The opportunity to corrupt the evidence

[The following are the final four paragraphs of an article by Gwynne Dyer headlined Libya, Bulgarians and Lockerbie published on this date in 2007:]

On 21 December, 1988, Pan American flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Most were Americans, and it was initially suspected that Iran carried out the operation — possibly with the help of its Syrian ally — in revenge for the killing of 290 Iranians six months earlier aboard a civilian Iran Air flight that was shot down by a US warship in the Gulf. (The United States was backing Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, and the American warship mistakenly believed that it was under attack by the Iranian air force.)

US and British investigators started building a case against Iran and Syria — but a year and a half later Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, turning overnight from an ally to an enemy of the United States. In the US-led war to liberate Kuwait that was being planned, the cooperation of Iran and Syria was vital — so suddenly the Lockerbie investigation shifted focus to Libya, and in due course (about ten years) two Libyan intelligence agents were brought to trial for the crime.

In 2001 one of them, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in Scotland, where the plane came down. Libya paid $2.7 billion in “compensation” to the victims’ families, without ever admitting guilt, but the verdict always smelled fishy. Jim Swire, father of one of the victims on Pan Am 103, said: “I went into that court thinking I was going to see the trial of those who were responsible for the murder of my daughter. I came out thinking (al-Megrahi) had been framed.”

Late last month, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission declared al-Megrahi’s conviction “unsafe” and granted him the right to appeal the verdict because “the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.” That may well be true, and it may not have been an accident either. But, as former British ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles told the BBC recently, “No court is likely get to the truth, now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence.” And so it goes.

HMG and the release of Megrahi: from a UK ambassador to Libya

What follows is taken from an article by Oliver Miles, a former UK ambassador to Libya, published on this date five years ago, shortly after Megrahi’s compassionate release, in the Mail on Sunday and reproduced on this blog:

Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s acknowledgement that the prospect of trade and oil deals with Libya played a part in the Government’s handling of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi has heightened the intrigue.

One British motivation is clear: Libya, dirt poor in everything except oil and gas, has been an important energy producer for half a century. It sells £40billion of oil per year – mainly to Europe – and buys from every trading country in the world. Britain has become a major supplier.

Furthermore, Libya is that rare thing, a ‘rogue state’ which sponsored terrorism before being brought back into the international fold by diplomacy. (...)

For 15 years Libya has been slowly emerging from its status as international pariah, and dealing with London is regarded there as a staging post to its ultimate goal – the normalisation of relations with the United States.

There is also the matter of Megrahi, an important man from an influential tribe (...) Megrahi’s close family and tribal elders would have been putting pressure on the Libyan leader to do something about bringing their man home.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Libya has actively sought to deal with the international community, often using Britain as a diplomatic bridgehead to the US, which was in the past much more aggressive. It ended support for terrorism, paid compensation to victims on a vast scale and abandoned illegal programmes of weapons of mass destruction.

All this has made Libya increasingly attractive to the West. The benefits for Britain in having access to Libya’s oil, when gas supplies are subject to disruption by the Russians and nuclear plants are being decommissioned, should be obvious to anyone. (...)

Lockerbie has been central to Libya’s international rehabilitation. Under arrangements worked out in [1998] by Robin Cook and the Foreign Office, involving a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands, Megrahi was convicted of responsibility for the destruction of the Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie in 1988 which killed 270 people.

There have always been doubts about the evidence against him. Some believe, as I do, that the Libyans delivered him for trial only because they felt he was unlikely to be convicted.

Having read the legal judgment of his trial, I defy anyone to conclude from it that his guilt was proved beyond reasonable doubt. Yet his first appeal, in 2002, was dismissed. He always insisted on his innocence and only abandoned his second appeal in the hope of a return to Libya. (...)

On his second visit, in 2007, [Tony Blair] launched a number of initiatives, including assisting the return of BP to Libya.

He also unwittingly laid the foundations for the current furore by proposing a Prisoner Transfer Agreement to allow British prisoners convicted in Libya to serve their sentences in Britain and vice versa – an arrangement which exists between many countries.

The Libyans saw it as an instrument to get Megrahi home.

But Blair seems conveniently to have overlooked the fact that Megrahi’s fate rested with the devolved government in Scotland. Given the bad relations between the Labour Party and the Scottish Nationalists, this was more than a formal problem.

Blair also overlooked an even bigger obstacle. Under the Lockerbie trial agreements, any sentence arising from it had to be served in Scotland (the Libyans insisted on this since they feared Megrahi might be handed to the Americans and executed).

The Lockerbie agreements are not properly documented, but the commitments were well known to the Foreign Office, the Americans and the Libyans. Tony Blair may not have bothered about them as he didn’t like inconvenient advice from officials.

As these difficulties emerged, the Libyans began to feel that they had been led up the garden path. And when it became known last year that Megrahi was terminally ill with prostate cancer, Tripoli began to issue not-very-veiled threats that if he died in jail relations between Britain and Libya would suffer.

When his condition deteriorated, two things happened: he inexplicably abandoned his appeal, and a story was leaked to the BBC that Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill was to grant compassionate release.

The reaction in the US was fevered amid rumours of a deal involving business and oil. The Americans have taken a line which they would call robust and I would call vindictive.

Some reactions have been foolish (Obama’s suggestion that Megrahi should have been put under house arrest in Tripoli), and others outrageous.

The demand by Obama and Brown that Megrahi should not receive a ‘hero’s welcome’ was a classic example of demanding that water should run uphill.

