Lockerbie: Lost Voices

[This is the title of a play to be performed by The Elements World Theatre on the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Contributions to help defray the costs of the production are being solicited.  The following are excerpts from the website through which donations can be made:]

THE PLAY

For the 25th anniversary of the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21st December 1988, this new controversial play gives voice to six hypothetical passengers before and after the  event. A US intelligence agent, a Scottish investigative journalist, a retired couple and a mother and her stepdaughter challenge each other with humour, love and courage to either accept the unacceptable or stand up for their personal truth. In poetic language and with original choral music and soundtrack, they speak from the neutrality of death as they report the investigation unfolding on the ground and shed new light on the worst terrorist attack in the UK.

BACKGROUND

A Scottish investigative journalist invited Lee Gershuny to write a play about Lockerbie for the 25th anniversary of the tragedy. His passion for truth, his courage to question and not accept the unacceptable and his commitment to freedom of the press in a just society inspired Lee to write Lockerbie: Lost Voices.

THE ELEMENTS WORLD THEATRE (EWT)

Presented by The Elements World Theatre, a professional new writing company, in association with SWAN productions, the play is written by Lee Gershuny, an award-winning playwright in both the US and UK and directed by Corinne Harris with a cast of leading actors of stage, film, radio and tv: James Bryce, Isabella Jarrett, Hannah Jarrett-Scott, Tim Licata and Doreen McGillivray.

After seeing a rehearsed reading of the play, Donald Smith, Director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre, invited EWT to have a 3-week run in his venue, one of the most accessible, popular year-round venues on the Edinburgh Fringe.

"The Elements World Theatre is an experience as much as a show, though performed with great skill. It's challenging conventional ideas of theatre and opening up stories and big ideas." Donald Smith, Director, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh.

WHY WE’RE BRINGING LOCKERBIE: LOST VOICES to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival:

1. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is a unique international arts platform for introducing provocative ideas in theatre to a world audience.
2. The play allows the Lockerbie victims to exist as more than just “victims” by revealing their courage, love and humour.
3. Many questions about the initial criminal investigation and the trial and conviction of Megrahi as the lone bomber of Pan Am 103 are still hotly debated nationally and internationally, making it difficult for so many to have closure on this international tragedy. What is the truth? “Who did it and why?”

In speaking after the explosion from the neutrality of death, our hypothetical passengers continue to ask tough questions about the initial investigation on the ground -- keeping the debate and the need for closure very much alive.

WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP

Having the opportunity to reach the huge audiences that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival attracts requires a considerable investment from the participants. As a non-profit Scottish charity, EWT has budgeted for excellence while keeping our minimalist style intact. We are asking for your help toward meeting expenses for a quality production and Fringe essentials:

1. Stage designer’s fees, materials, costumes, props
2. Lighting designer and operator’s fees to create minimalist special effects.
3. Creation of powerful eye catching images to represent the show, printing and distribution of leaflets and posters, production photos to promote wider press coverage and a trailer to give potential audiences a flavour of the show.
4. Rental of rehearsal venue
5. Insurance required to present work on the Edinburgh Fringe
6. All funds raised will go exclusively for our Fringe production

OTHER WAYS YOU CAN HELP

Please spread the word about our campaign and production by sending this link http://igg.me/at/Lockerbie-Lost-Voices/x/3643829 to your family and friends.

Keep up-to-date with us on our website.

“Like" us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter where we will be quoting startling facts and theories about Lockerbie.

Come to see Lockerbie: Lost Voices:

Scottish Storytelling Centre: Venue 30a

43-45 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1SR

Previews: Wed 31 July & Thurs 1 August 7pm (1 hour) £5

2-6, 8-13, 15-20, 22-26 August, 7pm (1 hour) £10 (£8)

Venue Box Office: 0131 556 9579

Fringe Box Office: 0131 226 0000 | www.edfringe.com

We are hugely grateful for whatever way you can contribute to our campaign. We are a very small company with a big passion for artistic excellence and dramatising new ways of looking at cultural conflict.

[Details of another Lockerbie play being performed on the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe can be found here.]

Libya's judges confront the past

[This is the headline over an interesting article by Mohamed Eljarh published yesterday in the Transitions blog on the website of the influential Foreign Policy magazine.  It reads in part:]

Ever since the revolution, Libyans have been waiting to see how the court system is going to settle accounts with Qaddafi-era officials. Now the first verdict has finally arrived -- but it clearly wasn't what a lot of people were expecting.

