From Lockerbie to the downing of Flight PS752

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Mohammed al-Sulami, head of the International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah), that was published yesterday on the website of the Saudi Arabian newspaper Arab News. The following are excerpts:]

On Jan 8, 2020, Iran’s air defense system was on high alert after the military launched a barrage of missiles targeting Iraqi bases housing US troops. Iran feared US retaliation. A year later, there has been no proof of any foreign intrusion into its airspace at the time when two TOR rockets pierced the fuselage of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752. After initial denials, Iran admitted that the aircraft was shot down “mistakenly.”

If the downing was a mistake, then it exposes the unprofessionalism and recklessness of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). However, there are other interpretations of the incident, linking it to a deliberate and calculated Iranian act intended to pin the blame on rival powers. But thanks to the almost immediate viral photographs and videos on social media, the IRGC had no room to blame hostile foreign forces.

Some 13 months later, a leaked audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif talking about the downing of Flight PS752 has stirred controversy inside Iran and abroad. In it, he can be heard saying that the incident was accidental, but later he says it is possible that two or three “infiltrators” deliberately downed the plane. In addition, he says a full investigation was not carried out and the truth of what happened will never be revealed by Iran’s Armed Forces and top leadership. He does not implicate his own government for hiding the facts, but seems to be scapegoating others by blaming “infiltrators” without providing details. Either way, Iran violated certain provisions of the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation and of the 1971 Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation.

Iran had accused the US of doing the same in July 1988, when Iran Air Flight IR655 was shot down over the Arabian Gulf, killing all 290 people on board. Though the US agreed to pay Iran $131.8 million in compensation in February 1996, some mysteries still exist.

Five months after the tragic downing of the Iran Air flight, Pan Am flight PA103 exploded at 31,000 feet, with its debris scattering across an area of more than 2,000 sq km along the English-Scottish border. The crash over Lockerbie claimed 270 lives. Finding evidence for what caused the deadly blast that ripped the plane apart was comparable to searching for a needle in a haystack, but aviation experts termed it a terrorist act. The media then recalled Iran’s threat to retaliate for the downing of Flight IR655.

Years later, however, Libyan citizen Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed Al-Megrahi was convicted for causing PA103’s deadly end. He pleaded his innocence until his death in 2012. Owing to foreign pressure and political expediency, Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi admitted his country’s role in the bombing. [RB: Libya accepted responsibility for the acts of the official who had been convicted at the Zeist trial. It did not admit anything other than that.] Among others, the late Nelson Mandela, himself a lawyer, had cast doubt on the prosecution’s case and the resulting verdict. Three decades later, the Scottish courts admitted Al-Megrahi’s family’s plea for a third appeal, only to reject it on Jan 15.

If, as some claim, Libya did not down the Pan Am flight, then who did? The most obvious suspect since December 1988 has been Ahmed Jibril, head of a Palestinian-Syrian terrorist group — the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command — whose ties to Iran were no secret. Jibril, said to be living in Damascus, was allegedly paid ... for avenging the downing of Flight IR655. At the time, the George H W Bush administration preferred not to blame Syria or Iran as it was preparing to attack Iraq in 1991 and needed their support. It was also seeking to free some hostages. Hence, Libya was blamed via al-Megrahi.

Lockerbie trial 'catastrophic' for Scottish justice

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. It reads as follows:]

The trial of the only man ever convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has had a “catastrophic” effect on the Scottish criminal justice system, with the damage intensified by authorities’ “continuing avoidance” of a reexamination of the entirety of the evidence, according to the father of one of the victims.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the atrocity, said that steps were required to ensure the better administration of justice of Scotland, but warned that such an overhaul would “have to be propelled by a force outwith Scotland.”

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the conviction of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was found guilty of mass murder unanimously at a specially-convened Scottish court in the Netherlands.

Two weeks ago, judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal rejected a third appeal on behalf of the Libyan national, who died in 2012.

However, his family and numerous campaigners, Swire included, have long maintained he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

Now, Swire has told Scotland on Sunday that the biggest mass murder trial in British history continues to cast a long shadow over Scotland’s judiciary.

Swire sat throughout the trial at Camp Zeist, and collapsed in court after the verdict was read out. It was held before three Scottish judges - Lord Sutherland, Lord Coulsfield and Lord MacLean - with no jury. The trial’s architect, Professor Robert Black QC, initially proposed it should have involved an international panel of judges, presided over and chaired by a Scottish judge.

Asked if he thought Megrahi would have been convicted on the evidence presented under such an arrangement, Swire said: “Answers about questions based on ‘what if’ carry little weight, but from what I know now, this would seem to have been a far safer solution than that allowed at Zeist.

“Nelson Mandela himself warned me that ‘No one country should be complainant, prosecutor, and judge’. History, to my sorrow, has proved him right, for Scotland became all three at Zeist.”

