Megrahi's son joins campaign to clear his father's name

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

The son of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has joined a Facebook group protesting his father's innocence to help dispel the notion that an application for a posthumous appeal is not backed by his family.

Khaled El Megrahi has joined the Friends of Justice for Megrahi group and has been welcomed warmly by the other 180 members committed to clearing his father's name.

They include British relatives of the 270 victims who perished 26 years ago, Professor Robert Black, the architect of the trial under Scots Law in a neutral country, and prominent figures like James Robertson, one of Scotland's greatest novelists. Robertson's acclaimed novel, The Professor of Truth, was based loosely on the Lockerbie atrocity which killed 270 people in December 1988.

Shortly before El Megrahi joined the group, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had expressed doubts about continuing the investigation that could lead to a fresh attempt to overturn the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.

The commission had asked the High Court to decide whether it could continue with the application, submitted earlier this year by Aamer Anwar, the Scottish solicitor acting for the Megrahi family and other supporters.

Scots Law allows for posthumous appeals to be pursued by the executor of the deceased, and leaves it open to others with an irrefutable interest to pursue justice, but their right is not enshrined in the same way as the executor's.

The SCCRC is seeking clarification about whether the victims' families alone could pursue a fresh appeal without the support of Megrahi's executor.

The confusion has arisen because the SCCRC insists it must have the original document confirming El Megrahi as his father's executor.

Mr Anwar said that the current climate in Libya made it extremely unlikely the legal team could travel there soon to obtain the necessary documentation, nor would they ask the Megrahi family to put their lives at risk.

He added: "With regards to the rights of the victims' families to pursue an appeal, we would submit that there is a fundamental duty on the state to protect the rights of victims of crime, which includes responsibility for the administration of justice."

Without the original executry documents, other Megrahi family members and "outsiders" like the British relatives of the victims, including Dr Jim Swire and the Rev John Mosey, would have to persuade the High Court of the legitimacy of their interest.

Given the stakes for the Scottish criminal justice system, there are fears that the judges who decide on the SCCRC's submission will not be easily convinced to encourage further close scrutiny of crucial aspects of the case, most notably the conduct of police, prosecutors and expert witnesses.

El Megrahi's public support for his father, therefore, could be very significant.

The SCCRC in 2007 referred the case back to the appeal court for what would have been a second appeal on six grounds that suggested there might have been a miscarriage of justice.

Since then, the case for an appeal has been strengthened by fresh scientific evidence showing that a fragment said to be from the timer that detonated the bomb was not a match for a type of device that the court accepted had been used and had been sold only to Libya.

Megrahi died on 20 May 2012, some 33 months after his release on compassionate grounds as he was dying from cancer.

He abandoned his appeal believing it would help secure his compassionate release, and although the Scottish Government has always denied a deal was done, his controversial release was confirmed soon after.

El Megrahi was welcomed to the Facebook group by Prof Black, who said: "I hope that 2015 will be the year when the injustice to your father, and your family, will begin to be rectified."

The sentiment was echoed later by other members, and El Megrahi later posted short messages thanking supporters, expressing hope for progress, and offering best wishes and a happy new year to all members.

[RB: Other members of Abdelbaset Megrahi’s immediate family are also members of the Facebook group.]

First Scottish judge to meet Lockerbie accused dies

[What follows is taken from an obituary published in The Herald on 10 January 2015:]

Graham Loudon Cox.
Lawyer.

Born: December 22, 1933;
Died: December 27, 2014.

Graham Cox, who has died aged 81, was a young army lawyer who went on to play a key role in the initial stages of the Lockerbie bombing case.

By then a veteran sheriff, who had already presided over the Lanarkshire Fatal Accident Inquiry into what was then the world's worst outbreak of E.coli, he was Sheriff Principal of the jurisdiction that covered the site of the atrocity and the first member of the Scottish judicial system to come into contact with the two Libyan suspects.

He sat on the bench at Camp Zeist, the temporary court set up in the Netherlands to hear the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, when they made their first appearance in private there on April 6, 1999. The pair, alleged to be behind the 1988 blowing up of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie which left 270 dead, faced charges of conspiracy, murder and violations of aviation laws.

The following week, April 14, Sheriff Principal Cox committed them for trial, a court case from which the reverberations still echo, more than a quarter of a century after the bombing. Fhimah was acquitted in 2001. Megrahi was convicted of the killings and sentenced to life imprisonment. He maintained his innocence and died of cancer in 2012 after being released on compassionate grounds.

