[This is the headline over an article published today on the Malta InsideOut website. It reads as follows:]
The Lockerbie bombing is an open wound. It is one of the 20th century’s most horrific events. Yet, despite the murderous act being well within living memory, nearly all aspects of it have taken on the mantel of myth and mystery. The fall of the Ghaddafi regime with its prospect of shedding new light on the atrocity rekindled public interest and opened up the various, latent conspiracy affairs. Malta, as the alleged origin of the bomb’s journey, is a key protagonist in any account of the Lockerbie bombing.
The staging of the drama ‘The Lockerbie Bomber’ in Malta this autumn is bound to be more than merely thought provoking. Few of us in Malta will encounter the script as a passive audience; the play by Kenneth N Ross is an incredibly powerful rendering of the aftermath of the Lockerbie disaster. It challenges public understanding of the event from three different perspectives; that of two parents who lost their young child in the crash; two journalists trying to piece together what happened on that fateful day; and two government officials with information to guard.
The play has just been on stage at the Alman Theatre, Alloa, in Scotland. Here in Malta, director Herman Grech and DnA Theatre, headed by Alan Montanaro and Denise Mulholland, are planning to stage the play at St James Cavalier in October. Herman Grech, who has followed closely and reported on the Lockerbie affair in his career at The Times of Malta, talks to us about the background to the play and the power of staging it in Malta.
Director’s view – “The Lockerbie Bomber”
Q1. The Lockerbie ‘affair’ has been of keen interest to you professionally for many years; it’s not simply something you came across now in its dramaturgical form as a provoking piece to stage. Can you talk us briefly through your background interest in Lockerbie?
I vividly remember watching the horror unfold on BBC TV at my brother’s London apartment in December 1988, as the Christmas lights flickered. Two hundred fifty-nine were on board; another 11 killed on land. It was surreal. Years later, the Malta connection emerged, the ‘bad guy’ was netted and the rest is history. Or so we thought. After Megrahi was locked up it emerged that the court was denied vital evidence which, had it been heard, would have probably led to a different outcome. Some of that evidence was sensational, and hence the theories. As a journalist, I have tried to keep these legitimate questions at the top of the agenda.
Q2. You are widely read on the Lockerbie bombing in journalistic and legalistic accounts but what attracts you to this script in particular?
The Lockerbie Bomber is a new play and I felt it beautifully blended fact with fiction. Parents of a victim relive the bombing in its vivid, horrific detail. The two journalists’ characters are impeccably close to anyone who’s worked in the field. Then you have the government agents who animate the script. But most of all, I felt the script should challenge even the most cynical audience member to start asking questions and demand answers following the outrageous revelations which emerged just a few years ago.
Q3. Can a drama unturn more stones or provoke new responses to the Lockerbie affair, an event that has been well worked in the news?
It’s in the interest of some governments to ignore the legitimate questions raised about the case, and understandably so. The western world has been fed the story that a Libyan man and his country’s despotic regime were responsible for the worst terrorist atrocity on British soil. The play is already triggering off controversy for different reasons. A drama can be effective because more than the casual newspaper or news portal reader, in a theatre you are guaranteed a captive audience, some of whom might be teased into knowing more, and demand the truth.
Q4. What is Malta not confronting about Lockerbie that you feel this play will force us to confront, or at the very least make us uncomfortable about? Is this an ideal juncture to reopen the issues here?
Several arguments have been made to prove this could have been a gross miscarriage of justice, so there should be no time bar. The Maltese government has consistently said the bomb never departed from Luqa airport. If that is the case then Megrahi is innocent, plain and simple, yet it remains reluctant to say so.
The only thing which linked Megrahi to this atrocity is the fact that he supposedly bought the clothes in which the bomb was wrapped, a claim he vehemently denied. Meanwhile, the original court case conveniently made no mention of the fact there was a break-in at Heathrow airport hours before the disaster, or that the Maltese witness allegedly had been paid by the Americans. What was the real reason Megrahi was released? So many questions, but few answers.
