Ian Bell's Lockerbie-related writings

I am deeply saddened to learn of the death at the age of 59 of Ian Bell, perhaps Scotland’s finest political columnist. Here, in chronological order, are links to some of his Lockerbie-related columns: 

1. Trust no-one, believe nothing; 2. Justice is the casualty in this Britain of secrets; 3. The demand for truth is more than rhetoric; 4. He’s dying: does it matter where?; 5. Caught in the middle of a transatlantic storm; 6. Tales of torture prove US has no right to moral leadership; 7. What do US cops know about justice?; 8. Too much heat and not enough light on Lockerbie; 9. Why do we still cling to mythical link with US?; 10. So many questions still unanswered on Megrahi; 11. Can Ian Bell be cloned, please?; 12. Truth lies hidden beneath the blather about Megrahi; 13. Lockerbie: some shrapnel; 14. Lockerbie: Scoundrel Time; 15. Lockerbie, Guilt & Gaddafi; 16. Libya & Lockerbie: secrets for sale; 17. Lockerbie: lawyers, guns & money; 18. We need truth about absurdity of unsafe Lockerbie conviction; 19. Lockerbie and Libya: hide & seek; and 20. Contempt shown to Scotland's legal system during Lockerbie shambles.

One might have expected more in the way of hard evidence

[What follows is the text of an article by Ian Ferguson that was published on this date in 2000 by Middle East Intelligence Bulletin:]

Set in the tranquility of the Dutch countryside, the trial of the two Libyans accused of bombing Pan Am flight 103 and killing 270 persons on December 21, 1988 has not yet reached it's 50th day in session, yet it is already clear that the prosecution's case is showing signs of major cracks. The investigation, which led to the charges being brought against Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was heralded as the largest criminal investigation in history. With the combined resources of the Scottish Police, the FBI and the CIA being brought to bear on this case, one might have expected a case which contained more in the way of hard evidence. Thus far, however, the Crown has presented a case composed entirely of circumstantial evidence and recent revelations at the trial show that some of it may be fatally flawed.

In the last few weeks we have seen an issue develop at the trial concerning the evidence of Libyan informer Abdul Majid Giaka. Prosecuting authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have for many years now indicated that this man would be their star witness. Skeptics were told to stay quiet and await his testimony at the trial. Giaka, who has been in the U.S. Witness Protection Program since July 1991, arrived at Camp Zeist on August 14 expecting to testify at the trial. The nearest he got to the courtroom was driving past it in his motorcade of US deputy marshals who provide his protection and he flew back to the United States on August 31. During those two weeks, instead of hearing the testimony of Giaka, the court has been preoccupied with legal submissions and arguments over a number of classified CIA cables sent by Giaka's handlers in Malta back to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The legal row erupted on August 22 when the court reconvened after the summer recess. William Taylor, QC for Megrahi, informed the judges that there were some 25 CIA cables relating to Giaka and that he had been informed the day before that the prosecution had seen much fuller versions of these cables than had been provided to the defense, thus placing the defense at distinct disadvantage. The Crown admitted that they had been shown a version of these cables on June 1 and that what they had seen was "blacked out" or redacted from the version given to the defense.

The Lord Advocate of Scotland, Colin Boyd, told the court that what Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC had seen was irrelevant to the defense's case and was also information which could be a threat to the national security of the United States. The judges were not impressed with this argument and ordered Boyd to use his best endeavors to approach the CIA and have these edited portions made available to the defense. Meanwhile, the court agreed with the defense that they could not hear the testimony of Giaka until the issue of the CIA cables was resolved.

Alongside the CIA cables, the defense also challenged another item--a diary belonging to Fhimah that the Crown wished to present to the court. The court was told that the diary was obtained without a search warrant and as such they challenged its admissibility.

