Defection or diplomatic mission?

Has Moussa Koussa really defected? There are some indications that this may be a diplomatic mission -- negotiating an exit strategy for the Gaddafi regime -- rather than a defection.

1. Moussa is not accompanied by his family, who are apparently still in Libya. If he had been planning defection he would have had no difficulty in getting them out of the country before he flew to London.

2. He was accompanied to Tunisia (but not beyond) for his flight from Djerba to Farnborough by Abdel Ati al-Obeidi who remains a trusted counsellor of Gaddafi (and a trusted intermediary in the eyes of the UK and the USA).

3. If Moussa had defected, he would surely have negotiated immunity from prosecution for any personal involvement in Lockerbie (if Libya was implicated in any capacity, Moussa would inevitably have been personally involved). According to Foreign Secretary William Hague, no such immunity has been granted. This suggests that his visit is already covered by diplomatic immunity.

Koussa's Libya defection welcomed by Lockerbie relative

[This is the headline over a report just published on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

The Libyan Foreign Minister's defection was a "great day" for families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing, according to one victim's father.

Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, said Moussa Koussa was at the heart of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's government and "could tell us everything". (...)

Mr Swire said the relatives of those who died "should be rejoicing".

Mr Koussa arrived in London on Wednesday saying he was no longer willing to represent the Libyan leader's regime internationally.

"Koussa was at the centre of Gaddafi's inner circle," Mr Swire said.

"This is a guy who knows everything.

"I think this is a fantastic day for those who seek the truth about Lockerbie."

Mr Swire, who met Mr Koussa during a visit to Libya in 1998, said he was "extremely frightening - more frightening than Gaddafi himself".

He said: "He was clearly running things.

"If Libya was involved in Lockerbie, he can tell us how they carried out the atrocity and why.

"I would be appalled if by now the Scottish police are not in England interviewing Mr Koussa - it is a great day for us."

Blow for Gathafi as foreign minister defects

[This is the headline over a report published today on the Middle East Online website. It reads in part:]

Libya's Moamer Gathafi suffered another blow Wednesday when his foreign minister flew into Britain telling officials he no longer wanted to represent the Tripoli regime.

Mussa Kussa arrived at Farnborough Airfield, west of London, on Wednesday, a Foreign Office statement said.

"He travelled here under his own free will. He has told us that he is resigning his post," it added.

"Mussa Kussa is one of the most senior figures in Gathafi's government and his role was to represent the regime internationally, something that he is no longer willing to do," the British statement continued.

"We encourage those around Gathafi to abandon him and embrace a better future for Libya that allows political transition and real reform that meets the aspirations of the Libyan people," it concluded. (...)

Washington quickly hailed Kussa's departure as a major blow to the Gathafi regime.

"This is a very significant defection and an indication that people around Gathafi think the writing's on the wall," a senior official in the US administration said.

Kussa is credited as having been a key figure in Libya's efforts to improve its international reputation before to the current crisis.

The 59-year-old was installed as Gathafi's foreign minister in March 2009 after having served as the head of Libya's intelligence agency from 1994.

One of Gathafi's trusted advisers, Kussa is believed to have convinced the leader to dismantle his nuclear weapons programme, opening the way for the lifting of US trade sanctions.

Earlier in his career, in 1980, Kussa served as ambassador to Britain, but was expelled after saying he wanted to eliminate the "enemies" of the Libyan regime in Britain.

[A profile of Moussa Koussa in today's edition of the Daily Telegraph contains the following:]

The former spy chief's resignation also comes at a critical time in the coalition's attempts to dislodge Col Gaddafi, as the rebels are retreating under fresh onslaughts and Whitehall sources suggested they were unlikely to win without arms or training from outside.

So his information and contacts among Col Gaddafi's generals will be all the more valuable.

However, the former head of Libya's external intelligence, was the mastermind accused of planning the Lockerbie bombing and any attempts to rehabilitate him are likely to be an exceedingly hot potato.

Mr Koussa has been a close confidant of Col Gaddafi's for 30 years and helped secure the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

He was expelled from London in 1980 after giving an extraordinary newspaper interview when he was the head of the embassy in which he said two Libyan dissidents living in London would be killed.

Speaking outside the Libyan embassy in St James’s Square, Mr Koussa told The Times: “The revolutionary committees have decided last night to kill two more people in the United Kingdom. I approve of this."

He returned to Libya after being given 48 hours to leave the UK, where he was accused of funding terrorist groups.

Mr Koussa was named by intelligence sources in the mid-1990s as the possible architect of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, and the blowing up the following year of a French airliner in central Africa in which 170 people died.

