[This is the headline over an article in South Africa's leading weekly newspaper the Mail & Guardian by playwright, novelist and journalist Bryan Rostron. The following are extracts.]
The righteous fury vented this week over the compassionate release of the dying "Lockerbie bomber", Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, has drowned out the voice of reason. A cool appraisal of the evidence shows that he is almost certainly not guilty.
The Libyan appears to be a scapegoat of crude international realpolitik, dictated by the United States's need for new Middle Eastern allies during the first Gulf War.
South Africa has a powerful interest in seeing the truth exposed, as it was Nelson Mandela who brokered the 1999 deal that allowed al-Megrahi and his co-accused to be tried by a specially created court in Holland.
Hans Köchler, the legal observer nominated by the UN secretary general to monitor the trial, concluded that it took place "in a context of power politics". Damningly, he concluded: "There is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime. In such a context, the guilty verdict … appears to be arbitrary, even irrational."
The outrage in the US at al-Megrahi's "hero's welcome" in Libya also reveals a spectacular double standard. At first it was thought that the bomb that exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1998, killing 270 people, was revenge for the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner by a US warship six months before, which resulted in 290 deaths, including 66 children.
The US said this was a "mistake" but never formally apologised. Yet when Captain William C Rogers III, in command of the USS Vincennes, returned after his tour of duty President George Bush Snr awarded him the Legion of Merit medal.
For nearly two years after the Lockerbie tragedy both US and UK intelligence services were convinced that it was a revenge attack. Within months, the British minister of transport announced that the culprits were about to be arrested. Intelligence agencies continued to leak the names of suspects and point to a clear plot: that Iran had paid millions of dollars to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) -- supported and protected by Syria -- to carry out a revenge attack.
Detailed leaks continued until the eve of the first Gulf War. They identified PFLP leader Ahmed Jibril and, crucially, Abu Talb, by then in a Swedish prison for other terrorist offences, as having been in Malta when clothes were bought that were later wrapped around the device that blew up Flight 103.
In December 1989 the London Sunday Times reported: "During a 90-minute closed court session, Ulf Forsburg, the Uppsala district prosecutor, told the presiding magistrate that the owner of a boutique in Sliema, Malta, had identified Talb as the man to whom he sold the clothes."
All this was soon forgotten. And later the Maltese shopkeeper was to contradict his original evidence to suit the new scenario. What had changed was international politics. During the Iran-Iraq War, the West secretly backed Saddam Hussein and Iraq. As soon as that war ended, the US and the UK provided Hussein with massive trade credits and arms. In August 1990, however, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the West suddenly needed new allies in the region.
"Thus very quickly, in the summer and autumn of 1990, a sea change took place in the Gulf," wrote the British investigative journalist Paul Foot. "The US, UK and their allies started to negotiate with their former enemies. All this was completed quickly -- in November 1990 new deals were signed to neutralise Iran and bring Syrian forces into the combined operation against Saddam, already known as Desert Storm."
Clearly Syria and Iran could no longer be vilified as terrorist masterminds, or instigators of the Lockerbie bombing. Then president Bush Snr announced: "Syria took a bum rap on this." Another version was called for and supplied. "The first signs of change came as the opposing armies started to build up in the desert," wrote Foot in his 31-page special report for Private Eye, called "Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice". "In October 1990 a series of newspaper reports indicated that the guilty country responsible for Lockerbie was not Iran or Syria or even Palestine. The guilty country was Libya." (...)
Where did al-Megrahi's name surface? At the Camp Zeist trial in Holland it emerged that it was supplied by Majid Giaka, an unreliable Libyan informer for the CIA. Giaka produced the name only when his increasingly frustrated CIA handlers threatened to cut him off unless he provided something useful. At the Camp Zeist trial the judges summed up Giaka's evidence as "at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue".
But when investigators showed a photo of al-Megrahi to the Maltese shop owner, Tony Gauci, who had previously identified the Palestinian Talb, Gauci suddenly agreed he could have sold him clothes. In his initial testimony Gauci had stated that this man had been at least 1.8m tall and more than 50 years of age. Al-Magrahi is 1.7m and at the time of the supposed shop visit was 37.
Gauci's evidence, on which al-Megrahi's conviction really hangs, is riddled with discrepancies. After the trial the man responsible for the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and for indicting al-Megrahi, the former Scottish Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser, described Gauci as "not quite the full shilling" and "an apple short of a picnic".
One convenient advantage of al-Megrahi's compassionate release, because he is dying of cancer, is that his appeal against his 2001 conviction will now not be heard.
Lawyers representing the Libyan would have alleged that Gauci was "coached" and that the US paid him a $2-million dollar reward.
These charges, as well as all other flimsy or discredited evidence, will never be retested in court.
Camp Zeist trial observer Köchler noted several disquieting factors. He pointed out that, quite improperly, two representatives of the US justice department were seated next to the prosecution team, giving the impression of being "supervisors".
He concluded that foreign governments, or their agencies, may have been allowed to determine what evidence was made available, adding: "Virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility, in certain cases even having lied openly to the court."
In the recent international furore all this has been forgotten. Is al-Megrahi guilty? We don't know. But he clearly he did not get a fair trial.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Mandela visit Megrahi. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Mandela visit Megrahi. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday 1 September 2009
Friday 21 November 2014
Kenny MacAskill, Lockerbie and Megrahi
[The departure of Kenny MacAskill as Cabinet Secretary for Justice has been confirmed. His part in the saga that is the Lockerbie affair since his appointment in 2007 can be followed on this blog here. A very short selection of highlights follows:]
Friday, 11 November 2011 MacAskill stands by Megrahi conviction "until such time as that matter were to be reviewed"
Tuesday, 23 October 2012 Police, Crown Office accused in widespread perversion of the course of justice over Pan Am 103
[The new Cabinet Secretary for Justice is Michael Matheson MSP. He is not a lawyer, but that is not a complete departure from precedent. Cathy Jamieson (then MSP, now MP) held the office from May 2003 to May 2007 in the Labour/LibDem administration. One potential drawback of having a non-lawyer in this position is that too much influence on justice policy and practice may come to be exerted by the Scottish Law Officers.
Talking of which, in her ministerial reshuffle Nicola Sturgeon has not as yet taken the step of rectifying the constitutional affront (not to mention governmental idiocy) perpetrated by her predecessors (SNP and Labour) of appointing Crown Office staffers as the Scottish Law Officers. However, unlike other Scottish Ministers, the appointment and removal of Law Officers requires the approval of the Scottish Parliament (under the Scotland Act 1998, section 48). So perhaps an appropriate parliamentary motion is already being drafted. It would be the single most important thing that the new First Minister (who is herself a lawyer) could do for the Scottish justice system.]
Sunday 3 September 2017
Mandela, Gaddafi and Blair
[What follows is excerpted from a long article headlined Gaddafi, Britain and US: A secret, special and very cosy relationship that was published in The Independent on this date in 2011:]
Britain's extraordinary rekindling of relations with Libya did not start as Mr Blair sipped tea in a Bedouin tent with Gaddafi, nor within the walls of the Travellers Club in Pall Mall – although this "summit of spies" in 2003 played a major role. It can be traced back to a 1999 meeting Mr Blair held with the man hailed as one of the greatest to have ever lived: Nelson Mandela, in South Africa.
Mr Mandela had long played a key role in negotiations between Gaddafi, whom he had hailed as a key opponent of apartheid, and the British government. Mr Mandela first lobbied Mr Blair over Libya in October 1997, at a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Edinburgh. Mr Mandela was pressing for those accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to be tried outside Scotland. In January 1999, Mr Mandela, during a visit by Mr Blair to South Africa, actively lobbied the PM on behalf of Gaddafi, over sanctions imposed on Libya and the Lockerbie suspects.
