond
ANNEX
SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO AL-MEGRAHI
1. Any documents including communications to and from Scottish Government officials, relating to the decision to release Al Megrahi or negotiations to release Al Megrahi. This request includes any communications between Scottish Commerce Secretary for Justice Kenneth MacAskill and UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw.
The Scottish Government has released all correspondence from the Scottish Government to the UK Government relating to these issues. Within these documents there are some redactions to protect the confidentiality of the US and UK Governments. We would be happy to remove the redactions with the agreement of the US and UK Governments.
Correspondence from the Scottish Government to the UK Government
The UK Government has released correspondence from it to the Scottish Government relating to these issues.
Ministry of Justice - correspondence
Foreign and Commonwealth Office - correspondence
In addition to the above, there is a range of documents relating to the release of Mr Al-Megrahi, for example the PTA application and process, the compassionate release application and process, correspondence, and the announcement of the decision. The link below provides access to these documents.
www.scotland.gov.uk/lockerbie
Please note that Kenny MacAskill is the Cabinet Secretary for Justice in the Scottish Government, not the "Scottish Commerce Secretary for Justice".
2. Any documents, including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the Justice Committee investigation of the Al Megrahi release, the Scottish Parliament investigation of the Al Megrahi release, or any other investigation of the Al Megrahi case and release.
There have been two Parliamentary inquiries into these issues:
Scottish Parliament Justice Committee: Below are links to the Committee's papers, the Committee's final report and the Scottish Government's response.
The Cabinet Secretary for Justice's evidence to the committee - is available in the official report from the Committee's meeting of 1 December 2009
UK Parliament Scottish Affairs Committee - Committee's final report on Scotland and the UK: cooperation and communication between governments
3. Any documents, including communications to or from senior Scottish Government officials, relating to BP's negotiations for or interest in oil exploration in Libya.
There are no such documents.
4. Any documents, including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the British Government's position on Al Megrahi's release or transfer to Libyan custody.
All exchanges between the Scottish and UK Governments have been published where we have been given permission to do so.
The UK Government's position regarding the release of Mr Al Megrahi was stated by the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, in the UK House of Commons on 12 October 2009:
"British interests, including those of UK nationals, British businesses and possibly security co-operation, would be damaged - perhaps badly - if Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison. Given the risk of Libyan adverse reaction, we made it clear .... that as a matter of law and practice it was not a decision for the UK Government and that as a matter of policy we were not seeking Megrahi's death in Scottish custody".
5. Any documents including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the US government's position on Al Megrahi's release or transfer to Libyan custody.
The US Government has refused publication of various documents. The link below contains the correspondence with the US Government about this. The Scottish Government cannot breach the long-standing practice of holding in confidence government to government communications, by publishing this material without the permission of the US Government. The Senate Committee may wish to pursue these issues. The material related to the US Government includes representations by the US Government regarding the release of Mr Al-Megrahi and notes of meetings between the Scottish and US Governments over the period 2008-9.
Correspondence with the US Government regarding publication of documents
Lockerbie probe may prove uncomfortable for Obama administration
[This is the headline over a report published today on the CNS News website. The following are excerpts:]
The four Democratic US senators probing the early release of the Libyan convicted in the Lockerbie bombing believe there were links to a BP oil deal, but their inquiry may have the unintended consequence of raising questions about just how strongly the Obama administration opposed the Libyan’s release. (...)
Scottish government ministers, stung by accusations that they released Megrahi to ease a massive oil exploration contract in Libya, are pointing out that it is the US government that is blocking the release of two documents relating to the decision.
One of the documents is a demarche and letter to Scottish First Minister Salmond from deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in London, Richard LeBaron, dated August 12, 2009, eight days before Megrahi was released.
Leaked to London’s Sunday Times this week, the letter reportedly argues that Megrahi should remain in custody – but goes on to say that if Scotland concludes he must be released, then doing so on compassionate grounds would be “far preferable” to his repatriation under a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) which Britain negotiated with Libya in 2007. (...)
The second document which Scotland says the US is withholding permission to make public is a note of a telephone conversation between Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill and Attorney General Eric Holder, apparently on June 26, 2009. The contents of that note remain secret.
Edinburgh says the two documents – the LeBaron letter and the MacAskill-Holder note – were both “part of the package of advice” MacAskill had before him when he made the decision to send Megrahi home last August.
At the height of last August’s controversy, Scotland made public its correspondence relating to the matter. On August 26, it asked the US government for permission to include the two documents in those it was releasing – offering to do so in redacted form if necessary.
But in a written reply on Sept 1, LeBaron declined. (...)
CNSNews.com also asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether it would request that the administration make the two documents available for its hearing into the matter, scheduled for Thursday. In response, spokesman Frederick Jones merely said the committee did not have the documents in its possession.
Edinburgh law professor Robert Black, an expert on the Lockerbie case, opined on his blog that if the LeBaron letter effectively accepted Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds as preferable to transfer under the prisoner transfer agreement, “it is unlikely – in a mid-term election year – that the US government would consent to its release or that Democrat senators would seriously try to persuade it to do so.” (...)
Potential witnesses not known to have been called by the committee include:
-- Tony Blair, the former British prime minister whose 2007 visit to Libya included an agreement on a PTA and the signing of “the single largest exploration commitment in BP’s 100-year history.”
-- British Ambassador to the US Nigel Sheinwald, who as a foreign policy advisor to Blair accompanied him on two key visits to Libya.
-- Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader, who played a key role in Tripoli’s political and trade negotiations with Britain. (He has traveled to the US before, and met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Department in late 2008.)
-- Graham Forbes, chairman of the independent Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which after a four-year investigation concluded in 2007 that there “may have been a miscarriage of justice” and recommended that Megrahi be allowed to an appeal.
-- Prof Robert Black, the law expert who designed the unusual format under which the Lockerbie trial was held in the Netherlands under Scottish law. Black in 2005 called Megrahi’s conviction “the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice in Scotland for 100 years.”
-- Prof Hans Koechler, an Austrian academic nominated by the UN to observe the 84-day trial, who also believes justice was not done.
-- Robert Baer, a retired Middle East CIA operative, who has claimed that Iran was behind the bombing.
[The following are two paragraphs from a report on the CNN website:]
A pair of US senators and the families of Lockerbie bombing victims will hold a news conference Monday in Times Square ahead of this week's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the matter.
Sen Robert Menendez of New Jersey will chair Thursday's hearing on last year's release by Scotland of a Libyan man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pam Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also is a member of the committee.
The four Democratic US senators probing the early release of the Libyan convicted in the Lockerbie bombing believe there were links to a BP oil deal, but their inquiry may have the unintended consequence of raising questions about just how strongly the Obama administration opposed the Libyan’s release. (...)
Scottish government ministers, stung by accusations that they released Megrahi to ease a massive oil exploration contract in Libya, are pointing out that it is the US government that is blocking the release of two documents relating to the decision.
One of the documents is a demarche and letter to Scottish First Minister Salmond from deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in London, Richard LeBaron, dated August 12, 2009, eight days before Megrahi was released.
Leaked to London’s Sunday Times this week, the letter reportedly argues that Megrahi should remain in custody – but goes on to say that if Scotland concludes he must be released, then doing so on compassionate grounds would be “far preferable” to his repatriation under a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) which Britain negotiated with Libya in 2007. (...)
The second document which Scotland says the US is withholding permission to make public is a note of a telephone conversation between Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill and Attorney General Eric Holder, apparently on June 26, 2009. The contents of that note remain secret.
Edinburgh says the two documents – the LeBaron letter and the MacAskill-Holder note – were both “part of the package of advice” MacAskill had before him when he made the decision to send Megrahi home last August.
At the height of last August’s controversy, Scotland made public its correspondence relating to the matter. On August 26, it asked the US government for permission to include the two documents in those it was releasing – offering to do so in redacted form if necessary.
But in a written reply on Sept 1, LeBaron declined. (...)
CNSNews.com also asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether it would request that the administration make the two documents available for its hearing into the matter, scheduled for Thursday. In response, spokesman Frederick Jones merely said the committee did not have the documents in its possession.
