24 December 2007: Libya anticipates Megrahi's return

[On this date in 2007 I posted on this blog an item that reads as follows:]

Al-Megrahi May Come Home Very Soon

Today the Libyaonline website runs an article, apparently from the Tripoli Post, with this title. Again, it embodies the assumption that, because the United Kingdom Government and Libya have concluded a prisoner transfer agreement and because Mr Megrahi is not specifically excluded from its operation, therefore he will soon be heading home to Tripoli. This is a quite unwarranted assumption. It is the Scottish Government, not the UK Government, that must consent to any transfer. I have seen no indication anywhere that such consent is likely to be forthcoming or, indeed, that any approaches have been made to the Scottish Ministers to sound them out.

[The website in question no longer exists as a news aggregation site. However, the article is still to be found on The Tripoli Post website. It reads as follows:]

The innocent Libyan citizen, Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi, who have been unfairly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing and has been in a Scottish prison since 2001, may soon come home. 

Britain is about to sign a Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) with Libya which will pave the way for the eventual return of Al-Megrahi to Tripoli. A letter was sent by Jack Straw, the British Justice Secretary, to Tripoli Wednesday night outlining the agreement.

According to The Scotsman quoting Thursday unidentified source, "Jack Straw will be signing the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya tonight. Megrahi will not be listed in the treaty as somebody who is specifically excluded." 

"The Libyans would not agree to that. But as Kenny MacAskill discussed with Jack, there is a safeguard in that Scottish ministers will have to decide in each transfer case from a Scottish prison,” The Scotsman added.

The deal comes just 48 hours before the 19th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie, which claimed 270 lives in 1988.

New evidence has recently published including an inclusively crucial affidavit from Eng Ulrich Lumpert, to definitely exonerate Mr Al-Megrahi and Libya from any participation in the bombing of PanAm 103.

A Scottish Government source said Justice Secretary Jack Straw spoke to his opposite number north of the border, Kenny MacAskill, and told him Abdelbaset al-Megrahi would not be excluded from the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) expected to be finalised soon, the Associated Press reported.

Al-Megrahi, who is serving life in Greenock Prison, is currently pursuing a second appeal against his 2001 conviction for bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21 1988.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair signed a memorandum of understanding during a visit to Libya in May 2007, kicking off negotiations on an agreement allowing the transfer of prisoners between the justice systems of the two countries.

23 December 2007: "There is still an innocent person in jail"

[What follows is excerpted from an article headlined Lockerbie story heads to Hollywood that was published in Scotland on Sunday on this date in 2007:]

Juval Aviv was behind the book that inspired the acclaimed Steven Spielberg blockbuster Munich.

His latest project is a fictional account of the Lockerbie disaster – in which 270 people were killed – and he hopes that the Jaws and ET filmmaker can make it into a major movie.

Flight 103 – which alleges that the Iranians and the American secret services were complicit in the atrocity – will be published early in the new year. The book is expected to become an international bestseller, and the former Mossad agent has revealed he is in talks with a number of high-profile Hollywood directors over the film rights. (...)

The former major in the Israeli Defence Force believes that [Steven] Spielberg would be the ideal man to bring his vision to the big screen.

"Steven is looking at the book right now. I worked closely with him on Munich and he is someone whom I admire greatly. My initial fear was that Munich could become little more than a Jewish James Bond movie. But Steven created a thought-provoking political movie, which showed the heavy toll that the assignment took on the agents who participated."

Aviv, who acted as lead investigator for Pan Am during the Lockerbie inquiry, admits that his book is a thinly veiled account of what he is convinced really happened in December 1988. [RB: Aviv’s report to Pan Am (the Interfor Report) can be read here.]

In the novel, retired Israeli agent Sam Woolfman discovers that Tehran ordered the destruction of an American plane in retaliation for the US downing an Iranian airbus, carrying 133 civilian partners, earlier in 1988.

The Iranians then enlist an experienced Palestinian terrorist, Ahmed 'The Falcon' Shabaan, to carry out the bloody reprisal.