Mr Koussa, who is now 61, travelled to Britain to meet British and Scottish government officials on at least two occasions as Mr Megrahi’s health deteriorated.

[A report in today's edition of The Guardian contains the following:]

Britain and the US have been in regular contact with him in recent days, mainly through intelligence sources. Probably more than any other senior official inside the Libyan regime, Kousa is seen as the key figure who persuaded Gaddafi to make a deal with British intelligence agencies to stop developing weapons of mass destruction in return for the ending of its pariah status.

However, his relationship with Britain in the past has been far from convivial. Kousa has previously been seen as one of the controlling forces behind the Lockerbie bombing and it was not clear whether he was seeking political asylum.

In 1980, he was expelled from the UK and, for 15 years, he was head of Libyan foreign intelligence – including in the period of the Lockerbie bombing. He has always denied Libya was involved in the bombing.

[Of the various officials of the Gaddafi regime that I met between 1993 and 2009, Moussa Koussa was the most frightening. It was he who, in January 1994, signed on behalf of the Libyan regime the letter confirming that they approved of the scheme that I had submitted to Megrahi and Fhimah's lawyers and to the Libyan Government regarding a non-jury trial in the Netherlands.]

Scottish leaders' debate: First Minister Alex Salmond under fire on release of ... Megrahi

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the blindly Labour-supporting Daily Record on the first televised debate between the Scottish party leaders in the run-up to the Scottish Parliament election in May. It reads in part:]

Scots Labour leader Iain Gray won loud applause during last night's live TV election debate when he tore into the SNP goverment's fateful decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.

He told the audience in Glasgow: "I just think he got the decision wrong."

Gray hit back after Alex Salmond tried to defend the decision, in August 2009, to release terminal cancer sufferer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.

It was arguably the biggest moment of Salmond's four years in power.

Last night, a question from an audience member during STV's live leaders' debate catapulted the controversy into the Holyrood election campaign.

And it revealed public anger that Megrahi, given three months to live, was released and continues to enjoy a life of luxury in his homeland nearly two years on. The audience member told Salmond: "Sometimes it's events, not policies, that define a leader and his party.

"Do you think the SNP will ever be forgiven for releasing Britain's biggest ever mass murderer?" Salmond said: "Yes, I do. "People don't necessarily vote for political parties because they agree or disagree with an issue, but parties are judged on whether they did what they believed was right."

Salmond claimed some victims' relatives supported the decision. He added: "Kenny MacAskill did it because he believed it to be right, not for oil or trade or politics."

But Gray instantly hit back - winning the biggest round of applause of the night. He said: "I just think he got the decision wrong and I've made that clear."

The Labour leader said Scottish justice had compassion built in - but it was not automatic.

He added: "One factor is the nature of the crime and it was the worst crime anyone has ever been convicted of in Scotland."

Scots Tory leader Annabel Goldie also slammed the decision to free Megrahi. She said: "It was a bad decision, badly made - and it reflected badly on Scotland."

The clash sparked an otherwise tame debate into life.

[According to a report by political correspondent Jamie Livingstone on the STV News website "The First Minister also successfully down-played his propensity to appear somewhat dismissive or arrogant and escaped largely unscathed over the release of the Lockerbie bomber."

Alan Cochrane's report in the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph opined: "The issue of Megrahi’s release was raised by a member of the studio audience but Mr Salmond was never seriously cross-questioned on the issue."

For some light relief, here is a link to the weekend edition of South Africa's best strip cartoon Madam & Eve.]

What's Libya got to do with it...?

[This is the headline over a long article by Justice for Megrahi secretary Robert Forrester published today on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads in part:]

Despite the distress caused to anyone directly connected to the Pan Am 103 incident, it almost seems wrong to draw a spotlight on to the Lockerbie/Zeist case at a time when Libya is being torn apart by civil war. Nevertheless, David Cameron has chosen to do just that recently in seeking to justify his belligerence by saying of Muammar al-Gaddafi: "The people of Lockerbie know what this man is capable of." (David Cameron - 21/3/2011). Justice Secretary Ken Clark is also now playing the Lockerbie card by saying that we have to bring Gaddafi down to prevent him from seeking "another Lockerbie" in revenge for the UK’s support of the rebels.

It is always much healthier if you can draw on some moral high ground to justify your cause in the public eye. We tried it on in Afghanistan with how we were lifting the Afghans out of their feudal political system by waving our magic wand of democracy over them. Now, with Libya, it is Lockerbie and terrorism.