Edinburgh law professor Robert Black, an expert on the Lockerbie case, opined on his blog that if the LeBaron letter effectively accepted Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds as preferable to transfer under the prisoner transfer agreement, “it is unlikely – in a mid-term election year – that the US government would consent to its release or that Democrat senators would seriously try to persuade it to do so.” (...)
Potential witnesses not known to have been called by the committee include:
-- Tony Blair, the former British prime minister whose 2007 visit to Libya included an agreement on a PTA and the signing of “the single largest exploration commitment in BP’s 100-year history.”
-- British Ambassador to the US Nigel Sheinwald, who as a foreign policy advisor to Blair accompanied him on two key visits to Libya.
-- Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader, who played a key role in Tripoli’s political and trade negotiations with Britain. (He has traveled to the US before, and met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Department in late 2008.)
-- Graham Forbes, chairman of the independent Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which after a four-year investigation concluded in 2007 that there “may have been a miscarriage of justice” and recommended that Megrahi be allowed to an appeal.
-- Prof Robert Black, the law expert who designed the unusual format under which the Lockerbie trial was held in the Netherlands under Scottish law. Black in 2005 called Megrahi’s conviction “the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice in Scotland for 100 years.”
-- Prof Hans Koechler, an Austrian academic nominated by the UN to observe the 84-day trial, who also believes justice was not done.
-- Robert Baer, a retired Middle East CIA operative, who has claimed that Iran was behind the bombing.
[The following are two paragraphs from a report on the CNN website:]
A pair of US senators and the families of Lockerbie bombing victims will hold a news conference Monday in Times Square ahead of this week's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the matter.
Sen Robert Menendez of New Jersey will chair Thursday's hearing on last year's release by Scotland of a Libyan man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pam Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also is a member of the committee.
Vital point missed in Megrahi controversy
[This is the heading over a letter from Brian Barder in today's edition of The Guardian. It reads as follows:]
In all the renewed controversy over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing ... a vital point seems to have been missed. Under the terms of the US-UK "initiative" under which Megrahi was convicted, he was required to serve his sentence in the UK. The initiative was accepted by Libya and approved by UN security council resolution 1192. For that reason Megrahi could never have been transferred to serve the rest of his sentence in Libya under the prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) negotiated by the Blair government with Libya, regardless of whether Megrahi was included in or excluded from its scope.
It's difficult to understand how the PTA came to be signed when it could never have been used to transfer Megrahi, the only Libyan then in UK custody. If BP was pressing for Megrahi to be transferred under the PTA, why was it not told that this was ruled out by the terms of the original agreement? Why didn't Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill point this out to Tony Blair and Jack Straw when they were arguing about the pros and cons of the PTA? Above all, when Blair and Straw made their "concession" to the Libyans under which Megrahi was not after all to be excluded from the PTA, did they remind the Libyans that Megrahi couldn't be transferred to Libya? If not, why not?
In an article published on Comment is Free on 1 September 2009, Oliver Miles pointed out that Megrahi's transfer to Libya under the PTA would have been contrary to the original agreement. It's strange that even then no one seems to have seen the implications of this.
[The implications had, of course, already been seen on this blog: Britain accused of breaking promise to US over Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Foreign Office told Scotland it made no promises to US over how long Megrahi would stay in prison.
The reason why the "promise" was not taken seriously by the UK Foreign Office was that the only country that might have an interest in complaining if it was broken was the United States of America. And both the United Kingdom government and the Libyan government knew (because they had checked) that Washington was relaxed about Abdelbaset Megrahi's repatriation, though it would have to huff and puff for US public consumption when it happened.]
In all the renewed controversy over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing ... a vital point seems to have been missed. Under the terms of the US-UK "initiative" under which Megrahi was convicted, he was required to serve his sentence in the UK. The initiative was accepted by Libya and approved by UN security council resolution 1192. For that reason Megrahi could never have been transferred to serve the rest of his sentence in Libya under the prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) negotiated by the Blair government with Libya, regardless of whether Megrahi was included in or excluded from its scope.
It's difficult to understand how the PTA came to be signed when it could never have been used to transfer Megrahi, the only Libyan then in UK custody. If BP was pressing for Megrahi to be transferred under the PTA, why was it not told that this was ruled out by the terms of the original agreement? Why didn't Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill point this out to Tony Blair and Jack Straw when they were arguing about the pros and cons of the PTA? Above all, when Blair and Straw made their "concession" to the Libyans under which Megrahi was not after all to be excluded from the PTA, did they remind the Libyans that Megrahi couldn't be transferred to Libya? If not, why not?
In an article published on Comment is Free on 1 September 2009, Oliver Miles pointed out that Megrahi's transfer to Libya under the PTA would have been contrary to the original agreement. It's strange that even then no one seems to have seen the implications of this.
[The implications had, of course, already been seen on this blog: Britain accused of breaking promise to US over Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Foreign Office told Scotland it made no promises to US over how long Megrahi would stay in prison.
The reason why the "promise" was not taken seriously by the UK Foreign Office was that the only country that might have an interest in complaining if it was broken was the United States of America. And both the United Kingdom government and the Libyan government knew (because they had checked) that Washington was relaxed about Abdelbaset Megrahi's repatriation, though it would have to huff and puff for US public consumption when it happened.]
US may release Lockerbie files
[This is the headline over a report in The Herald by UK Political Editor Michael Settle. It reads in part:]
The US Government is deciding whether to release all of its Lockerbie files, after Alex Salmond called for full disclosure – including details of the contacts between the UK Government and BP.
With a Senate hearing just four days away, the focus is beginning to fall on the exchanges between Washington, Edinburgh and London in the run-up to the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Louis Susman, the American ambassador to Britain, stressed the US Government is examining whether its correspondence over Megrahi could be released. “We will come up with a decision later on in relation to the hearing,” he said.
Salmond, meanwhile, noted the previous UK Government’s exchanges with BP were “more extensive than anyone had hitherto thought”. The First Minister was referring to a seven-page letter sent at the weekend to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by William Hague, the UK Foreign Secretary, confirming BP had met the former Labour Government five times in October and November 2007 over fears that disputes about a prisoner transfer agreement could damage its oil exploration contracts with Libya.
However, Hague emphasised this was a “perfectly normal and legitimate practice for a British company”, and said there was no evidence to corroborate the allegation BP was involved in Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
In the autumn of 2007, Jack Straw, the former UK Justice Secretary, had at least two telephone calls from Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 agent and a BP consultant. It has been suggested the oil giant, which a few months earlier had signed the “deal in the desert” with Tripoli, worth almost £600 million, was concerned that any delay in the prisoner transfer agreement between Libya and the UK could damage its commercial interests. (...)
Salmond said: “Just as I would say it would be helpful for the US to publish all the correspondence, the present Prime Minister is right in saying he is going to publish all that correspondence as well. When all that is published, the position of the Scottish Government will be vindicated.
“We’ve acted throughout with total integrity.” (...)
Elsewhere, a leaked memo has shown that while the US Government did not want Megrahi released, it made clear that compassionate grounds were “far preferable” to his transfer to a Libyan jail.
This seems to fly in the face of the statement last week by Barack Obama that America had been “surprised, disappointed and angry” about the release.
Susman said: “We had a mutual understanding with the British Government that if he was tried and convicted he would serve his entire sentence in Scotland.
“The fact [MacAskill] made a decision on compassionate grounds to release him was something we were not in favour of.”
The US Government is deciding whether to release all of its Lockerbie files, after Alex Salmond called for full disclosure – including details of the contacts between the UK Government and BP.
With a Senate hearing just four days away, the focus is beginning to fall on the exchanges between Washington, Edinburgh and London in the run-up to the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Louis Susman, the American ambassador to Britain, stressed the US Government is examining whether its correspondence over Megrahi could be released. “We will come up with a decision later on in relation to the hearing,” he said.
Salmond, meanwhile, noted the previous UK Government’s exchanges with BP were “more extensive than anyone had hitherto thought”. The First Minister was referring to a seven-page letter sent at the weekend to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by William Hague, the UK Foreign Secretary, confirming BP had met the former Labour Government five times in October and November 2007 over fears that disputes about a prisoner transfer agreement could damage its oil exploration contracts with Libya.