By Friday of that week, Boyd had produced for the defense and the court the largely unedited versions of the CIA cables. The contents were regarded by the defense as being "highly relevant" to their case. During lengthy legal debates we were treated to some of the "irrelevant" information that the Crown had decided should be denied to the defense. The idea that the Crown saw themselves as the arbiters of this information was at best an appalling lack of judgment and at worst an attempt to suppress information damaging to their case.

The new information showed that the CIA agents in Malta had questioned the value of Giaka as an informer. In a cable dated September 1989 (over a year after the CIA recruited him as an informer), they contemplated cutting off his $1000 per month salary as he had not provided them with the quality of information they had hoped he would. They doubted that he was an agent for the JSO (Libyan External Intelligence) and had decided to inform him that he would be put on "trial" status until January 1990. This is hardly a ringing testimonial for any informer and its importance to the defense was enormous.

If the CIA agents closely involved with Giaka held this opinion in September 1989, what happened in the intervening period to July 1991 to alter this opinion and make his testimony so crucial to this trial? If he possessed any information linking either of the two accused to the Pan Am 103 bombing, why was it not offered in the months leading up to the attack in December 1988, at which point Giaka had already been on the CIA's payroll for four months? Could it be that he was not able to supply them with this information until a decision was made to shift the focus of the investigation from Syria and Iran to Libya?

Evidence already given at the trial by a senior Scottish Police detective, Harry Bell, shows that a photograph of Megrahi was first shown to Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci in February 1991, after Bell was contacted by Special Agent Philip Reid of the FBI. Once again we are forced to ask why it took so long for Giaka to implicate Megrahi or Fhimah. Did it take from August 1988 until February 1991 for Giaka to implicate either of the accused? We certainly can deduce that it must have been at least after September 1989, when coincidentally his source of CIA money was threatened with withdrawal.

The use of information gathered by paid informers is already a contentious issue before courts in many jurisdictions and it has certainly become a major issue at this trial. The issues relate to motivation and credibility. Giaka would have been made aware that the US Department of Justice was offering a huge reward (around $4 million) for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103 and this may prove to be yet another hurdle for the prosecution to overcome.

The defense, sensing that the CIA may hold further information on Giaka, as well as on other groups that were originally the prime suspects in the investigation, successfully petitioned the court to once again have the Lord Advocate use his "best endeavors" with the CIA and request that it hand over all information it had on Giaka and the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), specifically Mohammed Abo Talb, a member of the PFLP-GC.

On September 21, the court will hear whether or not the Lord Advocate has been successful in his requests to the CIA. If he is unsuccessful in his "best endeavors" route, the judges have left the door open to revisit another submission from Richard Keen QC for Fhimah, which they rejected in favor of asking Boyd to explore his present course of action. The legal remedy sought by Keen was for formal "letters of request" to be submitted to the U.S. government so that a federal judge can review all the pertinent documents held by the CIA and sanction the release of such documents (excluding those which pose a real threat to American national security). The judges originally rejected this request because Boyd informed the court that this procedure might take anywhere from six months to two years, during which time the court would have to be adjourned. Such a lengthy adjournment would likely be greeted by an outcry from many of the families of those murdered on Pan Am flight 103, but it may be the only solution for the judges to ensure that the accused receive a fair trial.

In any case, the Crown still has other problems with regard to the testimony of another contentious witness: Mohammed Abo Talb, who is currently serving a life sentence in Sweden for terrorist attacks in Copenhagen. Talb was originally the prime suspect in the Pan Am 103 bombing and has been named in the special defense cited by lawyers for both accused Libyans.

Talb has been linked to a PFLP-GC cell that was operating in Malta during 1988 and police found a diary in his Swedish apartment in which the date of December 21, 1988 (the day of the Pan Am bombing) is circled. Needless to say, this circumstantial evidence incriminates Talb at least as much as the note in Fhimah's diary saying "get Air Malta taggs" (sic) incriminates the accused. When Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci was asked to look at the photograph of Megrahi, he commented that this photograph "most resembled the man who bought clothes" in his shop, but went on to say "other than the picture of the man shown to me by my brother." The other picture Gauci was referring to was a photograph of Talb shown to him by his brother Paul.

