UN Secretary General meets Gaddafi over Lockerbie

[What follows is the text of a United Nations press release issued on this date in 1998:]

Secretary-General Kofi Annan left the Tunisian island of Djerba for Libya on the morning of Saturday, 5 December, and was greeted in Tripoli by Libya's Ambassador to the United Nations, Abuzed Omar Dorda. The Secretary- General then flew to Sirte where he was met by Libya's senior foreign affairs official, Omar Mustafa Al-Muntasser.

He and Mr Muntasser then went to a government guest house in the Sirte conference centre, where they had lunch together and held a working session with their delegations for more than an hour. The meeting was described as positive and friendly. The Libyan side raised a number of remaining issues of concern regarding the Lockerbie suspects, and the Secretary-General sought to reassure them that all the governments concerned were dealing in good faith.

Before lunch, during his previously unscheduled visit to the Libyan capital, the Secretary-General had a private meeting with the President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, current President of the Organization of the African Unity (OAU), who was visiting Libya.

At about 7 pm, the Secretary-General left the Sirte conference centre for a meeting with Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Al-Qadhafi which lasted for about an hour and a half. On his return to Tripoli, the Secretary-General gave a press conference in which he described as "a step forward" his efforts to bring to closure the matter of the transfer of the Libyan suspects to a court in a third country. He said he expected the issue to be taken up at a meeting of the Libyan People's Congress in the coming week.

The Secretary-General arrived back in Djerba at around midnight on Saturday night, and departed the following morning for the United Arab Emirates, to participate in the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

“The evidence against him is very weak”

[Le Figaro on Saturday, 8 December 2007 published a lengthy interview with Colonel Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam. Here is what he had to say about Lockerbie:]

Le Figaro: Quelle est votre position sur Abd el-Basset al-Megrahi, le responsable des renseignements emprisonné en Écosse pour l’attentat de Lockerbie, et qui a obtenu le droit à faire appel?

Saif: Nous pensons qu’il est innocent, et nous nous battrons jusqu’au bout pour qu’il rentre chez lui. Les preuves contre lui sont très faibles. Elles ont été manipulées.

Le Figaro: S’il est innocenté, la Libye demandera-t-elle le remboursement des compensations qu’elle a versées aux familles?

Saif: Je ne sais pas.

[RB: The full interview can be read here. An English translation, courtesy of Google Translate, can be read here.]

Concerns over Crown Office

[What follows is a brief excerpt from an article by Chris Marshall headlined Prosecution service has its own case to answer that appears in today’s edition of The Scotsman:]

In a series of written submissions to the justice committee, bar associations have warned that fiscal deputes are being forced to proceed to trial in cases involving domestic abuse or hate crime because of national policy rather than their own professional judgment.

Bar associations representing lawyers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen all raised the issue with MSPs, describing it as a “serious concern”.

In its submission, Edinburgh Bar Association said: “The leeching away of the discretion of the procurator fiscal depute in court to take decisions on the prosecution is the greatest enemy to efficiency and effective management by COPFS”.

Then came a further warning last week from an anonymous fiscal depute citing “grave concerns...of cases proceeding to trial without there being sufficient evidence”.

The prosecutor warned of an “ever-increasing gap between management and frontline staff” and said serious and complex cases were being indicted for trial without “any prospect” of sufficient evidence.

Lord Advocate James Wolffe currently has plenty on his plate, not least spearheading the Scottish Government’s Article 50 case at the Supreme Court. There is also the soon-to-be concluded police investigation into criminal allegations against the Crown and others over its handling of the prosecution of the man later convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

But there is also now plenty to suggest there is much to concern the Lord Advocate within the prosecution service itself.

The guilty verdict was unreasonable

[What follows is excerpted from an article by John Ashton headed Eight inconvenient truths about Lockerbie, which the media and authorities are ignoring:]

The prosecution case, which was accepted by the Scottish judges who convicted Mr Megrahi, was that on the morning of 21 December 1988, while travelling under a false name, he managed to smuggle a brown Samsonite suitcase containing a bomb onto an Air Malta flight from Malta to Frankfurt. An expert in airline security and alleged senior intelligence officer, Megrahi was said to have labelled the case for onward transfer to Pan Am flight 103A from Frankfurt to London Heathrow and Pan Am 103 from Heathrow to New York.

He supposedly bought clothes for the suitcase at a small Maltese shop called Mary’s House on an earlier visit to the island on 7 December. The shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, who was the prosecution’s star witness, told the court that Mr Megrahi resembled the man who had bought the clothes. The Malta link was confirmed by baggage records from Frankfurt airport, which appeared to show that a suitcase from the Air Malta flight had been forwarded to Pan Am 103. (...)