The Scottish Government and a Megrahi inquiry

What follows is an item first posted on this blog on this date in 2011:

Megrahi inquiry delay sparks anger

[This is the headline over an article by Bob Smyth in today's edition of The Sunday Post. It does not appear on the newspaper's vestigial website. The article reads as follows:]

The Scottish Government has been criticised over its dealings with an influential parliamentary committee.

Holyrood's Public Petitions Committee finally received answers over ministers' refusal to hold an inquiry into the Lockerbie case on Friday -- a month after the deadline.

The response came after The Sunday Post quizzed the Scottish Government on the delay.

Before the late reply arrived, the campaigners behind the petition slammed the hold-up and a member of the committee also hit out.

Justice for Megrahi, who believe bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, have demanded the inquiry.

The campaigners met the committee on November 9 to highlight their petition calling for a probe into the bombing and the conviction of Megrahi. The group includes Lockerbie relatives, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, TV journalist Kate Adie, retired politician Tam Dalyell and Professor Robert Black, who was central to the setting up of the Lockerbie trial.

The Scottish Government has always refused an inquiry, saying it's beyond their jurisdiction.

Justice for Megrahi secretary Robert Forrester said, "We want them to have an inquiry about the matters that come under Scotiish jurisdiction, such as the police investigation, Megrahi's trial and appeal and his release. (...)

"They were supposed to respond to the committee by December 10 but didn't."

Committee member Cathie Craigie [MSP, Labour] said, "It's very concerning if the Scottish Government is not engaging with the proper process and responding within the timescale. They have an army of civil servants."

The Scottish Government reply said, "The Government’s view is that the petition is inviting the Scottish Government to do something which falls properly to the criminal justice system -- inquire into whether a miscarriage of justice has taken place. 

"The Inquiries Act 2005 provides that, to the extent that the matters dealt with are devolved, and criminal justice is devolved, the Scottish Government would have the power to conduct an inquiry.

"However, the wide ranging and international nature of the issues involved (even if the inquiry is confined to the trial and does not concern itself with wider matters) means that there is every likelihood of issues arising which are not devolved, which would require either a joint inquiry with or a separate inquiry by the UK government."

Legal expert Professor Robert Black said, "The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has no jurisdiction and powers outwith Scotland. Yet it managed to conduct an investigation into the Megrahi conviction that enabled it to reach the conclusion that the conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice. 

"There is no conceivable reason why a Scottish inquiry under the Inquiries Act should have less success in obtaining and uncovering evidence."

[Later today I shall be starting my trek from the Roggeveld back to Edinburgh. It is therefore unlikely that there will be further posts on this blog before 13 January.

Here are a few lines from one of the poems in Michael Cole’s Ghaap: Sonnets from the Northern Cape:

The place was empty, void of anything,

A barren wilderness of thorn and thirst,

Of night frost, and armoured sun spearing

Hard rays all day; the diamonds in the worst

Terrain they could imagine, but their call

Undeniable. No sustenance

But for the game, until they'd shot it all.

Ox and horse brought food and elegance,

Machinery and cables, makeshift sheds,

Rhodes, apartheid, flu and iron beds.]

Nelson Mandela's forthrightness discomfits Tony Blair

[What follows is a report from The Associated Press news agency published on this date in 1999:]

Officials from South Africa and Saudi Arabia will fly to Libya to negotiate the surrender of two Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner, President Nelson Mandela said Thursday.

Mandela made the announcement at a joint news conference with visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Both leaders expressed confidence that an impasse over bringing the two Libyans to trial in a third country could be broken.

The downing of the New York-bound airliner on Dec 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people.

Blair had tried to limit his comments to generalities and grimaced when Mandela announced the pending mission.

He also became uncomfortable when Mandela criticized the Dec 16-19 US and British airstrikes against Iraq. Earlier Thursday, about 50 Muslims demonstrating against the attacks clashed with police in Cape Town, which Blair plans to visit Friday and Saturday.

Still, Blair was optimistic about the chances for the mission to Libya.

“There has been progress ... on an issue that some people thought was completely impractical,” Blair said. Britain sought a breakthrough, “out of a deep respect for the families of the Lockerbie victims and their desire for this trial to happen,” he said.

Mandela said Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the director-general of Mandela's office, Jakes Gerwel, would fly to Libya in the next few days for talks with Libyan officials.

