New Scottish Parliament post for Christine Grahame MSP

Christine Grahame MSP has been elected as one of the Scottish Parliament’s two Deputy Presiding Officers. Unlike the Presiding Officer him/herself, deputies do not relinquish their political party affiliations. It is also possible for them to serve as committee members and conveners (see Guidance on Committees, para 2.13) Ms Grahame was, of course, convener of the Justice Committee in the last parliament and is a signatory member of Justice for Megrahi. Committee memberships and convenerships in the newly elected parliament have yet to be arranged.

John Ashton excoriates Kenny MacAskill

John Ashton has posted on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website this evening a detailed critique of the extract from Kenny MacAskill’s Lockerbie book that was published in The Sunday Times today. Mr Ashton’s article is headed Kenny MacAskill’s bungled Lockerbie book and it consists of the relevant portions of the MacAskill extract followed by corrections and commentary. This serves to demonstrate serious inaccuracies, flaws and omissions. John Ashton’s article is a must read.

Trade deal link to Lockerbie bomber release

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Sunday Times. It reads in part:]

The politician who freed the Lockerbie bomber today reveals the full story of how the Westminster government made him eligible for return to Libya, including the role of trade deals potentially worth £13bn to British companies.

In a dramatic new book, serialised exclusively in The Sunday Times, former justice minister Kenny MacAskill also admits his decision to free one of the world’s most notorious terrorists was partly motivated by a fear of violent reprisals against Scots if the killer died in Scottish custody.

His account divulges:

•Ministers refused to travel with MacAskill amid threats to his life;

•The SNP sought concessions from Westminster in exchange for Megrahi’s possible return;

•His view on who was really responsible for Britain’s worst terrorist attack.

MacAskill claims the UK government made Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi eligible for return to his Libyan home under a “trade for terrorist plan” to try to secure a massive oil and gas deal for BP which was in doubt. He says Jack Straw, then UK justice secretary, shared the details in a “highly confidential” telephone call which casts new light on a controversy that has dogged Tony Blair since his 2007 “deal in the desert” with the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi.

That deal was to give British industry access to Libyan oil reserves worth up to £13bn and £350m of defence contracts as the former rogue state was rehabilitated, and involved a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) allowing offenders to be moved between the countries.

Six months after that desert summit, MacAskill claims Straw warned him Gadaffi was threatening to cancel the energy contact and award it to a US firm unless Megrahi was covered by the PTA, after learning the new SNP regime was trying to exempt him.

Sensing that the British government, which had previously been prepared to exempt Megrahi from the PTA, was going to give in to Libya’s demands, MacAskill reveals that he and Salmond then tried to extract concessions in exchange for the agreement.

Although the Scottish government denied this five years ago, MacAskill says the concessions sought were changes to the law to give Holyrood power to regulate firearms and to curb lawsuits from former prisoners in Scottish jails who had been forced to use slop-out buckets in their cells instead of toilets.

Straw rejected MacAskill’s claims as a “highly embroidered version of what happened” while Salmond said his administration “played the whole thing with a straight bat from start to finish”. (...)

Within weeks of the UK government agreeing not to exempt Megrahi from the PTA, Gadaffi ratified the BP deal with Libya’s national oil corporation.

Negotiations for Megrahi’s return were interrupted after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and the Scottish government opted to free him on compassionate grounds in 2009. He died in Libya three years later.

A spokesman for BP said the company had no comment on the UK government’s actions or discussions.

In The Lockerbie Bombing, to be published on May 26, MacAskill reveals he feared the potential for a violent backlash in the Arab or wider Muslim world if Megrahi had been allowed to die while in Scottish custody.

Just a few weeks before MacAskill’s announcement to free him, UK hostages taken prisoner in Iraq had been murdered, which followed the execution of other Western nationals captured in the area.

He writes: “There was hostility to the West and ordinary citizens were becoming targets. Most in North Africa or the wider Arab world neither knew of Scotland nor cared about it. I was aware of the deaths of prison officers that had occurred in Northern Ireland where some had died through terrorist attack.