3. It’s official – the court judgment was unreasonable

In 2007, following a four-year review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (the official body responsible for examining alleged miscarriages of justice) referred Mr Megrahi’s conviction to the appeal court on no fewer than six grounds. He abandoned the appeal in 2009 when terminally ill with cancer in the belief that it would help smooth the way for his release from prison on compassionate grounds.

Crucially, one of the SCCRC’s six grounds was that there was no “reasonable foundation” for the crucial finding that he bought the clothes on 7 December 1988, which was his only window of opportunity. Why did the commission reach this conclusion? Because Mr Gauci was clear that, as he was leaving the shop, the clothes purchaser bought an umbrella because it had started to rain. Yet meteorological evidence heard by the court demonstrated that there was no rain on 7 December. If Mr Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes on 7 December, the prosecution case collapses, so the SCCRC had come as close as it legally could to saying that the guilty verdict itself was unreasonable.

Lockerbie: mystery witness 'saw Libyans making bomb'

[This is the headline over a report that appeared in The Independent on this date in 1999. It reads as follows:]

Senior Scottish prosecutors in the Lockerbie bombing case have recently visited the United States to interview a witness who claims to have seen the two Libyan defendants prepare the bomb.

The identity of the mystery witness - a Libyan - is known to The Independent and has been protected since the man went into hiding in the US in 1992 or earlier. His credibility will be crucial to the full trial, which is expected to begin on 2 February next year. [RB: The witness in question was, of course, Abdul Majid Giaka. His testimony at the trial was assessed by the judges as utterly incredible and unreliable. Further details can be found here.]

The news comes as attention focuses on Camp Zeist, a former US base in the Netherlands, where Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 47, and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, 43, will appear tomorrow for the first time in front of a Scottish judge.

Lord Sutherland will hear a challenge from the men's lawyers to the conspiracy charge, which, it will be claimed, should not be presented to a Scottish court. They will claim that since the alleged conspiracy took place outside Scotland, the court is acting beyond its jurisdiction.

Lawyers for the prosecution were yesterday declining to comment on their contacts with witnesses. The Libyan witness's statements are believed to implicate both defendants in a plot which led to the placing of the bomb on Pan Am flight 103 from Frankfurt to New York, via London, in December 1988.

The two men, alleged to be Libyan intelligence officers, deny the charges of murder, conspiracy to murder and breaching the 1982 Aviation Security Act. They were extradited from Libya to Scottish custody in April this year after an eight-year battle. [RB: Megrahi and Fhimah were not extradited: they voluntarily surrendered themselves for trial.]

Lockerbie defence case begins

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

Lawyers for one of the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing have begun presenting his defence at the Scottish court in the Netherlands.

They attempted to undermine allegations that a shopkeeper sold clothing, which was packed round the bomb that blew up Pam Am Flight 103, to one of the accused.

Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci had told the court that he sold clothes to a man - whom he identified in court as the first accused Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - at his shop in Sliema on 7 December, 1988.

He alleged that Mr Al Megrahi had also bought an umbrella because it was raining at that time.

Charred fragments of the clothing were recovered from the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 and traced back to Mr Gauci's shop.

The prosecution has alleged that the garments were in the suitcase carrying the bomb which blew the plane apart, killing 270 people.

On day 76 of the trial at Camp Zeist, lawyers for Mr Al Megrahi called retired meteorologist Major Joseph Mifsud who worked in Malta's Luqa airport in 1988.

Mr Mifsud, the 230th person to give evidence at the trial, referred to weather records kept in December 1988.

He told the court that other than some light showers during the morning, there was no rainfall at the airport prior to midnight on 7 December that year.

He said this meant it was unlikely there was any rain in Sliema, 5km away at about the time the clothes were sold.

Defence lawyers also began to concentrate on the activities of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) during October 1988.

They have already indicated that they would produce evidence which would incriminate others, including the PFLP-GC.

FBI agent Edward Marshman read from transcripts of interviews with PFLP-GC member Marwan Kreeshat, who said he had made bombs for the organisation.

Mr Kreeshat was jailed for 18 years in his absence for his part in placing a bomb in a record player on an El Al flight from Rome to Tel Aviv in 1972.

He was eventually arrested by the Germans in October 1988, but released in December that year.

Mr Marshman, 42, told the court that Mr Kreeshat was interviewed at the headquarters of the Jordanian Intelligence Services in Jordan by FBI agents in November 1989.

Mr Kreeshat had explained that he was an agent of that intelligence service and was sent to Europe to infiltrate the PFLP-GC.