Swire, now 84, said the past two decades had been “torturous,” and accused the Crown Office and “certain leaders” in Scotland’s legal profession of following a “readily visible course” based on the premise that the Netherlands court was infallible.

“Appeals have managed to avoid or ignore many of the aspects of the Zeist evidence in which failures are self evident, and have never fully addressed some of the further pieces of evidence which have emerged since,” he added.

“From a layman’s point of view, this seems to have been skilfully achieved. If I were asked to answer, ‘Why would they do that?’, I would have to reply that the impression given to me a layman is that they wish to conceal the profound failings within their system and its dangerous opacity to criticism, in order that damage to its reputation shall be minimised.”

Asked to respond to Swire’s criticisms, a Crown Office spokesman said: “The conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the murder of 270 people at Lockerbie in 1988 has been reviewed and appealed twice in accordance with the law over twenty years.

“His conviction stands and the investigation by Scottish prosecutors and police officers into the involvement of others with him in the plot to attack an American aircraft continues.”

The real perpetrators of Lockerbie bombing still to be brought to book

[This is the headline over a letter by Rev Dr John Cameron published on the website of the Belfast Telegraph on 1 December 2020. It reads as follows:]

In 1994 Nelson Mandela offered South Africa as a neutral venue for the Pan Am atrocity trial, but this was turned down by John Major.

His offer was also rejected by Tony Blair at the 1997 Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Edinburgh.

In words that still haunt our judiciary, Mandela warned “no one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge” in the Lockerbie case.

A life-long friend, the late Graham Cox, was Sheriff Principal of South Strathclyde, Dumfries and Galloway when Fhimah and Megrahi were arrested.

They appeared before him on April 6, 1999 at a makeshift Scottish court at Kamp Van Zeist in Holland.

In spite of his suspicion that the prosecution had arrested the wrong men, this court appearance starting off the subsequent legal proceedings.

Cox had no doubt the bombing resulted from the shooting down of Iran Air 655 by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, or that the Iranians recruited the PFLP-General Command.

Later, when Mandela asked the Kirk to intervene in a “serious miscarriage of justice”, Cox pointed me to the unsafe forensics, the unlikely use of a long-range timer and the fact that the bomb entered the system at Heathrow.

My report for the Kirk was used by Al Jazeera in a documentary which left no doubt of Megrahi’s innocence. [RB: Dr Cameron's report and the Al Jazeera documentary are referred to here, at the text accompanying footnote 46.]

Sadly, Cox warned against any hope that the verdict might be reversed.

Lord Fraser, then our senior law officer, had admitted the key witness Tony Gauci wasn’t “the full shilling”, had been paid $3m by the US and that the trial was a farce, but “nobody wants this can of worms opened”.

Pan Am 103 Lockerbie bombing: Fresh appeal launched to clear Megrahi

[This is the headline over an article by Steve James published today on the WSWS.org website. It reads in part:]

Relatives ... of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi have won the right to posthumously appeal his 2001 conviction for murder following a decision by the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC). (...)

The Lockerbie attack came only six months after an Iranair Airbus, IR655, was shot down in an unprovoked act of mass murder, by the US missile cruiser, the USS Vincennes. In that instance 290 passengers and crew were killed. At the time, most commentary and media coverage assumed that the Lockerbie atrocity was an act of revenge.

From the outset, however, it was apparent there was some level of foreknowledge or complicity on behalf of the US and British intelligence services. Warnings of an attack on Pan Am flights had been issued. PA103, flying just before Christmas, was half empty because of cancellations. On the crash site in Scotland, numerous reports emerged of unrecorded activity by the FBI, items of wreckage being removed under armed guard, and luggage interfered with.

In 1990, UK citizen Martin Cadman, whose son Bill was killed on the flight, attended a briefing at the US Embassy for relatives of victims of the attack. Cadman was, without prompting, told by an unnamed member of the US President’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism, “Your government and ours know exactly what happened and they are never going to tell.”

By 1991, around the time the Iranian government declared its neutrality during the US Desert Storm war on Iraq, the British and US authorities shifted responsibility for Lockerbie to Libya.

Pinning the blame on Libya served to isolate and pressure the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and provided a pretext for punitive economic sanctions, which undermined the North African country’s oil-based economy.

Magrahi’s trial, at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, was held under Scots law as part of a deal brokered by South African leader Nelson Mandela between the British and Libyan governments. Its purpose was to allow some veneer of legal process on the rapprochement between the two countries, as Gaddafi abandoned his former radical posturing and US and British imperialism eyed the country’s oil resources.

The trial, however, revealed extraordinary inconsistencies in the Scottish Crown Office case. Not least was that there was no proof that Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, had ever loaded a comparable suitcase in Luqa airport in Malta, no proof that any unaccompanied suitcase had travelled from Malta via Frankfurt to Heathrow, to be loaded onto PA103, and no explanation of how Luqa airport’s rigorous security was overcome.