“The last thing I wanted was to have Scotland become a place that was demonised and its citizens targeted. I would not allow Scottish oil workers or others, wherever they might be, to face retribution as a consequence of my decision.”

In an interview with The Sunday Times, MacAskill, whose own safety was thought to be at risk as he considered whether to free Megrahi, added: “I think, looking at events in Brussels and Paris, I stand by that. We would have kept him in if we had decided that was necessary but he would never have been allowed to die here.”

In a book extract in this newspaper today, the former minister argues that a coalition involving Libya, Syria, Iran and Palestinian terrorists were behind the Lockerbie bombing, in revenge for the downing of an Iran Air flight by a US naval ship in July 1988.

[RB: In the extract published in The Sunday Times today, Mr MacAskill cites three reasons for his belief in Libyan (and Abdelbaset Megrahi’s) involvement in the atrocity. They are (1) an alleged interview given by Colonel Gaddafi to The Washington Times in 2003; (2) Mustafa Abdel-Jalil’s statement reported in the Swedish newspaper Expressen; and (3) Scottish investigators’ and prosecutors’ belief in the accuracy of the information disclosed in Ken Dornstein’s recent films. It is interesting, however, that Mr MacAskill explicitly states "Clothes in the suitcase that carried the bomb were acquired in Malta, though not by Megrahi. But if Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes, he was certainly involved." If the Zeist court had not made the finding-in-fact that Megrahi purchased the clothes, it would not, and could not, have convicted him.

As regards (1): There was no such 2003 interview. What MacAskill is referring to, as is clear from the “quote” from Col Gaddafi that he provides, is the claim by the editor-in-chief of The Washington Times, Arnaud de Borchgrave, that in an off-the-record conversation in 1993 Gaddafi admitted that Libya played a part in a scheme to destroy an American aircraft which had been instigated by Iran. De Borchgrave’s account of this conversation can be read on this blog here. My comment at the time was as follows:

“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.”

As regards (2): An account of the statement by Mustafa Abdel-Jalil can be read here. Evidence that he promised to supply never materialised. The best he could come up with was the assertion that the Gaddafi regime paid Megrahi’s legal expenses -- something that had never been hidden or denied. A response to Abdel-Jalil by John Ashton can be read here. Blistering commentaries by the late Ian Bell can be read here and here.

As regards (3): A lengthy response by John Ashton to the disclosures in the Dornstein films can be read here. Another long and detailed commentary by Dr Kevin Bannon can be read here. Dr Neil Berry makes critical comments on the films here.

Nowhere in The Sunday Times coverage is there mention of (a) the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s findings that, on six grounds, the Megrahi conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of Justice; (b) the evidence disclosed in John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury and, in particular, the metallurgical discrepancy between the dodgy circuit board fragment PT35b and circuit boards used in the MST-13 timers supplied to Libya; and (c) the evidence supplied in Dr Morag Kerr’s Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies which establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the suitcase containing the bomb did not arrive at Heathrow as unaccompanied baggage from Malta via Frankfurt but was already in the relevant luggage container before the feeder flight arrived. Perhaps these issues are dealt with elsewhere in Mr MacAskill’s book. But I won’t be holding my breath.

The Palestinian connection

[This is the headline over an article by Martin Asser published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

The Lockerbie trial has resurrected the names of players in Palestinian radical politics that have long since ceased to be relevant in the armed struggle for an independent Palestinian state, a cause which itself has been consigned to the margins.

It was a world veiled in secrecy, where the abundance of splinter groups reflected the fact that internecine rivalry often took the place of liberation as the major occupation of those involved.

Lawyers for the two Libyans on trial for the 1988 airline bombing fingered 11 alleged members of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF), a little-known organisation which is now allied to Palestinian self-rule leader Yasser Arafat in the Israeli-occupied territories.

The more prominent Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), a prime suspect in the immediate aftermath of the Lockerbie atrocity, also had an unspecified number of its members accused in the trial indictment.

Both groups have denied involvement, with protestations that, when they were involved in the armed struggle, their operations were directed exclusively against Israel.