The court heard that Mr Kreeshat, who has refused to appear as a witness at the trial, was experienced in building improvised explosive devices (IEDs) within radio cassette recorders.

The PFLP-GC had planted them aboard aircraft using women as "unwitting couriers" to whom operatives would propose marriage after establishing a relationship.

They would then send the woman on ahead and give her an IED package to carry on board an aircraft, according to excerpts from transcripts of interviews with Mr Kreeshat read out in court.

The court heard that in October 1988, Mr Kreeshat was summoned to Germany where he met with colleagues and spent time shopping for electrical components and timers and working on building such devices.

He worked on five devices, the fifth of which went missing from his room after one of his colleagues came in while he was taking a shower.

He assumed his colleague took it away and the court also heard that Mr Kreeshat thought that device was a Toshiba radio cassette recorder.

The prosecution has alleged that the bomb which destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 was hidden in a Toshiba SF16 Bombeat radio cassette recorder and programmed to be detonated by an electronic timer.

However, reading from a transcript of the FBI interviews with Mr Kreeshat, Mr Marshman said: "He Kreeshat said he would not use an SF16 to build into an IED as there is not enough space inside.

"He said he would not remove any parts to get more space as then the radio would not work as it's supposed to.

"It is important it works so such a device would not be detected."

Pan Am ceases operations

[What follows is excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pan American World Airways:]

While a program to refurbish Pan Am aircraft and improve the company's on-time performance began showing positive results (in fact, Pan Am's most profitable quarter ever was the third quarter of 1988), on December 21, 1988, the terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi above Lockerbie, Scotland, resulted in 270 fatalities. Pan Am's iconic image had made it a repeated target for terrorists, resulting in many travelers avoiding the airline as they had begun to associate it with danger. (...)

Pan Am was forced to declare bankruptcy on January 8, 1991. Delta Air Lines purchased the remaining profitable assets of Pan Am, including its remaining European routes and Frankfurt mini hub, the Shuttle operation, 45 jets, and the Pan Am Worldport at John F. Kennedy Airport, for $416 million. (...)

Pan Am ceased operations on December 4, 1991 following a decision by Delta's CEO, Ron Allen, and other senior executives not to go ahead with the final $25 million payment Pan Am was scheduled to receive the weekend after Thanksgiving. As a result, some 7,500 Pan Am employees lost their jobs, thousands of whom had worked in the New York City area and were preparing to move to the Miami area to work at Pan Am's new headquarters near Miami International Airport.

Gaddafi: Megrahi family to sue over prison neglect

[What follows is the text of a report that appeared in the Evening Standard on this date in 2010:]

The family of the Lockerbie bomber is to sue over his "neglect" in a Scottish jail, Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi has said.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was freed from Greenock prison on compassionate grounds last year after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.

The Libyan was sentenced to life in jail after his conviction for the murder of 270 people in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland.

He returned to his home country where he is said to be "very ill".

Colonel Gaddafi spoke about the bomber to staff and students at the London School of Economics over a video link on Thursday.

According to reports, he told them: "His health was not looked after in prison. He didn't have any periodic examination. I wish him a long life.

"After he passes away, his family will demand compensation because he was deliberately neglected in prison."

The decision to free Megrahi, taken by Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, sparked fury in the US and was condemned by President Barack Obama's administration.

Meanwhile a group of campaigners in the UK is calling for an independent inquiry into his conviction.

[RB: No such action was ever raised or, I believe, seriously contemplated.]

Kofi Annan in Lockerbie trial mission

[This is the headline over a report that appeared in The Independent on this date in 1998. It reads as follows:]

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, is expected to meet Muammar Gaddafi this weekend, amid mounting speculation that the Libyan leader is on the verge of handing over two suspects, wanted for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Speaking in Algiers, Mr Annan said he was in contact with the Libyan Government, and "might go" to Libya when he ends a visit to Tunisia.

In fact it is assumed he will go - and, possibly, seal arrangements for Abdel Basset Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah to face trial at a court in The Hague.

With the 10th anniversary of the destruction of PanAm's flight 103 just 18 days away, the Foreign Office is bending over backwards to avoid any impression of a deadline.

Only too aware of Mr Gaddafi's proven capacity for stalling, officials in London merely express encouragement at the "serious engagement" of the Libyans in seeking a resolution of the issue.

Exactly what Mr Annan will do in Tripoli is unclear.

If the end game is at hand, he would be expected to confirm that, once the suspects had been surrendered, the UN's sanctions against Libya would be lifted.

But during a phone conversation last week with Mr Annan, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, made it clear that there could be no negotiation.

