[An interesting article by former ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles appears today in the Mail on Sunday. The following are excerpts.]
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 – the same as Abdullah Sanusi, the head of Libya’s internal intelligence service (equivalent to MI5 and MI6). Sanusi is related to Gaddafi by marriage and tribal solidarity is a strong link. 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 1999 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.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Oliver Miles. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Oliver Miles. Sort by date Show all posts
Sunday 6 September 2009
Monday 17 August 2009
The Lockerbie legacy
The leak of Megrahi's likely release has put the Scottish justice secretary in a fix. So who does he fear more: Libya or the US?
There have been some significant developments affecting the fate of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of involvement in the Lockerbie atrocity, since I wrote in Comment is free on 13 August.
There have been strong representations against his release from many of the families of the victims, particularly the American victims; this was expected, but what was not expected was that Hillary Clinton would make a personal démarche to the Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, which seems to have shaken him. Second, Megrahi has applied to the court to withdraw his appeal, which had just started. Third, MacAskill is – not for the first time – expected to announce his decision (which he still claims not to have taken yet) within two weeks, but the other main political parties in Scotland have called for a debate in the Scottish Assembly. And fourth, we now learn that Peter Mandelson and Qadhafi's son Saif al-Islam discussed the matter a couple of weeks ago, in Corfu naturally; as all conspiracy theorists know, these two deserve each other, each the power behind the throne after his own fashion. I omit the Corfu near-summit from what follows, if only because the ball is at present in the Scottish, rather than the British, court.
I am personally relieved that it has now emerged that Megrahi's application to withdraw his appeal was made on 12 August, the very same day that the BBC were tipped off that Megrahi would be released on humanitarian grounds. I wondered if I had gone too far when I said on the Today programme next morning, as I hinted on Comment is free, that there had probably been a deal; so it's always comforting when evidence supporting a hypothesis emerges after the hypothesis is formulated. I suppose the court will agree that his appeal should be called off, because the alternative would be embarrassing. They might, I suppose, decide that the appeal should proceed on public interest grounds, but I think that would be improbably highminded.
The London-Edinburgh dingdong will continue. Earlier, Alex Salmond wrongfooted Tony Blair, who seems not to have realised, when the British government was negotiating the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, that prisoners in Scotland were the responsibility of the Scottish Executive. Revenge is sweet; now it is Edinburgh that is accused of bungling.
And what are we to make of Hillary Clinton? Her call to MacAskill seems to have been prompted by the very strong feelings of the families of the American victims. But it is hard to see that American interests, as opposed to feelings, were at risk, or that she has much leverage with MacAskill. Indeed, if Megrahi dies in prison, the violent Libyan kneejerk kick aimed at Britain may well hit America, too.
So, here's the happy ending. Provided the withdrawal of the appeal is accepted, release by MacAskill of Megrahi on humanitarian grounds will suit everybody (except those who want the truth). The Libyans for obvious reasons; Hillary Clinton because she can tell her constituents in the US that she went the extra mile for justice American-style; and MacAskill because he can say that, with the greatest respect for Mrs Clinton and the US families' feelings etc, he had no alternative in view of the medical advice to doing the decent thing. Even London would have no cause to complain.
But when I tried this theory out on one of my nearest and dearest, the answer was simple: "MacAskill hasn't the balls."
[The above is the text of an article by Oliver Miles on the website of The Guardian. His earlier article in Comment is free can be read here.]
There have been some significant developments affecting the fate of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of involvement in the Lockerbie atrocity, since I wrote in Comment is free on 13 August.
There have been strong representations against his release from many of the families of the victims, particularly the American victims; this was expected, but what was not expected was that Hillary Clinton would make a personal démarche to the Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, which seems to have shaken him. Second, Megrahi has applied to the court to withdraw his appeal, which had just started. Third, MacAskill is – not for the first time – expected to announce his decision (which he still claims not to have taken yet) within two weeks, but the other main political parties in Scotland have called for a debate in the Scottish Assembly. And fourth, we now learn that Peter Mandelson and Qadhafi's son Saif al-Islam discussed the matter a couple of weeks ago, in Corfu naturally; as all conspiracy theorists know, these two deserve each other, each the power behind the throne after his own fashion. I omit the Corfu near-summit from what follows, if only because the ball is at present in the Scottish, rather than the British, court.
I am personally relieved that it has now emerged that Megrahi's application to withdraw his appeal was made on 12 August, the very same day that the BBC were tipped off that Megrahi would be released on humanitarian grounds. I wondered if I had gone too far when I said on the Today programme next morning, as I hinted on Comment is free, that there had probably been a deal; so it's always comforting when evidence supporting a hypothesis emerges after the hypothesis is formulated. I suppose the court will agree that his appeal should be called off, because the alternative would be embarrassing. They might, I suppose, decide that the appeal should proceed on public interest grounds, but I think that would be improbably highminded.
The London-Edinburgh dingdong will continue. Earlier, Alex Salmond wrongfooted Tony Blair, who seems not to have realised, when the British government was negotiating the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, that prisoners in Scotland were the responsibility of the Scottish Executive. Revenge is sweet; now it is Edinburgh that is accused of bungling.
And what are we to make of Hillary Clinton? Her call to MacAskill seems to have been prompted by the very strong feelings of the families of the American victims. But it is hard to see that American interests, as opposed to feelings, were at risk, or that she has much leverage with MacAskill. Indeed, if Megrahi dies in prison, the violent Libyan kneejerk kick aimed at Britain may well hit America, too.
