[This is the headline over an article in the Embassy Row section of the website of The Washington Times. It reads in part:]
The Libyan foreign minister — linked to the Lockerbie bombing and an attack on a disco in Berlin that killed American soldiers and expelled from Britain for plotting to kill Libyan dissidents — will be honored this week in Washington by US and Arab business executives.
Musa Kousa [or Mousa Kousa or Mousa Kusa or Musa Kusa] is scheduled to discuss a recent Commerce Department mission to Libya and the new US-Libyan trade framework agreement when he attends a reception in his honor sponsored by the National US-Arab Chamber of Commerce on Thursday [3 June] at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel.
Mr Kousa's terrorist background extends to the 1980s when he was accused of sending hit men around the world to kill critics of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In London, he was known as the "envoy of death" when he was the head of the Libyan diplomatic mission to Britain, according to reports in the London newspapers, The Times and The Independent.
After his expulsion from Britain in 1980, Mr Kousa went on to serve as Mr Gadhafi's top spymaster for 15 years. Mr Kousa was reportedly complicit in the 1986 Berlin disco bombing that led to President Reagan's decision to attack Mr. Gadhafi's residence in Tripoli. He was also accused of plotting the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. One hundred ninety victims were Americans. (...)
The refurbishment of Mr Kousa's image began with his appointment as Libya's envoy to talks that led to a $2.7 billion compensation fund for the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster.
The foreign intelligence chief is also reported to have given London information on spies operating in Britain. (...)
President Obama sent career Foreign Service officer Gene A Cretz to serve as US ambassador in Tripoli in December 2008. Libyan Ambassador Ali Suileiman Aujali presented his credentials to Mr Obama in January 2009.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Musa Kusa. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Musa Kusa. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday 1 June 2010
Friday 4 September 2009
Libyan Foreign Minister defends UK Government over Lockerbie
A top Libyan official once expelled from Britain for plotting the deaths of exiled dissidents rode to the defence of the British Government over Lockerbie yesterday.
In one of the few interviews he has given, Musa Kusa, the Libyan Foreign Minister and long-time member of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle, told The Times that he was astonished by the controversy over the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.
“Where is the human rights, the compassion and mercy? The man is on the verge of death,” Mr Kusa said in a midnight conversation in his plush, chilled office in the centre of baking Tripoli.
He flatly denied any link between al-Megrahi’s release and British commercial interests in his oil-rich state and said that Libya was grateful to the British and Scottish governments for their humanity. “You should not do an injustice to the British Government. It was nothing to do with trade,” he said. “If we wished to bargain we would have done it a long time ago.”
Mr Musa, likewise, said that the row over al-Megrahi’s rapturous reception at Tripoli airport was the result of a cultural misunderstanding: such greetings were a Libyan custom. “I can’t say to [al-Megrahi’s] friends and tribe, ‘Don’t go there’,” he said. Not one Libyan official went to the airport, he added, and the reception was, by Libyan standards, “low key”. (...)
He flatly denied that al-Megrahi or Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. “Libya is a victim ... It’s a preconception of the Western media that Libya was the one,” he said.
[The above are excerpts from a report in Saturday's edition of The Times.]
In one of the few interviews he has given, Musa Kusa, the Libyan Foreign Minister and long-time member of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle, told The Times that he was astonished by the controversy over the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.
“Where is the human rights, the compassion and mercy? The man is on the verge of death,” Mr Kusa said in a midnight conversation in his plush, chilled office in the centre of baking Tripoli.
He flatly denied any link between al-Megrahi’s release and British commercial interests in his oil-rich state and said that Libya was grateful to the British and Scottish governments for their humanity. “You should not do an injustice to the British Government. It was nothing to do with trade,” he said. “If we wished to bargain we would have done it a long time ago.”
Mr Musa, likewise, said that the row over al-Megrahi’s rapturous reception at Tripoli airport was the result of a cultural misunderstanding: such greetings were a Libyan custom. “I can’t say to [al-Megrahi’s] friends and tribe, ‘Don’t go there’,” he said. Not one Libyan official went to the airport, he added, and the reception was, by Libyan standards, “low key”. (...)
He flatly denied that al-Megrahi or Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. “Libya is a victim ... It’s a preconception of the Western media that Libya was the one,” he said.
[The above are excerpts from a report in Saturday's edition of The Times.]
Sunday 6 September 2009
Revealed: Blair's role in Megrahi release
[This is the headline over an article in today's edition of The Independent on Sunday. It claims that, as early as December 2003, the UK and US Governments were involved in negotiations designed to lead eventually to the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi. What was sought in return was Libya's renunciation of its nuclear weapons programme, not trade or oil exploration concessions. The article reads in part:]
Tony Blair will be thrust into the controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi with questions in Parliament over a secret meeting the then Prime Minister orchestrated that brought Libya in from the cold.
MPs are set to demand the minutes of an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger summit in London between British, American and Libyan spies held three days before Mr Blair announced that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was surrendering his weapons of mass destruction programme.
At the time of the secret meeting in December 2003 at the private Travellers Club in Pall Mall, London – for decades the favourite haunt of spies – Libyan officials were pressing for negotiations on the status of Megrahi, who was nearly three years into his life sentence at a Scottish jail.
Whitehall sources said the issue of Megrahi's imprisonment was raised as part of the discussions, although it is not clear whether Britain or America agreed to a specific deal over his imprisonment, or a more general indication that it would be reviewed.
MPs are to investigate what was promised by Britain at the talks on 16 December, and the role that Mr Blair played in the affair. Until now, the controversy over Megrahi's release last month has centred on discussions between Gordon Brown's government and the Scottish executive and Libya since 2007, with Mr Blair apparently not involved in any way.
It has also focused on claims that the deal was related to oil deals, with Jack Straw admitting yesterday that BP's interests in Libya played a "big part". But authoritative sources said the seeds for Megrahi's release were sown in 2003, when Libya made the historic agreement to end its status as a pariah, and that the focus on oil and trade was a "red herring".
Yesterday the Libyan Foreign Minister, Musa Kusa – who himself was present at the Travellers Club meeting – told The Times that Megrahi's release was "nothing to do with trade".
Two days after the meeting Mr Blair and Col Gaddafi held direct talks by telephone; and the next day, 19 December, the historic announcement about Libyan WMD was made by Mr Blair and President Bush. (...)
Nine top-level MI6, Foreign Office, CIA and Libyan officials were present for the negotiations at the Travellers Club. The revelation that two senior American officials were present risks causing embarrassment to the White House, as Washington has made clear its criticism of the release of Megrahi by the Scottish government last month. (...)
Last night, a spokesman for Mr Blair could not be drawn on the December 2003 meeting. In fact, The Independent on Sunday has established that Mr Blair's involvement with the Travellers Club meeting was at arm's length, via his then foreign affairs envoy, the current ambassador to Washington Sir Nigel Sheinwald. (...)
Sir Nigel was in Downing Street and was kept informed of negotiations. He in turn kept the Prime Minister up to date. Full details of the meeting, and the identities of those present, have not been revealed until now.
Mr Kusa, the Libyan head of external intelligence, was at the time banned from entering Britain after allegedly plotting to assassinate Libyan dissidents. But because of his closeness to Col Gaddafi, he was essential to the talks and was given safe passage to London. Also in the Libyan delegation was Abdulati [al-Obeidi], now the minister for Europe, who extracted the assurance from Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell this year that Mr Brown did not want Megrahi to die in a Scottish jail. Mr [al-Obeidi] said last week: "In my negotiations with the British and the Scottish, I didn't mention anything about trade relations."
For the Americans, Stephen Kappes, the CIA deputy director of operations, and Robert Joseph, counter-proliferation chief, led the talks. Britain was represented by William Ehrman, Foreign Office director general for defence and intelligence, and David Landsman, then the head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office. A CIA source said last night that a Lebanese businessman, while not at the meeting, was the key go-between, bringing together Libyan officials and British and US spies. The same businessman also put together a team of private investigators on Lockerbie to undermine the case against Megrahi.
An official with knowledge of the talks said of the Travellers Club meeting: "That was where the real negotiations were made."
[The same newspaper also publishes a leading article on the subject entitled "Megrahi: a small piece in the game".]
Tony Blair will be thrust into the controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi with questions in Parliament over a secret meeting the then Prime Minister orchestrated that brought Libya in from the cold.
MPs are set to demand the minutes of an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger summit in London between British, American and Libyan spies held three days before Mr Blair announced that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was surrendering his weapons of mass destruction programme.
At the time of the secret meeting in December 2003 at the private Travellers Club in Pall Mall, London – for decades the favourite haunt of spies – Libyan officials were pressing for negotiations on the status of Megrahi, who was nearly three years into his life sentence at a Scottish jail.
Whitehall sources said the issue of Megrahi's imprisonment was raised as part of the discussions, although it is not clear whether Britain or America agreed to a specific deal over his imprisonment, or a more general indication that it would be reviewed.
MPs are to investigate what was promised by Britain at the talks on 16 December, and the role that Mr Blair played in the affair. Until now, the controversy over Megrahi's release last month has centred on discussions between Gordon Brown's government and the Scottish executive and Libya since 2007, with Mr Blair apparently not involved in any way.
It has also focused on claims that the deal was related to oil deals, with Jack Straw admitting yesterday that BP's interests in Libya played a "big part". But authoritative sources said the seeds for Megrahi's release were sown in 2003, when Libya made the historic agreement to end its status as a pariah, and that the focus on oil and trade was a "red herring".
Yesterday the Libyan Foreign Minister, Musa Kusa – who himself was present at the Travellers Club meeting – told The Times that Megrahi's release was "nothing to do with trade".
Two days after the meeting Mr Blair and Col Gaddafi held direct talks by telephone; and the next day, 19 December, the historic announcement about Libyan WMD was made by Mr Blair and President Bush. (...)
Nine top-level MI6, Foreign Office, CIA and Libyan officials were present for the negotiations at the Travellers Club. The revelation that two senior American officials were present risks causing embarrassment to the White House, as Washington has made clear its criticism of the release of Megrahi by the Scottish government last month. (...)
Last night, a spokesman for Mr Blair could not be drawn on the December 2003 meeting. In fact, The Independent on Sunday has established that Mr Blair's involvement with the Travellers Club meeting was at arm's length, via his then foreign affairs envoy, the current ambassador to Washington Sir Nigel Sheinwald. (...)
Sir Nigel was in Downing Street and was kept informed of negotiations. He in turn kept the Prime Minister up to date. Full details of the meeting, and the identities of those present, have not been revealed until now.
