A monumental lie

[What follows is from an article by William Blum that featured in this blog on this date in 2012:]

If there’s anyone out there who is not already thoroughly cynical about those on the board of directors of the planet, the latest chapter in the saga of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland might just be enough to push them over the edge.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was “highly objectionable”. His White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added that the welcoming scenes in Libya were “outrageous and disgusting”. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “angry and repulsed”, while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images “deeply upsetting.” Miliband warned: “How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya’s reentry into the civilized community of nations.”[1]

Ah yes, “the civilized community of nations”, that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. And it should be pointed out that the Vincennes captain, plus the officer in command of air warfare, and the crew were all awarded medals or ribbons afterward.[2] No one in the US government or media found this objectionable or outrageous, or disgusting or repulsive. The United States has always insisted that the shooting down of the Iranian plane was an “accident”. Why then give awards to those responsible?

Today’s oh-so-civilized officials have known of Megrahi’s innocence since 1989. The Scottish judges who found Megrahi guilty know he’s innocent. They admit as much in their written final opinion. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigated Megrahi’s trial, knows it. They stated in 2007 that they had uncovered six separate grounds for believing the conviction may have been a miscarriage of justice, clearing the way for him to file a new appeal of his case.[3] The evidence for all this is considerable. And most importantly, there is no evidence that Megrahi was involved in the act of terror.

The first step of the alleged crime, sine qua non — loading the bomb into a suitcase at the Malta airport — for this there was no witness, no video, no document, no fingerprints, nothing to tie Megrahi to the particular brown Samsonite suitcase, no past history of terrorism, no forensic evidence of any kind linking him to such an act.

And the court admitted it: “The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta to Frankfurt] is a major difficulty for the Crown case.”[4]

The scenario implicating Iran, Syria, and the PFLP-GC was the Original Official Version, endorsed by the US, UK, Scotland, even West Germany — guaranteed, sworn to, scout’s honor, case closed — until the buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was needed for the broad Middle East coalition the United States was readying for the ouster of Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Washington was also anxious to achieve the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by groups close to Iran. Thus it was that the scurrying sound of backtracking could be heard in the corridors of the White House. Suddenly, in October 1990, there was a New Official Version: it was Libya — the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq — that was behind the bombing after all, declared Washington.

The two Libyans were formally indicted in the US and Scotland on Nov. 14, 1991. Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages were released in Lebanon along with the most prominent British hostage, Terry Waite.[5]

In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. “If he goes back to Libya,” Swire says, “it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. … I’ve lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.”[6]

And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.

The Sunday Times (London) recently reported: “American intelligence documents [of 1989, from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)] blaming Iran for the Lockerbie bombing would have been produced in court if the Libyan convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist attack had not dropped his appeal.” Added the Times: “The DIA briefing discounted Libya’s involvement in the bombing on the basis that there was ‘no current credible intelligence’ implicating her.”[7]

If the three governments involved really believed that Megrahi was guilty of murdering 270 of their people, it’s highly unlikely that they would have released their grip on him. Or is even that too much civilized behavior to expect.

One final note: Many people are under the impression that Libyan Leader Moammar Qaddafi has admitted on more than one occasion to Libya’s guilt in the PanAm 103 bombing. This is not so. Instead, he has stated that Libya would take “responsibility” for the crime. He has said this purely to get the heavy international sanctions against his country lifted. At various times, both he and his son have explicitly denied any Libyan role in the bombing.

____________________

[1] Washington Post, August 22 and August 26, 2009

[2] Newsweek magazine, July 13, 1992

[3] Sunday Herald (Scotland), August 17, 2009

[4] “Opinion of the Court”, Par. 39, issued following the trial in 2001

[5] Read many further details about the case at http://killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm

[6] The Independent (London daily), April 26, 2009

[7] Sunday Times (London), August 16, 2009

Verdict awaited in trial of Gaddafi-era officials

[What follows is excerpted from a Reuters news agency report dated 1 June 2015:]

A Libyan court will rule on July 28 on a son of Muammar Gaddafi and 36 other former regime officials accused of war crimes and suppressing peaceful protests during the 2011 revolution, a state prosecutor said on Monday. (...)

Others in the dock include Gaddafi-era prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, former foreign minister Abdul Ati al-Obeidi and ex-intelligence chief Buzeid Dorda. They also face corruption and other charges.