However, Hague emphasised this was a “perfectly normal and legitimate practice for a British company”, and said there was no evidence to corroborate the allegation BP was involved in Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
In the autumn of 2007, Jack Straw, the former UK Justice Secretary, had at least two telephone calls from Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 agent and a BP consultant. It has been suggested the oil giant, which a few months earlier had signed the “deal in the desert” with Tripoli, worth almost £600 million, was concerned that any delay in the prisoner transfer agreement between Libya and the UK could damage its commercial interests. (...)
Salmond said: “Just as I would say it would be helpful for the US to publish all the correspondence, the present Prime Minister is right in saying he is going to publish all that correspondence as well. When all that is published, the position of the Scottish Government will be vindicated.
“We’ve acted throughout with total integrity.” (...)
Elsewhere, a leaked memo has shown that while the US Government did not want Megrahi released, it made clear that compassionate grounds were “far preferable” to his transfer to a Libyan jail.
This seems to fly in the face of the statement last week by Barack Obama that America had been “surprised, disappointed and angry” about the release.
Susman said: “We had a mutual understanding with the British Government that if he was tried and convicted he would serve his entire sentence in Scotland.
“The fact [MacAskill] made a decision on compassionate grounds to release him was something we were not in favour of.”
Sunday, 25 July 2010
A rather different perspective
On The Oligarch Kings blog today there is a post by David Macadam entitled "Lockerbie, the Scottish Bar and Libya: a different truth perhaps?". The last few paragraphs read as follows:]
The matter was referred to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review [Commission] whose own report, reluctantly oh so reluctantly, accepted that a miscarriage of justice had happened.
And Al-Megrahi appealed.
Scotland is a devolved country within the UK. Matters legal are dealt with by its own Justice Minister who is Kenny McAskill. Now Kenny is a nice guy. When he was in practise it was as a partner in a down home Mom and Pop law shop dealing with the daily concerns of ordinary people. He showed genuine concern and this lead him to politics where his calm manner and common touch have made him friends. But a diplomatic background or any international legal experience is not his.
This appeal had every likelihood of going ahead. If it did it would undoubtedly have been a disaster to the profession and to Scotland’s legal standing in the world.
Worse was to happen. Al-Megrahi fell ill with prostate cancer and a nightmare for the profession loomed. It was entirely likely that Al-Megrahi would be found innocent and it was just as likely, given the length of time the appeal would take, that he (an innocent man) would die a lingering death in a Scottish jail far from his home and family. Desperate for a way out of this quandary, did the profession do what it does best? Did it panic and send Kenny in to bat?
Kenny certainly does something really out of place for a justice minister. He turns up personally in the jail to negotiate with Al-Megrahi. The deal? We might speculate that it was to drop the appeal, and Kenny would invoke a little known part of a 1993 act which would allow him to release Megrahi as a compassionate act.
The appeal was certainly dropped and Al-Megrahi was back in Tripoli a fortnight later.
So, is Megrahi is back in Libya, not because BP were dealing with Libya, or any deal with the British Government but because the Scottish legal profession were terrified that the whole mess, which had been their one and only throw on the world stage, would come unravelled and their bar would end up looking like a bunch of backwood hicks and amateurs? It also entirely denies anyone ever being able to test Al-Megrahi’s arguments under court conditions. Did they put their own legal political expediency over justice?
It worked a treat boys didn’t it?
The matter was referred to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review [Commission] whose own report, reluctantly oh so reluctantly, accepted that a miscarriage of justice had happened.
And Al-Megrahi appealed.
Scotland is a devolved country within the UK. Matters legal are dealt with by its own Justice Minister who is Kenny McAskill. Now Kenny is a nice guy. When he was in practise it was as a partner in a down home Mom and Pop law shop dealing with the daily concerns of ordinary people. He showed genuine concern and this lead him to politics where his calm manner and common touch have made him friends. But a diplomatic background or any international legal experience is not his.
This appeal had every likelihood of going ahead. If it did it would undoubtedly have been a disaster to the profession and to Scotland’s legal standing in the world.
Worse was to happen. Al-Megrahi fell ill with prostate cancer and a nightmare for the profession loomed. It was entirely likely that Al-Megrahi would be found innocent and it was just as likely, given the length of time the appeal would take, that he (an innocent man) would die a lingering death in a Scottish jail far from his home and family. Desperate for a way out of this quandary, did the profession do what it does best? Did it panic and send Kenny in to bat?
Kenny certainly does something really out of place for a justice minister. He turns up personally in the jail to negotiate with Al-Megrahi. The deal? We might speculate that it was to drop the appeal, and Kenny would invoke a little known part of a 1993 act which would allow him to release Megrahi as a compassionate act.
The appeal was certainly dropped and Al-Megrahi was back in Tripoli a fortnight later.
So, is Megrahi is back in Libya, not because BP were dealing with Libya, or any deal with the British Government but because the Scottish legal profession were terrified that the whole mess, which had been their one and only throw on the world stage, would come unravelled and their bar would end up looking like a bunch of backwood hicks and amateurs? It also entirely denies anyone ever being able to test Al-Megrahi’s arguments under court conditions. Did they put their own legal political expediency over justice?
It worked a treat boys didn’t it?
US must be open on Megrahi letter
[This is the heading over a press release issued today by the SNP. It reads in part:]
The SNP called for the US Government to give its full co-operation to the Senate inquiry and to release the documents and any information over American discussions with Libya in relation to Abdelbasset Mohmed Al Megrahi.
Responding to revelations in todays newspapers of the content of US correspondence with the Scottish Government, reports of US negotiations over the Lockerbie bomber and campaign donations to the US senators involved in the inquiry from BP organizations SNP MSP Christine Grahame repeated her call for the US Government to allow the release of documents and for the Senate investigation to call the right witnesses:
“As a newspaper appears to have obtained this document it is ridiculous that the public and the US Senate Committee are unable to see it.
“At the very least the US Government must release its correspondence with the Scottish Government to its own Senate committee and lift the embargo on Scottish Government publication. Senator Menendez has asked for this document and the Obama administration must give permission for it to be released. The families of victims on both sides of the Atlantic deserve to know the full position of the US Government on this issue.
“If this senate inquiry is to be taken seriously it must ask the right questions of the right people and along with revisiting its failure to formally invite Tony Blair and his former adviser, now UK ambassador to the US Sir Nigel Sheinwald, they should ask the US government to set out what discussions it had with Libya over Mr Megrahi and if US officials were in contact or even accompanied UK officials in discussions around the deal in the desert.”
Commenting on the revelations of significant campaign donations by BP to US Senators and senior Democrats including President Obama and Hilary Clinton and by US oil companies drilling in and around Libya SNP MSP Michael Matheson said this exposed the pure politicking around what should be an incredibly serious issue.
Commenting on the revelations Mr Matheson said
"It's astonishing that after all the rhetoric and talk of BP funds as 'blood money' that those Senators attacking BP have benefited from their donations. It exposes some of the sheer political opportunism currently being played out over the tragic events at Lockerbie and in the Gulf."
The SNP called for the US Government to give its full co-operation to the Senate inquiry and to release the documents and any information over American discussions with Libya in relation to Abdelbasset Mohmed Al Megrahi.
Responding to revelations in todays newspapers of the content of US correspondence with the Scottish Government, reports of US negotiations over the Lockerbie bomber and campaign donations to the US senators involved in the inquiry from BP organizations SNP MSP Christine Grahame repeated her call for the US Government to allow the release of documents and for the Senate investigation to call the right witnesses:
“As a newspaper appears to have obtained this document it is ridiculous that the public and the US Senate Committee are unable to see it.
“At the very least the US Government must release its correspondence with the Scottish Government to its own Senate committee and lift the embargo on Scottish Government publication. Senator Menendez has asked for this document and the Obama administration must give permission for it to be released. The families of victims on both sides of the Atlantic deserve to know the full position of the US Government on this issue.
“If this senate inquiry is to be taken seriously it must ask the right questions of the right people and along with revisiting its failure to formally invite Tony Blair and his former adviser, now UK ambassador to the US Sir Nigel Sheinwald, they should ask the US government to set out what discussions it had with Libya over Mr Megrahi and if US officials were in contact or even accompanied UK officials in discussions around the deal in the desert.”
