[This is the headline over a report on the South African News24 website. It reads in part:]
President Jacob Zuma will travel to Libya on Sunday for a meeting with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the Department of International Relations and Co-operation said on Friday.
Zuma will participate in the meeting in his capacity as a member of the African Union Ad Hoc High Level Committee on Libya.
"The committee has been granted permission by Nato to enter Libya and to meet in Tripoli with the Libyan leader, HE Muammar Gaddafi," the department said.
"The AU delegation will also meet with the Interim Transitional National Council in Benghazi on 10 and 11 April 2011." (...)
Zuma will take part in an AU meeting on Libya in Nouakchott, Mauritania on Saturday.
"President Zuma will participate in the meeting in his capacity as a member of the African Union Ad Hoc High Level Committee on Libya which has been mandated by the African Union Peace and Security Council to engage the opposing parties in Libya in order to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the current conflict in accordance with the will of the Libyan people."
The AU committee comprises the heads of state of Mauritania, Congo Republic, Mali, Uganda and South Africa.
"It is anticipated that the committee will hold discussions on the recent developments in Libya and deliberate on the way forward in fulfilling its mandate."
[Since the presidency of Nelson Mandela, the South African ANC government has had close relations with the Gaddafi regime in Libya. In the mid-1990s President Mandela and his then aide Jakes Gerwel played a significant part in encouraging the resolution of the Lockerbie impasse through a trial under Scots law in the Netherlands.
The Guardian website now has a report on the Zuma visit. It can be read here. A report on the outcome of the visit, headlined Libya: Gaddafi has accepted roadmap to peace, says Zuma appears in Monday's edition of the same newspaper. However, the BBC News website on Monday evening runs a report headed Libya: Benghazi rebels reject African Union truce plan.]
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Saturday, 9 April 2011
More defectors 'set to point the finger' over Lockerbie inquiry
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]
Relatives of American victims of the Lockerbie bombing are expecting more Libyan defectors to shed further light on the atrocity that killed 270 people.
Those who lost loved ones in the UK's worst mass-murder claim that they have been told that more defectors are set to follow in the footsteps of Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who has defected to Britain.
Frank Duggan, the Washington-based lawyer who represents many of the US families, yesterday said he was hopeful that future defectors would provide more evidence, the day after Scottish prosecutors and police officers interviewed Mr Koussa.
"Moussa Koussa is not going to be the only defector," Mr Duggan said. "I have heard that there are other people who are going to be willing to talk. I doubt that any of them will say anything that would incriminate themselves, but they might point the finger at other people who were involved in the bombing.
"Moussa Koussa is a very smooth character, but he is also a very bad man. He has got blood on his hands. I don't know what he is going to say about the bombing of Pan Am 103, but he obviously knows a great deal. Whether that translates into evidence that the prosecution can use in court for future indictments remains to be seen."
Representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Constabulary travelled to London to meet with Mr Koussa on Thursday. Neither organisation would release any details about their inquiries, saying that it was a "live investigation".
A joint statement added: "In order to preserve the integrity of that investigation it would not be appropriate at this time to offer any further details of the meeting or the details of ongoing inquiries."
Mr Duggan added: "We get updates of these meetings, but they don't say much. I understand that because we don't want to jeopardise the prosecution." (...)
From the police side, questioning was led by Det Supt Michael Dalgliesh, of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary. Yesterday, First Minsister Alex Salmond said: "I am pleased that Dumfries and Galloway police have had access to Moussa Koussa as requested, and no doubt officers will question him again if required as part of their ongoing investigation. It is very important for the integrity of the process that the police and Crown authorities are given the freedom to pursue their investigation without unwarranted speculation on the substance of their inquiries." (...)
Megrahi is the only man ever to be convicted of the crime, but it has always been suspected that many more people were behind the crime. A second man, [al-]Amin Khalifa Fhimah, stood trial with Megrahi, but was acquitted.
Yesterday it was suggested that he could face a retrial in the wake of reforms to the double jeopardy law, which will clear the way for an accused person to stand trial more than once.
Relatives of American victims of the Lockerbie bombing are expecting more Libyan defectors to shed further light on the atrocity that killed 270 people.
Those who lost loved ones in the UK's worst mass-murder claim that they have been told that more defectors are set to follow in the footsteps of Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who has defected to Britain.
Frank Duggan, the Washington-based lawyer who represents many of the US families, yesterday said he was hopeful that future defectors would provide more evidence, the day after Scottish prosecutors and police officers interviewed Mr Koussa.
"Moussa Koussa is not going to be the only defector," Mr Duggan said. "I have heard that there are other people who are going to be willing to talk. I doubt that any of them will say anything that would incriminate themselves, but they might point the finger at other people who were involved in the bombing.
"Moussa Koussa is a very smooth character, but he is also a very bad man. He has got blood on his hands. I don't know what he is going to say about the bombing of Pan Am 103, but he obviously knows a great deal. Whether that translates into evidence that the prosecution can use in court for future indictments remains to be seen."
Representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Constabulary travelled to London to meet with Mr Koussa on Thursday. Neither organisation would release any details about their inquiries, saying that it was a "live investigation".
A joint statement added: "In order to preserve the integrity of that investigation it would not be appropriate at this time to offer any further details of the meeting or the details of ongoing inquiries."
Mr Duggan added: "We get updates of these meetings, but they don't say much. I understand that because we don't want to jeopardise the prosecution." (...)
From the police side, questioning was led by Det Supt Michael Dalgliesh, of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary. Yesterday, First Minsister Alex Salmond said: "I am pleased that Dumfries and Galloway police have had access to Moussa Koussa as requested, and no doubt officers will question him again if required as part of their ongoing investigation. It is very important for the integrity of the process that the police and Crown authorities are given the freedom to pursue their investigation without unwarranted speculation on the substance of their inquiries." (...)
Megrahi is the only man ever to be convicted of the crime, but it has always been suspected that many more people were behind the crime. A second man, [al-]Amin Khalifa Fhimah, stood trial with Megrahi, but was acquitted.
Yesterday it was suggested that he could face a retrial in the wake of reforms to the double jeopardy law, which will clear the way for an accused person to stand trial more than once.
Re-open appeal hearing and deal with Lockerbie in a legal manner
[This is the headline over four letters published in today's edition of The Herald. They read as follows:]
I welcome advocate Brian Fitzpatrick’s support for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing and the Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi conviction (Letters, April 8).
I have also called for such an inquiry, although my personal preference would be for the second appeal hearing to be re-opened so that the Scottish justice system could deal with the matter in the proper legal sequence.
At least this would allow the concerns of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to be tested in court, but the Scottish political and legal establishments seem determined not to allow this to happen.
I am sure that if they wanted they could find some way to reconstitute this court procedure, perhaps on the grounds that Megrahi may not have understood that withdrawing his appeal was not a pre-condition of his being granted compassionate release.
Mr Fitzpatrick strongly defends the police officers, the judges and those of his colleagues involved in the original investigation and he is right to do so. It is a pity that he should then demean himself and weaken his argument by describing honourable people uneasy with the verdict, such as the bereaved parent Jim Swire, the UN observer Dr Hans Kochler and many others as “conspiracy theorists weaving a tale of deceit and intrigue to blacken the names of better men”. Such comments are objectionable and uncalled for.
The fact remains that the guilty verdict at Camp Zeist was largely influenced by two pieces of very dodgy evidence – the Malta shopkeeper’s identification of a customer he saw only once several months earlier until he was shown photographs of Megrahi by US agents and prompted by $2 million dollars of State Department cash – and the miraculous find of a fingernail-size piece of a timing device in a Lockerbie field by US security men six months after every other fragment of the plane and its contents had been collected in the most extensive search ever carried out by Scottish police officers.
The trial and subsequent investigations were also compromised by the withholding of certain information from the defence team and the refusal of both British and American governments to release relevant documents to the court. The weakness of the evidence resulted in a not proven verdict for one of the accused, and Megrahi’s guilty verdict must have been at best very marginal. No other evidence has yet been produced to prove any Libyan involvement in the atrocity.
Surely Mr Fitzpatrick’s legal experience, if not his political activities, must convince him that justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, especially in such a contentious case with the eyes of the world upon our Scottish justice system.
Iain AD Mann
Brian Fitzpatrick defends his fellow advocates who worked at the Camp Zeist trial for their efforts, yet heaps criticism on the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and First Minister Alex Salmond when he knows full well that Mr MacAskill followed due process of Scots law when taking the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
I admit to having no legal training, but during the trial I could not help but feel an uneasiness, which has steadily increased the more I have studied the available evidence on the Lockerbie tragedy. From the very beginning I thought it strange that two Libyan intelligence officers should be charged but only one found guilty; surely these intelligence officers would have been working together.
I don’t have sufficient knowledge to say whether Megrahi is innocent or guilty, but the SCCRC believes that there may have been a miscarriage of justice and some of the bereaved families who attended the trial also believe that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
Mistakes have been made before, and it seems to me that there are enough questions requiring answers to justify the holding of a full independent public inquiry to establish the truth, which need be feared only by the guilty.
Ruth Marr
I was incensed by Brian Fitzpatrick’s views, ostensibly in reply to Iain AD Mann but covering all those who have appealed for a proper investigation into the circumstances of the Lockerbie tragedy (Letters, April 8).
Does he think that the estimable Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of the victims “would rather secure a headline than undertake any study of the evidence”? How dare he assert that.
Or what about Dr Hans Kochler who was the international observer at Camp Zeist appointed by the United Nations who wrote, amongst other things: “The trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.”
If Mr Fitzpatrick, as a defence lawyer, found out that the main prosecuting witness was being paid a large sum of money for his “evidence”, would he not wonder if this compromised proceedings? No, what I and all the others who have queried this long-running saga want is simply the truth. Only then will the relatives of the victims at least have their doubts and suspicions cleared up.
I do, however, agree with his final paragraph in which he says that our country has been diminished by those who have weaved a tale of deceit and intrigue.
The sooner these people are asked to answer for that deception, the better. This can only be achieved once the truth comes out.
Raymond Hendry
Why on earth does everyone appear to assume that Moussa Koussa will tell the truth when questioned about Lockerbie?
David Clark
I welcome advocate Brian Fitzpatrick’s support for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing and the Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi conviction (Letters, April 8).
I have also called for such an inquiry, although my personal preference would be for the second appeal hearing to be re-opened so that the Scottish justice system could deal with the matter in the proper legal sequence.
At least this would allow the concerns of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to be tested in court, but the Scottish political and legal establishments seem determined not to allow this to happen.
I am sure that if they wanted they could find some way to reconstitute this court procedure, perhaps on the grounds that Megrahi may not have understood that withdrawing his appeal was not a pre-condition of his being granted compassionate release.
Mr Fitzpatrick strongly defends the police officers, the judges and those of his colleagues involved in the original investigation and he is right to do so. It is a pity that he should then demean himself and weaken his argument by describing honourable people uneasy with the verdict, such as the bereaved parent Jim Swire, the UN observer Dr Hans Kochler and many others as “conspiracy theorists weaving a tale of deceit and intrigue to blacken the names of better men”. Such comments are objectionable and uncalled for.
The fact remains that the guilty verdict at Camp Zeist was largely influenced by two pieces of very dodgy evidence – the Malta shopkeeper’s identification of a customer he saw only once several months earlier until he was shown photographs of Megrahi by US agents and prompted by $2 million dollars of State Department cash – and the miraculous find of a fingernail-size piece of a timing device in a Lockerbie field by US security men six months after every other fragment of the plane and its contents had been collected in the most extensive search ever carried out by Scottish police officers.