Q5. You have spoken several times to Dr Jim Swire, father of a Lockerbie victim and a key campaigner for justice and transparency in the Lockerbie affair. How significant do you feel his voice has been in prompting this creative angle to readdressing the issues behind the bombing?
Jim Swire’s 23-year-old daughter was killed in the bombing. Would any parent speak and campaign the way Dr Swire did if he had the slightest suspicion that Megrahi could have been behind the bombing? Megrahi has since died, and Dr Swire and his campaign team still want the truth to emerge. It’s impossible for anyone who truly believes in justice to ignore his calls to at least probe the facts which emerged after the Lockerbie ‘bomber’ was jailed.
Q6. What do you envisage as the greatest challenges to staging it in Malta?
I’m assembling a top cast because the play is a 75-minute rollercoaster of emotions. It’s tragic in parts, thrilling in some sections, and even funny in others. The biggest challenge would be to ensure the audience understands the pertinent questions and why, perhaps, this remains one of the biggest secret of our times. I would like Maltese audiences, hopefully the government, to understand why a group of people who have nothing to gain, including parents of victims, have been harking for the case to be reopened, even now that Megrahi is dead.
Further info: The BBC ran a piece on the prospect of Malta staging “The Lockerbie Bombing” here.
[What follows is a review in today’s edition of The Scotsman by Joyce McMillan of a performance of the play The Lockerbie Bomber at Alloa’s Alman Theatre:]
“The Lockerbie Bomber” - The Alman, Alloa
* * *
The quotation marks around the title are significant, for like many who have investigated the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the writer of this powerful new play does not believe that the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the only man convicted following the bombing, was guilty as charged.
Although the characters are fictional – two bereaved parents, two journalists, a CIA man, an MI5 man – the play is as well-researched as any documentary about this case and even more disturbing in its impact.
If Kenneth H Ross’s treatment of the material has a flaw, it lies in his melodramatic account of the fate of one of the journalists working on the story at the time of Megrahi’s death. There is a torture scene involving the woman journalist, in which the CIA man, played with intensity and presence by Brian Paterson, dwindles from an interesting portrait of manipulative power into a caricature of a full-blown psychopath.
Elsewhere, though, the structure of the play is powerful and persuasive, as Ross traces how the unanswered questions about Lockerbie, and the subsequent trial, continue to haunt Scottish society. The acting is impressive and heartfelt, and there is a clever set, placing two pairs of burned-out airline seats against a backdrop of the Scottish Parliament lobby.
In the end, it’s the tragedy of the terrible loss of life at Lockerbie that seems to drive Ross’s important and passionate play. That, and the sense that Scotland must finally deliver real justice to the bereaved, or carry scars deep in its body politic that will damage our national life for generations to come.
[The following are excerpts from an article by Mark Lawson in today’s edition of The Guardian:]
In an early scene of the new Channel 4 drama series Utopia, an academic rejects a student's proposal for a PhD on conspiracy theories with the clincher: "I mean, conspiracies aren't very now, are they?" The line is winking inwardly because Utopia is the second conspiracy thriller in a row on this network, following Secret State – with a third, Complicit, soon to come.
So conspiracies are very now, and about to become even more so with the return of the genre's dark lord and author of what is more or less the bible of the form, The Da Vinci Code or, as it is known to non-believers, The Bad Book. Dan Brown revealed this week that his new novel, Inferno, will be published on 14 May. (...)
Although Brown's books frequently present religion as an agent of conspiracy, his literary career has benefited from a general western decline in faith. The human instinct to see a shape to our days, which once drove people to the Bible and Dante's Inferno, now sends them to The Da Vinci Code and Brown's Inferno. In frightened, sceptical times, conspiracy theories flourish.
And those who question official histories have recently received vindication, though not in the areas they hoped. While no truth has ever been proved in the favourite fantasies of conspiracy theorists – that, for example, the Apollo moon landings were faked, Princess Diana was murdered or President Obama is not an American – numerous grave conspiracies have been exposed.