The ball, Britain insists, is firmly in the Libyan court. The hope is, as one official put it, "that Annan's going there will be a peg for Gaddafi to make an announcement."

But the Libyan's intentions are as mysterious as ever. Years of total deadlock were broken in August when the US and Britain, fearful that UN sanctions aimed at isolating Libya were slowly dying by default, abandoned their long standing insistence that the two men's trial be held in Scotland or America.

In return, Tripoli seemed to agree in principle to hand over the suspects.

Nonetheless, prevarication over the details had continued, before the waters were further muddied last week by reports from Tripoli of the trial and imprisonment of three senior Libyan security officials, allegedly on the grounds of "dereliction of duty" over the bombing, in which 270 people were killed.

That step was interpreted in some quarters as a sign that the crucial breakthrough was at hand, and that by jailing three key witnesses who would otherwise have been called to testify in The Hague, the Libyans were seeking to make it hard, if not impossible, to convict Megrahi and Fhimah.

Other analysts however maintain that the three - one of them the brother- in-law of Mr Gaddafi himself - are so senior that their belated "imprisonment", if such it is, may presage a definitive refusal to deliver the two men accused by the West of actually planting the suitcase bomb which blew the PanAm Jumbo jet apart.

According to this theory, the Libyan president would argue that the individuals who had plotted the crime had been punished and justice done, so that no grounds any longer existed for a trial of the mere foot soldiers in Britain's worst ever terrorist outrage.

Libyan lawyers set up fund for defence of Megrahi and Fhimah

[The following are two snippets from the Libya: News and Views website on this date in 1998:]

A Libyan lawyers' union has created a fund to help pay for the defense of two Libyans charged in the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. Mohammed al-Ellagi, head of the Libyan Lawyers' Union, was quoted as saying that a number of Arab lawyers have volunteered their expertise or pledged money to help defend the suspects, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lameen Khalifa Fhimah. Al-Ellagi did not say how much money the union hoped to collect. The union is licensed by the Libyan government. Libya has accepted in principle a joint US-British offer to try the Libyans in the Netherlands under Scottish law and with Scottish judges. [Spokane.net]

Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi said the United States and Britain must drop their conditions if they want a trial of two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing take place in the Netherlands, the official Libyan news agency JANA reported Monday. "We challenge America and Britain not to set conditions which are bound to be firmly rejected, for holding that (Lockerbie) trial and if they wanted it be held and solve this issue,'' the agency, monitored in Tunis, quoted al-Qadhafi as saying. Al-Qadhafi, who was talking at a banquet in the Libyan coastal town of Sirte, some 280 miles east of Tripoli, in honor of visiting Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, did not say to which US and British conditions he was referring to. [Reuters]

Lockerbie relative's doubts over Megrahi release

[This is the headline over a report published on this date in 2009 in The Scotsman. It reads as follows:]

Fears have been raised that Kenny MacAskill unduly influenced the course of criminal proceedings by delaying key decisions over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

As Mr MacAskill faces MSPs today to answer questions about the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a Lockerbie relative said it was "unclear" whether the justice secretary acted responsibly.

In a submission to Holyrood's justice committee, Matt Berkley, who lost his brother in the bombing, highlighted delays he says put pressure on the bomber to drop his appeal.

These include a 43-day wait to contact the relatives after the transfer application was made and a three-week wait to respond to Megrahi's acceptance of Mr MacAskill's invitation for a meeting.

Mr Berkley also said it was not clear the Scottish Government had "provided accurate, fair and balanced information to the prisoner". He said Mr MacAskill appeared not to have told Megrahi the range of options he had in relation to the dropping of his appeal.

"Did the justice secretary take adequate care, through promptness of action and appropriate information to the appellant, to avoid influencing the court process?" asked Mr Berkley in his submission.

A spokesman for Mr MacAskill said: "Megrahi and his legal team chose to abandon their appeal … their decision bore no relation to the release."

Unsubstantiated and unattributed intelligence rumours

[The following are excerpts from a report in The Sunday Times of 29 November 2009. The document referred to is a US State Department press release dating from April 1992 which appeared on the State Department website for many years and is well known to all who have taken the trouble to follow the Lockerbie case. What motivated the newspaper to draw  attention to it again in November 2009 remains a mystery.]

The Lockerbie bomber was implicated in the purchase and development of chemical weapons by Libya, according to documents produced by the American government.

The papers also claim that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi sought to sponsor Latin American terrorist groups and to buy 1,000 letter bombs from Greek arms dealers while working as a Libyan intelligence officer. The documents, which were prepared by the US State Department, reveal the extent of Megrahi’s alleged terrorist activities. (...)