Before the emergence in the late 1980s and 1990s of Hamas and Hezbollah as the major vehicles of militant (Islamic) resistance against Israel, the PFLP-GC, founded by Ahmad Jibril in 1968, took the lead in anti-Israeli attacks. (...)

Ahmad Jibril was born in the Palestinian city of Jaffa, now in Israel, in 1928, but his family moved to Syria and he became an officer in the Syrian army, reportedly attending the British military academy at Sandhurst.

He set up the small Palestinian Liberation Front in 1959, joining forces in 1967 with fellow radical George Habash to found the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

His breakaway PFLP-GC was founded after tensions arose between Syria and Mr Habash. Mr Jibril has remained consistently pro-Syrian ever since.

This orientation caused splits with other Palestinian organisations, such as the pro-Iraqi Fatah Revolutionary Council (the Abu Nidal group) in 1978, and the umbrella PLO in the mid-1980s, when Yasser Arafat broke with Damascus over negotiating with Israel for territory.

Mr Jibril's "revolutionary nihilism" - as one rival leader put it - apparently also led him into the arms of similarly inclined states such as Libya and Iran.

Hardly present in Israel and the occupied territories themselves, his group was to be found wherever there were the most hardline opponents of Israel. (...)

West Germany was the main centre for alleged PFLP-GC cells, in association with PPSF cells in Scandinavia.

These are alleged to have been engaged in bomb making and planning attacks on behalf of Iran and Syria, including the Lockerbie bombing. Tehran's motive, with Syrian backing, could have been revenge for the July 1988 shooting down of an Iranian airliner with the loss of all 270 people on board by a US warship in the Gulf.

The possibility of Libyan sponsorship, to avenge the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi, was also mooted in the aftermath of Lockerbie. The PFLP-GC had been linked to Col Gaddafi, who reportedly arranged training for Mr Jibril's fighters and even recruited them in his war against Chad in the 1980s.

However, there remain many sceptics who believe Washington's identification of Libya as the sole perpetrator of the Lockerbie bombing has much more to do with politics than evidence.

The first US theories put Syria and Iran firmly in the frame, but that changed after Syria joined the alliance to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, and shortly thereafter Damascus became a key player in the US-sponsored Arab-Israeli peace process.

But it is in the nature of groups like PFLP-GC, and their relationship with the states which support them, that the whole truth may never come out.

[RB: Dr Kevin Bannon’s rather different perspective on the PFLP-GC can be read here and here.]

UK Court quest for Lockerbie facts

[This is the heading over an item dated 14 May 1998 on The Pan Am 103 Crash Website. The subheading reads “Ian Black on a mother's search for truth behind PanAm tragedy” which is a strong indication that the article was published in The Guardian, though I can find no trace of it on the newspaper’s website. It reads as follows:]

The mother of a British victim of the Lockerbie disaster is going to the High Court after failing to force an inquest to reveal more about the case.

Nearly 10 years after PanAm flight 103 exploded, killing 270 people, Elizabeth Wright, a London psychiatrist, is seeking judicial review of the decision of a Sussex coroner that he could not conduct an inquest on her son Andrew.

Andrew Gillies-Wright, then 24, was flying to New York for Christmas when he died on December 21, 1988. He was cremated and his ashes interred in South Lancing, West Sussex. Dr Wright, like other Lockerbie relatives seeking movement after years of impasse, agreed to act as a test case, but was told "the lawfully cremated remains of a person (that is that person's ashes) do not constitute 'a body' for the purpose of... jurisdiction."

The British families want an inquest to raise questions which were not answered in the Scottish fatal accident inquiry in Dumfries.Those include events on the ground after the incident, whether intelligence agencies had warned of an attack, and how it was that initial suspicions that Iran, Syria or Palestinians were responsible gave way to charges against Libya.

Gareth Peirce, Dr Wright's solicitor, said: "There is potentially clear and compelling evidence setting out a scenario so different from the one that has been officially presented that it's a continuing national and international disgrace that it remains hidden, and that it falls to the families of the victims to unravel it."