Ever since Libya’s ex justice minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, set himself up as leader of Eastern Libya in February with claims that he had proof that Gaddafi was behind the Lockerbie incident, this has provided the opportunity to indulge in a bit of sleight of hand and massaging of public opinion. The Lockerbie crash combines public ignorance, terrorism, fear and righteousness, and, it sells papers into the bargain.

Abdel-Jalil’s claims are simply that, claims. After a month, he has yet to produce one iota of substance.

Is he saying that he was negligent enough to leave the documents back in Tripoli? Once Tripoli falls and no documents are produced, are we then going to hear that Gaddafi must have destroyed them? Perhaps though, documents will be produced, however, we all know what is said about truth and the fog of war. It surely comes as no surprise to anyone that Gaddafi would have been behind an action such as the Lockerbie event if one of his countrymen had carried it out. But, did Abdelbaset al-Megrahi do it?

To say that the case against Mr al-Megrahi has one or two problems would be arch understatement.

There was a break in to Heathrow airside giving access to Pan Am 103’s loading bay area shortly before take off. This incident was reported to the Heathrow authorities at the time but not made public until after the verdict was passed twelve years later.

There is no evidence of any unaccompanied luggage leaving on flight KM180 from Malta’s Luqa airport.

There are question marks over the provenance of documentary evidence provided by Frankfurt Airport (the transit point from Luqa to Heathrow).

Along with other alleged inducements, the Crown’s star witness, Mr Tony Gauci (the proprietor of a Maltese clothes outlet) and his brother, Paul, are accused of having been in receipt of payments of $2,000.000 and $1,000,000 respectively under an American rewards for justice scheme for their testimony (a practice understandably alien to Scots Law, and presumably sufficient to dismiss both Tony and Paul Gauci as witnesses. The US authorities have yet to deny this deal). Tony Gauci’s testimony falls considerably short of being conclusive in terms of his eye witness account, which attempts to match up the identity of the purchaser of clothes from his shop, on account of key discrepancies with regard to the date of the purchase and the height, weight, age and build of the purchaser. Even though he had been prompted by numerous photo spreads containing pictures of Mr al-Megrahi and privy to media photographs of the accused prior to the trial, Mr Gauci could do little better than say that the man in the dock “resembled” the purchaser of the clothes. (...)

The above simply serve to illustrate some of the more prominent worries over the safety of the conviction. To compound this, the judges chose to believe a tale of how a bombing was carried out that defies what any normal person could accept as credible, namely: that Mr al-Megrahi contrived to place an unaccompanied luggage item on to flight KM180 from Malta which was then subsequently transferred at Frankfurt to a feeder flight to Heathrow, again unaccompanied, where it was finally loaded on to Pan Am 103, unaccompanied. Thus defying three security regimes in three separate countries, and the bomb still managed to blow up its target and not either one of the first two flights despite the inevitability of delays etc which would have been par for the course around Christmas time. It is truly hard to believe that 15 lay Scottish jurors could reach anything other than a not guilty verdict in such circumstances. Although impeccably qualified as judges, their Lordships, MacLean, Sutherland and Coulsfield, in arriving at their guilty verdict, displayed an absence of experience when it comes to the role of being a juror. Indeed, to give credence at all to the story of the Luqa-Frankfurt-Heathrow connection, especially as it was presented at Zeist, demonstrates a complete inability to imagine how paramilitaries operate. (...)

Mr al-Megrahi’s first appeal failed, this is true. However, in their judgement, the judges were at pains to point out that they took no account of the sufficiency of evidence since the defence did not require them to do so. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) then referred the case back to the Court of Appeal on six grounds suggesting that no reasonable court would have reached a guilty verdict on the basis of the evidence laid before the Crown by the prosecution. This appeal was then, unnecessarily, dropped by Mr al-Megrahi in his attempt to gain compassionate release.

There has been much speculation regarding the possibility that he may have come under pressure to do so even though the terms of compassionate release do not require an appeal to be dropped to become a beneficiary of it.

The long and the short of it is, therefore, that this conviction has not yet been fully tested in law in the interests of justice.

The best that the Crown, in the form of the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, has been able to offer as a counter to these concerns is a mind-boggling merry-go-round of circular polemic which amounts to little more than: he was convicted, therefore, he did it. So parlous are the arguments offered up by the Crown that one almost feels bound to ask what qualifications are required for the job of Lord Advocate. To reassure us all that the Crown and the police are still taking the Lockerbie/Zeist affair seriously though, even at a point ten years after the conviction, Angiolini also claims that the Dumfries and Galloway police are conducting an on-going review of the investigation. It, in fact, transpires that this is being carried out by one sole officer. In the words of Christine Grahame MSP, this constitutes little better than “file management.” (...)