I believe Megrahi’s release was influenced more by the Scottish government’s desire to assert its independence rather than by any deal. Others may disagree, but time will tell.

Progress is slow and there are many obstacles to a better way of life in Libya. But BP’s operations continue and Megrahi has returned home to die.

Lockerbie bomber's release has strengthened ties with UK, says Libya

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on The Guardian website. It reads in part:]

Libya's relations with Britain have been flourishing across the board since the controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber, one of Muammar Gaddafi's senior ministers said today.

Libya was "delighted" at Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's return home from a Scottish prison last August and still insists he is innocent of the murder of 270 people on Pan Am 103, said Abdel-Fatah Yunis al-Obeidi, the Libyan secretary general for public security. [Note by RB: The person being referred to is not Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, who led the Libyan team that had several meetings with Scottish (and UK) government officials in the run-up to Mr Megrahi's repatriation.]

Obeidi, whose rank is that of a cabinet minister, hinted that David Cameron's comment that Megrahi's release had been a "mistake" — fuelling the domestic and international row about the circumstances of the decision — was made under US pressure. In an exclusive interview on a visit to London, Obeidi said he was certain the former intelligence agent was innocent.

"Libya is delighted by his return and has always viewed him as a political hostage and never acknowledged him as a prisoner," he said. "Libya had no connection with the Lockerbie affair. The international community was led to believe that Libya was behind the incident but history will prove the truth. I am convinced that Megrahi was innocent and was a victim of a huge international conspiracy."

Libya agreed to pay billions of dollars in compensation to families of the victims because of demands from the UN, not because it admitted guilt over the worst act of terrorism in British history. It portrays Megrahi's release as a purely humanitarian issue involving a man suffering from terminal prostate cancer who supposedly had just weeks left to live.

"Megrahi is in the hands of God," said Obeidi. "He was in a Scottish prison. Those who made the three-month prognosis were British doctors. The fact that he is still alive is divine will and has nothing to do with Libya. If you have a direct line to Heaven you can check up there." (...)

"Relations are excellent and getting better every day," he said. "The problem before was the absence of trust. Now we have restored confidence and there is much greater cooperation."

Libyan officials do not normally relish discussing Lockerbie, wishing to draw a line under it after the payment of compensation, the restoration of diplomatic relations with the US and UK and a wider sense that the country has shed its pariah status as western companies, backed by their governments, queue up to do business. But Libya lobbied hard for Megrahi's release — finding a willing partner in the Labour government — and the only man convicted of the 1988 atrocity was escorted home personally by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the leader's son and presumed heir. During a recent lecture in London the younger Gaddafi responded monosyllabically to a question about Megrahi, focusing instead on the "new" Libya and opportunities it presented.

Libya does not expect any adverse effect on its booming relations with the UK. "The Libyans won't really care," predicted Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Tripoli "It's yesterday's problem. The worry now is Megrahi's state of health. There's no question of him being sent back to Scotland or of Libya having to pay any price. They will see it as Cameron being in the pocket of the Americans."

Shifting of blame

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Gwynne Dyer published on this date in 2007 in the New Zealand Herald:]

Over a period of several years in the later 1990s, 438 children in a Benghazi hospital in eastern Libya were infected by HIV-contaminated blood transfusions. By now, 56 of the children have died of Aids.

Similar tragedies have happened in other countries, and those who made the mistakes have been disciplined - but this was Libya, where it's always the fault of foreign enemies if things go wrong.

So in 1999 the Libyans charged five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who were working at the hospital with murder. Gaddafi claimed that they were working for the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, seeking to destabilise his regime by undermining confidence in Libyan health care.

They all confessed to it, too, after they had been tortured for a while, but it was absurd: just another tinpot dictator shifting the blame for his regime's incompetence. The HIV infections, which began before the six foreign scapegoats arrived in Libya, were probably due to poor hygiene in the hospital, but the foreigners were convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Early this month, however, as part of a deal with the EU, the Libyan high court commuted their sentence to life imprisonment, and then allowed them to go to Bulgaria to serve out their sentences. On arrival in Sofia, they were immediately "pardoned," and the case was closed.

Nobody admitted any blame, nobody lost face, and no blackmail was paid. The fact that each of the 438 Libyan families involved will get $1 million from EU sources is purely coincidental. Colonel Gaddafi may be a head case, but Libya still has some oil, so his peccadilloes are overlooked.

And before people in other places start feeling superior, let us recall another case involving Libya in which some shifting of blame may have occurred.

On December 21, 1988, Pan American flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Most were Americans, and it was initially suspected that Iran carried out the operation - possibly with the help of its Syrian ally - in revenge for the killing of 290 Iranians six months earlier aboard a civilian Iran Air flight that was shot down by a US warship in the Gulf.

(The United States was backing Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, and the American warship mistakenly believed that it was under attack by the Iranian Air Force.)

US and British investigators started building a case against Iran and Syria - but a year and a half later Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, turning overnight from an ally to an enemy of the United States.

In the US-led war to liberate Kuwait that was being planned, the co-operation of Iran and Syria was vital - so suddenly the Lockerbie investigation shifted focus to Libya, and in due course (about 10 years) two Libyan intelligence agents were brought to trial for the crime.

In 2001 one of them, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in Scotland, where the plane came down. Libya paid $2.7 billion in "compensation" to the victims' families, without ever admitting guilt, but the verdict always smelled fishy.