The trial and subsequent investigations were also compromised by the withholding of certain information from the defence team and the refusal of both British and American governments to release relevant documents to the court. The weakness of the evidence resulted in a not proven verdict for one of the accused, and Megrahi’s guilty verdict must have been at best very marginal. No other evidence has yet been produced to prove any Libyan involvement in the atrocity.
Surely Mr Fitzpatrick’s legal experience, if not his political activities, must convince him that justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, especially in such a contentious case with the eyes of the world upon our Scottish justice system.
Iain AD Mann
Brian Fitzpatrick defends his fellow advocates who worked at the Camp Zeist trial for their efforts, yet heaps criticism on the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and First Minister Alex Salmond when he knows full well that Mr MacAskill followed due process of Scots law when taking the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
I admit to having no legal training, but during the trial I could not help but feel an uneasiness, which has steadily increased the more I have studied the available evidence on the Lockerbie tragedy. From the very beginning I thought it strange that two Libyan intelligence officers should be charged but only one found guilty; surely these intelligence officers would have been working together.
I don’t have sufficient knowledge to say whether Megrahi is innocent or guilty, but the SCCRC believes that there may have been a miscarriage of justice and some of the bereaved families who attended the trial also believe that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
Mistakes have been made before, and it seems to me that there are enough questions requiring answers to justify the holding of a full independent public inquiry to establish the truth, which need be feared only by the guilty.
Ruth Marr
I was incensed by Brian Fitzpatrick’s views, ostensibly in reply to Iain AD Mann but covering all those who have appealed for a proper investigation into the circumstances of the Lockerbie tragedy (Letters, April 8).
Does he think that the estimable Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of the victims “would rather secure a headline than undertake any study of the evidence”? How dare he assert that.
Or what about Dr Hans Kochler who was the international observer at Camp Zeist appointed by the United Nations who wrote, amongst other things: “The trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.”
If Mr Fitzpatrick, as a defence lawyer, found out that the main prosecuting witness was being paid a large sum of money for his “evidence”, would he not wonder if this compromised proceedings? No, what I and all the others who have queried this long-running saga want is simply the truth. Only then will the relatives of the victims at least have their doubts and suspicions cleared up.
I do, however, agree with his final paragraph in which he says that our country has been diminished by those who have weaved a tale of deceit and intrigue.
The sooner these people are asked to answer for that deception, the better. This can only be achieved once the truth comes out.
Raymond Hendry
Why on earth does everyone appear to assume that Moussa Koussa will tell the truth when questioned about Lockerbie?
David Clark
Families of Lockerbie victims make plea to talk to Koussa
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]
Lawyers acting for the British relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing will approach officials to ask for a meeting with former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa.
Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died when Pan Am flight 103 blew up in December 1988, told The Herald he had asked their legal team to request a meeting with Mr Koussa, who defected to the UK last week.
The Libyan was interviewed by Scottish prosecutors and police investigating the Lockerbie bombing on Thursday although the Crown Office has said that to preserve the integrity of the inquiry it could not give any more details. But officials have stressed that Mr Koussa has not been offered diplomatic immunity.
Dr Swire, who has met Mr Koussa and described him as “more frightening than Gaddafi himself”, said he had asked lawyers acting for the British relatives to request a meeting with Mr Koussa, although he urged caution in relying on any information given by the Libyan.
He said: “Anyone who has dealings with Moussa Koussa or people in Benghazi should take what they hear with a huge pinch of salt.”
Dr Swire has written to other British families after it emerged that a group of relatives are setting up the Gaddafi Terror Victims’ Initiative, calling for an investigation by US authorities into Libya’s role in the Lockerbie bombing.
In the letter, reproduced on a blog written by Professor Robert Black, Dr Swire said he feared it was unwise and may lead to unnecessary grief for relatives of those killed in the atrocity.
He said: “So far as Lockerbie is concerned, this initiative is, I believe, based on profoundly insecure foundations. Its title presupposes the guilt of the Gaddafi regime, its content presupposes the guilt of Megrahi.
“The words of defectors to Benghazi, or of Moussa Koussa, should be regarded with the greatest circumspection, taking their present situations into account. War generates fog, and truth is then even harder to come by.
“Without the certainty that Megrahi was guilty, which is implicit in this initiative, there can as yet be no certainty that the Libyan regime itself was involved, at least in the way that most in America believe.”
[The BBC News website now also features a report on this matter.]
Lawyers acting for the British relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing will approach officials to ask for a meeting with former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa.
Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died when Pan Am flight 103 blew up in December 1988, told The Herald he had asked their legal team to request a meeting with Mr Koussa, who defected to the UK last week.
The Libyan was interviewed by Scottish prosecutors and police investigating the Lockerbie bombing on Thursday although the Crown Office has said that to preserve the integrity of the inquiry it could not give any more details. But officials have stressed that Mr Koussa has not been offered diplomatic immunity.
Dr Swire, who has met Mr Koussa and described him as “more frightening than Gaddafi himself”, said he had asked lawyers acting for the British relatives to request a meeting with Mr Koussa, although he urged caution in relying on any information given by the Libyan.
He said: “Anyone who has dealings with Moussa Koussa or people in Benghazi should take what they hear with a huge pinch of salt.”
Dr Swire has written to other British families after it emerged that a group of relatives are setting up the Gaddafi Terror Victims’ Initiative, calling for an investigation by US authorities into Libya’s role in the Lockerbie bombing.
In the letter, reproduced on a blog written by Professor Robert Black, Dr Swire said he feared it was unwise and may lead to unnecessary grief for relatives of those killed in the atrocity.
He said: “So far as Lockerbie is concerned, this initiative is, I believe, based on profoundly insecure foundations. Its title presupposes the guilt of the Gaddafi regime, its content presupposes the guilt of Megrahi.
“The words of defectors to Benghazi, or of Moussa Koussa, should be regarded with the greatest circumspection, taking their present situations into account. War generates fog, and truth is then even harder to come by.
“Without the certainty that Megrahi was guilty, which is implicit in this initiative, there can as yet be no certainty that the Libyan regime itself was involved, at least in the way that most in America believe.”
[The BBC News website now also features a report on this matter.]
We need truth about absurdity of unsafe Lockerbie conviction
[This is the headline over the version of Ian Bell's article that is published in today's edition of The Herald. I would not normally reproduce the text of a piece that had appeared here earlier in a slightly different form. But this merits an exception to that rule. It reads as follows:]
One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session.
It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.
I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.
Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.
Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.
So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?
Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?
We get a legal letter to The Herald instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame”.
Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.
The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the “bribing” ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.
But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.
“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.
The real mistake was to believe that Colonel Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?
More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries and Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I thought – certainly in the case of Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?
Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.
What was asked of Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.
The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the apparent suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.
You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought that an SNP Government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.
Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were legal cabs for hire.
Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.
How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Koussa under close arrest? Why does the Government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?
So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our legal system has fallen in with “a tribe”.
I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence – with an SCCRC judgment to hand – for Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?
Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.
[Coincidentally (?) the Lallands Peat Worrier blog today features a post on Cockburn, one of my Scottish legal heroes.]
One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session.
It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.
I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.
Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.
Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.
So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?
Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?
We get a legal letter to The Herald instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame”.
Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.
The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the “bribing” ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.
But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.
“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.
The real mistake was to believe that Colonel Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?
More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries and Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I thought – certainly in the case of Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?
Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.
What was asked of Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.
The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the apparent suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.
You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought that an SNP Government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.
Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were legal cabs for hire.
Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.
How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Koussa under close arrest? Why does the Government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?
So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our legal system has fallen in with “a tribe”.
I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence – with an SCCRC judgment to hand – for Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?
Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.
[Coincidentally (?) the Lallands Peat Worrier blog today features a post on Cockburn, one of my Scottish legal heroes.]
Friday, 8 April 2011
Lockerbie: lawyers, guns & money
[This is the heading over another brilliant article posted today on Ian Bell's Prospero blog and a version of which will appear in tomorrow's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session. It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.
I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.
Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.
Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.
So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?
Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?
We get a legal letter instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame".
Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.
The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the bribing ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.
But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work, and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of al Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.
“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.
The real mistake was to believe that Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?
More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries & Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I had thought – certainly in the case of al Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?
Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.
What was asked of Moussa Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense be prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.
The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.
You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought, if naive, that an SNP government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.
Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were just legal cabs for hire.
Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.
How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Moussa Koussa under close arrest? Why does the government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?
So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our judiciary has fallen in with “a tribe”.
I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence strategy – with an SCCRC judgement to hand – for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?
Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.
One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session. It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.
I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.
Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.
Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.
So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?
Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?
We get a legal letter instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame".
Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.
The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the bribing ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.
But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work, and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of al Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.
“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.
The real mistake was to believe that Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?
More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries & Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I had thought – certainly in the case of al Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?
Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.
What was asked of Moussa Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense be prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.
The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.
You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought, if naive, that an SNP government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.
Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were just legal cabs for hire.
Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.
How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Moussa Koussa under close arrest? Why does the government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?
So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our judiciary has fallen in with “a tribe”.
I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence strategy – with an SCCRC judgement to hand – for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?
Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.
Jim Swire on "Gaddafi Terror Victims' Initiative"
[I am grateful to Dr Jim Swire for allowing me to publish here his reaction, contained in an e-mail sent to UK Lockerbie relatives, to the proposal soon to be announced by a number of US relatives of Lockerbie victims to launch a Gaddafi Terror Victims Initiative.]
I have no doubt that the 'Gaddafi terror victims initiative' from Victoria Cummock and Paul Hudson is launched with the very best of intentions and with sincerity. However I personally fear that, in terms of the Lockerbie atrocity it is unwise and may lead to unnecessary further grief for them, and perhaps all of us Lockerbie relatives. I hope it may empower those thousands of other victims of a long and brutal regime, though the healing of all that must come surely from within Libyan society,
I understand that a UK based lawyer is in Benghazi to gather and orchestrate support, and fully expect that the result will be an initiative supported by those now opposing Gaddafi there.
So far as Lockerbie is concerned, this initiative is, I believe, based on profoundly insecure foundations. Its title presupposes the guilt of the Gaddafi regime, its content presupposes the guilt of Megrahi.
The words of defectors to Benghazi, or of Moussa Koussa, come to that, should be regarded with the greatest circumspection, taking their present situations into account. War generates fog, and truth is then even harder to come by.
It has now become possible for those who were not present throughout the trial of Megrahi/Fhima to see with greater clarity, if they have the open-mindedness and patience to look, that Megrahi could not have been guilty as charged.
Without the certainty that Megrahi was guilty, which is implicit in this initiative, there can as yet be no certainty that the Libyan regime itself was involved, at least in the way that most in America believe.
In order to achieve the verdict against Megrahi, it was necessary both to conceal some evidence, some of which has now become available, but it also seems to have been necessary to inject some evidence which appears to have been deliberately fabricated.
Some of the crucial concealment of evidence appears to have been the responsibility of the investigating Scottish police, and perhaps their mentors.
Some of the apparently fabricated introduced evidence appears to have originated from intelligence sources operating in support of the US government, but also requiring collusion within the UK investigation.
Throughout the post-tragedy years there has been an undertow of a lust for revenge against the alleged perpetrators, without first establishing a sound basis for believing in their guilt. That was true even before the trial in Zeist had begun.
There are real suspicions that the UK Government of the day may also have interfered in the structure of the ensuing investigation into the tragedy, reducing the visibility of their own culpability in the process.
Press reports in the intervening years have suggested that both the UK and US leaders agreed that the investigation of the tragedy should be kept 'low key'.