Nevertheless, Magrahi was convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, later increased to 27.

In another of countless inconsistencies, Megrahi’s co-accused, Llamen Fhimah was set free. For his part, Gaddafi duly offered compensation to the attack’s victims without accepting Libyan responsibility. [RB: Libya accepted "responsibility for the actions of its officials" and nothing more.]

Megrahi had an initial appeal rejected in 2002, but the passage of time has only increased the perception that he was the victim of a politically motivated frame-up and show trial.

In 2007, the SCCRC authorised another appeal, reporting there was “no reasonable basis” to place Megrahi in Malta where he had been identified as allegedly purchasing clothing identified as being in a suitcase containing the bomb. However, in 2009 Megrahi, in prison in Greenock, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was allowed to return to Libya following an understanding reached with the Scottish government that his appeal should be dropped. Megrahi died in 2012, still protesting his innocence.

In 2011, 10 years after the trial, US, French and British imperialism launched a bloody neo-colonial war to overthrow Gaddafi. It ended with Gaddafi being hunted down and butchered. The country was pitched into a catastrophic civil war, which continues to this day.

This latest appeal was launched by Megrahi’s family and [supported by] the Justice for Megrahi (JFM) campaign. This includes relatives of several victims of the disaster such as Dr Jim Swire, who has steadfastly campaigned for the truth around his 23-year-old daughter’s murder on PA103.

JFM members include Robert Black, a lawyer and one of the architects of the original Camp Zeist trial. Another member is former police superintendent Iain McKie, whose daughter Shirley was the subject of a debacle which, in the end, discredited the Scottish Criminal Records Office entire finger-printing methodology. Shirley McKie was charged with perjury before finally being exonerated and compensated.

A SCCRC press statement reported grounds for allowing the new appeal. Referring to the identification of Megrahi as the purchaser of clothing in the bomb suitcase by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, the SCCRC concluded that “a miscarriage of justice may have occurred because no reasonable trial court, relying on the evidence led at trial, could have held the case against Mr Megrahi was proved beyond reasonable doubt.”

The SCCRC statement found that the Crown failed to “disclose a statement and a police report” confirming that Gauci had photographs of Megrahi in his possession before he identified him. This “deprived Mr Megrahi a real chance of an acquittal.” The commission also found that “reward money to be paid to Mr Gauci under a scheme administered by the US Department of State” meant that “Mr Megrahi was denied a fair trial.”

Gauci was coached by the Scottish police and bribed by the US government—$2 million was eventually said to have been handed over.

The SCCRC rejected further grounds for appeal relating to:

The date on which Megrahi was identified as having been in Gauci’s shop in Malta

* Evidence emerged of the date at which Christmas lights were switched on in Sliema, Malta and which contradicts the prosecution claim that Megrahi made the purchases. Yet, the SCCRC “decided that the fresh evidence in question is not likely to have assisted Mr. Megrahi’s cause.” In a repeated theme, the SCCRC’s pointed to the fact that Megrahi’s defence team “chose not to lead it in connection with his appeal in 2002.”

The metallurgical characteristics of circuit board fragment PT/35(b)

* This fragment was claimed to be part of an MST-13 timer constructed by MEBO AG of Switzerland. The fragment appeared late in the investigation with records of its discovery apparently altered. PT/35(b)’s significance in the case against Megrahi is that it implicated the Libyan government, which had purchased 20 such timers.

Evidence emerged, and was available early in the investigation, to confirm that the MST-13 circuit board fragment could not have been part of the batch of timers sold to Libya, as the board’s soldering had different characteristics from control samples provided by MEBO. When this was made available to Megrahi’s original defence team, they again, for reasons unclear, declined to use it.

The SCCRC nevertheless found that “the decision by the defence team to proceed without investigating the metallurgy issue did not mean that Mr. Megrahi’s defence was not presented to the court.”

Suitcase ingestion at Heathrow

* This is most damaging to the entire case against Megrahi and was clearly explained in the 2013 book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? by JFM member, Dr Morag Kerr.

Kerr makes a detailed and methodical examination of the recorded progress of all items of luggage through Luqa, Frankfurt and Heathrow airports, their position in the luggage container AVE4041 at Heathrow airport, and their subsequent condition and location when discovered on the hills around Lockerbie. Her conclusion is that the bomb suitcase, a Samsonite Silhouette 400, was introduced in London prior to a feeder flight, PA 103A, arriving from Frankfurt carrying any luggage from Malta.

Kerr makes clear that, despite the vast and complex investigation, this suitcase has no known provenance and its owner has never been identified. It was noticed by several airline staff prior to and during transfer to PA 103. It appeared the day after a highly unusual break-in to the Heathrow luggage storage area adjacent to where AVE4041 was loaded.