He said the UN Security Council had agreed to temporarily lift its air embargo of Libya to allow the two officials to fly to the Libyan capital of Tripoli. [RB: Largely through the influence of President Mandela, UK and US opposition to this mission at the United Nations was overcome.]

Mandela has already played a key role in convincing the United States and Britain to support a neutral venue for the trial and has relayed the proposal to Libyan leader Col Moammar Gadhafi, with whom Mandela maintains close ties.

Libya has agreed in principle to let the two stand trial in the Netherlands before a panel of Scottish judges. But the Libyan government demands that they be jailed in Libya if they are convicted.

In Tripoli, an unidentified Libyan Foreign Ministry official said Thursday that his government was still waiting for more information.

“(The United States and Britain) have to answer especially the points on the venue of imprisonment and the lifting of the sanctions,” the Libyan official said, according to a report by Egypt's official Middle East News Agency.

US and British diplomats have said that, if convicted, the suspects would serve their sentences in a British prison and that sanctions would be suspended after the handover.

Earlier Thursday, Blair lashed out at Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, calling him “a threat.”

Mandela noted later that “the charter of the United Nations provides that member nations should seek to settle their problems through peaceful means.”

“Tony here and Bill Clinton, I have no doubt, respect that,” Mandela said.

Blair stiffened at the comment and told reporters: “I have absolutely nothing to add to what I said this morning on that.”

Hubris in defence of the indefensible

[What follows is a response from Dr Jim Swire to Magnus Linklater’s articles Lockerbie conviction is upheld by review and Lockerbie review kills conspiracy theories in The Times on 20 December. Dr Swire intended to post the response on the relevant thread on this blog but I thought it should appear as a separate item:]

There were three particular aspects of comments attributed to the Crown Office and thus to Lord Advocate Mulholland, by Mr Linklater in The Times of 20 December 2014 which were intensely irritating to some Lockerbie relatives.

The first was that the Lord Advocate should be involved in such comments at all on that particular date knowing full well that many relatives here, such as myself, can no longer believe the Megrahi verdict to be justified and that therefore the precious memories to be renewed on the following day would be disturbed by his clear attempt to pander to US relatives, most of whom have not yet realised the extraordinary twisting of justice which seems to have occurred at Zeist, through not having reviewed the proceedings and subsequent fallout for themselves.

I am not aware that it is part of the remit of the Crown Office to suckle the American public, rather than objectively to examine evidence in criminal cases on behalf of the people of Scotland.

Those who do care about the human tragedy of this case should remember that the exhibition of such hubris in defence of the indefensible will, when the truth does eventually emerge, only add to the misery of those relatives who never detected the deception for themselves.

The second was the claim that the facts had been re-examined and that there was not a shred of doubt about the integrity of the verdict. In the face of the previous findings by the SCCRC after three years hard work, the Crown Office appears to have insulted their work as well as astonishing many Scots. Perhaps Lord Advocate Mulholland should hang the famous comments of the late Mandy Rice-Davies at the foot of his bed.

The third was the claim by the Lord Advocate that “our focus remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition.” This is supported according to Mr Linklater by the police who are quoted as saying that the evidence (the forensic item PT35b etc) would have to have been planted within 23 days. Linklater writes:

‘Police are adamant, however, that the fragment was under supervision. They point out that the evidence would have to have been planted within 23 days, requiring knowledge of all the evidence to come — including Megrahi, whose existence was then unknown.’

Perhaps Lord Advocate Mulholland and those representing the police have forgotten the details of the provenance of these items.

They were presented to the court as having been recovered by prosecution forensic scientists from the only police evidence bag found to have had its official label illegally interfered with. The alteration to the label was both criminal and significant. The wording had been changed from the ‘charred cloth’ of the original label to read ‘charred debris’ The other debris of course included PT35b, the mysterious board fragment, mimicking boards belonging to the Libyans, but having a fundamentally different mode of finish simply not available to the firm which had made the Libyan boards prior to December 1988. It could not therefore have been derived from the remains  of a Libyan bomb timer allegedly  found in the innocent fields round Lockerbie.

An explanation from the Crown Office as to what they have done to discover who altered that police label and whether or not that crime was accompanied by any additions to the bag's contents, might, if conducted intensively by a party free of any hubristic attachment to the marvels of Lord Advocate Mulholland's office do more to advance the truth in this dire case than does the police assumption that any interference 'must' have occurred 'within 23 days'. Again the late Mandy applies.

Has the Crown Office had the sanctity of the ‘supervision’ which the police claim protected their evidence bags objectively investigated?

