[This is the headline over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published yesterday in the Belfast Telegraph. It reads as follows:]
I am grateful to Kim Sengupta for his article (Saturday Review, December 29). Like Kim, I was privileged to meet Baset Al-Megrahi in Tripoli just before his death in 2012, by which time we had become good friends. Years before, I had met him while he was in prison at Greenock in Scotland for a crime I knew he had not committed.
Kim's article mentions many who were sufficiently involved to become convinced, like myself and Fr Keegans, that this man had been wrongly convicted.
For those of us relatives who know this to be the case, it adds sorely to the burden of bereavement to know that those with the authority, power and knowledge to overturn this verdict, simply will not thus far act.
We, the direct relatives, surely have the right to know the truth as to all that our governments know about the real perpetrators and why the atrocity at Lockerbie was not prevented.
I promised Megrahi's family I would do all I could to free them from the burden of the epithet of "the Lockerbie bomber's family". I also met Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill just before Megrahi's release, when I was able to beg him to let a man I knew to be innocent be free to go home to die among his family. He has since admitted he is not happy with aspects of the evidence used against Baset.
Unfortunately, the Scottish High Court has ruled that we relatives of some of the victims have no locus to request further review of the evidence through a fresh appeal. It is to be fervently hoped that 2019 will see Megrahi's family granted a further full appeal.
It is not that there is nicely balanced evidence for and against the verdict: there is now an overwhelming preponderance of material which confirms that Megrahi was not involved, but that failures in the way warnings were handled by the Thatcher government of the day - and at Heathrow, in particular - allowed the bomb to be ingested there.
Like Baset, Air Malta and Frankfurt airport need to be excluded from blame. Let's admit we got it disastrously wrong and plan for a safer future.
Showing posts sorted by date for query Kenny MacAskill. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Kenny MacAskill. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Tuesday 8 January 2019
Thursday 20 December 2018
MacAskill: I’ve never believed Megrahi to be the bomber
[An article by Kenny MacAskill in today's edition of The Scotsman is headlined Lockerbie bomber was freed ‘to protect Scotland’, says Kenny MacAskill. It reads in part:]
... as justice secretary in 2009, it was my responsibility to consider applications for prisoner transfer and compassionate release made by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the only man every convicted of the crime. That saw me engage with state leaders as well as with the families of the victims from around the globe, for Lockerbie was truly international in its dimensions both with those who perpetrated it and those who suffered by it.
As with the atrocity itself, that period is also ingrained in my memory. It couldn’t be anything else given the significance of it and the focus that fell upon me. I realised it was going to be big but it was impossible at the outset to realise just how big. Later, finding my face on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and other international media brought it home.
But, though I’m now part of what seems a never-ending saga, my own involvement was quite truncated, most taking place over a short space of time from spring 2009, when an application for prisoner transfer was submitted by Libya, through to August of that year when I made my decision to release on compassionate grounds.
Of course, there had been involvement before as, just weeks into my tenure in 2007, it was announced that the UK and Libya were seeking to conclude a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA). There was of course only one Libyan national detained in Scotland and it was evident that the UK’s intention was his release. Indeed, Jack Straw, the UK justice secretary, was quite open about it when I spoke to him. BP were seeking a major oil contract and without it the deal would go to an American competitor.
New Labour had either forgotten about devolution or failed to notice that an SNP administration was now in charge at Holyrood. The First Minister quickly raised objections and the UK realised that there were complications. However, though I was involved in discussions, much was dealt with by Alex Salmond given the constitutional aspect.
As debate raged on over the PTA, however, a further twist in the tale came when Megrahi was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. I was advised of that in September 2008 but things still seemed a long way off, as arguments over prisoner transfer continued and his illness was in its early stages. Indeed, I recall a conversation with my wife at Hogmanay that year when I explained it would be my decision but there still seemed no immediacy.
But, by spring 2009 the pace was picking up as the UK ignored Scottish objections and signed a treaty with Libya. Likewise, Megrahi’s health was worsening and it would only be a matter of time before an application for compassionate release would be submitted.
The months following were to become quite frenetic. Prisoner transfer applications have set timetables and accordingly the clock was ticking. Invariably the responsibility was compounded by us being not just a minority administration but the first ever SNP one. If there were to be political casualties then they would be limited to one. The decision would be for me alone.
However, I was remarkably well supported by staff, even more so as the days passed and pressure mounted. There was no consensus that could be brokered or solution that would see it all just go away. Accordingly, I resolved that the decision I had to make wouldn’t be subject to economic or strategic issues but based on the laws and guidance that applied. They would be followed scrupulously and wherever possible information and actions would be open and public.
That remained the policy of the Scottish Government throughout.
The only red line I ever set was that Megrahi wouldn’t die in a Scottish prison cell. Rejection of either or both applications remained open until my final conclusions but it simply meant that he’d never be allowed to pass away here, even if it meant being medically evacuated at the very last moment. I wasn’t prepared to risk the lives of those who worked in health or prisons through the creation of a martyr and attacks following from those who perpetrate such terror. Events in cities around the globe since then have simply confirmed my view.
But increased security soon surrounded me as governments and organisations from far and wide sought to make their views known. Locked car doors and being driven everywhere were immediately noticeable, though to the chagrin of my driver I often insisted on walking. Hourly drive-bys by police vehicles at home and my office, and even panic alarms installed at both. Sadly, that level of intrusion also impacted on others as my wife from whom I’d recently separated also required to endure it.
It did, though, create a bond with those who worked with me and shared the risks that I’ll take to the grave.
My staff did their best to insulate me from undue pressure and I recall being advised that Robert Mueller, currently investigating President Trump but then FBI director, had sought to have a letter delivered personally to me. It was out of office hours and contrary to diplomatic protocols and his request was speedily rejected by my office, who advised it could be delivered to St Andrews House in the usual manner. I remained sound asleep oblivious to it all but was told that a police armed response team had been scrambled to my address just in case, greatly endearing me to them ever since.
To make a decision, evidence had to be heard from victims’ families and States. Much was harrowing indeed with many meetings being distressing for staff and myself. Governments varied in their attitudes. The Libyans convivial but with an underlying hint of menace; the Americans business like but co-operative with information; whilst the UK was shameless, all the time conniving for Megrahi’s release but equally insisting it was nothing to do with them.
Many politicians were equally shameful. Labour in Scotland simply opposed whatever I did despite the risks to the nation and the collusion of their London colleagues with Libya. Tories likewise condemned whilst former Tory ministers sought to lobby on behalf of Anglo-Arab business interests.
As is now well known I refused the prisoner transfer request as it was clear that there had been a UN brokered agreement between UK/USA and Libya that sentences would be served in Scotland.
The legal criteria for compassionate release were also met and so I rejected the former but granted the latter.
It’s a decision I stand by to this day and whilst some disagree, with it few can fault the procedure. Indeed, information that has since come to light since has simply confirmed my view. I always knew that Scotland was but a small cog in a much bigger international wheel. The British and Americans, whatever their public utterances, were colluding with Gadhafi on everything from training his special forces to rendering prisoners to him. Tony Blair’s embrace of the Libyan despot was matched by the fawning over his family by Hillary Clinton and the desire of the west for trade deals and strategic alliances
At the same time the supposed hero’s welcome received by Megrahi on his return to Libya was shown to have been fake news which the British and Americans were aware of. But they were never going to allow truth to stand in the way of an opportunity to heap opprobrium on Scotland. (...)
Questions remain over the conviction of Megrahi but whilst I’ve never believed him to be the bomber, he most certainly was no innocent abroad. He was the highest-ranking official Libya would release and the lowest one the west would accept. [RB: There is absolutely no evidence that I am aware of that the west sought higher-ranking officials than Megrahi and that Libya refused; and, given my contacts with the Libyan government during my efforts to secure a Lockerbie trial, I am sure I would have been informed.]
But the UK and USA know the full story, even if a court never will, having their spies and even getting their sources out. Sadly, that’s why the conspiracy theories will run for ever with me now part of them.
... as justice secretary in 2009, it was my responsibility to consider applications for prisoner transfer and compassionate release made by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the only man every convicted of the crime. That saw me engage with state leaders as well as with the families of the victims from around the globe, for Lockerbie was truly international in its dimensions both with those who perpetrated it and those who suffered by it.
As with the atrocity itself, that period is also ingrained in my memory. It couldn’t be anything else given the significance of it and the focus that fell upon me. I realised it was going to be big but it was impossible at the outset to realise just how big. Later, finding my face on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and other international media brought it home.
But, though I’m now part of what seems a never-ending saga, my own involvement was quite truncated, most taking place over a short space of time from spring 2009, when an application for prisoner transfer was submitted by Libya, through to August of that year when I made my decision to release on compassionate grounds.
Of course, there had been involvement before as, just weeks into my tenure in 2007, it was announced that the UK and Libya were seeking to conclude a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA). There was of course only one Libyan national detained in Scotland and it was evident that the UK’s intention was his release. Indeed, Jack Straw, the UK justice secretary, was quite open about it when I spoke to him. BP were seeking a major oil contract and without it the deal would go to an American competitor.
New Labour had either forgotten about devolution or failed to notice that an SNP administration was now in charge at Holyrood. The First Minister quickly raised objections and the UK realised that there were complications. However, though I was involved in discussions, much was dealt with by Alex Salmond given the constitutional aspect.
As debate raged on over the PTA, however, a further twist in the tale came when Megrahi was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. I was advised of that in September 2008 but things still seemed a long way off, as arguments over prisoner transfer continued and his illness was in its early stages. Indeed, I recall a conversation with my wife at Hogmanay that year when I explained it would be my decision but there still seemed no immediacy.
But, by spring 2009 the pace was picking up as the UK ignored Scottish objections and signed a treaty with Libya. Likewise, Megrahi’s health was worsening and it would only be a matter of time before an application for compassionate release would be submitted.
The months following were to become quite frenetic. Prisoner transfer applications have set timetables and accordingly the clock was ticking. Invariably the responsibility was compounded by us being not just a minority administration but the first ever SNP one. If there were to be political casualties then they would be limited to one. The decision would be for me alone.
However, I was remarkably well supported by staff, even more so as the days passed and pressure mounted. There was no consensus that could be brokered or solution that would see it all just go away. Accordingly, I resolved that the decision I had to make wouldn’t be subject to economic or strategic issues but based on the laws and guidance that applied. They would be followed scrupulously and wherever possible information and actions would be open and public.