UN sanctions were suspended in April 1999 when Gaddafi handed over the two Lockerbie suspects, including Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was eventually convicted of the bombing. Libya also accepted "general responsibility" for the death of Yvonne Fletcher. Both moves allowed the Blair government to begin the long process of renewing ties with Libya.
Within a couple of years, the issue of persuading the Gaddafi regime to turn itself from pariah into international player surged to the forefront of the British government's agenda. It was during this time, according to the documents found in Mr Koussa's office, that MI6 and the CIA began actively engaging with Libyan intelligence chiefs. But it was a key meeting on 16 December 2003, at the Travellers Club, that would put the official UK – and US – stamp on Gaddafi's credibility. Present were Mr Koussa, then head of external intelligence for Libya, and two Libyan intelligence figures; Mr Blair's foreign affairs envoy, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, and three MI6 chiefs; and two CIA directors. Mr Koussa's attendance at the meeting in central London was extraordinary – at the time he had been banned from entering Britain after allegedly plotting to assassinate Libyan dissidents, and so was given safe passage by MI6.
Mr Koussa's pivotal role at the Travellers Club casts light on how, following his defection from Gaddafi's regime during the initial Nato bombing campaign earlier this year, he was able to slip quietly out of the country. Two days after the 2003 meeting, Mr Blair and Gaddafi held talks by telephone; and the next day, 19 December, the announcement about Libya surrendering its WMD was made by Mr Blair and President Bush.
In March 2004, Mr Blair first shook hands with Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent. The pair then met again in May 2007, shortly before Mr Blair left office.
Wednesday 16 December 2015
UK-Libya rapprochement following the Lockerbie trial
[What follows is excerpted from an article headlined Gaddafi, Britain, UK and US: A secret, special and very cosy relationship that was published in The Independent on Sunday on 4 September 2011. An important event in the post-Lockerbie rapprochement occurred on 16 December 2003:]
Most of the papers were found at the private offices of Moussa Koussa, the foreign minister, regime security chief and one of Gaddafi's chief lieutenants, on Friday afternoon. (...)
Mr Koussa, who defected after the February revolution and spent time in the UK, left to take up residence in the Gulf after demands that he face police questioning over the murder of Libyan opposition figures in exile, the Lockerbie bombing and the killing of the policewoman Yvonne Fletcher. In a sign of the importance of the British connection, MI6 merited two files in Mr Koussa's office, while the CIA had only one. UK intelligence agencies had played a leading role in bringing Gaddafi's regime in from the cold.
The documents reveal that British security agencies provided details about exiled opposition figures to the Libyans, including phone numbers. Among those targeted were Ismail Kamoka, freed by British judges in 2004 because he was not regarded as a threat to the UK's national security. MI6 even drafted a speech for Gaddafi when he was seeking rapprochement with the outside world with a covering note stressing that UK and Libyan officials must use "the same script". (...)
Britain's extraordinary rekindling of relations with Libya did not start as Mr Blair sipped tea in a Bedouin tent with Gaddafi, nor within the walls of the Travellers Club in Pall Mall – although this "summit of spies" in 2003 played a major role. It can be traced back to a 1999 meeting Mr Blair held with the man hailed as one of the greatest to have ever lived: Nelson Mandela, in South Africa.
Mr Mandela had long played a key role in negotiations between Gaddafi, whom he had hailed as a key opponent of apartheid, and the British government. Mr Mandela first lobbied Mr Blair over Libya in October 1997, at a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Edinburgh. Mr Mandela was pressing for those accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to be tried outside Scotland. In January 1999, Mr Mandela, during a visit by Mr Blair to South Africa, actively lobbied the PM on behalf of Gaddafi, over sanctions imposed on Libya and the Lockerbie suspects.
UN sanctions were suspended in April 1999 when Gaddafi handed over the two Lockerbie suspects, including Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was eventually convicted of the bombing. Libya also accepted "general responsibility" for the death of Yvonne Fletcher. Both moves allowed the Blair government to begin the long process of renewing ties with Libya.
Within a couple of years, the issue of persuading the Gaddafi regime to turn itself from pariah into international player surged to the forefront of the British government's agenda. It was during this time, according to the documents found in Mr Koussa's office, that MI6 and the CIA began actively engaging with Libyan intelligence chiefs. But it was a key meeting on 16 December 2003, at the Travellers Club, that would put the official UK – and US – stamp on Gaddafi's credibility. Present were Mr Koussa, then head of external intelligence for Libya, and two Libyan intelligence figures; Mr Blair's foreign affairs envoy, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, and three MI6 chiefs; and two CIA directors. Mr Koussa's attendance at the meeting in central London was extraordinary – at the time he had been banned from entering Britain after allegedly plotting to assassinate Libyan dissidents, and so was given safe passage by MI6.
Mr Koussa's pivotal role at the Travellers Club casts light on how, following his defection from Gaddafi's regime during the initial Nato bombing campaign earlier this year, he was able to slip quietly out of the country. Two days after the 2003 meeting, Mr Blair and Gaddafi held talks by telephone; and the next day, 19 December, the announcement about Libya surrendering its WMD was made by Mr Blair and President Bush.
In March 2004, Mr Blair first shook hands with Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent. The pair then met again in May 2007, shortly before Mr Blair left office.
Monday 21 December 2009
Open letter from Dr Swire to President Obama
In a speech in Cairo in June 2009 you said:
"I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world. One based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition."
"No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust," you said, and speaking of the Palestinians you went on: "For more than 60 years, they have endured the pain of dislocation," but "It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus," ..... "That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered."
The piece below is written by the father of one of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster of 1988 in which 270 died including children, students, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters and old women, all of them deeply missed, as a result not of a bus, but of an aircraft bombing now widely believed to have been engineered by a group claiming to pursue the interests of those same Palestinians, though centered itself in Syria.
In a recent YouGov poll in the Muslim world in October 2009, following a debate on Lockerbie held under the auspices of the Qatar foundation, over half the 1047 respondents thought Megrahi (the alleged Lockerbie bomber) innocent, and in a grim reminder of how the US is perceived in the Arab World, whereas 12% thought that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, 21% thought that the US was 'directly or indirectly responsible'.
So as you Mr President predicted, the impact of your dramatic Cairo speech has not been able to dispel the hatreds and distrust of 60 years. But for 20 of those years a group of families bereaved at Lockerbie have laboured towards obtaining the truth as to why the slaughter happened and who was responsible for it, by default or by commission.
That is why the piece below has been written. The hope is that recognising that some of us wish to see some benefit to the world come out of the horror of the Lockerbie slaughter, may empower a new effort to reach the truth. Maybe disclosing the truth behind the atrocity can actually be turned around to improve relations between the West and the Muslim world, and earn the USA a new respect.
That requires prior certainty as to what the truth actually was.
Those who put their hand up and admit that they previously made mistakes gain respect, those who acquiesce in allowing the truth to remain hidden may come to be despised at the bar of history.
As John Donne wrote : "On a huge hill, cragged and steep, truth stands, and he that will reach her, about must, and about must go." (John Donne 1571? - 1631). The piece below is distilled from 20 years of 'going about' in search of the truth, and the path is indeed cragged. On that path we have met with Presidents and dictators, Prime Ministers, a Secretary General of the UN and his foremost legal advisers, and more of the great and the good than can be named here. Perhaps it is worth reading on. I am confident that you want to stand on that hilltop, and that you have the humility to find the path that leads to it.
Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, age 23 murdered at Lockerbie, 21/12/88
The audacity to hope for change.
President Obama and the Lockerbie case
The truth has a positive contribution to make to US Middle East problems.
When President Obama assumed office a year ago, many thought that the American attitude to those who she regarded as her enemies would become more careful and knowledge based. His compelling writings and oratory supported this hope, as have many of his actions since election. His Nobel prize is a magnificent endorsement of the hope for change which he has brought to office with him.