If so, what was found?                 

If not, why not? 

[Other responses to the articles in The Times can be found here.]

"Food is not important, freedom and innocence are"

[The following are translated excerpts from an article that appeared on this date in 2008 in the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi:]

On February 27, a Scottish court is expected to re-examine the Lockerbie case and hear the appeal submitted by Abd-al-Basit al-Miqrahi, the Libyan national convicted of involvement in the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over this Scottish district. Al-Miqrahi has been serving a life sentence in a prison in Glasgow - the largest city in Scotland - since being convicted of the bombing by an international court that was set up in the Netherlands.

Many observers believe that Al-Miqrahi could soon leave prison and return to Libya now that Britain and Libya have signed an extradition treaty by which he would serve the rest of his sentence in his country. [RB: What is being referred to is the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement.] This is a known practice between countries (...).

Al-Quds al-Arabi visited Al-Miqrahi in his Scottish prison, located 40 kilometres from Glasgow. Entry procedures to the prison were normal and the guards were extremely gentle - we were not even physically searched. We were accompanied by Abd-al-Rahman al-Suwaysi, Libyan general consul in Scotland, and Algerian attorney Sa'd Jabbar. Al-Miqrahi entered the visitation room wearing a thick wool hat, jeans trousers, and a wool jersey, and he had clearly gained weight due to lack of activity.

The words Al-Miqrahi kept repeating all the time were: ‘I did not receive a fair trial’ and that ‘several documents were withheld from the court.’ He laid out on the counter a file filled with paragraphs that had been suppressed, rather, entire pages had been blackened out to conceal information from the judge under the pretext of security considerations.

Anyone visiting Al-Miqrahi will note his extremely high spirits, his unusual sturdiness, and his strong belief in his innocence of all the charges he was convicted of. He would smile every now an then, especially when talking about the letters he had received from Scots who wished him happy holidays, believed in his innocence, and expressed solidarity with him. Al-Miqrahi said: ‘A victim's family wrote to me, saying that on behalf of the citizens of Scotland, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.’

I asked Al-Miqrahi: ‘What about the Arabs?’ He replied sadly: ‘I have not received a single letter from an Arab, but I have received 27 letters from Scots …’

He went on to say that Dr Swire, doyen of the families of the victims, visited him in prison, as did Reverend John Reef [sic; probably means Rev John Mosey, father of one of the victims] and a number of other people, not to mention the Libyan consul, who visits him on a regular basis. Al-Miqrahi follows events in the Arab world through the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya channels, which he has been allowed to watch in his small cell, measuring no more than 2 by 1.5 meters. One day, a Scottish inmate visited him as he watched Opposite Direction in which the argument was in full swing; the inmate asked if he could understand what was being said, to which Al-Miqrahi said: ‘I can if you can.’

Al-Miqrahi said that what touched him the most was the martyrdom of child Muhammad al-Durah and his father's desperate attempts to protect him, and added that the image of Muhammad and his father never leaves him. Asked about his own children, he said that what pains him the most is that the Scottish Government refused to let them reside near his prison. He went on to say that he longs for them, and that he is especially saddened when his young son asks: ‘When are you coming back, Dad? You promised us many times that you would return soon.’

He spoke affectionately and admiringly of South African leader Nelson Mandela, who had visited him in prison, saying that Mandela refused to be accompanied by any British official when he visited him in his prison in Scotland. He added that Mandela also called him when he was visiting the Netherlands because his Dutch hosts had told him that he cannot visit him in prison as it would be a breach of protocol. Al-Miqrahi said that he wrote to many Arab leaders telling them that he wants a free trial, but that none of them replied, not even to humour him.

We asked Consul Abd-al-Rahman if he would remain in his post if Al-Miqrahi is transferred to Libya as expected, to which he said that he would not stay a single day because the consulate was originally opened in order to care for Al-Miqrahi and provide him with all means of comfort. For his part, attorney Sa'd Jabbar, who sat in on the visit, said that the Libyan Government exerted immense pressures on the British Government to retry or deport Al-Miqrahi - pressures that included a suspension of trade agreements. He expected Al-Miqrahi to return very soon.

Al-Miqrahi said that he would return to Libya because he misses his homeland and family, but that he wants to return an innocent man, not a convicted one, adding that he is confident that any free trial would exonerate him of the charges brought against him. His eyes filled with tears of anguish. Asked about food and whether he misses Bazin, Mabkakah, Isban, and Kuskusi, and he said: ‘I miss a lot of these foods even though the consulate supplied me with daily meals throughout the month of Ramadan, but food is not important, freedom and innocence, however, are.’