That remained the policy of the Scottish Government throughout.
The only red line I ever set was that Megrahi wouldn’t die in a Scottish prison cell. Rejection of either or both applications remained open until my final conclusions but it simply meant that he’d never be allowed to pass away here, even if it meant being medically evacuated at the very last moment. I wasn’t prepared to risk the lives of those who worked in health or prisons through the creation of a martyr and attacks following from those who perpetrate such terror. Events in cities around the globe since then have simply confirmed my view.
But increased security soon surrounded me as governments and organisations from far and wide sought to make their views known. Locked car doors and being driven everywhere were immediately noticeable, though to the chagrin of my driver I often insisted on walking. Hourly drive-bys by police vehicles at home and my office, and even panic alarms installed at both. Sadly, that level of intrusion also impacted on others as my wife from whom I’d recently separated also required to endure it.
It did, though, create a bond with those who worked with me and shared the risks that I’ll take to the grave.
My staff did their best to insulate me from undue pressure and I recall being advised that Robert Mueller, currently investigating President Trump but then FBI director, had sought to have a letter delivered personally to me. It was out of office hours and contrary to diplomatic protocols and his request was speedily rejected by my office, who advised it could be delivered to St Andrews House in the usual manner. I remained sound asleep oblivious to it all but was told that a police armed response team had been scrambled to my address just in case, greatly endearing me to them ever since.
To make a decision, evidence had to be heard from victims’ families and States. Much was harrowing indeed with many meetings being distressing for staff and myself. Governments varied in their attitudes. The Libyans convivial but with an underlying hint of menace; the Americans business like but co-operative with information; whilst the UK was shameless, all the time conniving for Megrahi’s release but equally insisting it was nothing to do with them.
Many politicians were equally shameful. Labour in Scotland simply opposed whatever I did despite the risks to the nation and the collusion of their London colleagues with Libya. Tories likewise condemned whilst former Tory ministers sought to lobby on behalf of Anglo-Arab business interests.
As is now well known I refused the prisoner transfer request as it was clear that there had been a UN brokered agreement between UK/USA and Libya that sentences would be served in Scotland.
The legal criteria for compassionate release were also met and so I rejected the former but granted the latter.
It’s a decision I stand by to this day and whilst some disagree, with it few can fault the procedure. Indeed, information that has since come to light since has simply confirmed my view. I always knew that Scotland was but a small cog in a much bigger international wheel. The British and Americans, whatever their public utterances, were colluding with Gadhafi on everything from training his special forces to rendering prisoners to him. Tony Blair’s embrace of the Libyan despot was matched by the fawning over his family by Hillary Clinton and the desire of the west for trade deals and strategic alliances
At the same time the supposed hero’s welcome received by Megrahi on his return to Libya was shown to have been fake news which the British and Americans were aware of. But they were never going to allow truth to stand in the way of an opportunity to heap opprobrium on Scotland. (...)
Questions remain over the conviction of Megrahi but whilst I’ve never believed him to be the bomber, he most certainly was no innocent abroad. He was the highest-ranking official Libya would release and the lowest one the west would accept. [RB: There is absolutely no evidence that I am aware of that the west sought higher-ranking officials than Megrahi and that Libya refused; and, given my contacts with the Libyan government during my efforts to secure a Lockerbie trial, I am sure I would have been informed.]
But the UK and USA know the full story, even if a court never will, having their spies and even getting their sources out. Sadly, that’s why the conspiracy theories will run for ever with me now part of them.
Tuesday 18 December 2018
What is at stake is the reputation of the Scottish justice system
[Today's edition of The Scotsman carries an article by James Robertson under the headline Lockerbie anniversary: ‘One terrible injustice cannot be cancelled out’. It reads as follows:]
Like many other people, I remember exactly where I was on the night of 21st December 1988. I was a bookseller in what was then the only Edinburgh branch of Waterstones, on George Street, and that evening the shop was crowded with customers choosing Christmas presents. Popular titles included Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and the paperback of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent. The phones were ringing constantly as people called to ask what time we closed or whether we had a copy of this or that book.
At about eight o’clock I answered the telephone and recognised the voice of a friend, another bookseller, on the line. He had just heard a radio report that a plane had crashed onto the town of Lockerbie. It sounded like a major incident and since, mistakenly, he thought I was from that part of the country he wanted to let me know. I thanked him and went back to work.
By the time I got home and switched on the television it was the only news story. Pan Am flight 103, a Boeing 747 passenger jet en route from London to New York, had fallen out of the sky and, as would be quite quickly established, all 259 passengers and crew, and a further eleven people on the ground, had been killed. A few days later, everybody’s worst fears were confirmed: this was not the result of bad weather or mechanical failure, but of a bomb having been placed on the plane.
That night is now half my lifetime away, and belongs to a world in which there was no internet, and in which news in the UK was accessed entirely via newspapers, radio and four TV channels. Through all the subsequent years of political, social and cultural change, the story of the Lockerbie bombing has never faded. In part this is because of the sheer scale of it: an event like no other in recent Scottish history − except perhaps the Piper Alpha disaster of the same year, which claimed the lives of 167 oil platform workers. But Piper Alpha was an accident, whereas the destruction of Pan Am 103 was an act of mass murder. It led to the biggest ever Scottish criminal investigation and, after more than twelve years, to the conviction of one Libyan man, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
The response to the bombing brought out some of the very best in human behaviour − kindness, care, courage and dignity. It also left deep emotional wounds that for some will never fully heal. It is completely understandable that many relatives of the victims, people of Lockerbie, police and other emergency workers involved in the traumatic aftermath have long wanted the story to be over, or as ‘over’ as it ever can be. But after the long investigation, then the trial of Megrahi and his co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, and finally the conviction of Megrahi alone in 2001, too many questions were left unanswered for this to be possible.
Well-founded doubts about aspects of the investigation have existed almost since the night the plane came down. It is, for example, highly questionable whether the bomb was ingested into the air traffic system at Malta, as the prosecution case against Megrahi and Fhimah contended, rather than at Heathrow. There were serious shortcomings in the identification by Tony Gauci, a key witness, of Megrahi as the purchaser of clothes packed into the bomb suitcase. Likewise, there were clear failings in the metallurgical analysis of the timer used to trigger the bomb. The prosecution failed to disclose vital evidence to the defence. And the indictments against Megrahi and Fhimah, without which no case against them could have been brought, were based on information supplied by a witness found to have been completely unreliable and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, the juryless court acquitted Fhimah and, almost entirely on the basis of circumstantial evidence, found Megrahi guilty. The United Nations-nominated observer Professor Hans Köchler immediately condemned aspects of the judgement as ‘arbitrary’, ‘inconsistent’ and ‘irrational’ and said that the trial as a whole was ‘not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.’
Concerns that the conviction might be a gross miscarriage of justice were reinforced over the years as new information emerged that had not been considered during either the trial or at Megrahi’s first appeal. The report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) on his conviction, made public by the Herald newspaper in March 2012, found six grounds which might have warranted referring the case to the Court of Appeal.
But by that time Megrahi was back home in Libya with terminal cancer, having dropped his second appeal at the time of his controversial release from prison, on compassionate grounds, in 2009. Even his death in May 2012 did not draw a line under the whole affair.
The campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM), to which I belong, was founded in 2008. Its signatories include some of those who lost loved ones in the disaster, such as Jim Swire and John Mosey, the ‘architect’ of the Kamp Zeist court arrangements Professor Robert Black, and various journalists, writers, lawyers, politicians, former police officers and other citizens who independently reached the conclusion that something had gone very wrong in the Lockerbie investigation and the subsequent prosecution of Mr Megrahi. In September 2012 the committee of JfM drew up six − later increased to nine − allegations of criminality in connection with the Lockerbie investigation and trial, relating to possible malpractice by Crown Office personnel, police and other prosecution witnesses. The allegations were submitted to the then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill in strict confidence. They were passed nonetheless to the Crown Office, which at once publicly denounced them as ‘without exception, defamatory and entirely unfounded’ even before the dossier of detailed evidence had been examined by the police.
This intervention, we felt, represented both prejudice and an intolerable conflict of interest since the Crown Office would ultimately decide whether or not the allegations had any validity. Furthermore, JfM’s allegations would be dealt with by Dumfries and Galloway Police, the force which had carried out the original investigation. None of this gave us confidence that these matters would be treated systematically, objectively and fairly. Indeed, one of the most important outcomes of the Lockerbie saga has been to expose serious faults in the mechanism and procedures of Scottish justice.
However, in 2013 Police Scotland came into being, and the treatment of our allegations changed substantially. ‘Operation Sandwood’ was established, which at its conclusion was described by the police as ‘a methodical and rigorous inquiry using our major investigation framework under the direction of an experienced senior investigating officer.’ We have no argument with that description. Regular liaison meetings took place between JfM and Police Scotland, who engaged a QC completely independent of Crown Office to review the findings of Operation Sandwood. These were unprecedented arrangements. The current Chief Constable, Iain Livingstone, had oversight of the entire investigation, which was completed on 21st November this year.
The Sandwood report has now been submitted to Crown Office. The police concluded that there was ‘no evidence of criminality and therefore no basis to submit a standard prosecution report’. Crucially, however, Police Scotland’s statement goes on to say, ‘The material collated during the inquiry and the findings and conclusions reached have relevance to … the potential appeal against conviction lodged on behalf of the late Mr Megrahi.’
JfM does not, of course, have any knowledge of the details of what the Sandwood report contains, but we are confident that the police have indeed been ‘methodical and rigorous’. We know from the amount of time and resources spent on Operation Sandwood that the police did not deem our allegations either vexatious or without substance. And when the report is received, as it must be, by the SCCRC -- the body currently considering whether to recommend that Mr Megrahi’s family be allowed to make a fresh appeal against his conviction -- we firmly believe that its contents will contain enough information to make that recommendation inevitable.
Such a development, long overdue, would enable all material relevant to the case to be reviewed in the Court of Appeal. JfM believes that in the absence of a public inquiry, which the Scottish Government has consistently refused to establish, this is the only way to have all the evidence examined and to bring some kind of finality to this aspect, at least, of the Lockerbie story.
What is at stake is not just whether there was a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi’s conviction but the reputation of the Scottish justice system. None of this will lessen the pain and grief felt by the families of the dead. But the terrible injustice perpetrated on that December night thirty years ago is not cancelled by another injustice: it is compounded.