The clothes in question are alleged to have been bought by Megrahi on the December 7, 1988, remnants of which the Crown alleges were found among the wreckage of the Pan Am plane. The defense will claim that the clothes were bought earlier by Talb and will present evidence of this to challenge the prosecution's claims.

So we have as good an identification of Talb as we have of Megrahi. Moreover, Talb is a convicted bomber with connections to a group that was making bombs hidden in Toshiba tape recorders that were nearly identical to the one alleged to have brought down Pan Am flight 103. We have also learned that Talb has agreed to testify at the Camp Zeist trial in return for a reduction in his sentence. A senior source in the Swedish police, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that an arrangement has been reached between the UK and Swedish authorities which will allow Talb to apply successfully for a "time limit" to be put on his sentence in return for his cooperation with Scottish prosecutors.

Talb, who has consistently refused to be interviewed by the defense, was thought extremely unlikely to attend as a witness and, as the Scottish court has no power of subpoena, there has been speculation for months as to why he would even contemplate attending. It is now clear that the prospect of a release date was the price for his cooperation, but it will no doubt be another issue raised prior to or during his testimony. Whether the case against the Libyans will stand up to scrutiny in court cannot be predicted, but clearly the events of the last few weeks have been the biggest setback to the Crown since the trial started on May 3.

Amid all of the publicity generated by the CIA cables about Giaka, the Crown has tried to reassure the families that all is not lost, that its case does not rely on the testimony of a single witness. For years they have been hinting at DNA, fingerprint and other hard evidence which we were told would be produced at the trial. With the Crown's case admittedly on their last evidentiary chapter, we are still waiting.

Pick your villain, pick your story, then bend your laws

[On this date in 2007 an article by Ian Bell headed Trust no-one, believe nothing was published in the Sunday Herald.  It reads as follows:]

A lack of inhibition must come easily when your parent is one of the world's more resilient dictators. Why fib when people rarely contest a word you say? If your dad is Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's unchallenged leader and new best friend to the West, you can tell the truth - or not - without much fear of the consequences.

Comments last week to French newspaper Le Monde by Saif al Islam, Gaddafi's 35-year-old son, amounted to an interesting parable, I think, for the democracies of the West. Faced with terrorism and an abundance of threats, they have become economical, to put it kindly, in their use of truth. Just possibly, just once or twice, they have not told us quite everything about reasons and risks. Young Saif, in contrast, enjoys the luxury of frankness.

So, was a deal struck between Tony Blair and Gaddafi to engineer the repatriation of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the "Lockerbie bomber"? That question caused some trouble earlier in the year, you'll recall, when Alex Salmond complained about failures of communication between London and Edinburgh on the issue.

London said, and continues to say, that any decision concerning the prisoner was, and is, "a matter for the Scottish courts and Scottish authorities". Edinburgh said that it would defend the integrity of a legal system already debauched, as it happened, by Megrahi's farcical trial in the Hague. Last week, Saif said in Nice (more or less, for my Arabic isn't up to much): "A deal? Of course."

Saif proclaimed himself confident that Megrahi will soon be returned to Libya and took satisfaction from a developing extradition arrangement between his country and Britain. How does that square, precisely, with all the Downing Street denials, the rubbishing of Salmond's "grandstanding", and the continuing insistence that Scots law remains paramount?

Surely it could not be possible or likely that someone - let's say a departing prime minister - failed to tell us the whole truth? Where Lockerbie is concerned, the difference between likely and probable is paper-thin.

There are complications, of course. The first is fundamental: Megrahi didn't do it. There is not the space here to explain why the man in Greenock Prison did not procure the murders of 270 people on Pan Am flight 103in December 1988. For now, I merely assert that the evidence presented in the Hague would have been laughable in any other circumstance. Scots law disgraced itself in those compromised proceedings.