The trial had started in April 2014 before fighting between rival factions in Tripoli ripped Libya apart in a power struggle which has produced two governments competing for authority.

It takes place in Tripoli which is controlled by a rival government set up after an armed faction called Libya Dawn seized the capital in August, expelling the official premier to the east.

The struggle has worsened chaos in the oil producer which has struggled to establish basic institutions since Gaddafi's four-decade one-man rule ended in 2011.

"The court has ended the hearing after all defendants gave their oral and written defence statements," said Sadiq al-Sur, head of the investigation department at the attorney general.

"God willing there will be a verdict on July 28...for 37 defendants," he told Reuters.

The International Criminal Court and other human rights organisations worry about the fairness of Libya's justice system although the North African country won the right in 2013 to try Gaddafi's former spy chief at home instead of at the ICC in The Hague.

Sur said all defendants had had plenty of time to meet their lawyers despite claims by some they had struggled to get access to their clients.

The verdicts could be appealed, said Sur.

[RB: Although he is not mentioned by name in the report, one of the other accused is Mohammed Belqasim Zwai. Obeidi, Dorda and Zwai were intimately involved on the Libyan side in seeking a resolution of the Lockerbie affair. In my dealings with them, I found them to be honest and straightforward -- a contrast with their UK and US counterparts.]

Foreign Office "has attempted to block ... judicial process"

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr Jim Swire which was published in The Herald on this date in 2008:]

Our first encounter with the Scottish justice system was the fatal accident inquiry (FAI) held in Dumfries under the late Sheriff Principal John Mowat. Two findings stood out: 1. The aircraft destroyed at Lockerbie on which our families perished, and into which it appeared that a bomb had been loaded at Heathrow, had been under the "host state protection" of the UK authorities; 2. It was preventable.

At the end of 1991 indictments were issued against two Libyans; there was, so the Foreign Office told us, no evidence against any other country than Libya.

Within two weeks, and with the subsequent ending of a professional career, one of us went to visit Colonel Gaddafi. We told him we believed that Scottish criminal justice was among the fairest available, and that it was independent of the English-based government. We dared to explain that we felt US justice to be inappropriate because of the death penalty, and because of the enmity between the two nations, and that Libyan justice, though appropriate under the international aviation treaties of the time, would never be accepted as impartial by the international community. Our plea to him was to allow his citizens to face justice under Scots law.

It was not until after two further visits to Libya and following the intervention of many, including Professor Robert Black of Edinburgh, with proposals as to how Scottish criminal law might best be used, plus that of the late Robin Cook as Foreign Secretary, and Nelson Mandela some years later, that our wish was granted, the result being the trial at Zeist in Holland.

Meanwhile, we had sought, in the light of the FAI findings and the known warnings received beforehand, an independent and far-reaching inquiry into why the UK government had failed to protect our families. The Thatcher government of the day refused to discuss the issue of an inquiry with us. Twenty years later, despite repeated refusals, we are still waiting for the government to face up to the 1988 failure by allowing a full inquiry.

Therefore, we bring some preconceptions from outwith the criminal justice arena about the role of the UK government in the whole Lockerbie disaster, and issues arising from the trial, though that trial has to do only with the accusations against the two Libyan individuals, one of whom was acquitted and the other of whom is currently in Greenock prison.

Doubts about the verdict against him meant the affair was referred to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) which, after some three years, decided the trial might have been unfair, partly because two documents given to the UK government by a foreign power had been available to the Crown and Dumfries and Galloway police from long before the trial, but not to the defence. The matter fell to be resolved by the High Court.

Following representations by the advocate-general to the government, the Foreign Office's response was to make the two documents the subject of a Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate.

The two documents, the denial of which to the defence was crucial to the SCCRC's decision that the verdict might be unsafe, are still denied to those by whom the convicted Libyan wishes to be represented in the appeal. The Foreign Office, through this PII certificate, has attempted to block, in the name of the national interest, the very Scottish criminal judicial process we believed to be independent of it.

The documents refer to a preventable outrage. They were provided to Dumfries and Galloway police and the Crown Office from at least 1996. PII certificates have never impacted upon Scottish criminal justice in this way before. The High Court has now to decide whether to set aside the PII certificate, or whether the national interest is really sufficiently powerful that it should be served by some intermediate degree of security for the documents. To do this the court first has to see the documents. Last week the High Court issued an order to the advocate-general that they be supplied with the documents within seven days.