The full truth about the Lockerbie bombing is not yet known, but gradually we are moving towards it.
We must hope that some of those, now elderly, who have sought that truth for so long, are still here when it is brought into the light.
Like many other people, I remember exactly where I was on the night of 21st December 1988. I was a bookseller in what was then the only Edinburgh branch of Waterstones, on George Street, and that evening the shop was crowded with customers choosing Christmas presents. Popular titles included Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and the paperback of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent. The phones were ringing constantly as people called to ask what time we closed or whether we had a copy of this or that book.
At about eight o’clock I answered the telephone and recognised the voice of a friend, another bookseller, on the line. He had just heard a radio report that a plane had crashed onto the town of Lockerbie. It sounded like a major incident and since, mistakenly, he thought I was from that part of the country he wanted to let me know. I thanked him and went back to work.
By the time I got home and switched on the television it was the only news story. Pan Am flight 103, a Boeing 747 passenger jet en route from London to New York, had fallen out of the sky and, as would be quite quickly established, all 259 passengers and crew, and a further eleven people on the ground, had been killed. A few days later, everybody’s worst fears were confirmed: this was not the result of bad weather or mechanical failure, but of a bomb having been placed on the plane.
That night is now half my lifetime away, and belongs to a world in which there was no internet, and in which news in the UK was accessed entirely via newspapers, radio and four TV channels. Through all the subsequent years of political, social and cultural change, the story of the Lockerbie bombing has never faded. In part this is because of the sheer scale of it: an event like no other in recent Scottish history − except perhaps the Piper Alpha disaster of the same year, which claimed the lives of 167 oil platform workers. But Piper Alpha was an accident, whereas the destruction of Pan Am 103 was an act of mass murder. It led to the biggest ever Scottish criminal investigation and, after more than twelve years, to the conviction of one Libyan man, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
The response to the bombing brought out some of the very best in human behaviour − kindness, care, courage and dignity. It also left deep emotional wounds that for some will never fully heal. It is completely understandable that many relatives of the victims, people of Lockerbie, police and other emergency workers involved in the traumatic aftermath have long wanted the story to be over, or as ‘over’ as it ever can be. But after the long investigation, then the trial of Megrahi and his co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, and finally the conviction of Megrahi alone in 2001, too many questions were left unanswered for this to be possible.
Well-founded doubts about aspects of the investigation have existed almost since the night the plane came down. It is, for example, highly questionable whether the bomb was ingested into the air traffic system at Malta, as the prosecution case against Megrahi and Fhimah contended, rather than at Heathrow. There were serious shortcomings in the identification by Tony Gauci, a key witness, of Megrahi as the purchaser of clothes packed into the bomb suitcase. Likewise, there were clear failings in the metallurgical analysis of the timer used to trigger the bomb. The prosecution failed to disclose vital evidence to the defence. And the indictments against Megrahi and Fhimah, without which no case against them could have been brought, were based on information supplied by a witness found to have been completely unreliable and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, the juryless court acquitted Fhimah and, almost entirely on the basis of circumstantial evidence, found Megrahi guilty. The United Nations-nominated observer Professor Hans Köchler immediately condemned aspects of the judgement as ‘arbitrary’, ‘inconsistent’ and ‘irrational’ and said that the trial as a whole was ‘not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.’
Concerns that the conviction might be a gross miscarriage of justice were reinforced over the years as new information emerged that had not been considered during either the trial or at Megrahi’s first appeal. The report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) on his conviction, made public by the Herald newspaper in March 2012, found six grounds which might have warranted referring the case to the Court of Appeal.
But by that time Megrahi was back home in Libya with terminal cancer, having dropped his second appeal at the time of his controversial release from prison, on compassionate grounds, in 2009. Even his death in May 2012 did not draw a line under the whole affair.
The campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM), to which I belong, was founded in 2008. Its signatories include some of those who lost loved ones in the disaster, such as Jim Swire and John Mosey, the ‘architect’ of the Kamp Zeist court arrangements Professor Robert Black, and various journalists, writers, lawyers, politicians, former police officers and other citizens who independently reached the conclusion that something had gone very wrong in the Lockerbie investigation and the subsequent prosecution of Mr Megrahi. In September 2012 the committee of JfM drew up six − later increased to nine − allegations of criminality in connection with the Lockerbie investigation and trial, relating to possible malpractice by Crown Office personnel, police and other prosecution witnesses. The allegations were submitted to the then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill in strict confidence. They were passed nonetheless to the Crown Office, which at once publicly denounced them as ‘without exception, defamatory and entirely unfounded’ even before the dossier of detailed evidence had been examined by the police.
This intervention, we felt, represented both prejudice and an intolerable conflict of interest since the Crown Office would ultimately decide whether or not the allegations had any validity. Furthermore, JfM’s allegations would be dealt with by Dumfries and Galloway Police, the force which had carried out the original investigation. None of this gave us confidence that these matters would be treated systematically, objectively and fairly. Indeed, one of the most important outcomes of the Lockerbie saga has been to expose serious faults in the mechanism and procedures of Scottish justice.
However, in 2013 Police Scotland came into being, and the treatment of our allegations changed substantially. ‘Operation Sandwood’ was established, which at its conclusion was described by the police as ‘a methodical and rigorous inquiry using our major investigation framework under the direction of an experienced senior investigating officer.’ We have no argument with that description. Regular liaison meetings took place between JfM and Police Scotland, who engaged a QC completely independent of Crown Office to review the findings of Operation Sandwood. These were unprecedented arrangements. The current Chief Constable, Iain Livingstone, had oversight of the entire investigation, which was completed on 21st November this year.
The Sandwood report has now been submitted to Crown Office. The police concluded that there was ‘no evidence of criminality and therefore no basis to submit a standard prosecution report’. Crucially, however, Police Scotland’s statement goes on to say, ‘The material collated during the inquiry and the findings and conclusions reached have relevance to … the potential appeal against conviction lodged on behalf of the late Mr Megrahi.’
JfM does not, of course, have any knowledge of the details of what the Sandwood report contains, but we are confident that the police have indeed been ‘methodical and rigorous’. We know from the amount of time and resources spent on Operation Sandwood that the police did not deem our allegations either vexatious or without substance. And when the report is received, as it must be, by the SCCRC -- the body currently considering whether to recommend that Mr Megrahi’s family be allowed to make a fresh appeal against his conviction -- we firmly believe that its contents will contain enough information to make that recommendation inevitable.
Such a development, long overdue, would enable all material relevant to the case to be reviewed in the Court of Appeal. JfM believes that in the absence of a public inquiry, which the Scottish Government has consistently refused to establish, this is the only way to have all the evidence examined and to bring some kind of finality to this aspect, at least, of the Lockerbie story.
What is at stake is not just whether there was a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi’s conviction but the reputation of the Scottish justice system. None of this will lessen the pain and grief felt by the families of the dead. But the terrible injustice perpetrated on that December night thirty years ago is not cancelled by another injustice: it is compounded.
The full truth about the Lockerbie bombing is not yet known, but gradually we are moving towards it.
We must hope that some of those, now elderly, who have sought that truth for so long, are still here when it is brought into the light.
Monday 17 December 2018
Three decades on and so many questions remain
[This is part of the headline over a long report by Chris Marshall in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]
Thirty years on since the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, there remains as many questions as there have been answers about what took place that night.
From the bombing itself – the deadliest terrorist atrocity ever carried out in Britain – to the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands and the jailing and subsequent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the night of 21 December, 1988 has come to define much that has happened since.
And while there are those satisfied of Megrahi’s guilt, there are others convinced of his innocence, and others still who believe the full truth of what took place may never be known. (...)
The youngest victim onboard the plane was two-month-old Brittany Williams, of New York; the oldest, Ibolya Gabor, 79, from Budapest, Hungary, who had survived two world wars and was travelling to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with her family. Other passengers included Bernt Carlsson, 50, the UN Commissioner for Namibia and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut.
There were a number of claims of responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, some far more credible than others.
A painstaking investigation carried out by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) set about reconstructing the plane from fragments of wreckage scattered across more than 2,000 square kilometres.
The murder inquiry would see officers travel to 23 different countries, identifying victims, speaking to witnesses and gathering evidence.
From the wreckage, fragments of a Samsonite suitcase were recovered which it was thought had been used to conceal the bomb.
Clothing from the same suitcase was found to have come from a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci, who later would controversially identify Megrahi as the man who had bought the items.
Megrahi, an intelligence officer, had a role as chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, allowing him regular travel to Malta where the company had an office. It was here, prosecutors would later argue, that Megrahi bought the clothing used to help hide the bomb which was to bring down Pan Am Flight 103. Using fake passports [RB "coded" not "fake"], he was also able to travel to Zurich where the timer for the bomb was made. [RB: The only evidence at the trial that Megrahi was an intelligence officer came from Majid Giaka, whose evidence on every other issue was dismissed by the court as utterly unworthy of credit. The court gave no reason for accepting his testimony on this one point.]
The police investigation, which had taken around 15,000 witness statements, eventually led to Libya, and both Megrahi and his compatriot, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted for the bombing by the Lord Advocate and US attorney-general in 1991.
It was to be a further eight years, however, amid heavy pressure in the form of UN sanctions, before Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to hand over the two men for trial. [RB: The Libyan Government had never objected to the suspects standing trial in Scotland. It was the lawyers for the suspects -- Libyan and international, including Scottish -- who objected. The true story of how the Zeist trial came about can be read here.]
After protracted negotiations, it was decided the two Libyans would be tried under Scots law, but at a neutral location. Nelson Mandela met with Jim Swire, who became a spokesman for the UK families, and helped broker the deal. A former US Air Force base at Camp Zeist near Utrecht in the Netherlands was chosen and the trial got under way on 3 May, 2000 – nearly 12 years after the bombing.
On 31 January the following year, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Fhimah was acquitted. But if observers thought that was to be the end of the legal case, they were wrong – it was only just beginning. (...)
An initial legal appeal was refused, but in September 2003 Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) asking for a review of his conviction. Nearly four years later, the SCCRC announced it would be referring the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal after it found Megrahi “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice”.
The Libyan applied to have the appeal dropped, however, shortly before it emerged he was to be controversially released on compassionate grounds by then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Despite a doctor’s assessment that Megrahi, who had terminal prostate cancer, had only three months to live, he would survive for a further three years after his return to Libyan, his life reportedly extended by a drug which at that point was not available to Scottish cancer sufferers on the NHS.