So, here's the happy ending. Provided the withdrawal of the appeal is accepted, release by MacAskill of Megrahi on humanitarian grounds will suit everybody (except those who want the truth). The Libyans for obvious reasons; Hillary Clinton because she can tell her constituents in the US that she went the extra mile for justice American-style; and MacAskill because he can say that, with the greatest respect for Mrs Clinton and the US families' feelings etc, he had no alternative in view of the medical advice to doing the decent thing. Even London would have no cause to complain.
But when I tried this theory out on one of my nearest and dearest, the answer was simple: "MacAskill hasn't the balls."
[The above is the text of an article by Oliver Miles on the website of The Guardian. His earlier article in Comment is free can be read here.]
Thursday 4 September 2014
"One of the most disgraceful miscarriages of justice in history"
[The following are excerpts from an article by Linda S Heard published seven years ago today in Gulf News and on this blog:]
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. (...)
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".
Friday 4 September 2015
Dubious evidence and suspect witnesses
Was Libya framed for Lockerbie bombing?
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.
Saturday 25 December 2010
The dangers of over-classification
[This is the heading over a post by Oliver Miles (former UK ambassador to Libya) on the London Review of Books blog. It reads in part:]
For the most part [in the WikiLeaks cables] we see able, professional diplomats doing their best to understand and report on the places where they’re stationed, as anyone familiar with the State Department would expect. Those I have looked at (mostly from or concerning the Middle East) are classified up to ‘secret’, which is supposed to mean the information in them would cause ‘grave damage’ to national security if made public. One lesson is that over-classification, which is a form of bad security, is even more prevalent in the State Department today than it was in the British diplomatic service when I served in it. The most recent cables are a few months old. Most of the information in them, though of interest to specialists, is not particularly new.
One report which does contain some new information was sent from the US embassy in Libya in December 2009, giving details of discussions with the Libyans about possible arms sales – though evidence that the US was considering such deals was already in the public domain, for example in the list of members on the website of the US-Libya Business Association. It’s amusing that these US-Libyan discussions took place at the same time as – and are much wider in scope than – British-Libyan discussions on the same subject, produced as evidence of a corrupt relationship in the recent report by four US senators on the Megrahi affair.
For the most part [in the WikiLeaks cables] we see able, professional diplomats doing their best to understand and report on the places where they’re stationed, as anyone familiar with the State Department would expect. Those I have looked at (mostly from or concerning the Middle East) are classified up to ‘secret’, which is supposed to mean the information in them would cause ‘grave damage’ to national security if made public. One lesson is that over-classification, which is a form of bad security, is even more prevalent in the State Department today than it was in the British diplomatic service when I served in it. The most recent cables are a few months old. Most of the information in them, though of interest to specialists, is not particularly new.
One report which does contain some new information was sent from the US embassy in Libya in December 2009, giving details of discussions with the Libyans about possible arms sales – though evidence that the US was considering such deals was already in the public domain, for example in the list of members on the website of the US-Libya Business Association. It’s amusing that these US-Libyan discussions took place at the same time as – and are much wider in scope than – British-Libyan discussions on the same subject, produced as evidence of a corrupt relationship in the recent report by four US senators on the Megrahi affair.
Sunday 20 November 2011
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Lockerbie
[The following are excerpts from an article in today's edition of The Sunday Telegraph:]
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was his father's favourite son. Until the start of the
Libyan revolution, he was also feted by the West, as the arch-moderniser who
would supposedly guide the oil and gas rich north African country along the
path of democracy.
He was influential in his father's decision to give up weapons of mass
destruction that brought Libya in from the cold in 2004 and helped to
negotiate the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish jail in 2009.
Saif's extensive contacts included the Duke of York, Tony Blair and Lord
Mandelson. (...)
By about 2002, he was becoming a regular visitor to London and within a year is said to have fixed up a meeting between the Libyan regime and MI6 that would lead to Libya's public abandonment of its nuclear and chemical weapons programme, paving the way for Tony Blair to embrace Muammar Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent in March 2004 – the now infamous "deal in the desert". (...)
He was hugely influential in controlling the Libyan Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund with billions of pounds to spend in the UK and elsewhere.
The fund was used as leverage to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Saif and others let it be known that if al-Megrahi died of cancer in a British jail, then all business deals with the UK would be cancelled. Saif was entrusted with accompanying Megrahi back to Tripoli for a hero's welcome.
[An article written by Saif in The New York Times about this supposed "hero's welcome" can be read here.
A report in The Sunday Times (behind the paywall) contains the following:]
His trial could prove deeply embarrassing if he chooses to reveal details of his once-cosy relations with British politicians including Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary.
Mohammed al-Alagi, Libya’s interim justice minister, said yesterday that Gadaffi will be placed on trial in Libya and faces the death penalty.
With little to lose, Gadaffi may decide from his desert prison in Zintan to spill the beans on business deals and political promises made to the regime over the past decade.
Blair, who was described by Gadaffi Jr as a close personal friend of the family, may face searching questions if Gadaffi goes ahead and reveals the secrets of their deals including oil contracts and the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.
Gadaffi was his father’s point man on the settlement of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which killed 270 people. His detailed knowledge of the negotiations that involved British diplomats and Musa Kusa, his father’s chief of intelligence, could prove explosive. The questions of who knew what, and who did what, have never been answered.(...)
Blair, Prince Andrew, Mandelson and the Rothschild banking family are among those who could be cited by Gadaffi in court.
They were among Establishment figures who courted him in the belief that Libya would pursue a reformist agenda while lucrative business contracts were on the agenda. Among the secrets he could unlock are the machinations that may have gone on under the former Labour government ahead of the release of Megrahi.
Gadaffi Jr greeted Megrahi’s flight from Glasgow to Tripoli when he was freed by the Scottish authorities on “humanitarian” grounds in August 2009. [RB: Saif did not greet the flight. He was on board it.] Megrahi is still alive even though doctors claimed he would die within three months from cancer.