That being so, however, the Court of Appeal will soon have to decide whether to accept a recommendation from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission calling for the evidence in the Lockerbie trial to be re-examined. The definition of "flimsy" is about to be tested. All the lawyers of my acquaintance say that, in due course, Megrahi will surely walk free, if he is not shipped out of Scotland beforehand.

So what then? Are we asked to believe that the worst atrocity ever inflicted on Scotland involved not a single perpetrator? That a long, allegedly intense, international investigation resulted in nothing better than the persecution of one innocent man? And that a Scottish court, in all its majesty, returned a guilty verdict on such a basis?

To put it no higher: a quick extradition deal, and a few more lies to conceal Blair's untruths, won't cover this. It amounts to an unholy shambles, the unravelling of almost two decades of deceit. Just imagine what follows if "the evidence" is truly re-examined with proper care.

Megrahi was convicted, supposedly after the most thorough investigation the police and security forces of the West could muster. Now the Libyans - those trusting souls - reckon that Blair gave his word guaranteeing the return of the only person we ever managed to convict. Scotland's legal system, and hence the Scottish Executive, therefore have some astonishing questions to answer.

Jack Straw, Westminster's new justice secretary, may have brought a little clarity to relationships between Edinburgh and London since Blair's departure, so it is said, but that hardly alters fundamentals. Sometimes the law misfires: we know this. Sometimes, though, the entire system we seek to defend against terrorists (or politicians) gets bent out of recognition. Corrupted in its own defence: that's almost an epitaph.

The wrong guy was the only guy. Worse, all those who failed to name the actual culprits, thanks to incompetence or intent, face no interrogation. Increasingly, Lockerbie resembles a political-management precursor to our manipulated post-11 September, 2001 world: pick your villain, pick your story, then bend your laws, your politics, and your media to fit. Democracy.

I tried this question in various formulations: are people secure if they cease to believe those defending their security? Can you be defended, truly, by those who lie about your defences, and the need for defence? If we are denied truth, what remains but lies? Who did bomb Lockerbie, and why have a succession of career bastards spent almost 20 years evading the question?

The tree-protected memorial that stands near the little town, amid those wind-blown, moss-green hills, will take your breath away. A "why" this happened is easy - causes are ten a penny. The "how" is harder. How did someone do the thing, how did others agree to it, and how do others still go on cultivating the lies, under democratic sanction, two decades on?

The family and friends of Jean Charles de Menezes may wonder about that. Had you listened late last week to Sir Ian Blair, the lead man at the Metropolitan Police, you would have heard "Britain's top cop" insisting that he had no knowledge whatever of the assassination of a 27-year-old Brazilian in 2005. Not a clue. Not one of his subordinates passed the word of the hit. Believable?

You would also have heard Blair denying that he was telling the public about vast terrorist threats with no understanding of - in the language of the Independent Police Complaints Commission - a "ghastly mistake" at Stockwell Tube station. Assistant commissioner, Andy Heyman, meanwhile, misled no-one; or misled them with the best of intentions; or misled them while enjoying the full support of a superior who, of course, knew nothing about anything. And so forth.

The people in these islands will cope with a very great deal if someone would, just once, honour them with the truth. We know that things go wrong. We know that mistakes are made. We strain to believe that those who defend us would allow a Pan Am jet to be dropped on a small Scottish town.

We wonder, though. Menezes died thanks, we hope to believe, to procedures in need of revision. At a long stretch, most of us would probably accept that he died because of a horrible error committed for the best of reasons. So why the deluge of excuses? Had an authentic terrorist chosen the best possible way to undermine the British public's will to resist, the jihadi would have selected last week's dire remarks by Sir Ian Blair.

Truth is fundamental. Truth is, they tell us, our distinguishing feature as a democracy. It was once the shining virtue of Scotland's jurisprudence. That was the least of Lockerbie's collateral damage, but not the least significant.