Despite Megrahi’s death, attempts continue to overturn his conviction. Earlier this year, the SCCRC began reviewing his conviction for a second time, saying it believed Megrahi had abandoned his earlier appeal because he thought it would result in him being released from prison and allowed to return home to Libya.
Back in Lockerbie, only the memorials to the dead remain as visible signs of the terror that came from the skies one December night 30 years ago. But while the houses of Sherwood Crescent have been rebuilt and life has gone on, the story appears far from finished.
Thirty years on since the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, there remains as many questions as there have been answers about what took place that night.
From the bombing itself – the deadliest terrorist atrocity ever carried out in Britain – to the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands and the jailing and subsequent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the night of 21 December, 1988 has come to define much that has happened since.
And while there are those satisfied of Megrahi’s guilt, there are others convinced of his innocence, and others still who believe the full truth of what took place may never be known. (...)
The youngest victim onboard the plane was two-month-old Brittany Williams, of New York; the oldest, Ibolya Gabor, 79, from Budapest, Hungary, who had survived two world wars and was travelling to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with her family. Other passengers included Bernt Carlsson, 50, the UN Commissioner for Namibia and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut.
There were a number of claims of responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, some far more credible than others.
A painstaking investigation carried out by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) set about reconstructing the plane from fragments of wreckage scattered across more than 2,000 square kilometres.
The murder inquiry would see officers travel to 23 different countries, identifying victims, speaking to witnesses and gathering evidence.
From the wreckage, fragments of a Samsonite suitcase were recovered which it was thought had been used to conceal the bomb.
Clothing from the same suitcase was found to have come from a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci, who later would controversially identify Megrahi as the man who had bought the items.
Megrahi, an intelligence officer, had a role as chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, allowing him regular travel to Malta where the company had an office. It was here, prosecutors would later argue, that Megrahi bought the clothing used to help hide the bomb which was to bring down Pan Am Flight 103. Using fake passports [RB "coded" not "fake"], he was also able to travel to Zurich where the timer for the bomb was made. [RB: The only evidence at the trial that Megrahi was an intelligence officer came from Majid Giaka, whose evidence on every other issue was dismissed by the court as utterly unworthy of credit. The court gave no reason for accepting his testimony on this one point.]
The police investigation, which had taken around 15,000 witness statements, eventually led to Libya, and both Megrahi and his compatriot, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted for the bombing by the Lord Advocate and US attorney-general in 1991.
It was to be a further eight years, however, amid heavy pressure in the form of UN sanctions, before Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to hand over the two men for trial. [RB: The Libyan Government had never objected to the suspects standing trial in Scotland. It was the lawyers for the suspects -- Libyan and international, including Scottish -- who objected. The true story of how the Zeist trial came about can be read here.]
After protracted negotiations, it was decided the two Libyans would be tried under Scots law, but at a neutral location. Nelson Mandela met with Jim Swire, who became a spokesman for the UK families, and helped broker the deal. A former US Air Force base at Camp Zeist near Utrecht in the Netherlands was chosen and the trial got under way on 3 May, 2000 – nearly 12 years after the bombing.
On 31 January the following year, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Fhimah was acquitted. But if observers thought that was to be the end of the legal case, they were wrong – it was only just beginning. (...)
An initial legal appeal was refused, but in September 2003 Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) asking for a review of his conviction. Nearly four years later, the SCCRC announced it would be referring the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal after it found Megrahi “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice”.
The Libyan applied to have the appeal dropped, however, shortly before it emerged he was to be controversially released on compassionate grounds by then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Despite a doctor’s assessment that Megrahi, who had terminal prostate cancer, had only three months to live, he would survive for a further three years after his return to Libyan, his life reportedly extended by a drug which at that point was not available to Scottish cancer sufferers on the NHS.
Despite Megrahi’s death, attempts continue to overturn his conviction. Earlier this year, the SCCRC began reviewing his conviction for a second time, saying it believed Megrahi had abandoned his earlier appeal because he thought it would result in him being released from prison and allowed to return home to Libya.
Back in Lockerbie, only the memorials to the dead remain as visible signs of the terror that came from the skies one December night 30 years ago. But while the houses of Sherwood Crescent have been rebuilt and life has gone on, the story appears far from finished.
Wednesday 31 October 2018
Lockerbie: Three decades on but still a tragic lack of justice
[This is the headline over an article by Campbell Gunn published yesterday on the website of The Press and Journal. It reads in part:]
Only one person, Abdelbaset al Megrahi, has ever been convicted of taking part in the bombing. He was later released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government and has since died. Many involved in the investigation believe that even if he was involved it was in a minor role. The result is that there has been no justice for those killed and no closure for the relatives of the victims.
I have a personal interest in the case. On the night of the bombing, I was the newly-appointed chief reporter of a newspaper office in Edinburgh. When word came through that a plane had crashed in the Borders – that was the original belief – I rounded up two colleagues, and the three of us headed for the incident.
I have to confess that we used some subterfuge to get near the town, as the motorway was closed and there were long tail-backs on the approach roads. Even from a few miles distant, however, the smell of burning fuel was heavy in the air, and in the distance, we could see a glow in the sky. Police officers were obviously tied up in the town, and it was left to an AA man to direct traffic away from the motorway. I showed him my press card and lied to him that the police had told us to come this way. He waved us onto the motorway with a warning, “Drive south on the northbound carriageway. There shouldn’t be anything coming the other way, but put on full beam just in case…”
The result was that a few minutes later we were standing gazing into what looked like the bowels of hell, on the edge of the huge crater at the side of the motorway where the fuel-laden wings had landed, exploded and were still burning. The rest of the night was spent speaking to witnesses, attending press conferences in the town and sending regular updates to head office from a telephone box – no mobiles in those days, remember – before heading home at seven in the morning.
Lockerbie then became a major part of my journalistic life, as I followed the events of the subsequent years. I attended the press conference where the then Lord Advocate announced the charges against Megrahi and his co-accused Khalifa Fhimah, I was at Camp Zeist in Holland when the two accused flew in for trial, and I was at Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s press conference when he announced he was to release Megrahi.
In between these events were a number of interesting asides. I knew the late MP Tam Dalyell, who campaigned long and vociferously that Megrahi was innocent. On one occasion, after there were reports in the American media containing details of documents relevant to the inquiry which were available under US freedom of information, but which we were unable to see in Scotland, I asked Tam if there was anyone he knew who could help. “Why don’t you call the US embassy and ask for John Doe,” he said. Even at this distance in time I’m reluctant to disclose the real name he gave me. I asked who this was. “His official title is First Secretary at the US embassy. His real job is head of the CIA in Europe. No-one knows more about the Lockerbie bombing investigation.”
I called the embassy, was put through to the man in question and he asked to see me before answering any questions. Next day I was in London facing the head of the CIA for Europe. He obviously wanted to check out that I was a real journalist and that my interest in Lockerbie was genuine. After a long chat he agreed to arrange for all these documents to be forwarded to me from the US State Department. They were the source of a number of stories in the subsequent weeks.
Additionally, it appears I was also put on a US Government list of “interested journalists”, as every time a documentary on Lockerbie was due to be screened on TV, I would receive a press release from Washington rebutting the claims the programme was expected to make.
When the Lockerbie media storm begins again in a few weeks, I’ll be able to reflect on my own coverage of the event and its consequences. Most importantly, I’ll reflect on the fact that not one of the main players in the attack, whether in Iran, Syria or Libya, has ever been brought to justice. Nor at this distance in time are they ever likely to face a criminal court in Scotland.
And that is a tragedy for the Scottish, UK and American justice systems.
Only one person, Abdelbaset al Megrahi, has ever been convicted of taking part in the bombing. He was later released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government and has since died. Many involved in the investigation believe that even if he was involved it was in a minor role. The result is that there has been no justice for those killed and no closure for the relatives of the victims.
I have a personal interest in the case. On the night of the bombing, I was the newly-appointed chief reporter of a newspaper office in Edinburgh. When word came through that a plane had crashed in the Borders – that was the original belief – I rounded up two colleagues, and the three of us headed for the incident.
I have to confess that we used some subterfuge to get near the town, as the motorway was closed and there were long tail-backs on the approach roads. Even from a few miles distant, however, the smell of burning fuel was heavy in the air, and in the distance, we could see a glow in the sky. Police officers were obviously tied up in the town, and it was left to an AA man to direct traffic away from the motorway. I showed him my press card and lied to him that the police had told us to come this way. He waved us onto the motorway with a warning, “Drive south on the northbound carriageway. There shouldn’t be anything coming the other way, but put on full beam just in case…”
The result was that a few minutes later we were standing gazing into what looked like the bowels of hell, on the edge of the huge crater at the side of the motorway where the fuel-laden wings had landed, exploded and were still burning. The rest of the night was spent speaking to witnesses, attending press conferences in the town and sending regular updates to head office from a telephone box – no mobiles in those days, remember – before heading home at seven in the morning.
Lockerbie then became a major part of my journalistic life, as I followed the events of the subsequent years. I attended the press conference where the then Lord Advocate announced the charges against Megrahi and his co-accused Khalifa Fhimah, I was at Camp Zeist in Holland when the two accused flew in for trial, and I was at Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s press conference when he announced he was to release Megrahi.
In between these events were a number of interesting asides. I knew the late MP Tam Dalyell, who campaigned long and vociferously that Megrahi was innocent. On one occasion, after there were reports in the American media containing details of documents relevant to the inquiry which were available under US freedom of information, but which we were unable to see in Scotland, I asked Tam if there was anyone he knew who could help. “Why don’t you call the US embassy and ask for John Doe,” he said. Even at this distance in time I’m reluctant to disclose the real name he gave me. I asked who this was. “His official title is First Secretary at the US embassy. His real job is head of the CIA in Europe. No-one knows more about the Lockerbie bombing investigation.”
I called the embassy, was put through to the man in question and he asked to see me before answering any questions. Next day I was in London facing the head of the CIA for Europe. He obviously wanted to check out that I was a real journalist and that my interest in Lockerbie was genuine. After a long chat he agreed to arrange for all these documents to be forwarded to me from the US State Department. They were the source of a number of stories in the subsequent weeks.
Additionally, it appears I was also put on a US Government list of “interested journalists”, as every time a documentary on Lockerbie was due to be screened on TV, I would receive a press release from Washington rebutting the claims the programme was expected to make.
