Destroying Libya

[What follows is excerpted from this week’s syndicated column by US political columnist and cartoonist Ted Rall:]

Barack Obama destroyed Libya.

What he did to Libya is as bad as what Bush did to Iraq and Afghanistan. He doesn’t deserve a historical pass.

When Obama took office in 2009, Libya was under the clutches of longtime dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. But things were looking up.

Bush and Gaddafi had cut a deal to lift Western trade sanctions in exchange for Libya acknowledging and paying restitution for its role in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In a rare triumph for Bush, Libya also agreed to give up its nuclear weapons research program. Libyan and Western analysts anticipated that Gaddafi’s dictatorship would be forced to accept liberal reforms, perhaps even free elections and rival political parties, in order to attract Western investment.

Libya in 2009 was prosperous. As citizens of a major oil- and natural gas-exporting nation, Libyans enjoyed high salaries, low living expenses, generous social benefits, not to mention law and order. It seems like a mirage today.

Looking back, many Libyans miss their former tyrant. “Muammar Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa,” notes Garikai Chengu of the Du Bois Institute for African Research at Harvard University. “However, by the time he was assassinated, Libya was unquestionably Africa’s most prosperous nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy in Africa and less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.”

As a dictator, Gaddafi was guilty of horrendous human rights abuses. But life was better then than now. Women enjoyed more rights in Libya than in any other Arab country, particularly after the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein in Iraq. By regional standards, Libya was a relatively sweet place to live. (...)

Obama threw Gaddafi, whose regime was secular and by all accounts had been cooperative and held up his end of the deals with US, under the bus.

American forces jammed Libyan military communications. The US fired missiles to intercept Libyan missiles fired at rebel targets. The US led numerous airstrikes against units loyal to Gaddafi. US intervention turned the tide in favor of the Benghazi-based rebels.

In October 2011, one of Obama’s killer robot drones participated in Gaddafi’s assassination. Game over.

Before invading Iraq, then Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Bush about his “Pottery Barn rule“: if you break it, you own it.

Obama has broken the hell out of Libya.

Pass the parcel over who should call an inquiry

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date five years ago:

A deep shadow

[This is the headline over my most recent column in the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads as follows:]

Despite willingness expressed by both the Scottish and UK Governments to hold an inquiry into the Lockerbie debacle, neither has initiated one, and each appear to expect the other to do so. Professor Robert Black QC says the complicated comedy of manners and faux fidelity hides the knowledge of both that the actings of their legal advisers are fatally compromised.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi abandoned his appeal because he thought it would maximise his chances of being allowed home to Libya to die (by keeping open the possibility of prisoner transfer). In fact, what Kenny MacAskill did was to release him on compassionate grounds, a procedure which, unlike prisoner transfer, does not require that there be no live legal proceedings. But Mr Megrahi had no way of knowing that this was the way that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice would jump.

The abandonment of the appeal did not signify that he now accepted the justness of his conviction. Far from it. In the statement released on his departure he said: “I had to sit through a trial which I had been persuaded to attend on the basis that it would have been scrupulously fair. In my second, most recent, appeal I disputed such a description. I had to endure a verdict being issued at the conclusion of that trial which is now characterised by my lawyers, and the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, as unreasonable. To me, and to other right thinking people back at home in Libya, and in the international community, it is nothing short of a disgrace.”

So the concerns about the conviction felt by many, including the SCCRC, remain. Until those concerns are officially addressed a deep shadow will hover over the Scottish criminal justice system, both domestically and internationally. It is blindingly obvious that the shadow can now best be removed by the establishment of an independent inquiry into the whole circumstances of the Lockerbie disaster.