The release happened after Blair’s notorious “deal in the desert” with Muammar Gadaffi paving the way for multi- million-pound oil contracts with Shell and BP.
Gadaffi Jr claimed that the former prime minister acted as a consultant to the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Blair vehemently denies this. However, he has visited Libya at least six times since leaving office.
Five meetings with Muammar Gadaffi took place in the 14-month period prior to Megrahi’s release. On at least two occasions Blair flew on a private jet paid for by Gadaffi. But he denies influencing the Scottish government’s decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.
Just a week before Megrahi’s release, Mandelson discussed his case with Gadaffi Jr while on holiday at a villa in Corfu owned by the Rothschilds. Mandelson later met Gadaffi at a shooting party at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Rothschild family seat.
[The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (footnotes omitted):]
He was also negotiating with the United States in order to conclude a comprehensive agreement making any further payments for American victims of terror attacks that have been blamed on Libya – such as the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing – conditional upon U.S. payment of compensation for the 40 Libyans killed and 220 injured in the 1986 United States bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. On 14 August 2008, the U.S.-Libya Comprehensive Claims Settlement Agreement was signed in Tripoli. Former British Ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles described the agreement as "a bold step, with political cost for both parties" and wrote an article in the online edition of The Guardian querying whether the agreement is likely to work.
In an August 2008 BBC TV interview, Saif Gaddafi said that Libya had admitted responsibility (but not "guilt") for the Lockerbie bombing simply to get trade sanctions removed. He further admitted that Libya was being "hypocritical" and was "playing on words", but Libya had no other choice on the matter. According to Saif, a letter admitting "responsibility" was the only way to end the economic sanctions imposed on Libya. When asked about the compensation that Libya was paying to the victims' families, he again repeated that Libya was doing so because it had no other choice. He went on to describe the families of the Lockerbie victims as "trading with the blood of their sons and daughters" and being very "greedy": "They were asking for more money and more money and more money".
Interviewed by French newspaper Le Figaro on 7 December 2007, Saif said that the seven Libyans convicted for the Pan Am Flight 103 and the UTA Flight 772 bombings "are innocent". When asked if Libya would therefore seek reimbursement of the compensation paid to the families of the victims (US$2.33 billion), Saif replied: "I don't know." Saif led negotiations with Britain for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Pan Am 103 conspirator.
By about 2002, he was becoming a regular visitor to London and within a year is said to have fixed up a meeting between the Libyan regime and MI6 that would lead to Libya's public abandonment of its nuclear and chemical weapons programme, paving the way for Tony Blair to embrace Muammar Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent in March 2004 – the now infamous "deal in the desert". (...)
He was hugely influential in controlling the Libyan Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund with billions of pounds to spend in the UK and elsewhere.
The fund was used as leverage to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Saif and others let it be known that if al-Megrahi died of cancer in a British jail, then all business deals with the UK would be cancelled. Saif was entrusted with accompanying Megrahi back to Tripoli for a hero's welcome.
[An article written by Saif in The New York Times about this supposed "hero's welcome" can be read here.
A report in The Sunday Times (behind the paywall) contains the following:]
His trial could prove deeply embarrassing if he chooses to reveal details of his once-cosy relations with British politicians including Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary.
Mohammed al-Alagi, Libya’s interim justice minister, said yesterday that Gadaffi will be placed on trial in Libya and faces the death penalty.
With little to lose, Gadaffi may decide from his desert prison in Zintan to spill the beans on business deals and political promises made to the regime over the past decade.
Blair, who was described by Gadaffi Jr as a close personal friend of the family, may face searching questions if Gadaffi goes ahead and reveals the secrets of their deals including oil contracts and the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.
Gadaffi was his father’s point man on the settlement of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which killed 270 people. His detailed knowledge of the negotiations that involved British diplomats and Musa Kusa, his father’s chief of intelligence, could prove explosive. The questions of who knew what, and who did what, have never been answered.(...)
Blair, Prince Andrew, Mandelson and the Rothschild banking family are among those who could be cited by Gadaffi in court.
They were among Establishment figures who courted him in the belief that Libya would pursue a reformist agenda while lucrative business contracts were on the agenda. Among the secrets he could unlock are the machinations that may have gone on under the former Labour government ahead of the release of Megrahi.
Gadaffi Jr greeted Megrahi’s flight from Glasgow to Tripoli when he was freed by the Scottish authorities on “humanitarian” grounds in August 2009. [RB: Saif did not greet the flight. He was on board it.] Megrahi is still alive even though doctors claimed he would die within three months from cancer.
The release happened after Blair’s notorious “deal in the desert” with Muammar Gadaffi paving the way for multi- million-pound oil contracts with Shell and BP.
Gadaffi Jr claimed that the former prime minister acted as a consultant to the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Blair vehemently denies this. However, he has visited Libya at least six times since leaving office.
Five meetings with Muammar Gadaffi took place in the 14-month period prior to Megrahi’s release. On at least two occasions Blair flew on a private jet paid for by Gadaffi. But he denies influencing the Scottish government’s decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.
Just a week before Megrahi’s release, Mandelson discussed his case with Gadaffi Jr while on holiday at a villa in Corfu owned by the Rothschilds. Mandelson later met Gadaffi at a shooting party at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Rothschild family seat.
[The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (footnotes omitted):]
He was also negotiating with the United States in order to conclude a comprehensive agreement making any further payments for American victims of terror attacks that have been blamed on Libya – such as the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing – conditional upon U.S. payment of compensation for the 40 Libyans killed and 220 injured in the 1986 United States bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. On 14 August 2008, the U.S.-Libya Comprehensive Claims Settlement Agreement was signed in Tripoli. Former British Ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles described the agreement as "a bold step, with political cost for both parties" and wrote an article in the online edition of The Guardian querying whether the agreement is likely to work.