A Libyan court in Tripoli has acquitted two former officials in Colonel Qaddafi's regime of wasting public money by spending $2.7 billion on payments to the families of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Ex-Foreign Minister Abdul Ati al-Obeidi and Mohamed al-Zwai, the former head of Qaddafi's legislature, stood accused of arranging compensation for the families of victims of the attack. The two men were trying to persuade the survivors to drop their claims against Libya. The prosecution had charged that Obeidi and Zwai were responsible for negotiating settlements with the Lockerbie families and had paid out double the amount originally planned.

This would be the first verdict in a number of cases against key figures in the old Qaddafi regime by the new Libyan government following his killing in 2011. Despite being acquitted in this case, both men will remain in custody while further investigations take place ahead of a wider trial in August, where allegations of war crimes, including mass killings and incitement to rape, will be put to the court, according to state prosecutor al-Seddik al-Sur. Qaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi are among the defendants in this wider trial.

While the families of the two officials celebrated the innocent verdict and expressed their happiness with the Libyan judiciary, the public prosecutor was quick to announce a new trial and took measures to ensure that the two officials will in custody, emphasizing that the Lockerbie-related charges are a "side case." The judge gave no reasons for his verdict after the trial, which lasted seven months. The two officials were tried under Qaddafi-era laws.

Many Libyans are cautiously celebrating what they claim to be "the independence of the judiciary." However, after the court's verdict some prominent Facebook pages and groups (mainly pro-isolation law and pro-militias) started calling for the cleansing of the judiciary, claiming that the revolution has yet to happen within the judicial establishment in Libya. They claim that the current judicial establishment will find Saif al-Islam and Abdullah al-Senussi innocent, and that the judges affected by the isolation process will hamper the implementation of the isolation law. The fear of attacks on the judiciary and the justice system could explain the quick announcement by the country's public prosecutor that the two acquitted officials will remain in custody as his office prepares for these broader proceedings.

However, many in Libya called the trial a "waste of time." Claiming that the Saif al-Islam and al-Senussi have yet to stand trial, and that these "side cases" are just used by the authorities to buy them time as they keep delaying the trials of the key crimes committed by the former regime. The general sentiment between Libyans is that the authorities have failed to facilitate or build any substantial cases against many of the ex-regime officials, and that the evidence required to convict them is not available. (...)

Lawyers for Justice in Libya expressed concern at the increase in attacks on judges and lawyers in Libya. Most recently, a senior judge from the eastern city of Albaida was shot dead in a drive-by shooting in front of the local courthouse in Derna last Sunday.

Moreover, the legitimacy and independence of the judiciary in Libya is compromised by its lack of autonomy and by interference from the General National Congress (Libya's interim legislature). Judges throughout Libya have condemned the recent Political Isolation Law, and some have gone on strike because it targets the judiciary. An appeal by more than 60 judges and lawyers against the law has been submitted to the Supreme Court. They argue that the judiciary should be independent and that the isolation law violates the principle of the separation of powers among the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judiciary). The judges stress that any reform within the judicial establishment should come from within, that it should be based on consultation with the legislative and executive branches of government, and that it should not imposed by one or the other.

In post-revolution Libya, the process of judicial institutionalization is constantly undermined by political instability and the lack of security as well as by the struggle for power between the different factions in the absence of the constitution. Ensuring the independence of the judiciary and security of its personnel is of vital importance for Libya's transition. Ultimately, the absence of security for justice sector personnel has led and will continue to lead to indefinite delays in the processing of the cases of ex-regime officials and conflict-related detainees.

Private security firm discussed rendition of Megrahi from Libya to USA

[The following are excerpts from a long article on the website of The Nation entitled The Strange Case of Barrett Brown:]

In February 2011, a year after [Barrett] Brown penned his defense of Anonymous, and against the background of its actions during the Arab Spring, Aaron Barr, CEO of the private intelligence company HBGary, claimed to have identified the leadership of the hacktivist collective. (In fact he only had screen names of a few members).

Barr’s boasting provoked a brutal hack of HBGary by a related group called Internet Feds (it would soon change its name to “LulzSec”). Splashy enough to attract the attention of The Colbert Report, the hack defaced and destroyed servers and websites belonging to HBGary. Some 70,000 company emails were downloaded and posted online. As a final insult to injury, even the contents of Aaron Barr’s iPad were remotely wiped.

The HBGary hack may have been designed to humiliate the company, but it had the collateral effect of dropping a gold mine of information into Brown’s lap. (...) 