The SCCRC agreed that “If accepted, this would fatally undermine the Crown case,” but claimed the allegation lacked information highlighted by Operation Sandwood—a four-year police inquiry into allegations of police criminality during the Lockerbie investigation made by JFM.

This counterclaim is not substantiated. Operation Sandwood concluded in 2018 that “no criminality” had been found. Its report has not been published, nor the basis of its findings released.

Learning of the news of the appeal being allowed, Megrahi’s youngest son, Ali, told The Times “If the world discovers the identity of the true bomber, it will have to accept that it was not my father. Those who lost their loved ones deserve to know the truth, who was responsible and why it happened.”

Lockerbie has no Stasi link: we need a proper inquiry

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire in today's edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]

Since December 1988 when my beloved daughter, Flora, was murdered at Lockerbie I have searched diligently for the truth as to why the warnings that Pan Am was to be attacked had not been heeded.

A detailed warning from West Germany in October 1988 told our government that improvised bombs had been recovered near Frankfurt which, though stable on the ground, if put anywhere aboard a plane would automatically sense take-off and explode 35 to 40 minutes later.

My daughter’s doomed flight flew for 38 minutes before exploding over Lockerbie. None of the families knew of the warnings received beforehand. Yet the US’s Moscow embassy had given permission to staff to abandon Pan Am 103. The 747 was only two thirds full that night.

Margaret Thatcher forbade an inquiry and no subsequent prime minister has allowed one, often on the basis that “there is an ongoing criminal investigation” now alleged to involve the Stasi. At the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands that convicted Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi a piece of timer circuitboard was produced by Scottish police as evidence. It seemed to implicate a Swiss maker of digital timers. These had been supplied not only to Libya but to the Stasi. Since 2012 we have known that whatever its origin, the metallurgy on that fragment cannot be matched to that in use in Switzerland. This link between the Stasi and Lockerbie does not exist.

Before he died, a key leader of the Scottish police investigation told the world that “he would like to wring the neck of anyone who disagrees with the police findings”.

We have met many important people who tried to help. Nelson Mandela warned us that “no one country should be complainant prosecutor and judge”. Douglas Hurd, the Tory home and foreign secretary, referred to us in cabinet as responsible people who should be kept informed. Cecil Parkinson, the transport secretary, protected me from acquiring a criminal record when I demonstrated post hoc that Heathrow’s security had still not improved, by attempting to board an aircraft with a fake bomb, and Robin Cook, the Labour foreign secretary, talked to the families and seemed to favour an inquiry.

What have we done to deserve this extra burden of unknowing, piled upon that terrible bereavement?

Dr Jim Swire has been campaigning for justice for the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, in which his daughter died

Probably we will never know exactly who did it

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Mike Wade in today's edition of The Times headlined Lockerbie 30 years on: Flora Swire’s parents tell of the struggle to cope with her death. It reads in part:]

Flora was vivacious, funny, shrewd and beautiful, “a terrific searcher after truth”, in Jim’s words, a young woman of endless curiosity, whose life was cut short by a bomb the day before her 24th birthday in 1988.

Numb with grief, it would take the Swires a couple of days to travel to Lockerbie. When they arrived, Jim demanded to see Flora’s body, in defiance of the official advice. He identified her by a mole on her toe and returned from the mortuary with a lock of his daughter’s hair. A keepsake that Jane has treasured.

Jim’s activism had begun. Within weeks he was a familiar figure on news bulletins, his angular face and shock of hair set off by a lapel badge reading: “Pan Am 103: The Truth Must Be Known.”

Early on he persuaded Cecil Parkinson of the need for a public inquiry, but the transport secretary was “handbagged” by the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the inquiry never happened. Eighteen months after the attack he carried a “bomb” made of marzipan on to a plane, to demonstrate the inadequacy of British and US airport security.

Over the next decade he campaigned remorselessly to have the suspected bombers brought to court, lobbying the leaders of the Arab League and meeting Nelson Mandela. In 1998, seven years after indictments had been issued for two Libyan suspects, he travelled to Tripoli to urge Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to give up the men.

Jane never joined in any of this. “The how, why, when, what and where questions were unimportant compared with the loss,” she says. “Someone who has been so important in your life suddenly gone, just like that, was too much [for me] to take in. So I could never have been active politically, trying to process this terrible grief.”

When her husband’s activities prompted unwelcome media attention, Jane forgave him. “We are all different, and I felt it helped Jim, because he was so angry,” she says. “I was devastated with sorrow. I envied him his anger confronting these political things. But I didn’t have it, so I could not join in.”

For a whole year, in 2000-01, the couple lived in the Netherlands during the trial at Camp Zeist of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the men charged with carrying out the attack. Typically, Jim attended every day, Jane less often. At the time, she gave an interview to the Daily Mail, suggesting she had lost her husband to the tragedy, along with her daughter.