A new administration, particularly when based on an entirely distinct support base in its own community from that enjoyed by its predecessors, may find it difficult to resolve issues they left over for it to solve. To ease this difficulty a new leader will often co-opt supporters of his preceding administration; at the same time such individuals may make it harder to break with previous ethical norms. The new President's refusal publicly to attack the record of his predecessors can only be admired.
In no field will his task be more difficult than in the conduct of foreign relations, where the support bases of interacting nations will usually not have changed simultaneously, so that previous problems tend to persist. The solution must be for the incoming President to apply a logical re-analysis of how these difficult issues may have arisen, based on the objective re-assessment of the available evidence. This process requires both time and resources, and is finely shown by President Obama's evident careful assessment of the decisions necessary over Afghanistan. But as evidenced by his visit to Cairo in June 2009 and his speech there, nowhere is this more difficult than in relations with the Muslim world.
This re-evaluation process requires even more caution where the work of a nation's intelligence services have been involved, they need to have strong allegiance to the mindset of their current President. This allegiance can lead those intelligence services, in the interests of serving what was their current administration at the time, to overstep the limits which their citizens and their new President would approve, were they aware of them.
True justice should be the great bulwark of citizens the world over against wrongful intrusion into their lives by politicians of their own or any other nation, whether expressed through force or other misuse of power. The Lockerbie trial was of two Libyan individuals, not of the Libyan regime. National justice should protect the rights of its individual citizens, irrespective of the wishes of the politicians and intelligence services of any other nations however relevant to the cases involved, its effectiveness is a measure of the quality of the community it should protect.
For protection at an international level, there are increasing moves towards empowered international justice, such as the International Criminal Court. The US in the past has not pulled her weight there, maybe President Obama will change that. The seeming past belief that US law should run right across the planet causes great resentment.
Almost unnoticed at the time that President Clinton, backed by UK Foreign Secretary (the late) Robin Cook gave the go ahead for the Lockerbie court in Holland, Nelson Mandela issued an urgent warning; speaking from a CHOGM* meeting in Edinburgh he said "No one country should be complainant prosecutor and judge".
The time has now come for the new President to assess whether ignoring the warning from this wise man over this terrible case has led to very unfortunate consequences internationally.
Where several states are all involved in the same case, the danger arises that if one such state is much more powerful than the others, then the protection provided by their own legal systems to those who live in the lesser involved states may be overridden by that power. Intelligence is a form of power. In the Lockerbie case, those who attended the Zeist trial were treated to repeated demonstrations of how some individuals in the Scottish prosecuting authority had developed a sychophantic relationship towards US sources of investigation and technical expertise. Such a relationship gave real meaning to the concept that the UK and the US were indeed to be considered 'one nation' as in Mandela's warning on this matter.
The justice system which President Obama has inherited appears to many observers to be flawed. The mindset of the US Department of Justice, when it boasts of its use of financial inducement to obtain evidence is risky. The US DoJ sports on its website a list of named individuals, allegedly terrorists, who have been brought to 'justice' by the application of financial inducements. There is a fine line between innocent inducement and bribery leading to the perversion of justice. The role of certain Scottish entities in a similar use of 'inducements' also needs investigation.
Megrahi, the alleged Lockerbie bomber is on the DoJ's list of those whose convictions have been assisted by financial inducements to witnesses. It is now known, from records kept by one of the Scottish police force visiting Malta (Harry Bell) that the DoJ wanted to offer $10,000 'up front' with $2,000,000 to follow, to a key prosecution witness, the Maltese clothing-shop keeper, Tony Gauci. This long before he had given his evidence in court. It has not increased faith in the DoJ's probity that Megrahi's name was removed from their front page some time ago after attention was drawn to it by those seeking the truth over Lockerbie.
During the years since Lockerbie, the writer has had the privilege of meeting with Hans Corell, one time under Secretary General and legal Counsel to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, with Nelson Mandela, and with Kofi Annan himself. In addition I have the firm friendship of Professor Robert Black, emeritus professor of Scots law in Edinburgh, whose idea the neutral country Lockerbie trial was, and who, like the writer is convinced that Megrahi should never have been found guilty. There could have been no better tutorial in teaching the need for a better way of resolving international criminal cases based on terrorism and the guilt of individuals.
In the case of the Lockerbie disaster there are compelling reasons for fearing that international political expediency, aided by a litany of pre-existing established patterns of hatred, and serviced by national intelligence services, may have overcome Scotland's hope that she would be able to display to the US and the world an independent but impartial judicial process. International terrorism cases carry a great risk of 'conflict of interest' for national authorities attempting to bring them to justice, for it is the policies of national governments which often decide a terrorist's target, and a nation may well not wish those policies questioned by her own or any other citizens.
Instead it seems inevitable that the truth will out, sooner or later, namely that the Lockerbie trial has deeply undermined the previously high reputation of Scotland's independent criminal justice system, and convicted an individual innocent of the crime with which he had been charged, further bedevilling relations between the West and the Muslim world in the process.
The doubts that exist about the use of the Scottish criminal system in this case keep growing. A number of respected legal authorities, particularly in the UK, such as Scotland's Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) have come to the conclusion that the verdict against the Libyan, Megrahi, may be unjustified and was politically/economically influenced. Some of these doubts are cogently set out in an article by one of the UK's most prominent champions of true justice and the overturning of improper verdicts, Gareth Peirce.
Any unbiased reader of her article published in the London Review of Books will see some of the reasons why the Megrahi verdict is being increasingly criticised. Her article does not bear a title dwelling on passive failure of justice but reads 'The framing of Al-Megrahi'.
This title bears witness to the widespread belief that not only was there serious blocking of some material arising from the Scottish investigation, which should certainly have been made known to the defence, but also a naive amateurishness about the acquisition of information concerning at least one potential source of motivation for the crime. There is also deep suspicion that weaknesses were not confined to being so passive as this, for a key piece of the forensic evidence seemed to bear the stamp of deliberate fabrication, aspects of this are discussed below, and need to be set in the context of the quality of the forensic staff involved, both in the UK and in the US.
A few of the reasons for questioning the findings and verdict in the Lockerbie trial.
Unfortunately there appears to be a very grave risk that a key piece of forensic evidence, a piece of timer circuit board designated PT35B was fraudulently introduced into the evidence chain and accepted by the British forensic 'experts' who described it to the court. Among all the evidence led, the doubts about the story of this item's alleged recovery and subsequent treatment are unique and gather like vultures round a corpse.
Also unique is the significance that this item would have, if genuine. There was no other physical evidence led capable of giving such support to the prosecution's extraordinary and circumstantial story that the IED had originated from the island of Malta. If true, this story would have required the use of just such a long-running timer as the one from which the fragment called PT35B was alleged to have come, and there simply was no other item which seemed to show that such a timer had been used. The timing of the explosion so early in the Lockerbie aircraft's flight would have been a phenomenal error by any terrorist having complete control over the timing of the explosion. Anyone using a timer such as that from which 'PT35B' was alleged to have come would have had such complete control.
What of involved American intelligence or forensic 'experts'? An agent of the FBI, Thomas Thurman held up in front of public TV cameras in the US a photograph of a pristine timer circuit board through which, he claimed to have linked the crime irrefutably to Libya. It was instantly clear that his photograph was of a circuit board which had not been involved in proximity to any explosion. It was also clearly not the circuit board from which PT35B was said to have come, but was of a separate daughter board adjacent to the PT35B board within such timers.
Before long it became clear (and later confirmed in court evidence) that the CIA had already been in possession of timers containing such circuit boards. The FBI agent Thurman was subsequently cited by a more senior FBI officer for the deliberate distortion of prosecution evidence in other criminal cases, in order to assist the prosecution. He was hastily removed from his position. His Lockerbie related contribution remains in place.