No doubt their lordships will reach a wise decision; their responsibility is both to the Lockerbie criminal appeal process, and to future perceptions as to the independence of our criminal justice system. It has always been part of our endeavour to force something good out of this atrocity, and we hope Scottish criminal justice will be enhanced, not harmed.

As for the relatives of the dead, some of us cast the Westminster government in a role far removed from impartiality. However seriously defective its full failure in 1988 may or may not have been, it has hidden it behind powerful protective screens. The repercussions, should the criminal verdict be overturned on appeal, might impact heavily upon the perceived degree of the government's failure to protect our families and promote the truth. Just what this PII certificate is supposed to benefit is unclear. Maybe the answer is simply the politicians and civil servants of the Foreign Office.

A jury would not have convicted Megrahi

[What follows is excerpted from an item published on this date in 2009 on the Lallands Peat Worrier blog:]

On entering Edinburgh University’s School of Law in 2004, my first lecture was delivered by Professor Robert Black QC, and concerned the trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. Convicted by a three judge panel in Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, anyone with half an eye on Scottish justice issues will be familiar with the extensive legal and political controversy surrounding the trial. Robert Black is convinced that – abstractly guilty or not – legally, Megrahi should not have been convicted on the evidence lead against him, beyond the standard of reasonable scepticism required. He has kept and continues to update a blog on the Lockerbie Case here.

Privately, other senior figures in the legal profession have suggested to me that, to their minds, a jury would not have convicted Al Megrahi on the evidence presented to the Court in the Netherlands. Implicitly, it is being suggested here that judges Sutherland, McLean and Coulsfield yielded to an inchoate sense of pressure, putting aside their doubts and convicting Megrahi. On either question, I am not particularly qualified to answer, not having reviewed the evidence. I simply report that it is a prevalent view in the dusty corridors of Scottish legal discussion.

Of course, we should bear in mind that other jurisdictions habitually try criminal cases employing only judges. Appeal courts regularly set aside lower courts findings of fact. The criticism implied by changing decisions or substituting a different ruling on appeal is undoubtedly less sharp when it is simply a general fact of legal life. Scotland is different. The exceptionalism which saw Megrahi tried without a jury seems to have erected barriers of embarrassment. In its structure, the High Court of Justiciary is collegiate. To recognise that one’s colleagues “got it wrong” would be dreadfully to undermine the whole College of Justice. Better to encourage quietism, and leave Megrahi where he is. So, in half-articulated whispers and furtive conversations, some suggest the "Lockerbie problem" should be dispensed with.

This is Denningprinzip, a haunting refrain recalling the much overrated Alfred Denning, who suggested in McIlkenny v. Chief Constable of the West Midlands[1980], dismissing allegations of police brutality against the “Birmingham Six” that we should all:

“Just consider the course of events if this action were to go to trial … if the six men fail, it will mean that much time and money and worry will have been expended by many people for no good purpose. If the six men win, it will mean that the police were guilty of perjury, that they were guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were involuntary and were improperly admitted in evidence: and that the convictions were erroneous. That would mean that the Home Secretary would have either to recommend they be pardoned or he would have to remit the case to the Court of Appeal … This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say: it cannot be right that these actions should go any further. They should be struck out.”

A vile canon for judicial action, that, which gnaws at the very bowels of the rational basis for our regimes of legal regulation. 

[At the time, I commented on this blog: “The anonymous author apparently attended a lecture by me in The Edinburgh Law School in 2004 and -- which must be unique -- remembers it.” I am happy to report that the author is no longer anonymous. Andrew Tickell is now a lecturer in law at Glasgow Caledonian University, continues to blog knowledgeably and entertainingly, and contributes to print and broadcast media on legal and political matters.]

The Crown and the CIA cables

[On this date in 2000, members of the prosecution team at the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist were given access at the United States embassy in the Netherlands to the unredacted cables sent by Abdul Majid Giaka’s CIA handlers to headquarters in Langley, Virginia. What follows is taken from an account of the trial by David Morrison which was published in March 2001:]

On 1 June last year [2000] after the trial in Camp Zeist had started the prosecution at last saw uncensored versions of CIA cables about Giaka and became aware of the awful truth of Giaka’s history, which if revealed to the defence would mean that his credibility as a prosecution witness would be undermined.  When the defence applied to the Court for the same access to the cables, desperate to protect their key witness, the prosecution lied to the Court that the censored material would [not] be useful to the defence (see below). The person who told this enormous whopper was the Lord Advocate, the chief law officer of Scotland, who led for the prosecution at Camp Zeist.