“It sounds as if I was angry about that, but I wasn’t,” Jane says. “We are all so different and everyone would process this devastating ‘event’ — it sounds too trite a word — in their own way. You’re alone in your grief, it is quite difficult to share.

“You are in a differing relationship with the loving, lovely person that’s gone. He was a father, I was a mother, probably closer really, just trying to survive, doing my best, trying to cope for the sake of our remaining family.” Jim, 82, does not demur. He says: “One of the awful things is you don’t just lose your lovely daughter, you lose what she would have become in later life: the children she would have had; the professorship I’m sure she would have achieved.

“We often get back to this basic divergence about my campaigning, and Jane will say, quite rightly, ‘Whatever you do, it will never bring Flora back.’ ”

His wife, 79, is nodding. “There is a terrible finality in death, which is unequivocal,” she says. A former religious education teacher, her faith has been shaken, but she still holds out hope of meeting Flora in heaven. (...)

Al-Megrahi alone was convicted of the crime, although he died of cancer in 2012 protesting his innocence. Jim believed him, became his friend and for the past 18 years has campaigned to clear the Libyan’s name. He hopes an appeal by al-Megrahi’s family will succeed, opening the way for his daughter’s real killers to be brought to justice.

Thirty years on, do they think Jim’s campaigning will reveal the full truth in their lifetimes? Both are doubtful. “There will be new inquiries. Probably we will never know exactly who did it,” Jane says.

“I think Flora would have appreciated my trying to get to the truth,” Jim says. “At the bar of history I want it to be fairly straightforward for objective investigators to see what was done.” Mum’s grief. Dad’s anger. Flora would have expected nothing less and would have loved them all the more. “She would,” Jane says, “she would.”

Three decades on and so many questions remain

[This is part of the headline over a long report by Chris Marshall in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]

Thirty years on since the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, there remains as many questions as there have been answers about what took place that night.

From the bombing itself – the deadliest terrorist atrocity ever carried out in Britain – to the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands and the jailing and subsequent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the night of 21 December, 1988 has come to define much that has happened since.

And while there are those satisfied of Megrahi’s guilt, there are others convinced of his innocence, and others still who believe the full truth of what took place may never be known. (...)

The youngest victim onboard the plane was two-month-old Brittany Williams, of New York; the oldest, Ibolya Gabor, 79, from Budapest, Hungary, who had survived two world wars and was travelling to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with her family. Other passengers included Bernt Carlsson, 50, the UN Commissioner for Namibia and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut.

There were a number of claims of responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, some far more credible than others.

A painstaking investigation carried out by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) set about reconstructing the plane from fragments of wreckage scattered across more than 2,000 square kilometres.

The murder inquiry would see officers travel to 23 different countries, identifying victims, speaking to witnesses and gathering evidence.

From the wreckage, fragments of a Samsonite suitcase were recovered which it was thought had been used to conceal the bomb.

Clothing from the same suitcase was found to have come from a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci, who later would controversially identify Megrahi as the man who had bought the items.

Megrahi, an intelligence officer, had a role as chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, allowing him regular travel to Malta where the company had an office. It was here, prosecutors would later argue, that Megrahi bought the clothing used to help hide the bomb which was to bring down Pan Am Flight 103. Using fake passports [RB "coded" not "fake"], he was also able to travel to Zurich where the timer for the bomb was made. [RB: The only evidence at the trial that Megrahi was an intelligence officer came from Majid Giaka, whose evidence on every other issue was dismissed by the court as utterly unworthy of credit. The court gave no reason for accepting his testimony on this one point.] 

The police investigation, which had taken around 15,000 witness statements, eventually led to Libya, and both Megrahi and his compatriot, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted for the bombing by the Lord Advocate and US attorney-general in 1991.

It was to be a further eight years, however, amid heavy pressure in the form of UN sanctions, before Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to hand over the two men for trial. [RB: The Libyan Government had never objected to the suspects standing trial in Scotland. It was the lawyers for the suspects -- Libyan and international, including Scottish -- who objected. The true story of how the Zeist trial came about can be read here.]

After protracted negotiations, it was decided the two Libyans would be tried under Scots law, but at a neutral location. Nelson Mandela met with Jim Swire, who became a spokesman for the UK families, and helped broker the deal. A former US Air Force base at Camp Zeist near Utrecht in the Netherlands was chosen and the trial got under way on 3 May, 2000 – nearly 12 years after the bombing.

On 31 January the following year, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Fhimah was acquitted. But if observers thought that was to be the end of the legal case, they were wrong – it was only just beginning. (...)

An initial legal appeal was refused, but in September 2003 Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) asking for a review of his conviction. Nearly four years later, the SCCRC announced it would be referring the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal after it found Megrahi “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice”.