By June 2011, the plot had thickened further. The FBI had the goods on the leader of LulzSec, one Hector Xavier Monsegur, who went under the nom de guerre Sabu. The FBI arrested him on June 7, 2011 and (according to court documents) turned him into an informant the following day. Just three days before his arrest, Sabu had been central to the formation of a new group called AntiSec, which comprised his former LulzSec crew members, as well as members as Anonymous. In early December AntiSec hacked the website of a private security company called Stratfor Global Intelligence. On Christmas Eve, it released a trove of some five million internal company emails. AntiSec member and Chicago activist Jeremy Hammond, has pled guilty to the attack and is currently facing ten years in prison for it.

The contents of the Stratfor leak were even more outrageous than those of the HBGary hack. They included discussion of opportunities for renditions and assassinations. For example, in one video, Statfor’s Vice President of Intelligence, Fred Burton, suggested taking advantage of the chaos in Libya to render Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who had been released from prison on compassionate grounds due to his terminal illness. Burton said that the case “was personal.” When someone pointed out in an email that such a move would almost certainly be illegal—“This man has already been tried, found guilty, sentenced…and served time”—another Stratfor employee responded that this was just an argument for a more efficient solution: “One more reason to just bugzap him with a hellfire. :-)”

Scottish Police Authority board to meet in Lockerbie

The board of the Scottish Police Authority holds its next (public) meeting in Lockerbie on Wednesday, 26 June.  

In terms of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, section 2, the functions of the SPA include:

* to promote and support continuous improvement in the policing of Scotland

* to keep under review the policing of Scotland

* to hold the chief constable to account for the policing of Scotland.

If the investigation currently being conducted by former Dumfries and Galloway chief constable Patrick Shearer upholds Justice for Megrahi’s allegations of criminal misconduct in (inter alia) the Lockerbie police investigation, then the SPA board will almost certainly have a part to play in promoting systems to prevent such conduct ever being repeated in future.

The SPA's report on the Lockerbie meeting can now be read here.

Lockerbie cover-up reduces Scotland to a banana republic

[What follows is the text of a press release regarding the Edinburgh Festival Fringe production of the play The Lockerbie Bomber:]

The writer of a new play about the Lockerbie bombing believes the truth has been covered up, resulting in Scotland being reduced today to the level of a corrupt banana republic.

Alan Clark, whose play The Lockerbie Bomber is being staged for the first time at the Edinburgh Fringe next month, says: “I believe the truth has been covered up for nearly twenty-five years. We shake our heads in disbelief as we hear allegations of evidence withheld. Evidence fabricated. Witnesses paid for their testimony. Even serious allegations that members of the Scottish prosecution team at the Camp Zeist trial perverted the course of justice.

“If that were another country, it would rightly be ridiculed but this actually is Scotland today. In the eyes of the world, I believe Scottish justice, often held up as a shining example of fairness and decency, is being reduced to the level of a corrupt, banana republic.

“As one of the characters in the play says: '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.'”

When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, 270 people from 21 countries perished and it remains the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the UK. Its consequences continue to reverberate round the world and yet, after nearly a quarter of a century, the truth remains elusive.

Carefully researched, The Lockerbie Bomber looks at the bombing from three different perspectives: the victims' families; journalists investigating the case; and the US and UK security services engaged in covering up what happened.

Dr Jim Swire, who lost a daughter on Pan Am 103, was at the premiere and commented: “This is a searing and soul-searching drama of international significance which dramatically shows how absolute power corrupts absolutely and how individuals and nations are diminished by the lies told in their names.”

Herman Grech of the Times of Malta added: “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.”

And critic Joyce McMillan said it is “an important and passionate play.”

The play is sponsored by solicitors Mitchells Roberton, The BenRiach Distillery Company, accountants FL Walker & Co, financial advisers The Wealth Partnership and Tryst Gymnastics Club.

The Lockerbie Bomber will be performed by Nugget Theatre Company at C Venues in Edinburgh's Chambers Street on July 31-August 13 daily at 12 noon.

The Professor of Truth to be read on BBC Radio 4

[From programme information on the BBC website:]

Award-winning author James Robertson's new novel is a powerful work of fiction inspired by some of the aspects and events surrounding the Lockerbie bombing.

Twenty-one years after his wife and daughter were murdered in the bombing of a plane over Scotland, Alan Tealing, a university lecturer, still does not know the truth of what really happened on that terrible night. Obsessed by the details of what he has come to call 'The Case', he is sure that the man convicted of the atrocity was not responsible and that he himself has thus been deprived not only of justice but also of any chance of escape from his enduring grief.