The Scottish Government says that it favours an inquiry, but that it should be set up by the UK Government. The UK Government says that since all the legal proceedings relating to Lockerbie were under Scottish jurisdiction, any inquiry must be a matter for the Scottish Government. It is difficult to disagree with the following passage from an editorial in The Herald on 25 October 2009: “Yesterday the British and Scottish Governments continued to play pass the parcel over who should call an inquiry. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said it was a matter for the Scots because 'that’s the way our system works', while a Scottish Government spokesman insisted that any inquiry had to be convened 'by those with required powers'. The telephone has been in common use in Britain for more than 100 years. It is not beyond the wit of ministers in London and Edinburgh to agree on the format, structure and remit of a Lockerbie inquiry that hopefully would answer some remaining questions without turning into the open-ended Bloody Sunday-style affair.”

If neither government is opposed to an inquiry, but only at odds about who should convene it, why has the problem not been resolved (as it was in relation to Stockline) by setting up a joint inquiry under section 32 of the Inquiries Act 2005? Could the answer be the legal advice that both governments are receiving?

If the possibility of holding a public inquiry were to be discussed within the Scottish Government, from whom would the Scottish Ministers seek advice on the legal aspects of any such enterprise? From their principal legal adviser, the Lord Advocate. If such an inquiry were to be set up, one of the issues at the forefront of its terms of reference would have to be the conduct of the prosecution before, during and after the Lockerbie trial. Who is the head of the Scottish prosecution system? The Lord Advocate, of course.

If the possibility of holding a public inquiry were to be discussed within the UK Government, from whom would UK Ministers seek advice on the Scottish legal aspects of any such enterprise? From their principal Scottish legal adviser, the Advocate General for Scotland. Who was it who in the recent appeal fought valiantly and successfully to keep documents out of the hands of Megrahi’s legal team? The Advocate General for Scotland, of course.

Just the teensiest suspicion of a conflict of interest here, perhaps?

[RB: And five years later the conflicts of interest continue.]

The late Arnaud de Borchgrave and Lockerbie

[Arnaud de Borchgrave died on Sunday, 15 February 2015. Obituaries are to be found in The Washington Times, The New York Times and The Guardian. His contribution to the Lockerbie affair is recorded in the following two items on this blog:]

Friday, 1 January 2010

Gadhafi admitted it!

This is the subject-heading of an e-mail sent by Arnaud de Borchgrave to Frank Duggan and copied by the latter to me. It reads as follows:

"As Gaddafi explained it to me, which you are familiar with, it was indeed Iran's decision to retaliate for the Iran Air Airbus shot down by the USS Vincennes on its daily flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai that led to a first subcontracting deal to Syrian intel, which, in turn, led to the 2nd subcontract to Libyan intel. As he himself said if they had been first at this terrorist bat, they would not have put Malta in the mix; Cyprus would have made more sense to draw attention away from Libya."

According to Arnaud de Borchgrave, Gaddafi made the admission, off the record, in the course of an interview in 1993. His published account [28 August 2009] reads:

"Megrahi was a small cog in a much larger conspiracy. After a long interview with Gaddafi in 1993, this editor at large of The Washington Times asked Libya's supreme leader to explain, off the record, his precise involvement in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, and for which Libya paid $2.7 billion in reparations. He dismissed all the aides in his tent (located that evening in the desert about 100 kilometers south of Tripoli) and began in halting English without benefit of an interpreter, as was the case in the on-the-record part of the interview.

"Gaddafi candidly admitted that Lockerbie was retaliation for the July 3, 1988, downing of an Iranian Airbus. Air Iran Flight 655, on a 28-minute daily hop from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz to the port city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on the other side of the Gulf, was shot down by a guided missile from the Aegis cruiser USS Vincennes. The Vincennes radar mistook it for an F-14 Tomcat fighter (which Iran still flies); 290 were killed, including 66 children. A year before, in 1987, the USS Stark was attacked by an Iraqi Mirage, killing 37 sailors. The Vincennes skipper, Capt. William Rogers, received the Legion of Merit, and the entire crew was awarded combat-action ribbons. The United States paid compensation of $61.8 million to the families of those killed on IR 655.