In an August 2008 BBC TV interview, Saif Gaddafi said that Libya had admitted responsibility (but not "guilt") for the Lockerbie bombing simply to get trade sanctions removed. He further admitted that Libya was being "hypocritical" and was "playing on words", but Libya had no other choice on the matter. According to Saif, a letter admitting "responsibility" was the only way to end the economic sanctions imposed on Libya. When asked about the compensation that Libya was paying to the victims' families, he again repeated that Libya was doing so because it had no other choice. He went on to describe the families of the Lockerbie victims as "trading with the blood of their sons and daughters" and being very "greedy": "They were asking for more money and more money and more money".
Interviewed by French newspaper Le Figaro on 7 December 2007, Saif said that the seven Libyans convicted for the Pan Am Flight 103 and the UTA Flight 772 bombings "are innocent". When asked if Libya would therefore seek reimbursement of the compensation paid to the families of the victims (US$2.33 billion), Saif replied: "I don't know." Saif led negotiations with Britain for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted Pan Am 103 conspirator.
Wednesday 7 April 2021
A self-blinded justice system
[What follows is from an email sent today by Jim Swire to a friend and supporter. It is reproduced here with Dr Swire's consent:]
There has been one quotation that I have been strengthened by throughout the last 35 years. It's from John Donne:
On a huge hill,Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that willReach her, about must and about must go,And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.Yet strive so that before age, death's twilight,Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.
I fear that the message of the last two lines is now upon us.
As for American contributions to the deception, I have long believed that there is no way we can puncture that bubble, fragile though it is.
For us, ... and so many others, now knowing the broad picture of the truth, is part of the healing process. But that healing is so severely damaged by the strutting pomposity of most of those who trumpet that the case is solved when so many of them must know it clearly is not.
Nor can we get away from the fact that a great deal of further evil has been unleashed upon the world by the obstruction to allowing the truth to get out. That obstruction has fostered some of the most malevolent characters in the terrorist world by shielding them from the threat of prosecution and has destroyed for a generation any prospect of peaceful progress for nearly seven million Libyans. By protecting the Ayatollahs of Iran from investigation the obstruction must also have reinforced the horrors that eighty three million ordinary people in Iran will have to face if they are ever to shake off the bands of religious impenetrability. Through ‘faith’ religious belief is used as a ‘reason' for abandoning the need to look with honesty at developments in the one world we actually live in, and some of whose intrinsic laws we are privileged to know.
A good example of such an individual was the policeman [Stuart] Henderson, who before he died said publicly in front of the US relatives that he would like to wring the neck of anyone who disagreed with the Scottish police findings in the case. He is now dead but the consequences of his force’s mistakes continues to blight and sometimes destroy all those lives in Libya.
A self-blinded ‘justice' system in Scotland together with a police force there which has also been blinded to the failure of its own hypothesis, partly through a deeply flawed verdict, partly by unjustified belief in their own infallibility, sails on. Like their justice system, that force will not listen to their voices when people originally with no axe to grind are raised in dissent.
However, John Mosey and I along with other UK relatives of the innocent dead have always wanted to force something of benefit for the future to emerge from that horrible toll of avoidable deaths at Lockerbie. That is worlds away from a desire for revenge against those who got things so grotesquely wrong in the investigation, many of whom are now dead anyway.
Now common sense (if I may be allowed so vague an entity at all) suggests to me that Henderson and his men fell into a deliberate trap set for the searchers by Ahmed Jibril in Damascus, in case any forensic evidence should fall into their hands after the crash, and that trap of course was the clothing readily traceable to Malta, inserted into the bomb suitcase. Common sense can also be stretched a little further to suggest that Abu Talb from the Jibril team was the probable buyer and provider of those clothes as part of Jibril's carefully organised plot.
The headlong chase to Malta which had to be based on the transfer of the bomb at Luqa (false), the transfer of a bag from the Air Malta flight to PA103A at Frankfurt (false) the transfer of the bag from PA103A to PA 103 at Heathrow (false) and the allegation that a MEBO MST13 timer had been used (false: based on a carelessly and fraudulently introduced fragment of circuit board clearly copied from the pattern of an MST13 board, but manufactured after the industry had switched to using lead-free plating technology in the early 90s).
Then one cannot ignore the concealment from the trial by the Crown Office prosecution team of the Metropolitan Police's findings of an airside break-in at Heathrow. We know that the Scottish police were informed of the Met’s findings by February 1989. Whether or not that break-in was the route by which the bomb came to be put aboard at Heathrow we cannot know, (and the proximity of Iran Air personnel adjacent to Pan Am provides an alternative route), but the break-in and its concealment from the trial court looks mighty like the deliberate removal of an obvious ‘reasonable doubt', which any criminal court ought to have had the opportunity to evaluate as the case unfolded in front of it.
Unfortunately however, failure to identify Iran as the initiating country skews the interests of justice between the nations if indeed there is any.
But perhaps we should leave to Scotland’s friends from “ the auld alliance”, her own poet Robbie Burns, to her philosopher David Hume to a recent Scottish Justice Secretary and also to a scion of the cream of British diplomacy, the last words.
Here’s freedom to him that wad read,
Here’s freedom to him that wad write,
There’s nane ever fear’d that the truth should be heard,
But they whom the truth wad indite. -- Robert Burns
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. -- Montesquieu
In our reasonings concerning matters of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. ― David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
The Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission’s decision to refer the Megrahi case back to the courts really isn’t a surprise. Issues of concern in the Lockerbie bombing trial include not least the witness payments to Tony Gauci. So back the case goes and while it may resolve some aspects relating to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, I won’t hold my breath that it’ll cast any more light on Lockerbie. Sadly, this review will clarify some questions regarding Megrahi, but I very much doubt it’ll provide closure on Lockerbie.