As we have said, the key prosecution witness at the trial in Camp Zeist was Abdul Majid Giaka.  Without him, the two Libyans, Megrahi and Fhimah, would never have been indicted.  Whenever, in the intervening years, journalists and others questioned the soundness of the case against them, the prosecuting authorities in Edinburgh and Washington always responded by boasting that they had a witness who could connect the accused directly with the Lockerbie bomb.  The witness in question was Giaka.

Giaka was a member of the Libyan intelligence service, the JSO, who in August 1988 a few months before the Lockerbie bombing offered his services to the CIA.  In July 1991 he gave the CIA startling eyewitness evidence connecting Megrahi and Fhimah with the Lockerbie bomb (whereupon he was taken to the US and put on a witness protection programme, where he has remained ever since).  A few months later in November 1991, they were charged with the bombing in Scotland and the US.  Without Giaka’s evidence, they would never have been charged.

The credibility of any witness should be of concern to prosecuting authorities.  The more so when he is the key witness in the biggest murder trial in British history with profound geopolitical implications.  Even more so when he is a former member of Libyan intelligence who has defected to the CIA and who stood to receive $4 million of reward money from the US government if his evidence was instrumental in securing a conviction for the Lockerbie bombing.

Plainly, it was incumbent upon the Scottish prosecuting authorities to look upon Giaka’s evidence with a very sceptical eye and to assess his credibility as a witness thoroughly before charging the two Libyans.  This they failed to do.  Crucially, they failed to get sight of uncensored versions of the regular cables about him sent by his CIA handlers in Malta to CIA headquarters in Langley in the period from August 1988 onwards, which contained the CIA’s own assessment of his credibility.  It seems that prior to the charges being laid in November 1991 the CIA had allowed them to see censored versions of the cables with large parts blacked out.  But it wasn’t until 1 June 2000, after the trial in Camp Zeist had begun, that they saw uncensored versions of these cables.

It was, unsurprisingly, the blacked out parts which were relevant to an assessment of Giaka’s credibility.  They revealed that, as of 1 September 1989 when he had been working for the CIA for over a year (and months after the destruction of Pan Am 103), Giaka’s CIA handlers were highly critical of him and of the lack of important information supplied by him.  He is described as a man in the business of selling information for his own benefit; as someone who will never have the penetration of Libyan intelligence services that had been anticipated; as someone who had never been a true member of Libyan intelligence; and as someone whose CIA salary of $1000 per month should be cut off if he supplied no significant information.  The clear inference from this is that by 1 September 1989 Giaka had still not given his CIA masters the crucial eyewitness “evidence” incriminating Megrahi and Fhimah, otherwise these criticisms of his value and of the worth of the information supplied by him could not have been made.

Had the Scottish prosecuting authorities done their job in 1991 and made it their business to acquaint themselves with the CIA’s experience of Giaka then Megrahi and Fhimah would never have been charged – and Libya would not have had economic sanctions imposed on it for most of the 90s for refusing to extradite them.  Clearly, the CIA deliberately kept vital information about Giaka’s lack of credibility as a witness from the Scottish prosecuting authorities.  But it was their job to make sure their key witness was credible, to demand a full account of Giaka’s history with the CIA and to bring charges against the two Libyans only if that history revealed him to be credible. (...)

The prosecution saw the uncensored versions of the CIA cables about Giaka on 1 June last year at the US embassy in The Hague, having promised to keep the censored parts confidential.  How this came about is not clear.  Presumably, the prosecution made a request to the CIA.  If so, it was not obviously a sensible thing to do from their point of view.  There is a clear obligation in Scottish law that the prosecution has a duty to disclose to the defence any information which supports the defence case or casts doubt upon the prosecution case.  In principle, therefore, information from the uncensored cables which undermined Giaka’s credibility would have to be disclosed to the defence, and a confidentiality agreement with the CIA could not override that principle.  So, on the face of it, from the prosecution point of view it would have been far better if they had remained in ignorance.