Mr Kusa, the Libyan head of external intelligence, was at the time banned from entering Britain after allegedly plotting to assassinate Libyan dissidents. But because of his closeness to Col Gaddafi, he was essential to the talks and was given safe passage to London. Also in the Libyan delegation was Abdulati [al-Obeidi], now the minister for Europe, who extracted the assurance from Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell this year that Mr Brown did not want Megrahi to die in a Scottish jail. Mr [al-Obeidi] said last week: "In my negotiations with the British and the Scottish, I didn't mention anything about trade relations."
For the Americans, Stephen Kappes, the CIA deputy director of operations, and Robert Joseph, counter-proliferation chief, led the talks. Britain was represented by William Ehrman, Foreign Office director general for defence and intelligence, and David Landsman, then the head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office. A CIA source said last night that a Lebanese businessman, while not at the meeting, was the key go-between, bringing together Libyan officials and British and US spies. The same businessman also put together a team of private investigators on Lockerbie to undermine the case against Megrahi.
An official with knowledge of the talks said of the Travellers Club meeting: "That was where the real negotiations were made."
[The same newspaper also publishes a leading article on the subject entitled "Megrahi: a small piece in the game".]
Sunday 18 July 2010
The Sunday Herald on the BP/Megrahi furore
[The Sunday Herald contains a long article by James Cusick. The following are excerpts:]
In the current open season on oil company BP, a core of senators have switched their attentions from the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to BP’s exploration deals with Libya – and allegations that the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi helped BP secure a $900 million deal.
In his visit to Washington next week, Prime Minister David Cameron will discover if the senators are merely showboating ahead of their mid-term elections or whether they are serious about dissecting the role of international diplomacy and back-stage politics in the rehabilitation of oil-rich rogue states. For one leading energy consultant in London, who has commercial ties to oil and gas companies operating in the Middle East, showboating would be the preferred option.
“If Capitol Hill really wants the full, dark picture, they’ll need to do more than call in BP to answer a few questions,” he says.
“They might start with George Bush, Tony Blair and Condi Rice. Jack Straw would help; so would Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the United States. As well as BP, they should talk to Shell, Marathon, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, all of them. And, if they’ve time, Colonel Gaddafi’s son Seif and Musa Kusa, Libya’s former head of intelligence [and currently Foreign Minister]. This is a Pandora’s Box.”
Sir Nigel will be alongside Cameron in DC this week, just as he was alongside Tony Blair during his years as the British ambassador to the European Union, and later as Blair’s foreign policy adviser. Ahead of Cameron’s visit, it fell to Sir Nigel to state the coalition’s position on the release of Megrahi. “The new British Government is clear that Megrahi’s release was a mistake,” he said.
For Libyan diplomats, that will have come as a surprise. “Nigel and Tony” are regarded in Tripoli as the two figures who helped bring Megrahi home.
Operating behind the scenes and in direct contact with Gaddafi’s closest aides, it was Sir Nigel who – on Blair’s direct orders – helped broker the secret talks in 2003 between the UK and the US that eventually ended Libya’s exile and coaxed Gaddafi into ending his ambition to build a nuclear arsenal. After he and Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, had met Libyan officials, it was Sir Nigel who chaired a series of meetings in London with Libyan diplomats which sealed the deal.
In March the following year, Sir Nigel was with Blair when he visited Gaddafi’s tented complex in the desert outside Tripoli. One news paper report noted that it was 5,573 days since Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie. Blair was the first British prime minister to visit Tripoli since Churchill, and his job was to confer international respectability on the Gaddafi regime and to re-open the commercial opportunities in one of the world’s least explored oil territories. (...)
Lurking in the background, however, was one unresolved issue: one that regularly presented tribal difficulties for Gaddafi in internal Libyan politics. This was Megrahi’s imprisonment in Scotland. (...)
After Blair’s meeting with Gaddafi in 2004, pressure increased on both the UK and US governments to create the necessary conditions for further commercial activity. But Megrahi was still an unresolved part of the Libyan jigsaw – and, felt many in the Foreign Office, a vital one. Quietly, the prospect of a prisoner transfer deal crept on to the diplomatic agenda.
Gaddafi’s son Seif has said that Megrahi’s release was a constant reference point in any trade talks. And in a meeting with Megrahi after he returned to Tripoli last year, Seif told him: “When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table.”
According to a US embassy source in London, Seif would “scare the hell out of Capitol Hill” if he gave a witness testimony. It would not be what he had to say about BP – but what he could say about anyone from any country, including the US, trying to secure new and lucrative business with Libya. (...)
When Blair eventually returned to Tripoli in May 2007 to sign the so-called deal in the desert – a major step towards Libya’s international rehabilitation – it was Sir Nigel who had designed the “memorandum of understanding”. This included, for the first time, an outline of a legal agreement on prisoner transfer. On the same day that Blair and Gaddafi shook hands, both Blair and Sir Nigel travelled to the Libyan city of Sirt to watch BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward and the Libyan National Oil Company’s chairman Shokri Ghanem sign an exploration deal worth $900m.
Hayward knew he was delivering something big for BP. “Our agreement is the start of an enduring long-term and mutually beneficial partnership with Libya,” he said. “With its potentially large resources of gas, favourable geographic location and improving investment climate, Libya has an enormous opportunity to be a source of clean energy for the world.” (...)
BP expected the prisoner transfer agreement to be dealt with quickly by Westminster. But shortly after the signing ceremony between Hayward and Ghanem – which, although it looked formal enough, was still only an outline deal – Libyan officials were told by UK lawyers that there might be a problem with returning Megrahi to Tripoli. Transfer or release of prisoners from a Scottish jail was not a matter for Number 10 but for the devolved government at Holyrood.
According to a senior UK judicial source, when the prospect of delays in any prisoner transfer was suggested to Libya, it was dismissed as nonsense. One Libyan source claimed there would be no delay; that “Nigel and Tony have assured us”. This source also believed Megrahi would be back in Libya within six months.
But BP had begun to appreciate the Scottish problem. By the late autumn of 2007, the company was said to be worried about the slow progress being made in concluding the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
Last week BP officially acknowledged this concern. “We were aware this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan Government of BP’s exploration agreement,” the company said.
BP admits it lobbied the government, seeking to speed up the process of getting the transfer agreement into law. However, it denied it tried to intervene in the case of Megrahi in particular.
But Professor Black, the man who helped engineer the case at Zeist, says: “The prisoner transfer agreement and the potential release of Megrahi back to Libya have always been one and the same thing. It is disingenuous of BP to say they were different. Megrahi was always the name on the table. He was the only high-profile prisoner that mattered.”
Last year, Megrahi was released from jail on compassionate grounds by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary. MacAskill said the Libyan was in the final stages of prostate cancer and was expected to die within three months. He added that he was bound by Scottish values to release him and allow him to die in his home country. The transfer agreement – which the Scottish Government had criticised as unconstitutional because it had not been consulted – did not figure in the minister’s deliberations. (...)
The senate committee in Washington will care little about the constitutional in-fighting between Edinburgh and London. The former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has said that if Westminster had wanted to stop Megrahi leaving, it had the power to do so. “The last time I looked, Scotland wasn’t independent and doesn’t have powers over foreign policy,” said Bolton.
Although Sir Nigel says the UK Government believes the release of Megrahi was a mistake, he does not say if he thought it was mistake.
[Also in the Sunday Herald is an article by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill. It reads in part:]
My decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi last August was, as I made clear at the time and many times since, the right decision for the right reasons.
It was a decision based entirely upon the application for compassionate release that I was duty bound to consider. As I said then, it was not a decision I chose to make, but one I was obliged to make as Scotland’s Justice Secretary.
Megrahi was sent home to die according to the due process of Scots law, based on the medical report of the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care, and the recommendations of the parole board and prison governor – all of which have been published by the Scottish Government.
However, I was also faced with another, separate decision, in respect of Megrahi. That was the application before me for a transfer from Scotland under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed by the UK and Libyan governments.
I rejected that application because the US Government and the families of Lockerbie victims in the US had been led to believe such a prisoner transfer would not be possible for anyone convicted of the atrocity.
The Scottish Government has always totally opposed the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated between the UK and Libyan governments. The memorandum that led to the Agreement was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes.
That is why we chose to reveal the secret talks between the then Labour Government and the Libyans, as soon as we learned of the “deal in the desert” between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi, with the First Minister making a statement to the Scottish Parliament on the issue as far back as June 2007. (...)
Let us be clear: the issues now being raised in the United States about BP refer to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the governments of the UK and Libya, and so have nothing to do with the decision on compassionate release, which was a totally different process based on entirely different criteria.
And the Scottish Government had no contact from BP in relation to Megrahi.
We would always look to assist any properly constituted inquiry – and indeed we very much support a wider UK public inquiry or United Nations investigation capable of examining all the issues related to the Lockerbie atrocity, which go well beyond Scotland’s jurisdiction. That remains the case.
In terms of the new UK Government’s position on the Megrahi issue, we have known the Prime Minister’s opinion since last August, and he knows the due process of Scotland’s independent legal system was followed.
We also now know Professor Karol Sikora has rejected news paper reports that misrepresented his comments about Megrahi’s condition.
I said last August that Megrahi may die sooner or may die later than the three-month prognosis the experts then deemed to be a reasonable estimate of life expectancy – that is something over which we have had no control.
What is certain is the man rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing remains terminally ill with prostate cancer.
[Mr MacAskill's opinion that Mr Megrahi was "rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" is one that many, including the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, do not share.]
In the current open season on oil company BP, a core of senators have switched their attentions from the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to BP’s exploration deals with Libya – and allegations that the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi helped BP secure a $900 million deal.
In his visit to Washington next week, Prime Minister David Cameron will discover if the senators are merely showboating ahead of their mid-term elections or whether they are serious about dissecting the role of international diplomacy and back-stage politics in the rehabilitation of oil-rich rogue states. For one leading energy consultant in London, who has commercial ties to oil and gas companies operating in the Middle East, showboating would be the preferred option.
“If Capitol Hill really wants the full, dark picture, they’ll need to do more than call in BP to answer a few questions,” he says.
“They might start with George Bush, Tony Blair and Condi Rice. Jack Straw would help; so would Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the United States. As well as BP, they should talk to Shell, Marathon, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, all of them. And, if they’ve time, Colonel Gaddafi’s son Seif and Musa Kusa, Libya’s former head of intelligence [and currently Foreign Minister]. This is a Pandora’s Box.”
Sir Nigel will be alongside Cameron in DC this week, just as he was alongside Tony Blair during his years as the British ambassador to the European Union, and later as Blair’s foreign policy adviser. Ahead of Cameron’s visit, it fell to Sir Nigel to state the coalition’s position on the release of Megrahi. “The new British Government is clear that Megrahi’s release was a mistake,” he said.