Following the UTA (French) disaster, Moussa Koussa was investigated by Judge Brugiere and rejected as a suspect in that atrocity. The French investigation named Senussi, Gaddafi's brother-in-law as the main perpetrator, and he was sentenced to 'life', in absentia. For the sake of the UTA relatives, it is to be hoped that he, and those named with him, may be 'flushed out' by present events, to serve their sentences.
That does not imply that the Libyan regime was directly responsible for Lockerbie, any more than it exonerates them. The Lockerbie investigation did not assess evidence for or against members of the Libyan regime per se, merely alleging that the two accused Libyans had colluded with others. To search for truth amongst the ruins of Libya would be more likely to bear fruit when the fog of war has settled, but one can only admire the determination of those behind this initiative to seek out the truth: but how can they recognise it, if the core presumptions of the searchers turn out to be incorrect?
For some of us, one of the main reasons for seeking trial under Scottish rather than American law, was to avoid the possibility of the death penalty. Megrahi, now so widely acknowledged to be innocent of the charges against him, would no doubt be long dead had he been tried in the USA.
I believe there is a better way forward, and that is first to allow a complete review of the Megrahi verdict through whatever legal process can be engaged to achieve that, making use of all the evidence now available. Such a process will have to exclude the possibility that executives who have made serious mistakes, or even acted criminally in their work on this case, might try to damage the review process.
From 1991 onwards I had presumed that the two indicted Libyans must be among the guilty. It was the evidence I heard throughout the Zeist trial, specially the forensic evidence about the PFLP-GC IEDs, which converted me to believing that I had not heard the truth, and that they were not guilty as charged. Only after my conversion and after the verdict did we discover the evidence of the break-in.
Meanwhile we should remember a number of existing concerns about the trial itself.
1. The UN's special observer of the Megrahi/Fhima trial has roundly condemned it as not having represented justice.
2. Intelligence assets from the US and from Libya were present amongst the prosecution and defence teams in the well of the court. This even opened the possibility of covert prompting of witnesses.
3. Scotland's own Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission spent three years studying all the evidence then available and came to the conclusion that this trial may have been a miscarriage of justice. Political intervention has stifled publication of their full reasons to this day.
4. In Megrahi's first appeal his then defence team chose not even to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence heard in his main trial. Current knowledge has underlined how rash that was.
5. Scotland has had the opportunity for frank re-assessment of this case for 10 years, but has failed to do so, except through the SCCRC's findings, still partly politically suppressed. Megrahi's second appeal in Edinburgh was confounded by a combination of political interference and deliberate delaying tactics, until the issue of his illness put a stop to it. That court was briefly attended by two of the same officials from the US Department of Justice who had been active during the trial itself. They circulated emails which alleged that British relatives 'only attended while the press cameras were there'. In fact we were there to watch one DoJ official snoring during the proceedings, and we were there again after they had left. Again this does not suggest a scrupulous care for the truth.
6. An ever growing number of experienced lawyers and media commentators now believe that Megrahi should never have been convicted.
7. Nelson Mandela, himself a staunch supporter of getting the two accused Libyans to trial, said of it " No one country should be complainant prosecutor and judge." This principle was breached by the closeness of the US and the UK in assembling evidence, prosecuting and judging this case. It would be far more severely breached now, were the USA to assume sole responsibility for a renewed prosecution, as this initiative seems to hope.
8. The British Prime Minister at the time of Lockerbie, commanding huge respect in the USA, was Margaret Thatcher. In her book The Downing Street Years (ISBN 0 00 255049 0 published 1993) on pages 448/9, referring to her support for the USAF bombing of Tripoli and Bengazi under President Reagan in 1986, wrote: "It [the USAF bombing of Tripoli] 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......there was a marked decline in Libyan sponsored terrorism in succeeding years"
One is left wondering what connection there may be between this extraordinary claim, and the suppression of the evidence of the break-in at Heathrow, so close to the baggage assembly shed, and to the Iran Air facility, on the night before Lockerbie.
If this break-in, as seems so likely, was the real portal of entry of the device, it would mean that the total failure of the Heathrow authorities to find out who broke in or why, or to suspend outgoing flights till they had some answers, would amount to nothing less than criminal negligence. I believe they did suspend outward bound flights eventually - after 19.03 on the 21st of December 1988 that is. Till that point there was simply money to be made as usual.
The break-in evidence coupled to the 38 minute flight time of the Lockerbie aircraft, when assessed together with the German forensic evidence led at Zeist, strongly suggest the use of a specialised type of IED, unique to the PFLP-GC Palestinian terrorist group in Syria. These IEDs all guaranteed a flight time of 35 to 45 minutes before exploding, required no setting by the user, and were unaffected by having to wait around in an airport, or anywhere else at ground level, no matter for how long, until required for use, when they would still always allow approximately 38 minutes flight time before exploding if put in an aircraft.
Do read the court transcripts.
We know from evidence led at Zeist that a substantial number of these IEDs had been made, though almost all had been confiscated by the (West) German police in October 1988. These IEDs had an air pressure sensitive switch; if exposed to the lower air pressure in a flying jet, they would all have exploded about 35-40 minutes from take-off, hence the need for bringing one by a surface route to Heathrow, to be introduced via a break-in requiring and absolutely no intervention within an airport, save that of getting them into an aircraft's hull.They were unique in their deadliness and in their fitness for purpose. Thus they could be left undisturbed, hidden in a suitcase.The break-in offered the ideal portal of entry. The overturning of the verdict against Megrahi will demonstrate just how unlikely the story that the IED ever came from Malta via Frankfurt always was
Whatever happened to the need to exclude 'reasonable doubt' in a criminal trial?.
Had the break-in evidence been available to the trial court, it is doubtful whether the trial could have continued.
Who suppressed it, and for what motive? Does Stuart Henderson of the investigating Scottish police force now admit knowing of its existence before the trial? If so why did the court not know of it too?
Do you feel angry that your family boarded a plane that night at an airport, which, despite having been warned of increased terrorist threat, didn't even bother to investigate a break-in which gave immediate access, not only to where the interline bags for their aircraft were assembled the following evening, but also to the Iran Air facility at that airport?
Then there is the disturbing fact that Iran lost an airbus and 290 people to a missile fired by the USS Vincennes only 6 months before Lockerbie, (in a ghastly error I believe). Iran then had to watch as the captain of that ship, Will Rogers, was awarded a medal after his return to the USA.. None need doubt that Lockerbie was an act of revenge, but by which country? If we were to get that wrong, the scene might be set for a further cycle of revenge.
However strong our need to find the truth about why our loved ones died, I believe we have an absolute obligation to find out what that truth really is, lest from our activities further injustice and revenge should be unleashed. We must not fall into that trap: surely the victims would not be proud of us if we did.
If we can exhibit a little more patience on top of the last 22 years, we shall see more of the truth. War, as over Libya now, generates fog not clarity, now is not the time to try to add an extra level onto the existing structure created in the hope of explaining what happened, its foundations will soon collapse anyway.
The allegations of those in Benghazi or from the likes of Moussa Koussa are particularly difficult to assess at this time, laced as they will be with strong but partially hidden motivations.
It has been difficult to keep referring to the growing doubts over 'the official version' all these years, precisely because of the distress it may have caused to others wishing to find closure in their acceptance of the Zeist verdict.
Of course all relatives of the dead are free to cope the best way they can, but I hope that there will be restraint over putting reliance on the claims of those whose country and futures are being so torn apart in Libya at this time.
Failure to show restraint now may make coping even harder in the years ahead.
Meanwhile the initiative's last sentence deserves everyone's total support: it reads: "No government should be able to suppress truth, justice and accountability for the sake [of] diplomatic convenience and oil money."
[This story has now been picked up and reported -- without acknowledgment, of course -- by The Guardian.]
I have no doubt that the 'Gaddafi terror victims initiative' from Victoria Cummock and Paul Hudson is launched with the very best of intentions and with sincerity. However I personally fear that, in terms of the Lockerbie atrocity it is unwise and may lead to unnecessary further grief for them, and perhaps all of us Lockerbie relatives. I hope it may empower those thousands of other victims of a long and brutal regime, though the healing of all that must come surely from within Libyan society,
I understand that a UK based lawyer is in Benghazi to gather and orchestrate support, and fully expect that the result will be an initiative supported by those now opposing Gaddafi there.
So far as Lockerbie is concerned, this initiative is, I believe, based on profoundly insecure foundations. Its title presupposes the guilt of the Gaddafi regime, its content presupposes the guilt of Megrahi.
The words of defectors to Benghazi, or of Moussa Koussa, come to that, should be regarded with the greatest circumspection, taking their present situations into account. War generates fog, and truth is then even harder to come by.
It has now become possible for those who were not present throughout the trial of Megrahi/Fhima to see with greater clarity, if they have the open-mindedness and patience to look, that Megrahi could not have been guilty as charged.
Without the certainty that Megrahi was guilty, which is implicit in this initiative, there can as yet be no certainty that the Libyan regime itself was involved, at least in the way that most in America believe.
In order to achieve the verdict against Megrahi, it was necessary both to conceal some evidence, some of which has now become available, but it also seems to have been necessary to inject some evidence which appears to have been deliberately fabricated.
Some of the crucial concealment of evidence appears to have been the responsibility of the investigating Scottish police, and perhaps their mentors.
Some of the apparently fabricated introduced evidence appears to have originated from intelligence sources operating in support of the US government, but also requiring collusion within the UK investigation.
Throughout the post-tragedy years there has been an undertow of a lust for revenge against the alleged perpetrators, without first establishing a sound basis for believing in their guilt. That was true even before the trial in Zeist had begun.
There are real suspicions that the UK Government of the day may also have interfered in the structure of the ensuing investigation into the tragedy, reducing the visibility of their own culpability in the process.
Press reports in the intervening years have suggested that both the UK and US leaders agreed that the investigation of the tragedy should be kept 'low key'.
Following the UTA (French) disaster, Moussa Koussa was investigated by Judge Brugiere and rejected as a suspect in that atrocity. The French investigation named Senussi, Gaddafi's brother-in-law as the main perpetrator, and he was sentenced to 'life', in absentia. For the sake of the UTA relatives, it is to be hoped that he, and those named with him, may be 'flushed out' by present events, to serve their sentences.
That does not imply that the Libyan regime was directly responsible for Lockerbie, any more than it exonerates them. The Lockerbie investigation did not assess evidence for or against members of the Libyan regime per se, merely alleging that the two accused Libyans had colluded with others. To search for truth amongst the ruins of Libya would be more likely to bear fruit when the fog of war has settled, but one can only admire the determination of those behind this initiative to seek out the truth: but how can they recognise it, if the core presumptions of the searchers turn out to be incorrect?
For some of us, one of the main reasons for seeking trial under Scottish rather than American law, was to avoid the possibility of the death penalty. Megrahi, now so widely acknowledged to be innocent of the charges against him, would no doubt be long dead had he been tried in the USA.
I believe there is a better way forward, and that is first to allow a complete review of the Megrahi verdict through whatever legal process can be engaged to achieve that, making use of all the evidence now available. Such a process will have to exclude the possibility that executives who have made serious mistakes, or even acted criminally in their work on this case, might try to damage the review process.
From 1991 onwards I had presumed that the two indicted Libyans must be among the guilty. It was the evidence I heard throughout the Zeist trial, specially the forensic evidence about the PFLP-GC IEDs, which converted me to believing that I had not heard the truth, and that they were not guilty as charged. Only after my conversion and after the verdict did we discover the evidence of the break-in.