Saudi Arabia/South Africa Lockerbie mediation attempt blocked

[What follows is a report published on Bloomberg News on this date in 1999:]

Saudi, South Africa Blocked From Mediating in Libya Standoff

A Security Council panel turned down a request by Saudi Arabian and South African diplomats to travel to Libya in an effort to break the stalemate over sanctions against the country, Slovenian diplomat Janez Lenarcic said.

“There was no consensus in the committee to approve the request,” Lenarcic said. He would not identify which committee member or members opposed the request. [RB: My sources at the time told me that the opponents were the United States and the United Kingdom.] Slovenia is a non-permanent member of the 15-nation Security Council and its ambassador, Danilo Turk, heads the council's sanctions committee.

Libya has been under United Nations sanctions restricting travel and arms sales since April 1992 because of its refusal to hand over two Libyans accused of blowing up a Pam-Am airliner ten years ago over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. The crash killed 270 people, including [11] on the ground.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is currently on an official visit to South Africa where he's expected to ask South African President Nelson Mandela to urge Libya to accept a US-British plan to try the two suspects in the Netherlands under Scottish law.

Last week US President Bill Clinton said he'll seek to tighten international sanctions against Libya unless it agrees to a trial for the two in the Netherlands by February.

The request for permission to travel to Libya was made by Saudi Arabia's Washington ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, on behalf of the Saudi kingdom.

“As a follow-up to the conversations with the (UN) secretary-general regarding the Lockerbie situation, I'm kindly requesting the permission of the sanctions committee to travel directly to Tripoli and Sirte,'' Prince Bandar wrote in his letter to committee chairman Turk.

He was referring to secretary-general Kofi Annan who last month made a personal appeal to Libyan leader Muammar Al Qaddafi to move forward on the Lockerbie issue which the US and Britain wanted to have settled by Dec 21 last year, the tenth anniversary of the bombing.

Prince Bandar said during the visit he would represent Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. [RB: Abdullah succeeded to the throne in 2005.] Accompanying him would be South Africa's Jakes Gerwel, the director-general in the office of the president, representing Mandela.

The request was made during the new year's holiday. Had it been granted, Prince Bandar and Gerwel along with a staff of 15, would have arrived in Tripoli today, according to the letter, and would have stayed for two days.

Another chapter in Lockerbie story

[This is the heading over a letter by Joan S Laverie in today’s edition of the Sunday Herald. It reads as follows:]

The Lord Advocate's latest ­ruminations on the Lockerbie ­tragedy produce neither heat nor light (Scotland's top law officer: Megrahi WAS guilty of Lockerbie atrocity, and The four elephants in the room which suggest the Lord Advocate is wrong, News, December 21). His continuing faith in the verdict at Camp Zeist, under Scots law, is of no consequence. The fact remains that a trial without a jury is never a good idea, and even if one is present, with alleged ­perpetrators of acts of terrorism in the dock, justice often plays second fiddle to political expediency.

Frank Mulholland promises us, nevertheless, that "justice has no sell-by date in Scotland". His attempt earlier this year to arrange an interview between the Scottish police and Abdullah al-Senussi, long-serving Libyan intelligence chief and brother-in-law of Colonel Gaddafi, shows reasonable intent. Al-Senussi is also a possible Lockerbie suspect, and is currently in custody in Tripoli awaiting trial for the murder and torture of Libyan citizens.

Mulholland will make many enemies both at home and abroad, if his determination to secure justice for the families of the dead is indeed genuine. In doing so, he will most certainly have to jettison any understandable concern for the reputation of the Scottish justice system and, especially, its presumed independence. I wish him well.

Piece by piece, the major elements of the case are falling apart

The following is an item originally posted on this blog six years ago on this date:

[What follows is excerpted from a long op-ed entitled "20 Years Later, the Lockerbie Terror Attack Is Not as Solved as We Think" on the website of US News & World Report by Nathan Thrall, a well-known American writer on US politics and Middle East affairs. The full article can be read here.]

But though a chapter may have closed, the Lockerbie case is today further from resolution than it has been since the investigation began 20 years ago.