Commenting on the revelations of significant campaign donations by BP to US Senators and senior Democrats including President Obama and Hilary Clinton and by US oil companies drilling in and around Libya SNP MSP Michael Matheson said this exposed the pure politicking around what should be an incredibly serious issue.
Commenting on the revelations Mr Matheson said
"It's astonishing that after all the rhetoric and talk of BP funds as 'blood money' that those Senators attacking BP have benefited from their donations. It exposes some of the sheer political opportunism currently being played out over the tragic events at Lockerbie and in the Gulf."
‘Outraged’ US has been wooing Libya for years
[This is the heading over a section of Peter Hitchens's column in today's edition of the Mail on Sunday. Since the piece is short, and since it is probably the first time that I have ever agreed with anything written by Mr Hitchens, I quote it in full:]
Can those who fuss about the release of alleged Pan-Am bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi at least mention the fact there is no evidence that he committed this crime?
Also that the US government has been sucking up to Libya for years, in gratitude to Colonel Gaddafi for getting rid of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that he never in fact had.
Anyone who actually knows what is going on in the world must find the current dim, sheep-like credulity of most of the Western media almost unbearable.
[See also this short piece headed "US double talk on Megrahi" on The Spectator website.]
Can those who fuss about the release of alleged Pan-Am bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi at least mention the fact there is no evidence that he committed this crime?
Also that the US government has been sucking up to Libya for years, in gratitude to Colonel Gaddafi for getting rid of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that he never in fact had.
Anyone who actually knows what is going on in the world must find the current dim, sheep-like credulity of most of the Western media almost unbearable.
[See also this short piece headed "US double talk on Megrahi" on The Spectator website.]
US finds bullying a tough habit to kick
[This is the headline over an article by John Sexton on the China.org website. It reads in part:]
Imperial arrogance has become so ingrained in US political culture that it even pillories its most loyal ally, the United Kingdom.
While sensible countries like France drew back from the adventures of George W Bush, Tony Blair was always there, yapping his master on. But his fawning won the UK no rewards.
When new UK PM David Cameron arrived to pay homage in Washington last week, he faced a perfect storm of Brit-bashing over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In an extraordinary feat of self-deception, America is blaming the spill entirely on BP even though an explosion on an American-owned rig triggered the disaster. Warning systems on the Transocean Deepwater Horizon were disabled to allow the workers to sleep undisturbed. (...)
Scenting British blood, senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have demanded Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill attend hearings in Washington. They want to prove BP lobbyists, eager for Libyan oil concessions, persuaded the Scots to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds last year.
In fact, al-Megrahi was convicted in a special court in 2001 by three Scottish judges, on evidence so flimsy that even many relatives of the Lockerbie victims believe he was framed on the orders of the Americans.
The original Lockerbie inquiry had focused on the Iranians – who were said to have contracted a Palestinian group to destroy Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes earlier the same year with the loss of 290 lives, including 66 children. (In a less than sensitive move, the US Navy later awarded combat medals to the Vincennes crew.)
But when it became no longer politically convenient to blame the Iranians, the perennial pantomime villain Colonel Gaddafi was a handy substitute, and al-Megrahi became the fall guy.
The Scottish ministers politely refused to attend the Imperial Inquisition. (As an aside, the senators must have forgotten that last time a Scot, George Galloway, appeared at a Washington hearing he wiped the floor with his interrogators.)
Salmond and MacKaskill showed more dignity than Cameron, who obediently proclaimed al-Megrahi's release "a mistake." Meanwhile back in London, his deputy, Nick "Calamity" Clegg, was complicating matters by declaring the 2003 invasion of Iraq illegal.
There are interesting times ahead for what one British MP has dubbed the Brokeback Coalition - and the UK's less-and-less special relationship with Washington.
Imperial arrogance has become so ingrained in US political culture that it even pillories its most loyal ally, the United Kingdom.
While sensible countries like France drew back from the adventures of George W Bush, Tony Blair was always there, yapping his master on. But his fawning won the UK no rewards.
When new UK PM David Cameron arrived to pay homage in Washington last week, he faced a perfect storm of Brit-bashing over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In an extraordinary feat of self-deception, America is blaming the spill entirely on BP even though an explosion on an American-owned rig triggered the disaster. Warning systems on the Transocean Deepwater Horizon were disabled to allow the workers to sleep undisturbed. (...)
Scenting British blood, senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have demanded Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill attend hearings in Washington. They want to prove BP lobbyists, eager for Libyan oil concessions, persuaded the Scots to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds last year.
In fact, al-Megrahi was convicted in a special court in 2001 by three Scottish judges, on evidence so flimsy that even many relatives of the Lockerbie victims believe he was framed on the orders of the Americans.
The original Lockerbie inquiry had focused on the Iranians – who were said to have contracted a Palestinian group to destroy Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes earlier the same year with the loss of 290 lives, including 66 children. (In a less than sensitive move, the US Navy later awarded combat medals to the Vincennes crew.)
But when it became no longer politically convenient to blame the Iranians, the perennial pantomime villain Colonel Gaddafi was a handy substitute, and al-Megrahi became the fall guy.
The Scottish ministers politely refused to attend the Imperial Inquisition. (As an aside, the senators must have forgotten that last time a Scot, George Galloway, appeared at a Washington hearing he wiped the floor with his interrogators.)
Salmond and MacKaskill showed more dignity than Cameron, who obediently proclaimed al-Megrahi's release "a mistake." Meanwhile back in London, his deputy, Nick "Calamity" Clegg, was complicating matters by declaring the 2003 invasion of Iraq illegal.
There are interesting times ahead for what one British MP has dubbed the Brokeback Coalition - and the UK's less-and-less special relationship with Washington.
The release of Megrahi: the buck stops here
[This is the headline over a long article by Eddie Barnes in Scotland on Sunday. The first section covers the well-trodden ground of the Scottish government's reasons for not sending witnesses to the Senate hearing and former UK minister Jack Staw's reasons for also refusing. The second section is more interesting -- particularly in a newspaper with the political stance of this one. It contains the following:]
With the two governments having rehearsed their lines over and again, it is hard to see how, even if they hauled Straw and MacAskill over in manacles, they would get further than the simple facts which the two governments can lean upon. MacAskill released Megrahi because he was ill. Straw and BP didn't release Megrahi because they couldn't.
End of story? Not quite. For relatives such as Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among those killed in December 1988, the hope is that the questionable genesis of the Senate inquiry, and the buck-passing of its witnesses, will not deter it from a more thorough investigation; into the trial of Megrahi himself.
Here the controversy really begins. For while BP's alleged involvement has created all the heat in Washington in recent weeks, the slow-burning story of Megrahi's prosecution is likely to last for much longer. Lockerbie veterans such as former Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who has long believed in Megrahi's innocence, thinks there is an obvious reason why MacAskill decided to free Megrahi. Yes, because he was terminally ill. But also: "I think he and Alex Salmond know in their heart of hearts that Megrahi was an innocent man who had nothing to do with Lockerbie."
He goes on: "Of course they can't say this because if they were to say it, here would be an SNP government decrying the quality of Scottish justice. It would be saying that Scottish justice had made an almighty fool of itself in the eyes of the world."
Dalyell and other sceptics such as Swire and UN Observer Hans Kochler, all argue that Megrahi's release was inextricably linked to the prisoner's decision to drop his appeal just before he was released last year. Minutes from the controversial meeting MacAskill had with Megrahi in Greenock jail show that the Justice Secretary raised the question of the appeal with Megrahi, warning him that the Scottish Government could "only grant a transfer if there are no court proceedings ongoing".
Megrahi had already been informed that the PTA request and compassionate release request (which was not affected by the appeal) would be taken together. There is no evidence in the minutes of any deal being brokered, but questions about why that meeting took place are now being raised. Kochler declared: "It is entirely appropriate to ask whether the decisive motive might have been the termination of proceedings so that the Scottish, UK and US administrations in the handing of the Lockerbie case would never be fully scrutinised in a court of law." Swire, Kochler and Dalyell all believe the matter needs to be examined.
For many American relatives who are convinced of Megrahi's guilt, such an inquiry into the reliability of the conviction would be met with dismay. Kochler and others are "conspiracy buffs", they argue The evidence linking Megrahi to the crime was clear. But the fact is that the senate inquiry, however misguided in its approach, is now focusing attention once more on the original claims: the Iranian connection; the claims of baggage on Flight 103 being tampered with at Heathrow; the evidence allegedly planted on the scene; the complicity of the US and UK Governments in a cover-up; and whether an innocent man was put in the dock.