When an American intelligence officer, apparently terminally ill and determined to settle his own accounts before he dies, arrives on his doorstep with information about a key witness in the trial, a fateful sequence of events is set in motion.

The reader is Peter Firth. Written and abridged by James Robertson.

Producer: Kirsteen Cameron for the BBC.

Monday 24 June to Friday 28 June, 10.45-11.00pm

BBC Radio 4

Court finds Obeidi and Zway not guilty; Attorney General to appeal

[This is the headline over a report published late yesterday on the website of the Libya Herald.  It reads as follows:]

Qaddafi regime Foreign Minister Abdulati Al-Obeidi and Mohamed Al-Zway, the former secretary of the General People’s Congress, were found not guilty by a Tripoli court today. However, the Attorney General says he is appealing against the decisions and has ordered the two men to be returned to prison pending the appeal.

The verdict is seen as important because it shows the impartiality and independence of the Libya courts at a time when many voices outside the country claim that a fair trial is impossible in Libya, in particular in the case of Saif Al-Islam and Abdullah Senussi. The impossibility of a fair trial is one of the main planks of the International Criminal Court’s demand that Libya hand over both men to it.

Obeidi and Zway were first arrested in July 2011. Obeidi had served as Prime Minister from 1977 to 1979, then as nominal head of state from 1979 to 1981 and finally as Qaddafi’s last Foreign Minister after Musa Kusa fled in March 2011.

Zway, a close friend of Qaddafi from schooldays in Sebha, was Libya’s ambassador to the UK. In 2010 was chosen by the dictator to be Secretary-General of his General People’s Congress.

Their trial opened on 10 September last year.  They were accused of poor performance of their duties while in office and of maladministration, specifically wasting of public funds in respect of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The prosecution claimed that it was wrong to organise a compensation deal of $2.7 billion to the victims’ families in return for having Libya removed from the list of the states sponsoring terrorism.

It also alleged that Obeidi and Zway had paid out double the amount originally planned – a charge at variance with claims by others linked to the compensation plan that the $2.7 billiion was itself never fully paid.

At the opening of the case, the judge said that the deal “was a waste of public money especially when there was no guarantee the charges in the Lockerbie case would be dropped if the compensation was made”.

Just before their trial, the former Justice Minister Mohamed Allagi who is president of Libya’s National Council for Civil Liberties and Human Rights, claimed that the trial and those of other Qaddafi officials were “invalid” because the law was not being properly implemented.

The charges against Zway and Obeidi surprised many observers at the time as they implied that the two should have been more effective in serving the Qaddafi regime and that the Lockerbie deal should never have happened.

Both men consistently denied the charges.

Today’s “Not Guilty” verdict was greeted with jubilation from the two men’s families. “We are satisfied that the verdict proves that Libyan justice is transparent and equal,” a nephew of Obeidi was quoted saying at the end of the proceedings. 

[The Herald today contains a report (with a quote from me) on the acquittal.]

Lockerbie compensation: Libyan officials acquitted

[This is the headline over a report just published on the BBC News website. In its original form (it has now been slightly expanded), it read as follows:]

Two senior Libyan officials have been acquitted of "squandering public funds" by agreeing to pay $2.7bn (£1.7bn) in compensation to victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Former Foreign Minister Abdelaaty al-Obeidi [a long-serving member of the Libyan Lockerbie committee] and former General People's Congress head Mohamed al-Zway [a long time ambassador in London] have been on trial since September 2012.

Col Muammar Gaddafi agreed to pay the compensation in 2003.

These are the first verdicts against his officials since he was ousted.

[I am delighted to hear of these acquittals. Between 1993 and 2010 I had numerous dealings with Messrs Obeidi and Zwai over the Lockerbie case.  I found both of them to be straightforward, honest and trustworthy.  They were two of the good guys of the Gaddafi regime, in my view.  The saga of their arrest and trial after the collapse of the old regime can be followed here.

I am saddened to discover the following addition to the BBC’s report made at 16.08:]

State prosecutor Sidiq al-Sour later told journalists that the pair would face separate charges over the "systematic repressive policies practised" by Col Gaddafi's government during the 2011 uprising which toppled him.

He said they would face charges such as forming armed criminal groups, inciting rape and illegally detaining individuals. 

[An Agence France Presse news agency report on the Star Africa website contains the following:]

A Libyan court acquitted two former aides of slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi on Monday of charges connected to the deadly 1988 bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.