"Gaddafi told me, 'The most powerful navy in the world does not make such mistakes. Nobody in our part of the world believed it was an error.' And retaliation, he said, was clearly called for. Iranian intelligence subcontracted retaliation to one of the Syrian intelligence services (there are 14 of them), which, in turn, subcontracted part of the retaliatory action to Libyan intelligence (at that time run by Abdullah Senoussi, Gaddafi's brother-in-law). 'Did we know specifically what we were asked to do?' said Gaddafi. 'We knew it would be comparable retaliation for the Iranian Airbus, but we were not told what the specific objective was,' Gaddafi added.

"As he got up to take his leave, he said, 'Please tell the CIA that I wish to cooperate with America. I am just as much threatened by Islamist extremists as you are.'

"When we got back to Washington, we called Director of Central Intelligence Jim Woolsey to tell him what we had been told off the record. Woolsey asked me if I would mind being debriefed by the CIA. I agreed. And the rest is history."

On the assumption that this account of an off-the-record conversation in 1993 is accurate, it in no way affects the wrongfulness of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. As I have tried (without success) to explain to US zealots in the past, the fact -- if it be the fact -- that Libya was in some way involved in Lockerbie does not entail as a consequence that any particular Libyan citizen was implicated. The evidence led at the Zeist trial did not justify the guilty verdict against Megrahi. On that basis alone his conviction should have been quashed had the recently-abandoned appeal gone the full distance. That conclusion is reinforced (a) by the material uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and (b) by the material released on Mr Megrahi's website.

Saturday, 2 January 2010

Reaction to "Gadhafi admitted it!"

[The following comment on the "Gadhafi admitted it!" thread comes from Peter Biddulph. It was too long to be posted directly as a comment on that thread.]

The timing of this information is most strange.

According to Wikipedia and other sources, Arnaud de Borchgrave appears to have an impeccable background. According to him, the CIA debriefing arranged by Woolsey took place in 1993.

But I am informed by an expert on these matters that Gaddafi never, repeat never, was without at least one armed personal bodyguard. To be alone with an American journalist with many contacts in Washington would be, for Gaddafi, impossible.

And if this information was known in 1993, why on earth did the CIA, the FBI and the Scottish Crown office not know of it in the next seven years leading up to the trial?

Why was de Borchgrave not invited to be deposed or give evidence to the Lockerbie trial, or even an affidavit?

It might be said to be hearsay, and therefore not admissible in court.

But several hearsay issues and affidavits were extensively investigated by the court, notably the Goben Memorandum, and the account of the interview of bomb maker Marwan Khreesat by FBI Agent Edward Marshman. Even a hearsay account that Gaddafi confessed to the crime would have cast serious doubt on al-Megrahi's defence.

The original 1991 indictment could have been varied to reflect the latest knowledge. Indeed, the final version of the indictment was agreed by the US Department of Justice and the Scottish Crown Office in 2000, only three weeks before the trial commenced.

If the FBI did know it, why did they not mention any of this in a May 1995 Channel 4 discussion following the screening of the documentary The Maltese Double Cross? Buck Revell of the FBI became quite intense in answering Jim Swire's questions and those of presenter Sheena McDonald. But he said not a word about the Gaddafi "confession". Why?

Also, how come Marquise - as he says himself "Chief FBI Investigator of the Lockerbie bombing" - was not aware of it in the seven years leading up to the 2000 trial or the nine years since? That is, sixteen years of ignorance?

And why did CIA Vincent Cannistraro himself not mention it when interviewed on camera on at least two occasions in 1994 by Alan Francovich for the documentary film The Maltese Double Cross?

As head of the CIA team investigating Libya, Cannistraro would be the first to be briefed by the Langley central office. He was happy to provide hearsay evidence to the media and film camera against Oliver North and any Libyan or Iranian that got in his way. He spoke at length about green and brown timer boards, and potential witnesses.

To relate on camera the Gaddafi "confession" would have been greatly to Cannistraro's advantage, a slam-dunk in the public mind. Indeed, even a hint in the media would have ham-strung al-Megrahi’s defence before proceedings commenced.

But between 1993 and 2009 from Cannistraro not a word. And when it comes to America's interests, the CIA never follow Queensberry rules.