For Libyan diplomats, that will have come as a surprise. “Nigel and Tony” are regarded in Tripoli as the two figures who helped bring Megrahi home.
Operating behind the scenes and in direct contact with Gaddafi’s closest aides, it was Sir Nigel who – on Blair’s direct orders – helped broker the secret talks in 2003 between the UK and the US that eventually ended Libya’s exile and coaxed Gaddafi into ending his ambition to build a nuclear arsenal. After he and Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, had met Libyan officials, it was Sir Nigel who chaired a series of meetings in London with Libyan diplomats which sealed the deal.
In March the following year, Sir Nigel was with Blair when he visited Gaddafi’s tented complex in the desert outside Tripoli. One news paper report noted that it was 5,573 days since Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie. Blair was the first British prime minister to visit Tripoli since Churchill, and his job was to confer international respectability on the Gaddafi regime and to re-open the commercial opportunities in one of the world’s least explored oil territories. (...)
Lurking in the background, however, was one unresolved issue: one that regularly presented tribal difficulties for Gaddafi in internal Libyan politics. This was Megrahi’s imprisonment in Scotland. (...)
After Blair’s meeting with Gaddafi in 2004, pressure increased on both the UK and US governments to create the necessary conditions for further commercial activity. But Megrahi was still an unresolved part of the Libyan jigsaw – and, felt many in the Foreign Office, a vital one. Quietly, the prospect of a prisoner transfer deal crept on to the diplomatic agenda.
Gaddafi’s son Seif has said that Megrahi’s release was a constant reference point in any trade talks. And in a meeting with Megrahi after he returned to Tripoli last year, Seif told him: “When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table.”
According to a US embassy source in London, Seif would “scare the hell out of Capitol Hill” if he gave a witness testimony. It would not be what he had to say about BP – but what he could say about anyone from any country, including the US, trying to secure new and lucrative business with Libya. (...)
When Blair eventually returned to Tripoli in May 2007 to sign the so-called deal in the desert – a major step towards Libya’s international rehabilitation – it was Sir Nigel who had designed the “memorandum of understanding”. This included, for the first time, an outline of a legal agreement on prisoner transfer. On the same day that Blair and Gaddafi shook hands, both Blair and Sir Nigel travelled to the Libyan city of Sirt to watch BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward and the Libyan National Oil Company’s chairman Shokri Ghanem sign an exploration deal worth $900m.
Hayward knew he was delivering something big for BP. “Our agreement is the start of an enduring long-term and mutually beneficial partnership with Libya,” he said. “With its potentially large resources of gas, favourable geographic location and improving investment climate, Libya has an enormous opportunity to be a source of clean energy for the world.” (...)
BP expected the prisoner transfer agreement to be dealt with quickly by Westminster. But shortly after the signing ceremony between Hayward and Ghanem – which, although it looked formal enough, was still only an outline deal – Libyan officials were told by UK lawyers that there might be a problem with returning Megrahi to Tripoli. Transfer or release of prisoners from a Scottish jail was not a matter for Number 10 but for the devolved government at Holyrood.
According to a senior UK judicial source, when the prospect of delays in any prisoner transfer was suggested to Libya, it was dismissed as nonsense. One Libyan source claimed there would be no delay; that “Nigel and Tony have assured us”. This source also believed Megrahi would be back in Libya within six months.
But BP had begun to appreciate the Scottish problem. By the late autumn of 2007, the company was said to be worried about the slow progress being made in concluding the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.
Last week BP officially acknowledged this concern. “We were aware this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan Government of BP’s exploration agreement,” the company said.
BP admits it lobbied the government, seeking to speed up the process of getting the transfer agreement into law. However, it denied it tried to intervene in the case of Megrahi in particular.
But Professor Black, the man who helped engineer the case at Zeist, says: “The prisoner transfer agreement and the potential release of Megrahi back to Libya have always been one and the same thing. It is disingenuous of BP to say they were different. Megrahi was always the name on the table. He was the only high-profile prisoner that mattered.”
Last year, Megrahi was released from jail on compassionate grounds by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary. MacAskill said the Libyan was in the final stages of prostate cancer and was expected to die within three months. He added that he was bound by Scottish values to release him and allow him to die in his home country. The transfer agreement – which the Scottish Government had criticised as unconstitutional because it had not been consulted – did not figure in the minister’s deliberations. (...)
The senate committee in Washington will care little about the constitutional in-fighting between Edinburgh and London. The former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has said that if Westminster had wanted to stop Megrahi leaving, it had the power to do so. “The last time I looked, Scotland wasn’t independent and doesn’t have powers over foreign policy,” said Bolton.
Although Sir Nigel says the UK Government believes the release of Megrahi was a mistake, he does not say if he thought it was mistake.
[Also in the Sunday Herald is an article by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill. It reads in part:]
My decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi last August was, as I made clear at the time and many times since, the right decision for the right reasons.
It was a decision based entirely upon the application for compassionate release that I was duty bound to consider. As I said then, it was not a decision I chose to make, but one I was obliged to make as Scotland’s Justice Secretary.
Megrahi was sent home to die according to the due process of Scots law, based on the medical report of the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care, and the recommendations of the parole board and prison governor – all of which have been published by the Scottish Government.
However, I was also faced with another, separate decision, in respect of Megrahi. That was the application before me for a transfer from Scotland under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed by the UK and Libyan governments.
I rejected that application because the US Government and the families of Lockerbie victims in the US had been led to believe such a prisoner transfer would not be possible for anyone convicted of the atrocity.
The Scottish Government has always totally opposed the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated between the UK and Libyan governments. The memorandum that led to the Agreement was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes.
That is why we chose to reveal the secret talks between the then Labour Government and the Libyans, as soon as we learned of the “deal in the desert” between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi, with the First Minister making a statement to the Scottish Parliament on the issue as far back as June 2007. (...)
Let us be clear: the issues now being raised in the United States about BP refer to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the governments of the UK and Libya, and so have nothing to do with the decision on compassionate release, which was a totally different process based on entirely different criteria.
And the Scottish Government had no contact from BP in relation to Megrahi.
We would always look to assist any properly constituted inquiry – and indeed we very much support a wider UK public inquiry or United Nations investigation capable of examining all the issues related to the Lockerbie atrocity, which go well beyond Scotland’s jurisdiction. That remains the case.
In terms of the new UK Government’s position on the Megrahi issue, we have known the Prime Minister’s opinion since last August, and he knows the due process of Scotland’s independent legal system was followed.
We also now know Professor Karol Sikora has rejected news paper reports that misrepresented his comments about Megrahi’s condition.
I said last August that Megrahi may die sooner or may die later than the three-month prognosis the experts then deemed to be a reasonable estimate of life expectancy – that is something over which we have had no control.
What is certain is the man rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing remains terminally ill with prostate cancer.
[Mr MacAskill's opinion that Mr Megrahi was "rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" is one that many, including the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, do not share.]
Friday 24 January 2014
There's none so blind as those who will not see
[Two years ago today, I posted on this blog an item headed Lockerbie bombing inquiry police officer numbers raised based on a BBC News report. It contained the following:]
Additional police officers have been drafted into the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary team investigating the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.
The inquiry has been scaled up following regime change in Libya.
Chief Constable Patrick Shearer said that the extra resources required for the probe had been supplied by the Scottish government. (...)
The overthrow and death of Col Muammar Gaddafi last year opened up a possible opportunity for investigators to explore the role of others in the bombing.
The Crown Office has already asked the new authorities in Libya for help with the inquiry.
As a result, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, which has led the Lockerbie investigation from the start, has increased staffing levels within its inquiry team.
Detectives from the local force have already questioned Libya's former Foreign Minister Musa Kusa who fled to London when Col Gaddafi's regime started to fall.A spokesman for Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary said that for operational reasons it could not reveal the number of officers it had added to its inquiry team.
I commented: “Unless the police inquiry is prepared to investigate conscientiously the material that has come to light casting grave doubt on the Zeist trial's verdict against Abdelbaset Megrahi (including material uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) the new staffing and resources will be a complete waste of time and money and will achieve no more than the "one man with a feather duster" that has been the pretext over the years for the police and Crown Office claim that the Lockerbie investigation was still live.
”The treatment of this issue by Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm can be found here. The coverage of the story in the edition of The Herald for Wednesday 25 January [2012] contains the following: 'The Crown Office said: "The transitional Government of Libya has agreed to allow officers from Dumfries and Galloway police to travel to Libya for inquiries into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi."' So here we have confirmation from the horse's mouth of the scope of this ‘investigation’."
Nothing in the police and Crown Office stance has changed in the succeeding two years, notwithstanding the emergence of yet more evidence fatally undermining the Megrahi conviction.
Additional police officers have been drafted into the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary team investigating the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.
The inquiry has been scaled up following regime change in Libya.
Chief Constable Patrick Shearer said that the extra resources required for the probe had been supplied by the Scottish government. (...)
The overthrow and death of Col Muammar Gaddafi last year opened up a possible opportunity for investigators to explore the role of others in the bombing.
The Crown Office has already asked the new authorities in Libya for help with the inquiry.
As a result, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, which has led the Lockerbie investigation from the start, has increased staffing levels within its inquiry team.
Detectives from the local force have already questioned Libya's former Foreign Minister Musa Kusa who fled to London when Col Gaddafi's regime started to fall.A spokesman for Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary said that for operational reasons it could not reveal the number of officers it had added to its inquiry team.
I commented: “Unless the police inquiry is prepared to investigate conscientiously the material that has come to light casting grave doubt on the Zeist trial's verdict against Abdelbaset Megrahi (including material uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) the new staffing and resources will be a complete waste of time and money and will achieve no more than the "one man with a feather duster" that has been the pretext over the years for the police and Crown Office claim that the Lockerbie investigation was still live.
”The treatment of this issue by Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm can be found here. The coverage of the story in the edition of The Herald for Wednesday 25 January [2012] contains the following: 'The Crown Office said: "The transitional Government of Libya has agreed to allow officers from Dumfries and Galloway police to travel to Libya for inquiries into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi."' So here we have confirmation from the horse's mouth of the scope of this ‘investigation’."
Nothing in the police and Crown Office stance has changed in the succeeding two years, notwithstanding the emergence of yet more evidence fatally undermining the Megrahi conviction.
Wednesday 2 September 2009
More from Jonathan Mitchell QC
Jonathan Mitchell's most recent blog post on the Megrahi release is entitled "Compassionate release in Scotland: the actual policy and the law". It is a masterly exposition of the law and the policy relating to compassionate release. It should have been, but unfortunately was not, required reading for those MSPs who took part in today's debate in the Scottish Parliament. The following are brief excerpts:
"[O]n the published facts of Megrahi’s case, had the Scottish Government refused to allow compassionate release in terms of a policy which had been applied by it and its Lib-Lab predecessors, and before them by Labour and Conservative Secretaries of State alike, it would have been open to legal challenge with excellent prospects of success. That’s the way the law works; it doesn’t suddenly cease to operate because the person claiming its benefits is criminal, or a foreigner, or because release is politically undesirable. Still less because of the improbable suggestion that Americans will boycott Scotland and all its works if Scots law is applied impartially and judicially. (...)