When the Lockerbie media storm begins again in a few weeks, I’ll be able to reflect on my own coverage of the event and its consequences. Most importantly, I’ll reflect on the fact that not one of the main players in the attack, whether in Iran, Syria or Libya, has ever been brought to justice. Nor at this distance in time are they ever likely to face a criminal court in Scotland.
And that is a tragedy for the Scottish, UK and American justice systems.
Monday 18 June 2018
The case that never goes away
[What follows is the text of a talk given by Dr Morag Kerr on Saturday, 16 June 2018 at a rally at Inch Park, Edinburgh:]
This year is the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster, the case that never goes away.
I've heard people say, drop it, it's history. But it's not much longer ago than Hillsborough, and that was only resolved to public satisfaction very recently. And I personally have an aversion to a false narrative going down in history. Other people feel the same way, including people personally impacted by the atrocity, and that's why we still have active campaigns.
Why is it that there's still so much concern about Lockerbie?Fundamentally, because the verdict in 2001 never made any sense. As the court proceedings unfolded the prosecution case appeared to be falling apart. The evidence against the accused was far far weaker than the public had been led to believe and credible alternative culprits and lines of inquiry had never been properly investigated. The guilty verdict against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi came as a genuine shock to many informed observers, and their concerns have never been laid to rest.
Two separate but parallel campaigns have been going on for the last few years, and both are seeing significant developments unfolding. First, there is the application by Megrahi's family for a posthumous appeal against his conviction.
This case has already had two appeals come to court. The first appeal, the automatic one immediately after the conviction, was brought on the wrong grounds by Megrahi's inept advocate, and was dismissed essentially on a string of technicalities. The second appeal was the result of a prolonged investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and it came to court in 2009. But by that time Megrahi had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and was anxious to return home to his family before he died, and he formally abandoned that appeal immediately before he was granted compassionate release.
This introduced a legal controversy. Megrahi himself and his legal team maintained that he had withdrawn the appeal to make it more likely that compassionate release would be granted. Kenny MacAskill denied having made that a condition of granting compassionate release. When Megrahi's family applied to the SCCRC for a third appeal, the point that had to be decided was, how many bites at the cherry is anybody allowed to have? The appellant abandoned his appeal voluntarily, so why should another be allowed?
The SCCRC's decision on this was reported last month. They accepted that Megrahi withdrew the appeal because he believed it would improve his chances of being allowed to go home, and that it wasn't in any way a capitulation or an admission of guilt. They have therefore decided to carry out a full evaluation of the new application from his family. I anticipate that this will result in a third appeal being allowed and going to court.
The second campaign is an initiative by the pressure group Justice for Megrahi, of which I'm secretary depute. The JFM committee includes retired senior lawyers and a retired senior police officer as well as relatives of Lockerbie victims, so we have a lot of expertise to call on. Back in 2012 when the prospects of getting a third appeal to court were looking remote, we had a look at other options to force the authorities to look again at the case. The thing is, you can't just go to the police or the Crown Office and say, look, here's why I think you got this wrong, you must reconsider. It doesn't work like that. What you can do, is force the police to look at the case again by making formal allegations of criminality against other people, which they are then duty bound to investigate.
I'm not talking about allegations against alternative suspects, but against people involved in the original investigation and the trial at Camp Zeist. We had very good reason to believe that significant shenanigans had taken place at both stages of the proceedings, and that we had sufficient evidence to compel the police to investigate this seriously. Eventually we submitted nine separate allegations to the authorities, backed up with credible evidence in each case. These included police misconduct, forensic fraud and/or criminal negligence, perjury, and attempts to pervert the course of justice.
Now of course talk is cheap and anyone can allege anything, but if there had been no substance to our allegations the police could have disposed of them quickly with very little trouble. That's what they thought they were going to do, at first. However it was eventually realised that there was serious substance to what we were saying, and in 2014 a dedicated Police Scotland investigation was set up, codenamed Operation Sandwood. I think the fact that it has taken these detectives four years to finalise their report says a lot about how well-founded our position is, and how thorough the investigation has been.
It seems likely that the Operation Sandwood report will be submitted to the Crown Office before the SCCRC is ready to report, but I don't really know how much longer it will be for either of them. Both reports will be confidential and will not automatically be made public, so we're going to have to do a fair bit of reading between the lines.
Although the two investigations are separate, they are essentially investigating the same thing -- the evidence in the Lockerbie case. There's a huge amount of that, but systematic analysis boils it down to three critical points, only two of which specifically incriminate Megrahi.
The first of these is the identification evidence. Clothes packed in the suitcase with the bomb were traced to their manufacturer, and from there to the shop where they were sold. Amazingly the shopkeeper remembered selling more than one of these items to a customer, and he had some recollection of what that man looked like. The prosecution alleged that it was Megrahi who had bought these clothes.
The first SCCRC report detailed six grounds on which the commission believed it was possible that a miscarriage of justice had occurred, and all of these related to the clothes purchase. It seems to me inevitable that the new SCCRC investigation will have to allow a new appeal on these grounds if nothing else. However, we hardly need to wait for the SCCRC on that one. Kenny MacAskill has already, belatedly, conceded the point. In his recent book and again in press articles, he agrees that Megrahi was not the man who bought the clothes.
In fact that's all it should take to overturn the conviction entirely. If he didn't buy the clothes the case against him falls apart in logic. However, Kenny doesn't see it that way, and pins his continued assertion that Megrahi was involved in the bombing on the second main point which appears to incriminate him, the fact that he was present at the airport when the bomb was smuggled on board the plane. This also seems to be the fall-back position of the Crown Office. Well, maybe someone else bought the clothes, but Megrahi was there when the crime took place and he was a Libyan security agent so go figure.
That aspect of the case is my own personal speciality. Was Megrahi present at the scene of the crime? There's no doubt he was at the airport in Malta that morning, catching a short-hop flight back to Tripoli after an overnight business trip to Malta. The question is, was that actually the scene of the crime? There was no evidence at all that security at Malta airport was breached that morning, no evidence that an illicit, unaccompanied suitcase was smuggled on to the flight to Frankfurt, and considerable evidence that no such thing actually happened. Exactly how the prosecution managed to persuade the judges that it had happened is one of the enduring conundrums of the Lockerbie saga.
The Crown case depends absolutely on their preferred modus operandi, the story of the suitcase that was smuggled on to an aircraft in the morning on Malta, was transferred automatically through the baggage transfer system at Frankfurt without anyone realising that there was no passenger attached to it, and was then in due course transferred to the transatlantic airliner Maid of the Seas at Heathrow. It was the transatlantic leg that blew up over Lockerbie.
However, as I said, there's no evidence at all of that suitcase being present at Malta airport, and the evidence from Frankfurt that was used to assert that it must have been there is tenuous beyond belief. It's only when you look at the evidence from Heathrow itself that things get a lot clearer. To cut a long story short, there is clear and incontrovertible evidence that the bomb suitcase was already in the baggage container at Heathrow a full hour before the connecting flight from Frankfurt landed. This evidence was available to the investigation at an early stage, but it appears the investigating officers simply didn't want to know. The amount of effort expended in ignoring that suitcase is quite remarkable.
But once that is accepted, Megrahi really is exonerated. This smear of "well maybe he didn't buy the clothes but he was there when the bomb was smuggled on board the plane so obviously he was involved" simply doesn't stand up. He was 1,500 miles away at the time -- the distance from London to Tripoli.
The Crown Office case simply collapses. It's not a situation where the crime has been more or less solved but there just isn't enough admissible evidence to get a conviction to stick, the Lockerbie investigation was up a gum tree almost from the beginning. Despite clear and compelling evidence that Heathrow was the scene of the crime, the police chased a red herring down a blind alley to Malta, and refused to think again even when prolonged investigation there turned up no sign of the bomb.
This admission would be hugely embarrassing for the legal establishment. Millions of pounds spent on an investigation that was investigating the wrong airports. An entire country ruined by punitive sanctions imposed on the assumption that its nationals were guilty of the atrocity. Millions more spent on that three-ring-circus of a trial.
So I think we can anticipate some pretty strenuous resistance to this finding. I expect the SCCRC to be pressurised to confine their investigation to the original six grounds of appeal, which were all about the clothes purchase, and not to extend their remit to the route of the bomb suitcase or indeed to the third point of contention, the identity of the fragment of printed circuit board that was alleged to have been part of the bomb's timing mechanism.
I also expect the Crown Office to try to bury the Sandwood report into our allegations of criminality. There's an unavoidable weakness there. The stratagem that we had to use was to accuse individuals of criminal offences in the course of these matters being wrongly investigated and wrongly presented to the court. However, even if Operation Sandwood agrees with us on all three main headings -- that Megrahi was not the man who bought the clothes, that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow not Malta, and that the fragment of circuit board was not what the prosecution said it was -- it's quite possible that no actual prosecutions will result.
The people involved are now quite elderly, in their seventies or older. Some of them are dead. John Orr, the first senior investigating officer assigned to the case, who was prominent in turning a blind eye to the Heathrow evidence, died about four months ago. Even if Operation Sandwood concludes that there is credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing as opposed to blind incompetence, it's not impossible that a decision might be taken that prosecutions are not in the public interest.
So I'm somewhat prepared for the announcement that no prosecutions are to be brought as a result of the Operation Sandwood investigation. That, in my opinion, will not be good enough. The public paid for that investigation, and the public is entitled to know the broad outcome of its inquiry into the facts. Does the Sandwood report accept that the witness Tony Gauci was groomed and pressurised into identifying Megrahi as the man who bought the clothes, even though he looked absolutely nothing like him? Does it agree that the Lockerbie bomb started its journey in the late afternoon at Heathrow airport, not in the morning on Malta? And does it agree that the scrap of printed circuit board, whatever it was, was never part of one of the timers in the batch that was sold to Libya?
We may have to wait for the third appeal coming to court to get to the bottom of all this, but these are the questions that the public, and in particular journalists, should be asking.
Now if anyone wants to hear a lot more detail about this, I will be giving a longer, illustrated talk on the evidence at the Yes Hub in a couple of weeks time, and there will be more opportunity for questions, and you won't have to stand in the rain to do it. But if anyone has anything they want to ask now, fire away.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster, the case that never goes away.
I've heard people say, drop it, it's history. But it's not much longer ago than Hillsborough, and that was only resolved to public satisfaction very recently. And I personally have an aversion to a false narrative going down in history. Other people feel the same way, including people personally impacted by the atrocity, and that's why we still have active campaigns.