The logical lesson to be taken from last week's buck-passing is clear.
If the US Senate cannot get the answers, then surely a proper inquiry should be called. The US Senators themselves have acknowledged this.
Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the four who called this week's hearing, declared: "The only way to restore the integrity of what happened and to continue the integrity of the British government is to do a full and complete investigation." Only a few weeks ago – before he took office – David Cameron agreed, arguing in the strongest terms that the matters most be probed.
Now in office, he is vacillating. It was Jack Straw and Kenny MacAskill who played the blame game last week. But if Cameron refuses to act over the coming weeks, he may go down as the biggest buck-passer of them all.
With the two governments having rehearsed their lines over and again, it is hard to see how, even if they hauled Straw and MacAskill over in manacles, they would get further than the simple facts which the two governments can lean upon. MacAskill released Megrahi because he was ill. Straw and BP didn't release Megrahi because they couldn't.
End of story? Not quite. For relatives such as Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among those killed in December 1988, the hope is that the questionable genesis of the Senate inquiry, and the buck-passing of its witnesses, will not deter it from a more thorough investigation; into the trial of Megrahi himself.
Here the controversy really begins. For while BP's alleged involvement has created all the heat in Washington in recent weeks, the slow-burning story of Megrahi's prosecution is likely to last for much longer. Lockerbie veterans such as former Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who has long believed in Megrahi's innocence, thinks there is an obvious reason why MacAskill decided to free Megrahi. Yes, because he was terminally ill. But also: "I think he and Alex Salmond know in their heart of hearts that Megrahi was an innocent man who had nothing to do with Lockerbie."
He goes on: "Of course they can't say this because if they were to say it, here would be an SNP government decrying the quality of Scottish justice. It would be saying that Scottish justice had made an almighty fool of itself in the eyes of the world."
Dalyell and other sceptics such as Swire and UN Observer Hans Kochler, all argue that Megrahi's release was inextricably linked to the prisoner's decision to drop his appeal just before he was released last year. Minutes from the controversial meeting MacAskill had with Megrahi in Greenock jail show that the Justice Secretary raised the question of the appeal with Megrahi, warning him that the Scottish Government could "only grant a transfer if there are no court proceedings ongoing".
Megrahi had already been informed that the PTA request and compassionate release request (which was not affected by the appeal) would be taken together. There is no evidence in the minutes of any deal being brokered, but questions about why that meeting took place are now being raised. Kochler declared: "It is entirely appropriate to ask whether the decisive motive might have been the termination of proceedings so that the Scottish, UK and US administrations in the handing of the Lockerbie case would never be fully scrutinised in a court of law." Swire, Kochler and Dalyell all believe the matter needs to be examined.
For many American relatives who are convinced of Megrahi's guilt, such an inquiry into the reliability of the conviction would be met with dismay. Kochler and others are "conspiracy buffs", they argue The evidence linking Megrahi to the crime was clear. But the fact is that the senate inquiry, however misguided in its approach, is now focusing attention once more on the original claims: the Iranian connection; the claims of baggage on Flight 103 being tampered with at Heathrow; the evidence allegedly planted on the scene; the complicity of the US and UK Governments in a cover-up; and whether an innocent man was put in the dock.
The logical lesson to be taken from last week's buck-passing is clear.
If the US Senate cannot get the answers, then surely a proper inquiry should be called. The US Senators themselves have acknowledged this.
Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the four who called this week's hearing, declared: "The only way to restore the integrity of what happened and to continue the integrity of the British government is to do a full and complete investigation." Only a few weeks ago – before he took office – David Cameron agreed, arguing in the strongest terms that the matters most be probed.
Now in office, he is vacillating. It was Jack Straw and Kenny MacAskill who played the blame game last week. But if Cameron refuses to act over the coming weeks, he may go down as the biggest buck-passer of them all.
Lockerbie: now pressure switches to America
[This is the headline over an article in today's edition of The Sunday Herald. It reads in part:]
Pressure is growing on the US government to release secret documents which detail its position on the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
As the trans-Atlantic row deepens over why Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish jail last summer, the US government is being urged to drop its ban on the publication of letters it sent to both the Scottish Government and Whitehall on the issue.
The US government refused Holyrood permission to make the papers public in a strongly worded letter last September, a month after Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, was allowed to return to Libya following his compassionate release.
But the move to make the documents public took a step forward as the Senate committee on foreign affairs prepares for Thursday’s inquiry into the prisoner’s release, with chairman Senator Robert Menendez requesting that the Scottish Government provide information on Megrahi’s release in five key areas.
They include “any documents including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the US government’s position on Al Megrahi’s release or transfer to Libyan custody.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said last night: “We have received another letter from Senator Menendez, who will chair next week’s hearing, and who has now asked for us to provide five categories of documents relating to the case. We are more than happy to do so, and indeed have already published all we hold on this issue, with the exception of some documents where permission for publication has so far been declined.
“These unpublished documents include correspondence between the Scottish Government and the US Government, whose release Senator Menendez has now requested. We would urge the Senator and his colleagues to work with their own Government so that the remaining information we hold can be published in the interests of maximum transparency.”
The Scottish Government also denied reports that Alex Salmond received a letter from committee member Senator Frank Lautenberg, who is said to have “pleaded” with the First Minister to send a representative to the hearing to add “credibility” to proceedings.
[Another article in the same newspaper by James Cusick contains the following:]
Of all the missing pieces in the jigsaw of information on the Lockerbie bombing and its aftermath one of the most confusing is Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal against his conviction for the greatest terrorist atrocity ever perpetrated over Scottish soil. (...)
The Scottish Government had repeatedly branded the 2007 Prisoner Transfer Agreement between the UK and Libya – brokered in Tripoli in May 2007 by the then-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his foreign affairs adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald – as unconstitutional because it took no account of Scotland’s separate legal identity from the UK Government,
For the prisoner transfer agreement to go ahead Megrahi would have had to drop his appeal. But MacAskill rejected the PTA and opted instead to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, under the terms of which the appeal could have gone ahead as planned. Yet Megrahi opted to drop it. Why? (...)
MacAskill will have known the full facts that lay behind the SCCRC’s decision to grant the appeal. The commission produced an 800-page report of the decision taken at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001. It was a Scottish court sitting in an independent country, and heard by three high court judges. A further 14 pages offered evaluation of new evidence and new circumstances surrounding the case against Megrahi, and identified six key areas where a potential miscarriage of justice may have taken place. (...)
Perhaps the most damning fall-out from the imminent appeal process, however, is the potential shredding of the evidence used to convict Megrahi and the unanswered questions about why they were admitted to court in the first place. Other uncomfortable questions centre on why wider investigations into the background of key witnesses did not take place on any scale that would have routinely been tested in a different legal arena.
Crucial to Megrahi’s conviction was the prosecution’s ability to place him in Malta on December 7, 1988. That was the day the court identified as the date a purchase was made at Mary’s House, a shop run by Tony Gauci. Clothes bought in the Sliema shop on this specific date were said to have been in the Samsonite case containing the explosive device.
Gauci was the witness who identified Megrahi as buying the clothes from his shop, on December 7. (...) This is crucial because the Libyan’s passport states that he was in Malta at that time. But if the clothes purchase was made earlier then Megrahi couldn’t have been in Malta at the time. That is the new picture painted in the evidence reviewed by the SCCRC. Gauci’s identification of Megrahi in his shop is also questioned.
Documents also allege that at an early stage of the US-UK investigation Gauci asked for, and was given, $2m by the US Department of Justice for his contributions to the case.
Other new areas of evidence which cast doubt on the conviction included documents said to have come from the CIA which relate to the ‘Mebo’ timer that is said to have been the key device which detonated the bomb on the aircraft. Details of these documents were not given to Megrahi’s defence counsel.
The owner of the Mebo firm, Edwin Bollier, is also listed in review of the evidence as claiming that in 1991 the FBI offered him $4m to testify that the fragments of a timer found near the scene of the crash were part of a Mebo MST-13 timer which the company said had been supplied to Libya.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is supposed to be the outcome of any legal process seeking justice. The appeal of Megrahi, had it gone ahead, suggests that Scottish justice fell short in the way it dealt with Lockerbie.