"I cannot imagine that the release of Megrahi will in a few years be seen as a worse decision than the UK Government’s decision to release seventy-eight murderers who had collectively murdered far more people than were murdered at Lockerbie; or the US Government's decision to release a murderer of (per his conviction) twenty-two after three and a half years house arrest; or the UK Government’s decision that Pinochet should never face murder charges because of his supposedly poor health.
"But had the decision been to abrogate the law so that Megrahi would die in prison while Musa Kusa and Colonel Gaddafi himself are fawned on by Washington and London, that would, I think, have come to be seen as shameful."
"[O]n the published facts of Megrahi’s case, had the Scottish Government refused to allow compassionate release in terms of a policy which had been applied by it and its Lib-Lab predecessors, and before them by Labour and Conservative Secretaries of State alike, it would have been open to legal challenge with excellent prospects of success. That’s the way the law works; it doesn’t suddenly cease to operate because the person claiming its benefits is criminal, or a foreigner, or because release is politically undesirable. Still less because of the improbable suggestion that Americans will boycott Scotland and all its works if Scots law is applied impartially and judicially. (...)
"I cannot imagine that the release of Megrahi will in a few years be seen as a worse decision than the UK Government’s decision to release seventy-eight murderers who had collectively murdered far more people than were murdered at Lockerbie; or the US Government's decision to release a murderer of (per his conviction) twenty-two after three and a half years house arrest; or the UK Government’s decision that Pinochet should never face murder charges because of his supposedly poor health.
"But had the decision been to abrogate the law so that Megrahi would die in prison while Musa Kusa and Colonel Gaddafi himself are fawned on by Washington and London, that would, I think, have come to be seen as shameful."
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Lockerbie bombing inquiry police officer numbers raised
[This is the headline
over a report published
today on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
Additional police officers have been drafted into the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary team investigating the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.
Chief Constable Patrick Shearer said that the extra resources required for the probe had been supplied by the Scottish government. (...)
The Crown Office has already asked the new authorities in Libya for help with the inquiry.
As a result, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, which has led the Lockerbie investigation from the start, has increased staffing levels within its inquiry team.
Additional police officers have been drafted into the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary team investigating the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.
The inquiry has been
scaled up following regime change in Libya.
Chief Constable Patrick Shearer said that the extra resources required for the probe had been supplied by the Scottish government. (...)
The overthrow and death
of Col Muammar Gaddafi last year opened up a possible opportunity for
investigators to explore the role of others in the bombing.
The Crown Office has already asked the new authorities in Libya for help with the inquiry.
As a result, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, which has led the Lockerbie investigation from the start, has increased staffing levels within its inquiry team.
Detectives from the local force have already
questioned Libya's former Foreign Minister Musa Kusa who fled
to London when Col Gaddafi's regime started to fall.A spokesman for Dumfries
and Galloway Constabulary said that for operational reasons it could not reveal
the number of officers it had added to its inquiry team.
[Unless the police inquiry is prepared to investigate
conscientiously the material that has come to light casting grave doubt on the
Zeist trial's verdict against Abdelbaset Megrahi (including material uncovered
by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) the new staffing and
resources will be a complete waste of time and money and will achieve no more
than the "one man with a feather duster" that has been the pretext
over the years for the police and Crown Office claim that the Lockerbie
investigation was still live.
The treatment of this issue by Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm can be found here. The coverage of the story in the edition of The Herald for Wednesday 25 January contains the following: 'The Crown Office said: "The transitional Government of Libya has agreed to allow officers from Dumfries and Galloway police to travel to Libya for inquiries into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi."' So here we have confirmation from the horse's mouth of the scope of this "investigation".]
The treatment of this issue by Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm can be found here. The coverage of the story in the edition of The Herald for Wednesday 25 January contains the following: 'The Crown Office said: "The transitional Government of Libya has agreed to allow officers from Dumfries and Galloway police to travel to Libya for inquiries into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi."' So here we have confirmation from the horse's mouth of the scope of this "investigation".]
Thursday 11 December 2014
Torture, rendition and UK Government hypocrisy
[What follows is excerpted from an article by Derek Bateman headed Why Britain shares America's torture shame published yesterday on the Newsnet Scotland website:]
The trouble is that witness after witness has averred that British officials were associated with their kidnap, rendition and torture, sometimes intimately so. At first officially, there was ‘no British involvement’. Then there was a stopover at Diego Garcia. Then we heard of refuelling at Prestwick.
Liberty says: ‘We now know that during the War on Terror many people were unlawfully transferred from one territory to another in circumstances where they were subjected to torture, horrendous conditions of imprisonment and ill-treatment…in 2008 officials stated they were unsure how many other times such flights had passed through British airspace. This is despite previously consistent denials by the government of any such use of UK airspace.’ (...)
If you imagine the detainees all to be committed jihadist killers, it seems that as many as 26 were ‘wrongly held’, notoriously among them the al-Saadi family. They were rendered en masse (or en famille) to Libya in 2004 - Sami, an anti-Gaddafi dissident, his wife Karima and their four children, the eldest 12 and the youngest just six.
A pregnant woman was also rendered. She was Fatima Bouchard and she provides another link with the Labour government because after her forced return to Libya along with her husband where they were jailed, Britain was proud of its efforts in helping. So much so, that MI6 agent Mark Allen sent a letter to the Libyan regime to congratulate them on the arrival of their ‘air cargo’ (the Libyan couple).
The letter was addressed to the head of security in Libya Musa Kusa. He arrived in London after defecting and was set free, presumably because he had been an asset to Britain who couldn’t be allowed to talk about the nature of UK contacts with Gaddafi.
He was also the key figure who would have known the truth about any Libyan involvement in the Lockerbie Bombing. But while Megrahi was pursued and jailed, the security chief was released.
This convoluted snakes and ladders is the stuff of what passes for modern diplomacy and it shows that ‘national interest’ is a shifting and sinewy creature wriggling wherever the dark is to be found.
We only discovered after the release, courtesy of Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary, that it had been British policy to aid the release of Megrahi all along. This had been made known to the Cabinet which at the time included Jim Murphy as Scottish Secretary. But no one made this information public. Meanwhile Iain Gray was roundly lambasting the SNP government for letting Megrahi go apparently unaware that his Labour colleague Murphy already knew it was government policy. (When I tried to get Murphy to admit this, he failed three times to respond.)
So there is a history of the Cabinet having knowledge of security issues and keeping quiet, which is what I believe happened over torture rendition - the British State knowingly staged kidnappings and illegal transport of victims for a torture regime and, in the spirit of outsourcing, gave questions to the torturers to ask…that’s our government…our LABOUR government. That is as shameful as water-boarding and cattle prods and puts us side by side with the torturers themselves. Labour – ‘Britain’s democratic socialist party…’
The trouble is that witness after witness has averred that British officials were associated with their kidnap, rendition and torture, sometimes intimately so. At first officially, there was ‘no British involvement’. Then there was a stopover at Diego Garcia. Then we heard of refuelling at Prestwick.
Liberty says: ‘We now know that during the War on Terror many people were unlawfully transferred from one territory to another in circumstances where they were subjected to torture, horrendous conditions of imprisonment and ill-treatment…in 2008 officials stated they were unsure how many other times such flights had passed through British airspace. This is despite previously consistent denials by the government of any such use of UK airspace.’ (...)
If you imagine the detainees all to be committed jihadist killers, it seems that as many as 26 were ‘wrongly held’, notoriously among them the al-Saadi family. They were rendered en masse (or en famille) to Libya in 2004 - Sami, an anti-Gaddafi dissident, his wife Karima and their four children, the eldest 12 and the youngest just six.
A pregnant woman was also rendered. She was Fatima Bouchard and she provides another link with the Labour government because after her forced return to Libya along with her husband where they were jailed, Britain was proud of its efforts in helping. So much so, that MI6 agent Mark Allen sent a letter to the Libyan regime to congratulate them on the arrival of their ‘air cargo’ (the Libyan couple).
The letter was addressed to the head of security in Libya Musa Kusa. He arrived in London after defecting and was set free, presumably because he had been an asset to Britain who couldn’t be allowed to talk about the nature of UK contacts with Gaddafi.
He was also the key figure who would have known the truth about any Libyan involvement in the Lockerbie Bombing. But while Megrahi was pursued and jailed, the security chief was released.
This convoluted snakes and ladders is the stuff of what passes for modern diplomacy and it shows that ‘national interest’ is a shifting and sinewy creature wriggling wherever the dark is to be found.
We only discovered after the release, courtesy of Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary, that it had been British policy to aid the release of Megrahi all along. This had been made known to the Cabinet which at the time included Jim Murphy as Scottish Secretary. But no one made this information public. Meanwhile Iain Gray was roundly lambasting the SNP government for letting Megrahi go apparently unaware that his Labour colleague Murphy already knew it was government policy. (When I tried to get Murphy to admit this, he failed three times to respond.)
So there is a history of the Cabinet having knowledge of security issues and keeping quiet, which is what I believe happened over torture rendition - the British State knowingly staged kidnappings and illegal transport of victims for a torture regime and, in the spirit of outsourcing, gave questions to the torturers to ask…that’s our government…our LABOUR government. That is as shameful as water-boarding and cattle prods and puts us side by side with the torturers themselves. Labour – ‘Britain’s democratic socialist party…’
Friday 1 February 2013
Lockerbie: the current status
[What follows is the text of an essay written on 1 January 2013 by Dr Jim Swire:]
On 21st December 2012, US relatives of those Americans who died aboard the PanAm 103 747 over Lockerbie chose to issue a petition to their government.
Their petition majors on aspects of the relationship between their own country and Libya – the Libya of both before and after Colonel Gaddafi’s death. It can be read on The Lockerbie Case blog (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2012/12/commemoration-of-pan-am-103-at.html). [RB: Note that the group which launched this petition is not Victims of Pan Am 103 Flight Inc, whose president is Frank Duggan.]
There can be no doubt that under the late Colonel, Libya was responsible for much mischief, murder and mayhem in the world. In the UK we cannot forget the supply of Libyan arms to IRA terrorists, providing weapons and explosives for the murder of both soldiers and civilians in both Northern Ireland and the UK mainland.