Jim Swire, father of one of the victims on Pan Am 103, said: "I went into that court thinking I was going to see the trial of those who were responsible for the murder of my daughter. I came out thinking [al-Megrahi] had been framed."

Late last month, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission declared al-Megrahi's conviction "unsafe" and granted him the right to appeal against the verdict because "the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice".

That may well be true, and it may not have been an accident either. But, as former British ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles told the BBC recently, "No court is likely get to the truth, now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence."

And so it goes.

From Gulf News, 4 September 2007

Was Libya framed for Lockerbie bombing?

http://archive.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10151176.html

09/04/2007 12:37 AM | By Linda S. Heard Special to Gulf News

On December 21 1988, a Pan Am plane mysteriously exploded over Scotland causing the death of 270 people from 21 countries. The tragedy provoked global outrage. In 1991, two Libyans were charged with the bombing.

In the event, only Abdulbaset Ali Mohammad Al Megrahi, a Libyan agent, was pronounced guilty by a panel of three judges, who based their decision on largely circumstantial evidence. Al Megrahi and the Libyan government have protested their innocence all along.

Nevertheless, after suffering punitive UN sanctions which froze overseas Libyan bank accounts and prevented the import of spare parts needed for the country's oil industry, Tripoli reluctantly agreed to pay $2.7 billion to victims? families ($10 million per family), on condition the pay-out would not be deemed as admission of guilt.

In February, 2004, the Libyan prime minister told the BBC that his country was innocent but was forced to pay-up as a "price for peace".

Al Megrahi is currently serving a life sentence but earlier this year the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled there may have been a miscarriage of justice on the basis of lost or destroyed evidence.

Later this month, a Scottish appeals court is due to revisit the case and is expected to overturn Al Megrahi's conviction as unsafe.

The Libyan leader's son Saif Al Islam recently said he is confident Al Megrahi will soon be found innocent and will be allowed to return home.

On Sunday, an Observer expose written by Alex Duval Smith reported "a key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing has emerged as a probable fake" with allegations of "international political intrigue and shoddy investigative work" levelled at "the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police".

The Observer story maintains Ulrich Lumpert a Swiss engineer who was "a crucial witness" has now confessed that he lied about the origins of a timer switch.

Recently, Lumpert gave a sworn declaration to a Swiss court, which read "I stole a prototype MST-13 timing device" and "gave it without permission on June 22, 1989 to a person who was officially investigating the Lockerbie affair".

The owner of the company that manufactured the switch - forced into bankruptcy after being sued by Pan Am - says he told police early in the enquiry that the timer switch was not one his company had ever sold to Libya.

Moreover, he insists the timer switch shown to the court had been tampered with since he initially viewed it in Scotland, saying the pieces appeared to have been "carbonised" in the interim. He also says the court was so determined to prove Libya's guilt it brushed aside his evidence.

In 2005, a former Scottish police chief signed a statement alleging the CIA had planted fragments of a timer circuit board produced at trial, evidence supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent to the effect his agency "wrote the script" to ensure Libya was incriminated.

There are also allegations that clothing allegedly purchased by the bomber in Malta before it was wrapped around the bomb, was intact when discovered but by the time it reached the court it was in shreds.

Life sentence

The shopkeeper who sold the item made a statement to the effect Al Megrahi had never been a customer. Instead, he identified an Egyptian-born Palestinian Mohammad Abu Talb - now serving a life sentence in Sweden for a synagogue bombing.

Professor Hans Koechler, appointed by the UN to be an observer at the trial, has termed its outcome "a spectacular miscarriage of justice". Koechler has repeatedly called for an independent enquiry, which, to date, the British government has refused to allow.

Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, insists "no court is likely to get to the truth, now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence".

Jim Swire, the father of one of the Lockerbie victims, said "Scottish justice obviously played a leading part in one of the most disgraceful miscarriages of justice in history."

Craig Murray, a former British ambassador, who was earlier second-in-command of Britain's Aviation and Maritime Department from 1989 to 1992, writes about a strange incident on his website.

Murray says a colleague told him "in a deeply worried way" about an intelligence report indicating Libya was not involved in the Pan Am bombing. When he asked to see it, his colleague said it was marked for named eyes only, which Murray describes as "extremely unusual". Earlier, a CIA report that had reached a similar conclusion had been conveniently buried.

If Al Megrahi walks, as is likely, Libya will be vindicated and would presumably be able to reclaim monies paid in compensation along with its reputation.

This would also be a highly embarrassing turn of events for Britain and the US not to mention their respective intelligence agencies, and would leave the question of who bombed Pan Am Flight 103 unanswered.

In a perfect world, Libya should also receive an apology from its accusers and should be allowed to sue for damages for all that it lost as a result of UN sanctions.

But in a world where political expediency often triumphs, the appeal has no foregone conclusion despite the exposure of dubious "evidence" and suspect "witnesses".

Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com.

This story was reprinted by Tripoli News on 17 September:
http://www.africanpath.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=2349

O what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive!
(Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, can VI, xvii)

The UK Government brazenly maintains that there were no "deals" or "understandings" between it and the Libyan Government in relation to the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi. That view is most assuredly not shared by high Libyan Government officials. The "deal in the desert" was intended to lead to Mr Megrahi's early return to Tripoli. But that was stymied by Downing Street and the Foreign Office's failure to appreciate that the decision on transfer of a prisoner in Scotland rested with the Scottish, not the UK, Government. And just to make matters worse, at the most inconvenient moment, the SNP had taken over the Scottish Government from Labour and so supine obedience to UK Labour Government wishes could no longer be guaranteed. That was when the deal started to fall apart, to the anger of the Libyans and the embarrassment of HMG.