An official Scottish review body has declared that a "miscarriage of justice may have occurred" in the conviction of the Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The reviewers examined a secret document, provided to the United Kingdom by a foreign government and seen during Megrahi's trial by only the prosecution, that they said cast serious doubts on Megrahi's guilt. A new appeal of Megrahi's conviction is scheduled for this coming spring. The UN special observer appointed by Kofi Annan to Megrahi's trial, Hans Koechler, has declared that Megrahi was wrongfully convicted, as have the legal architect of his special trial, Prof Robert Black, and a spokesperson for the families of the British victims, Jim Swire.

Piece by piece, the major elements of the prosecution's case are falling apart. A high-ranking Scottish police officer has said vital evidence was fabricated. One of the FBI's principal forensic experts has been discredited. The lord advocate—Scotland's chief legal officer—who initiated the Lockerbie prosecution has called the credibility of the government's primary witness into question, stating that the man was "not quite the full shilling...an apple short of a picnic." Another prosecution witness now claims, in a July 2007 sworn affidavit, to have lied about the key piece of evidence linking Libya to the bombing.So if the case against Megrahi and his government is so thin, why would Libya pay compensation to the families of Lockerbie's victims?

One answer came from Libya's prime minister. He told the BBC that his government took no responsibility for Lockerbie and had merely "bought peace," agreeing to pay compensation to the families of victims because it was the only means of ending the far more costly sanctions against his country. Saif al-Qadhafi, the Libyan leader's son and one of the regime's most prominent spokespersons, recently told CNN that Megrahi "had nothing to do with Lockerbie." When asked why his government would pay the victims of a terrorist act in which they played no role, Qadhafi responded, "There was no other way around. Because there was a resolution from the Security Council, and you have to do it. Otherwise, you will not get rid of the sanctions. It was very political. Very political."

Megrahi has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and may not live to see his second appeal. If he does live and his appeal succeeds, a new and independent international investigation — as has been called for by the UN observer to the Lockerbie trial — may commence. If it does, the investigators will return to the primary suspect of the first year and a half of the original investigation: a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, whose bank account, according to a CIA officer involved in the investigation, received a transfer of $11 million two days after Lockerbie and whose leaders the investigators believed had been contracted by Iran to avenge America's inadvertent shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner carrying 290 passengers and crew.

Yet the more likely outcome is that Megrahi will die just before or after his second appeal and that with the closure of his death, like that of Libya's payments, most will forget that the Lockerbie case remains unsolved.

[On this blog, I headed the item “US media beginning to see the light”. One swallow does not a summer make.]

Delay in securing a Lockerbie trial

[What follows is a Reuters news agency report from 2 January 1999:]

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview published on Sunday he would appeal to South African President Nelson Mandela to persuade Libya to hand over two men suspected of the Lockerbie bombing for trial in the Netherlands. Blair, who starts a four day visit to South Africa on Tuesday, said negotiations between Britain, the United States and Libya over the 1980 airline bombing had reached an impasse.

In the interview with the Sunday Business newspaper, he said Mandela had already played a “unique and important” role in trying to resolve the controversy and he would ask the South African leader to intervene again. “I will explain that we have done all that we reasonably can to resolve the impasse over the trial. The UK-US initiative for a trial in the Netherlands has been on the table for four months,” said Blair.

“The UK-US initiative for a trial in the Netherlands has been on the table for four months. I do not for one moment accept that Scottish courts would not give a fair trial, but was prepared to go for a third-country trial because this is what the Libyan Government said it wanted. I will appeal to President Mandela to convince the Libyan government that a third country trial should now proceed,” he added.

[Mr Blair conveniently fails to mention that while four months had passed since the announcement of the UK/US scheme, four years and seven months passed after the Libyan Government and defence team accepted my “neutral venue” proposal before the UK and US published their own amended (and inferior) version. After January 1994 the delay in achieving a Lockerbie trial was attributable almost exclusively to the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States. The history is outlined here.

Nelson Mandela’s rÔle in the resolution of the Lockerbie impasse can be followed here.]

The truth about Lockerbie still unknown

This is the translated headline over a long and detailed article by Tereza Spencerova published on 21 December 2014 on the Czech Literární Noviny website, which has just come to my attention. Google Translate provides a reasonably good English version of the article.

Say not the struggle nought availeth

[I wish all readers of this blog a happy and peaceful New Year. 

The following are three stanzas from A H Clough’s poem Say not the struggle nought availeth:]

Say not the struggle nought availeth,

 The labour and the wounds are vain,

 The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

 Far back through creeks and inlets making,

Came, silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light,

 In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

But westward, look, the land is bright.