In the book, the American secret services turn a blind eye to the plot and ensure that three CIA agents, who are due to blow this whistle on a internal heroin dealing racket, are aboard the doomed eponymous flight.

Woolfman, accompanied by his glamorous young Irish sidekick Orla Sheehy, discover that American Embassy staff around the world were warned not to board the Pan Am airliner.

The suggestion that Libya was not responsible for the atrocity was made forcibly by Aviv, who writes under the nom de plume of Sam Green, during the inquiry, but his evidence was rejected.

With a second appeal under way by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, the president of investigations firm Interfor is convinced that his version of events will finally be vindicated.

He said: "Flight 103 is written as fiction, but it is based solidly on real-life facts. The US Government urged me to change my report (to the inquiry), but I wouldn't and I fully stand by my version of events.

"I think 2008 will be the year when the truth finally emerges. There is still an innocent person in jail, but hopefully not for much longer."

A town laid to waste

[This is the headline over a report published in The Scotsman on this date in 1988. It reads in part:]

The peaceful Borders town of Lockerbie was left with smoking ruins and grieving families last night after a flaming Boeing 747, laden with more than 270 people, scattered death and destruction before crashing alongside the A74.

There were no survivors among the 273 adults and three children on board the Pan American flight front London to New York. An unknown number of people were killed on the ground. in their homes and in their vehicles, in the Dresden-like maelstrom of burning homes and cars.

The jet destroyed or damaged at least a dozen houses and narrowly missed a petrol a station before crashing beside the A74 on the edge of the market town, ten miles cast Of Dumfries, in what was Britain's worst air disaster.

Eye-witnesses spoke of a gigantic explosion and a huge fireball as the jumbo crashed, soon after 7 pm. One described how the stricken plane "rained liquid fire" as it roared earthwards. An RAF spokesman said: "The plane demolished two rows of houses. There are no survivors from these houses. There will be a lot of digging needed tomorrow."

The ill-fated flight, thought to have been full of Americans returning home for Christmas - including some US servicemen - left Heathrow 25 minutes late, at 6:25 pm. It disappeared from radar screens 54 minutes later.

Trouble appears to have struck the 747 somewhere over Langholm approximately 13 miles to the cast where residents found lumps Of aircraft metal and suitcases.

The crippled aircraft struggled west at low level, apparently clipping a hill about three miles east of Lockerbie.

More wreckage fell on houses on the northern edge of the town before the plane finally crashed near Sherwood Crescent.

The end came in a blinding ball of flame that lit up the night sky, as the aircraft just missed a petrol station.

A huge blazing 40-foot deep crater was torn in the ground and earth and rubble covered the A74.

At a 1am Press conference, Chief Constable John Boyd of Dumfries and Galloway Police said that he feared for casualties in Lockerbie.

He said: "Wreckage is spread over a very wide area about ten miles in radius and parts of wreckage have fallen on two residential areas of the town, causing considerable damage and setting fire to a number of houses. There is severe damage to houses at Sherwood Crescent and I am fearful about casualties at that site."

He added: "It would appear that wreckage has fallen at six different locations both within Lockerbie and some miles outside the town. There are bodies at each of these locations."

District nurse Sheila Macdonald was with her two children in a car delivering presents to a friend's house on a hillside overlooking the town when she saw the plane come down.

She said: "There was a horrible droning noise and then this V-shaped object came sweeping down ... it was obviously the wings and the front part of the plane. It was accompanied by showers of what looked like sparks. Another part of the plane came afterwards and it just seemed to plough into the town. There was a sheet of flame and everything shook I knew then it was some terrible catastrophe."

A former police inspector, Mr Archie Smith, lived only yards from the residential crescent which was devastated in the impact and he said: "Four or five houses are just simply gone. The flames spread quickly and suddenly my house was on fire and it just went out of control and has now been destroyed."

He added: "I had more than thirty years in the police force and never saw anything so appalling or with so much horror as this."

Lockerbie resembled a war zone last night with debris strewn all over the streets. The town centre was lined with ambulances and police cars as the search for bodies went on. Seriously injured people were being taken to Dumfries Royal Infirmary while the town hall was being used as a temporary mortuary.