Some of this is now coming into the public domain. An article in today's edition of The Sunday Times contains the following:

'Apart from the unfortunate Lockerbie families, everyone seems to have got what they wanted. Gadaffi and his son have their man. Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice secretary, who signed the release order, has burnished his humanitarian credentials. Gordon Brown has preserved Britain’s politically and economically valuable new relationship with Libya while avoiding any blame for the release. And American politicians have been able to bluster in protest while exercising none of their considerable clout to stop it happening.

'The whole exercise reeks of realpolitik and moral evasion.

'The reality is that Megrahi’s freedom is a product of the effort to bring Libya out of dangerous isolation. This is as much to America’s advantage as Britain’s, but Washington has too much baggage to be openly involved; it bombed Libya in 1986 in punishment for supporting terrorism, and Gadaffi remains a bogeyman to many Americans. So Britain takes the lead — except when it can devolve the dirty work onto a Scottish politician.

'A so-called “deal in the desert” reached between Gadaffi and Blair in a tent outside Tripoli in 2004 led to a broad rapprochement with Libya and a prisoner transfer agreement that Gadaffi saw, from the outset, as a means of bringing home Megrahi. The Libyans became increasingly angry, however, at what they regarded as British foot-dragging over the transfer.

'“They were furious with the Foreign Office because things were not panning out as they were told they would,” said a source close to the Scottish administration. “The Foreign Office had been telling the Libyans that they were confident the Scottish government would agree to their prisoner transfer request.”

'British officials strongly denied that they had put pressure on Scotland to release Megrahi — or signed the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya — in order to smooth the way for oil deals. But on the way home to Tripoli on Thursday, Saif seemed to contradict them. “In all commercial contracts for oil and gas with Britain, Megrahi was always on the negotiating table,” he said.

'There were anxieties in Edinburgh and Westminster when the Libyans raised the prospect of breaking off diplomatic relations, which in effect would have frozen all British dealings in Libya.

'“Look at what he’s done to Switzerland,” said Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya. “He [Gadaffi] can make life very unpleasant for us all.”

'Some of the secret background to Megrahi’s release has now emerged with the leak of a letter from Ivan Lewis, a junior minister at the Foreign Office, encouraging MacAskill to “consider” Libya’s application for Megrahi to be sent home. It is part of the political game of pass the parcel between Brown and Alex Salmond, the nationalist Scottish first minister.

'This began with a fiction that suited both sides. The prime minister claimed that the decision on whether to release the man convicted in a Scottish court of killing 270 people lay exclusively with ministers in the devolved Scottish administration.

'Brown, who has a Macavity reputation of knowing when to hide from no-win situations, realised his reputation could be damaged by any association with the decision on Megrahi’s fate. However, no political insider seriously believed that the Westminster government would leave a matter as sensitive to this to Salmond’s unpredictable justice minister. (...)

'Lewis’s leaked letter to MacAskill suggested otherwise. Writing on August 3, Lewis told MacAskill there was no legal reason not to accede to Libya’s request to transfer Megrahi into its custody under the terms of the treaty agreed between Tony Blair and Gadaffi in 2007.

'A source who saw the letter said Lewis added: “I hope on this basis you will now feel able to consider the Libyan application in accordance with the provisions of the prisoner transfer agreement.” The source said the Scottish government interpreted this as an attempt to influence MacAskill’s decision.'

A further article in The Sunday Times headed "Foreign Office ‘pushed for Lockerbie release’" is also worth reading in this context.

Tony Blair has now, of course, gone on record denying that there was any deal in the desert, at least as far as the repatriation of Megrahi was concerned. I know, because I've talked to them, that Libyan officials who took part came away with a different impression. If one wished to be generous to Mr Blair, one could perhaps adopt the view outlined in the following paragraph from an article in today's Scotland on Sunday:

'One senior Labour source suggested last night that while Blair would not have laid down the offer of Megrahi's release formally, he may have given that impression to Gaddafi. The source said: "Gaddafi wouldn't be the first person to have walked away from a meeting with Tony thinking a deal was on. Just ask Gordon Brown." Blair visited Libya in May 2007, during which UK energy giant BP signed a £450m exploration deal.'

An article in the same newspaper by Professor Hans Koechler, a UN-appointed observer at the Lockerbie trial, is also well worth reading. It contains the following sentence:

'What I do know is that the UK government was interested in having Megrahi returned to his homeland. There was this understanding between Libya and the UK, which was discussed in many confidential meetings. One of those recent meetings may have been the one between Lord Mandelson and the son of Colonel Gaddafi in Corfu.'

Megrahi inquiry 'is kicking BP while it's down'

The BP spill and a senate inquiry in the release of the Lockerbie could overshadow David Cameron's visit to the US. But former UK Libyan ambassador Oliver Miles tells Channel 4 News the al-Megrahi inquiry is a case of kicking BP while it is down. (...)

You told Channel 4 News last year that you thought there had been a deal on al-Megrahi's release. How would it have worked?

The problem is this: why did Megrahi and Libya decide to abandon the appeal. It was probably Libya rather than Megrahi, because Megrahi was very ill and had given the Libyans full powers to act on his behalf.