The work of Bishop James Jones's commission of inquiry has exposed that the circumstances and causes of the deaths of 96 football supporters at Hillsborough were hidden by the police and other authorities in establishment machinations far more concrete and shocking than those long summoned up in sceptics' seances over the Kennedy assassination or the moonshots.
During much of the same period of British history, the activities of Sir Jimmy Savile and Sir Cyril Smith benefited from at the very least a conspiracy of silence, if no greater collusion, among some of those in the circles in which they moved. And, at a lesser level of human suffering, it is now established that intrigues and cabals existed in the banking sector to fix the Libor lending rate and seems likely that other collusions contributed to the wider banking collapse. And who knows what secret deals may be revealed by the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war if (after a delay that is itself the subject of conspiracy theories) it is eventually published?
We also now know that the private lives of the well known and those thrown into the news by tragedy or grief were routinely suffering intrusion from a conspiracy of journalists. (...)
The biggest conspiracies are to be found not in fiction about the far past, but in the facts of the present.
[Twelve months ago today, the following item headlined A deathbed farewell to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi appeared on this blog. I reproduce it simply to reassure worried readers that I have not (yet) expired in the baking heat of the Roggeveld:]
Even without the events of December 21, 1988, they would be the most unlikely of friends. Jim Swire, an Eton and Cambridge-educated doctor from Bromsgrove, and Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a former member of the Libyan security services who was convicted of murdering 270 people when a bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 as it flew over Lockerbie.
Swire’s daughter, Flora, was one of the passengers. She would have turned 24 the next day.
Last month, Flora’s father travelled to Tripoli for a meeting with the terminally ill Megrahi, who was released from a Scottish prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds. It was a remarkable journey for a 75-year-old man to make, not least because Swire undertook it in order to bid farewell to the man he now describes as his friend.
The pair have met on a number of occasions – once in prison in Scotland and twice in Libya – but Swire is sure their encounter in December was their last. “It was, a privilege to be allowed, essentially, to say goodbye to him,” Swire told an ITV camera crew who filmed part of his visit to Libya. He tells me he is “proud” to have known the man he calls Basset, the man so many others know as the Lockerbie bomber. “Megrahi is dying, and as a doctor I wanted to find out whether he has got the necessary painkillers.”
He has, but Swire cannot say how long the convicted terrorist might live. “He is a very sick man. He only talks in short sentences with pauses to get his breath back. He is looking death in the face, and he knows it.”
Swire speaks affectionately of the Libyan’s wife, Aisha, always by her husband’s side, holding his hand; he is almost jovial when speaking about Megrahi’s love of football. “I think that was the thing that endeared him to the other prisoners. He was popular prisoner and, although he lived a different sort of life from his fellow inmates, he did muck in with them.”
At the end of his meeting Swire, a Christian, was so moved he found one of only two churches in Tripoli, where he prayed for Megrahi.
Such gentle compassion for the man convicted of murdering his daughter is incredible, and Swire is aware that many might find it astonishing. But the simple fact of the matter in this most complex of cases is this: Swire does not believe Megrahi is guilty. Indeed, if anyone feels guilt then it is Swire himself, who once met Gaddafi to pressure the late Libyan leader into handing over Megrahi to stand trial. (...)
Swire does not seem to have the same sense of mercy towards Gaddafi, who went to his grave with his secrets. “I am totally satisfied, that he [Megrahi] had nothing to do with it. But that is very different to saying that Gaddafi had nothing to do with it.”
It was during the 2001 trial that Swire started to doubt Megrahi’s guilt. While Libya and Syria may have been involved, he believes Iran was ultimately responsible for Lockerbie, as revenge for the shooting down of an Iranair flight by the Americans.
It was in the early hours of Flora’s 24th birthday that the Swires received a phone call confirming their daughter was dead. “It never occurred to me that I would be trying to get justice for Flora 23 years later. I thought there would be an international investigation and the truth would come out in a year or two,” Swire says. He has lobbied five Prime Ministers for a public inquiry, all of whom seem to have fobbed the families off; and at least two of whom, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, were pictured cosying up to Gaddafi.
The Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission found in 2007 the Lockerbie verdict may have been a miscarriage of justice; Swire still hopes for a proper inquiry.
[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads as follows:]
Talks are under way to stage a new play in Malta about the Lockerbie bombing.
The 1988 bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie killed 270 people and was the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history.
The Lockerbie Bomber is the latest in a long line of books and plays tackling the subject, and it will be performed in Alloa's Alman Theatre this week.
Malta is a key location in the case, and a theatre director in the capital, Valletta, is now in talks with writer Alan Clark about staging it there.
The Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci was a crucial witness in the trial, identifying the only man convicted of the atrocity, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi.
Mr Gauci owned Mary's House clothes shop in the port of Sliema, and according to evidence given at Megrahi's trial in 2000, he sold him clothes which were said to have been wrapped around the bomb which brought down the flight.
Megrahi was also said to have loaded the bomb onto an Air Malta Flight at the island's Luqa airport.
He was convicted in 2001 but was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds in 2009, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died last year.
The new play about the bombing considers events from three perspectives; families, journalists and security experts.
And Valletta theatre director Herman Grech is keen to stage it in the Maltese capital later this year.
He said: "The play struck me because it recalls the bombing of the aircraft in its vivid, horrific detail.
"But most of all, the script challenges the audience into thinking whether, beyond the odd newspaper headline, this could have been one of the grossest miscarriages of justice of our times.
"I have also found it ironic that while the Maltese government has maintained that the bomb never departed from the island's airport, it has remained reluctant to challenge the accusations against Megrahi."
Mr Clark said: "Mr Grech and I have had preliminary discussions about performances in Malta. It's especially interesting because Malta has particular relevance to Lockerbie, an angle that the play examines."
He said he hoped performances of the play, both in Scotland and in Malta, would boost calls for an independent public inquiry into the prosecution of the case.
And Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the attack, said: "I welcome the play as it tries to shed light on what happened when the investigation went off the rails."
[What follows is the full text of a press release from Tryst Theatre:]
A Maltese theatre director has expressed an interest in staging a new play by a Scottish writer about the Lockerbie bombing.
Malta-based Herman Grech is in discussions with writer Alan Clark about presenting The Lockerbie Bomber in Valletta later this year.
The bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie killed 270 people and was the worst terrorist atrocity in the UK. Now, for the first time, the horrific tragedy has been brought to the stage in this new work which attempts to lift the veil of secrecy thrown over the bombing by successive Governments and security services.
Mr Grech, who is also Head of Media at The Times of Malta, said: "The play struck me because it recalls the bombing of the aircraft in its vivid, horrific detail. But most of all, the script challenges the audience into thinking whether, beyond the odd newspaper headline, this could have been one of the grossest miscarriages of justice of our times.
“I have also found it ironic that while the Maltese government has maintained that the bomb never departed from the island's airport, it has remained reluctant to challenge the accusations against Megrahi." [RB: An article on Lockerbie and Malta by Herman Grech can be read here.]
Alan Clark said: “Mr Grech and I have had preliminary discussions about performances in Malta. It’s especially interesting because Malta has particular relevance to Lockerbie, an angle that the play examines.
“The Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci identified Megrahi, the only man convicted of the atrocity, as resembling the man who bought clothes in his shop. Megrahi was at Malta’s Luqa Airport on the day of the bombing. It’s alleged the bomb was put on a feeder flight at Luqa which went to Frankfurt and then to London Heathrow before detonating over Lockerbie. Following the bombing, a small fragment of printed circuit board was found embedded in a scrap of the Maltese clothing. After Megrahi was convicted, Tony Gauci and his brother were paid an alleged $3m for their evidence by the US Department of Justice ‘Rewards for Justice’ programme. So Malta is absolutely central to the case.”