Why is it that there's still so much concern about Lockerbie?Fundamentally, because the verdict in 2001 never made any sense. As the court proceedings unfolded the prosecution case appeared to be falling apart. The evidence against the accused was far far weaker than the public had been led to believe and credible alternative culprits and lines of inquiry had never been properly investigated. The guilty verdict against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi came as a genuine shock to many informed observers, and their concerns have never been laid to rest.
Two separate but parallel campaigns have been going on for the last few years, and both are seeing significant developments unfolding. First, there is the application by Megrahi's family for a posthumous appeal against his conviction.
This case has already had two appeals come to court. The first appeal, the automatic one immediately after the conviction, was brought on the wrong grounds by Megrahi's inept advocate, and was dismissed essentially on a string of technicalities. The second appeal was the result of a prolonged investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and it came to court in 2009. But by that time Megrahi had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and was anxious to return home to his family before he died, and he formally abandoned that appeal immediately before he was granted compassionate release.
This introduced a legal controversy. Megrahi himself and his legal team maintained that he had withdrawn the appeal to make it more likely that compassionate release would be granted. Kenny MacAskill denied having made that a condition of granting compassionate release. When Megrahi's family applied to the SCCRC for a third appeal, the point that had to be decided was, how many bites at the cherry is anybody allowed to have? The appellant abandoned his appeal voluntarily, so why should another be allowed?
The SCCRC's decision on this was reported last month. They accepted that Megrahi withdrew the appeal because he believed it would improve his chances of being allowed to go home, and that it wasn't in any way a capitulation or an admission of guilt. They have therefore decided to carry out a full evaluation of the new application from his family. I anticipate that this will result in a third appeal being allowed and going to court.
The second campaign is an initiative by the pressure group Justice for Megrahi, of which I'm secretary depute. The JFM committee includes retired senior lawyers and a retired senior police officer as well as relatives of Lockerbie victims, so we have a lot of expertise to call on. Back in 2012 when the prospects of getting a third appeal to court were looking remote, we had a look at other options to force the authorities to look again at the case. The thing is, you can't just go to the police or the Crown Office and say, look, here's why I think you got this wrong, you must reconsider. It doesn't work like that. What you can do, is force the police to look at the case again by making formal allegations of criminality against other people, which they are then duty bound to investigate.
I'm not talking about allegations against alternative suspects, but against people involved in the original investigation and the trial at Camp Zeist. We had very good reason to believe that significant shenanigans had taken place at both stages of the proceedings, and that we had sufficient evidence to compel the police to investigate this seriously. Eventually we submitted nine separate allegations to the authorities, backed up with credible evidence in each case. These included police misconduct, forensic fraud and/or criminal negligence, perjury, and attempts to pervert the course of justice.
Now of course talk is cheap and anyone can allege anything, but if there had been no substance to our allegations the police could have disposed of them quickly with very little trouble. That's what they thought they were going to do, at first. However it was eventually realised that there was serious substance to what we were saying, and in 2014 a dedicated Police Scotland investigation was set up, codenamed Operation Sandwood. I think the fact that it has taken these detectives four years to finalise their report says a lot about how well-founded our position is, and how thorough the investigation has been.
It seems likely that the Operation Sandwood report will be submitted to the Crown Office before the SCCRC is ready to report, but I don't really know how much longer it will be for either of them. Both reports will be confidential and will not automatically be made public, so we're going to have to do a fair bit of reading between the lines.
Although the two investigations are separate, they are essentially investigating the same thing -- the evidence in the Lockerbie case. There's a huge amount of that, but systematic analysis boils it down to three critical points, only two of which specifically incriminate Megrahi.
The first of these is the identification evidence. Clothes packed in the suitcase with the bomb were traced to their manufacturer, and from there to the shop where they were sold. Amazingly the shopkeeper remembered selling more than one of these items to a customer, and he had some recollection of what that man looked like. The prosecution alleged that it was Megrahi who had bought these clothes.
The first SCCRC report detailed six grounds on which the commission believed it was possible that a miscarriage of justice had occurred, and all of these related to the clothes purchase. It seems to me inevitable that the new SCCRC investigation will have to allow a new appeal on these grounds if nothing else. However, we hardly need to wait for the SCCRC on that one. Kenny MacAskill has already, belatedly, conceded the point. In his recent book and again in press articles, he agrees that Megrahi was not the man who bought the clothes.
In fact that's all it should take to overturn the conviction entirely. If he didn't buy the clothes the case against him falls apart in logic. However, Kenny doesn't see it that way, and pins his continued assertion that Megrahi was involved in the bombing on the second main point which appears to incriminate him, the fact that he was present at the airport when the bomb was smuggled on board the plane. This also seems to be the fall-back position of the Crown Office. Well, maybe someone else bought the clothes, but Megrahi was there when the crime took place and he was a Libyan security agent so go figure.
That aspect of the case is my own personal speciality. Was Megrahi present at the scene of the crime? There's no doubt he was at the airport in Malta that morning, catching a short-hop flight back to Tripoli after an overnight business trip to Malta. The question is, was that actually the scene of the crime? There was no evidence at all that security at Malta airport was breached that morning, no evidence that an illicit, unaccompanied suitcase was smuggled on to the flight to Frankfurt, and considerable evidence that no such thing actually happened. Exactly how the prosecution managed to persuade the judges that it had happened is one of the enduring conundrums of the Lockerbie saga.
The Crown case depends absolutely on their preferred modus operandi, the story of the suitcase that was smuggled on to an aircraft in the morning on Malta, was transferred automatically through the baggage transfer system at Frankfurt without anyone realising that there was no passenger attached to it, and was then in due course transferred to the transatlantic airliner Maid of the Seas at Heathrow. It was the transatlantic leg that blew up over Lockerbie.
However, as I said, there's no evidence at all of that suitcase being present at Malta airport, and the evidence from Frankfurt that was used to assert that it must have been there is tenuous beyond belief. It's only when you look at the evidence from Heathrow itself that things get a lot clearer. To cut a long story short, there is clear and incontrovertible evidence that the bomb suitcase was already in the baggage container at Heathrow a full hour before the connecting flight from Frankfurt landed. This evidence was available to the investigation at an early stage, but it appears the investigating officers simply didn't want to know. The amount of effort expended in ignoring that suitcase is quite remarkable.
But once that is accepted, Megrahi really is exonerated. This smear of "well maybe he didn't buy the clothes but he was there when the bomb was smuggled on board the plane so obviously he was involved" simply doesn't stand up. He was 1,500 miles away at the time -- the distance from London to Tripoli.
The Crown Office case simply collapses. It's not a situation where the crime has been more or less solved but there just isn't enough admissible evidence to get a conviction to stick, the Lockerbie investigation was up a gum tree almost from the beginning. Despite clear and compelling evidence that Heathrow was the scene of the crime, the police chased a red herring down a blind alley to Malta, and refused to think again even when prolonged investigation there turned up no sign of the bomb.
This admission would be hugely embarrassing for the legal establishment. Millions of pounds spent on an investigation that was investigating the wrong airports. An entire country ruined by punitive sanctions imposed on the assumption that its nationals were guilty of the atrocity. Millions more spent on that three-ring-circus of a trial.
So I think we can anticipate some pretty strenuous resistance to this finding. I expect the SCCRC to be pressurised to confine their investigation to the original six grounds of appeal, which were all about the clothes purchase, and not to extend their remit to the route of the bomb suitcase or indeed to the third point of contention, the identity of the fragment of printed circuit board that was alleged to have been part of the bomb's timing mechanism.
I also expect the Crown Office to try to bury the Sandwood report into our allegations of criminality. There's an unavoidable weakness there. The stratagem that we had to use was to accuse individuals of criminal offences in the course of these matters being wrongly investigated and wrongly presented to the court. However, even if Operation Sandwood agrees with us on all three main headings -- that Megrahi was not the man who bought the clothes, that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow not Malta, and that the fragment of circuit board was not what the prosecution said it was -- it's quite possible that no actual prosecutions will result.
The people involved are now quite elderly, in their seventies or older. Some of them are dead. John Orr, the first senior investigating officer assigned to the case, who was prominent in turning a blind eye to the Heathrow evidence, died about four months ago. Even if Operation Sandwood concludes that there is credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing as opposed to blind incompetence, it's not impossible that a decision might be taken that prosecutions are not in the public interest.
So I'm somewhat prepared for the announcement that no prosecutions are to be brought as a result of the Operation Sandwood investigation. That, in my opinion, will not be good enough. The public paid for that investigation, and the public is entitled to know the broad outcome of its inquiry into the facts. Does the Sandwood report accept that the witness Tony Gauci was groomed and pressurised into identifying Megrahi as the man who bought the clothes, even though he looked absolutely nothing like him? Does it agree that the Lockerbie bomb started its journey in the late afternoon at Heathrow airport, not in the morning on Malta? And does it agree that the scrap of printed circuit board, whatever it was, was never part of one of the timers in the batch that was sold to Libya?
We may have to wait for the third appeal coming to court to get to the bottom of all this, but these are the questions that the public, and in particular journalists, should be asking.
Now if anyone wants to hear a lot more detail about this, I will be giving a longer, illustrated talk on the evidence at the Yes Hub in a couple of weeks time, and there will be more opportunity for questions, and you won't have to stand in the rain to do it. But if anyone has anything they want to ask now, fire away.
Friday 1 June 2018
Arguments for a Lockerbie inquiry
[Around a year after the abandonment by Abdelbaset Megrahi of his
representatives of UK Families Flight 103 had a meeting with the
Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, with a view
to pressing the case for an inquiry into Lockerbie. The Rev’d John
Mosey, a member of the group, has recently found amongst his papers
a briefing note that I wrote for the group before that meeting
containing suggestions for points that should be made to Mr MacAskill.
It reads as follows:]
1. The SCCRC findings are there. [RB: The Scottish Criminal Cases
Review Commission found in June 2007 that there were six grounds on
which Megrahi’s conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of
justice.] They cannot simply be ignored or swept under the carpet.
2. The SCCRC is not a body composed of conspiracy theorists. Nor are
those who have, like it, questioned the justifiability of the Zeist verdict.
Apart from a number of UK relatives, they include the UN observer
Dr Hans Koechler, Kate Adie, Ian Bell, Ian Hislop, Michael Mansfield QC,
Gareth Peirce, John Pilger, Kenneth Roy, and Desmond Tutu.