The obvious reason for abandoning it was that it was a precondition under the prisoner transfer agreement – but the PTA wasn't actually used. And under Scottish humanitarian arrangements, it wasn't a precondition. It means we're left with an unanswered question as to why he abandoned it.

So there's a mystery there. The only half-solution I can think of is that someone convinced the Libyans or Megrahi that this was the only way he’d get a ticket home.

And has UK-Libya trade improved since al-Megrahi's release?

UK trade has improved. That's a fact if you believe the statistics. But whether one can link it to Megrahi or any other political factor, I would doubt.

The position I probably was taking last year and my feeling now is that if this had gone wrong, it would have had a serious negative impact on relations, including trade.

Put it this way. I was in Libya in May leading a delegation of British business people, and Megrahi wasn't mentioned - and I would have been amazed if he had been.

What will the US Senate inquiry reveal?

It seems to be there is no basis for an inquiry at all. Why are they raising this? The answer, to be blunt, is because of BP? Everybody knows that BP s a baddie, and when they're nearly down, this is the time to kick them.

Libya knows the only way it can achieve a boost in oil production is by bringing in the world's biggest oil companies – that’s the country has signed a deal with BP, with Shell and with Exxon Mobil as well.

[From a report on the Channel 4 News website.]

Questions remain in Lockerbie case

[What follows is the text of an article on The Guardian website by Oliver Miles, who was the United Kingdom's ambassador in Libya at the time of the severing of diplomatic relations in 1984.]

The leak or tip-off to a journalist that Abd al-Basit al-Megrahi, convicted of responsibility for the Lockerbie atrocity, is to be freed on compassionate grounds may – unless Scottish ministers lose their nerve – bring this complex story to its dénouement. But there are still many questions to be answered.

The story is complex because it involves several interlocking issues. First, the guilt or innocence of Libya and of Megrahi personally. Next, the Libyan government's acceptance of responsibility for the atrocity on the basis of the decision of a Scottish court, payment of compensation at a colossal rate and attempts to negotiate his release. Third the British government's responsibility for the curious arrangements (a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands) which led to his conviction and for the new Prisoner Transfer Agreement under which he might be returned to Libya. And fourth the Scottish executive's responsibility for prisoners in Scotland and in particular for decisions about release on compassionate grounds.

Intensive negotiations between all these parties have been going on in recent months, largely behind the scenes, and there have been more than rumours to suggest that the Libyan pressure included threats of interference with prospective business interests including those of BP, whose exploration programme in Libya is currently their largest in the world.

The new report comes as a surprise in that it was previously considered that Megrahi's medical condition was not so acute as to justify compassionate release. That may have changed, and if it has I for one would unconditionally support his release. It will be very welcome to the Libyans, but perhaps less so to the British and Scottish authorities. Why? Because if Megrahi were to be released under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, a precondition is that he should abandon his appeal which has just started, and which even if not successful may well produce considerable embarrassment both in London and in Edinburgh. A Scottish law professor has already gone on the record claiming that it was a disgrace that he was convicted on the evidence presented. But if he is released on compassionate grounds his appeal can continue.

Could the Anglo-Libyan discussions have led to some kind of deal? Libya gets what it wants, and in return offers what? Will Megrahi withdraw his appeal as soon as he returns home? Will the Libyans refrain from embarrassing celebrations at the 40th anniversary of the revolution in September? Will they refrain from asking for their compensation back, a cool $2.7bn?

FBI Special Agent Thomas Thurman

A whole day power outage here in the Roggeveld Karoo made it impossible to post to this blog yesterday (30 October). Here is what I had intended to post:

[This is the heading over an article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer that appeared on the Canada Free Press website on this date in 2008. It reads in part:]

“No court is likely get to the truth [regarding the bombing of Pan Am 103], now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence.” - Oliver Miles, Former British Ambassador to Libya

Thomas Thurman worked for the FBI forensics laboratory in the late 80s and most of the 90s. Thurman has been publicly credited for identifying a tiny fragment as part of a MST-13 timer produced by the Swiss company Mebo.

“When that identification was made, of the timer, I knew that we had it,” Thurman told ABC in 1991. “Absolute, positively euphoria! I was on cloud nine.”

Again, his record is far from pristine. The US attorney general has accused him of having altered lab reports in a way that rendered subsequent prosecutions all but impossible. He has been transferred out the FBI forensic laboratory. Thurman has since left the FBI and joined the faculty at the School of Criminal Justice, Eastern Kentucky University.

The story shed some light on his formation. The report says “Williams and Thurman merit special censure for their work. It recommends that Thurman, who has a degree in political science, be reassigned outside the lab and that only scientists work in its explosives section.”

“For what it’s worth the best information on Lockerbie came long after Zeist, when the investigation was closed. I’ve always been curious about this case and never stopped looking into it, until the day I left the CIA in December 1997,” Robert Baer told me.

“The appeals commission posed the question to me about someone planting or manipulating evidence only to cover all the bases. I told them I did not think there was an organized attempt to misdirect the investigation, although I was aware that once it was decided to go after Libya, leads on Iran and the PFLP-GC were dismissed. Often in many investigations of this sort, the best intelligence comes out long after the event,” Baer added.

“I’m fascinated to know precisely why the Scots referred the case back to the court, although they did tell me the FBI and Scotland Yard have manipulated the evidence for the prosecution,” Baer told me.