It is hard to see Gaddafi going anywhere now except to follow Saddam to the gallows. The West will do what it knows best and install someone who is suitably on message until the oil runs out. Who knows what may become of Mr al-Megrahi? A one way ticket to the US’s Guantánamo rest home perhaps?

Whatever transpires, it will make no difference to the case being put before the Scottish parliament by justice campaigners. No amount of dissembling mendacity claimed by politicians and others can ever change the documented historical fact of what took place at Zeist. This conviction simply does not stack up, no matter how good your gas mask.

Libyan crisis: Kenneth Clarke warns UK at risk of new Lockerbie

[Many UK news media over the past weekend ran stories on the Libya statement by the UK Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor. The original report is to be found in Saturday's edition of The Guardian. It reads in part:]

Kenneth Clarke has ratcheted up government pressure to depose Colonel Gaddafi by warning that the Libyan leader could stage a Lockerbie-style attack in revenge for Britain's role in the enforcement of the UN resolution if he is left in power.

The Lord Chancellor told The Guardian: "We do have one particular interest in the Maghreb [the western region of North Africa], which is Lockerbie.

"The British people have reason to remember the curse of Gaddafi – Gaddafi back in power, the old Gaddafi looking for revenge, we have a real interest in preventing that."

Clarke says in the interview that the UN resolution does not support regime change, adding that he would regard occupation as madness. But his remarks suggest British ministers recognise they now have a direct security interest in Gaddafi's removal in light of Libya's involvement in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 259 people on Pan Am flight 103 and 11 on the ground in the Scottish town.

The justice secretary is also extremely frank in admitting that the UK government has little idea how long the conflict will take or how it will be resolved.

He says: "I am not in the Foreign Office, fortunately, so I am not too worried by my remarks. But I am still not totally convinced anyone knows where we are going now".

His remarks came as a Guardian ICM poll shows more people oppose British involvement in the military action in Libya than support it: 42% against, compared with 36% in favour. (...)

Clarke, who was an opponent of the Iraq war and a critic of "havering" over Bosnia, said the UN resolution on Libya "represented a significant event in the evolution of the world order".

Speaking as the cabinet's senior lawyer, he said: "What we seem to have almost established in the international law is the humanitarian basis which can, in exceptional cases, justify intervention by the international community."

He admitted victory would be hard to define: "You cannot answer what is the destination, what it is going to be the moment when you can see the mission is accomplished. It is a little uncertain, but that would have been a dreadful reason for doing nothing." He added that no expert or pundit had foreseen the democratic uprising in Libya: "I don't think any of them saw it coming. I don't think any of them knew why it started or what started it."

He said: "We have already achieved a great deal by stopping the imminent invasion of Benghazi in the nick of time. We would have seen a lot of innocent people, some of them inspired by the best motives, being killed and a quite lunatic regime back in power, acting as an inspiration to others who want to imitate him. So we have already achieved something." (...)

Asked if the public would tolerate a long war, Clarke said: "We have strong public support – but, I mean, the invasion of Iraq had strong public support." The public, he said, "will support our participation so long as they are satisfied we are doing it for reasons we said and we are not getting ourselves into the occupation of another complicated tribal country of uncertain politics." (...)

He said: "We are not going in anyone's dreams, [going] in to start occupying the country. We have ruled it out in the resolution, thank heavens. It would be mad to occupy another country while we are in Afghanistan."

[The Madame Arcati blog on Sunday featured a post entitled Remembering Paul Foot and 'Lockerbie's dirty secret', referring to an article in The Guardian on 31 March 2004.

It is now exactly one month since the last visit to this blog from within Libya.]

Qaddafi unites Arabs against him in bid to oust "mad dog"

[This is the headline over an article published today on the Bloomberg Business Week website. It reads in part:]

President Ronald Reagan called Muammar Qaddafi a “mad dog” in 1986 when he ordered air strikes on Tripoli. A quarter century later, it might be the Libyan leader’s fellow Arabs who ultimately broker his downfall.

After opposing the Reagan response to Qaddafi’s terrorism, the 22-member Arab League is backing the bombing campaign led by Britain, France and the US to ground Libya’s air force and halt Qaddafi’s attempt to crush a rebellion. (...)

Before renouncing nuclear weapons in 2002, Qaddafi was a pariah as one of the earliest backers of terror attacks abroad, according to the US and European governments. His regime has been responsible for the death of at least 440 people in four countries, as well as brutality in Libya.

Reagan’s military action followed the April 1986 bombing of a Berlin discotheque that killed two US servicemen and a Turkish woman. Four people, including a Libyan diplomat, were convicted by a German court for participating in the attack. (...)