3. There is widespread public concern within Scotland regarding the
Megrahi conviction. Look at the letters that have been published, and
the readers' online comments that have followed articles, in eg The
Herald, The Scotsman and Newsnet Scotland. Public confidence in the
Scottish prosecution system and the Scottish criminal justice system
has been severely dented.
4. At the very least there must be an inquiry covering the six issues on
which the SCCRC found that there might have been a miscarriage of
justice. All of the material on the basis of which that conclusion was
reached is already in the hands of the SCCRC in Scotland. There is
therefore no justification for contending that a purely Scottish inquiry
would not be meaningful, and the UK relatives may soon be compelled
to begin saying so very publicly. In respect of some of the SCCRC
evidence the previous Foreign Secretary [David Miliband] asserted
public interest immunity. If the new Foreign Secretary [William Hague]
refused to allow that material to be laid before an independent Scottish
inquiry, he would open himself to public excoriation. And even an
inquiry limited to the mass of SCCRC material in respect of which no
PII issue arises would still be valuable.
5. If, as a spokesman for the First Minister has asserted, "the Scottish
Government does not doubt the safety of the conviction of Megrahi"
will the Scottish Government disband the Scottish Criminal Cases Review
Commission? This expert body has stated that on six grounds there are
reasons for believing that Megrahi may have been the victim of a
miscarriage of justice. On what grounds and on the basis of what
evidence does the Scottish Government expect the people of Scotland
and elsewhere to prefer its satisfaction with the conviction over the
SCCRC's doubts? If the Scottish Government has evidence that
establishes that the SCCRC's concerns are unjustified, laying it before
an independent inquiry would be the best way of getting it before the
public at home and abroad and allaying their concerns about the safety
of the Megrahi conviction.
6. At present the SNP, unlike the Labour and Conservative parties, has
clean hands over the Megrahi conviction. But unless it moves soon, the
opprobrium over that conviction will begin to attach to the SNP as well.
7. Moreover, establishing an inquiry, as the UK relatives wish, is
morally the right thing to do. Surely the Scottish Government wishes to
occupy the moral high ground?
8. It took 19 years for Scottish politicians and the Scottish criminal
justice system to rectify the miscarriage of justice suffered by Oscar
Slater. Does the Scottish Government really want to break that dismal
record in relation to the Megrahi case?
9. Until the Megrahi conviction is removed from the picture, it can be
used -- and is being used -- by governments and politicians as a reason
for denying relatives an independent inquiry into the whole Pan Am 103
affair. By establishing an inquiry covering the SCCRC concerns only, the
Scottish Government would deprive the UK Government of this very
convenient excuse.
10. It was Voltaire who said that the best is the enemy of the good. Of
course an inquiry convened under international auspices, or an inquiry
convened by the UK Government which has foreign relations powers,
would be better than one which would of necessity be limited to such
aspects of Lockerbie -- eg the police investigation, the prosecution, the
trial, the conviction, the SCCRC investigation and findings, the
applications for prisoner transfer and compassionate release -- as are
within the competence of the Scottish Government. But the argument
that a good and useful thing should not be done because somebody
else could, if so minded, do a better and more useful thing is always
a bad argument. It is sad to see the Scottish Government resorting to it.
11. There are skeletons in the cupboard of Scottish and UK Labour
Governments in relation to the Lockerbie case. If the Scottish
Government falls in May 2011 into the hands of the Labour Party,
there is no prospect whatsoever of a serious investigation. They have
too much to hide. Our only hope is for the SNP Government to do the
right thing.
1. The SCCRC findings are there. [RB: The Scottish Criminal Cases
Review Commission found in June 2007 that there were six grounds on
which Megrahi’s conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of
justice.] They cannot simply be ignored or swept under the carpet.
2. The SCCRC is not a body composed of conspiracy theorists. Nor are
those who have, like it, questioned the justifiability of the Zeist verdict.
Apart from a number of UK relatives, they include the UN observer
Dr Hans Koechler, Kate Adie, Ian Bell, Ian Hislop, Michael Mansfield QC,
Gareth Peirce, John Pilger, Kenneth Roy, and Desmond Tutu.
3. There is widespread public concern within Scotland regarding the
Megrahi conviction. Look at the letters that have been published, and
the readers' online comments that have followed articles, in eg The
Herald, The Scotsman and Newsnet Scotland. Public confidence in the
Scottish prosecution system and the Scottish criminal justice system
has been severely dented.
4. At the very least there must be an inquiry covering the six issues on
which the SCCRC found that there might have been a miscarriage of
justice. All of the material on the basis of which that conclusion was
reached is already in the hands of the SCCRC in Scotland. There is
therefore no justification for contending that a purely Scottish inquiry
would not be meaningful, and the UK relatives may soon be compelled
to begin saying so very publicly. In respect of some of the SCCRC
evidence the previous Foreign Secretary [David Miliband] asserted
public interest immunity. If the new Foreign Secretary [William Hague]
refused to allow that material to be laid before an independent Scottish
inquiry, he would open himself to public excoriation. And even an
inquiry limited to the mass of SCCRC material in respect of which no
PII issue arises would still be valuable.
5. If, as a spokesman for the First Minister has asserted, "the Scottish
Government does not doubt the safety of the conviction of Megrahi"
will the Scottish Government disband the Scottish Criminal Cases Review
Commission? This expert body has stated that on six grounds there are
reasons for believing that Megrahi may have been the victim of a
miscarriage of justice. On what grounds and on the basis of what
evidence does the Scottish Government expect the people of Scotland
and elsewhere to prefer its satisfaction with the conviction over the
SCCRC's doubts? If the Scottish Government has evidence that
establishes that the SCCRC's concerns are unjustified, laying it before
an independent inquiry would be the best way of getting it before the
public at home and abroad and allaying their concerns about the safety
of the Megrahi conviction.
6. At present the SNP, unlike the Labour and Conservative parties, has
clean hands over the Megrahi conviction. But unless it moves soon, the
opprobrium over that conviction will begin to attach to the SNP as well.
7. Moreover, establishing an inquiry, as the UK relatives wish, is
morally the right thing to do. Surely the Scottish Government wishes to
occupy the moral high ground?
8. It took 19 years for Scottish politicians and the Scottish criminal
justice system to rectify the miscarriage of justice suffered by Oscar
Slater. Does the Scottish Government really want to break that dismal
record in relation to the Megrahi case?
9. Until the Megrahi conviction is removed from the picture, it can be
used -- and is being used -- by governments and politicians as a reason
for denying relatives an independent inquiry into the whole Pan Am 103
affair. By establishing an inquiry covering the SCCRC concerns only, the
Scottish Government would deprive the UK Government of this very
convenient excuse.
10. It was Voltaire who said that the best is the enemy of the good. Of
course an inquiry convened under international auspices, or an inquiry
convened by the UK Government which has foreign relations powers,
would be better than one which would of necessity be limited to such
aspects of Lockerbie -- eg the police investigation, the prosecution, the
trial, the conviction, the SCCRC investigation and findings, the
applications for prisoner transfer and compassionate release -- as are
within the competence of the Scottish Government. But the argument
that a good and useful thing should not be done because somebody
else could, if so minded, do a better and more useful thing is always
a bad argument. It is sad to see the Scottish Government resorting to it.
11. There are skeletons in the cupboard of Scottish and UK Labour
Governments in relation to the Lockerbie case. If the Scottish
Government falls in May 2011 into the hands of the Labour Party,
there is no prospect whatsoever of a serious investigation. They have
too much to hide. Our only hope is for the SNP Government to do the
right thing.
Thursday 17 May 2018
Shameless behaviour over Libya
[What follows is excerpted from an article by Kenny MacAskill in today's edition of The Scotsman:]
Robin Cook became Foreign Secretary in 1997 amid much fanfare about an ethical foreign policy. That lasted a matter of weeks before arms sales to Indonesia intervened and a muting of the sound was required.
To be fair, Cook was a good man who tried to do the right thing and showed his mettle and his principles by resigning from office over the Iraq War. However, it also showed how difficult it can be to abide by ethical values when the needs of a state intrude. (...)
However, New Labour gave up any pretence of an ethical foreign policy after Tony Blair rode shotgun for George W Bush on the invasion of Iraq. It was without any ethical basis and predicated on a lie. Having supped with the devil, Blair seemed to lose any moral scruples on foreign policy, as shown by the shameless behaviour over Libya.
When news of a UK and Libya ‘Prisoner Transfer Agreement’ first broke, Jack Straw sallied north to appease the new SNP administration’s concerns about its effect on Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The UK Justice Secretary seemingly genuinely willing to remove Scotland’s only Libyan prisoner from the document until overruled by the Treasury and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which made clear the demands of Libya and the needs of the British state. [RB: See Jack Straw and the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement.]
Straw was no innocent on Libyan affairs as shown by the parliamentary apology tendered last week over the case of Abdel Belhaj, a Libyan dissident rendered into the Gadhafi regime’s hands by the US with the complicity of the UK. (...)
Belhaj and his pregnant wife weren’t the only prisoners rendered to Gadhafi’s Libya by the CIA and UK’s security services. There were others and they were returned to a despot that the UK was imposing international sanctions on and rightly condemned. To be fair to Cook, his initial involvement with Libya was simply to seek the release of the Lockerbie suspects for the trial that took place at Camp Zeist. His successors though discarded all pretence at justice and policy was dictated by the shameless pursuit of UK economic interests, irrespective of the welfare of innocents.
When Blair made his deal in the desert and embraced Gadhafi, other connected events quickly followed. First was the signing of a huge oil deal and second the commencement of the prisoner renditions. For the deal was a two-way street with benefits for the Libyan regime as much as the UK. It wasn’t just a lessening of sanctions but also involved the supply of arms and even the training of Gadhafi’s elite troops by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
That was exposed in an Amnesty International report shortly after I made the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds – and not because of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement. Individuals are entitled to their view on that, but the criticism of it by Labour was brazen given the actions they were involved in. America was equally Brazen with Clinton and Obama pursuing commercial deals with Libya, as well as courting him as an ally against Islamism. They embraced the Gadhafi family before Megrahi was even released but were equally craven in their denunciations.
The great irony is that when the West realised that Gadhafi was neither going to change nor be reliable they turned on him once more.