Forensic analysis of the circuit board fragment allowed the investigators to identify its origin. The timer, known as MST-13, is fabricated by a Swiss Company named MeBo, which stands for Meister and Bollier.

The company has indeed sold about 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military (machine-made nine-ply green boards), as well as a few units (hand-made eight-ply brown boards) to a Research Institute in Bernau, known to act as a front to the Stasi, the former East German secret police. (...)

The CIA’s Vincent Cannistraro is on the record stating that no one has ever questioned the Thurman credentials. Allow me.

“He’s very aggressive, but I think he made some mistakes that needed to be brought to the attention of FBI management,” says Frederic Whitehurst, a former FBI chemist who filed the complaints that led to the inspector general’s report.

“We’re not necessarily going to get the truth out of what we’re doing here,” concluded Whitehurst who now works as an attorney at law and forensic consultant.

Dr Whitehurst has authored something like 257 memos to the FBI and Justice Department with various complaints of incompetence, “fabrication of evidence” and perjury of various examiners in the FBI Laboratory (primarily Explosives Unit examiners).

“What I had to say about Tom Thurman and the computer chip was reported to the US attorney general’s inspector general during the investigation of wrongdoing in the FBI lab in the 1990s. I acquired all that information and the inspector general’s report from a law suit under the Freedom of Information Act and therefore the information provided under that FOIA request is in the public sector,” Whitehurst told me.

“I reported to my superiors up to and including the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US attorney general, members of the US Congress and US Senate as well as the Office of the President of the United States that FBI Supervisory Special Agent Thomas Thurman altered my reports for five years without my authorization or knowledge. This is public information. Thurman holds an undergraduate degree in political science and I hold a PhD in chemistry.”

“Thurman was not recognized by the FBI or anyone else as having expertise in complex chemical analysis and I was. When confronted with this information Thurman did not deny it but argued that my reports could and/or would hurt prosecutors’ cases. I was very concerned about the fact that wrong information in the final reports could hurt individuals and deny citizens of this country right to a fair trial. When I raised my concerns with my managers at the FBI laboratory, all except for one of them reminded me that Thurman was the “hero” behind determining the perpetrators of the Pan Am 103 disaster.”

“I understood from that that the FBI would not expose these issues for fear that the investigation into the Pan Am 103 bombing would be seen as possibly flawed and this would open the FBI up to criticism and outside review.”

No government body has found that Mr. Thurman has done anything illegal. However he was relieved from his post in the FBI’s Explosives Unit and placed in charge of the FBI’s Bomb Data Center.

“Did Mr Thurman find the integrated circuit chip about which you have referred? After leaving the FBI, I was interviewed by Scottish defense attorneys for one of the individuals accused of bombing Pan Am 103. At that interview were two of my attorneys, two FBI attorneys and two Scottish attorneys and me. I was asked what I knew about the circuit chip. I can say that I was not interviewed because I agreed with the official version of the discovery of that integrated circuit chip,” Whitehurst wrote to me. (...)

In the world of Forensic Sciences, former FBI [special agent] William Tobin is a legend. To name but a few of his achievements, Tobin demonstrated, along with his NTSB colleagues, that TWA 800 had been destroyed by mechanical failure at the time when virtually the rest of the world strongly believed a terror act. Both the NTSB and the CIA subsequently presented compelling evidence demonstrating the scientific validity of Tobin’s conclusion.

After retiring, Tobin demonstrated that the Lead content bullet identification technique, used by the FBI for more than four decades, was flawed. Tobin was not allowed to work on this matter while at the FBI.

Tobin knows a few things about superhero Thomas Thurman. Tobin told me that, in his opinion, Thurman and other Explosives Unit examiners were prone to confirmation bias, an observer bias whereby an examiner is inclined to see what he is expected to see. Tobin’s opinion is based on “numerous interactions whereby Thurman and other examiners rendered conclusions supporting the prevailing investigative or prosecutorial theory but which were unsupported by scientific fact.

It was not uncommon to determine that items characterized as ‘chrome-plated’ were nickel-plated, ‘extrusions’ turned out to be drawn products, ‘castings’ turned out to be forgings, white residues characterized as explosive residue turned out to be corrosion products (generally Al2O3 or a non-stoichiometric form), bent nails claimed to be indicative of an explosion, and a truck axle was characterized as having fractured from an explosion (a conclusion rendered solely from an 8-1/2” x 11” photograph where the axle was a small fraction of the field of view and the fracture surface itself was not observable).

“I put no credence into any scientific or technical conclusions rendered by anyone without a suitable scientific background for that matter, until I can make an independent evaluation. Thurman was a history or political science major to my recollection,” Tobin added

“His habit, as with most Explosives Unit examiners with whom I interacted and based on numerous court transcript reviews and ‘bailout’ requests I received on several occasions (to ‘bail out’ an examiner who not only misrepresented an item of evidence but also was confronted with more accurate representations of the evidence in trial), was to seek someone else’s expertise and then present it as his own in a courtroom without attribution.”

“He would frequently come into my office, ask for a ‘quick’ assessment of something (but I would always indicate that my opinion was only a preliminary evaluation and that I would need to conduct proper scientific testing of the item(s)), then weeks later I would see the assessment in a formal FBI Laboratory report to the contributor (of the evidence) as his own ‘scientific’ conclusion,” Tobin remembers.

“I cannot imagine that he was acting alone. He was a mid-level manager without a great deal of authority and with severely limited credentials of which the FBI was fully aware,” Whitehurst answered when I asked him if he thought that Thurman had acted alone.