(Why the CIA consented to the prosecution seeing the uncensored cables is also a puzzle, since they must have known that there was a grave danger that as a result Giaka would be discredited and the trial would collapse.  At the time there was some public controversy about the CIA failing to make information available for the trial and at one point the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, made a statement to the victims’ families saying that the CIA was committed to making every relevant piece of evidence available to the Court.  Perhaps that’s why the CIA felt obliged to give the prosecution unrestricted access of the cables for the first time.)

When the prosecution saw uncensored versions of the cables on 1 June 2000, they must have been panic stricken since their key witness had being revealed to be utterly unreliable.  They kept quiet about their sight of the uncensored cables for three months until 21 August, the day before the trial was due to resume after its summer recess.  When the defence applied to the Court next day for access to the uncensored cables, the prosecution objected strenuously and simply lied to the Court that the censored material would be useful to the defence.

The Lord Advocate of Scotland, who led for the Crown at the trial, told the Court that the members of the prosecution team who saw the uncensored CIA cables were fully aware of the obligation upon them to make available to the defence teams material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, considered the contents of those cables with certain principles in mind.

He said:

“First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions [the censored material] which would undermine the Crown case in any way.  Secondly, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Mr Majid [Giaka]. They also considered whether there was anything which might bear upon the special defences which had been lodged and intimated in this case. On all of these matters, … [they] reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made on may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way.”

One of the trial judges, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened:

“Does that include, Lord Advocate ... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?”

To which the Lord Advocate replied:

“… there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid [Giaka] on these matters”.

That is a barefaced lie by the chief law officer of the Crown in Scotland.  The uncensored cables revealed, amongst other things, that the CIA believed Giaka to be in the business of selling information for his own benefit.  One doesn’t have to be a lawyer, let alone the chief law officer in Scotland, to recognise that this “impinges upon the credibility” of Giaka as a witness, as did other matters from the uncensored cables.  A witness in court who is caught out lying can be charged with perjury and even gaoled, but the chief law officer of the Crown in Scotland can apparently lie with impunity.

However, the Lord Advocate’s lies were in vain.  The Court did not accept that the defence should be denied access to the uncensored cables and he was instructed by the Court “to use his best endeavours to ensure that the information in the unedited cables was disclosed to the defence”.  The CIA conceded that the defence could see the unedited cables – they had to, otherwise the case would most likely have collapsed – and for the first time in history CIA internal documents were made available to foreign court.

With the aid of the unedited cables, the defence destroyed Giaka’s credibility as a witness when he gave evidence on 26-28 September.

US gagging orders in Lockerbie case

[On this date in 2000, Lamin Fhimah’s solicitor wrote to Dr Richard Fuisz. The account that follows is excerpted from an item on John Ashton’s website Megrahi: You are my Jury. The documents which are referred to can be read here.]

Dr Richard Fuisz was an international businessman and deep-cover CIA spy,  who worked in the USSR and across the Middle East during the Eighties and Nineties. As well as having a very successful medical technology company, he ran training programmes for the Saudi military, supplied computers with a secret spying capability to the unwitting Soviets (via Raisa Gorbachev) and had a model agency that supplied the first Miss USSR.

In May 2000, not long after the start of the Lockerbie trial, the defence lawyers got wind of Fuisz, via an associate of his, Susan Lindauer, who said that he had been based in Syria in 1988 and had irrefutable intelligence that Lockerbie was the work of the PFLP-GC. Lindauer also said that he was the subject of a gagging order, a breach of which would result in a significant prison sentence.

On 31 May [2000], defence solicitor Eddie MacKechnie wrote to the US department of justice’s Lockerbie prosecutor Brian Murtagh to ask if Fuisz was indeed prevented from speaking (Document 1). Six weeks later Murtagh wrote back. He confirmed that Fuisz was the subject of a gagging order in relation to another case, which involved the supply of military equipment to Iraq by a company called Terex, however, he claimed that Fuisz was free to talk about Lockerbie, writing: “I found no factual basis to the allegation that any representative of the US Government has taken any action to deter Dr Fuisz from talking to anyone about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.” (See Document 2)

Fuisz insisted that this was not true and that he was the subject of another gagging order that was quite independent of the Terex litigation. Furthermore, he claimed that Murtagh and another DoJ lawyer had advised him that he was not in fact free to talk about Lockerbie. (See Document 3)

Murtagh again denied it, telling MacKechnie: “You ask whether or not you can assume that the defense is at liberty to ask Dr Fuisz any questions in relation to Pan Am 103, and further whether he is fully at liberty to answer any questions relating to Pan Am 103? The answer to both questions as far as I am concerned is “yes”. The problem here is with Dr Fuisz himself, and not with any court order or attempt by the Government to keep him from talking to the defense about the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103.” (See Document 4)