Robin Cook became Foreign Secretary in 1997 amid much fanfare about an ethical foreign policy. That lasted a matter of weeks before arms sales to Indonesia intervened and a muting of the sound was required.
To be fair, Cook was a good man who tried to do the right thing and showed his mettle and his principles by resigning from office over the Iraq War. However, it also showed how difficult it can be to abide by ethical values when the needs of a state intrude. (...)
However, New Labour gave up any pretence of an ethical foreign policy after Tony Blair rode shotgun for George W Bush on the invasion of Iraq. It was without any ethical basis and predicated on a lie. Having supped with the devil, Blair seemed to lose any moral scruples on foreign policy, as shown by the shameless behaviour over Libya.
When news of a UK and Libya ‘Prisoner Transfer Agreement’ first broke, Jack Straw sallied north to appease the new SNP administration’s concerns about its effect on Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The UK Justice Secretary seemingly genuinely willing to remove Scotland’s only Libyan prisoner from the document until overruled by the Treasury and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which made clear the demands of Libya and the needs of the British state. [RB: See Jack Straw and the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement.]
Straw was no innocent on Libyan affairs as shown by the parliamentary apology tendered last week over the case of Abdel Belhaj, a Libyan dissident rendered into the Gadhafi regime’s hands by the US with the complicity of the UK. (...)
Belhaj and his pregnant wife weren’t the only prisoners rendered to Gadhafi’s Libya by the CIA and UK’s security services. There were others and they were returned to a despot that the UK was imposing international sanctions on and rightly condemned. To be fair to Cook, his initial involvement with Libya was simply to seek the release of the Lockerbie suspects for the trial that took place at Camp Zeist. His successors though discarded all pretence at justice and policy was dictated by the shameless pursuit of UK economic interests, irrespective of the welfare of innocents.
When Blair made his deal in the desert and embraced Gadhafi, other connected events quickly followed. First was the signing of a huge oil deal and second the commencement of the prisoner renditions. For the deal was a two-way street with benefits for the Libyan regime as much as the UK. It wasn’t just a lessening of sanctions but also involved the supply of arms and even the training of Gadhafi’s elite troops by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
That was exposed in an Amnesty International report shortly after I made the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds – and not because of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement. Individuals are entitled to their view on that, but the criticism of it by Labour was brazen given the actions they were involved in. America was equally Brazen with Clinton and Obama pursuing commercial deals with Libya, as well as courting him as an ally against Islamism. They embraced the Gadhafi family before Megrahi was even released but were equally craven in their denunciations.
The great irony is that when the West realised that Gadhafi was neither going to change nor be reliable they turned on him once more.
Tuesday 15 May 2018
What is source of information on which Kenny MacAskill's opinions based?
[The following are two letters submitted a few days ago to The Scotsman but not, as far as I can see, selected for publication:]
As the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie Pam Am disaster approaches it appears as if a light is finally going to be shone into the murkiness surrounding the UK’s worst ever terrorist outrage.
Police Scotland is finalising its four-year investigation into Justice for Megrahi’s (JfM’s) nine criminal allegations against some of those involved in the investigation and trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, and is preparing its report for Crown Office.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has decided that it is in the interests of justice to conduct a full review of Mr Megrahi's conviction in order to decide if the case should be referred back to the Court of Appeal.
The Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament continues its consideration of JfM’s petition for a public enquiry and is monitoring the police, Crown Office and SCCRC initiatives.
At such a critical time therefore it is surprising that Kenny MacAskill (Scotsman 10 May - Kenny MacAskill: Lockerbie bomber’s conviction may well collapse) should yet again see it appropriate to speculate publicly about the likely outcome of these enquiries and Mr Megrahi’s guilt.
It must be remembered that Mr MacAskill, as Cabinet Secretary for Justice, made the controversial 2009 decision to release Mr Megrahi on compassionate grounds and in 2013 turned down JfM’s request for a public enquiry, underlining that the Scottish Government 'did not doubt the safety of the conviction'. Yet, since leaving office, he has repeatedly, in writing and in interviews, questioned and dismissed key pieces of the evidence on which Mr Megrahi was convicted. If, as Mr MacAskill avers, that evidence is in doubt, then as he himself acknowledges the case against Mr Megrahi falls.
Both in reaching his decision to release Mr Megrahi and in making the statements that he has since leaving office Mr MacAskill must have received substantial confidential information from the police, Crown Office and other sources which he now chooses to release into the public arena before the various investigations are complete and apparently without regard to the effect this might have.
Has Mr MacAskill reported his concerns to Police Scotland and/or Crown Office? Where did he obtain the information on which he is basing his speculation and opinions? Was this confidential information received while acting as Cabinet Secretary for Justice and should it have been used for public speculation and profit?
It is in the interests of justice that these questions are asked and that Mr MacAskill passes any relevant evidence to the authorities as a matter of urgency.
As the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie Pam Am disaster approaches it appears as if a light is finally going to be shone into the murkiness surrounding the UK’s worst ever terrorist outrage.
Police Scotland is finalising its four-year investigation into Justice for Megrahi’s (JfM’s) nine criminal allegations against some of those involved in the investigation and trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, and is preparing its report for Crown Office.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has decided that it is in the interests of justice to conduct a full review of Mr Megrahi's conviction in order to decide if the case should be referred back to the Court of Appeal.
The Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament continues its consideration of JfM’s petition for a public enquiry and is monitoring the police, Crown Office and SCCRC initiatives.
At such a critical time therefore it is surprising that Kenny MacAskill (Scotsman 10 May - Kenny MacAskill: Lockerbie bomber’s conviction may well collapse) should yet again see it appropriate to speculate publicly about the likely outcome of these enquiries and Mr Megrahi’s guilt.
It must be remembered that Mr MacAskill, as Cabinet Secretary for Justice, made the controversial 2009 decision to release Mr Megrahi on compassionate grounds and in 2013 turned down JfM’s request for a public enquiry, underlining that the Scottish Government 'did not doubt the safety of the conviction'. Yet, since leaving office, he has repeatedly, in writing and in interviews, questioned and dismissed key pieces of the evidence on which Mr Megrahi was convicted. If, as Mr MacAskill avers, that evidence is in doubt, then as he himself acknowledges the case against Mr Megrahi falls.
Both in reaching his decision to release Mr Megrahi and in making the statements that he has since leaving office Mr MacAskill must have received substantial confidential information from the police, Crown Office and other sources which he now chooses to release into the public arena before the various investigations are complete and apparently without regard to the effect this might have.
Has Mr MacAskill reported his concerns to Police Scotland and/or Crown Office? Where did he obtain the information on which he is basing his speculation and opinions? Was this confidential information received while acting as Cabinet Secretary for Justice and should it have been used for public speculation and profit?
It is in the interests of justice that these questions are asked and that Mr MacAskill passes any relevant evidence to the authorities as a matter of urgency.
Iain A J McKie
Secretary of Justice for Megrahi
I am sorry to see that Kenny MacAskill's article contains a number of easily refutable errors, but I value his continued contributions.
One of the more obvious errors is that there is, so far as we know, no proof that Gaddafi ever admitted responsibility for Lockerbie.
That means that when, as I believe will eventually happen, the Megrahi verdict is seen as untenable, it is likely that many will continue to believe that 'it must have been Libya's work through Malta somehow'.
When I last met members of the Tripoli based Government after the murder of Gaddafi, senior members were seized with a determination to blame Lockerbie onto their fallen leader, perhaps in the hope of reducing blame on others. It seemed to be a belief without any 'proof', except for their own enthusiasm for it.
Among all the conspiracy theories of thirty years, my friend has always been William of Occam [1287-1347] who seems to have believed quaintly that the simplest explanation compatible with the actual facts was the most likely to be true. Here are some facts about Lockerbie, suggesting a relatively simple explanation:-
One of the more obvious errors is that there is, so far as we know, no proof that Gaddafi ever admitted responsibility for Lockerbie.
That means that when, as I believe will eventually happen, the Megrahi verdict is seen as untenable, it is likely that many will continue to believe that 'it must have been Libya's work through Malta somehow'.
When I last met members of the Tripoli based Government after the murder of Gaddafi, senior members were seized with a determination to blame Lockerbie onto their fallen leader, perhaps in the hope of reducing blame on others. It seemed to be a belief without any 'proof', except for their own enthusiasm for it.
Among all the conspiracy theories of thirty years, my friend has always been William of Occam [1287-1347] who seems to have believed quaintly that the simplest explanation compatible with the actual facts was the most likely to be true. Here are some facts about Lockerbie, suggesting a relatively simple explanation:-
1. Iran had an airbus containing 290 innocent victims destroyed by a US missile 5 months before Lockerbie, and received no timeous apology whatever for that dreadful error. Indeed the man responsible for firing the missile, Captain Will Rogers of the USS Vincennes, received a medal.
2. Iran publicly swore revenge.
3.Iran was linked to the Damascus based terror group known as the PFLP-GC and their bomb maker, the Jordanian, Marwan Khreesat. The CIA knew this and also were aware of a payment by Iran into a numbered PFLP-GC bank account discovered in the possession of an arrested member of that group.
4. A letter from the King of Jordan to John Major claiming that Lockerbie was not the work of the Libyans was in possession of the Zeist prosecution, but when later requested for defence purposes was hastily given a PII certificate by the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, at the request of Scotland's Advocate General.
5. Kreesat had developed anti-aircraft bombs based on an air pressure sensitive switch and crude timer. His bombs were not adjustable, were stable at ground level, but constructed to explode automatically within 30 - 45 minutes of take off if placed in an aircraft.
6. A detailed analysis of these devices by the West German police had been sent to UK and US authorities well before Lockerbie, confirming that not all the examples of these devices were thought to have been recovered from the terrorists.
7. Steps taken to block insertion of such devices at Heathrow were wildly inappropriate.
8. In the light of Morag Kerr's book Adequately explained by stupidity? there is powerful reasoned argument for re-assessment of the happenings at Heathrow that evening, and in particular uncertainty over the origins of two suitcases loaded there aboard the fatal flight, and placed close to the origin of the explosion.
9. The fatal flight exploded in the very middle of the designed fixed flight time for Khreesat's devices.
These are but a few simple facts from among many others. It is to be hoped that the question of ingestion of the bomb at Heathrow, not just Malta or Frankfurt as well as the bomb's most probable origins, will soon accompany new steps by the Scottish authorities to review this dreadful case in detail, on behalf of the late Mr Megrahi's family.
Dr Jim Swire
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