Kenny MacAskill — Former Cabinet Secretary for Justice (2007–2014)
No court is likely get to the truth, now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence.
Oliver Miles — Former British ambassador to Libya
Wednesday 23 September 2009
Deception over Lockerbie?
[This is the title of a lengthy review article by Dr Malise Ruthven in the October 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books. The following are excerpts.]
After it became clear that Megrahi could not be excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement, it seems the Scottish and British governments actively encouraged him and his legal team to seek a release on compassionate grounds.
At stake, for the British, were contracts for oil and gas exploration worth up to £15 billion ($24 billion) for British Petroleum (BP), announced in May 2007, as well as plans to open a London office of the Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign fund with £83 billion ($136 billion) to invest. Libya refused to ratify the contracts until Straw abandoned his insistence on excluding Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement. Shortly after Brown's statement, Straw admitted—in apparent contradiction to his prime minister—that oil had been "a very big part" of his negotiations. British leaders were also warned that trade deals worth billions could be canceled. "The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage," Straw wrote to MacAskill in December 2007, "and in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom I have agreed that in this instance the PTA [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual." Within six weeks of the British government's concession, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalized in May of this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.
For the SNP government in Edinburgh, the "compassion loophole" made it possible to avoid authorizing Megrahi's release under an agreement negotiated by London. The decision was widely condemned in Scotland, with the minority SNP administration losing a vote by 73–50 in the Scottish parliament on a government motion that the release of Megrahi on compassionate grounds was "consistent with the principles of Scottish justice." But there was a further twist to this story. Before his release from Greenock prison near Glasgow and his flight to Tripoli in a chartered Libyan jet, Megrahi agreed to drop his appeal against the life sentence he received from the specially convened Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.
Megrahi has always insisted on his innocence, and doubts about his conviction have been expressed by several influential figures, most notably Dr. Jim Swire, a spokesman for the UK families of Flight 103, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, and Professor Hans Köchler, official UN observer at Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist. In his reports to the UN secretary-general, Köchler deplored the political atmosphere of the trial and the failure of the court to consider evidence of foreign (i.e., non-Libyan) government involvement that formed part of a special defense—inculpating others—that is available under Scottish law.
He was even more forthright in condemning the rejection of Megrahi's first appeal in March 2002—calling it a "spectacular miscarriage of justice"—which took place at the same time as discussions with Libya over compensation for the victims' families. The presence of a Libyan "defense support team" hampered the efforts of the Scottish defense lawyers, who failed to raise vital questions about the withholding of evidence and the reliability of witnesses. Two notable omissions Köchler highlighted were the alleged coaching of a key prosecution witness by Scottish police and the appeal court's failure to consider evidence of a break-in at the baggage storage area in London's Heathrow airport on the night before the bombing. (...)
A widely held suspicion at the beginning of the investigation pointed toward the culpability of a Palestinian faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC), working under the protection of Syria. The theory held that the PFLP-GC, who specialized in aircraft hijackings using semtex bombs concealed in tape recorders, may have been "sub- contracted" by Syria's Iranian allies to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, just months before the bombing of Flight 103.
At the time Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that the skies would "rain blood" in revenge for the loss of 290 civilian lives, including 66 children. Two defectors from Iranian intelligence agencies—or alleged defectors—subsequently accused the Iranian government of being behind the attacks for which the PFLP-GC was said to have been paid $10 million. Some analysts have argued that leads pointing toward the Palestinian-Syrian-Iranian connection were purposefully deflected after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when Syria became—albeit temporarily—a US coalition ally. Libya, the only Arab state to support Saddam's invasion, remained a more tenable target for exacting exemplary justice.
After a decade of sanctions and interventions by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and South African President Nelson Mandela, the Libyans in 1999 gave up Megrahi and his alleged associate Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who would later be acquitted. The case against Megrahi hinged on a fragment recovered at Lockerbie of a timing device traced to a Swiss manufacturer, Mebo. The firm had sold timers to Libya that differed in design from those allegedly used in cassette bombs of the type attributed to the PFLP-GC. The clothing in which the bomb was said to have been wrapped inside a suitcase was traced to a shop in Malta that Megrahi was alleged to have visited, traveling under an assumed name, on December 20–21, 1988.
Although the evidence was purely circumstantial (there was no direct evidence that either he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft), the judges wrote in their decision that the preponderance of the evidence led them to believe that Megrahi was guilty as charged. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum of twenty-seven years, to be served in a Scottish jail. A major reason for US anger at Megrahi's release has been the repeated assurances given by the British government that he would serve out his full term.
In December 2003, as part of its campaign to end UN sanctions and abandon its pariah status, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, and agreed to pay compensation to the victims' families—although it continued to maintain Megrahi's innocence, as he had done throughout his trial. His position divided observers: some see his continuing denial as the standard response of a professional intelligence officer, as summarized by the unofficial motto of the CIA's Office of Technical Services—"admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations."
Others, including a significant group of Scottish lawyers and laypersons, take a different view. In June 2007, after an investigation lasting nearly four years, the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission delivered an eight-hundred-page report—with thirteen annexes—that identified several areas where "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred" and referred Megrahi's case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. The commission considered evidence that cast doubt on the dates on which Megrahi was supposed to have been in Malta as well as the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to have sold clothing to Megrahi. He had changed his testimony several times, and had been shown Megrahi's photograph before picking him out of a line-up. It was expected that the fresh appeal would also consider new evidence about the timing device, as well as the reported break-in at Heathrow airport, which indicate that the bomb could have been planted in London rather than in a suitcase checked from Malta to New York, as the prosecution had claimed.