CIA [officer] Robert Baer too, as a Middle Eastern specialist has given no hint of this. Such information would surely have come within the "need to know" category. Yet he has maintained on two occasions that Iran commissioned the job and paid the PFLP-GC handsomely two days after the attack. His conclusion suggests strongly that the so-called fragment of the bomb was planted.

The real reasons for this late announcement, we believe, are as follows:

1. It is well known among those who study these things in the field that there are two candidates shortly to succeed Gaddafi. His son Saif, and his son-in law Sennusi. Meanwhile Sennusi is not top of the pops with Arab leaders in the region. They would love it if he were out of the frame. The Borchgrave revelation discredits Sennusi perfectly.

2. The SCCRC is shortly to publish information which some believe will cause serious embarrassment to the FBI And CIA. The Borchgrave email is huge smoke and mirrors, a spoiler.

It all looks highly suspicious. Just another carefully crafted phase in a long, long history of disinformation.

CIA evidence 'clears Libya' of Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article published in the Sunday Herald on this date in 2002. It reads as follows:]

Megrahi's appeal team ignored 'evidence' from key CIA investigator that claims Iran was behind PanAm 103 bombing

One of the CIA's leading Lockerbie bomb investigators has come forward with compelling evidence that Libya was not behind the downing of PanAm 103 which killed 270 people.

Robert Baer, a retired senior CIA agent, offered to meet the defence team leading the appeal of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who was convicted last year of the bombing. However, his offer was not accepted and the new evidence never raised in court.

The new evidence, according to Baer, shows Iran masterminded and funded the bombing; implicates the Palestinian terrorist unit, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), as the group behind the plot; and reveals that just two days after the December 21 1988 bombing the PFLP-GC received $11 million (£7.6m), paid into a Swiss bank account by Iran.

Legal experts say the new evidence should have been brought before the court, and are asking why Megrahi's defence didn't take up the offer.

Megrahi's appeal, which took place at a special Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in Holland, adjourned on Thursday for judges to consider whether to overturn the original verdict.

Baer claims he is breaking his silence now because of growing disillusionment with the CIA's counter-terrorist operations and the war on terror.

Baer, an anti-terrorist specialist, was one of the key CIA officers investigating Lockerbie. He says the CIA received definitive evidence that the PFLP-GC struck a deal with Iranian intelligence agents in July 1988 to take down an American airliner.

Baer also has details of an $11m payment made to the PFLP-GC. On December 23 1988 the money was paid into a bank account used by the terror group in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was transferred to another PFLP-GC account at the Banque Nationale de Paris and moved to the Hungarian Trade Development Bank.

A terrorist linked to the PFLP-GC, Abu Talb, who was later jailed for terrorist offences in Sweden, was also paid $500,000 (£350,000). The money went into an account in Talb's name in Frankfurt four months after the bombing, on April 25 1989.

Germany was a key base for the PFLP-GC in the late 1980s. Baer has the number of at least one of these bank accounts.

Talb and the PFLP-GC were to have been implicated by lawyers working for Megrahi and his co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, at the original trial, but little evidence was ever raised to show they were part of the Lockerbie plot.

On legal advice Baer is not disclosing his Lockerbie records, but the Sunday Herald has seen CIA paperwork that supports his claims. British and US intelligence have always publicly denied that the PFLP-GC played a part in the Lockerbie plot, saying raids by German police two months before the Lockerbie bombing took the terror group out of action.

Baer says, however, that these arrests were a mere hiccup in PFLP-GC plans as other members of the German unit rem ained at large. This theory also fits with claims that the bomb began its journey in Frankfurt, rather than Malta, where Megrahi was based.

PFLP-GC leader Hafez Dalkamoni and the group's chief bomb-maker, Marwan Khreesat, were arrested in Germany in October 1988 in possession of a Toshiba radio-cassette player containing a bomb. PanAm 103 flew from Frankfurt and was destroyed by a bomb built inside a Toshiba radio-cassette.