[A third article in The Sunday Herald by Tom Gordon reads in part:]
To many observers, it was the day Kenny MacAskill crossed a line. Before BP’s oil spill made it the focus for conspiracy theories, it was also the moment some felt ministers pressured a dying man to spare the blushes of the Scots legal system.
Just before 9am on Wednesday, August 5 last year, the Justice Secretary entered Greenock Prison for a meeting with inmate 55725. (...)
On May 5, the Libyan government had applied for Megrahi’s release under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) initiated by Tony Blair.
The following month, on the advice of George Burgess, head of the government’s criminal law and licensing division, MacAskill agreed to meetings with key players in the Lockerbie case, including Megrahi.
On July 24, Megrahi made a separate application for release on compassionate grounds. (...)
MacAskill came with Robert Gordon, director of the Justice Department, and Linda Miller, from the Criminal Law and Licensing Division.
According to official notes of the meeting, MacAskill said he would be considering both applications for release “in parallel”.
After asserting his innocence, Megrahi gave a history of his case, from his surrender in 1999, to trial at Camp Zeist in 2001, up to the present day, his illness, separation from his family, and feeling of “desolation”.
MacAskill stressed he could only grant a PTA transfer if there were no court proceedings ongoing – in other words, if Megrahi dropped his appeals against conviction and sentence.
“Mr Megrahi confirmed he understood this point,” the note recorded.
However, according to one of those close to events, Megrahi wrongly took this to mean that dropping his appeals was also a pre-condition of compassionate release. It wasn’t.
“MacAskill said something stupid. He shouldn’t have mentioned the appeal at all. “[The two processes] were conflated. That’s ultimately what Megrahi took from it,” said the source.
A week later, Megrahi signalled he was dropping his appeals.
His QC, Maggie Scott, told the High Court her client thought this would “assist in the early determination of these applications”.
Note the “applications” plural. (...)
A senior legal source told the Sunday Herald Megrahi was definitely under the false impression that abandoning his appeals would help secure compassionate release.
However the Libyan may simply have calculated that with MacAskill considering the PTA and compassionate applications at the same time, ending his appeals would leave both options open rather than just one. [Note by RB: This is the correct interpretation. Mr Megrahi was very well aware that compassionate release did not require abandonment of the appeal. Equally, he knew that prisoner transfer did; and he, like his government, was still labouring under the lingering impression created by Blair and Sheinwald during the "deal in the desert" that his repatriation under the PTA was really a done deal. Release under the PTA was what was really expected, because that was what Nigel and Tony had led the Libyan government to believe.]
On September 2, by a majority vote, the Scottish Parliament declared MacAskill had “mishandled” the release decision, and that meeting Megrahi while considering his application for compassionate release was “wrong”, and an “inappropriate precedent”.
[An editorial in the same newspaper headlined "Don’t let America give us lessons in justice" contains the following:]
[E]ven if MacAskill’s decision was flawed – and that is surely a subjective opinion – there remains no evidence that BP played any role whatsoever in persuading the Justice Minister to release Megrahi. The Scottish Government has insisted it received no representations from the oil company, and that it had no contact with it. There is no evidence, or indeed any serious suggestion, that is not the case.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that the Westminster Government wanted Megrahi free and that it was lobbied by BP to pave the way for his return to Libya.
It was the Westminster Government – albeit not the present Government – that agreed the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya when Megrahi was the only significant Libyan in a British jail. It was a Westminster Government which specifically agreed not to exclude Megrahi from that agreement. And it was a Westminster Government that decided to agree a strategy of bringing Libya back in from the cold. BP has already admitted lobbying Westminster for a quick conclusion to the prisoner transfer agreement so that trade with Libya could resume. Indeed, a deal between the Libyan government and BP was signed almost immediately after the prisoner transfer agreement was approved. All this is in the public domain. It does not require an inquiry in America to establish these facts.
It was only when it became apparent that Westminister did not have the legal authority to release Megrahi that the matter landed on MacAskill’s desk. Westminster may have officially kept its wishes to itself while MacAskill was making his deliberations but there can be no doubt that it privately wished Megrahi freed. It had already agreed a deal to make that happen.
In the end, MacAskill went against the prisoner transfer agreement but instead decided on compassionate release. It is acceptable to question the wisdom of that decision. It is not acceptable to question MacAskill’s right to make it.
Yet if the events surrounding Megrahi’s death are known, there are many facts about his conviction, and in particular his appeal against that conviction, which remain shrouded in mystery.
By all means we should have an inquiry which would allow the serious doubts about the veracity of the evidence against Megrahi to be aired. But we do not need the inquiry currently being demanded and we do not need America to give us lessons in justice. Alex Salmond is right to have nothing to do with it.
Pressure is growing on the US government to release secret documents which detail its position on the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
As the trans-Atlantic row deepens over why Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish jail last summer, the US government is being urged to drop its ban on the publication of letters it sent to both the Scottish Government and Whitehall on the issue.
The US government refused Holyrood permission to make the papers public in a strongly worded letter last September, a month after Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, was allowed to return to Libya following his compassionate release.
But the move to make the documents public took a step forward as the Senate committee on foreign affairs prepares for Thursday’s inquiry into the prisoner’s release, with chairman Senator Robert Menendez requesting that the Scottish Government provide information on Megrahi’s release in five key areas.
They include “any documents including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the US government’s position on Al Megrahi’s release or transfer to Libyan custody.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said last night: “We have received another letter from Senator Menendez, who will chair next week’s hearing, and who has now asked for us to provide five categories of documents relating to the case. We are more than happy to do so, and indeed have already published all we hold on this issue, with the exception of some documents where permission for publication has so far been declined.
“These unpublished documents include correspondence between the Scottish Government and the US Government, whose release Senator Menendez has now requested. We would urge the Senator and his colleagues to work with their own Government so that the remaining information we hold can be published in the interests of maximum transparency.”
The Scottish Government also denied reports that Alex Salmond received a letter from committee member Senator Frank Lautenberg, who is said to have “pleaded” with the First Minister to send a representative to the hearing to add “credibility” to proceedings.
[Another article in the same newspaper by James Cusick contains the following:]
Of all the missing pieces in the jigsaw of information on the Lockerbie bombing and its aftermath one of the most confusing is Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal against his conviction for the greatest terrorist atrocity ever perpetrated over Scottish soil. (...)
The Scottish Government had repeatedly branded the 2007 Prisoner Transfer Agreement between the UK and Libya – brokered in Tripoli in May 2007 by the then-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his foreign affairs adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald – as unconstitutional because it took no account of Scotland’s separate legal identity from the UK Government,
For the prisoner transfer agreement to go ahead Megrahi would have had to drop his appeal. But MacAskill rejected the PTA and opted instead to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, under the terms of which the appeal could have gone ahead as planned. Yet Megrahi opted to drop it. Why? (...)
MacAskill will have known the full facts that lay behind the SCCRC’s decision to grant the appeal. The commission produced an 800-page report of the decision taken at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001. It was a Scottish court sitting in an independent country, and heard by three high court judges. A further 14 pages offered evaluation of new evidence and new circumstances surrounding the case against Megrahi, and identified six key areas where a potential miscarriage of justice may have taken place. (...)
Perhaps the most damning fall-out from the imminent appeal process, however, is the potential shredding of the evidence used to convict Megrahi and the unanswered questions about why they were admitted to court in the first place. Other uncomfortable questions centre on why wider investigations into the background of key witnesses did not take place on any scale that would have routinely been tested in a different legal arena.
Crucial to Megrahi’s conviction was the prosecution’s ability to place him in Malta on December 7, 1988. That was the day the court identified as the date a purchase was made at Mary’s House, a shop run by Tony Gauci. Clothes bought in the Sliema shop on this specific date were said to have been in the Samsonite case containing the explosive device.
Gauci was the witness who identified Megrahi as buying the clothes from his shop, on December 7. (...) This is crucial because the Libyan’s passport states that he was in Malta at that time. But if the clothes purchase was made earlier then Megrahi couldn’t have been in Malta at the time. That is the new picture painted in the evidence reviewed by the SCCRC. Gauci’s identification of Megrahi in his shop is also questioned.