The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people and the only man convicted of the atrocity is a former Libyan intelligence officer. It was followed a year later by the attack on a French UTA plane over Niger, when 170 people died. Qaddafi in 2004 agreed to pay $170 million in compensation, the French government said. (...)

The final break with the Arab world came March 12 when the Arab League, meeting in an emergency session, asked the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, which has Africa’s largest oil reserves, to thwart attacks by Qaddafi’s forces on civilians.

While Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, said on March 12 one or two members of the Cairo-based group had voiced concerns, he reiterated this week that countries remain “committed” to UN efforts to halt the 68-year-old Qaddafi. (...)

In London, a police officer was killed in 1984 by gunfire from inside the Libyan embassy, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported at the time. The Libyan suspects were allowed to leave the country under diplomatic immunity and the U.K. broke diplomatic relations with Qaddafi.

The turnaround in relations with the West started in 1999, when Qaddafi allowed the extradition of two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing. He abandoned nuclear weapons development efforts after 2002 and pledged to destroy a chemical weapons stockpile. He also renounced terrorism.

Libya paid $1.5 billion into a compensation fund for terrorism victims to settle claims related to attacks, including the 1988 bombing of the U.S.-bound airliner over Lockerbie, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice certified in 2008.

The actions led to an easing of sanctions and improved ties with the U.S. and Europe. Western investment to expand Libyan oil production followed, as did Libyan investment in the West ranging from a stake in Italian bank UniCredit SpA to a 1.5 million-pound ($2.4 million) donation to the London School of Economics. (...)

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair visited him in his tent in Tripoli in 2004 and said Qaddafi had found “common cause” with the West in fighting terrorism.

Scottish authorities released Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al- Megrahi, the only person convicted of the jetliner attack over Lockerbie, on compassionate grounds in 2009 because he was said to be dying of cancer. He remains alive, according to Scottish officials responsible for monitoring him.

[With another busy weekend in prospect at Gannaga Lodge, it is unlikely that there will be further posts to this blog before Monday, 28 March.]

Shady dealings helped Qaddafi build fortune and regime

[This is the headline over an article in today's edition of The New York Times. It reads in part:]

In 2009, top aides to Col Muammar el-Qaddafi called together 15 executives from global energy companies operating in Libya’s oil fields and issued an extraordinary demand: Shell out the money for his country’s $1.5 billion bill for its role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 and other terrorist attacks.

If the companies did not comply, the Libyan officials warned, there would be “serious consequences” for their oil leases, according to a State Department summary of the meeting.

Many of those businesses balked, saying that covering Libya’s legal settlement with victims’ families for acts of terrorism was unthinkable. But some companies, including several based in the United States, appeared willing to give in to Libya’s coercion and make what amounted to payoffs to keep doing business, according to industry executives, American officials and State Department documents.

The episode and others like it, the officials said, reflect a Libyan culture rife with corruption, kickbacks, strong-arm tactics and political patronage since the United States reopened trade with Colonel Qaddafi’s government in 2004. As American and international oil companies, telecommunications firms and contractors moved into the Libyan market, they discovered that Colonel Qaddafi or his loyalists often sought to extract millions of dollars in “signing bonuses” and “consultancy contracts” — or insisted that the strongman’s sons get a piece of the action through shotgun partnerships.

“Libya is a kleptocracy in which the regime — either the al-Qadhafi family itself or its close political allies — has a direct stake in anything worth buying, selling or owning,” a classified State Department cable said in 2009, using the department’s spelling of Qaddafi.

The wealth that Colonel Qaddafi’s family and his government accumulated with the help of international corporations in the years since the lifting of economic sanctions by the West helped fortify his hold on his country. While the outcome of the military intervention under way by the United States and allied countries is uncertain, Colonel Qaddafi’s resources — including a stash of tens of billions of dollars in cash that American officials believe he is using to pay soldiers, mercenaries and supporters — may help him avert, or at least delay, his removal from power. (...)

In the first few years after trade restrictions were lifted — Colonel Qaddafi had given up his country’s nuclear capabilities and pledged to renounce terrorism — many American companies were hesitant to do business with Libya’s government, officials said. But with an agreement on a settlement over Libya’s role in the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, finally reached in 2008, officials at the United States Commerce Department began to serve as self-described matchmakers for American businesses. (...)

When Qaddafi aides demanded payment for the Lockerbie settlement from oil companies operating in Libya, a State Department cable in February 2009 reported, industry executives had indicated “that smaller operators and service companies might relent and pay.” Several industry officials and someone close to the settlement, all speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the payments went through but declined to identify the businesses.