In July 2007, Ulrich Lumpert, a former engineer at Mebo and a key technical witness, admitted that he had committed perjury at the Camp Zeist trial. In a sworn affidavit he declared that he had stolen a handmade sample of an MST-13 Timer PC-board from Mebo in Zurich and handed it to an unnamed official investigating the Lockerbie case. He also affirmed that the fragment of the timer presented in court as part of the Lockerbie wreckage had in fact been part of this stolen sample. When he became aware that this piece was to be used as evidence for an "intentionally politically motivated criminal undertaking," he said, he decided to keep silent out of fear for his life.
Although it would have been necessary for Megrahi to drop his appeal under the prisoner transfer scheme, this was not a precondition for release on compassionate grounds. Nevertheless it seems likely that he was pressured into abandoning the appeal. Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, has suggested that the dropping of the appeal, rather than "a deal involving business," was the real quid pro quo behind Megrahi's release. According to Miles, Scottish legal sources had been talking of a mood of "growing anxiety in the Scottish justice department that a successful appeal...would severely damage the reputation of the Scottish justice system."
After it became clear that Megrahi could not be excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement, it seems the Scottish and British governments actively encouraged him and his legal team to seek a release on compassionate grounds.
At stake, for the British, were contracts for oil and gas exploration worth up to £15 billion ($24 billion) for British Petroleum (BP), announced in May 2007, as well as plans to open a London office of the Libyan Investment Authority, a sovereign fund with £83 billion ($136 billion) to invest. Libya refused to ratify the contracts until Straw abandoned his insistence on excluding Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement. Shortly after Brown's statement, Straw admitted—in apparent contradiction to his prime minister—that oil had been "a very big part" of his negotiations. British leaders were also warned that trade deals worth billions could be canceled. "The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage," Straw wrote to MacAskill in December 2007, "and in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom I have agreed that in this instance the PTA [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual." Within six weeks of the British government's concession, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalized in May of this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.
For the SNP government in Edinburgh, the "compassion loophole" made it possible to avoid authorizing Megrahi's release under an agreement negotiated by London. The decision was widely condemned in Scotland, with the minority SNP administration losing a vote by 73–50 in the Scottish parliament on a government motion that the release of Megrahi on compassionate grounds was "consistent with the principles of Scottish justice." But there was a further twist to this story. Before his release from Greenock prison near Glasgow and his flight to Tripoli in a chartered Libyan jet, Megrahi agreed to drop his appeal against the life sentence he received from the specially convened Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.
Megrahi has always insisted on his innocence, and doubts about his conviction have been expressed by several influential figures, most notably Dr. Jim Swire, a spokesman for the UK families of Flight 103, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, and Professor Hans Köchler, official UN observer at Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist. In his reports to the UN secretary-general, Köchler deplored the political atmosphere of the trial and the failure of the court to consider evidence of foreign (i.e., non-Libyan) government involvement that formed part of a special defense—inculpating others—that is available under Scottish law.
He was even more forthright in condemning the rejection of Megrahi's first appeal in March 2002—calling it a "spectacular miscarriage of justice"—which took place at the same time as discussions with Libya over compensation for the victims' families. The presence of a Libyan "defense support team" hampered the efforts of the Scottish defense lawyers, who failed to raise vital questions about the withholding of evidence and the reliability of witnesses. Two notable omissions Köchler highlighted were the alleged coaching of a key prosecution witness by Scottish police and the appeal court's failure to consider evidence of a break-in at the baggage storage area in London's Heathrow airport on the night before the bombing. (...)
A widely held suspicion at the beginning of the investigation pointed toward the culpability of a Palestinian faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC), working under the protection of Syria. The theory held that the PFLP-GC, who specialized in aircraft hijackings using semtex bombs concealed in tape recorders, may have been "sub- contracted" by Syria's Iranian allies to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, just months before the bombing of Flight 103.
At the time Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that the skies would "rain blood" in revenge for the loss of 290 civilian lives, including 66 children. Two defectors from Iranian intelligence agencies—or alleged defectors—subsequently accused the Iranian government of being behind the attacks for which the PFLP-GC was said to have been paid $10 million. Some analysts have argued that leads pointing toward the Palestinian-Syrian-Iranian connection were purposefully deflected after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when Syria became—albeit temporarily—a US coalition ally. Libya, the only Arab state to support Saddam's invasion, remained a more tenable target for exacting exemplary justice.
After a decade of sanctions and interventions by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and South African President Nelson Mandela, the Libyans in 1999 gave up Megrahi and his alleged associate Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who would later be acquitted. The case against Megrahi hinged on a fragment recovered at Lockerbie of a timing device traced to a Swiss manufacturer, Mebo. The firm had sold timers to Libya that differed in design from those allegedly used in cassette bombs of the type attributed to the PFLP-GC. The clothing in which the bomb was said to have been wrapped inside a suitcase was traced to a shop in Malta that Megrahi was alleged to have visited, traveling under an assumed name, on December 20–21, 1988.
Although the evidence was purely circumstantial (there was no direct evidence that either he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft), the judges wrote in their decision that the preponderance of the evidence led them to believe that Megrahi was guilty as charged. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum of twenty-seven years, to be served in a Scottish jail. A major reason for US anger at Megrahi's release has been the repeated assurances given by the British government that he would serve out his full term.