As for his UK counterparts, one was Alan Feraday from RARDE# the comment below on his prior performance in an IRA case cannot be ignored:
"The Crown's chief forensic scientist ... Mr Alan Feraday, upon whom so much depended as to the integrity of his theories and the integrity of himself as an expert witness, has since been severely criticised by the Lord Chief Justice in the case of R v Berry (1991). Mr. Feraday was brought forward as an expert in electronics. He is only qualified to a Higher National Certificate level. The Lord Chief Justice declared that the nature of his evidence was 'dogmatic in the extreme ' and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field. In a recent development the Home Office has agreed to pay out compensation from the public purse to Mr. Berry because he was jailed on the erroneous evidence of Feraday."
The comment of the Lord Chief Justice above was available to those who selected Feraday to handle forensics for the Lockerbie case well before the case opened. Indeed the R v Berry case cited above occurred in 1991, and it was in December of that year that indictments against the two Libyans were first issued, and the Lockerbie trial did not start till May 2000. At least the FBI did not discover their problems over Thomas Thurman until after he had spoken out over his interpretation of the Lockerbie forensic position.
The problems over Feraday were known to the UK authorities well before they decided to give him a critical role in the Lockerbie forensic determinations. That the above quotation centres on electronics is particularly crucial to the Lockerbie case in view of the unique position of 'PT35B' within it.
Then in an amazing prequel to the Lockerbie case - that of Danny McNamee we see:
"In the course of the investigation [into the McNamee case] documents were discovered which prove that the police and prosecution knew of the existence of Desmond Ellis and that the evidence pointed to him fully 4 years before Mr. McNamee's arrest. They had matched prints in the arms caches to Ellis. In clear breach of their legal responsibilities they deliberately did not disclose this to Mr. McNamee's defence at the 1987 trial or the appeal in 1991.
"During the McNamee case Mr.Alan Feraday, the Crown's main scientific witness, said that 'the two (circuit boards, one found at the bomb site, the other contained in an IRA arms cache) were matched in design 'artwork' and were therefore made by the same master bombmaker.' The circuit board fragment put forward by the Crown as the link between McNamee and an actual explosion was never forensically tested for explosive contamination although other items from the scene of the explosion were subjected to such tests."
The circuit board fragment known as PT35B in the Lockerbie case was never tested by Feraday for explosives residues either.
The writer knows of no evidence that Mr Feraday received any further education in electronics, or the ethics of forensic presentation in criminal trials between 1987 (the McNamee case) and 2000 when he took such a crucial role in the Lockerbie case.
So who authorised the employment of Feraday in the Lockerbie case, and why? Was this really the best our nation could offer in attempting honestly to reach the truth about the worst terrorist outrage ever to occur in the UK?
Why was the Lord Chief Justice's warning about Feraday following the R v Berry case of 1991 ignored, despite our Home Office having had to make compensation payments because of the findings over Feraday's incompetence at that time?
We now also know that evidence (the Heathrow break-in) supportive of a totally different explanation for the atrocity, and which might have excluded both Megrahi and Malta from the case, was known to the Metropolitan police by January 1989, as Mr Manly of Heathrow security told the appeal court, and recorded in the trial transcripts as follows:
"In January 1989 I was called in for an interview by the anti-terrorist squad. I was interviewed by a Mr. Robson ..."
The prosecuting authorities (Crown Office) have claimed in writing to me that they were unaware of the break-in till after the verdict against Megrahi had been reached 12 years after this 'preventable' disaster. The question here must be whether the prosecuting authorities are correct and whether the break-in was or was not known to the police force (Dumfries and Galloway) charged by the Westminster government of the day with conducting the case, and if not, why did the 'anti terrorist squad', 'Mr Robson' and the Heathrow authorities themselves not pass it on to the investigation?
Remember the words of the Lord Chief justice from 1991? "Mr Feraday was brought forward as an expert in electronics. He is only qualified to a Higher National Certificate level. The Lord Chief Justice declared that the nature of his evidence was 'dogmatic in the extreme ' and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field."
Why should the Lockerbie case still be important to President Obama in 2009?
President Obama has inherited so many problems, but resolution of the Lockerbie question is not the least of them, despite the many years since the disaster itself.
In a recent YouGov poll in the Arab world, fieldwork was conducted from the 21st to 25th of October 2009. Over half the 1047 respondents thought Megrahi innocent, and in a grim reminder of how the US is perceived in the Arab World, whereas 12% thought that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, 21% thought that the US was 'directly or indirectly responsible'.
President Obama will recall no doubt that a previous holder of his office (Ronald Reagan), strongly supported by Lady Thatcher, used the USAF to bomb Tripoli and Bengazi in 1986. Thus it may be that Arab belief in America's responsibility for Lockerbie lies partly in the motivation given to Libya to get revenge for that bombing, which had killed Gaddafi's adopted daughter.
Alternatively a few may also be remembering the destruction of an Iranian airbus with 290 pilgrims on board over the Gulf in July 1988, five months before Lockerbie by a US missile cruiser.
Against this background it would seem logical for the new President to set up a new inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster and particularly into how the verdict against a Libyan came to be reached. It would seem that contributors to such an inquiry would have to be required to give evidence under oath, and that it would be necessary to exercise extreme caution as to how members of the FBI, the CIA and the US Department of Justice should be handled.
In any event if the Lockerbie trial was indeed fatally flawed by the intrusion of international politics then that will be known in the Muslim world, particularly in those nations in which the actual perpetrators and their collaborators are domiciled. These are believed to include Iran and Syria.
If President Obama fails to take all reasonable steps to resolve the doubts surrounding the trial verdict, then he and his country will find it much harder to make progress in reducing tensions in the Middle East, since his country is already suspected of foul play over this case.
If he decides to investigate the case objectively and if that investigation confirms the worst, namely that this was a gross miscarriage of justice, he and his country would surely gain in reputation for integrity and honesty by admitting past mistakes and apologising.
In respect of apologising for miscarriages of justice, there is of course precedent, again provided by the UK.
In February 2005 Prime Minister Tony Blair officially apologised to the families and friends of those falsely convicted over the Guildford and Woolwich IRA bombings. By a twist of fate these tragic miscarriages of justice directly affected America too, for one of those falsely convicted, Paul Hill, had married Caroline Kennedy, daughter of another of President Obama's predecessors in office, President John F Kennedy.
President Obama may consider that the use of those who contributed to the above debacles over IRA cases were again employed in reaching the Lockerbie verdict, dictates a need to re-examine how the Lockerbie verdict came to be reached, even if that process casts painful doubt upon the ethics of involved Americans also.
Why is the Lockerbie trial at Zeist important to the Lockerbie relatives?
Since 1989 we have been requesting a full and objective inquiry into the failure to protect the flight, from every single UK Prime MInister, and have been as often rebuffed, usually with the excuse that there was 'an ongoing criminal investigation which must not be compromised', then by the mantra that 'the trial and appeal must take precedence'.
During those long years a Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry (=inquest) was held. It knew nothing of the Heathrow break-in mentioned above, but nevertheless concluded that the disaster was preventable and that the aircraft had been under the Host State protection of the UK while being loaded with its deadly cargo at Heathrow airport.
President Obama will understand at once that we have a need to know why no effective steps were taken by either the US or UK authorities to save those 270 lives. He will find that many of his own country's families who lost loved ones then (but not all of them) believe that justice was done at Zeist. Their sincerity cannot be doubted.
He will find that most of those active in US intelligence in 1988 will swear that they worked with integrity to reach the trial verdict in 2001. No doubt most of them did. But for those of us who cannot believe that more should not have been done to provide protection, and those who believe that the Zeist verdict was a disgrace, there seems a poisonous miasma of deceit choking the truth over just why and by whom our beloved families were left innocent, vulnerable and then were brutally slaughtered. It is a dilemma which embraces both our nations, so the new President will need to approach our current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, also, if a comprehensive inquiry is to be realised.