Are not the people of this little country entitled to the moral right to know, finally, who bombed Pan Am 103?

If there is no answer, I know, finally, what I think: they lied; they lie.

The farrago of al-Megrahi's farcical conviction

[Yesterday I reproduced on this blog an article by Ian Bell that was published four years ago in The Herald. What follows is the text of a piece that he published the following day on his own blog (regrettably no longer available online, as far as I can see):]

Lockerbie: some shrapnel

Something stuck in my mind. It came to me just after the wave of fatigue you get from the sort of approbation you neither need nor seek. Specifically, it was this: a brief comment in the Telegraph, that blunderbuss among reactionary snipers, on August 21, 2009.

On Wednesday night, I was still thinking about Lockerbie. We had just driven back and forth in a day and night to the Humber’s edge so that my wife could sit with her dying mother. But I’m a hack. In the car, coming back across the border, I thought: Fucking Brian Wilson. Must look it up.

I’m so old, I keep cuttings. Not just any old cuttings; only the important mounds. August 21, 2009.

Wilson is a hack, too, of long-standing, who surely won’t mind if I remind the world that he was locally-minded, once, and may even have made a youthful political gesture of nationalism (with a tiny n), and later gained some expertise as a minister with an energy brief, before he grew energetic, post-ministerially, for Energy. That stuff is none of Scotland’s concern, of course.

Anyhow, in the cutting Wilson’s sub stunted a cunning paraphrase: “The SNP’s Libya stunt has shamed my nation”. With a determination born of free West Highland localism, the writer began: “The Scottish Nationalists have never been too fussy about the international company they keep”.

He then excoriated Alex Salmond for opposing the bombing of Belgrade. This sally was in tribute to the late Robin “Ethical” – unless you happened to have met him – Cook. Apparently, Cookie was Wilson’s companion on the British parliamentary – sorry, I’m straining this joke – road to socialism.

Let the quote do some work instead. Wilson wrote – on August 21, 2009, mind you: “Rarely can so many decent Scottish stomachs have turned than at the sight of the Saltire being flourished in Tripoli as a centre-piece of the repulsive celebrations to welcome home the mass murderer Megrahi, courtesy of the SNP”.

Wilson judged the entire affair to have been a matter of self-aggrandisement. He wrote that, “The vast global audience for the rantings of Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Minister, could have been forgiven for assuming him to be the spokesman for a sovereign state, albeit a tinpot one with curious moral values”.

Bear that phrase in mind: “curious moral values”. History being slow but oddly quick on its feet sometimes, how are those turning stomachs now?

The net’s Nationalists will give you a quick answer. Labour’s multifarious du­plicities stand exposed. MacAskill has been vindicated. I’d get the usual reflex­ive praise just for saying so, over and over.

The rantings of Brian Wilson were of a piece with each of Labour’s stitched-to-order lies levelled against the Justice Secretary. For some people, that’s better than enough. They’d like me to say nothing else from now until – My, is that the time? – May.

But here’s a problem: Kenny MacAskill is still Justice Secretary; al-Megrahi is still “a convicted mass-murderer”; and a government of Nationalists still refuses to attempt to make public the facts that each one of them, MacAskill in the van, under­stands.* To paraphrase that Telegraph sub-editor, someone is shaming my nation.

Labour have had their turn. Wilson’s siblings have been exposed. But they are not in government, currently, in Scotland, where the plane fell from the sky. That would be another party.

Nationalism’s bots course through the local web demanding that the MSM tell the truth. Good luck with that. But here’s weird: MacAskill has part of the truth about Lockerbie at his fingertips. He and Alex Salmond, his First Minister, could find out a great deal more with a full public – not parliamentary, please – inquiry into the mas­sacre. The farrago of al-Megrahi's farcical conviction is a stain on Scotland’s honour: what greater cause for truth could there be?

What’s the worst that could happen? That Salmond and MacAskill could join the likes of Wilson in defending the conviction, yet again? Surely not. Surely it would take a mainstream media plot to make that smear true?