Meanwhile we should remember a number of existing concerns about the trial itself.
1. The UN's special observer of the Megrahi/Fhima trial has roundly condemned it as not having represented justice.
2. Intelligence assets from the US and from Libya were present amongst the prosecution and defence teams in the well of the court. This even opened the possibility of covert prompting of witnesses.
3. Scotland's own Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission spent three years studying all the evidence then available and came to the conclusion that this trial may have been a miscarriage of justice. Political intervention has stifled publication of their full reasons to this day.
4. In Megrahi's first appeal his then defence team chose not even to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence heard in his main trial. Current knowledge has underlined how rash that was.
5. Scotland has had the opportunity for frank re-assessment of this case for 10 years, but has failed to do so, except through the SCCRC's findings, still partly politically suppressed. Megrahi's second appeal in Edinburgh was confounded by a combination of political interference and deliberate delaying tactics, until the issue of his illness put a stop to it. That court was briefly attended by two of the same officials from the US Department of Justice who had been active during the trial itself. They circulated emails which alleged that British relatives 'only attended while the press cameras were there'. In fact we were there to watch one DoJ official snoring during the proceedings, and we were there again after they had left. Again this does not suggest a scrupulous care for the truth.
6. An ever growing number of experienced lawyers and media commentators now believe that Megrahi should never have been convicted.
7. Nelson Mandela, himself a staunch supporter of getting the two accused Libyans to trial, said of it " No one country should be complainant prosecutor and judge." This principle was breached by the closeness of the US and the UK in assembling evidence, prosecuting and judging this case. It would be far more severely breached now, were the USA to assume sole responsibility for a renewed prosecution, as this initiative seems to hope.
8. The British Prime Minister at the time of Lockerbie, commanding huge respect in the USA, was Margaret Thatcher. In her book The Downing Street Years (ISBN 0 00 255049 0 published 1993) on pages 448/9, referring to her support for the USAF bombing of Tripoli and Bengazi under President Reagan in 1986, wrote: "It [the USAF bombing of Tripoli] 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......there was a marked decline in Libyan sponsored terrorism in succeeding years"
One is left wondering what connection there may be between this extraordinary claim, and the suppression of the evidence of the break-in at Heathrow, so close to the baggage assembly shed, and to the Iran Air facility, on the night before Lockerbie.
If this break-in, as seems so likely, was the real portal of entry of the device, it would mean that the total failure of the Heathrow authorities to find out who broke in or why, or to suspend outgoing flights till they had some answers, would amount to nothing less than criminal negligence. I believe they did suspend outward bound flights eventually - after 19.03 on the 21st of December 1988 that is. Till that point there was simply money to be made as usual.
The break-in evidence coupled to the 38 minute flight time of the Lockerbie aircraft, when assessed together with the German forensic evidence led at Zeist, strongly suggest the use of a specialised type of IED, unique to the PFLP-GC Palestinian terrorist group in Syria. These IEDs all guaranteed a flight time of 35 to 45 minutes before exploding, required no setting by the user, and were unaffected by having to wait around in an airport, or anywhere else at ground level, no matter for how long, until required for use, when they would still always allow approximately 38 minutes flight time before exploding if put in an aircraft.
Do read the court transcripts.
We know from evidence led at Zeist that a substantial number of these IEDs had been made, though almost all had been confiscated by the (West) German police in October 1988. These IEDs had an air pressure sensitive switch; if exposed to the lower air pressure in a flying jet, they would all have exploded about 35-40 minutes from take-off, hence the need for bringing one by a surface route to Heathrow, to be introduced via a break-in requiring and absolutely no intervention within an airport, save that of getting them into an aircraft's hull.They were unique in their deadliness and in their fitness for purpose. Thus they could be left undisturbed, hidden in a suitcase.The break-in offered the ideal portal of entry. The overturning of the verdict against Megrahi will demonstrate just how unlikely the story that the IED ever came from Malta via Frankfurt always was
Whatever happened to the need to exclude 'reasonable doubt' in a criminal trial?.
Had the break-in evidence been available to the trial court, it is doubtful whether the trial could have continued.
Who suppressed it, and for what motive? Does Stuart Henderson of the investigating Scottish police force now admit knowing of its existence before the trial? If so why did the court not know of it too?
Do you feel angry that your family boarded a plane that night at an airport, which, despite having been warned of increased terrorist threat, didn't even bother to investigate a break-in which gave immediate access, not only to where the interline bags for their aircraft were assembled the following evening, but also to the Iran Air facility at that airport?
Then there is the disturbing fact that Iran lost an airbus and 290 people to a missile fired by the USS Vincennes only 6 months before Lockerbie, (in a ghastly error I believe). Iran then had to watch as the captain of that ship, Will Rogers, was awarded a medal after his return to the USA.. None need doubt that Lockerbie was an act of revenge, but by which country? If we were to get that wrong, the scene might be set for a further cycle of revenge.
However strong our need to find the truth about why our loved ones died, I believe we have an absolute obligation to find out what that truth really is, lest from our activities further injustice and revenge should be unleashed. We must not fall into that trap: surely the victims would not be proud of us if we did.
If we can exhibit a little more patience on top of the last 22 years, we shall see more of the truth. War, as over Libya now, generates fog not clarity, now is not the time to try to add an extra level onto the existing structure created in the hope of explaining what happened, its foundations will soon collapse anyway.
The allegations of those in Benghazi or from the likes of Moussa Koussa are particularly difficult to assess at this time, laced as they will be with strong but partially hidden motivations.
It has been difficult to keep referring to the growing doubts over 'the official version' all these years, precisely because of the distress it may have caused to others wishing to find closure in their acceptance of the Zeist verdict.
Of course all relatives of the dead are free to cope the best way they can, but I hope that there will be restraint over putting reliance on the claims of those whose country and futures are being so torn apart in Libya at this time.
Failure to show restraint now may make coping even harder in the years ahead.
Meanwhile the initiative's last sentence deserves everyone's total support: it reads: "No government should be able to suppress truth, justice and accountability for the sake [of] diplomatic convenience and oil money."
[This story has now been picked up and reported -- without acknowledgment, of course -- by The Guardian.]
Thursday, 7 April 2011
Lockerbie prosecutors yet to meet Libyan defector Moussa Koussa
[This is the headline over a report published this evening on The Guardian website. It reads in part:]
Scottish prosecutors who want to interview the dissident Libyan minister Moussa Koussa about the Lockerbie bombing have failed to meet him four days after they flew to London. [RB: According to Kenny MacAskill, they have been in London since Friday, 1 April.] (...)
In a carefully worded statement released on Monday evening Crown Office officials said they had met with the Foreign Office. "It was a very positive meeting and steps are being taken with a view to arranging a meeting with Mr Moussa Koussa at the earliest opportunity in the next few days."
There were press reports that prosecutors believed they would meet Koussa on Monday but sources close to the investigation have confirmed no interview has yet taken place. The Crown Office and police refused to comment. (...)
The Foreign Office confirmed Koussa had not been offered immunity but nor had he been arrested. He was not under any obligation to meet prosecutors, police or other officials. "Moussa Koussa is not detained by us and has taken part in discussions with officials since his arrival, of his own free will," a spokeswoman said.
"As the Crown Office statement on Monday evening indicated, Crown Office and FCO officials had a very positive meeting to address these matters on Monday with a view to arranging a meeting with Moussa Koussa at the earliest opportunity. It is not appropriate for us to say anything more at this stage."
The Times reported on Monday that the prosecutors were "fully expecting the interview to take place" that day. David Cameron, the prime minister, and William Hague, the foreign secretary, said they would encourage Koussa to talk to the Scottish team. But they played down speculation that he would agree.
[The BBC News website later published a report headed Moussa Koussa interviewed over Lockerbie. It reads in part:]
The former Libyan foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, has been interviewed by Scottish police investigating the Lockerbie bombing, the BBC has learned. (...)
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) said: "We can confirm that officers of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, supported by COPFS, today met....[Mr Moussa Koussa].....in relation to the ongoing investigation into the Lockerbie bombing."
BBC Scotland correspondent Glenn Campbell said: "It's not clear how productive the interview was.
"The Scottish authorities hope that Moussa Koussa and other senior figures who have deserted Col Gaddafi's regime can help them close in on those who ordered the attack."
Our correspondent said the questioning was led by Det Supt Michael Dalgliesh, of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, who is continuing the Lockerbie investigation.
Scottish prosecutors who want to interview the dissident Libyan minister Moussa Koussa about the Lockerbie bombing have failed to meet him four days after they flew to London. [RB: According to Kenny MacAskill, they have been in London since Friday, 1 April.] (...)
In a carefully worded statement released on Monday evening Crown Office officials said they had met with the Foreign Office. "It was a very positive meeting and steps are being taken with a view to arranging a meeting with Mr Moussa Koussa at the earliest opportunity in the next few days."
There were press reports that prosecutors believed they would meet Koussa on Monday but sources close to the investigation have confirmed no interview has yet taken place. The Crown Office and police refused to comment. (...)
The Foreign Office confirmed Koussa had not been offered immunity but nor had he been arrested. He was not under any obligation to meet prosecutors, police or other officials. "Moussa Koussa is not detained by us and has taken part in discussions with officials since his arrival, of his own free will," a spokeswoman said.
"As the Crown Office statement on Monday evening indicated, Crown Office and FCO officials had a very positive meeting to address these matters on Monday with a view to arranging a meeting with Moussa Koussa at the earliest opportunity. It is not appropriate for us to say anything more at this stage."
The Times reported on Monday that the prosecutors were "fully expecting the interview to take place" that day. David Cameron, the prime minister, and William Hague, the foreign secretary, said they would encourage Koussa to talk to the Scottish team. But they played down speculation that he would agree.
[The BBC News website later published a report headed Moussa Koussa interviewed over Lockerbie. It reads in part:]
The former Libyan foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, has been interviewed by Scottish police investigating the Lockerbie bombing, the BBC has learned. (...)
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) said: "We can confirm that officers of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, supported by COPFS, today met....[Mr Moussa Koussa].....in relation to the ongoing investigation into the Lockerbie bombing."
BBC Scotland correspondent Glenn Campbell said: "It's not clear how productive the interview was.
"The Scottish authorities hope that Moussa Koussa and other senior figures who have deserted Col Gaddafi's regime can help them close in on those who ordered the attack."
Our correspondent said the questioning was led by Det Supt Michael Dalgliesh, of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, who is continuing the Lockerbie investigation.
Vincent Cannistraro on Moussa Koussa
[I am grateful to reader of this blog for drawing my attention to this report from 31 March on the American WLTX website. It reads in part:]
Moussa Koussa, the Libyan official who British officials said resigned Wednesday after travelling to England, was a "key organizer" of the bombing, the Central Intelligence Agency's lead investigator into the bombing told CBS News Thursday. All 259 people on the plane and 11 people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, Dec. 21, 1988.
Vincent Cannistraro, who led the CIA bombing investigation, told CBS News that Qaddafi has long been suspected of initiating the attack.
"Yes, Moussa Koussa was personally responsible for the actual organization of it," said Cannistraro. "The orders to do it clearly came from Muammar Qaddafi himself as everything that happened in Libya over the years did originate with Qaddafi himself."
When Koussa defected to England, he brought with him secrets of his decades-long relationship with Quaddafi. Koussa was once Qadaffi's intelligence chief and is believed to know the intricate details of the Libyan leader's involvement with terrorism.
"Moussa is a person with a lot of blood on his hands over many years," Cannistraro said.