Timers matching the one used in the Lockerbie device were sold to both Libya and the East German secret service, the Stasi, which had close links to the PFLP-GC. 'I don't know what components the bomb contained,' Baer said, 'but there was very reliable information from multiple sources that (the PFLP-GC) were running around between East and West Germany and Sweden, trying to get the operation back on track. It's conceivable that the Stasi supplied components during a trip to East Germany.'

Baer said the components for the bomb were supplied by a terrorist known as Abu Elias, who was for a time the CIA's prime suspect but was never caught. 'He was the big centre of the investigation, but he was very elusive,' Baer said. Khreesat and Dalkamoni were on their way to meet Abu Elias when they were arrested in Germany. Abu Elias was a close associate of Abu Talb. Both lived in Sweden. [RB: More about Abu Elias can be found here and here.]

Talb had made a trip to Malta just weeks before the Lockerbie bombing. Clothes from a shop in Malta were packed in the suitcase which contained the PanAm 103 bomb.

Baer also claims the CIA has irrefutable intelligence that Talb and Dalkamoni were Iranian agents and were on a government roll of honour for their services to the 'Islamic revolutionary struggle against the west'. Baer added: 'Although it was not specific, Dalkamoni's citation praised him for achieving Iran's greatest- ever strike against the west'.

Iran had vowed 'the skies would rain with American blood' after a US battle cruiser, the USS Vincennes, accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people, six months before the Lockerbie bombing.

'It doesn't take a genius to figure out where the $11m came from,' says Baer. He added that 'the information [would] be useful to the defence as much of it was of a type that would be admissible in court. Once the investigators had the timer evidence, which seemed to point to Libya, they stopped pursuing other leads -- that's the way most criminal investigations work. People sleep better at night if they think they have justice. Who wants an unsolved airplane bombing?'

Edinburgh University law professor Robert Black, the architect of the Lockerbie trial, said of Megrahi's defence not seeking to interview Baer: 'I don't know why they would act like this. Real hard evidence of a money transfer from Iran to the PFLP-GC is so supportive of the alternative theory behind the bombing that I'm at a loss to explain their actions.

'At the very least, you would interview the source of the information and make a decision once you have spoken to him. A lawyer's job is to provide a belt-and-braces defence for his client, so to refuse to even meet with Baer requires a lot of explaining.'

Copenhagen synagogue previously targeted by Lockerbie suspect Abu Talb

[The following are excerpts from an article datelined yesterday on the website of Frontpage Mag:]

It was a grim anniversary of sorts at the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen where a Jewish volunteer guard was shot keeping Muslim terrorist Omar El-Hussein out of a young girl’s Bat Mitzva.

Muslim terrorists had previously targeted the synagogue in 1985:

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) Bombs today destroyed the downtown office of a US airline and damaged a synagogue and Jewish home for the elderly, injuring 23 people, at least three seriously. Three Americans were among those suffering minor injuries, the US Embassy reported.

The bombings were the most serious acts of terrorism in recent memory in Denmark. The first bomb ripped open the Northwest Orient office, the only American airline office in the Danish capital. At least one other device was set off in a passageway bordering the synagogue and home for the elderly, in a narrow street deeper in the central city. The heavy wooden doors of the synagogue were blown down.

Seven residents of the nursing home adjacent to the synagogue were wounded.

While Islamic Jihad initially claimed responsibility, the actual perpetrators were a Muslim terrorist cell that had gained asylum in Sweden who belonged to a splinter group of the PLO. The leader of that cell, Mohammed Abu Talb, was alleged to be connected to the Lockerbie bombing. At trial, he claimed to be “not innocent” of the synagogue bombing.

A Swedish court reduced his sentence from life to thirty years and there are reports that he was already released.

Call for Lord Advocate to step back from Lockerbie case

[What follows is excerpted from a report in today’s edition of The Herald:]

The lawyer who was the architect of the Lockerbie trial in a foreign country believes the Lord Advocate must excuse himself from deciding whether to mount criminal proceedings against those who led the investigation.