The building was also the centre for anxious people seeking relatives from the area devastated as the 747 crashed. A list of evacuees was pinned on the front wall of the town hall.

The quiet Dumfriesshire town was strewn with debris as the stricken aircraft lurched across the sky to its final impact on Lockerbie's southern outskirts beside the A74.

Phones in the area were knocked out by the explosion. Ambulances came from as far away as Edinburgh, Livingston land Glasgow. Helicopters quartered the sky in a search for any survivors and Territorial Army volunteers plus Royal Air Force staff from Carlisle were also helping to try to wrest some order out of the widespread confusion.

In a grim pointer to the high death toll, a spokesman at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, Mr Les Callaghan, said it had received only a, 'very, very small number of casualties," nearly two hours after the crash.

A fleet of 12 helicopters from as far away as Hampshire, two RAF mountain rescue teams and a coastguard team from nearby Kirkcudbright joined Scotland's biggest emergency rescue operation.

A special landing zone was organised by officers at Lockerbie police station, which was set up as the disaster headquarters.

Early reports said 12 people had been taken to the hospital - they were thought to be residents of Lockerbie, which has a population of about 3,000.

One eye-witness, Mr Jack Glasgow of Mount Florida, Glasgow, said: "We tried to get near the plane but it was completely on fire. There were no bodies about. I don't think there would be any chance of anyone getting out of it. It went up in a fireball."

Mr Glasgow said the aircraft hit the road, carried on for about three quarters of a mile and then exploded.

A Dunfermline businessman, Mr Edward Killeen, was a few hundred yards away from the scene. He was driving to his home in Gowanbrae Drive Dunfermline, from Bolton and from the scene last night said: "It was quite unbelievable.

"I saw a tremendous burst of flame and explosion. The traffic immediately ground to a halt and even from the distance I could see the sky lit up.

"Very shortly afterwards, the emergency services arrived but found obvious difficulty approaching the scene because of the congestion."

Mr Colin Gourlay, of Hightae, two miles south-west of Lockerbie, said: "We heard a roar, and the roar got louder and everything started to shake. I thought it was maybe a earthquake or a meteor and the atmosphere was burning up. Everything outside was a huge orange glow. My wife was frozen to the ground with fear."

Mr Mike Carnahan, who lives two miles south of Lockerbie, said: "I was driving past the filling station when the aircraft crashed. There was a terrible explosion.

"The sky was actually raining fire. It was just like liquid. We have actually found an aluminium rivet embedded in the metal of my car."

One resident near to the impact scene, Mr Raymond Lees (71), said 'We heard this rumbling, a terrible noise as though it was a vehicle in trouble.

"Then we looked out the window and we could see this debris falling. It just went past the window. There was a massive explosion as though it was fuel that went up. We could see the houses and roofs on fire within yards of us.

"It must have missed this place by a few inches.

"We walked to the A74 and had a look and could see a terrific burning. There were cars and houses on fire. It was complete mayhem."

A school teacher who declined to be named helping control crowds outside the town, hall said of the crash: "There was a sort of rumble. We thought it was an earthquake and ran outside just as the sky lit up."

All roads to Lockerbie were reported blocked with telephone lines down.

Fire services said the A74 the main road between Scotland and the English border had been cut and several cars appeared to have been set alight.

For the first time Dumfries and Galloway Regional Council activated its emergency back-up service to help to provide rescue co-ordination. A spokesman said that there never had been a disaster on such a scale in the area.

A Boeing team will be travelling to Scotland along with representatives of the US National Transportation Safety Board, a Boeing spokesman said in Seattle, Washington, last night.

Mr John Wheeler, Boeing's public relations manager, said: "We will probably he sending a team of two to three experts. They will join the NTSB team."

The Jumbo, a 747-121 class named Clipper Maid Of The Seas, had reached an altitude of 31,000 feet before it ran into trouble, an aviation official said. (...)

Among the dead passengers were at least 36 students from Syracuse University in New York State. They had been studying in London since September, and were returning for Christmas.

A Department of Transport air investigation branch team will be going to the scene of the crash today to carry out an investigation.