Moussa Koussa, the Libyan official who British officials said resigned Wednesday after travelling to England, was a "key organizer" of the bombing, the Central Intelligence Agency's lead investigator into the bombing told CBS News Thursday. All 259 people on the plane and 11 people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, Dec. 21, 1988.
Vincent Cannistraro, who led the CIA bombing investigation, told CBS News that Qaddafi has long been suspected of initiating the attack.
"Yes, Moussa Koussa was personally responsible for the actual organization of it," said Cannistraro. "The orders to do it clearly came from Muammar Qaddafi himself as everything that happened in Libya over the years did originate with Qaddafi himself."
When Koussa defected to England, he brought with him secrets of his decades-long relationship with Quaddafi. Koussa was once Qadaffi's intelligence chief and is believed to know the intricate details of the Libyan leader's involvement with terrorism.
"Moussa is a person with a lot of blood on his hands over many years," Cannistraro said.
An independent legal team should question Koussa about Lockerbie
[This is the heading over a letter from Iain A D Mann in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
I am pleased that the Libyan foreign minister and defector Moussa Koussa is to be questioned about Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s alleged responsibility for the destruction of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 and the deaths of 270 innocent people.
As Colonel Gaddafi’s right-hand man at the time and until recently, Koussa must know more than anyone about Libya’s alleged involvement in the atrocity. But I’m not sure that the Scottish Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary are the right bodies to interview him.
It was that police force whose investigation led to Megrahi’s arrest and trial, and it was the Crown Office that prosecuted him at Camp Zeist. The Crown Office is also preventing the release into the public domain of the report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which identified six possible reasons why the conviction may have been unsafe and a miscarriage of justice.
There is also some suspicion over how Megrahi was persuaded to withdraw his second appeal, when he had no need to do so as he had already been promised release on compassionate grounds. [RB: My understanding is that there was no such promise. Kenny MacAskill announced that he would deal with both applications -- prisoner transfer and compassionate release -- together. Megrahi had no way of knowing which one -- if either -- MacAskill would go for and abandoned his appeal so that both options could remain open.] If he had not done so the SCCRC concerns would have been aired and tested publicly in court.
It is likely these two public bodies would not be best pleased to be told by Koussa that Libya had nothing to do with the terrorist attack, as Gaddafi himself claimed at the outset. It is quite possible that Gaddafi’s subsequent acceptance of guilt and payment of £2.4 billion in compensation to the bereaved families may simply have been a diplomatic device to get Libya accepted back into the international fold, so that it could again buy arms from Britain and the United States, and more importantly start to benefit from its vast undeveloped oil reserves.
What if the police and Crown Office representatives refuse to reveal details of their discussions with Koussa, and simply report that he was not able to shed any new light on the matter? I would much prefer Koussa’s interrogation to be undertaken by an independent group of respected lawyers and other experts.
Names that come to mind are Sir Menzies Campbell and Dame Helena Kennedy QC. Dr Jim Swire should be involved since he knows more about the tragic event than almost anyone else, and perhaps also Dr Hans Kochler, the UN special observer at the trial who has already commented on the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence.
This may be the last chance to find out the truth about Lockerbie, and it would be a tragedy if that chance were missed because of vested interests within the Scottish legal establishment.
[A letter in response from Brian Fitzpatrick appears in The Herald for Friday, 8 April. It reads as follows:]
IaIn AD Mann’s worries about the sensitivities of Scotland’s “legal establishment” (Letters, April 7) are misplaced.
Few, save perhaps the taxpayer, will baulk at a further public inquiry into the circumstances of the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over our skies. Any further evidence emerging from Libya’s freedom struggle as to the guilty parties involved should be welcomed.
An inquiry might also allow scope for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame.
Many Scots will recall where they were when they heard the news of President John F Kennedy’s assassination, the ripping down of the Berlin Wall and the felling of the Twin Towers. Lockerbie was one of those epoch-defining events. It is a grotesque tragedy for our country that memories of our engagement will not be centred on our fellow citizens who were murdered on our soil by the agents of a foreign power, but focused on the incompetence of our Justice Minister backed to the hilt by our First Minister.
That tragedy is widened when one reflects on the sustained campaign of vilification of those many Scots who laboured to try to ensure that, at least, some measure of justice was done for the victims of that mass murder. Far from a cover-up of the sort much loved by those who would rather secure a headline than undertake any study of the evidence, we should be proud of those women and men across our police and prosecution services who worked hard on the Lockerbie investigation.
I knew many of my fellow advocates who gave of their time and lives to serve the Camp Zeist tribunal – men and women who left families behind to work long hours in uncomfortable circumstances. They will have a better notion of the contribution of the men and women whose work and efforts underlaid their own tasks. I think of the contribution made by the late Lord Macfadyen as one of the five Scottish appeal judges who presided at Camp Zeist – not a conspirator in any establishment plot but a kind, courteous and thoughtful man with an unfailing independence of spirit and loyalty to his judicial oath matched only by his formidable legal prowess.
Our country has been diminished by those who have weaved a tale of deceit and intrigue – and while doing so, blackened the names of better men.
[In yesterday's edition of The Herald UK political editor Michael Settle reported that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court wishes to question Koussa about possible involvement in crimes against humanity.
In today's edition of The Guardian there appears an article headlined Libya rebels 'pressured into Lockerbie apology'. It reads in part:]
Libya's rebel administration has said that it signed an apology for the Gaddafi regime's role in IRA attacks and the Lockerbie bombing under pressure from the British government, and that the document is the result of "misunderstanding".
After initially denying that the document existed, the revolutionaries' governing council acknowledged that its chairman, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, had indeed signed an apology on behalf of the Libyan people for Gaddafi's provision of semtex used in IRA bombings and for the blowing up of the Pan Am flight in 1988. It also promised compensation.
Amid division and confusion over the declaration, which some blamed on a translation mix-up, council officials said that the issue of the Libyan government's responsibility for attacks in the UK came up only because it was pressed on the revolutionary administration by the British.
Officials in the rebel government say the Lockerbie and IRA issues are not a priority for them given that they are fighting a military campaign to overthrow Gaddafi while trying to administer the rebel-held areas. They say that there are few Libyans who believe they are responsible for Gaddafi's acts or that they should apologise for him.
Council officials privately said that the Foreign Office pressed Jalil to invite a British lawyer, Jason McCue, head of the Libya Victims Initiative, to Benghazi. McCue arrived saying that he was seeking an "unequivocal apology" in the name of the Libyan people and $10m compensation for each death in IRA attacks. All of his demands were met by Jalil.
Council officials said that they regarded McCue as working with a team of British diplomats in Benghazi, led by the UK's ambassador to Rome, Christopher Prentice. Prentice has declined to talk to the press. A council spokesman, Essam Gheriani, said that Jalil had had little choice but to sign as part of the rebel administration's attempts to win diplomatic recognition and gain access to desperately needed funds frozen overseas.
"The whole world knows the Libyan people are not responsible for Gaddafi's acts over 40 years. An apology is not warranted for the simple reason that the Libyan people did not participate in these acts," said Gheriani. "But there is the situation in the international arena."
Britain is holding about £100m in Libyan currency seized from a ship that could be released to the rebel administration, which is needs funds to meet next month's civil service pay roll as well as for imports of food.
Asked if Jalil was pressured by Britain, Gheriani said: "It depends on how you define pressure. I request something from you when you want something from me. It could be defined as pressure."
I am pleased that the Libyan foreign minister and defector Moussa Koussa is to be questioned about Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s alleged responsibility for the destruction of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 and the deaths of 270 innocent people.
As Colonel Gaddafi’s right-hand man at the time and until recently, Koussa must know more than anyone about Libya’s alleged involvement in the atrocity. But I’m not sure that the Scottish Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary are the right bodies to interview him.
It was that police force whose investigation led to Megrahi’s arrest and trial, and it was the Crown Office that prosecuted him at Camp Zeist. The Crown Office is also preventing the release into the public domain of the report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which identified six possible reasons why the conviction may have been unsafe and a miscarriage of justice.
There is also some suspicion over how Megrahi was persuaded to withdraw his second appeal, when he had no need to do so as he had already been promised release on compassionate grounds. [RB: My understanding is that there was no such promise. Kenny MacAskill announced that he would deal with both applications -- prisoner transfer and compassionate release -- together. Megrahi had no way of knowing which one -- if either -- MacAskill would go for and abandoned his appeal so that both options could remain open.] If he had not done so the SCCRC concerns would have been aired and tested publicly in court.
It is likely these two public bodies would not be best pleased to be told by Koussa that Libya had nothing to do with the terrorist attack, as Gaddafi himself claimed at the outset. It is quite possible that Gaddafi’s subsequent acceptance of guilt and payment of £2.4 billion in compensation to the bereaved families may simply have been a diplomatic device to get Libya accepted back into the international fold, so that it could again buy arms from Britain and the United States, and more importantly start to benefit from its vast undeveloped oil reserves.
What if the police and Crown Office representatives refuse to reveal details of their discussions with Koussa, and simply report that he was not able to shed any new light on the matter? I would much prefer Koussa’s interrogation to be undertaken by an independent group of respected lawyers and other experts.
Names that come to mind are Sir Menzies Campbell and Dame Helena Kennedy QC. Dr Jim Swire should be involved since he knows more about the tragic event than almost anyone else, and perhaps also Dr Hans Kochler, the UN special observer at the trial who has already commented on the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence.
This may be the last chance to find out the truth about Lockerbie, and it would be a tragedy if that chance were missed because of vested interests within the Scottish legal establishment.
[A letter in response from Brian Fitzpatrick appears in The Herald for Friday, 8 April. It reads as follows:]
IaIn AD Mann’s worries about the sensitivities of Scotland’s “legal establishment” (Letters, April 7) are misplaced.
Few, save perhaps the taxpayer, will baulk at a further public inquiry into the circumstances of the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over our skies. Any further evidence emerging from Libya’s freedom struggle as to the guilty parties involved should be welcomed.
An inquiry might also allow scope for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame.
Many Scots will recall where they were when they heard the news of President John F Kennedy’s assassination, the ripping down of the Berlin Wall and the felling of the Twin Towers. Lockerbie was one of those epoch-defining events. It is a grotesque tragedy for our country that memories of our engagement will not be centred on our fellow citizens who were murdered on our soil by the agents of a foreign power, but focused on the incompetence of our Justice Minister backed to the hilt by our First Minister.
That tragedy is widened when one reflects on the sustained campaign of vilification of those many Scots who laboured to try to ensure that, at least, some measure of justice was done for the victims of that mass murder. Far from a cover-up of the sort much loved by those who would rather secure a headline than undertake any study of the evidence, we should be proud of those women and men across our police and prosecution services who worked hard on the Lockerbie investigation.
I knew many of my fellow advocates who gave of their time and lives to serve the Camp Zeist tribunal – men and women who left families behind to work long hours in uncomfortable circumstances. They will have a better notion of the contribution of the men and women whose work and efforts underlaid their own tasks. I think of the contribution made by the late Lord Macfadyen as one of the five Scottish appeal judges who presided at Camp Zeist – not a conspirator in any establishment plot but a kind, courteous and thoughtful man with an unfailing independence of spirit and loyalty to his judicial oath matched only by his formidable legal prowess.
Our country has been diminished by those who have weaved a tale of deceit and intrigue – and while doing so, blackened the names of better men.
[In yesterday's edition of The Herald UK political editor Michael Settle reported that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court wishes to question Koussa about possible involvement in crimes against humanity.