Other companies also struck costly deals with the government. In 2008, Occidental Petroleum, based in California, paid a $1 billion “signing bonus” to the Libyan government as part of 30-year agreement. A company spokesman said it was not uncommon for firms to pay large bonuses for long-term contracts. (...)

Looking back on the decision in 2004 to resume business dealings, Juan Zarate, a former top White House and Treasury official in the administration of President George W Bush, said that officials had believed then that the benefits of trying to rehabilitate Colonel Qaddafi outweighed the obvious risks. “It was a deal with the devil,” Mr Zarate said.

“The hope was that with normalization, Qaddafi would serve less as the mad dog of the Middle East and more as a partner,” he added. “But I don’t think this is the way anyone would have wanted it to work out.”

Council sure Megrahi still living in suburban Tripoli home

[What follows is from a report in today's edition of The Scotsman.]

The Lockerbie bomber has had "recent" contact with the Scottish council tasked with keeping tabs on his life licence release.

And the council is satisfied he has not moved home in Libya.

Despite reports that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi had been spirited away by the Gaddafi regime, a spokesman for East Renfrewshire Council, the council tasked with monitoring the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, said it is "satisfied that he is not in breach of any licence conditions".

Sources close to the monitoring authority say the supervising officer in the case is satisfied that Megrahi is still at the same address in a Tripoli suburb.

The council contacted the bomber amid reports he had been moved to a safe house by the Gaddafi regime as coalition UN forces targeted air defences around the Libyan capital.

Part of Megrahi's life licence conditions state he must alert the council to any change of address and agree it with it in advance. It has a secure videolink to the bomber, and call him as and when it deems necessary.

The spokesman added: "The contact is when we need to speak to him. We have done. That contact was very recent."

[A useful counterweight to some of the more imaginative material being published in the Western media.]

Did Gaddafi really order the Lockerbie bombing?

[This is the headline over a letter from Thomas McLaughlin in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

You report that the unfolding debacle in Libya offers hope of further indictments of those involved in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 (“Conflict brings new hope of convicting others involved in Lockerbie attack”, The Herald, March 21).

The Lord Advocate should not hold her breath. Officers of the Dumfries and Galloway police force should not plan a trip to Libya soon, even if that country survives intact.

The source of these (false) hopes is Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Libya’s former justice minister who has claimed, “the orders were given by Gaddafi himself.” As Mandy Rice-Davis once remarked, “he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Jalil, now the Brother Leader’s sworn enemy and head of a provisional government, has courted Western sympathy, in competition with his former boss, using this claim as his trump card. Muammar Gadaffi’s counter-bid, that al Qaeda were trying to topple him (now seemingly in alliance with Crusaders), was deemed to lack credibility.

But truth, as “Blairaq” veterans know only too well, is the first casualty of war. If anyone has evidence of Libyan complicity then surely Libya’s own former justice minister has? It is, though, now a month since he made the claim. Where is the evidence? Has it yet to be manufactured –like so much else that helped convict Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi?

[A letter from Dr Jim Swire in yesterday's edition of The Herald reads as follows:]

In 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher colluded with US President Ronald Reagan in facilitating the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi – revenge for an alleged Libyan terrorist bomb in Germany.

Inspection of the Gaddafi family residence of the time, preserved as a ruin ever since, and seen on our screens again these days, makes it obvious that the US bomb which partially destroyed the residence had been intended to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi (“New Gaddafi blitz”, The Herald, March 21).

Instead the blast and shrapnel killed Gaddafi’s adopted daughter Hannah, aged 18 months, asleep in her bedroom. Some 30 Libyan civilians died too that night. Their relatives still grieve as we do.

In 1993, nearly two years after the publication of indictments of two Libyan citizens for their alleged part in causing the Lockerbie disaster, Lady Thatcher wrote, in praise of this action, in The Downing Street Years.

She wrote: “First it [the bombing raid] turned out to be a more decisive blow against Libyan-sponsored terrorism than I could ever have imagined … the much-vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place. Gaddafi had not been destroyed but he had been humbled. There was a marked decline in Libyan-sponsored terrorism in succeeding years.”

Two years later the Lockerbie tragedy occurred.

In 1991, when the indictments were issued, I first visited Gaddafi to beg him to allow his citizens to appear before a Scottish court. I also asked him to put up a picture of Flora on the wall of Hannah’s bedroom, beside one of Hannah. Beneath we put a message in Arabic and English. It was still there in 2010 when I was last in Tripoli.

It reads: “ The consequence of the use of violence is the death of innocent people.”