But it is true. Someone else is shaming my nation.

* I should have said that, in this, I exempt Christine Grahame MSP from criticism. Apologies.

[RB: The comment that I appended at the time to this post was “Wow!”  I now repeat it -- Wow!]

Guilty of monumental hypocrisy

[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog four years ago on this date:]

Truth lies hidden beneath the blather about Megrahi

[This is the headline over Ian Bell's column in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

Sir Gus O’Donnell’s trawl through certain documents relating to the Lockerbie bombing has become very bad news for Labour.

It is bad in London, bad in Edinburgh; bad for reputations, bad for careers. On both sides of the border, the charge is the same: saying one thing, doing another. The only difference is that some things were shouted in one place and whispered elsewhere.

David Cameron handled the report with a certain vicious elegance in the Commons, in his best more-in-sorrow-than-anger voice. Too many things, he pointed out, were left unsaid by Labour ministers. Whether he would have behaved any differently in their shoes was a point he was happy to leave moot. He had certain aims in mind, and he achieved them.

Thus: blame Labour, blame the SNP, placate America, exonerate BP, and remind us that he was always opposed to the freeing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on any grounds. Better still, for the eternal interests of Her Majesty’s Government, nothing in O’Donnell’s document obliged Cameron to deal with a real question: what of profound doubts over the original conviction?

No-one in the Commons, as usual, had a word to say about that.

Labour was all over the place. Gordon Brown was forced into a statement that answered no questions. Jack Straw, England’s Justice Secretary in the period at issue, fell to parsing any phrase that might provide an excuse. Meanwhile, the Scottish party found itself in a truly hideous position.

Either its leading members knew about London’s efforts to “facilitate” a release deal with Libya, or they did not. If not, what does that tell us about relationships between Labour in Edinburgh and Labour in Westminster?

But if all was known, what excused the many, vehement accusations hurled at Kenny MacAskill, the SNP minister who freed Megrahi? Labour in Scotland was still at that game this week, even when it was beyond doubt that its colleagues in London had connived in Libyan efforts. Straw, O’Donnell tells us, even thought of supplying a supportive letter.

It’s possible, of course, that some Scottish Labour figures were “in the loop” and some were not. The Scotland Office, first under Des Browne, and by October 2008 in the charge of Jim Murphy, was under no illusions. The latter minister was certainly given the minutes of calls between Straw and Alex Salmond. So what about Holyrood?

But this means that some passionate opponents of Megrahi’s release were permitted – encouraged? – to go on conducting a campaign against MacAskill while the truth was otherwise kept hidden. Take your pick: scandal, shambles, or a bit of both?

None is easy to spin, but Labour has done its best. Supported by the – no doubt unprompted – right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes, a tale filtered into the London media this week to the effect that MacAskill was prepared, late in 2007, to amend the Scottish Government’s opposition to Labour’s prisoner transfer agreement with Libya. The alleged price: cash to pay off human rights claims over prison slopping out, and devolved control over airgun legislation. And how tawdry would that have been?

O’Donnell certainly relates – of exchanges in November, 2007 – that “it is clear that HMG’s understanding was that a PTA without any exclusions” – meaning Megrahi, the only Libyan in a British prison – “might be acceptable to the Scottish Government if progress could be made with regards to ongoing discussions...” (on slopping out and firearms law). The Cabinet Secretary’s footnotes then refer the reader to letters between Straw and Browne in which the two allude to that “understanding”.

But O’Donnell’s very next sentence in the body of his text records that, “Kenny MacAskill restated the Scottish Government’s position that any PTA should exclude anyone convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in a letter to Jack Straw on 6 December 2007”.

So much was already in the public domain, thanks to the Scottish Government’s website. Nor did the SNP deviate from that position.

Labour’s attempt to establish otherwise this week depends entirely on a “leaked” email from John McTernan, Brown’s adviser, who gleaned his “understanding” from unnamed “officials”.