This we have of course done, both individually and as a group, but without even a reply to the group's request at the time of writing.
Yes it is hard to question the 'closure' obtained for many by the Zeist verdict, but eventually the truth will come out, and then what will those who have contributed to this terrible deception have to say to us?
We should all remember that 'it is only necessary for good men to do nothing, for evil to triumph'. Some of us believe that honest re-appraisal of this dreadful case could be a force for integrity and the benefit of humanity, whereas the present deceit poisons international relations and makes the work of the great, such as President Obama, all the more difficult.
In the interests of integrity, truth and the healing of past mistakes Mr President I believe you should give this tragedy your attention.
In the name of human love and family rejoice that it did not afflict you or your lovely family, may terrorism never do so. But surely at this time of year especially we know in our hearts that the way to defeat terrorism is by handling perpetrators with firmness, yes, but also with fairness and true justice and eschewing the natural human urge to seek revenge? It is sometimes possible to wrest something good even out of something profoundly evil. Surely this case now offers just that.
Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, murdered at Lockerbie, and a seeker after truth. 20th December 2009
* CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
# RARDE Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment.
~ The research was conducted using YouGovSiraj’s regional online panel of 200,000+ respondents. Respondents from across the region (Arab world) were invited to participate in the survey. Fieldwork was conducted from the 21st to 25th of October 2009. The poll was completed during the third week of October by more than 1,000 respondents from 18 Arab countries.Over half – 55 percent - of those interviewed cast doubt on Al Megrahi's conviction for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
"I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world. One based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition."
"No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust," you said, and speaking of the Palestinians you went on: "For more than 60 years, they have endured the pain of dislocation," but "It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus," ..... "That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered."
The piece below is written by the father of one of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster of 1988 in which 270 died including children, students, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters and old women, all of them deeply missed, as a result not of a bus, but of an aircraft bombing now widely believed to have been engineered by a group claiming to pursue the interests of those same Palestinians, though centered itself in Syria.
In a recent YouGov poll in the Muslim world in October 2009, following a debate on Lockerbie held under the auspices of the Qatar foundation, over half the 1047 respondents thought Megrahi (the alleged Lockerbie bomber) innocent, and in a grim reminder of how the US is perceived in the Arab World, whereas 12% thought that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, 21% thought that the US was 'directly or indirectly responsible'.
So as you Mr President predicted, the impact of your dramatic Cairo speech has not been able to dispel the hatreds and distrust of 60 years. But for 20 of those years a group of families bereaved at Lockerbie have laboured towards obtaining the truth as to why the slaughter happened and who was responsible for it, by default or by commission.
That is why the piece below has been written. The hope is that recognising that some of us wish to see some benefit to the world come out of the horror of the Lockerbie slaughter, may empower a new effort to reach the truth. Maybe disclosing the truth behind the atrocity can actually be turned around to improve relations between the West and the Muslim world, and earn the USA a new respect.
That requires prior certainty as to what the truth actually was.
Those who put their hand up and admit that they previously made mistakes gain respect, those who acquiesce in allowing the truth to remain hidden may come to be despised at the bar of history.
As John Donne wrote : "On a huge hill, cragged and steep, truth stands, and he that will reach her, about must, and about must go." (John Donne 1571? - 1631). The piece below is distilled from 20 years of 'going about' in search of the truth, and the path is indeed cragged. On that path we have met with Presidents and dictators, Prime Ministers, a Secretary General of the UN and his foremost legal advisers, and more of the great and the good than can be named here. Perhaps it is worth reading on. I am confident that you want to stand on that hilltop, and that you have the humility to find the path that leads to it.
Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, age 23 murdered at Lockerbie, 21/12/88
The audacity to hope for change.
President Obama and the Lockerbie case
The truth has a positive contribution to make to US Middle East problems.
When President Obama assumed office a year ago, many thought that the American attitude to those who she regarded as her enemies would become more careful and knowledge based. His compelling writings and oratory supported this hope, as have many of his actions since election. His Nobel prize is a magnificent endorsement of the hope for change which he has brought to office with him.
A new administration, particularly when based on an entirely distinct support base in its own community from that enjoyed by its predecessors, may find it difficult to resolve issues they left over for it to solve. To ease this difficulty a new leader will often co-opt supporters of his preceding administration; at the same time such individuals may make it harder to break with previous ethical norms. The new President's refusal publicly to attack the record of his predecessors can only be admired.
In no field will his task be more difficult than in the conduct of foreign relations, where the support bases of interacting nations will usually not have changed simultaneously, so that previous problems tend to persist. The solution must be for the incoming President to apply a logical re-analysis of how these difficult issues may have arisen, based on the objective re-assessment of the available evidence. This process requires both time and resources, and is finely shown by President Obama's evident careful assessment of the decisions necessary over Afghanistan. But as evidenced by his visit to Cairo in June 2009 and his speech there, nowhere is this more difficult than in relations with the Muslim world.
This re-evaluation process requires even more caution where the work of a nation's intelligence services have been involved, they need to have strong allegiance to the mindset of their current President. This allegiance can lead those intelligence services, in the interests of serving what was their current administration at the time, to overstep the limits which their citizens and their new President would approve, were they aware of them.
True justice should be the great bulwark of citizens the world over against wrongful intrusion into their lives by politicians of their own or any other nation, whether expressed through force or other misuse of power. The Lockerbie trial was of two Libyan individuals, not of the Libyan regime. National justice should protect the rights of its individual citizens, irrespective of the wishes of the politicians and intelligence services of any other nations however relevant to the cases involved, its effectiveness is a measure of the quality of the community it should protect.
For protection at an international level, there are increasing moves towards empowered international justice, such as the International Criminal Court. The US in the past has not pulled her weight there, maybe President Obama will change that. The seeming past belief that US law should run right across the planet causes great resentment.
Almost unnoticed at the time that President Clinton, backed by UK Foreign Secretary (the late) Robin Cook gave the go ahead for the Lockerbie court in Holland, Nelson Mandela issued an urgent warning; speaking from a CHOGM* meeting in Edinburgh he said "No one country should be complainant prosecutor and judge".
The time has now come for the new President to assess whether ignoring the warning from this wise man over this terrible case has led to very unfortunate consequences internationally.
Where several states are all involved in the same case, the danger arises that if one such state is much more powerful than the others, then the protection provided by their own legal systems to those who live in the lesser involved states may be overridden by that power. Intelligence is a form of power. In the Lockerbie case, those who attended the Zeist trial were treated to repeated demonstrations of how some individuals in the Scottish prosecuting authority had developed a sychophantic relationship towards US sources of investigation and technical expertise. Such a relationship gave real meaning to the concept that the UK and the US were indeed to be considered 'one nation' as in Mandela's warning on this matter.
The justice system which President Obama has inherited appears to many observers to be flawed. The mindset of the US Department of Justice, when it boasts of its use of financial inducement to obtain evidence is risky. The US DoJ sports on its website a list of named individuals, allegedly terrorists, who have been brought to 'justice' by the application of financial inducements. There is a fine line between innocent inducement and bribery leading to the perversion of justice. The role of certain Scottish entities in a similar use of 'inducements' also needs investigation.
Megrahi, the alleged Lockerbie bomber is on the DoJ's list of those whose convictions have been assisted by financial inducements to witnesses. It is now known, from records kept by one of the Scottish police force visiting Malta (Harry Bell) that the DoJ wanted to offer $10,000 'up front' with $2,000,000 to follow, to a key prosecution witness, the Maltese clothing-shop keeper, Tony Gauci. This long before he had given his evidence in court. It has not increased faith in the DoJ's probity that Megrahi's name was removed from their front page some time ago after attention was drawn to it by those seeking the truth over Lockerbie.