The Libyan applied to have the appeal dropped, however, shortly before it emerged he was to be controversially released on compassionate grounds by then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Despite a doctor’s assessment that Megrahi, who had terminal prostate cancer, had only three months to live, he would survive for a further three years after his return to Libyan, his life reportedly extended by a drug which at that point was not available to Scottish cancer sufferers on the NHS.

Despite Megrahi’s death, attempts continue to overturn his conviction. Earlier this year, the SCCRC began reviewing his conviction for a second time, saying it believed Megrahi had abandoned his earlier appeal because he thought it would result in him being released from prison and allowed to return home to Libya.

Back in Lockerbie, only the memorials to the dead remain as visible signs of the terror that came from the skies one December night 30 years ago. But while the houses of Sherwood Crescent have been rebuilt and life has gone on, the story appears far from finished.

Scottish prosecutors in secret meeting with Libyans about al‑Megrahi and Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Sunday Times. It
reads in part:]

A clandestine meeting between the Crown Office and Libyan officials has taken place as part

of efforts to bring those behind the Lockerbie bombing to justice.

The Sunday Times has learnt that Scottish prosecutors want to interview at least one suspect

about the 1988 atrocity, and they met their Libyan counterparts in March to enlist their help.
It is understood the suspect may be linked to the purchase of a suitcase that concealed the
bomb. The Crown maintains that the suitcase was loaded onto a plane in Malta and
transferred onto Pan Am flight 103, which took off from Heathrow for New York. (...)

Scottish prosecutors maintain that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who was accused of buying

clothes in Malta that were packed in the suitcase, did not act alone and have vowed to bring
his accomplices to justice. Megrahi is the only person convicted of the bombing.

According to a diplomatic source, Libyan officials visited the UK at the invitation of

Scottish prosecutors and are “keen” to assist the Lockerbie investigation.

“Megrahi is regarded as unfinished business because the inquests determined that he

was not acting by himself,” said the source.

“Investigators have been looking at the people who were involved in the purchase of

a bag in Malta. This is something they have been trying to follow up and they have
leads which still need to be fully explored.”

He added: “Police Scotland have been pursuing the possibility of questioning

individuals in Libya and they have some information relating to an individual ... They
will be looking to the prosecutor [to see] if they can be tracked down and interviewed
on their behalf.”

The disclosure follows a decision by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission

(SCCRC) to review Megrahi’s conviction. (...)

The SCCRC said last week that it was in “the interests of justice” to accept the

application by Megrahi’s family. The move has been welcomed by campaigners who
believe Megrahi was innocent. A separate police investigation into claims that
prosecutors, police and forensic officials perverted the course of justice is expected
to conclude shortly.

The Crown Office declined to comment.

[RB: A comment by John Cameron under this article on The Sunday Times website reads as follows:]

My Italian friends were deeply embarrassed by the judicial shenanigans of the Meredith

Kercher murder trial which showed their nation's Byzantine legal system at its worst.
But the fact is the Italian system was self-correcting and in the end, the manifestly innocent
students Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were released.

The conviction of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi for the Pan Am bombing raised a similar international

outcry. From the UN observer to Nelson Mandela, from the UK relatives' leader Dr Swire to
the Scottish churches, from his prison inmates and staff to every journalist who investigated
the case, no-one believed he was guilty.

Megrahi and co-defendant Lamin Fhimah were remanded into custody by my dear old friend, the late Sheriff Graham Cox in whose jurisdiction Lockerbie lay. He later confided, "I'm sure they've got the wrong men" adding that in the event of a miscarriage of justice, the Scottish judiciary was "too small and too inbred" to sort it out.

We shall see!

Mandela, Gaddafi and Blair

[What follows is excerpted from a long article headlined Gaddafi, Britain and US: A secret, special and very cosy relationship that was published in The Independent on this date in 2011:]

Britain's extraordinary rekindling of relations with Libya did not start as Mr Blair sipped tea in a Bedouin tent with Gaddafi, nor within the walls of the Travellers Club in Pall Mall – although this "summit of spies" in 2003 played a major role. It can be traced back to a 1999 meeting Mr Blair held with the man hailed as one of the greatest to have ever lived: Nelson Mandela, in South Africa.

Mr Mandela had long played a key role in negotiations between Gaddafi, whom he had hailed as a key opponent of apartheid, and the British government. Mr Mandela first lobbied Mr Blair over Libya in October 1997, at a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Edinburgh. Mr Mandela was pressing for those accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to be tried outside Scotland. In January 1999, Mr Mandela, during a visit by Mr Blair to South Africa, actively lobbied the PM on behalf of Gaddafi, over sanctions imposed on Libya and the Lockerbie suspects.