The Transport Secretary, Mr Paul Channon, will make a full Commons statement on the tragedy at 11 am today.

[Paul Channon’s statement in the House of Commons and the ensuing debate can be read here.]

"We are all of us at risk of such travesties recurring"

[What follows is the text of a report by Greg Russell published in today’s edition of The National:]

It was one of the worst terrorist atrocities of the 20th century – 27 years ago today Pan Am flight 103 from London’s Heathrow Airport to JFK in New York was blown up over the town of Lockerbie.

All 243 passengers and 16 crew died, along with 11 people in the town itself, leaving a total death toll of 270.

A Libyan national Abdelbaset al-Megrahi eventually became the only man to be convicted of the bombing. He died in May 2012 from terminal prostate cancer, three years after the then justice secretary Kenny Mac- Askill released him from a life sentence on compassionate grounds.

However, the controversy surrounding his conviction has never died. The campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM) has revealed a series of responses to their claim that “bias and prejudice” of the Crown Office should disqualify it from assessing a Police Scotland report into criminal allegations JfM made relating to the Lockerbie investigation and trial.

The group said that had these been supported, they would cast serious doubt on Megrahi’s conviction and “point to possible malpractice by Crown Office personnel, police and other prosecution witnesses”.

Justice campaigner and retired police officer Iain McKie, said: “A major Police Scotland report is about to be published which could point to Mr Megrahi’s innocence and possible criminal acts by former Crown Office personnel and prosecution witnesses.

“Surely this disqualifies the Lord Advocate and Crown Office from coming anywhere near this report.”

Hugh Andrew, managing director of publishers Birlinn, which published a book on the disaster, said: “Behaviour such as leaking information by the Crown ... to sympathetic journalists, the refusal to accept the implications of a damning report and the refusal to consider relevant evidence not available at the time of trial and independently verified, is a pointer to something disturbing and rotten in our justice system.”

“In a case of such importance it is essential all evidence is fairly and openly considered. That every form of subterfuge seems deployed to prevent this begs ominous questions.”

QC Ian Hamilton said he did not think there was a lawyer in Scotland who believed Megrahi was “justly convicted”.

Robert Black QC, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, was born and raised in Lockerbie and has taken a close interest in the case. He told The National: “It is over eight years since the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission concluded that Megrahi’s conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice. After all this time, why has the Lockerbie case not just faded away? It is because the official, judicially-approved version of what happened simply does not hold water. It never did.

“The failure of the Scottish justice system and of Scottish (and British) political institutions to acknowledge this in the face of quite overwhelming evidence is profoundly shocking and depressing.

“Until such recognition occurs and appropriate lessons are learned, we are all of us at risk of such travesties recurring. And that is frightening.”

A gaping hole

[On this date in 2007 I posted an item on this blog which reads in part:]

I have often on this blog had occasion to bemoan the apparent blindness of the mainstream media and commentators in the United States to the shakiness of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi, to the weakness of the evidence on which it was based and to the fact that it has now been referred back to the High Court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission because there may have been a miscarriage of justice. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that I draw attention to an article on the Congressional Quarterly website, CQ Politics by their National Security Editor, Jeff Stein. In this article, he outlines the problems with the official US/UK version of events and explores the most compelling of the alternative scenarios, with quotes from US security and intelligence operatives who doubt the official version. A welcome transatlantic breath of fresh air.

[Mr Stein’s article no longer appears on the CQ Politics (now Roll Call) website. However, it is to be found at other locations, including Ed’s Blog City. It reads as follows:]

Libya is close to getting off the hook for millions of dollars in payments to relatives of the 189 Americans who died in the bombing of Pan American Flight 103, amid a stiff new challenge to the 2001 verdict and rapidly warming relations between the erstwhile terrorist state and Washington.

It was 19 years ago this weekend that the airliner, bound from London to New York with 259 passengers, 189 of them Americans, exploded in the night skies over Scotland, killing all aboard as well as 11 residents of Lockerbie, the village where the fiery chunks of steel and other debris came crashing down.

A memorial service was planned for Friday at Arlington National Cemetery to mark the anniversary.