In 1987, Megrahi was appointed director of Libya’s Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS), which served the Department of Military Procurement. In a section headed “Procurement of chemical weapons precursors”, the documents state: “An al-Megrahi subordinate operating in Germany in 1988 played an important role in acquiring and shipping chemical weapons precursors to Libya. Megrahi is also linked to a senior manager of Libya’s chemical weapons development program.” (...)

Bill Aitken, justice spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, said the documents made a mockery of Britain’s ongoing trade links with Libya and the decision to release Megrahi. (...)

Frank Duggan, president of Washington-based Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said that the documents shed further light on Megrahi's terrorist activities.

"It was pretty clear that investigators from the US and Scotland knew they had a bad penny with Megrahi. I had never heard of Megrahi being linked with chemical weapons but his involvement doesn't surprise me. This strengthens the case against Megrahi as being the Lockerbie bomber."

Tony Kelly, Megrahi’s lawyer in Scotland, said he was unaware of the existence of the State Department documents but was sure they were based on “unsubstantiated and unattributed intelligence rumours”.

“If there was any evidence backing any of this up I am absolutely certain it would have been introduced at trial, and it wasn’t,” he said.

Prosecution failure to disclose

[What follows is based on an item that was originally posted on this blog on this date in 2007:]

Lockerbie evidence withheld from defence

This is the title of an article posted today on the Cossacks Breaking News website. Internal evidence suggests that it derives from The Scotsman but I have not been able to find the piece on that newspaper's website. [RB: The article in The Scotsman can now be found here.] Part of the story reads:

"Fresh doubt has been cast over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber after it emerged a document containing vital evidence about the bomb timer has never been shown to the defence.

The Scotsman has learned that the failure to disclose the classified document, which concerns the supply of timers identical to the one said to have been used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103, led a review body that examined the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to conclude a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

It was not previously known that doubts over the timer were grounds for an appeal.

The content of the document remains a mystery as sensitive details of the report seen by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) have been blacked out, or redacted. It is understood that security services also prevented the SCCRC from releasing the report, or disclosing any of its contents, to Megrahi or his lawyers, who are thought likely to seek a court order forcing the Crown Office to hand it over.

The document is among six points in the case which the SCCRC has concluded casts doubt over the reliability of Megrahi’s conviction. The SCCRC detailed some of these in a summary of its findings in June, but others, including the failure to disclose this document, remained secret." (...)

None of this seems terribly earth-shattering: those who attended, or followed proceedings at, the procedural hearing on 11 October [2007] had already reached the inevitable conclusion that the failure by the Crown to disclose the document relating to timers was one of the grounds upon which the SCCRC had referred the case back to the appeal court.

UK and US call for surrender of accused Libyans

On 27 November 1991 the Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States each issued a statement calling upon the Libyan Government to hand over the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing to either the Scottish or the American authorities for trial, to disclose all that it knows of the crime, and to pay appropriate compensation.  Requests for the extradition of the suspects had been transmitted to the Government of Libya by diplomatic channels. The full text of the statement can be read here in a UN Security Council document (Annex III). The same UN document reproduces the full announcement of the charges which was made by the Lord Advocate, Peter Fraser QC, on 14 November 1991 (Annex I) and a statement made by the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, in the House of Commons on the same date (Annex II).

Lockerbie Bombing: ‘Case Closed’ Says Libya’s Justice Minister

[This is the headline over a report that appeared in The Huffington Post on this date in 2011. It reads as follows:]

Scottish prosecutors’ hopes of help with their investigation into the Lockerbie bombing look set to be dashed after Libya’s interim justice minister reportedly said “the case is closed”.

Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC has requested that Libyan authorities hand over any information that could lead to a second trial over the atrocity, which killed 270 people in December 1988.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to have been convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie.

But according to reports, Libya’s interim justice minister Mohammed al-Alagi, responding to news of the request, told a press conference: “The case is closed.”

The Crown Office declined to comment on the interim justice minister’s comment.

Prosecutors are seeking assistance from Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) to gain evidence that could lead to the conviction of others involved in the atrocity.

Earlier a Crown Office spokesman said that it accepts that Megrahi “did not act alone” and it is hopeful recent developments in Libya will mean the country will assist with the inquiry.

He said: “The trial court accepted that Mr Megrahi acted in furtherance of the Libyan intelligence services in an act of state-sponsored terrorism and did not act alone.

“Lockerbie remains an open inquiry concerning the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi in the murder of 270 people.

“The Crown will continue to pursue lines of inquiry that become available, and following recent events in Libya, has asked the National Transitional Council, through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for assistance with the investigation.”