In 1984 the FBI had warned the Irish concerning a shipment of about 7 tons of arms and explosives from the USA heading for Ireland, which was intercepted. But In another major victory for intelligence in 1987 the ship the Eksund was stopped at sea and found to be loaded with Libyan guns and explosives intended for the Provisional IRA. These arms would have bolstered the weapons obtained from America in the previous decade which had included the deadly Armalite rifle, the image of which can still be seen depicted on Belfast gable ends.
For many Irish Americans the cause pursued by the IRA/Provos was seen as that of freedom fighters, a euphemism for those who clandestinely and indescrimately kill for their cause.
Not being an American nor claiming to understand the mindset of the ‘average American citizen’, nor having any access to their governmental or intelligence organisations, I feel I have no right to criticise the direction which the American relatives are now taking in their search for the truth about the tragedy of Lockerbie. All that can be said I think about the content of their petition is that to seek to draw together many different aspects of the relationships between Libya and America is to risk confounding the search for the true perpetrators of Lockerbie, for it starts from the assumption that Libya ‘must’ have been involved.
This presumption of Libyan guilt is founded of course upon the evidence led and the verdict reached at the Lockerbie trial in Zeist, 12 years ago. Apart from that there have been claims and counter claims about how others in the Gaddafi regime might have been involved. These claims belong in the hall of smoke and mirrors created by national and international intelligence and the politicians to whom they report. I certainly, and I suspect the American relatives, cannot be certain where the truth lies in such an arena.
The only apparent solid foundation for the notion of Libyan guilt is the Zeist verdict against the Libyan, Megrahi. That is now being used in this petition as a foundation for exploring multiple other aspects of Libyan/US relations over the decades. That in turn makes it all the more important to examine the legitimacy of that verdict.
Whether or not higher echelons of Gaddafi’s regime were involved in Lockerbie I do not know. The strange co-operation of the UK in assisting in Musa Kusa’s escape from Libya to the Middle East certainly suggests that he was seen as an intelligence asset in the West, but whether that included any aspect of Lockerbie we have of course no idea. When I met him in 1991 I found him an intimidating central figure in the Colonel’s regime, but was never faced with meeting Senoussi, widely known as a brutal killer on behalf of the dictator. Both men’s names have been co-opted into this petition now created by American Lockerbie families. For me they remain denizens of the hall of mirrors too.
My sad task here is to question the one foundation which seems to me to underlie the US relatives’ petition; namely the conviction of Megrahi. I bitterly regret that in doing so I have to challenge the deeply held belief concerning the verdict against Megrahi among equally bereaved families in the US, for to do so must disturb the relative tranquillity (‘closure’) which many feel they have achieved in the lee of this verdict. Even closure however can be a false haven if the facts on which it is based are untrue. My fervent wish is that those who do shelter in the lee of this verdict will look objectively at the facts now known to surround it. Tough but better to venture out of the shelter into the storm again if one wants to reach the real safe haven of provable truth. Below is a brief summary of the story we heard at Zeist, together with sufficient of the reasons why it is unsafe, some of which emerged in the court, many of which have emerged later.
For those who wish to make their best effort to understand the discussion I recommend a book published in February of 2012. It is written by John Ashton, who spent years working on the legal aspects of the case. At Zeist there was no jury, and the book’s title invites the reader to assume that role. Megrahi: You are my jury is published by Birlinn of Edinburgh (ISBN-13: 978 1 78027 015 9) and is available from Amazon.com.
On the very day it was published, this book was described as ‘an insult to the (Lockerbie) relatives’, by the UK Prime Minister’s Office.
I hope that many will simply read it with an open mind. I do not believe that Downing Street can have done so.
In the hope of simplifying what some regard as an impenetrably complex story here is a simplified version of what seems to have happened. Please check it out against what is actually known to be true.
The months preceding Lockerbie
In July 1988 an American warship had accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus (Iran Air flight 655) killing 290 innocent people.
Iran swore revenge.
America awarded a medal to Captain Rogers, the ship’s captain.
In October 1988 the West German police broke up a cell of Palestinian terrorists operating in Neuss near Frankfurt, but really emanating from Syria.
In doing so the BKA police recovered a number of IED bombs from the Neuss flat. Unfortunately they also missed some of them, which disappeared into the terrorist world. These IEDs were triggered by sensing the drop in air pressure when a plane takes off, they also had inbuilt timers, which were not adjustable and meant that such devices would always explode 30-45 minutes after take off. They were the leading design available to terrorists for destroying aircraft in flight. The Syrian group using them were closely allied to Iran.
The fatal Lockerbie flight lasted 38 minutes.
It was the hearing of this forensic evidence from the German expert, Herr Gobel in the court that first alerted the writer to the improbability of the Malta story. Why launch a bomb from there with a long running and fully adjustable timer, and have it explode just 38 minutes into the flight when it could have been set for many hours after the target flight had left Heathrow?
Some of the arrested conspirators were released promptly by the BKA, despite having been arrested with one of these IEDs actually in their possession at the time of arrest. This extraordinary decision seems another portal into the hall of mirrors.
According to CIA sources the terrorist group involved received significant funding from Iran immediately after Lockerbie.
The prosecution case at Zeist
The story was that Megrahi, aided and abetted by Fhima had put a suitcase containing the bomb aboard Air Malta flight KM180 as Megrahi passed through Luqa airport on 21st December 1988.
The suitcase, suitably labelled was then claimed to have passed through Frankfurt airport where it was transferred to a PanAm feeder flight (PA103A) to Heathrow, there it was transferred again, this time into a already partly loaded container , containing some bags which had been loaded into it at Heathrow before the arrival of PA103A from Frankfurt. The full container, now containing luggage from both Heathrow and Frankfurt was then placed in the hold of PA103 itself.
In order for all this to be confirmed it was necessary to link the two Libyans to the suitcase and explain how it might have survived the complex route proposed only to explode 38 minutes out of Heathrow. In order to have done so, their bomb would have had to have contained a long running timer.
There was not a scrap of evidence led in court that any such suitcase had been loaded onto the Air Malta flight. Their Lordships simply described this evidence deficit as ‘a difficulty for the prosecution’.
As for the long running timer required for a flight from Malta to Lockerbie via Frankfurt and Heathrow, the prosecution produced a fragment of timer circuit board, allegedly retrieved from the Lockerbie wreckage and found in a police evidence bag. It was claimed to have come from a circuit board in a timer bought by Libya from a Swiss firm, MEBO, well before Lockerbie. These timers , had one been used, could have been adjusted to explode over the Atlantic or even over New Jersey.
The fragment appeared to have been part of such a timer’s circuit board.
However what the court did not know was that the metal layers on the circuit elements of the fragment did not match those on the Libyan boards, although looking exactly like them to the naked eye.
This difference was known to the prosecution before the trial. its significance is explained in detail in Megrahi: you are my jury.
Although the prosecution forensic officer knew of this difference and recorded it in his notes, he told the court that the fragment was ‘similar in all respects’ to the Libyan circuit boards.
The manufacturer of the circuit boards sold to Libya before Lockerbie has confirmed by affidavit that his firm did not use, nor even have the equipment necessary for manufacture of, circuit boards by the ‘pure tin’ process found on the curious and apparently incriminating fragment.
Although the anomaly over the fragment was known to the prosecution well before the trial, its true significance did not come to the attention of Megrahi’s defence until his second appeal in Edinburgh.
It did however come to the attention of the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC), who had investigated the case. Like the prosecution’s forensic officer, they failed to investigate the full significance of the difference between the fragment and the Libyan circuit boards. Yet they still found six reasons why the case might have been a miscarriage of justice and agreed its referral to a further appeal.
What is revealed in Megrahi: you are my jury is that the fragment has a coating which is essentially ‘pure tin’, not a tin/lead alloy like the Libyan-owned timer boards . Moreover further, objective scientific testing confirms that there is no possibility that this coating could be derived from that on the Libyan boards, not even by exposure in extreme proximity to a Semtex explosion...
Clothing originating from a Malta shop run by the Gauci brothers was found among the Lockerbie wreckage. The prosecution alleged that this clothing was bought on a certain day when Megrahi was on the island, circumstantial evidence has accumulated indicating that in fact it was bought on a different date when he was not on Malta.
The investigating Scottish police bought improper pressure to bear on Mr Gauci to encourage him to identify Megrahi as the buyer: some of this they concealed from the court.
They also knew that Gauci was aware of, and keen to get his hands on, substantial US offered money, conditional on him giving evidence against Megrahi in court. Again the Scottish police did not declare this knowledge to the Court.
Thus the identification of Megrahi as the buyer of the clothing would certainly have been seen to have failed to reach the standards for an identification normally required in a Scottish criminal court, had all the facts been then known to the court.
The evidence against alleged co-conspirator Fhima failed to convince the court and he was found not guilty. In order to continue proceedings, the charges against Megrahi had then to be altered from conspiring with Fhima, to conspiring with others unknown. Changing the charge in mid stream seems hard to justify under Scots law.
If the prosecution case was a myth, how was it really done?
The above description is taken so far as possible from the evidence led at Zeist and knowledge accumulated since. It is astonishing that it seems to fail to implicate Megrahi and Malta in so many ways.
With one exception, not yet mentioned, the Zeist evidence, unlike the events leading up to the disaster itself, helps little to tell us about the most likely true explanation. Only after the verdict did that piece of evidence come to light.
It was that during the night of 20/21 December 1988 about 16 hours before the disaster somebody broke into Heathrow airside at a point close to where the Lockerbie bomb was loaded aboard PanAm103 the following evening.
Although the airport authorities were told immediately of the break-in they seem to have decided that they could afford to ignore it, not calling in Scotland Yard until long after the atrocity, and failing to halt outgoing flights until the identity and motive of the intruder had been identified, as one would surely expect at a time of known heightened terrorist risk, especially for US aircraft...
The bombs mentioned above being made in Neuss had key characteristics which were described to the Zeist court.
They were inert on the ground, but would sense falling air pressure in a climbing aircraft and explode 30-45 minutes after take off. The court heard that the delay was not adjustable.
This means that one of these devices when armed could not have been flown in from Frankfurt, let alone Malta: it would have exploded en route.
The user had to either bring one overland to the target airport or fly in with a disarmed one and arm it there. Once loaded in the target plane he could be sure that the device would explode between 30-45 minutes after takeoff, for no timer would start until the air pressure fell appropriately. Evidence that a suitcase similar to that containing the bomb was indeed loaded at Heathrow into the very container where the explosion occurred 38 minutes after take-off was heard in court but rejected.
The break-in was entirely concealed from the trial court, yet the evidence which was heard at Zeist as to the loading of the container at Heathrow in which the explosion did occur now needs to be reviewed in the light of the break-in. The opportunity for the introduction of such a device by an overland route at Heathrow did exist after all. So reviewed, the Heathrow evidence is seen strongly to support the loading of the bomb-containing suitcase there into the baggage container labelled as and destined for PA103.