Clark continued: “It’s worth pointing out that the trial judges had problems with how the suitcase containing the bomb got loaded at Malta. In their determination, they said: ‘The absence of an explanation as to how the suitcase was taken into the system at Luqa is a major difficulty for the Crown case but after taking full account of that difficulty, we remain of the view that the primary suitcase began its journey at Luqa.’”
He added: “Since then, compelling new evidence has come to light that the verdict was terribly flawed – the Heathrow break-in, the bomb timer fragment, the view of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that there were six separate grounds where there may have been a miscarriage of justice. So it seems to me the only way the matter can be satisfactorily resolved is by having an independent public inquiry, not into Lockerbie itself, but specifically into the prosecution of the case – as allegations of evidence fabricated and evidence withheld continue to be made.
“I hope performances of the play, both here and in Malta, help us move towards such an inquiry.”
The play has been seen and welcomed by members of the Justice for Megrahi group. Founded in November 2008, the campaign maintains that the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing was a miscarriage of justice.
One of its members is former Police Superintendent Iain McKie who was at the premiere. “This is a challenging and thought-provoking play that brings the human suffering and political chicanery behind the tragedy of Lockerbie to vivid and dramatic life. It should be required viewing for every Scot as a reminder of a disaster that has become an indelible stain on the reputation ofScotland and its justice system."
And Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the attack, commented: “I welcome the play as it tries to shed light on what happened when the investigation went off the rails. I believe Megrahi was wrongly identified.”
Tryst Theatre is staging The Lockerbie Bomber in Alloa’s Alman Theatre from January 17-19 at 8pm. Call the Box Office on 07929 561 311 for tickets.
[This story features on the website of the Maltese newspaper The Independent, but not, strangely enough given Mr Grech's links, on that of The Times of Malta.]
In its link to a Workers World profile of former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Google News displays (or, at 08.45 GMT this morning, displayed) the following sentence: “On April 16, 1986, warplanes took off from Lockerbie, Scotland, and attacked Tripoli while US aircraft carriers shelled Benghazi, Libya.”
The relevant portion of the article itself (now) reads as follows: “On April 16, 1986, warplanes took off from Lakenheath AFB, Scotland, and attacked Tripoli while US aircraft carriers shelled Benghazi, Libya. Clark filed lawsuits against the US and British governments. He also opposed the recent US-aided overthrow of the Libyan government.”
Lakenheath is not, of course, in Scotland but in the southern English county of Suffolk.
[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on the website of the Alloa Advertiser. It reads as follows:]
The director of an Alloa play branded "despicable" by a woman whose daughter was murdered in the Lockerbie atrocity says he respects her view - but believes he was right to make the production.
Alan Clark's The Lockerbie Bomber, which depicts convicted and now deceased Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as a victim, goes on show next week at the Alman Theatre amid a storm of controversy.
Its story centres on a belief held by many - including another victim's father - that Megrahi was wrongly held responsible for the 1988 terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York, which killed 270 people.
However, that view was met with revulsion last week by American Susan Cohen (74), whose 20-year-old daughter Theodora perished in the blast.
She said, "Megrahi murdered my daughter - he's not a victim. It is repulsive to put Theodora's name in with his. Does he have any idea how horrible that is to the families?
"It's despicable and so insulting to those who lost relatives."
Speaking to the Advertiser, Alan (59), who wrote the play under the pseudonym of Kenneth N Ross, was at pains to stress that he sympathised with Susan's grief.
It is his belief, though, that Megrahi, who died of cancer in May 2012 almost three years after he was granted compassionate release from prison in Scotland, was the victim of a cover-up - and he hopes his play will cast a new light on to the matter.
Alan said, "I am so sorry for Mrs Cohen's loss. She clearly believes Megrahi was guilty as charged and I respect that view. She obviously wants closure and doesn't want this painful memory opened up again.
"However, the verdict now looks increasingly flawed and I hope that the play casts some light on this evidence. I hope it leads to a public enquiry into the prosecution of the case and the evidence suppressed and tampered with."