Documents also allege that at an early stage of the US-UK investigation Gauci asked for, and was given, $2m by the US Department of Justice for his contributions to the case.
Other new areas of evidence which cast doubt on the conviction included documents said to have come from the CIA which relate to the ‘Mebo’ timer that is said to have been the key device which detonated the bomb on the aircraft. Details of these documents were not given to Megrahi’s defence counsel.
The owner of the Mebo firm, Edwin Bollier, is also listed in review of the evidence as claiming that in 1991 the FBI offered him $4m to testify that the fragments of a timer found near the scene of the crash were part of a Mebo MST-13 timer which the company said had been supplied to Libya.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is supposed to be the outcome of any legal process seeking justice. The appeal of Megrahi, had it gone ahead, suggests that Scottish justice fell short in the way it dealt with Lockerbie.
[A third article in The Sunday Herald by Tom Gordon reads in part:]
To many observers, it was the day Kenny MacAskill crossed a line. Before BP’s oil spill made it the focus for conspiracy theories, it was also the moment some felt ministers pressured a dying man to spare the blushes of the Scots legal system.
Just before 9am on Wednesday, August 5 last year, the Justice Secretary entered Greenock Prison for a meeting with inmate 55725. (...)
On May 5, the Libyan government had applied for Megrahi’s release under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) initiated by Tony Blair.
The following month, on the advice of George Burgess, head of the government’s criminal law and licensing division, MacAskill agreed to meetings with key players in the Lockerbie case, including Megrahi.
On July 24, Megrahi made a separate application for release on compassionate grounds. (...)
MacAskill came with Robert Gordon, director of the Justice Department, and Linda Miller, from the Criminal Law and Licensing Division.
According to official notes of the meeting, MacAskill said he would be considering both applications for release “in parallel”.
After asserting his innocence, Megrahi gave a history of his case, from his surrender in 1999, to trial at Camp Zeist in 2001, up to the present day, his illness, separation from his family, and feeling of “desolation”.
MacAskill stressed he could only grant a PTA transfer if there were no court proceedings ongoing – in other words, if Megrahi dropped his appeals against conviction and sentence.
“Mr Megrahi confirmed he understood this point,” the note recorded.
However, according to one of those close to events, Megrahi wrongly took this to mean that dropping his appeals was also a pre-condition of compassionate release. It wasn’t.
“MacAskill said something stupid. He shouldn’t have mentioned the appeal at all. “[The two processes] were conflated. That’s ultimately what Megrahi took from it,” said the source.
A week later, Megrahi signalled he was dropping his appeals.
His QC, Maggie Scott, told the High Court her client thought this would “assist in the early determination of these applications”.
Note the “applications” plural. (...)
A senior legal source told the Sunday Herald Megrahi was definitely under the false impression that abandoning his appeals would help secure compassionate release.
However the Libyan may simply have calculated that with MacAskill considering the PTA and compassionate applications at the same time, ending his appeals would leave both options open rather than just one. [Note by RB: This is the correct interpretation. Mr Megrahi was very well aware that compassionate release did not require abandonment of the appeal. Equally, he knew that prisoner transfer did; and he, like his government, was still labouring under the lingering impression created by Blair and Sheinwald during the "deal in the desert" that his repatriation under the PTA was really a done deal. Release under the PTA was what was really expected, because that was what Nigel and Tony had led the Libyan government to believe.]
On September 2, by a majority vote, the Scottish Parliament declared MacAskill had “mishandled” the release decision, and that meeting Megrahi while considering his application for compassionate release was “wrong”, and an “inappropriate precedent”.
[An editorial in the same newspaper headlined "Don’t let America give us lessons in justice" contains the following:]
[E]ven if MacAskill’s decision was flawed – and that is surely a subjective opinion – there remains no evidence that BP played any role whatsoever in persuading the Justice Minister to release Megrahi. The Scottish Government has insisted it received no representations from the oil company, and that it had no contact with it. There is no evidence, or indeed any serious suggestion, that is not the case.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that the Westminster Government wanted Megrahi free and that it was lobbied by BP to pave the way for his return to Libya.
It was the Westminster Government – albeit not the present Government – that agreed the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya when Megrahi was the only significant Libyan in a British jail. It was a Westminster Government which specifically agreed not to exclude Megrahi from that agreement. And it was a Westminster Government that decided to agree a strategy of bringing Libya back in from the cold. BP has already admitted lobbying Westminster for a quick conclusion to the prisoner transfer agreement so that trade with Libya could resume. Indeed, a deal between the Libyan government and BP was signed almost immediately after the prisoner transfer agreement was approved. All this is in the public domain. It does not require an inquiry in America to establish these facts.
It was only when it became apparent that Westminister did not have the legal authority to release Megrahi that the matter landed on MacAskill’s desk. Westminster may have officially kept its wishes to itself while MacAskill was making his deliberations but there can be no doubt that it privately wished Megrahi freed. It had already agreed a deal to make that happen.
In the end, MacAskill went against the prisoner transfer agreement but instead decided on compassionate release. It is acceptable to question the wisdom of that decision. It is not acceptable to question MacAskill’s right to make it.
Yet if the events surrounding Megrahi’s death are known, there are many facts about his conviction, and in particular his appeal against that conviction, which remain shrouded in mystery.
By all means we should have an inquiry which would allow the serious doubts about the veracity of the evidence against Megrahi to be aired. But we do not need the inquiry currently being demanded and we do not need America to give us lessons in justice. Alex Salmond is right to have nothing to do with it.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
The Libya investment firm and the release of the Lockerbie bomber
[This is the headline over a report on the Telegraph website. The following are excerpts.]
The terraced house just around the corner from the American embassy in London looks like most in the affluent street. Tall and elegant, only the shiny brass plaque gives a clue to what lies beyond the black front door.
The name reads Dalia Advisory Limited, a company established by Libyan businessmen just a week after the country's officials were told the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was being considered for release on compassionate grounds.
Dalia Advisory is in fact a "front" for the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), a sovereign wealth fund with £80 billion, to invest in Britain and beyond. The Georgian town house, bought for £6 million, is, ironically, only a few yards from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
Senior business sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that had Megrahi died in a British jail, the LIA would have taken its vast sums elsewhere. "If Megrahi had perished in Scotland, we would have become a pariah state as far as the Libyans were concerned," said one source.
Oliver Miles, a former ambassador to Libya and now deputy chairman of the Libyan British Business Council, said: "At the time of his release everyone knew that if he died in a Scottish jail, it would be bad for our relations." (...)
However long Megrahi now survives, the fact is business between Britain and Libya is currently booming. British exports to Libya are now double what they were a year ago while imports from Libya have risen three fold. In the first two months of this year alone, the UK exported £110 million of goods and services.
In Washington this week, the timing of the establishment of Dalia, run by an associate of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's favourite son Saif, will come under the scrutiny of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a wide-ranging hearing into the release.
Angry US politicians and victims' families are convinced that Megrahi – convicted of the murder of 270 people, 189 of them Americans, when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Dec 1988 – was allowed home to ease oil and business deals between Libya and Britain.
There is particular focus on the role of BP, already on America's most hated list because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In the US, the company is prime suspect in masterminding the release – although the British and Scottish governments and BP have all denied this.
And US-British relations are heading for a fresh crisis over the Megrahi affair as it appears that none of the five invited British witnesses will attend Thursday's hearing. (...)
BP is to expected to send a senior executive but not the two men requested by senators – Tony Hayward, the beleaguered chief executive who may be about to leave the company, and Sir Mark Allen, the former MI6 agent who acted as a go-between for British and Libyan authorities. (...)
Speaking in a personal capacity, Mr Miles believes the American senators are conducting a "kangaroo court". He said: "They have already decided BP are guilty but they haven't got any evidence to say that." (...)
American anger is only compounded by the tone from Tripoli. Megrahi's wife Aisha, a schoolteacher, said: "Abdelbaset was a political prisoner who paid with ten years of his life to support his country. Libyans are perfectly right to celebrate his return to his family." And his eldest brother Mohammed added: "The public response is not a political one, but a show of support for someone who is much loved." (...)