The Scottish Crown Office and their investigating police force must answer as to why this break-in evidence was suppressed from January 1989 when the Scotland Yard police told them about it, until after the trial had ended and the verdict been reached.
The concept that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie seems to rest on the conviction of Megrahi, yet the timer fragment said to support the use of a long running timer by Megrahi could not have come from one of the Libyan timers proposed by the prosecution. They were profoundly incompatible.
If Megrahi and Malta were but a myth, was it incompetence that led the Crown Office and their investigators to get so much wrong or something more sinister still?
There is no evidence known to us that suggests any other point of origin for the mysterious fragment other than ‘the Libyan bomb from Malta’. Yet it was found inside a Scottish police evidence bag, the court was told, tucked inside a piece of shirt collar readily identifiable as having been bought in Gauci’s shop in Malta. And now we know, though it was hidden from the court and the first appeal that the fragment could not have come from one of the designated Libyan timers, so where could it have come from, and how on earth did it come to be found inside an official police evidence bag?
Come to that why had someone altered the label on that very bag in such a way as to make it simpler for the investigating forensic officer to find the fragment, rather than just have him find the piece of cloth?
An even more sinister question is who could have carefully copied the circuitry of a corner of a Libyan owned circuit board, but let themselves down by carelessness over the plating technique? There is simply no known alternative circuit board nor electronic device associated with Lockerbie from which the fragment might have been derived.
I do hope that this attempt to review the situation will be criticised, but by people who have taken the trouble to check on the facts portrayed or hinted at in it. The self styled circumstantial case against Megrahi does not seem to survive such examination, and without it the huge bubble of the ‘Libya did it believers’ seems at least as circumstantial itself.
It was just before the evidence about the circuit board fragment and other exculpatory matters were to be led in Edinburgh in open court that the Megrahi appeal was cancelled. Only now has it become public knowldege.
I have tried but failed to discover anything that could be called proof of Libyan involvement at a higher level than Megrahi. That failure is to be expected for a private citizen seeking to probe State security.
However I wonder whether those who drew up the accusatory petition against their own country over its relationship with Libya have ever asked themselves whether the perceived refusal of their government(s) to obtain any answers might be because there simply isn’t any genuine evidence of Libyan involvement at any level.
Hatred and desire for revenge are always corrosive to those who harbour them. What a further tragedy for the bereaved of Lockerbie if we have been deliberately misled by those who should care for us, their citizens.
Then there is the Christian tenet of forgiveness, how can one forgive someone if his identity is being officially concealed? Such aspects of this terrible case complicate and prolong the grieving process, and in the end will only harm those involved in the deception and the reputation of their nations.
On 21st December 2012, US relatives of those Americans who died aboard the PanAm 103 747 over Lockerbie chose to issue a petition to their government.
Their petition majors on aspects of the relationship between their own country and Libya – the Libya of both before and after Colonel Gaddafi’s death. It can be read on The Lockerbie Case blog (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2012/12/commemoration-of-pan-am-103-at.html). [RB: Note that the group which launched this petition is not Victims of Pan Am 103 Flight Inc, whose president is Frank Duggan.]
There can be no doubt that under the late Colonel, Libya was responsible for much mischief, murder and mayhem in the world. In the UK we cannot forget the supply of Libyan arms to IRA terrorists, providing weapons and explosives for the murder of both soldiers and civilians in both Northern Ireland and the UK mainland.
In 1984 the FBI had warned the Irish concerning a shipment of about 7 tons of arms and explosives from the USA heading for Ireland, which was intercepted. But In another major victory for intelligence in 1987 the ship the Eksund was stopped at sea and found to be loaded with Libyan guns and explosives intended for the Provisional IRA. These arms would have bolstered the weapons obtained from America in the previous decade which had included the deadly Armalite rifle, the image of which can still be seen depicted on Belfast gable ends.
For many Irish Americans the cause pursued by the IRA/Provos was seen as that of freedom fighters, a euphemism for those who clandestinely and indescrimately kill for their cause.
Not being an American nor claiming to understand the mindset of the ‘average American citizen’, nor having any access to their governmental or intelligence organisations, I feel I have no right to criticise the direction which the American relatives are now taking in their search for the truth about the tragedy of Lockerbie. All that can be said I think about the content of their petition is that to seek to draw together many different aspects of the relationships between Libya and America is to risk confounding the search for the true perpetrators of Lockerbie, for it starts from the assumption that Libya ‘must’ have been involved.
This presumption of Libyan guilt is founded of course upon the evidence led and the verdict reached at the Lockerbie trial in Zeist, 12 years ago. Apart from that there have been claims and counter claims about how others in the Gaddafi regime might have been involved. These claims belong in the hall of smoke and mirrors created by national and international intelligence and the politicians to whom they report. I certainly, and I suspect the American relatives, cannot be certain where the truth lies in such an arena.
The only apparent solid foundation for the notion of Libyan guilt is the Zeist verdict against the Libyan, Megrahi. That is now being used in this petition as a foundation for exploring multiple other aspects of Libyan/US relations over the decades. That in turn makes it all the more important to examine the legitimacy of that verdict.
Whether or not higher echelons of Gaddafi’s regime were involved in Lockerbie I do not know. The strange co-operation of the UK in assisting in Musa Kusa’s escape from Libya to the Middle East certainly suggests that he was seen as an intelligence asset in the West, but whether that included any aspect of Lockerbie we have of course no idea. When I met him in 1991 I found him an intimidating central figure in the Colonel’s regime, but was never faced with meeting Senoussi, widely known as a brutal killer on behalf of the dictator. Both men’s names have been co-opted into this petition now created by American Lockerbie families. For me they remain denizens of the hall of mirrors too.
My sad task here is to question the one foundation which seems to me to underlie the US relatives’ petition; namely the conviction of Megrahi. I bitterly regret that in doing so I have to challenge the deeply held belief concerning the verdict against Megrahi among equally bereaved families in the US, for to do so must disturb the relative tranquillity (‘closure’) which many feel they have achieved in the lee of this verdict. Even closure however can be a false haven if the facts on which it is based are untrue. My fervent wish is that those who do shelter in the lee of this verdict will look objectively at the facts now known to surround it. Tough but better to venture out of the shelter into the storm again if one wants to reach the real safe haven of provable truth. Below is a brief summary of the story we heard at Zeist, together with sufficient of the reasons why it is unsafe, some of which emerged in the court, many of which have emerged later.
For those who wish to make their best effort to understand the discussion I recommend a book published in February of 2012. It is written by John Ashton, who spent years working on the legal aspects of the case. At Zeist there was no jury, and the book’s title invites the reader to assume that role. Megrahi: You are my jury is published by Birlinn of Edinburgh (ISBN-13: 978 1 78027 015 9) and is available from Amazon.com.
On the very day it was published, this book was described as ‘an insult to the (Lockerbie) relatives’, by the UK Prime Minister’s Office.
I hope that many will simply read it with an open mind. I do not believe that Downing Street can have done so.
In the hope of simplifying what some regard as an impenetrably complex story here is a simplified version of what seems to have happened. Please check it out against what is actually known to be true.
The months preceding Lockerbie
In July 1988 an American warship had accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus (Iran Air flight 655) killing 290 innocent people.
Iran swore revenge.
America awarded a medal to Captain Rogers, the ship’s captain.
In October 1988 the West German police broke up a cell of Palestinian terrorists operating in Neuss near Frankfurt, but really emanating from Syria.
In doing so the BKA police recovered a number of IED bombs from the Neuss flat. Unfortunately they also missed some of them, which disappeared into the terrorist world. These IEDs were triggered by sensing the drop in air pressure when a plane takes off, they also had inbuilt timers, which were not adjustable and meant that such devices would always explode 30-45 minutes after take off. They were the leading design available to terrorists for destroying aircraft in flight. The Syrian group using them were closely allied to Iran.
The fatal Lockerbie flight lasted 38 minutes.
It was the hearing of this forensic evidence from the German expert, Herr Gobel in the court that first alerted the writer to the improbability of the Malta story. Why launch a bomb from there with a long running and fully adjustable timer, and have it explode just 38 minutes into the flight when it could have been set for many hours after the target flight had left Heathrow?
Some of the arrested conspirators were released promptly by the BKA, despite having been arrested with one of these IEDs actually in their possession at the time of arrest. This extraordinary decision seems another portal into the hall of mirrors.
According to CIA sources the terrorist group involved received significant funding from Iran immediately after Lockerbie.
The prosecution case at Zeist
The story was that Megrahi, aided and abetted by Fhima had put a suitcase containing the bomb aboard Air Malta flight KM180 as Megrahi passed through Luqa airport on 21st December 1988.
The suitcase, suitably labelled was then claimed to have passed through Frankfurt airport where it was transferred to a PanAm feeder flight (PA103A) to Heathrow, there it was transferred again, this time into a already partly loaded container , containing some bags which had been loaded into it at Heathrow before the arrival of PA103A from Frankfurt. The full container, now containing luggage from both Heathrow and Frankfurt was then placed in the hold of PA103 itself.
In order for all this to be confirmed it was necessary to link the two Libyans to the suitcase and explain how it might have survived the complex route proposed only to explode 38 minutes out of Heathrow. In order to have done so, their bomb would have had to have contained a long running timer.
There was not a scrap of evidence led in court that any such suitcase had been loaded onto the Air Malta flight. Their Lordships simply described this evidence deficit as ‘a difficulty for the prosecution’.
As for the long running timer required for a flight from Malta to Lockerbie via Frankfurt and Heathrow, the prosecution produced a fragment of timer circuit board, allegedly retrieved from the Lockerbie wreckage and found in a police evidence bag. It was claimed to have come from a circuit board in a timer bought by Libya from a Swiss firm, MEBO, well before Lockerbie. These timers , had one been used, could have been adjusted to explode over the Atlantic or even over New Jersey.
The fragment appeared to have been part of such a timer’s circuit board.
However what the court did not know was that the metal layers on the circuit elements of the fragment did not match those on the Libyan boards, although looking exactly like them to the naked eye.
This difference was known to the prosecution before the trial. its significance is explained in detail in Megrahi: you are my jury.
Although the prosecution forensic officer knew of this difference and recorded it in his notes, he told the court that the fragment was ‘similar in all respects’ to the Libyan circuit boards.
The manufacturer of the circuit boards sold to Libya before Lockerbie has confirmed by affidavit that his firm did not use, nor even have the equipment necessary for manufacture of, circuit boards by the ‘pure tin’ process found on the curious and apparently incriminating fragment.