In today's edition of The Guardian there appears an article headlined Libya rebels 'pressured into Lockerbie apology'. It reads in part:]
Libya's rebel administration has said that it signed an apology for the Gaddafi regime's role in IRA attacks and the Lockerbie bombing under pressure from the British government, and that the document is the result of "misunderstanding".
After initially denying that the document existed, the revolutionaries' governing council acknowledged that its chairman, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, had indeed signed an apology on behalf of the Libyan people for Gaddafi's provision of semtex used in IRA bombings and for the blowing up of the Pan Am flight in 1988. It also promised compensation.
Amid division and confusion over the declaration, which some blamed on a translation mix-up, council officials said that the issue of the Libyan government's responsibility for attacks in the UK came up only because it was pressed on the revolutionary administration by the British.
Officials in the rebel government say the Lockerbie and IRA issues are not a priority for them given that they are fighting a military campaign to overthrow Gaddafi while trying to administer the rebel-held areas. They say that there are few Libyans who believe they are responsible for Gaddafi's acts or that they should apologise for him.
Council officials privately said that the Foreign Office pressed Jalil to invite a British lawyer, Jason McCue, head of the Libya Victims Initiative, to Benghazi. McCue arrived saying that he was seeking an "unequivocal apology" in the name of the Libyan people and $10m compensation for each death in IRA attacks. All of his demands were met by Jalil.
Council officials said that they regarded McCue as working with a team of British diplomats in Benghazi, led by the UK's ambassador to Rome, Christopher Prentice. Prentice has declined to talk to the press. A council spokesman, Essam Gheriani, said that Jalil had had little choice but to sign as part of the rebel administration's attempts to win diplomatic recognition and gain access to desperately needed funds frozen overseas.
"The whole world knows the Libyan people are not responsible for Gaddafi's acts over 40 years. An apology is not warranted for the simple reason that the Libyan people did not participate in these acts," said Gheriani. "But there is the situation in the international arena."
Britain is holding about £100m in Libyan currency seized from a ship that could be released to the rebel administration, which is needs funds to meet next month's civil service pay roll as well as for imports of food.
Asked if Jalil was pressured by Britain, Gheriani said: "It depends on how you define pressure. I request something from you when you want something from me. It could be defined as pressure."
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Former Lord Advocate Boyd on Libya and Lockerbie
[There was a debate on the situation in Libya in the House of Lords on Friday, 1 April. The contribution of former Lord Advocate Lord Boyd of Duncansby (Colin Boyd) as reported in Hansard (starting on column 1496) was as follows:]
Lord Boyd of Duncansby: My Lords, as Lord Advocate I prosecuted the Lockerbie trial. I mention that not to claim any great insight into the present situation in Libya. Nor do I claim that the focus of attention should be on that one horrific incident, although I can at least bear witness to the horror of one aspect of Gaddafi's terrorism. The priority has to be the protecting of the civilian population, while ensuring a transition to a democratic state founded on the rule of law and respecting human rights. Thereafter, there are any number of criminal offences that should be addressed.
I mention Lockerbie because it has been central to our relations with Libya over the past two decades and more, and because the trial has some lessons for us in the pursuit of justice and the rule of law. Before I go any further, I say that I am speaking strictly for myself as it is four and a half years since I have been in the Crown Office and had any contact with any of the evidence. Megrahi was convicted of the murder of 270 people: 259 on Pan Am 103 and 11 on the ground in Lockerbie. Scottish terms of conviction and indictment also narrate certain factors which go along with the conviction. In this case, Megrahi was convicted while acting along with others, who were unnamed. Moussa Koussa's defection to the United Kingdom and his connection to Lockerbie have been much commented on in the past 24 hours. From my knowledge, which I emphasise is elderly, he is a "person of interest". I am pleased that the Prime Minister has acceded to the Crown Office's request that prosecutors and police should have access to him. However, he is no more than that. No warrant has been issued for his arrest, and there are others who would also be of interest. That should be borne in mind, and I say no more on the matter.
The other aspect of the conviction was that Megrahi was acting in furtherance of the aims and objectives of the JSO, the Libyan intelligence services, so the court was satisfied of the culpability of the Libyan state for what happened, acting through the agency of its intelligence service. The conviction was important in bringing to justice one of the people who was responsible for that atrocity. The trial was innovative both in being in the Netherlands and in the adaptations that were made for that purpose. I pay particular tribute to the late, lamented Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary who was particularly important to that, and to the Foreign Office, which set it up.
Thereafter, the road becomes somewhat trickier. I choose my words carefully: there were times, more than once, when I had the strong impression that Megrahi's conviction was seen as an inconvenience and an impediment to developing relations with Libya.
I acknowledge that the rapprochement was significant and important because it led to the renunciation by Gaddafi of weapons of mass destruction. Other claims that were made for it, such as the provision of intelligence on al-Qaeda, I take with, frankly, a little more scepticism, particularly as Gaddafi is now claiming that virtually everyone who is involved in the rebellion is motivated by al-Qaeda. However, the negotiation of the prisoner transfer agreement, in the expectation-and, I suspect, the hope-that it would lead to the return of Megrahi to Libya, was an error of judgment. It was in the face of an agreement with the United States that, if convicted, he would remain in Scotland and serve his sentence there, and, importantly, of commitments that were given to American relatives-often through me, acting, as I believed at the time, on the advice of the Government of the day.
The announcement of the enhanced judicial co-operation, which included a commitment to the prisoner transfer agreement, at the same time-and I think in the same press release-as the contracts for BP, did nothing to dispel the impression that we were prepared to compromise on our principles of justice. This, along with the eventual return of Megrahi, undermined the confidence of the United States and of American relatives in our commitment to justice on this issue. One has only to have regard to the letter from Robert Mueller to the Justice Minister in Scotland, Kenny MacAskill, to understand the depth of anger that was provoked. I remind the House that if, and I stress "if", there were to be any prospect of any new trial arising out of the Lockerbie incident, or possibly on other matters that need US co-operation, that co-operation has been put in difficulty as a result of what was done by the British and Scottish Governments. Relations between prosecutors remain good but between Governments they do not.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, might I ask the noble and learned Lord a question? He appears to have overlooked the view of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission on this matter; it found the conviction unsafe.
Lord Boyd of Duncansby: It did not. It said that there may have been a miscarriage of justice and referred it back to the Appeal Court. Had the appeal gone forward, it would have been the Appeal Court that ruled on that. For myself, I think it was unfortunate that that appeal was withdrawn, since the matter was then not dealt with. However, there now seems to be at least an acceptance that Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.
At the end of the trial, Louis Freeh, the then director of the FBI, telephoned me. One of the messages that he wanted to give me was that it demonstrated to the world, particularly to the United States, that we can bring justice home to terrorists with patience and international co-operation, and that the US could learn that it did not need a military response. That lesson has been lost or obscured in the aftermath of 9/11, but it is even more relevant now.
We need to bring through a strong commitment to international justice. One of the most powerful of the speeches that I have listened to today was that of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, who outlined the reason for that. Through our present mission, we are promoting that international justice. I accept with limitations that we are doing the right thing and that it is legal, but we must go further.
What we have seen and witnessed in Libya is truly shocking: enforced disappearances, beatings, torture, horrific rapes and extrajudicial killings, as well as attacks on civilian populations. Holding people to account for these crimes is of vital importance, and part of that is ensuring that people are brought before the International Criminal Court or other courts as appropriate. It sends out a powerful message, not just to dictators and despots but also to those who chafe under such tyrannical regimes. If we are to build a world where human rights are universally respected, our commitment to those fundamental values must not be waived in the face of expediency.
Lord Boyd of Duncansby: My Lords, as Lord Advocate I prosecuted the Lockerbie trial. I mention that not to claim any great insight into the present situation in Libya. Nor do I claim that the focus of attention should be on that one horrific incident, although I can at least bear witness to the horror of one aspect of Gaddafi's terrorism. The priority has to be the protecting of the civilian population, while ensuring a transition to a democratic state founded on the rule of law and respecting human rights. Thereafter, there are any number of criminal offences that should be addressed.
I mention Lockerbie because it has been central to our relations with Libya over the past two decades and more, and because the trial has some lessons for us in the pursuit of justice and the rule of law. Before I go any further, I say that I am speaking strictly for myself as it is four and a half years since I have been in the Crown Office and had any contact with any of the evidence. Megrahi was convicted of the murder of 270 people: 259 on Pan Am 103 and 11 on the ground in Lockerbie. Scottish terms of conviction and indictment also narrate certain factors which go along with the conviction. In this case, Megrahi was convicted while acting along with others, who were unnamed. Moussa Koussa's defection to the United Kingdom and his connection to Lockerbie have been much commented on in the past 24 hours. From my knowledge, which I emphasise is elderly, he is a "person of interest". I am pleased that the Prime Minister has acceded to the Crown Office's request that prosecutors and police should have access to him. However, he is no more than that. No warrant has been issued for his arrest, and there are others who would also be of interest. That should be borne in mind, and I say no more on the matter.
The other aspect of the conviction was that Megrahi was acting in furtherance of the aims and objectives of the JSO, the Libyan intelligence services, so the court was satisfied of the culpability of the Libyan state for what happened, acting through the agency of its intelligence service. The conviction was important in bringing to justice one of the people who was responsible for that atrocity. The trial was innovative both in being in the Netherlands and in the adaptations that were made for that purpose. I pay particular tribute to the late, lamented Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary who was particularly important to that, and to the Foreign Office, which set it up.
Thereafter, the road becomes somewhat trickier. I choose my words carefully: there were times, more than once, when I had the strong impression that Megrahi's conviction was seen as an inconvenience and an impediment to developing relations with Libya.
I acknowledge that the rapprochement was significant and important because it led to the renunciation by Gaddafi of weapons of mass destruction. Other claims that were made for it, such as the provision of intelligence on al-Qaeda, I take with, frankly, a little more scepticism, particularly as Gaddafi is now claiming that virtually everyone who is involved in the rebellion is motivated by al-Qaeda. However, the negotiation of the prisoner transfer agreement, in the expectation-and, I suspect, the hope-that it would lead to the return of Megrahi to Libya, was an error of judgment. It was in the face of an agreement with the United States that, if convicted, he would remain in Scotland and serve his sentence there, and, importantly, of commitments that were given to American relatives-often through me, acting, as I believed at the time, on the advice of the Government of the day.
The announcement of the enhanced judicial co-operation, which included a commitment to the prisoner transfer agreement, at the same time-and I think in the same press release-as the contracts for BP, did nothing to dispel the impression that we were prepared to compromise on our principles of justice. This, along with the eventual return of Megrahi, undermined the confidence of the United States and of American relatives in our commitment to justice on this issue. One has only to have regard to the letter from Robert Mueller to the Justice Minister in Scotland, Kenny MacAskill, to understand the depth of anger that was provoked. I remind the House that if, and I stress "if", there were to be any prospect of any new trial arising out of the Lockerbie incident, or possibly on other matters that need US co-operation, that co-operation has been put in difficulty as a result of what was done by the British and Scottish Governments. Relations between prosecutors remain good but between Governments they do not.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, might I ask the noble and learned Lord a question? He appears to have overlooked the view of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission on this matter; it found the conviction unsafe.
Lord Boyd of Duncansby: It did not. It said that there may have been a miscarriage of justice and referred it back to the Appeal Court. Had the appeal gone forward, it would have been the Appeal Court that ruled on that. For myself, I think it was unfortunate that that appeal was withdrawn, since the matter was then not dealt with. However, there now seems to be at least an acceptance that Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.