“The problem with having a scientific laboratory within an intelligence gathering organization is that scientists traditionally are seeking truth and at times their data is in direct contradiction to the wishes of a government that is not seeking truth but victory on battle fields.”

“The problem with the scientific data is that when one wishes to really determine what the government scientists or pseudo scientists could have known, one need only look at the data. So few citizens ever ask for or review that data. So few scientists wish to question the government that feeds them and gives security to their families.”

“Was Thurman ordered to do what he did? No one acts alone without orders in the FBI. We had clear goals which were clearly given to us in every document we received from anyone. If a police organization wished for us to provide them “proof” of guilt then they told us in many ways of their absolute belief that the perpetrators were those individuals they had already arrested. If the president of the United States tells the country in the national news that Dandeny Munoz Mosquera is one of the most fear assassins in the history of the world then every agent knows that he must provide information to support that statement. If leaders decide without concern for foundation of truth then most people will follow them,” Whitehurst said.

“Thurman did not act alone. The culture at the FBI was one of group think, don’t go against the flow, stay in line, ignore that data that does not fit the group think,” Whitehurst added.

His former colleague agrees. “I’ve seen so often where an individual who was at one time an independent thinker and had good powers of reasoning acquires the ‘us vs them,’ circle-the-wagons, public-relations at all costs mentality at the FBI,” Tobin says.

“As much as I loved the institution, I have never seen a worse case of spin-doctoring of any image-tarnishing facts or developments as I had at the FBI. Never! It seemed the guiding principle was ‘image before reality’ or ‘image before all else’ (including fact). Whatever you do, ‘don’t embarrass the Bureau’ and ‘the Bureau can do no wrong.’”

Vital point missed in Megrahi controversy

[This is the heading over a letter from Brian Barder in today's edition of The Guardian. It reads as follows:]

In all the renewed controversy over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing ... a vital point seems to have been missed. Under the terms of the US-UK "initiative" under which Megrahi was convicted, he was required to serve his sentence in the UK. The initiative was accepted by Libya and approved by UN security council resolution 1192. For that reason Megrahi could never have been transferred to serve the rest of his sentence in Libya under the prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) negotiated by the Blair government with Libya, regardless of whether Megrahi was included in or excluded from its scope.

It's difficult to understand how the PTA came to be signed when it could never have been used to transfer Megrahi, the only Libyan then in UK custody. If BP was pressing for Megrahi to be transferred under the PTA, why was it not told that this was ruled out by the terms of the original agreement? Why didn't Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill point this out to Tony Blair and Jack Straw when they were arguing about the pros and cons of the PTA? Above all, when Blair and Straw made their "concession" to the Libyans under which Megrahi was not after all to be excluded from the PTA, did they remind the Libyans that Megrahi couldn't be transferred to Libya? If not, why not?

In an article published on Comment is Free on 1 September 2009, Oliver Miles pointed out that Megrahi's transfer to Libya under the PTA would have been contrary to the original agreement. It's strange that even then no one seems to have seen the implications of this.

[The implications had, of course, already been seen on this blog: Britain accused of breaking promise to US over Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Foreign Office told Scotland it made no promises to US over how long Megrahi would stay in prison.

The reason why the "promise" was not taken seriously by the UK Foreign Office was that the only country that might have an interest in complaining if it was broken was the United States of America. And both the United Kingdom government and the Libyan government knew (because they had checked) that Washington was relaxed about Abdelbaset Megrahi's repatriation, though it would have to huff and puff for US public consumption when it happened.]

“Libya has always viewed him as a political hostage”

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on the website of The Guardian on this date in 2010:]

Libya's relations with Britain have been flourishing across the board since the controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber, one of Muammar Gaddafi's senior ministers said today.

Libya was "delighted" at Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's return home from a Scottish prison last August and still insists he is innocent of the murder of 270 people on Pan Am 103, said Abdel-Fatah Yunis al-Obeidi, the Libyan secretary general for public security.

Obeidi, whose rank is that of a cabinet minister, hinted that David Cameron's comment that Megrahi's release had been a "mistake" — fuelling the domestic and international row about the circumstances of the decision — was made under US pressure. In an exclusive interview on a visit to London, Obeidi said he was certain the former intelligence agent was innocent.

"Libya is delighted by his return and has always viewed him as a political hostage and never acknowledged him as a prisoner," he said. "Libya had no connection with the Lockerbie affair. The international community was led to believe that Libya was behind the incident but history will prove the truth. I am convinced that Megrahi was innocent and was a victim of a huge international conspiracy."

Libya agreed to pay billions of dollars in compensation to families of the victims because of demands from the UN, not because it admitted guilt over the worst act of terrorism in British history. It portrays Megrahi's release as a purely humanitarian issue involving a man suffering from terminal prostate cancer who supposedly had just weeks left to live.

"Megrahi is in the hands of God," said Obeidi. "He was in a Scottish prison. Those who made the three-month prognosis were British doctors. The fact that he is still alive is divine will and has nothing to do with Libya. If you have a direct line to Heaven you can check up there."

Renewed US interest in the affair is linked to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and anger among families of the 189 US victims of the Pan Am bombing.

"The British government should disregard the views of others," Obeidi said. "We and you know who those others are. They are those who do not want Britain to look after its own economic interests and wants it to be subjugated to them for ever."