Behind the legal arguments being prepared by Ms Peirce and Michael Mansfield, QC, lies the pain of bereaved families whose hope of seeing justice is diminishing almost a decade after the crime. "It shows what sort of position we find ourselves in when we have to discuss whether a cremated human being is a body," said Pam Dix, spokesperson for UK Families Flight 103.

She added: "We were not satisfied with the fatal accident inquiry, and we see the inquest as one way to further our quest to find out exactly what happened... We want information, not blame.

"We know intelligence won't be openly discussed in any court, but we would like to see how far we could go in getting these matters aired."

Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, returned from Libya last month with "strong assurances" that the suspects would be handed over for trial in a neutral country. He accused the Government of "following slavishly in America's slipstream", despite the comment by Nelson Mandela that no nation should be "complainant, prosecutor and judge".

Roger Stone, the West Sussex coroner, wrote after refusing an inquest on Mr Gillies-Wright: "I hope, given time, that Dr Wright and other members of the family will find it possible to come to terms with their son's tragic death and take comfort from the loving memories they no doubt hold of him."

[RB: If a judicial review was in fact applied for (on which I can find no information) it clearly did not succeed.]

Extracts from MacAskill book to appear in Sunday Times

[On page 37 of today’s Scottish edition of The Times there appears an advertisement in the following terms:]

THE SUNDAY TIMES

SCOTLAND

The Lockerbie Bombing:

The search for justice

In exclusive extracts from his

powerful new book, Kenny

MacAskill, the man who freed

the Lockerbie bomber, lays bare

the commercial interests that

led UK ministers to push for his

return to Libya. And who he

believes was really responsible

for Britain’s worst terrorist

attack.

Starting this weekend, only in

The Sunday Times

[RB: It may perhaps be worth recalling that on 3 May 2016 there appeared in The Times an article headlined MacAskill accused of cashing in on Lockerbie.]

US normalization of relations with Libya

[What follows is excerpted from an item on the ITN Source website:]

A flag raising ceremony on Wednesday May 13 [2009] has symbolically marked the return of the US to Libya after a 30 year absence.

The ceremony, held before foreign diplomats, officials and media, took place in the new US Embassy compound, still being completed, in Tripoli.

The new US ambassador to Libya, Gene A Cretz, said that he was continuing the daily work of normalising relations with the Libyan government, and creating new ties with the Libyan people. An American visa section opened in Tripoli in April.

The return of the US to Libya and of improving diplomatic relations between Washington and Tripoli comes three decades after ties were severed. In November 1972, the US withdrew its ambassador from Tripoli after it accused Libya of supporting international terrorism. US-Libyan relations have dramatically improved since December 2003 after Tripoli's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction programs.

"I've been here over four months and I have found nothing but courtesy on the part of the Libyan officials with whom I have dealt with. I have found nothing but warmth and welcoming spirit from the Libyans who I have met on the street or visiting or whatever. I think we have come a long way even just since the time I have been here in terms of establishing a working relationship with the Libyan government," Cretz said to waiting media.

He said in the short time he had been in Tripoli, he thought the two countries had made much progress in building a new relationship.

"I would say on an official level we have made progress in several different areas and we look forward to even more progress and I think that today's ceremony in which we raised our flag here is just another building block on the way to what we consider to be a normalisation of relationships with the Libyan government and the Libyan people."

Since relations between the two have improved, the United States has ended its major economic sanctions on Libya and has dropped it from a State Department blacklist for "state sponsors of terrorism".

[RB: Less than two-and-a-half years later the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was saying “We came, we saw, he died” on hearing that Muammar Gaddafi had been brutally killed.]