Back in 1988, Iran was immediately suspected of authoring the mass murder, in retaliation for the accidental downing of one of its own airliners by a US Navy warship in the Persian Gulf a few months earlier.

US intelligence agencies, in overdrive to find the culprits, quickly compiled evidence that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, or PFLP-GC, had carried out the plot on behalf of Iran and Syria. (The PFLP-GC was formed to opposed PLO leader Yassir Arafat’s movement toward detente with Israel.)

Nevertheless, on Jan 31, 2001, a panel of three Scottish judges found Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, officially the head of security for Libyan Airlines, guilty of carrying out the plot and sentenced him to life in jail. A Libyan co-defendant was set free.

Libya always denied any guilt in the crime, but agreed to compensate relatives of the dead to open the door for normal relations with the United States. It also agreed to compensate victims of the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle discotheque in West Berlin, a gathering place for US soldiers. Libya also denied complicity in that attack, which killed three and wounded scores more, but likewise agreed on compensation payments.

Megrahi, now serving a life sentence in Scotland, could be freed soon, British authorities hinted on Thursday, as part of a broad normalization of relations with Libya.

Only a day earlier, the Bush administration managed to stave off a congressional effort, led by Sen. Frank R Lautenberg , D-NJ, to deny it funds to build an embassy in Tripoli until Libya completed payments to the relatives of those who died on Pan Am 103.

While Lautenberg lost that battle, he and his allies in the House did manage to prohibit the administration from giving Libya any US aid until the payments are completed.

‘A Gaping Hole’

The ranks of critics of the 2001 verdict have steadily grown through the years.

Among them is Hans Koehler, the eminent Austrian jurist who was appointed by the United Nations to ensure the trial was conducted fairly.

“It is highly likely that the sentenced Libyan national is not guilty as charged and that one or more countries other than Libya, through their intelligence services and/or financial and logistical support for a terrorist group, may have responsibility for the crime,” Koehler said in a formal statement this year.

Likewise, Robert Black, the senior University of Edinburgh legal scholar who devised the trial of the Lockerbie defendants in the Netherlands under Scottish law, noted that the prosecution never produced any direct evidence tying the defendants to the bomb that brought the plane down.

It was entirely “circumstantial,” he said, based on a single computer print-out of a baggage manifest, which was contradicted by other evidence. “A gaping hole in the prosecution’s case,” he called it.

But more sinister factors were at work in the investigation, Black and other authoritative sources close to the case told me.

Black told me that he suspected Libya was framed to avoid a case that would hold Iran and Syria responsible.

The first Bush administration needed Syria to stay in the broad Middle East coalition that it was readying to oust Iraq’s troops from Kuwait.

“I have been told by persons involved in the Lockerbie investigation at a very high level, that a public announcement of PFLP-GC responsibility for the bombing was imminent in early 1991,”

Black told me, confirming earlier UK press reports. “Then suddenly, and to the mystification and annoyance of many on the investigation team, the focus of the investigation changed to Libya.”

Robert Baer, the former CIA officer who was based in Paris at the time and tracking Iranian terrorist operations, agrees.

Baer told me the Scottish commission reviewing evidence in the case was able to confirm that Iran and Syria paid the PFLP-GC to carry out the bombing.

Indeed, Vincent Cannistraro, who headed the CIA’s investigation of the crash, was quoted several times in 1989 blaming Iran, and right after the 1991 verdict he said it “was outrageous to pin the whole thing on Libya.” (Oddly, last week he told me the evidence “always pointed to the Libyans.”)

But Baer says, “Everybody” in US intelligence knew about “Iran’s intention to bomb an American airliner” in response to the downing of one of its own only months earlier.”

“We knew that,” Baer added. “We had that solid.”

The Defense Intelligence Agency also thought the Iranians paid the PFLP-GC to do it.

Patrick Lang, chief of the DIA’s Middle East section at the time, told me he “signed off” on the DIA’s conclusion that “The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorized and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur), the former Iranian minister of Interior.”