At the end of the trial, Louis Freeh, the then director of the FBI, telephoned me. One of the messages that he wanted to give me was that it demonstrated to the world, particularly to the United States, that we can bring justice home to terrorists with patience and international co-operation, and that the US could learn that it did not need a military response. That lesson has been lost or obscured in the aftermath of 9/11, but it is even more relevant now.
We need to bring through a strong commitment to international justice. One of the most powerful of the speeches that I have listened to today was that of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, who outlined the reason for that. Through our present mission, we are promoting that international justice. I accept with limitations that we are doing the right thing and that it is legal, but we must go further.
What we have seen and witnessed in Libya is truly shocking: enforced disappearances, beatings, torture, horrific rapes and extrajudicial killings, as well as attacks on civilian populations. Holding people to account for these crimes is of vital importance, and part of that is ensuring that people are brought before the International Criminal Court or other courts as appropriate. It sends out a powerful message, not just to dictators and despots but also to those who chafe under such tyrannical regimes. If we are to build a world where human rights are universally respected, our commitment to those fundamental values must not be waived in the face of expediency.
Libyan rebels deny offering Lockerbie compensation
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Guardian. It reads in part:]
Libya's revolutionary administration has denied a claim by a British lawyer representing victims of IRA attacks and the Lockerbie bombing that it has apologised for Libya's involvement and offered compensation.
Following a meeting with the rebel council's leadership in Benghazi, Jason McCue, head of the Libya Victims Initiative, read a statement which he said was an "unequivocal apology" for Libya's provision of Semtex used in IRA bombings and the blowing up of the Pan Am flight.
McCue said the revolutionary council had agreed to pay compensation along the lines paid out in a deal between Muammar Gaddafi and the US government which provided $10m for a death and $3m for a serious injury. He said there was also agreement to set up a trust for other victims.
McCue said the apology and offer of compensation was in the name of chairman of its interim governing council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil.
But Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, its deputy chairman, said McCue's claims were "not true".
"We didn't apologise ourselves. We regret what happened, the catastrophic event of Lockerbie, and we will do our best to reach the truth with the families of Lockerbie. Also for the IRA. We emphasised to the British government that we will work to overcome what has happened. But there was no apology. We are not responsible," he said.
Ghoga said that the council "didn't negotiate anything about compensation".
"We want to know the truth. We will help the families of the victims to get to the truth," he said.
However, separately, the council said that it would "co-operate fully" to establish what had happened in the Lockerbie attack "and the right of the victims' families for justice".
Mustafa Gheriani, a council spokesman, was equally clear in his denial that an apology was made. He said they council had expressed sorrow but that Gaddafi was responsible and that it is he who should apologise.
"When we say sorry it means we did it. But we did not do it. Gaddafi did it. It's sorrow not an apology," he said.
The council noted that if it wished to issue an apology in Jalil's name it would not ask a British lawyer to read it.
[A letter from Tom Minogue in today's edition of The Herald reads as follows:]
In Michael Settle’s article you quote Sir Menzies Campbell saying that, if any criminal proceedings in relation to the Lockerbie outrage are taken against any defectors, it must be clearly accepted that they are to be tried in the conventional court system, and there should be no repeat of the incongruities of Camp Zeist (“Scots police to question Koussa about Lockerbie”, The Herald, April 5).
This raises very important issues that have a bearing on the reputation of the Scottish legal system.
The previous incongruity of the special court at Camp Zeist in Holland to which Sir Menzies referred should not be repeated if there are further trials in this country. Some of the inappropriate events to emerge after the previous Lockerbie trial and appeals have been well documented, including:
l The US government promising and then rewarding a key witness and his brother with millions of dollars.
2 The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission being denied access to relevant documents protected by Public Interest Immunity Certificates, and Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi being denied his right to be in court to hear this evidence. [RB: The SCCRC did obtain access to the relevant documents, but only on condition that they would not be further disclosed. Indeed, at least one of the SCCRCs six grounds for holding that Megrahi's conviction might have been a miscarriage of justice related to the contents and non-disclosure of these documents. It was Megrahi and his legal team who were denied access to the documents for the purposes of the appeal that followed the SCCRC's report.]
I would agree with Sir Menzies that in the event of further Lockerbie trials a more conventional trial in Scotland according to normal legal practice would be desirable. It would perhaps help to restore the reputation of Scots justice.
[Posted on a flying visit to Middelpos from Gannaga Lodge.]
Libya's revolutionary administration has denied a claim by a British lawyer representing victims of IRA attacks and the Lockerbie bombing that it has apologised for Libya's involvement and offered compensation.
Following a meeting with the rebel council's leadership in Benghazi, Jason McCue, head of the Libya Victims Initiative, read a statement which he said was an "unequivocal apology" for Libya's provision of Semtex used in IRA bombings and the blowing up of the Pan Am flight.
McCue said the revolutionary council had agreed to pay compensation along the lines paid out in a deal between Muammar Gaddafi and the US government which provided $10m for a death and $3m for a serious injury. He said there was also agreement to set up a trust for other victims.
McCue said the apology and offer of compensation was in the name of chairman of its interim governing council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil.
But Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, its deputy chairman, said McCue's claims were "not true".
"We didn't apologise ourselves. We regret what happened, the catastrophic event of Lockerbie, and we will do our best to reach the truth with the families of Lockerbie. Also for the IRA. We emphasised to the British government that we will work to overcome what has happened. But there was no apology. We are not responsible," he said.
Ghoga said that the council "didn't negotiate anything about compensation".
"We want to know the truth. We will help the families of the victims to get to the truth," he said.
However, separately, the council said that it would "co-operate fully" to establish what had happened in the Lockerbie attack "and the right of the victims' families for justice".
Mustafa Gheriani, a council spokesman, was equally clear in his denial that an apology was made. He said they council had expressed sorrow but that Gaddafi was responsible and that it is he who should apologise.
"When we say sorry it means we did it. But we did not do it. Gaddafi did it. It's sorrow not an apology," he said.
The council noted that if it wished to issue an apology in Jalil's name it would not ask a British lawyer to read it.
[A letter from Tom Minogue in today's edition of The Herald reads as follows:]
In Michael Settle’s article you quote Sir Menzies Campbell saying that, if any criminal proceedings in relation to the Lockerbie outrage are taken against any defectors, it must be clearly accepted that they are to be tried in the conventional court system, and there should be no repeat of the incongruities of Camp Zeist (“Scots police to question Koussa about Lockerbie”, The Herald, April 5).
This raises very important issues that have a bearing on the reputation of the Scottish legal system.
The previous incongruity of the special court at Camp Zeist in Holland to which Sir Menzies referred should not be repeated if there are further trials in this country. Some of the inappropriate events to emerge after the previous Lockerbie trial and appeals have been well documented, including:
l The US government promising and then rewarding a key witness and his brother with millions of dollars.
2 The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission being denied access to relevant documents protected by Public Interest Immunity Certificates, and Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi being denied his right to be in court to hear this evidence. [RB: The SCCRC did obtain access to the relevant documents, but only on condition that they would not be further disclosed. Indeed, at least one of the SCCRCs six grounds for holding that Megrahi's conviction might have been a miscarriage of justice related to the contents and non-disclosure of these documents. It was Megrahi and his legal team who were denied access to the documents for the purposes of the appeal that followed the SCCRC's report.]
I would agree with Sir Menzies that in the event of further Lockerbie trials a more conventional trial in Scotland according to normal legal practice would be desirable. It would perhaps help to restore the reputation of Scots justice.
[Posted on a flying visit to Middelpos from Gannaga Lodge.]
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Koussa has "no secrets" over Pan Am 103
[This is the headline over an article on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads in part:]
Saif al-Islam Gadaffi, heir apparent to Colonel Gadaffi, has said that former intelligence chief Moussa Koussa has “no secrets” to tell over the Pan Am 103 event and says that both the British and the American Governments are already aware of the full circumstances surrounding the destruction of the Boeing airliner over Lockerbie.
Saif Gadaffi, who met with Peter Mandelson to facilitate Abdelbaset Al Megrahi’s repatriation to Libya, has spoken before on the geopolitical aspects of the Megrahi case, denying that Libya had any involvement in the event, but accepted responsibility in order to allow the UN sanctions regime to be lifted.
“The British and the Americans, they know about Lockerbie. They know everything about Lockerbie. There are no secrets anymore,” Gadaffi told the BBC’s John Simpson.
The claim mirrors an earlier revelation made to Dr Jim Swire of UK Families Flight 103.
“One of our number was told by an official on the US Commission of Inquiry, in an aside that: 'Your government and mine know exactly what happened, but they're never going to tell'", Swire says.
Gadaffi added that Koussa is likely to “invent stories” for the British authorities in order to secure his immunity.
“If you press him and say “You have to invent stories in order [for us] to give you immunity, what can he do?. The British Government said he had no immunity unless he cooperated. So of course he will come out with funny stories,” said Gadaffi.
[The BBC interview with Saif Gaddafi and a related report can be accessed here.
A report in today's edition of The New York Times contains the following:]
The Obama administration dropped financial sanctions on Monday against the top Libyan official who fled to Britain last week, saying it hoped the move would encourage other senior aides to abandon Col Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s embattled leader.
But the decision to unfreeze bank accounts and permit business dealings with the official, Moussa Koussa, underscored the predicament his defection poses for American and British authorities, who said on Tuesday that Scottish police and prosecutors planned to interview Mr Koussa about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and other issues “in the next few days.”
Mr Koussa’s close knowledge of the ruling circle, which he is believed to be sharing inside a British safe house, could be invaluable in trying to strip Colonel Qaddafi of support.
But as the longtime Libyan intelligence chief and foreign minister, Mr Koussa is widely believed to be implicated in acts of terrorism and murder over the last three decades, including the assassination of dissidents, the training of international terrorists and the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. (...)
On Tuesday, Scotland’s Crown Office prosecutors said they had met with Foreign Office officials to discuss access to Mr Koussa. “Steps are being taken with a view to arranging a meeting with Mr Moussa Koussa at the earliest opportunity in the next few days,” the prosecutors said in a statement.
The British foreign secretary, William Hague, told Parliament on Monday that officials would “encourage” Mr Koussa “to co-operate fully with all requests for interviews with law enforcement and investigation authorities in relation both to Lockerbie as well as other issues stemming from Libya’s past sponsorship of terrorism and to seek legal representation where appropriate.”
In a BBC interview in Tripoli broadcast on Tuesday, one of Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, charged that the British government had coerced Mr Koussa into speaking against the Qaddafi government.
“The British government said this: you have no immunity unless you cooperate,” Mr Qaddafi said. “He is sick, he is sick and old so if you put it this way — no immunity — of course I will come out with the funny stories.”
Brian P Flynn, a New Yorker whose brother, J P Flynn, died in the Lockerbie bombing, said the lifting of sanctions on Mr Koussa distressed him and other family members of the 270 victims. They have long believed that Mr Koussa had a role in ordering the bombing, and Scottish prosecutors have requested access to him.
“It’s all logical in the diplomatic game they need to play,” said Mr Flynn, vice president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103. “But at what cost to our system of justice? He’s a mass-murder suspect.”
Administration officials hastened to say that dropping the sanctions, which were imposed on March 15, had no bearing on the investigation of any crimes that Mr Koussa might have committed in office. The American Lockerbie investigation has never been closed, and law enforcement officials said the FBI would like to talk with Mr Koussa.
[Because of duties at Gannaga Lodge (a virtually telecommunications-free area) it is unlikely that I shall be in a position to make further posts to this blog before Friday.]