You wouldn’t base a Scottish election campaign on that, I’d have thought. But what else does Iain Gray and his Holyrood party now possess? Continued demands for the release of Megrahi’s medical records? Such material is redacted even in O’Donnell’s report, on data protection grounds. An oncologist would tell you, meanwhile, that a prognosis is not a prediction, but add that prostate cancer treatments – and hence survival rates – are improving yearly.

Even given the horrific scale of Lockerbie, an attack on compassion is tricky. It’s also beside the point. As is O’Donnell’s report, and Cameron’s lofty satisfaction, and Brown’s floundering response.

The fact that Labour has been found guilty of monumental hypocrisy is important in its own right, no doubt, but it is only one part of a larger argument. In the matter of mass murder, the question of guilt is paramount. Unless it is settled, beyond doubt, every other “row” is chatter, and distracting chatter at that. In the case of Megrahi, despite anything politicians claim, there is no certainty.

We do know, though, of $3 million paid by US authorities to Maltese brothers, Toni and Paul Gauci, for the sake of identification evidence. We know that Lord Peter Fraser, then Lord Advocate, would later describe the former brother, supposedly a star witness, as less than the full shilling and “an apple short of a picnic”.

We know, furthermore, that the forensic “experts” on both sides of the Atlantic, providers of still more “key evidence” at Camp Zeist, were later discredited thoroughly. We know Professor Hans Koechler, Kofi Annan’s UN observer, damned the trial as an outrage and an abuse.

There’s more, much more. We don’t know, though, why Megrahi still fails to provide proof of his innocence. We don’t know why no political party – the SNP included – is prepared to entertain even an inquiry into the conviction.

Those rows over the compassionate release of “the Lockerbie bomber” will do instead, at least until some successor to Sir Gus cares to examine a few more of the papers salted away in the hidden record.

Double-dealing and naked hypocrisy

[What follows is an article entitled Know Who Your Friends Are published today on the Derek Bateman Broadcaster blog:]

I have been silent for some days following a family bereavement and will try to catch up with events.

One thing that happened was the report detailing cooperation between the British government and Libya under Gaddafi:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/22/cooperation-british-spies-gaddafi-libya-revealed-official-papers?CMP=share_btn_link

This tale of betrayal of British and American interests – as opposed to commercial advantages which was their real objective – opens up a whole area of the Blair government to exposure for its double-dealing and naked hypocrisy affecting Scotland. It also leads directly to the door of Jim Murphy and reveals an untrustworthy individual who is the enemy of justice and transparency.

The close ties between the UK’s intelligence and security services and those of Libya are nauseating to read laced as they are with a tone of complicity, subterfuge and sadistic pleasure at rendering back into the hands of the Gaddafi regime political dissidents for torture and death.

Not only did Britain play this sordid game of spider and fly with real people and in full knowledge of the consequences, it also invited foreign agents from Tripoli to operate here in our country where they could pursue and harass Gaddafi’s opponents.

This, remember, was a Labour government, ostensibly a left-of-centre party committed to human rights and an ethical foreign policy.

At play was a desire to bring Gaddafi in from the cold by encouraging him to disown weapons of mass destruction – an initiative with a social conscience which required delicate handling.

Like much else in the contradictory world of Blairism, this became confused with other objectives like securing oil deals in North Africa for BP, a long-time corporate friend of New Labour and benefactor to its lieutenants.

What this attempted rapprochement did not need was to engage Libyan state security as Britain’s best friends in the grubby world of kidnap, torture and kill. Little wonder that when Moussa Koussa defected in 2011 it was to the UK and his friends in the Foreign Office that he turned for sanctuary, to be spirited away unscathed to a new life.