“The operation was contracted to Ahmad Jabril” [the head of the PFLP-GC] . . . for $1 million,” said the Sept 24, 1989, memo, first reported last week in a London tabloid. “The remainder was to be paid after successful completion of the mission.”

Lang said on Friday, “I still agree with that. We felt quite sure that this was a PFLP thing.”

“The CIA wouldn’t listen to that,” Lang added, because it couldn’t find proof of Iranian or Syrian complicity and was under immense pressure to solve the case.

Just last week, a Scottish newspaper, citing “sources close to the investigation,” recently cited specific transactions that the SCCRC allegedly had uncovered, including amounts and dates.

“This doesn’t exonerate Libya,” Baer cautioned. “Iran and Syria and Libya could have been working together.”

Plenty of Theories

Conspiracy theories have grown like barnacles on the much-questioned verdict, including far-fetched allegations of Israeli and even South African involvement in the crime.

On the Internet, some bloggers see the hand of the White House in the growing evidence of Iranian complicity in the Pan Am bombing, suggesting that the administration is further laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran.

The available evidence, however, suggests that the administration is primarily interested in getting Western companies’ access to Libya’s oil fields.

A particularly persistent rumor is that key witnesses were paid off by American intelligence to finger the Libyans.

Edwin Bollier, head of the Swiss company that was said to have manufactured the timer used to detonate the Pan Am bomb, has claimed variously that he was offered “bribes” by the FBI and CIA to finger Libya.

Bollier’s company did in fact supply the circuit boards to Libya, he admitted, but also East Germany, where the PFLP-GC had an office.

Since Bollier had ongoing business with the Qaddafi regime, his veracity has often been questioned.

In response to my query, a CIA spokesman ridiculed Bollier’s accusations that it offered or paid him anything.

“It may disappoint the conspiracy buffs, but the CIA doesn’t belong in your story,” he said, insisting on anonymity.

An FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed, however, that the bureau met with Bollier in Washington in 1991, but denied he was offered anything to implicate Libya.

In a formal statement, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko emphatically rejected any suggestions of a payoff.

“Any accusations that any witness was paid to lie are complete fabrications and these ridiculous statements should be immediately discounted as the untruths they are,” Kolko said. “That is not the way the FBI operates.”

Likewise, allegations have persisted that Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper on Malta who testified, in spite of contrary evidence, that he sold Megrahi clothing that ended up in the suitcase bomb, was paid to finger the Libyans.

But Gauci was paid approximately $2 million from the State Department’s USA Rewards program, an authoritative source told me, along with another, still unidentified witness.

Together, they were paid somewhere between $3 million and $4 million for information leading to the conviction of Megrahi, the source said.

The State Department acknowledged to me that rewards were paid.

“A reward was paid out in the Lockerbie-Pan Am 103 case,” a spokesperson there said on condition of anonymity, “but due to operational and security concerns we are not disclosing details regarding specific amounts, sources, or types of assistance the sources provided.”

Freeing Megrahi

All this — and much more questionable evidence related to the electronic timers and witnesses — may soon be moot.

A British Ministry of Justice spokeswoman confirmed on Thursday that Foreign Minister Jack Straw had been in contact with Scotland’s justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, about a deal that would send Megrahi back to Libya.

Such a move could well make irrelevant a Scottish appeals court’s expected judgment that a “miscarriage of justice” occurred in the case.

Reopening the investigation to present evidence of an Iranian/Syrian connection to the Pan Am bombing would be extremely difficult if not impossible, in the view of all observers.

The commercial pressure against such a move would be extreme. Western oil companies are eager to develop Libya’s reserves.

How this will affect Libya’s stalled payments to relatives of the Lockerbie and LaBelle discotheque victims is unknown, but if past patterns hold true, they cannot be optimistic.

In July 2006, a lawyer for the LaBelle families was about to finalize a deal with Libya when the State Department announced its intention to take Libya off the terrorist list.

The deal evaporated, said attorney Thomas Fay.

“They had made an offer and we accepted and at their request had every client execute release of claims forms” he told me by e-mail late Friday.

“In short, we were not close to a deal, we had made the deal,” Fay said. “They just refused to pay when they came off the terrorist list.”