During the years since Lockerbie, the writer has had the privilege of meeting with Hans Corell, one time under Secretary General and legal Counsel to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, with Nelson Mandela, and with Kofi Annan himself. In addition I have the firm friendship of Professor Robert Black, emeritus professor of Scots law in Edinburgh, whose idea the neutral country Lockerbie trial was, and who, like the writer is convinced that Megrahi should never have been found guilty. There could have been no better tutorial in teaching the need for a better way of resolving international criminal cases based on terrorism and the guilt of individuals.
In the case of the Lockerbie disaster there are compelling reasons for fearing that international political expediency, aided by a litany of pre-existing established patterns of hatred, and serviced by national intelligence services, may have overcome Scotland's hope that she would be able to display to the US and the world an independent but impartial judicial process. International terrorism cases carry a great risk of 'conflict of interest' for national authorities attempting to bring them to justice, for it is the policies of national governments which often decide a terrorist's target, and a nation may well not wish those policies questioned by her own or any other citizens.
Instead it seems inevitable that the truth will out, sooner or later, namely that the Lockerbie trial has deeply undermined the previously high reputation of Scotland's independent criminal justice system, and convicted an individual innocent of the crime with which he had been charged, further bedevilling relations between the West and the Muslim world in the process.
The doubts that exist about the use of the Scottish criminal system in this case keep growing. A number of respected legal authorities, particularly in the UK, such as Scotland's Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) have come to the conclusion that the verdict against the Libyan, Megrahi, may be unjustified and was politically/economically influenced. Some of these doubts are cogently set out in an article by one of the UK's most prominent champions of true justice and the overturning of improper verdicts, Gareth Peirce.
Any unbiased reader of her article published in the London Review of Books will see some of the reasons why the Megrahi verdict is being increasingly criticised. Her article does not bear a title dwelling on passive failure of justice but reads 'The framing of Al-Megrahi'.
This title bears witness to the widespread belief that not only was there serious blocking of some material arising from the Scottish investigation, which should certainly have been made known to the defence, but also a naive amateurishness about the acquisition of information concerning at least one potential source of motivation for the crime. There is also deep suspicion that weaknesses were not confined to being so passive as this, for a key piece of the forensic evidence seemed to bear the stamp of deliberate fabrication, aspects of this are discussed below, and need to be set in the context of the quality of the forensic staff involved, both in the UK and in the US.
A few of the reasons for questioning the findings and verdict in the Lockerbie trial.
Unfortunately there appears to be a very grave risk that a key piece of forensic evidence, a piece of timer circuit board designated PT35B was fraudulently introduced into the evidence chain and accepted by the British forensic 'experts' who described it to the court. Among all the evidence led, the doubts about the story of this item's alleged recovery and subsequent treatment are unique and gather like vultures round a corpse.
Also unique is the significance that this item would have, if genuine. There was no other physical evidence led capable of giving such support to the prosecution's extraordinary and circumstantial story that the IED had originated from the island of Malta. If true, this story would have required the use of just such a long-running timer as the one from which the fragment called PT35B was alleged to have come, and there simply was no other item which seemed to show that such a timer had been used. The timing of the explosion so early in the Lockerbie aircraft's flight would have been a phenomenal error by any terrorist having complete control over the timing of the explosion. Anyone using a timer such as that from which 'PT35B' was alleged to have come would have had such complete control.
What of involved American intelligence or forensic 'experts'? An agent of the FBI, Thomas Thurman held up in front of public TV cameras in the US a photograph of a pristine timer circuit board through which, he claimed to have linked the crime irrefutably to Libya. It was instantly clear that his photograph was of a circuit board which had not been involved in proximity to any explosion. It was also clearly not the circuit board from which PT35B was said to have come, but was of a separate daughter board adjacent to the PT35B board within such timers.
Before long it became clear (and later confirmed in court evidence) that the CIA had already been in possession of timers containing such circuit boards. The FBI agent Thurman was subsequently cited by a more senior FBI officer for the deliberate distortion of prosecution evidence in other criminal cases, in order to assist the prosecution. He was hastily removed from his position. His Lockerbie related contribution remains in place.
As for his UK counterparts, one was Alan Feraday from RARDE# the comment below on his prior performance in an IRA case cannot be ignored:
"The Crown's chief forensic scientist ... Mr Alan Feraday, upon whom so much depended as to the integrity of his theories and the integrity of himself as an expert witness, has since been severely criticised by the Lord Chief Justice in the case of R v Berry (1991). Mr. Feraday was brought forward as an expert in electronics. He is only qualified to a Higher National Certificate level. The Lord Chief Justice declared that the nature of his evidence was 'dogmatic in the extreme ' and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field. In a recent development the Home Office has agreed to pay out compensation from the public purse to Mr. Berry because he was jailed on the erroneous evidence of Feraday."
The comment of the Lord Chief Justice above was available to those who selected Feraday to handle forensics for the Lockerbie case well before the case opened. Indeed the R v Berry case cited above occurred in 1991, and it was in December of that year that indictments against the two Libyans were first issued, and the Lockerbie trial did not start till May 2000. At least the FBI did not discover their problems over Thomas Thurman until after he had spoken out over his interpretation of the Lockerbie forensic position.
The problems over Feraday were known to the UK authorities well before they decided to give him a critical role in the Lockerbie forensic determinations. That the above quotation centres on electronics is particularly crucial to the Lockerbie case in view of the unique position of 'PT35B' within it.
Then in an amazing prequel to the Lockerbie case - that of Danny McNamee we see:
"In the course of the investigation [into the McNamee case] documents were discovered which prove that the police and prosecution knew of the existence of Desmond Ellis and that the evidence pointed to him fully 4 years before Mr. McNamee's arrest. They had matched prints in the arms caches to Ellis. In clear breach of their legal responsibilities they deliberately did not disclose this to Mr. McNamee's defence at the 1987 trial or the appeal in 1991.
"During the McNamee case Mr.Alan Feraday, the Crown's main scientific witness, said that 'the two (circuit boards, one found at the bomb site, the other contained in an IRA arms cache) were matched in design 'artwork' and were therefore made by the same master bombmaker.' The circuit board fragment put forward by the Crown as the link between McNamee and an actual explosion was never forensically tested for explosive contamination although other items from the scene of the explosion were subjected to such tests."
The circuit board fragment known as PT35B in the Lockerbie case was never tested by Feraday for explosives residues either.
The writer knows of no evidence that Mr Feraday received any further education in electronics, or the ethics of forensic presentation in criminal trials between 1987 (the McNamee case) and 2000 when he took such a crucial role in the Lockerbie case.
So who authorised the employment of Feraday in the Lockerbie case, and why? Was this really the best our nation could offer in attempting honestly to reach the truth about the worst terrorist outrage ever to occur in the UK?
Why was the Lord Chief Justice's warning about Feraday following the R v Berry case of 1991 ignored, despite our Home Office having had to make compensation payments because of the findings over Feraday's incompetence at that time?
We now also know that evidence (the Heathrow break-in) supportive of a totally different explanation for the atrocity, and which might have excluded both Megrahi and Malta from the case, was known to the Metropolitan police by January 1989, as Mr Manly of Heathrow security told the appeal court, and recorded in the trial transcripts as follows:
"In January 1989 I was called in for an interview by the anti-terrorist squad. I was interviewed by a Mr. Robson ..."
The prosecuting authorities (Crown Office) have claimed in writing to me that they were unaware of the break-in till after the verdict against Megrahi had been reached 12 years after this 'preventable' disaster. The question here must be whether the prosecuting authorities are correct and whether the break-in was or was not known to the police force (Dumfries and Galloway) charged by the Westminster government of the day with conducting the case, and if not, why did the 'anti terrorist squad', 'Mr Robson' and the Heathrow authorities themselves not pass it on to the investigation?