Alan was inspired to write the story after Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill declared on Megrahi's release that he "now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power. It is terminal, final and irrevocable. He is going to die".
Alan, from Larbert, said, "It sounded biblical. I wondered if it was all as it seemed. I came with an open mind and thought Megrahi must be guilty. He was convicted - surely they got it right. The more I delved, the more I thought it was strange and could make an interesting play."
The director, who has acted and directed with Falkirk's Tryst Theatre for around 20 years, took six months to finish the play - from the initial idea to the final 14th draft.
He managed to obtain authentic props from a disused Boeing 747 at Prestwick Airport and on Googling the plane's reference number was shocked to find out that it was a sister Pan Am of the Lockerbie one that crashed.
The harrowing play is set in the present day and looks at the tragedy from three different perspectives - a victim's family, journalists investigating the case, and the UK and US security services engaged in covering up what happened.
Grangemouth, Greenock, Glasgow and Guantanamo Bay are cleverly linked in the gritty and fast-moving 75-minute piece.
The play highlights several questions in the Megrahi case - including a claim that evidence was suppressed following an alleged break-in at the Heathrow baggage area 16 hours before take-off, and further theories that a fragment of the bomb found at Lockerbie did not come from a batch of timers sold to Libya in 1985, and how the Scottish criminal cases review commission found six separate grounds of appeal.
Alan's compelling writing also puts a spotlight on Maltese storekeeper Tony Gauci - a crucial witness for the prosecution who testified that he had sold Megrahi the clothing later found in the remains of the suitcase bomb.
At the trial, Gauci was said to have appeared uncertain about the exact date he sold the clothes in question, and was not entirely sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold.
Gauci was the only witness to link Megrahi directly to the improvised explosive device (IED) and it was later reported in October 2007 that he received a $2 million reward for testifying.
Alan added, "I personally believe Megrahi was set up and there's been a miscarriage of justice. Sooner or later, to protect itself, the Scottish Government will have to cast the Crown Office adrift and abandon the fiction that Megrahi's conviction is safe."
Falkirk's Tryst Theatre presents The Lockerbie Bomber at the Alman's Coach House Theatre, Alloa, from January 17-19 at 8pm. Tickets are £10 and are available from the Alman Box Office on 07929 561331.
[A review of the premiere of this play can be read here.]
[What follows is an excerpt from a report published yesterday on the website of the Libya Herald:]
Court proceedings against former Foreign Minister Abdulati Ibrahim Al-Obeidi and former Secretary General of the General People’s Congress Mohammed Zwai have been adjourned yet again, for the fourth time.
The two were in court today, Monday, accused in connection with the $2.7 billion in compensation payments for families of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, charges they both deny. However, after the court heard defense witnesses the judge decided to adjourn the trial until 4 February.
[Previous related blogposts can be found here and here and here.]
[A report published today on the BBC News website contains the following:]
US President Barack Obama is to nominate John Brennan as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, White House officials have said.
If confirmed, Mr Brennan will replace Gen David Petraeus, who resigned last year after admitting to an affair. (...)
Mr Brennan, a CIA veteran, is currently Mr Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser. He was heavily involved in the planning of the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Although put forward for the role in 2008, Mr Brennan withdrew his name amid questions about his connection to interrogation techniques used during the administration of George W Bush.
"Brennan has the full trust and confidence of the president," a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP news agency.
"Over the past four years, he has been involved in virtually all major national security issues and will be able to hit the ground running at CIA."
[Mr Brennan has on occasion commented on Lockerbie during his CIA career. Here are a few of his interventions:]
‘President Obama's top counterterrorism aide denounced Scotland's decision last year to release the Lockerbie bomber as a "travesty" and categorically denied a widespread report that the United States secretly endorsed the decision to free the Libyan terrorist, who was sentenced to life in prison. (...)
‘John Brennan, deputy national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism, this week wrote Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, in response to a major British newspaper's report Sunday that the Obama administration "secretly" agreed to al-Megrahi's release. (...)’