Professor Robert Black QC, a former law academic at Edinburgh University, said it was particularly important that Scotland's top prosecutor, Frank Mulholland QC, step aside (...)

Three years ago, the Justice for Megrahi group, which believes the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was innocent, submitted nine allegations of criminality on the part of police, Crown officials and expert witnesses in the case.

A police report is expected to be submitted to the Crown Office in the summer, and it will then be for the Lord Advocate to decide whether to take further action.

Well-placed sources have indicated that at least some of the allegations appear to stand up to scrutiny, so Mr Mulholland, who as recently as the 26th anniversary of the bombing in December publicly defended the safety of the conviction, would face a difficult decision.

Prof Black said Mr Mulholland must avoid that scenario and step aside before the police report is submitted.

He added: "Given that any charges would be against police officers subject to direction by the Crown Office; forensic scientists instructed and called as witnesses by the Crown Office; and members of the Crown Office's prosecution team at the Lockerbie trial, there is an obvious conflict of interest involved in the current head of the Crown Office being the person to decide whether prosecutions should be commenced." (...)

A police spokesman said: "Police Scotland continue to progress live investigation and as such it would be inappropriate to comment further."

A spokesman for the Crown Office said: "The allegations made by Justice For Megrahi are being considered by Police Scotland in accordance with due process. It would be inappropriate to offer further comment at this stage."

Jet blast case was 'botched'

The following are items from today’s Scottish edition of The Sun on Sunday:

[The second of the above items reads in part:]

Three years ago, Dr Swire, 78, and the Justice for Megrahi campaign group submitted nine claims of wrongdoing to Holyrood.

Now a police dossier is expected to prove several key points.

A source said yesterday: “Investigators set about testing them.

“It seems some are broadly true but were the result of incompetence and could not be said to be criminal. But that doesn’t appear to be the case across the board.”

The report could uphold accusations that false evidence was given in Megrahi’s 2001 trial.

It will go to Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland in the summer, who will then decide if criminal charges should be brought.

At best disingenuous, at worst an outright lie

What follows is taken from an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2008:

Jack Straw, Lord Chancellor and Minister of Justice in the United Kingdom Government (and Foreign Secretary at the time of the Libya-UK prisoner transfer negotiations) has a letter published today in The Herald denying that any deal has been done with Libya regarding the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi. A prisoner transfer agreement has been concluded with Libya, from which Megrahi is not specifically excluded, but any decision on whether he will benefit under it rests with the Scottish Government. [RB: The letter itself is no longer to be found on The Herald’s website. However, the coverage of the story on the BBC News website can be accessed here.]

None of what Mr Straw says is in any way controversial. But it avoids the issue: what were the Libyans led to expect and believe when the UK Foreign Office was negotiating the agreement; and why was the Scottish Government (host to the only Libyan prisoner in Britain about whom Libya is in any way concerned) kept in the dark? These issues are dealt with in earlier posts on this blog. See

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007/12/libyan-prisoner-transfer.html

and

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/02/prisoner-transfer-again.html.

[RB: The second of these items contains the following passage:]

The truth of the matter is this. The UK Foreign Office (and officials in the office of the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair) entered into negotiations with Libya for a reciprocal prisoner transfer agreement. Both sides were perfectly well aware that the only Libyan prisoner in a British jail about whom the Libyans had the slightest concern was Megrahi. The Libyan negotiators believed, rightly believed, and were known by the UK negotiators to believe that the agreement they were drafting would cover Megrahi. The London Government did not have the courtesy to inform the Scottish Government (which is responsible for prisons and prisoners in Scotland) that these negotiations were taking place. When the Scottish Government found out about them and complained to the UK Government, the latter announced that (a) the proposed agreement was not intended to cover Megrahi and (b) even if it were, the final decision on the transfer of any Libyan prisoner in a Scottish jail would rest with the Scottish Government. The latter proposition was and is correct. The former was not: it was at best disingenuous and at worst (and probably more accurately) an outright lie.