In December 2003, as part of its campaign to end UN sanctions and abandon its pariah status, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, and agreed to pay compensation to the victims' families—although it continued to maintain Megrahi's innocence, as he had done throughout his trial. His position divided observers: some see his continuing denial as the standard response of a professional intelligence officer, as summarized by the unofficial motto of the CIA's Office of Technical Services—"admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations."
Others, including a significant group of Scottish lawyers and laypersons, take a different view. In June 2007, after an investigation lasting nearly four years, the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission delivered an eight-hundred-page report—with thirteen annexes—that identified several areas where "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred" and referred Megrahi's case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. The commission considered evidence that cast doubt on the dates on which Megrahi was supposed to have been in Malta as well as the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to have sold clothing to Megrahi. He had changed his testimony several times, and had been shown Megrahi's photograph before picking him out of a line-up. It was expected that the fresh appeal would also consider new evidence about the timing device, as well as the reported break-in at Heathrow airport, which indicate that the bomb could have been planted in London rather than in a suitcase checked from Malta to New York, as the prosecution had claimed.
In July 2007, Ulrich Lumpert, a former engineer at Mebo and a key technical witness, admitted that he had committed perjury at the Camp Zeist trial. In a sworn affidavit he declared that he had stolen a handmade sample of an MST-13 Timer PC-board from Mebo in Zurich and handed it to an unnamed official investigating the Lockerbie case. He also affirmed that the fragment of the timer presented in court as part of the Lockerbie wreckage had in fact been part of this stolen sample. When he became aware that this piece was to be used as evidence for an "intentionally politically motivated criminal undertaking," he said, he decided to keep silent out of fear for his life.
Although it would have been necessary for Megrahi to drop his appeal under the prisoner transfer scheme, this was not a precondition for release on compassionate grounds. Nevertheless it seems likely that he was pressured into abandoning the appeal. Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, has suggested that the dropping of the appeal, rather than "a deal involving business," was the real quid pro quo behind Megrahi's release. According to Miles, Scottish legal sources had been talking of a mood of "growing anxiety in the Scottish justice department that a successful appeal...would severely damage the reputation of the Scottish justice system."
Friday 7 April 2017
An A to Z of Lockerbie “conspiracies”
[What follows is the text of an article published in The Guardian on this date in 1999. Some of the "conspiracies" have since been comprehensively debunked. Others have not:]
Lockerbie conspiracies: from A to Z
A
is for Africa, South
Several pieces of evidence (see H and W) suggest that the authorities knew in advance that the Boeing 747 which blew up over Lockerbie in southern Scotland on December 21 1988 was in danger. The German newspaper Die Zeit claimed that the South African foreign minister, Pik Botha, intended to fly on Pan Am 103 but had been warned off. Mr Botha flew on an earlier flight, Pan Am 101, which, unlike flight 103, had special security checks at Heathrow. No one has been able to definitively confirm or refute the Die Zeit story.
B
is for bomb-maker
The German anti-terror campaign Operation Autumn Leaves (see J, O and P) led to the arrest of bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat weeks before the Lockerbie disaster. Khreesat was released after a few days because of a lack of evidence. In April 1989 further German police raids resulted in the discovery of two more bombs designed by Khreesat specifically to blow up aircraft. Did he make the bomb which was placed on feeder flight Pan Am 103A before it left Frankfurt for Heathrow?
C
is for coffin
Two coach-loads of officials arrived at the disaster scene in the day after the crash. Many were plain-clothed Americans with no obvious affiliation. Among their baggage was a single coffin for which no explanation has ever been given. Labour MP Tam Dalyell later produced evidence indicating that the Americans had "stolen" a body from the wreckage. A local doctor identified and labelled 59 bodies and was then puzzled to find that the Americans had relabelled and tagged only 58 in the area where he had been working.
D
is for drugs
Lockerbie farmer Jim Wilson found a suitcase full of cellophane packets containing white powder among the debris in his fields. The suitcase was taken away, no explanation was given, and the authorities continued to insist that no drugs (apart from a small quantity of cannabis) had been found on the plane. But it was later discovered that the name Mr Wilson saw on the suitcase did not correspond with any of the names on the Pan Am 103 passenger list.
E
is for the Express
Ten days after the Lockerbie disaster, the Daily Express devoted its front page to exposing a Lebanese American called Khaled Jafaar whom it named as the "bomb carrier". The Express's sources were "the FBI and Scotland Yard". The Interfor report (see I) also named Khaled Jafaar as the bomb carrier.
F
is for fiction
It has been argued that talk of the CIA, cover-ups, bombs, timers and Maltese trousers (see M) is just entertaining fiction. Some observers believe that there was no bomb on Pan Am 103 and that explosive decompression or an electrical fault caused the Lockerbie disaster, as they caused other Boeing 747 crashes.
G
is for Garrick
Paul Channon, British Secretary of State for Transport, lunched five journalists at the Garrick Club three months after Lockerbie and told them, off-the-record, that the Lockerbie killers had been identified and would soon be arrested. Yet the two Libyans who came to be the prime suspects were not charged until November 1991. It seems likely that at that time Mr Channon was confident that the Lockerbie bomb was the work of the Palestinians (see P).
H
is for Helsinki
Sixteen days before the disaster, a man rang the US embassy in Helsinki, Finland, and warned of a bomb aboard a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the US. The 1990 US President's Commission report on aviation security said that "thousands of US government employees saw the Helsinki threat". Not a single US worker at the Moscow embassy took flight Pan Am 103 from Frankfurt, a standard and popular route home for Christmas. But the British Department of Transport had told Pan Am in December that British intelligence dismissed the threat as "not real".