Remember the words of the Lord Chief justice from 1991? "Mr Feraday was brought forward as an expert in electronics. He is only qualified to a Higher National Certificate level. The Lord Chief Justice declared that the nature of his evidence was 'dogmatic in the extreme ' and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field."
Why should the Lockerbie case still be important to President Obama in 2009?
President Obama has inherited so many problems, but resolution of the Lockerbie question is not the least of them, despite the many years since the disaster itself.
In a recent YouGov poll in the Arab world, fieldwork was conducted from the 21st to 25th of October 2009. Over half the 1047 respondents thought Megrahi innocent, and in a grim reminder of how the US is perceived in the Arab World, whereas 12% thought that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, 21% thought that the US was 'directly or indirectly responsible'.
President Obama will recall no doubt that a previous holder of his office (Ronald Reagan), strongly supported by Lady Thatcher, used the USAF to bomb Tripoli and Bengazi in 1986. Thus it may be that Arab belief in America's responsibility for Lockerbie lies partly in the motivation given to Libya to get revenge for that bombing, which had killed Gaddafi's adopted daughter.
Alternatively a few may also be remembering the destruction of an Iranian airbus with 290 pilgrims on board over the Gulf in July 1988, five months before Lockerbie by a US missile cruiser.
Against this background it would seem logical for the new President to set up a new inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster and particularly into how the verdict against a Libyan came to be reached. It would seem that contributors to such an inquiry would have to be required to give evidence under oath, and that it would be necessary to exercise extreme caution as to how members of the FBI, the CIA and the US Department of Justice should be handled.
In any event if the Lockerbie trial was indeed fatally flawed by the intrusion of international politics then that will be known in the Muslim world, particularly in those nations in which the actual perpetrators and their collaborators are domiciled. These are believed to include Iran and Syria.
If President Obama fails to take all reasonable steps to resolve the doubts surrounding the trial verdict, then he and his country will find it much harder to make progress in reducing tensions in the Middle East, since his country is already suspected of foul play over this case.
If he decides to investigate the case objectively and if that investigation confirms the worst, namely that this was a gross miscarriage of justice, he and his country would surely gain in reputation for integrity and honesty by admitting past mistakes and apologising.
In respect of apologising for miscarriages of justice, there is of course precedent, again provided by the UK.
In February 2005 Prime Minister Tony Blair officially apologised to the families and friends of those falsely convicted over the Guildford and Woolwich IRA bombings. By a twist of fate these tragic miscarriages of justice directly affected America too, for one of those falsely convicted, Paul Hill, had married Caroline Kennedy, daughter of another of President Obama's predecessors in office, President John F Kennedy.
President Obama may consider that the use of those who contributed to the above debacles over IRA cases were again employed in reaching the Lockerbie verdict, dictates a need to re-examine how the Lockerbie verdict came to be reached, even if that process casts painful doubt upon the ethics of involved Americans also.
Why is the Lockerbie trial at Zeist important to the Lockerbie relatives?
Since 1989 we have been requesting a full and objective inquiry into the failure to protect the flight, from every single UK Prime MInister, and have been as often rebuffed, usually with the excuse that there was 'an ongoing criminal investigation which must not be compromised', then by the mantra that 'the trial and appeal must take precedence'.
During those long years a Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry (=inquest) was held. It knew nothing of the Heathrow break-in mentioned above, but nevertheless concluded that the disaster was preventable and that the aircraft had been under the Host State protection of the UK while being loaded with its deadly cargo at Heathrow airport.
President Obama will understand at once that we have a need to know why no effective steps were taken by either the US or UK authorities to save those 270 lives. He will find that many of his own country's families who lost loved ones then (but not all of them) believe that justice was done at Zeist. Their sincerity cannot be doubted.
He will find that most of those active in US intelligence in 1988 will swear that they worked with integrity to reach the trial verdict in 2001. No doubt most of them did. But for those of us who cannot believe that more should not have been done to provide protection, and those who believe that the Zeist verdict was a disgrace, there seems a poisonous miasma of deceit choking the truth over just why and by whom our beloved families were left innocent, vulnerable and then were brutally slaughtered. It is a dilemma which embraces both our nations, so the new President will need to approach our current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, also, if a comprehensive inquiry is to be realised.
This we have of course done, both individually and as a group, but without even a reply to the group's request at the time of writing.
Yes it is hard to question the 'closure' obtained for many by the Zeist verdict, but eventually the truth will come out, and then what will those who have contributed to this terrible deception have to say to us?
We should all remember that 'it is only necessary for good men to do nothing, for evil to triumph'. Some of us believe that honest re-appraisal of this dreadful case could be a force for integrity and the benefit of humanity, whereas the present deceit poisons international relations and makes the work of the great, such as President Obama, all the more difficult.
In the interests of integrity, truth and the healing of past mistakes Mr President I believe you should give this tragedy your attention.
In the name of human love and family rejoice that it did not afflict you or your lovely family, may terrorism never do so. But surely at this time of year especially we know in our hearts that the way to defeat terrorism is by handling perpetrators with firmness, yes, but also with fairness and true justice and eschewing the natural human urge to seek revenge? It is sometimes possible to wrest something good even out of something profoundly evil. Surely this case now offers just that.
Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, murdered at Lockerbie, and a seeker after truth. 20th December 2009
* CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
# RARDE Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment.
~ The research was conducted using YouGovSiraj’s regional online panel of 200,000+ respondents. Respondents from across the region (Arab world) were invited to participate in the survey. Fieldwork was conducted from the 21st to 25th of October 2009. The poll was completed during the third week of October by more than 1,000 respondents from 18 Arab countries.Over half – 55 percent - of those interviewed cast doubt on Al Megrahi's conviction for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
Tuesday 12 January 2016
‘I did not receive a fair trial’
[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2008, recording an interview conducted with Abdelbaset Megrahi a few days earlier by Al-Quds al-Arabi:]
An interview with Megrahi
“On February 27, a Scottish court is expected to re-examine the Lockerbie case and hear the appeal submitted by Abd-al-Basit al-Miqrahi, the Libyan national convicted of involvement in the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over this Scottish district. Al-Miqrahi has been serving a life sentence in a prison in Glasgow - the largest city in Scotland - since being convicted of the bombing by an international court that was set up in the Netherlands.
“Many observers believe that Al-Miqrahi could soon leave prison and return to Libya now that Britain and Libya have signed an extradition treaty by which he would serve the rest of his sentence in his country. This is a known practice between countries, with the most prominent example being Chad's consent to allow the French nationals convicted of abducting some 100 children from Chad and Darfur to return to Paris and serve the rest of their sentences in a French prison.
“Al-Quds al-Arabi visited Al-Miqrahi in his Scottish prison, located 40 kilometres from Glasgow. Entry procedures to the prison were normal and the guards were extremely gentle - we were not even physically searched. We were accompanied by Abd-al-Rahman al-Suwaysi, Libyan general consul in Scotland, and Algerian attorney Sa'd Jabbar. Al-Miqrahi entered the visitation room wearing a thick wool hat, jeans trousers, and a wool jersey, and he had clearly gained weight due to lack of activity.
“The words Al-Miqrahi kept repeating all the time were: ‘I did not receive a fair trial’ and that ‘several documents were withheld from the court.’ He laid out on the counter a file filled with paragraphs that had been suppressed, rather, entire pages had been blackened out to conceal information from the judge under the pretext of security considerations.
“Anyone visiting Al-Miqrahi will note his extremely high spirits, his unusual sturdiness, and his strong belief in his innocence of all the charges he was convicted of. He would smile every now an then, especially when talking about the letters he had received from Scots who wished him happy holidays, believed in his innocence, and expressed solidarity with him. Al-Miqrahi said: ‘A victim's family wrote to me, saying that on behalf of the citizens of Scotland, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.’