UN sanctions were suspended in April 1999 when Gaddafi handed over the two Lockerbie suspects, including Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was eventually convicted of the bombing. Libya also accepted "general responsibility" for the death of Yvonne Fletcher. Both moves allowed the Blair government to begin the long process of renewing ties with Libya.

Within a couple of years, the issue of persuading the Gaddafi regime to turn itself from pariah into international player surged to the forefront of the British government's agenda. It was during this time, according to the documents found in Mr Koussa's office, that MI6 and the CIA began actively engaging with Libyan intelligence chiefs. But it was a key meeting on 16 December 2003, at the Travellers Club, that would put the official UK – and US – stamp on Gaddafi's credibility. Present were Mr Koussa, then head of external intelligence for Libya, and two Libyan intelligence figures; Mr Blair's foreign affairs envoy, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, and three MI6 chiefs; and two CIA directors. Mr Koussa's attendance at the meeting in central London was extraordinary – at the time he had been banned from entering Britain after allegedly plotting to assassinate Libyan dissidents, and so was given safe passage by MI6.

Mr Koussa's pivotal role at the Travellers Club casts light on how, following his defection from Gaddafi's regime during the initial Nato bombing campaign earlier this year, he was able to slip quietly out of the country. Two days after the 2003 meeting, Mr Blair and Gaddafi held talks by telephone; and the next day, 19 December, the announcement about Libya surrendering its WMD was made by Mr Blair and President Bush.

In March 2004, Mr Blair first shook hands with Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent. The pair then met again in May 2007, shortly before Mr Blair left office.

Lockerbie bomber to stay in Scotland

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2002. It reads in part:]

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will serve his entire sentence in a Scottish jail, the UK Government has confirmed.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has rejected Nelson Mandela's calls for Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to see out the remainder of his life sentence in a Muslim country.

The former South African president suggested the move after meeting the Libyan in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison in June.

Last month he said after a meeting with the victims' relatives in London that they would not object to such a move.

However, Mr Mandela's calls prompted Dumfries MP Russell Brown to write to Prime Minister Tony Blair urging him to reject any such transfer.

In a letter of reply, Mr Straw said: "I can assure you that there will be no change in policy on the location of Megrahi's imprisonment.

"He will serve his full prison sentence in Scotland."

Mr Mandela had accused the Scottish Prison Service of "psychological persecution" for holding the bomber in solitary confinement at Barlinnie.

He said that the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia had both agreed to accept Megrahi if he was transferred from Glasgow.

However, Mr Straw said UN monitors had found that the prison guards at Barlinnie showed "commendable" sensitivity to cultural and religious conditions.

They described the conditions in the jail as "clearly very good" and said that they met all known national and international standards.

Mr Brown welcomed the promise from Mr Straw.

"Now that Jack Straw has ended speculation over Megrahi, we can now focus our attention on ensuring that the government hold a further inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing," said the Labour MP.

"We know that this won't be a full public inquiry, but there are still many questions that remain unanswered."

He said these included the possible involvement of other countries in the bombing and the issue of airport security.

[RB: Why Mr Brown or Mr Straw thought that the United Kingdom government had any control over where Abdelbaset Megrahi would serve his sentence is a mystery to me. Mr Mandela can be forgiven for not being aware of the details of the division of authority between the Scottish and the United Kingdom governments, but Messrs Brown and Straw cannot.]

The forces that cooked up the lie

[What follows is excerpted from a long article by Owei Lakemfa headlined There was a country called Libya published yesterday on the Nigerian website The News:]

Saif al-Islam Ghaddafi (...)  the best known son of Muammar Ghaddafi was set free this week. He had been detained for six years since November 19, 2011 when following the Libyan ‘Civil War’ he was captured by the Abu Bakr al-Sadiq Brigade while attempting to flee to Niger Republic. (...)

Saif, given his father’s legacy, his own force of character and the anarchy in the country, is a force to be reckoned with. Many of those who knew peace under Ghaddafi, had perhaps the best social security in the world and the joy of being able to carry out basic human activities like going to the market, taking children to school and family on a picnic, might be nostalgic for the old era. Many in the middle and upper classes who could go to the airport and take an international flight rather than risk a road journey to neigbouring Tunisia, might yearn for the return of the Ghaddafi days. Many of those who lived in a secured and peaceful Libya would long for the days they had a country worthy of its name. Therein lie the appeal of Saif.

A freed Saif may be crucial in national dialogue, restoration of peace, national reconstruction and unity; a country with multiple governments cannot be said to be a country. But in a large sense, his role will be determined by the forces on the ground, the logic of the Libyan trajectory, his perception of the various armed groups in the country, and of course, the extent of the intervention of Europe and America in the internal affairs of Libya.