The other link http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/feb/07/labour-government-lockerbie-bomber-release

is to the story of how the Labour government simultaneously had an undeclared policy of trying to get the Lockerbie bomber freed in order to improve relations with Gaddafi and ease the way for those oil contracts in the Deal in the Desert. Here, Sir Gus O’Donnell, head of the Civil Service (the one we now we can trust courtesy of Sir Nicholas Macpherson) produced a report for the Prime Minister which proves that throughout the years of Megrahi’s imprisonment in Scotland it was the Labour government’s policy to help get him released.

So two things are going on…the UK is buttering up the man responsible for the Lockerbie bombing to the extent that it is working hand in glove with his state security while simultaneously it is beavering away behind the scenes to free the man they agree performed the actual bombing. It is a twin-track approach to appease the sponsor of the worst terrorist atrocity on British soil.

Meanwhile what was going on in Scotland where the Pan Am flight came down? Well, another Labour member, Scottish leader Iain Gray was regularly excoriating the SNP for  releasing Megrahi – the very thing that the head of the Civil Service now says was Labour policy.

Gray said: ‘The last time the SNP appealed to ‘moral authority’ was when they released the Lockerbie bomber. They were wrong about that and most Scots agree that was the wrong decision. That’s another example of poor judgement.’

Gray used the release as a trump card during the election in 2011. He said: ‘The SNP must provide the US with details of how it reached the decision to free Megrahi, who has always maintained his innocence. We have to make it clear to the US what the basis of the decision to release Megrahi was. I don’t believe that lobbying by BP had anything to do with his release. I think it was a decision made by Kenny MacAskill and Alex Salmond and a decision I think they both got wrong. If we reach the anniversary of his release and Megrahi is still alive, I think Kenny MacAskill should apologise and admit he made a mistake and should apologise to the families of the victims.’

Now you see where this is going…in London it is the secret policy of Labour to work behind the scenes for the release of Megrahi because that will open up trade links and should make Libya a safer place. But up the road at Holyrood, poor old Labour is hammering away at a cracked bell trying to get a ring. How they must have smiled at Westminster when they read of Gray’s desperate attempts to condemn the very policy they were actively supporting.

So why didn’t Gray know the truth? (He told the BBC he didn’t know and made up his own view). After all there is a Secretary of State for Scotland in Cabinet whose job is to represent Scotland and to act as intermediary between the two.

Enter Jim Murphy. For most of this time (2008 – 10) Murphy was Scottish Secretary. (Des Browne is also but more briefly culpable).

Yet it seems Murphy did not disclose any information to Gray or his Labour colleagues to rein in their criticisms of the SNP in case the news leaked that they wanted Megrahi released all along. Why not? I contacted Murphy’s office several times through the BBC and never once received a reply, clearly indicating that he knew he was guilty of deceiving his own party and Scotland on an issue of huge emotional importance. He sided with secret deals with Gaddafi and Moussa Koussa and the torture of dissidents instead of truth and fair dealing, even when dealing with his own side.

Iain Gray’s humiliation came in the 2011 election of course but if he ever wants to revisit the issue with double-dealing Jim, well he’s in his Cabinet today…

[RB: Derek Bateman is entirely correct in pointing out the hypocrisy of Labour over the release of Megrahi. There is no doubt that Tony Blair & Co were striving mightily to secure his repatriation by means of prisoner transfer, but were swift to condemn Kenny MacAskill when he granted compassionate release. But I am extremely disappointed at the reference to “the Lockerbie bomber” and “the man responsible for the Lockerbie bombing”. Does anyone who has taken the trouble to study the case (and who is outside the Crown Office) still believe that Megrahi was the Lockerbie bomber? Certainly, as Ian Hamilton QC has said, “I don't think there's a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr Megrahi was justly convicted.” 

As he has made clear on Twitter (@DerekBateman2) Derek Bateman is not someone who believes that Megrahi was guilty. The point he was making was that Labour Government ministers believed that Megrahi was "the Lockerbie bomber" and that Gaddafi was "the man responsible for the Lockerbie bombing” (or at least said that they did) but nevertheless had the dealings that they did with the Gaddafi regime.]