“I asked Al-Miqrahi: ‘What about the Arabs?’ He replied sadly: ‘I have not received a single letter from an Arab, but I have received 27 letters from Scots …’
“He went on to say that Dr Swire, dean of the families of the victims, visited him in prison, as did Reverend John Reef [sic; probably means Rev John Mosey, father of one of the victims] and a number of other people, not to mention the Libyan consul, who visits him on a regular basis. Al-Miqrahi follows events in the Arab world through the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya channels, which he has been allowed to watch in his small cell, measuring no more than 2 by 1.5 meters. One day, a Scottish inmate visited him as he watched Opposite Direction in which the argument was in full swing; the inmate asked if he could understand what was being said, to which Al-Miqrahi said: ‘I can if you can.’
“Al-Miqrahi said that what touched him the most was the martyrdom of child Muhammad al-Durah and his father's desperate attempts to protect him, and added that the image of Muhammad and his father never leave him. Asked about his own children, he said that what pains him the most is that the Scottish Government refused to let them reside near his prison. He went on to say that he longs for them, and that he is especially saddened when his young son asks: ‘When are you coming back dad? You promised us many times that you would return soon.’
“He spoke affectionately and admiringly of South African leader Nelson Mandela, who had visited him in prison, saying that Mandela refused to be accompanied by any British official when he visited him in his prison in Scotland. He added that Mandela also called him when he was visiting the Netherlands because his Dutch hosts had told him that he cannot visit him in prison as it would be a breach of protocol. Al-Miqrahi said that he wrote to many Arab leaders telling them that he wants a free trial, but that none of them replied, not even to humour him.
“We asked Consul Abd-al-Rahman if he would remain in his post if Al-Miqrahi is transferred to Libya as expected, to which he said that he would not stay a single day because the consulate was originally opened in order to care for Al-Miqrahi and provide him with all means of comfort. For his part, attorney Sa'd Jabbar, who sat in on the visit, said that the Libyan Government exerted immense pressures on the British Government to retry or deport Al-Miqrahi - pressures that included a suspension of trade agreements. He expected Al-Miqrahi to return very soon.
“Al-Miqrahi said that he would return to Libya because he misses his homeland and family, but that he wants to return an innocent man, not a convicted one, adding that he is confident that any free trial would exonerate him of the charges brought against him. His eyes filled with tears of anguish. Asked about food and whether he misses Bazin, Mabkakah, Isban, and Kuskusi, and he said: ‘I miss a lot of these foods even though the consulate supplied me with daily meals throughout the month of Ramadan, but food is not important, freedom and innocence, however, are.’
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Saturday 12 January 2008
An interview with Megrahi
“On February 27, a Scottish court is expected to re-examine the Lockerbie case and hear the appeal submitted by Abd-al-Basit al-Miqrahi, the Libyan national convicted of involvement in the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over this Scottish district. Al-Miqrahi has been serving a life sentence in a prison in
“Many observers believe that Al-Miqrahi could soon leave prison and return to
“Al-Quds al-Arabi visited Al-Miqrahi in his Scottish prison, located 40 kilometres from
“The words Al-Miqrahi kept repeating all the time were: ‘I did not receive a fair trial’ and that ‘several documents were withheld from the court.’ He laid out on the counter a file filled with paragraphs that had been suppressed, rather, entire pages had been blackened out to conceal information from the judge under the pretext of security considerations.
“Anyone visiting Al-Miqrahi will note his extremely high spirits, his unusual sturdiness, and his strong belief in his innocence of all the charges he was convicted of. He would smile every now an then, especially when talking about the letters he had received from Scots who wished him happy holidays, believed in his innocence, and expressed solidarity with him. Al-Miqrahi said: ‘A victim's family wrote to me, saying that on behalf of the citizens of Scotland, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.’
“I asked Al-Miqrahi: ‘What about the Arabs?’ He replied sadly: ‘I have not received a single letter from an Arab, but I have received 27 letters from Scots …’
“He went on to say that Dr Swire, dean of the families of the victims, visited him in prison, as did Reverend John Reef [sic; probably means Rev John Mosey, father of one of the victims] and a number of other people, not to mention the Libyan consul, who visits him on a regular basis. Al-Miqrahi follows events in the Arab world through the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya channels, which he has been allowed to watch in his small cell, measuring no more than 2 by 1.5 meters. One day, a Scottish inmate visited him as he watched Opposite Direction in which the argument was in full swing; the inmate asked if he could understand what was being said, to which Al-Miqrahi said: ‘I can if you can.’
“Al-Miqrahi said that what touched him the most was the martyrdom of child Muhammad al-Durah and his father's desperate attempts to protect him, and added that the image of Muhammad and his father never leave him. Asked about his own children, he said that what pains him the most is that the Scottish Government refused to let them reside near his prison. He went on to say that he longs for them, and that he is especially saddened when his young son asks: ‘When are you coming back dad? You promised us many times that you would return soon.’
“He spoke affectionately and admiringly of South African leader Nelson Mandela, who had visited him in prison, saying that Mandela refused to be accompanied by any British official when he visited him in his prison in
“We asked Consul Abd-al-Rahman if he would remain in his post if Al-Miqrahi is transferred to
“Al-Miqrahi said that he would return to
- Al-Quds al-Arabi,
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Thursday 14 January 2016
Upbeat assessment of Lockerbie trial prospects
Two Libyans wanted for the Lockerbie bombing will be handed over for trial within weeks, a South African envoy predicted last night after Britain piled on the pressure.
'We have a feeling we are pretty close to a solution,' Jakes Gerwel, President Nelson Mandela's emissary, said after talks with Colonel Muammar Gadafy. 'We would hope that it is not a matter of months but weeks.'
Mr Gerwel, joined by Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, said problems still remained, especially over the question of where the suspects would be imprisoned if convicted. But his upbeat assessment gave new hope that a trial would go ahead.
Earlier Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, used a visit to the site of a proposed trial in the Netherlands to urge Col Gadafy to surrender Abdel-Basset al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, who are accused of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people, in December 1988.
As Tripoli reported 'headway' in talks with the emissaries from Pretoria and Riyadh, Mr Cook, seeking to assuage Libyan fears of an Anglo-American trick, said United Nations sanctions against Libya would be suspended the moment the two alleged intelligence agents landed in the Netherlands as 'a first step towards permanently lifting sanctions'.
And, as part of an effort to convince Col Gadafy that the damage to his regime can be limited and that senior security chiefs will not be implicated, he said explicitly that under Scottish law the men would have the right to refuse to be interviewed by police or intelligence agencies.
'We have no reason and no intention of interviewing the suspects on any other issue,' Mr Cook insisted. 'We have no hidden agenda.' Speaking after touring Camp Zeist, a former Dutch and Nato air force base being converted for the trial, Mr Cook elaborated on his message in an interview with MBC, an Arabic-language television channel seen all over the Middle East. 'It is a criminal court and it is not possible for it to start investigating regimes,' he said. 'These are the only individuals we are accusing.'
Expectations of a handover have risen and fallen since last August when London and Washington dropped their demand for a trial in Scotland or the United States.
Last month the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, reported progress but no breakthrough. Hopes rose when the Libyan General People's Congress approved a trial, but fell when Col Gadafy again demanded an international tribunal.
Reports from Tripoli yesterday said that Prince Bandar and Mr Gerwel had agreed what were described as 'important practical step... toward solving this case'.
Libya's Jana news agency, citing a Libyan foreign ministry official, reported 'major headway' in the efforts to resolve the impasse.
Libya has insisted that the men, if convicted, must serve their prison sentences in a third country, but Britain says only Scotland is acceptable. Prince Bandar, quoted in the London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, denied suggestions that he was carrying proposals to jail them in Saudi prisons if convicted.
'We are close to a solution on lifting an embargo on our Libyan brothers,' Prince Bandar said. 'We can say we are in the final stages.'
'We feel we are close to a solution. We hope that it is a matter of weeks.'
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