It was these international policemen from Brussels and Washington who setup Libya for the kill. It was they and their agents who for decades sold the crap to the world that President Ghaddafi was a lunatic [sitting] on huge oil wells that they can put to better use. They were the forces that isolated Libya and were alarmed that Ghaddafi was not only bankrolling African unity but also wanted an international monetary medium of exchange independent of the NATO countries. They are the forces that cooked up the lie that Libya agents planted a bomb in the Pan Am Flight 103 which on December 21, 1988 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland killing all 259 on board and 11 on ground. These are the same people who accused Libya of sponsoring terrorism and on April 14, 1986, without a declaration of war, bombed Tripoli killing over 70 people. They are the same gang that imposed a No-Fly-Zone over the entire country threatening to shoot down any aircraft that violated the ban, until the unforgettable Nelson Mandela flew into Libya daring them to bring down his aircraft. It is these same forces that engineered the February 2011 uprising from Benghazi and provided the insurgents massive air power to smash the Ghaddafi government and impose the present chaos.

But for these forces of colonialism and neo-colonialism, Libya might not today, be a basket case. But for them, tens of thousands of Libyans might not have died in half a dozen years of chaos, and the over five thousand Libyans who perished in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe, might still have been alive. Libya was prosperous and self-sufficient, today, thanks to the West, 2.5 million Libyans are in need of humanitarian aid including food. Saif’s transformation since 2011, might be for good. 

A can of worms

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2011.

Conspiracy and cover-up in Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article published yesterday on the Bread & Circuses website, vol 3 issue 11. It reads in part:]

In Libya, there were mass celebrations to honor the homecoming of their national hero, while in the Western press, there were repeated protests over the premature release of a convicted terrorist, but the whole sordid affair died within a short time, even if Megrahi hasn’t yet, and it has all been pretty much long forgotten.

If you think that’s the end of the story, you’re wrong. It’s just the beginning. And it’s a story that’s all too familiar, involving international intrigue, the CIA tampering with evidence, lies and cover-ups by disreputable prosecutors, and two world powers anxious to bring about a conviction at all costs, which included a $2 million payoff to buy fabricated witness accounting. As a result, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who may be one of the most hated men in the world, whose deteriorating health was considered too mild a punishment to many people around the world, and who has been incarcerated for perpetrating the attack on Pan-Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland since 1991, may also be innocent.

This won’t be the first time our Government has been involved in a conspiracy to commit murder, to cover up a crime, or to frame an innocent person to protect someone or something it considers more important in the big picture. In this case, the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and Scotland were driven by a powerful need to attach this terrorist attack to a face as soon as possible. Under the circumstances, it served all of their purposes to pin it on a Libyan, without having to go to war with Libya itself. At that point, it didn’t matter all that much which Libyan, since to us Westerners, they all look alike anyway.

Between the eagerness of Scottish prosecutors and Government officials to circumvent the procedures of law to make their story fit the facts, and the $2 million dollars the United States Government put up as a bribe to anyone believable enough sell a phony story to a panel of judges hearing this case, it wasn’t all that difficult to make up a scenario that fit the crime. From beginning to end, there were inconsistencies and problems with the gathering of evidence and procedural misconduct on the part of investigators from the police department and the attorneys building this case. Using every manipulative trick and fraud they could come up with, they managed to hammer the square pegs into the round holes and Megrehi was convicted, in spite of protests not only from him and his attorneys who were denied fair access to police evidence and adequate appeals, but to people around the world who looked at the case against Megrahi and called foul. Those included private investigators from around the world who have taken an unbiased look at the evidence, to Nelson Mandela who pleaded with the Church of Scotland to independently investigate the case against Megrahi on their own.

In 2009, under mounting pressure, the Scottish Government had no choice but to allow the appeal to reopen the case. At this point, the British, American, and Scottish Governments were in a quandary. The latest appeal process and the world attention it was bringing, was going to open more than a can of worms for those closest to the conspiracy. It was going to open all the evidence, including formerly withheld and altered evidence, much of which was clearly tampered with by the authorities pressing for a conviction, to public scrutiny that they were previously able to keep a lid on.

So instead of taking that chance on having to explain the obvious framing and conspiracy to defraud the Courts, a deal was struck and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was set free. While President Obama and Prime Minister Tony Blair were displaying their public outrage over Megrahi’s early release, behind the scenes they were wiping the sweat from each other’s brows, knowing that a serious political crisis had been averted. Unfortunately, the victims and their surviving families of the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, must live with the frustration of believing that the murderer of their loved ones was freed on humanitarian grounds, when in fact, they should be more outraged than anyone else that the truth of what really happened will remain buried with the dead.

This is one of those stories that you will not see in the mainstream news media run by multi-national corporations in this country. This story was reported in a documentary film released on Al Jazeera English, the Arab news network. Before you judge the reliability of the source based on prejudices and opinions formulated for you by the American news networks with a strong motive in not wanting us to listen to this news forum with an opened mind, please watch this video and judge for yourself.