Although the anomaly over the fragment was known to the prosecution well before the trial, its true significance did not come to the attention of Megrahi’s defence until his second appeal in Edinburgh.
It did however come to the attention of the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC), who had investigated the case. Like the prosecution’s forensic officer, they failed to investigate the full significance of the difference between the fragment and the Libyan circuit boards. Yet they still found six reasons why the case might have been a miscarriage of justice and agreed its referral to a further appeal.
What is revealed in Megrahi: you are my jury is that the fragment has a coating which is essentially ‘pure tin’, not a tin/lead alloy like the Libyan-owned timer boards . Moreover further, objective scientific testing confirms that there is no possibility that this coating could be derived from that on the Libyan boards, not even by exposure in extreme proximity to a Semtex explosion...
Clothing originating from a Malta shop run by the Gauci brothers was found among the Lockerbie wreckage. The prosecution alleged that this clothing was bought on a certain day when Megrahi was on the island, circumstantial evidence has accumulated indicating that in fact it was bought on a different date when he was not on Malta.
The investigating Scottish police bought improper pressure to bear on Mr Gauci to encourage him to identify Megrahi as the buyer: some of this they concealed from the court.
They also knew that Gauci was aware of, and keen to get his hands on, substantial US offered money, conditional on him giving evidence against Megrahi in court. Again the Scottish police did not declare this knowledge to the Court.
Thus the identification of Megrahi as the buyer of the clothing would certainly have been seen to have failed to reach the standards for an identification normally required in a Scottish criminal court, had all the facts been then known to the court.
The evidence against alleged co-conspirator Fhima failed to convince the court and he was found not guilty. In order to continue proceedings, the charges against Megrahi had then to be altered from conspiring with Fhima, to conspiring with others unknown. Changing the charge in mid stream seems hard to justify under Scots law.
If the prosecution case was a myth, how was it really done?
The above description is taken so far as possible from the evidence led at Zeist and knowledge accumulated since. It is astonishing that it seems to fail to implicate Megrahi and Malta in so many ways.
With one exception, not yet mentioned, the Zeist evidence, unlike the events leading up to the disaster itself, helps little to tell us about the most likely true explanation. Only after the verdict did that piece of evidence come to light.
It was that during the night of 20/21 December 1988 about 16 hours before the disaster somebody broke into Heathrow airside at a point close to where the Lockerbie bomb was loaded aboard PanAm103 the following evening.
Although the airport authorities were told immediately of the break-in they seem to have decided that they could afford to ignore it, not calling in Scotland Yard until long after the atrocity, and failing to halt outgoing flights until the identity and motive of the intruder had been identified, as one would surely expect at a time of known heightened terrorist risk, especially for US aircraft...
The bombs mentioned above being made in Neuss had key characteristics which were described to the Zeist court.
They were inert on the ground, but would sense falling air pressure in a climbing aircraft and explode 30-45 minutes after take off. The court heard that the delay was not adjustable.
This means that one of these devices when armed could not have been flown in from Frankfurt, let alone Malta: it would have exploded en route.
The user had to either bring one overland to the target airport or fly in with a disarmed one and arm it there. Once loaded in the target plane he could be sure that the device would explode between 30-45 minutes after takeoff, for no timer would start until the air pressure fell appropriately. Evidence that a suitcase similar to that containing the bomb was indeed loaded at Heathrow into the very container where the explosion occurred 38 minutes after take-off was heard in court but rejected.
The break-in was entirely concealed from the trial court, yet the evidence which was heard at Zeist as to the loading of the container at Heathrow in which the explosion did occur now needs to be reviewed in the light of the break-in. The opportunity for the introduction of such a device by an overland route at Heathrow did exist after all. So reviewed, the Heathrow evidence is seen strongly to support the loading of the bomb-containing suitcase there into the baggage container labelled as and destined for PA103.
The Scottish Crown Office and their investigating police force must answer as to why this break-in evidence was suppressed from January 1989 when the Scotland Yard police told them about it, until after the trial had ended and the verdict been reached.
The concept that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie seems to rest on the conviction of Megrahi, yet the timer fragment said to support the use of a long running timer by Megrahi could not have come from one of the Libyan timers proposed by the prosecution. They were profoundly incompatible.
If Megrahi and Malta were but a myth, was it incompetence that led the Crown Office and their investigators to get so much wrong or something more sinister still?
There is no evidence known to us that suggests any other point of origin for the mysterious fragment other than ‘the Libyan bomb from Malta’. Yet it was found inside a Scottish police evidence bag, the court was told, tucked inside a piece of shirt collar readily identifiable as having been bought in Gauci’s shop in Malta. And now we know, though it was hidden from the court and the first appeal that the fragment could not have come from one of the designated Libyan timers, so where could it have come from, and how on earth did it come to be found inside an official police evidence bag?
Come to that why had someone altered the label on that very bag in such a way as to make it simpler for the investigating forensic officer to find the fragment, rather than just have him find the piece of cloth?
An even more sinister question is who could have carefully copied the circuitry of a corner of a Libyan owned circuit board, but let themselves down by carelessness over the plating technique? There is simply no known alternative circuit board nor electronic device associated with Lockerbie from which the fragment might have been derived.
I do hope that this attempt to review the situation will be criticised, but by people who have taken the trouble to check on the facts portrayed or hinted at in it. The self styled circumstantial case against Megrahi does not seem to survive such examination, and without it the huge bubble of the ‘Libya did it believers’ seems at least as circumstantial itself.
It was just before the evidence about the circuit board fragment and other exculpatory matters were to be led in Edinburgh in open court that the Megrahi appeal was cancelled. Only now has it become public knowldege.
I have tried but failed to discover anything that could be called proof of Libyan involvement at a higher level than Megrahi. That failure is to be expected for a private citizen seeking to probe State security.
However I wonder whether those who drew up the accusatory petition against their own country over its relationship with Libya have ever asked themselves whether the perceived refusal of their government(s) to obtain any answers might be because there simply isn’t any genuine evidence of Libyan involvement at any level.
Hatred and desire for revenge are always corrosive to those who harbour them. What a further tragedy for the bereaved of Lockerbie if we have been deliberately misled by those who should care for us, their citizens.
Then there is the Christian tenet of forgiveness, how can one forgive someone if his identity is being officially concealed? Such aspects of this terrible case complicate and prolong the grieving process, and in the end will only harm those involved in the deception and the reputation of their nations.
Tuesday 18 June 2013
Court finds Obeidi and Zway not guilty; Attorney General to appeal
[This is the headline over a report published late yesterday on the website of the Libya Herald. It reads as follows:]
Qaddafi regime Foreign Minister Abdulati Al-Obeidi and Mohamed Al-Zway, the former secretary of the General People’s Congress, were found not guilty by a Tripoli court today. However, the Attorney General says he is appealing against the decisions and has ordered the two men to be returned to prison pending the appeal.
The verdict is seen as important because it shows the impartiality and independence of the Libya courts at a time when many voices outside the country claim that a fair trial is impossible in Libya, in particular in the case of Saif Al-Islam and Abdullah Senussi. The impossibility of a fair trial is one of the main planks of the International Criminal Court’s demand that Libya hand over both men to it.
Obeidi and Zway were first arrested in July 2011. Obeidi had served as Prime Minister from 1977 to 1979, then as nominal head of state from 1979 to 1981 and finally as Qaddafi’s last Foreign Minister after Musa Kusa fled in March 2011.
Zway, a close friend of Qaddafi from schooldays in Sebha, was Libya’s ambassador to the UK. In 2010 was chosen by the dictator to be Secretary-General of his General People’s Congress.
Their trial opened on 10 September last year. They were accused of poor performance of their duties while in office and of maladministration, specifically wasting of public funds in respect of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The prosecution claimed that it was wrong to organise a compensation deal of $2.7 billion to the victims’ families in return for having Libya removed from the list of the states sponsoring terrorism.
It also alleged that Obeidi and Zway had paid out double the amount originally planned – a charge at variance with claims by others linked to the compensation plan that the $2.7 billiion was itself never fully paid.
At the opening of the case, the judge said that the deal “was a waste of public money especially when there was no guarantee the charges in the Lockerbie case would be dropped if the compensation was made”.
Just before their trial, the former Justice Minister Mohamed Allagi who is president of Libya’s National Council for Civil Liberties and Human Rights, claimed that the trial and those of other Qaddafi officials were “invalid” because the law was not being properly implemented.
The charges against Zway and Obeidi surprised many observers at the time as they implied that the two should have been more effective in serving the Qaddafi regime and that the Lockerbie deal should never have happened.
Both men consistently denied the charges.
Today’s “Not Guilty” verdict was greeted with jubilation from the two men’s families. “We are satisfied that the verdict proves that Libyan justice is transparent and equal,” a nephew of Obeidi was quoted saying at the end of the proceedings.
[The Herald today contains a report (with a quote from me) on the acquittal.]
Qaddafi regime Foreign Minister Abdulati Al-Obeidi and Mohamed Al-Zway, the former secretary of the General People’s Congress, were found not guilty by a Tripoli court today. However, the Attorney General says he is appealing against the decisions and has ordered the two men to be returned to prison pending the appeal.
The verdict is seen as important because it shows the impartiality and independence of the Libya courts at a time when many voices outside the country claim that a fair trial is impossible in Libya, in particular in the case of Saif Al-Islam and Abdullah Senussi. The impossibility of a fair trial is one of the main planks of the International Criminal Court’s demand that Libya hand over both men to it.
Obeidi and Zway were first arrested in July 2011. Obeidi had served as Prime Minister from 1977 to 1979, then as nominal head of state from 1979 to 1981 and finally as Qaddafi’s last Foreign Minister after Musa Kusa fled in March 2011.
Zway, a close friend of Qaddafi from schooldays in Sebha, was Libya’s ambassador to the UK. In 2010 was chosen by the dictator to be Secretary-General of his General People’s Congress.
Their trial opened on 10 September last year. They were accused of poor performance of their duties while in office and of maladministration, specifically wasting of public funds in respect of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The prosecution claimed that it was wrong to organise a compensation deal of $2.7 billion to the victims’ families in return for having Libya removed from the list of the states sponsoring terrorism.
It also alleged that Obeidi and Zway had paid out double the amount originally planned – a charge at variance with claims by others linked to the compensation plan that the $2.7 billiion was itself never fully paid.
At the opening of the case, the judge said that the deal “was a waste of public money especially when there was no guarantee the charges in the Lockerbie case would be dropped if the compensation was made”.
Just before their trial, the former Justice Minister Mohamed Allagi who is president of Libya’s National Council for Civil Liberties and Human Rights, claimed that the trial and those of other Qaddafi officials were “invalid” because the law was not being properly implemented.