Saif al-Islam Gadaffi, heir apparent to Colonel Gadaffi, has said that former intelligence chief Moussa Koussa has “no secrets” to tell over the Pan Am 103 event and says that both the British and the American Governments are already aware of the full circumstances surrounding the destruction of the Boeing airliner over Lockerbie.
Saif Gadaffi, who met with Peter Mandelson to facilitate Abdelbaset Al Megrahi’s repatriation to Libya, has spoken before on the geopolitical aspects of the Megrahi case, denying that Libya had any involvement in the event, but accepted responsibility in order to allow the UN sanctions regime to be lifted.
“The British and the Americans, they know about Lockerbie. They know everything about Lockerbie. There are no secrets anymore,” Gadaffi told the BBC’s John Simpson.
The claim mirrors an earlier revelation made to Dr Jim Swire of UK Families Flight 103.
“One of our number was told by an official on the US Commission of Inquiry, in an aside that: 'Your government and mine know exactly what happened, but they're never going to tell'", Swire says.
Gadaffi added that Koussa is likely to “invent stories” for the British authorities in order to secure his immunity.
“If you press him and say “You have to invent stories in order [for us] to give you immunity, what can he do?. The British Government said he had no immunity unless he cooperated. So of course he will come out with funny stories,” said Gadaffi.
[The BBC interview with Saif Gaddafi and a related report can be accessed here.
A report in today's edition of The New York Times contains the following:]
The Obama administration dropped financial sanctions on Monday against the top Libyan official who fled to Britain last week, saying it hoped the move would encourage other senior aides to abandon Col Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s embattled leader.
But the decision to unfreeze bank accounts and permit business dealings with the official, Moussa Koussa, underscored the predicament his defection poses for American and British authorities, who said on Tuesday that Scottish police and prosecutors planned to interview Mr Koussa about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and other issues “in the next few days.”
Mr Koussa’s close knowledge of the ruling circle, which he is believed to be sharing inside a British safe house, could be invaluable in trying to strip Colonel Qaddafi of support.
But as the longtime Libyan intelligence chief and foreign minister, Mr Koussa is widely believed to be implicated in acts of terrorism and murder over the last three decades, including the assassination of dissidents, the training of international terrorists and the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. (...)
On Tuesday, Scotland’s Crown Office prosecutors said they had met with Foreign Office officials to discuss access to Mr Koussa. “Steps are being taken with a view to arranging a meeting with Mr Moussa Koussa at the earliest opportunity in the next few days,” the prosecutors said in a statement.
The British foreign secretary, William Hague, told Parliament on Monday that officials would “encourage” Mr Koussa “to co-operate fully with all requests for interviews with law enforcement and investigation authorities in relation both to Lockerbie as well as other issues stemming from Libya’s past sponsorship of terrorism and to seek legal representation where appropriate.”
In a BBC interview in Tripoli broadcast on Tuesday, one of Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, charged that the British government had coerced Mr Koussa into speaking against the Qaddafi government.
“The British government said this: you have no immunity unless you cooperate,” Mr Qaddafi said. “He is sick, he is sick and old so if you put it this way — no immunity — of course I will come out with the funny stories.”
Brian P Flynn, a New Yorker whose brother, J P Flynn, died in the Lockerbie bombing, said the lifting of sanctions on Mr Koussa distressed him and other family members of the 270 victims. They have long believed that Mr Koussa had a role in ordering the bombing, and Scottish prosecutors have requested access to him.
“It’s all logical in the diplomatic game they need to play,” said Mr Flynn, vice president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103. “But at what cost to our system of justice? He’s a mass-murder suspect.”
Administration officials hastened to say that dropping the sanctions, which were imposed on March 15, had no bearing on the investigation of any crimes that Mr Koussa might have committed in office. The American Lockerbie investigation has never been closed, and law enforcement officials said the FBI would like to talk with Mr Koussa.
[Because of duties at Gannaga Lodge (a virtually telecommunications-free area) it is unlikely that I shall be in a position to make further posts to this blog before Friday.]
Koussa Lockerbie meeting 'within days'
[An Agence France Presse news agency report published earlier this morning contains the following:]
Scottish officials investigating the Lockerbie bombing will interview defected Libyan foreign minister Mussa Kussa within "the next few days", the country's Crown Office confirmed Monday.
Scottish detectives and prosecutors met with officials from the Foreign Office (FCO) officials earlier Monday after making a formal request to speak to Kussa about the 1988 incident last week.
"We can confirm that representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary met with FCO officials this afternoon to discuss the situation concerning Kussa and specifically to discuss access to Kussa," a spokesman for the Scottish government department said.
"It was a very positive meeting and steps are being taken with a view to arranging a meeting with Kussa at the earliest opportunity in the next few days," added the spokesman.
[A report in today's edition of The Scotsman reads in part:]
Libyan defector and former secret service chief Moussa Koussa will be "encouraged" to speak to Scottish police and prosecutors about the Lockerbie bombing, William Hague has said. (...)
They met Foreign and Commonwealth officials yesterday and have been given assurances he will be encouraged to assist them.
However, speaking in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Mr Hague made is clear that Mr Koussa would not be detained or forced by the UK government to talk to investigators against his will.
"Moussa Koussa is not being offered any immunity from British or international justice," he said. "He is not detained by us and has taken part in discussions with officials since his arrival, of his own free will.
"We will encourage Moussa Koussa to co-operate fully with all requests for interviews with law enforcement and investigation authorities, in relation both to Lockerbie, as well as other issues stemming from Libya's past sponsorship of terrorism, and to seek legal representation where appropriate." He went on to say there was "insufficient evidence to produce further prosecutions, but that may change in future".
Dumfries and Galloway Police and the Crown Office were unable to comment last night, as talks were still on going.
The former Libyan foreign secretary is thought to have taken over the ESO, his country's security service, at least two years after the explosion which brought down the Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people, on 21 December, 1988.
[The Herald's report can be read here. A letter from Iain Stuart in today's edition of the same newspaper reads as follows:]
Moussa Koussa may, in time, prove to be a source of reliable and truthful evidence in relation to Libya’s involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.
Mrs J Greenhorn (Letters, April 4) does right to bring attention back to the report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), the suppression of which is an affront to justice. The public is entitled to know why the SCCRC concluded the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi may have been unsafe – and why key players seem not to want its report published.
An informative, independent report already exists. Compiled by the late investigative journalist Paul Foot, Lockerbie – The flight from justice sets out the unsatisfactory nature of much of the investigation and criminal trial, and points almost inescapably to the injustice of Megrahi’s conviction.
Scottish officials investigating the Lockerbie bombing will interview defected Libyan foreign minister Mussa Kussa within "the next few days", the country's Crown Office confirmed Monday.
Scottish detectives and prosecutors met with officials from the Foreign Office (FCO) officials earlier Monday after making a formal request to speak to Kussa about the 1988 incident last week.
"We can confirm that representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary met with FCO officials this afternoon to discuss the situation concerning Kussa and specifically to discuss access to Kussa," a spokesman for the Scottish government department said.
"It was a very positive meeting and steps are being taken with a view to arranging a meeting with Kussa at the earliest opportunity in the next few days," added the spokesman.
[A report in today's edition of The Scotsman reads in part:]
Libyan defector and former secret service chief Moussa Koussa will be "encouraged" to speak to Scottish police and prosecutors about the Lockerbie bombing, William Hague has said. (...)
They met Foreign and Commonwealth officials yesterday and have been given assurances he will be encouraged to assist them.
However, speaking in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Mr Hague made is clear that Mr Koussa would not be detained or forced by the UK government to talk to investigators against his will.
"Moussa Koussa is not being offered any immunity from British or international justice," he said. "He is not detained by us and has taken part in discussions with officials since his arrival, of his own free will.
"We will encourage Moussa Koussa to co-operate fully with all requests for interviews with law enforcement and investigation authorities, in relation both to Lockerbie, as well as other issues stemming from Libya's past sponsorship of terrorism, and to seek legal representation where appropriate." He went on to say there was "insufficient evidence to produce further prosecutions, but that may change in future".
Dumfries and Galloway Police and the Crown Office were unable to comment last night, as talks were still on going.
The former Libyan foreign secretary is thought to have taken over the ESO, his country's security service, at least two years after the explosion which brought down the Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people, on 21 December, 1988.
[The Herald's report can be read here. A letter from Iain Stuart in today's edition of the same newspaper reads as follows:]
Moussa Koussa may, in time, prove to be a source of reliable and truthful evidence in relation to Libya’s involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.
Mrs J Greenhorn (Letters, April 4) does right to bring attention back to the report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), the suppression of which is an affront to justice. The public is entitled to know why the SCCRC concluded the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi may have been unsafe – and why key players seem not to want its report published.
An informative, independent report already exists. Compiled by the late investigative journalist Paul Foot, Lockerbie – The flight from justice sets out the unsatisfactory nature of much of the investigation and criminal trial, and points almost inescapably to the injustice of Megrahi’s conviction.
Monday, 4 April 2011
Encouraging Moussa Koussa
[The following is an extract from a report on the BBC News website on UK Foreign Secretary William Hague's statement in the House of Commons today:]
Libyan politicians fleeing to the UK who break "definitively" from the Gaddafi regime could have restrictions on them lifted, William Hague has said.
The foreign secretary promised to treat those abandoning Libya with respect but said they would not receive immunity.
He said last week's departure of ex-Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa to the UK "weakened" the regime. (...)
Mr Koussa was refused formal leave to enter the UK but granted temporary admission when he flew in on Wednesday, Mr Hague said.
Mr Hague said Moussa Koussa, who fled to the UK last week, had not been granted any immunity.
The foreign secretary said the government would encourage him to co-operate fully with all requests made by the police and other investigating authorities, stemming from Libya's past sponsorship of terrorism.
[A further BBC News report contains the following:]
William Hague has urged Libya's former foreign minister to co-operate fully with Scottish prosecutors over the Lockerbie bombing. (...)
He was a Libyan intelligence head at the time of the bombing in 1988.
In a statement, Mr Hague said Moussa Koussa was not being detained by UK authorities.
Mr Koussa has been giving information to British officials about the current Libyan situation after saying he was no longer prepared to represent the Libyan regime.
[So there we have it. It is up to Moussa Koussa whether he will speak to Scottish police and prosecutors. But the UK Government will encourage him to do so. Was the Scots' trip to London really worth it?]
Libyan politicians fleeing to the UK who break "definitively" from the Gaddafi regime could have restrictions on them lifted, William Hague has said.
The foreign secretary promised to treat those abandoning Libya with respect but said they would not receive immunity.
He said last week's departure of ex-Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa to the UK "weakened" the regime. (...)
Mr Koussa was refused formal leave to enter the UK but granted temporary admission when he flew in on Wednesday, Mr Hague said.
Mr Hague said Moussa Koussa, who fled to the UK last week, had not been granted any immunity.
The foreign secretary said the government would encourage him to co-operate fully with all requests made by the police and other investigating authorities, stemming from Libya's past sponsorship of terrorism.
[A further BBC News report contains the following:]
William Hague has urged Libya's former foreign minister to co-operate fully with Scottish prosecutors over the Lockerbie bombing. (...)
He was a Libyan intelligence head at the time of the bombing in 1988.
In a statement, Mr Hague said Moussa Koussa was not being detained by UK authorities.
Mr Koussa has been giving information to British officials about the current Libyan situation after saying he was no longer prepared to represent the Libyan regime.
[So there we have it. It is up to Moussa Koussa whether he will speak to Scottish police and prosecutors. But the UK Government will encourage him to do so. Was the Scots' trip to London really worth it?]
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