“On behalf of all people, the court decides to acquit Abdelati al-Obeidi and Mohamed Belgassem al-Zwai of all charges against them,” the judge said to shouts of “Long live justice!” from the defendants’ families. (...)

It was unclear if Obeidi, a former foreign minister, and Zwai, ex-parliament speaker, would be released following their acquittal or if there were other charges outstanding.

“We are satisfied that the verdict proves that Libyan justice is transparent and equal,” said Sami, a nephew of Obeidi, as he left the courtroom.

The two men were accused of mismanaging public funds in compensating families of victims of the Lockerbie bombing.

The prosecution had charged that Obeidi and Zwai were responsible for negotiating settlements with the Lockerbie families and had paid out double the amount originally planned. 

[Further clarification can be found in this report from the news agency Reuters and in this report on the Middle East Online website.

I can find no recent information on the criminal proceedings against Abuzed Omar Dorda, another Gaddafi-era official heavily involved in seeking a resolution of the Lockerbie affair.]

Lockerbie forensics

Two years ago today I reproduced on this blog a substantial part of a long article by physicist and former Church of Scotland minister Dr John Cameron entitled Forensic report on the Lockerbie bombing. 

Although it came before the devastating disclosures about the dodgy timer fragment (PT35b) in John Ashton's Megrahi: You are my Jury, the article is still well worth reading, as are the comments that it generated from Rolfe, Vronsky and Richard Marquise amongst others.

Canadian PM uses Lockerbie to justify intervention in Libya

[The following are excerpts from a report published today on the website of the Toronto Star:]

Prime Minister [of Canada] Stephen Harper evoked the ideals of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher in a speech to British parliamentarians that stressed the need for shared vigilance in a world threatened by the “monsters” of terrorism. (...)

Above all, he told Members of Parliament and Lords, “Syria cannot be allowed to become another safe haven for the hydra-heads of terrorism.” (...)

The wide-ranging, 28-minute address to more than a hundred Members of Parliament and Lords recounted the risks British and Canadian soldiers have shared from World War II to Libya.

“Britons and Canadians have pursued what is right in the world, often at great cost,” Harper said.

In a reference to former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, he said Canada and Britain had used military might to save Libya from “massive and imminent slaughter at the hands of the psychotic architect of the Lockerbie horror.” That recalled the terrorist bomb that brought down a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

[I really don't know whether to regard it as sad or as comforting that British Prime Ministers are not the only Prime Ministers to spout nonsense about Lockerbie.]

Further payments for Lockerbie victims?

[The following is an excerpt from a report published on Tuesday on the website of the Libya Herald:]

The government has asked the GNC to approve an additional  LD 15.25 billion for urgent items that did not feature in its original budget. Congress is expected to vote on the requests on Sunday.

“The prime minister Ali Zeidan asked for the additional budget for some item which were not included in the general budget of 2013,” Fareeha Barkawi, a member of the GNC finance committee told the Libya Herald. These covered compensation, urgent development projects and the security situation.

Barkawi explained that the proposed compensation included the settlement of salaries for workers at foreign companies obliged to abandon projects at the start of the revolution.  There were also payments ear-marked for Lockerbie victims and extra money for municipalities for rehabilitation schemes.

[It is not clear to me on what basis further payments for Lockerbie victims are envisaged as being due or necessary.]

Odd obituary of US Senator Frank Lautenberg

Today's edition of The Herald contains an obituary of US Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died on 3 June. There is only one good reason that I can think of for a Scottish newspaper to run an obituary of this minor American politician: his rôle on the periphery of the Lockerbie case. But The Herald's obituary never mentions this!

The architect of the cover-up of the Lockerbie bombing

[What follows is the text of a letter from Professor Francis A Boyle published today on the World Socialist Web Site:]

And be sure to add to your list of FBI cover-ups since 9/11/2001 the FBI covering up the DOD/CIA origins of the anthrax attacks in October 2001. See my book Biowarfare and Terrorism (2005). The retiring FBI Director Mueller was also the architect of the cover-up of the Lockerbie bombing, blaming Libya instead of whoever the real culprits were: see my book Destroying Libya and World Order (2013).  I would recommend your readers have a look at Swearingen, FBI Secrets (South End Press). There the author, a retired and decorated FBI agent, repeatedly calls the FBI “an American Gestapo.” The FBI/CIA also put me on all the US government’s terrorist watch lists when I refused to become an informant for them on my Arab and Muslim clients. QED.