The discovery of the dodgy circuit board fragment

[It was on this date in 1989 that the fragment of circuit board that was used to link the Lockerbie bomb to a MST-13 timer and hence to Libya was discovered among material that had been collected in January. Here is what Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer says on his PT35B website:]

Fragment of circuit board is found in PI/995 by Dr Hayes on 12 May 89, according to page 51 of Dr Hayes notes. The police production logs for PT/35 record it as having been found by Dr Hayes at RARDE on 12 May 1989. In his evidence (p2608) Hayes said he had no memory of finding the timer fragment independent of his notes. In his chapter 8 Crown precognition (“CP”), Hayes said his recollection was that he worked alone when carrying out examination of debris, but that he occasionally called Allen Feraday in when something of interest was found. Feraday in his chapter 8 CP referred to the discovery of PT/35 and PT/2 and said that he remembered when this was done. He stated that although Hayes was carrying out the examination, he thought Hayes invited him in to see the pieces embedded in PI/995 before Hayes removed them. He stated that Hayes knew he would be interested in what Hayes found, and he therefore remembered that PT/2 and PT/35 were extracted from PI/995. In his chapter 10 CP Feraday does not specifically mention his memory of PT/35’s extraction. He states that initially the main concern was with the pieces of cassette recorder manual that were found in PI/995, as they appeared to support the identification of fragments discovered earlier, and it was only at a later stage that the potential significance of PT/35(b) became clear.

Frank Mulholland to become judge

[A Scottish Government press release announces today that the Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland QC is amongst five new judges of the Court of Session and High Court of Justiciary. It reads as follows:]

Her Majesty the Queen has appointed five new Senators to the College of Justice on the recommendation of the First Minister.

Sheriff John Beckett QC, Ailsa Carmichael QC, Alistair Clark QC, the Rt Hon Frank Mulholland QC and Andrew Stewart QC will sit as judges in the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary.

The judges will deal with Scotland’s most important criminal and civil cases.

Their appointments take effect on dates to be agreed by the Lord President. Four of the appointments are to fill existing vacancies. The fifth appointment, to be taken up by Frank Mulholland QC, will take effect following the retirement of a senator later in the year.

Campaigners’ Lockerbie plea to government over Lord Advocate's comments

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

A campaign group whose members believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was innocent of the Lockerbie bombing has urged “political intervention” from the Scottish Government.

The call from Justice for Megrahi (JfM) comes after the outgoing Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland speculated about a possible new trial for the bombing – which JfM said showed he had “gone rogue”.

Investigators from Scotland and the US said last year that they had identified two Libyans as suspects over the 1988 atrocity.

Mulholland had previously indicated he would stand down after the Holyrood elections and, in an interview to mark the occasion he told STV there was a “realistic possibility” of a second trial over bombing, which killed 270 people.

JfM told The National: “The time has come for political intervention by the Scottish Government as the Lord Advocate appears to have gone rogue in relation to his speculation about Lockerbie. It is particularly difficult to understand his statements given that we are awaiting the result of a three-year Police Scotland investigation into criminal allegations related to Lockerbie which, if proved, will cast severe doubt not only on Mr Megrahi’s original conviction but by implication on the guilt of the other ‘suspects’ Mr Mulholland claims to be pursuing.

“It was only in March this year that leading legal commentators criticised Mr Mulholland in relation to this report and yet he continues to publicly undermine the police inquiry.

“This makes it quite clear that he has made his mind up and will not be diverted from making his views public at every opportunity.

“Given this unprecedented stance it is a constitutional disgrace that the Crown Office will have the final say in relation to any prosecutions resulting from the police inquiry.

“The time is long overdue for the Scottish Government to intervene on behalf of the Scottish people.”

In his interview, Mulholland said he had been to the Libyan capital Tripoli twice, and had established “good relations” with the country’s attorney general.

“We’re currently at a stage where there are a number of outstanding international letters of request, one of which is seeking the permission of the Libyan authorities to interview two named individuals as suspects,” he said. “I hope that the Libyans will grant permission for that to be done. I obviously can’t say too much publicly but a lot of work is going on behind the scenes to make that happen.”

Mulholland and the US Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced in October that there was “a proper basis in law” to treat the two Libyans as suspects. Authorities did not name the men, but they are known to be Colonel Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi, and Abouajela Masud.

Both are being held in Libyan jails, where Senussi is appealing against a death sentence and Masud is serving 10 years for bomb making.