Even forbidden as we private citizens still are, to see the secret documents from those days, the sentiments of Flora’s message remain secure. I hope the plaque will not be destroyed in a second attempt at assassination. Libyans should decide their own future, as we ours.

[The uniformly bellicose views of a selection of US relatives of victims of the Lockerbie bombing can be found in an article by Brian Bolduc on the National Review website entitled Qaddafi Must Go: Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 demand the dictator’s ouster.]

Bid to nail second Lockerbie bomber after double jeopardy law scrapped

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Daily Record. It reads in part:]

The man cleared of the Lockerbie bombing could face a second trial for mass murder.

MSPs last night scrapped Scotland's 800-year-old double jeopardy law, which prevents someone standing trial twice for the same offence.

And that has opened the door for a second trial for Libyan Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah.

Legal sources claim there is "new and compelling evidence" linking him to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. [RB: For the Crown to produce any compelling evidence at all -- new or old -- against either Fhimah or Megrahi would be a novelty.]

And if Colonel Gaddafi's regime collapses, law chiefs will try to bring Fhimah back to Scotland for a retrial.

A top level source told the Record: "Fhimah is very much on the radar but everything depends on what happens in Libya in the coming days and weeks."

Fhimah was unanimously cleared of the mass murder of 270 people after a trial in Holland under Scots law in 2001. Three judges accepted he was in Sweden at the time the bomb was planted. [RB: This statement is arrant nonsense. There was no evidence to this effect and the trial judges made no such finding. The journalist appears to have confused Fhimah with Abu Talb.]

But his co-accused Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty and jailed for life. Said to be dying from prostate cancer, Megrahi was controversially freed on compassionate grounds in 2009.

And Fhimah was there to hug him on the steps of the plane which brought him home to Libya. Now prosecutors believe their new evidence would see him convicted.

But that will only happen if there is regime change in Tripoli - and any new government agrees Fhimah should face retrial.

The scrapping of the double jeopardy rule follows a similar change to English law in 2003.

Flimsy evidence

[What follows is a short excerpt from an article with the above title by Oxford-based researcher Jason Pack published yesterday on the US National Public Radio website.]

On flimsy evidence, Libya was found guilty of the devastating 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Europe was finally on board for comprehensive UN sanctions of Libya, which endured from 1992 to 1999.

In 1999, feeling the pinch caused by his decaying oil infrastructure and declining revenues, Gadhafi turned over the two suspected Lockerbie bombers for trial in the Netherlands (only one, Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi, was later convicted). This action caused UN sanctions to be suspended. As more countries began trading with Libya, the US policy dating back to Reagan of actively containing Gadhafi and hoping for his ouster was no longer feasible.

In the new millennium, US and British negotiators intensified their covert dealings with Libyan diplomats, and in 2003, Gadhafi made his first payment of compensation to the Lockerbie victims' families. At the same time, the colonel declared his desire to voluntarily give up his weapons of mass destruction program. (...)

From 2004 to 2010, US diplomats and businessman embarked on the long and hard road of normalization. Erratic Libyan behavior and electorally motivated grandstanding by US congressmen — generally on third-tier issues like Gadhafi's desire to pitch a tent in Central Park or Megrahi's release from a Scottish prison for health reasons — frequently derailed progress.

Megrahi leaves Tripoli

[What follows is from a report in yesterday's edition of The Mail on Sunday.]

Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was among thousands evacuated in Libya yesterday.

The 58-year-old was moved from his family home in Tripoli to a secure unit. ‘We know targets are already being worked out by the West, and Brother Al Megrahi is certain to be high on the list,’ said an impeccably placed source within Gaddafi’s regime, which views the bomber as a national hero.

The source, who helped negotiate the convicted murderer’s 2009 release from a Scottish prison, added: ‘It would make life very easy for the West if Al Megrahi was no longer a problem – we will do everything we can to protect him.’

Plain-clothes police and armed soldiers were still visible around Al Megrahi’s home in the New Damascus district of Tripoli, but neighbours confirmed he had been moved. ‘The government does not want him here – it is too dangerous,’ said one.

Libya no fly zone

[What follows is the text of a press release dated 18 March from the Scottish Government. I post it simply to confirm to anxious readers that, notwithstanding fearsome computer and internet connection difficulties, a trip to Cape Town and a big function at Gannaga Lodge, this blog is still operational.]

Welcoming the agreement by the United Nations Security Council of a "no fly zone" in Libya in order to protect civilians - which imposes a "ban on all flights in Libyan airspace" except for aid planes, as well as other measures such as toughening up the arms embargo and widening of the asset freeze - First Minister Alex Salmond said:

"The fundamental principle of international intervention is that it must be done under the authority of a United Nations mandate, and therefore I welcome the agreement of a 'no fly zone' with the clear legal underpinning of a Security Council resolution.