MacKechnie replied: “Dr Fuisz insists that it is not the Department of Justice or even the Attorney General herself which possess the authority to release him from what he refers to as his statutory obligations of secrecy.  It has been suggested to us that the President himself, but perhaps more sensibly the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet, would be able to release him from any possible remaining inhibitions so that he could provide a statement in relation to Pan Am 103 and the alleged perpetrators of the bombing.” (See Document 5)

CIA lawyer Robert Eatinger then wrote to Murtagh: “Dr Fuisz has been informed that neither the CIA nor the DoJ pose any objection to his discussing with the defense, or anyone else for that matter, his knowledge of the Pan Am flight 103 bombing. There is and has been no impediment to his being interviewed on this matter… As you and I have discussed, there simply is no court order of which we are aware that in any way limits Dr Fuisz from revealing his knowledge of who bombed Pan Am flight 103. (See Document 6)

The following day, 13 October 2000, Eatinger wrote to Fuisz. Although the letter downplayed Fuisz’s knowledge of Lockerbie, it is highly significant, because it acknowledged de facto that Fuisz was, indeed, involved with the CIA. Moreover, it conceded that he had been briefed by the CIA about Lockerbie and that they had told him that Jibril was to blame. It also tacitly admitted that, contrary to earlier assurances, he was restricted in what he could say. The key passage read:

“Now that you have clarified that you have no personal knowledge of who is responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, we can provide you more specific guidance. You may freely identify the number of briefings you received by CIA officials the dates on which you received them. You may identify whom the CIA briefers said was responsible for the bombing of Pan flight 103. However, you may not reveal the identities of the CIA officers, nor the purpose for which you were receiving these security briefings.” (See Document 7)

Finally, on 6 December 2000, Fuisz was deposed. As well as his own lawyer, a DoJ lawyer and two unnamed CIA officials were also present at the first depositio and three at the second. Fuisz’s story was covered briefly in a few media reports, which suggested that he had been effectively prevented from saying anything that he knew about Lockerbie. However, earlier this year I learnt that this was not true. I came across a lawyer’s note of the first of his two depositions (Document 8) and a transcript of the second (Document 9). Although he was very restricted in what he could say, he nevertheless went on the record with two extraordinary revelations. Firstly, he confirmed that he received multiple briefings from CIA agents in 1989 in which they told him, inter alia, that the PFLP-GC was responsible for Lockerbie. Secondly, and even more significantly, he said that between 1990 and 1995 he was told separately by around 10-15 high level Syrian officials that the group was to blame.  These officials, he said, interacted with the group’s leader, Ahmed Jibril “on a constant basis”.

Insurers sue US Government for blocking Pan Am 103 payout claim

[What follows is excerpted from a report published yesterday on the Insurance Business America website:]

A $96 million lawsuit filed against the US government by Lloyd’s, New York Marine and General Insurance Co and Aviation & General Insurance Co went forward this week after the Court of Federal Claims failed to dismiss the suit as the government requested.

The plaintiffs are seeking remuneration from the government after it allegedly blocked certain underwriters from recovering $96 million from Libya for sponsoring two terrorist attacks in the 1980s – the Lockerbie bombings that affected EgyptAir 648 in 1985 and Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. The insurers had filed suits against Libya before US officials stepped in and terminated the proceedings.

In denying the government’s motion to dismiss, the court held that Lloyd’s and the other plaintiffs had a legitimate property interest on which to base their claims. (...)

Lloyd’s originally sued Libya in 1988, looking for reimbursement for their coverage of the attacks, which cost more than $41 million for the EgyptAir flight and $55 million for the Pan Am flight. The other insurers filed a similar suit in 2006.

However, Congress passed the Libyan Claims Resolution Act in 2008, which took the right to oversee suits against Libya away from federal courts’ jurisdiction. Shortly afterward, the government stopped all suits pending against Libya.

After the plaintiffs filed suit against the US government, governmental officials sought a dismissal on the grounds that the insurers do not possess a valid property interest on which they can base their claims.

The court, however, ruled that plaintiffs demonstrated sufficient facts to establish a “property interest in the insurance contracts they sought to protect with a legal claim against Libya, which the United States subsequently extinguished.”