The charges against Zway and Obeidi surprised many observers at the time as they implied that the two should have been more effective in serving the Qaddafi regime and that the Lockerbie deal should never have happened.
Both men consistently denied the charges.
Today’s “Not Guilty” verdict was greeted with jubilation from the two men’s families. “We are satisfied that the verdict proves that Libyan justice is transparent and equal,” a nephew of Obeidi was quoted saying at the end of the proceedings.
[The Herald today contains a report (with a quote from me) on the acquittal.]
Saturday 2 April 2011
Talks about talks
[What follows is the text of a press release just issued by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.]
The following can be attributed to a Crown Office spokesperson:
"I can confirm that representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary have been in close contact with FCO officials over recent days and will be meeting with them on Monday to discuss the situation concerning Mr Musa Kusa further."
[As a former civil servant (briefly, I rejoice to say) I am only too well aware of how meetings serve as a substitute for, but can be represented as, action.]
The following can be attributed to a Crown Office spokesperson:
"I can confirm that representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary have been in close contact with FCO officials over recent days and will be meeting with them on Monday to discuss the situation concerning Mr Musa Kusa further."
[As a former civil servant (briefly, I rejoice to say) I am only too well aware of how meetings serve as a substitute for, but can be represented as, action.]
Sunday 20 November 2011
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Lockerbie
[The following are excerpts from an article in today's edition of The Sunday Telegraph:]
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was his father's favourite son. Until the start of the
Libyan revolution, he was also feted by the West, as the arch-moderniser who
would supposedly guide the oil and gas rich north African country along the
path of democracy.
He was influential in his father's decision to give up weapons of mass
destruction that brought Libya in from the cold in 2004 and helped to
negotiate the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish jail in 2009.
Saif's extensive contacts included the Duke of York, Tony Blair and Lord
Mandelson. (...)
By about 2002, he was becoming a regular visitor to London and within a year is said to have fixed up a meeting between the Libyan regime and MI6 that would lead to Libya's public abandonment of its nuclear and chemical weapons programme, paving the way for Tony Blair to embrace Muammar Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent in March 2004 – the now infamous "deal in the desert". (...)
He was hugely influential in controlling the Libyan Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund with billions of pounds to spend in the UK and elsewhere.
The fund was used as leverage to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Saif and others let it be known that if al-Megrahi died of cancer in a British jail, then all business deals with the UK would be cancelled. Saif was entrusted with accompanying Megrahi back to Tripoli for a hero's welcome.
[An article written by Saif in The New York Times about this supposed "hero's welcome" can be read here.
A report in The Sunday Times (behind the paywall) contains the following:]
His trial could prove deeply embarrassing if he chooses to reveal details of his once-cosy relations with British politicians including Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary.
Mohammed al-Alagi, Libya’s interim justice minister, said yesterday that Gadaffi will be placed on trial in Libya and faces the death penalty.
With little to lose, Gadaffi may decide from his desert prison in Zintan to spill the beans on business deals and political promises made to the regime over the past decade.
Blair, who was described by Gadaffi Jr as a close personal friend of the family, may face searching questions if Gadaffi goes ahead and reveals the secrets of their deals including oil contracts and the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.
Gadaffi was his father’s point man on the settlement of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which killed 270 people. His detailed knowledge of the negotiations that involved British diplomats and Musa Kusa, his father’s chief of intelligence, could prove explosive. The questions of who knew what, and who did what, have never been answered.(...)
Blair, Prince Andrew, Mandelson and the Rothschild banking family are among those who could be cited by Gadaffi in court.
They were among Establishment figures who courted him in the belief that Libya would pursue a reformist agenda while lucrative business contracts were on the agenda. Among the secrets he could unlock are the machinations that may have gone on under the former Labour government ahead of the release of Megrahi.
Gadaffi Jr greeted Megrahi’s flight from Glasgow to Tripoli when he was freed by the Scottish authorities on “humanitarian” grounds in August 2009. [RB: Saif did not greet the flight. He was on board it.] Megrahi is still alive even though doctors claimed he would die within three months from cancer.
The release happened after Blair’s notorious “deal in the desert” with Muammar Gadaffi paving the way for multi- million-pound oil contracts with Shell and BP.
Gadaffi Jr claimed that the former prime minister acted as a consultant to the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Blair vehemently denies this. However, he has visited Libya at least six times since leaving office.
Five meetings with Muammar Gadaffi took place in the 14-month period prior to Megrahi’s release. On at least two occasions Blair flew on a private jet paid for by Gadaffi. But he denies influencing the Scottish government’s decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.
Just a week before Megrahi’s release, Mandelson discussed his case with Gadaffi Jr while on holiday at a villa in Corfu owned by the Rothschilds. Mandelson later met Gadaffi at a shooting party at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Rothschild family seat.
[The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (footnotes omitted):]
He was also negotiating with the United States in order to conclude a comprehensive agreement making any further payments for American victims of terror attacks that have been blamed on Libya – such as the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing – conditional upon U.S. payment of compensation for the 40 Libyans killed and 220 injured in the 1986 United States bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. On 14 August 2008, the U.S.-Libya Comprehensive Claims Settlement Agreement was signed in Tripoli. Former British Ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles described the agreement as "a bold step, with political cost for both parties" and wrote an article in the online edition of The Guardian querying whether the agreement is likely to work.
In an August 2008 BBC TV interview, Saif Gaddafi said that Libya had admitted responsibility (but not "guilt") for the Lockerbie bombing simply to get trade sanctions removed. He further admitted that Libya was being "hypocritical" and was "playing on words", but Libya had no other choice on the matter. According to Saif, a letter admitting "responsibility" was the only way to end the economic sanctions imposed on Libya. When asked about the compensation that Libya was paying to the victims' families, he again repeated that Libya was doing so because it had no other choice. He went on to describe the families of the Lockerbie victims as "trading with the blood of their sons and daughters" and being very "greedy": "They were asking for more money and more money and more money".
Interviewed by French newspaper Le Figaro on 7 December 2007, Saif said that the seven Libyans convicted for the Pan Am Flight 103 and the UTA Flight 772 bombings "are innocent". When asked if Libya would therefore seek reimbursement of the compensation paid to the families of the victims (US$2.33 billion), Saif replied: "I don't know." Saif led negotiations with Britain for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Pan Am 103 conspirator.
By about 2002, he was becoming a regular visitor to London and within a year is said to have fixed up a meeting between the Libyan regime and MI6 that would lead to Libya's public abandonment of its nuclear and chemical weapons programme, paving the way for Tony Blair to embrace Muammar Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent in March 2004 – the now infamous "deal in the desert". (...)
He was hugely influential in controlling the Libyan Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund with billions of pounds to spend in the UK and elsewhere.
The fund was used as leverage to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Saif and others let it be known that if al-Megrahi died of cancer in a British jail, then all business deals with the UK would be cancelled. Saif was entrusted with accompanying Megrahi back to Tripoli for a hero's welcome.
[An article written by Saif in The New York Times about this supposed "hero's welcome" can be read here.
A report in The Sunday Times (behind the paywall) contains the following:]
His trial could prove deeply embarrassing if he chooses to reveal details of his once-cosy relations with British politicians including Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary.
Mohammed al-Alagi, Libya’s interim justice minister, said yesterday that Gadaffi will be placed on trial in Libya and faces the death penalty.
With little to lose, Gadaffi may decide from his desert prison in Zintan to spill the beans on business deals and political promises made to the regime over the past decade.
Blair, who was described by Gadaffi Jr as a close personal friend of the family, may face searching questions if Gadaffi goes ahead and reveals the secrets of their deals including oil contracts and the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.
Gadaffi was his father’s point man on the settlement of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which killed 270 people. His detailed knowledge of the negotiations that involved British diplomats and Musa Kusa, his father’s chief of intelligence, could prove explosive. The questions of who knew what, and who did what, have never been answered.(...)
Blair, Prince Andrew, Mandelson and the Rothschild banking family are among those who could be cited by Gadaffi in court.
They were among Establishment figures who courted him in the belief that Libya would pursue a reformist agenda while lucrative business contracts were on the agenda. Among the secrets he could unlock are the machinations that may have gone on under the former Labour government ahead of the release of Megrahi.
Gadaffi Jr greeted Megrahi’s flight from Glasgow to Tripoli when he was freed by the Scottish authorities on “humanitarian” grounds in August 2009. [RB: Saif did not greet the flight. He was on board it.] Megrahi is still alive even though doctors claimed he would die within three months from cancer.
The release happened after Blair’s notorious “deal in the desert” with Muammar Gadaffi paving the way for multi- million-pound oil contracts with Shell and BP.
Gadaffi Jr claimed that the former prime minister acted as a consultant to the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Blair vehemently denies this. However, he has visited Libya at least six times since leaving office.
Five meetings with Muammar Gadaffi took place in the 14-month period prior to Megrahi’s release. On at least two occasions Blair flew on a private jet paid for by Gadaffi. But he denies influencing the Scottish government’s decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.
Just a week before Megrahi’s release, Mandelson discussed his case with Gadaffi Jr while on holiday at a villa in Corfu owned by the Rothschilds. Mandelson later met Gadaffi at a shooting party at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Rothschild family seat.
[The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (footnotes omitted):]
He was also negotiating with the United States in order to conclude a comprehensive agreement making any further payments for American victims of terror attacks that have been blamed on Libya – such as the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing – conditional upon U.S. payment of compensation for the 40 Libyans killed and 220 injured in the 1986 United States bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. On 14 August 2008, the U.S.-Libya Comprehensive Claims Settlement Agreement was signed in Tripoli. Former British Ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles described the agreement as "a bold step, with political cost for both parties" and wrote an article in the online edition of The Guardian querying whether the agreement is likely to work.
In an August 2008 BBC TV interview, Saif Gaddafi said that Libya had admitted responsibility (but not "guilt") for the Lockerbie bombing simply to get trade sanctions removed. He further admitted that Libya was being "hypocritical" and was "playing on words", but Libya had no other choice on the matter. According to Saif, a letter admitting "responsibility" was the only way to end the economic sanctions imposed on Libya. When asked about the compensation that Libya was paying to the victims' families, he again repeated that Libya was doing so because it had no other choice. He went on to describe the families of the Lockerbie victims as "trading with the blood of their sons and daughters" and being very "greedy": "They were asking for more money and more money and more money".
Interviewed by French newspaper Le Figaro on 7 December 2007, Saif said that the seven Libyans convicted for the Pan Am Flight 103 and the UTA Flight 772 bombings "are innocent". When asked if Libya would therefore seek reimbursement of the compensation paid to the families of the victims (US$2.33 billion), Saif replied: "I don't know." Saif led negotiations with Britain for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Pan Am 103 conspirator.
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