28 July 2010
‘The White House has told Scottish Ministers that they should return the Lockerbie bomber to jail in Scotland, amid fresh calls for a full public inquiry into his conviction and subsequent release.
‘John Brennan, counter-terrorism adviser to President Barack Obama, said Washington had expressed "strong conviction" to officials in Edinburgh over what he described as the "unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision" to free Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. (...)’
22 August 2010
‘John Brennan, President Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, stated that the United States has "expressed our strong conviction" to Scottish officials that Megrahi should not remain free. Brennan criticized what he termed the "unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision" to allow Megrahi's return to Libya on compassionate grounds on Aug 20, 2009 because he had cancer and was not expected to live more than about three months.’
1 September 2010
[Addendum from The Guardian of Tuesday, 8 January:]
The appointment of Brennan to replace disgraced general David Petraeus as head of the CIA has also been criticised because of Brennan's involvement with the Bush administration's backing for harsh interrogation techniques that many have described as torture, although Brennan denies he supported their use. (...)
The nomination of Brennan, while less controversial, has also come in for criticism from liberal Democrats unhappy at his previous record at the CIA.
Brennan had been a candidate to lead the agency in Obama's first term but withdrew his name from consideration. In doing so, Brennan told Obama that he was "a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush administration, such as the pre-emptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, to include waterboarding".
[A further letter from Christopher Frew headed Scepticism about Lockerbie inquiry in today’s edition of The Herald responds to comments on his earlier letter. It reads as follows:]
May I make it clear that I am not against a public inquiry on the Lockerbie bombing because it would upset US public opinion (Letters, January 5)?
Far from it.
Regarding the Libyan connection, an appropriately qualified small committee should be able to profit from the Libyan government's co-operation to clarify Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi's and, especially, Colonel Gaddafi's role prior to the bombing and then report openly on its methods and conclusions.
This would be quicker and less costly than a full public inquiry.
My main doubts, however, focus on the alternative possibility: involvement of the Iranians and the PFLP-GC, information on which would almost certainly depend on the co-operation of the US agencies, past and present.
My attitude to this is one of scepticism not one of deference.
[This is the heading over two letters published today in The Herald. They read as follows:]
You allude to the fact that grave disquiet about the handling of the Megrahi case continues ("New plea by LibDems for Lockerbie public inquiry", The Herald, January 3).
The concerns that Britain's worst terrorist atrocity may additionally have become Scotland's greatest miscarriage of justice are now so deep-seated that a full public inquiry is required to establish the truth and restore faith in the justice system.
That view is not shared by the legal establishment. Last month, Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate, went on public record and stigmatised those who question the validity of the Lockerbie verdict as "conspiracy theorists".
In support of his contention, he alluded to the number of judges (the trial judges and the appeal court judges) involved in the case and, in effect, concluded that the verdict was therefore unassailable.
Others, with perhaps a more sophisticated grasp of elementary logic, could point to the number of grounds which were used by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to justify the case being referred back to the Court of Criminal Appeal and conclude that Scotland's judges are not necessarily deities.
Thomas Crooks
Edinburgh
I cannot agree with Christopher Frew, who is opposed to the holding of a public inquiry into the Lockerbie case because it would upset US public opinion (Letters, January 4). Far too many questions hang over the conviction of the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi for the horrific bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, and these questions will not go away.
If Megrahi was innocent, justice demands that his name must be cleared for the sake of his family, for all the bereaved families, and for the reputation of the Scottish justice system.
Anything less than the truth should be unacceptable to the public on both sides of the Atlantic. Let a full public inquiry be held and the true facts be known.
Ruth Marr
Stirling
This is the title of an article by Morag Kerr published yesterday on the Wings Over Scotland website. It contains a masterly analysis of the evidence in favour of Heathrow ingestion of the bomb suitcase, and effectively demolishes the case for Malta ingestion. An interesting discussion by readers follows the text of the article.
Morag Kerr’s booklet Lockerbie: Fact and Fiction can be read here.