"The resolution - which proposes a range of measures - is a lesson to the nay-sayers who have dismissed the UN and sought to undermine its authority at every turn. This agreement - which carries the support of the Arab League, as well as the wider international community - is a vindication of the ability of the UN to act."

Mr Salmond - who met with a committee of representatives of the Libyan community in Scotland at the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday - added:

"What is vital now is that military intervention delivers the objective of securing the welfare and saving lives of innocent civilians - which is now extremely urgent - that there are agreed aims, and that there is a clear exit strategy."

Press release from Families of Pan Am 103

[Families of Pan Am 103, one of the US organisations of relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie disaster, issued a press release on the current Libyan situation on 14 March. It reads as follows (with links deleted):]

Gaddafi has been branded by the international community as a serial violator of human rights, as well as by his own people. He is also the admitted No. 2 international terrorist, second only to Osama Bin Laden, having caused the murder of hundreds of Americans, French, UK and other innocent citizens in the bombings of U.S. bound Pan Am 103 killing 270, UTA flight 772 killing 170, the La Belle Disco bombing in Berlin, dozens of other terrorist attacks, and delivering large shipments of plastic explosives for IRA terrorist bombings, plus killing thousands of his own people who regularly disappear into his torture chambers or are assassinated abroad. (...)

Oil companies have invested $50 billion with the Gaddafi regime since U.S. bilateral sanctions were lifted five years ago. (...)

Oil interests therefore have a financial interest to let Gaddafi stay in power. Without a no fly zone and U.S. help, Gaddafi is expected to destroy the rebel forces. He has promised and has apparently begun to slaughter thousands in a "river of blood" all Libyans who have opposed him. With a Gaddafi victory, there likely will follow a new genocide for Libyans and a possible return to terrorism.

Prior to turnover of the Pan Am 103 indicted terrorists for trial, a letter by former UN Secretary Kofi Annan stated that the U.S. and UK had agreed not to pursue the case so as to destabilize the Gaddafi regime. (...) When Gaddafi agreed to give up his WMD program in 2003 after the U.S. invaded Iraq and Libya was labeled as part of a terrorist "axis of evil" by President George W. Bush, secret talks were held in London by top U.S. and UK officials, and Gaddafi's secret police henchman. The agreements reached remain secret, but after Libyan sanctions were lifted, the U.S. and UK both refused to pursue the criminal investigations of the Lockerbie bombing, notwithstanding Libya's formal promise to the UN that it would fully cooperate with U.S. criminal investigations of its admitted aviation bombings. Embarrassment for U.S. officials involved in the secret dealings with the Gaddafi regime is apparently another unstated reason for U.S. government inaction.

After the UK released the convicted Lockerbie bomber to Libya in 2009, the arms embargo was lifted and arms contracts allowed Gaddafi to buy modern weapons now being used against the Libyan people. (...)

President Obama has said Gaddafi must go "immediately," and that the U.S. is "considering all options," but so far has failed to take any military action to back up his words. If he does nothing now after peaceful demonstrators have been slaughtered and Gaddafi threatens genocide against his own people who do not support him, President Obama will have shown the world how weak his crisis leadership is.

Secretary Clinton gave a major speech in January that the U.S. will now support democratic forces in the Middle East; however, she doesn't favor a no fly zone needed to save a Free Libya and has not recognized the Libyan National Council in Benghazi. No fly zones in northern Iraq protected the Kurds from slaughter by Saddam Hussein, and saved many lives in Kosovo and Bosnia. Failure to impose this in southern Iraq allowed Saddam to crush after the Gulf War a 1991 rebellion that could have deposed him and avoided the entire Iraq War. Instead, this week Secretary Clinton is scheduled to close the Libyan embassy and evict the Libyan diplomats who are now opposing Gaddafi.

The UN was established after WWII mainly for collective security, so dictators could not run rampant and start major wars by international inaction. UN Security Council Resolution 1970 and the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide which the U.S. supports provides for force to stop genocide within a nation member. Tomorrow a No Fly resolution is expected to be presented. A petition in support by concerned citizens nearly a million strong is available on line. (...)

"If the U.S. does not act and Gaddafi wins, the U.S. will have restored an old enemy and sent a message to all democratic forces in oppressive regimes that we are indeed feckless, unreliable, oil sucking hypocrites," stated Paul Hudson, father of a Lockerbie victim and co-president of the Families of Pan Am 103/Lockerbie.