Dalia was incorporated, according to Companies House records, on July 14 last year. A week earlier, at a meeting between Scottish and Libyan officials, Mr MacAskill first discussed the possibility of Megrahi being released on compassionate grounds rather than under PTA. [Note by RB: This wording gives the impression that, out of the blue, Kenny MacAskill raised the possibility of compassionate release with Libyan officials. This is arrant nonsense. The compassionate release option had been discussed in the media and was familiar to Libyan officials long before their meeting with Mr MacAskill.] BP's lobbying for the PTA – which was holding up ratification of a Libyan oil exploration deal – is at the centre of the US senate hearing next week.
The terraced house just around the corner from the American embassy in London looks like most in the affluent street. Tall and elegant, only the shiny brass plaque gives a clue to what lies beyond the black front door.
The name reads Dalia Advisory Limited, a company established by Libyan businessmen just a week after the country's officials were told the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was being considered for release on compassionate grounds.
Dalia Advisory is in fact a "front" for the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), a sovereign wealth fund with £80 billion, to invest in Britain and beyond. The Georgian town house, bought for £6 million, is, ironically, only a few yards from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
Senior business sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that had Megrahi died in a British jail, the LIA would have taken its vast sums elsewhere. "If Megrahi had perished in Scotland, we would have become a pariah state as far as the Libyans were concerned," said one source.
Oliver Miles, a former ambassador to Libya and now deputy chairman of the Libyan British Business Council, said: "At the time of his release everyone knew that if he died in a Scottish jail, it would be bad for our relations." (...)
However long Megrahi now survives, the fact is business between Britain and Libya is currently booming. British exports to Libya are now double what they were a year ago while imports from Libya have risen three fold. In the first two months of this year alone, the UK exported £110 million of goods and services.
In Washington this week, the timing of the establishment of Dalia, run by an associate of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's favourite son Saif, will come under the scrutiny of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a wide-ranging hearing into the release.
Angry US politicians and victims' families are convinced that Megrahi – convicted of the murder of 270 people, 189 of them Americans, when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Dec 1988 – was allowed home to ease oil and business deals between Libya and Britain.
There is particular focus on the role of BP, already on America's most hated list because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In the US, the company is prime suspect in masterminding the release – although the British and Scottish governments and BP have all denied this.
And US-British relations are heading for a fresh crisis over the Megrahi affair as it appears that none of the five invited British witnesses will attend Thursday's hearing. (...)
BP is to expected to send a senior executive but not the two men requested by senators – Tony Hayward, the beleaguered chief executive who may be about to leave the company, and Sir Mark Allen, the former MI6 agent who acted as a go-between for British and Libyan authorities. (...)
Speaking in a personal capacity, Mr Miles believes the American senators are conducting a "kangaroo court". He said: "They have already decided BP are guilty but they haven't got any evidence to say that." (...)
American anger is only compounded by the tone from Tripoli. Megrahi's wife Aisha, a schoolteacher, said: "Abdelbaset was a political prisoner who paid with ten years of his life to support his country. Libyans are perfectly right to celebrate his return to his family." And his eldest brother Mohammed added: "The public response is not a political one, but a show of support for someone who is much loved." (...)
Dalia was incorporated, according to Companies House records, on July 14 last year. A week earlier, at a meeting between Scottish and Libyan officials, Mr MacAskill first discussed the possibility of Megrahi being released on compassionate grounds rather than under PTA. [Note by RB: This wording gives the impression that, out of the blue, Kenny MacAskill raised the possibility of compassionate release with Libyan officials. This is arrant nonsense. The compassionate release option had been discussed in the media and was familiar to Libyan officials long before their meeting with Mr MacAskill.] BP's lobbying for the PTA – which was holding up ratification of a Libyan oil exploration deal – is at the centre of the US senate hearing next week.
Kenny MacAskill rejects Lockerbie plea
[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill has again refused to attend a US senate hearing over the release of the Lockerbie bomber. (...)
Mr MacAskill said the only documents which the Scottish government had not already put in the public domain were correspondence with the US government.
A US senator has "pleaded" with the Scottish government to appear before the hearing next week. (...)
Mr MacAskill told the BBC the Scottish government had not yet received Mr Lautenberg's letter, but had received one from New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, a member of the Senate's foreign affairs committee, who had asked for further information.
He said: "The point has already been made quite clear by the First Minister of Scotland - I am the justice secretary of Scotland, I am elected by the people of Scotland and I am answerable to the parliament of Scotland.
"I have been made available and co-operated with enquiries both in the Scottish Parliament and in Westminster, and that is where jurisdiction lies."
Mr MacAskill said he would be happy to provide Mr Menendez with the information he had requested, which the Scottish government had already published on the internet.
He added: "The only matter that remains outstanding is communications between the American government and ourselves.
"The only reason that has not been published is that the American government has refused to give us consent to publish it.
"If Senator Menendez, and indeed Senator Lautenberg, wish to lobby or persuade the United States government to allow the release of that information, we will publish it forthwith."
[If the claim in the editorial in The Herald is correct that the letter from the US State Department to the Scottish Government effectively accepts the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds as preferable to repatriation under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, it is unlikely -- in a mid-term election year -- that the US government would consent to its release or that Democrat senators would seriously try to persuade it to do so.]
Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill has again refused to attend a US senate hearing over the release of the Lockerbie bomber. (...)
Mr MacAskill said the only documents which the Scottish government had not already put in the public domain were correspondence with the US government.
A US senator has "pleaded" with the Scottish government to appear before the hearing next week. (...)
Mr MacAskill told the BBC the Scottish government had not yet received Mr Lautenberg's letter, but had received one from New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, a member of the Senate's foreign affairs committee, who had asked for further information.
He said: "The point has already been made quite clear by the First Minister of Scotland - I am the justice secretary of Scotland, I am elected by the people of Scotland and I am answerable to the parliament of Scotland.
"I have been made available and co-operated with enquiries both in the Scottish Parliament and in Westminster, and that is where jurisdiction lies."
Mr MacAskill said he would be happy to provide Mr Menendez with the information he had requested, which the Scottish government had already published on the internet.
He added: "The only matter that remains outstanding is communications between the American government and ourselves.
"The only reason that has not been published is that the American government has refused to give us consent to publish it.
"If Senator Menendez, and indeed Senator Lautenberg, wish to lobby or persuade the United States government to allow the release of that information, we will publish it forthwith."
[If the claim in the editorial in The Herald is correct that the letter from the US State Department to the Scottish Government effectively accepts the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds as preferable to repatriation under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, it is unlikely -- in a mid-term election year -- that the US government would consent to its release or that Democrat senators would seriously try to persuade it to do so.]
MacAskill's meeting with Megrahi
[I am grateful to a reader of this blog who yesterday evening sent me the following message:]
You will be interested in tonight's Any Questions, if you didn't hear it. It's on the iPlayer here http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t2y8r/Any_Questions_23_07_2010/
They begin with Megrahi, but you can go to 12 or 13 minutes in for the interesting bit. Magnus Linklater says he has seen a transcript of the meeting between Kenny MacAskill and Megrahi, and Kenny says "There is no question of you being released while there is still an appeal outstanding. The decsion as to whether you pursue that appeal is for you and your legal team."
Fergus Ewing has made it clear that the meeting was part of the provisions of the PTA and was about that application not compassionate release; however, that wording (if Magnus has remembered it correctly) seems very definite, if not threatening. One would need to know whether these were the exact words, and whether in context it was indeed referring purely to the PTA, but something smells very funny about this.
You will be interested in tonight's Any Questions, if you didn't hear it. It's on the iPlayer here http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t2y8r/Any_Questions_23_07_2010/
They begin with Megrahi, but you can go to 12 or 13 minutes in for the interesting bit. Magnus Linklater says he has seen a transcript of the meeting between Kenny MacAskill and Megrahi, and Kenny says "There is no question of you being released while there is still an appeal outstanding. The decsion as to whether you pursue that appeal is for you and your legal team."
Fergus Ewing has made it clear that the meeting was part of the provisions of the PTA and was about that application not compassionate release; however, that wording (if Magnus has remembered it correctly) seems very definite, if not threatening. One would need to know whether these were the exact words, and whether in context it was indeed referring purely to the PTA, but something smells very funny about this.
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