Obeidi's busy UK schedule underlines the warmth and intensity of bilateral relations since Tony Blair met Gaddafi in 2004. (...)

"Relations are excellent and getting better every day," he said. "The problem before was the absence of trust. Now we have restored confidence and there is much greater cooperation."

Libyan officials do not normally relish discussing Lockerbie, wishing to draw a line under it after the payment of compensation, the restoration of diplomatic relations with the US and UK and a wider sense that the country has shed its pariah status as western companies, backed by their governments, queue up to do business. But Libya lobbied hard for Megrahi's release — finding a willing partner in the Labour government — and the only man convicted of the 1988 atrocity was escorted home personally by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the leader's son and presumed heir. During a recent lecture in London the younger Gaddafi responded monosyllabically to a question about Megrahi, focusing instead on the "new" Libya and opportunities it presented.

Libya does not expect any adverse effect on its booming relations with the UK. "The Libyans won't really care," predicted Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Tripoli. "It's yesterday's problem. The worry now is Megrahi's state of health. There's no question of him being sent back to Scotland or of Libya having to pay any price. They will see it as Cameron being in the pocket of the Americans."

Dubious "evidence" and suspect "witnesses"

[What follows is the text of an article by Linda S Heard that was published in Gulf News on this date ten years ago:]

On December 21 1988, a Pan Am plane mysteriously exploded over Scotland causing the death of 270 people from 21 countries. The tragedy provoked global outrage. In 1991, two Libyans were charged with the bombing.

In the event, only Abdulbaset Ali Mohammad Al Megrahi, a Libyan agent, was pronounced guilty by a panel of three judges, who based their decision on largely circumstantial evidence. Al Megrahi and the Libyan government have protested their innocence all along.

Nevertheless, after suffering punitive UN sanctions which froze overseas Libyan bank accounts and prevented the import of spare parts needed for the country's oil industry, Tripoli reluctantly agreed to pay $2.7 billion to victims? families ($10 million per family), on condition the pay-out would not be deemed as admission of guilt.

In February, 2004, the Libyan prime minister told the BBC that his country was innocent but was forced to pay-up as a "price for peace".

Al Megrahi is currently serving a life sentence but earlier this year the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled there may have been a miscarriage of justice on the basis of lost or destroyed evidence.

Later this month, a Scottish appeals court is due to revisit the case and is expected to overturn Al Megrahi's conviction as unsafe.

The Libyan leader's son Saif Al Islam recently said he is confident Al Megrahi will soon be found innocent and will be allowed to return home.

On Sunday, an Observer expose written by Alex Duval Smith reported "a key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing has emerged as a probable fake" with allegations of "international political intrigue and shoddy investigative work" levelled at "the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police".

The Observer story maintains Ulrich Lumpert a Swiss engineer who was "a crucial witness" has now confessed that he lied about the origins of a timer switch.

Recently, Lumpert gave a sworn declaration to a Swiss court, which read "I stole a prototype MST-13 timing device" and "gave it without permission on June 22, 1989 to a person who was officially investigating the Lockerbie affair".

The owner of the company that manufactured the switch - forced into bankruptcy after being sued by Pan Am - says he told police early in the enquiry that the timer switch was not one his company had ever sold to Libya.

Moreover, he insists the timer switch shown to the court had been tampered with since he initially viewed it in Scotland, saying the pieces appeared to have been "carbonised" in the interim. He also says the court was so determined to prove Libya's guilt it brushed aside his evidence.

In 2005, a former Scottish police chief signed a statement alleging the CIA had planted fragments of a timer circuit board produced at trial, evidence supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent to the effect his agency "wrote the script" to ensure Libya was incriminated.

There are also allegations that clothing allegedly purchased by the bomber in Malta before it was wrapped around the bomb, was intact when discovered but by the time it reached the court it was in shreds.

The shopkeeper who sold the item made a statement to the effect Al Megrahi had never been a customer. Instead, he identified an Egyptian-born Palestinian Mohammad Abu Talb - now serving a life sentence in Sweden for a synagogue bombing.

Professor Hans Koechler, appointed by the UN to be an observer at the trial, has termed its outcome "a spectacular miscarriage of justice". Koechler has repeatedly called for an independent enquiry, which, to date, the British government has refused to allow.

Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, insists "no court is likely to get to the truth, now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence".

Jim Swire, the father of one of the Lockerbie victims, said "Scottish justice obviously played a leading part in one of the most disgraceful miscarriages of justice in history."

Craig Murray, a former British ambassador, who was earlier second-in-command of Britain's Aviation and Maritime Department from 1989 to 1992, writes about a strange incident on his website.

Murray says a colleague told him "in a deeply worried way" about an intelligence report indicating Libya was not involved in the Pan Am bombing. When he asked to see it, his colleague said it was marked for named eyes only, which Murray describes as "extremely unusual". Earlier, a CIA report that had reached a similar conclusion had been conveniently buried.

If Al Megrahi walks, as is likely, Libya will be vindicated and would presumably be able to reclaim monies paid in compensation along with its reputation.

This would also be a highly embarrassing turn of events for Britain and the US not to mention their respective intelligence agencies, and would leave the question of who bombed Pan Am Flight 103 unanswered.

In a perfect world, Libya should also receive an apology from its accusers and should be allowed to sue for damages for all that it lost as a result of UN sanctions.

But in a world where political expediency often triumphs, the appeal has no foregone conclusion despite the exposure of dubious "evidence" and suspect "witnesses".