I
is for Interfor
A report by Interfor, a New York corporate investigative company hired by Pan Am, suggested that a Palestinian gang (see P) had got the bomb on to the airliner at Frankfurt by exploiting a US intelligence deal (see U). In a bid to free American hostages in Beirut, American intelligence agents had apparently struck a deal with Syrian drug smugglers: in exchange for hostage information, the agents smoothed the Lebanon-US drugs route by relaxing security restrictions and allowing drug luggage to sail through customs. The terrorist gang simply switched the drug luggage for a bomb.
J
is for Ahmed Jibril
Ahmed Jibril was the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) (see P). He enjoyed the protection of the Syrian government. Intelligence agents reported that Jibril had been assigned by a furious Iran to avenge the shooting down of an Iranian airbus by a US warship in 1988 (which killed 290 people). The leader of Jibril's terrorist gang, Hafez Dalkamoni, was one of the Palestinians arrested in Operation Autumn Leaves (see O).
K
is for Kuwait
In 1990 Kuwait was invaded by Saddam Hussein. Anglo-American attitudes to the Middle East were transformed. Paul Foot and John Ashton argue that theories about Lockerbie are inextricably linked to this changing political situation. In 1989 intelligence-based evidence fitted snugly with US and British foreign policy in the Middle East. Both countries had severed relations with Syria, and the Iraq-Iran war ended in 1988 with America and Britain continuing to be hostile to Iran and supportive of Iraq. The US and British governments were content with the prime Lockerbie suspects: a Palestinian gang (see P), backed by Syria and Iran. But in 1990, the impending Anglo-American war against Iraq necessitated neutralising Iran and winning the support of Syria. Britain's diplomatic relations with Syria were duly restored in November 1990 and the Gulf war commenced in 1991. Sure enough, the credibility of intelligence theories about the Lockerbie bombing being masterminded by the Iran- and Syria-backed Palestinian gang was soon dismantled.
L
is for Libya
In November 1991, the American and British governments charged two Libyan airline officials, Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, with planting the Lockerbie bomb. To justify the radical change in the investigation's focus away from the Palestinians, the US State Department said: "Fresh evidence undermined the initial theory linking the PFLP-GC (see P) to the bomb". This included evidence that the Lockerbie bomb's "sophisticated electronic timer" had been delivered from Switzerland to Libya. And, in contrast, the bombs discovered in the hands of the Palestinians in Germany (see B) had "relatively crude timers".
M
is for the Maltese connection
A series of Sunday Times investigative pieces reported that the Lockerbie bomb had first been put on a plane in Malta. The bombing had been carried out by the Palestinian group (see P), after a gang member, Abu Talb, visited Malta. He was identified by a Maltese boutique owner as the man who bought clothes later found in the bomb suitcase. A bag which ended up on Pan Am 103 was identified by a baggage handler as coming from an Air Malta flight. When a Granada TV documentary repeated the allegations, Air Malta sued Granada for libel. A hitherto unpublished document from Air Malta's lawyers demonstrated that there were no bags on the flight which went on to Pan Am 103 or 103A. Granada settled out of court.
N
is for not proven
Legally defined as "a criminal verdict, somewhere between guilty and not guilty, the consequences of which are that the accused is treated as if found not guilty". Britain and the US fear that if attention is paid to the conflicting conspiracy theories, the case against the Libyans in The Hague could only be "not proven".
O
is for Operation Autumn Leaves
Five weeks before the Palestinian warning (see I) was received, a German anti-terrorism campaign, Operation Autumn Leaves, arrested a "team of Palestinians not associated with the PLO" in possession of a bomb in a cassette recorder (see T) strikingly similar to the Lockerbie bomb. These Palestinians, including Hafez Dalkamoni (see J) and Marwan Khreesat (see B) had been arrested outside a flat in Neuss - two hours' drive from Frankfurt, from whose airport Pan Am 103's feeder flight had originated. They were released after five days because there was not enough evidence against them.
P
is for Palestinians
Operation Autumn Leaves led to the arrest of a gang associated with a splinter group of the Palestinian movement the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). Was Pan Am 103 blown up by a Palestinian gang, protected by Syria and paid for by Iran?
Q
is for Queen's English
The official air accident report concludes: "The detonation of an improvised explosive device led directly to the destruction of the aircraft". If it was a bomb why wasn't it called a bomb in plain English?
R
is for red tarpaulin
On the night of the disaster teams of rescue volunteers scouring the area discovered a large object under a red tarpaulin. As they approached it, they were warned off by gunmen in the doorway of a hovering helicopter. A local farmer, Innes Graham, was also warned by US investigators to stay away from a small wooded area a few miles east of Lockerbie.
S
is for the Swiss circuit board
A central piece of evidence which pointed to the Libyans (see L) was a tiny fragment of a circuit board found among the Lockerbie debris. This was traced to a firm in Switzerland which exported timers to Libya. Apart from the confusion over when and where the circuit board was found (reports vary between June and November 1990), the Libyan connection to the timers is not as clear-cut as investigators have claimed. The US state department maintained that all timers from the Swiss firm had been delivered to Libya, but a BBC radio programme later proved that the firm had provided identical timers to the East German secret police, the Stasi.
T
is for Toshiba
The German anti-terror campaign Operation Autumn Leaves (see O) discovered a Toshiba cassette recorder packed with semtex. Pieces of a similar model of recorder had been found in the wreckage at Lockerbie.
U
is for US intelligence
There have been several claims that the bomb was planted on Pan Am 103 by a crack team of US intelligence agents. A Radio Forth journalist reported the claim and, within an hour, was threatened with prosecution or, bizarrely, invited to disclose his source to the Prime Minister. The Interfor report (see I) also alleged that Major Charles McKee, the head of the US intelligence team, who was travelling on the plane, was shocked by his colleagues' deal with Syrian drug smugglers and was returning on Pan Am 103 to report them. The inference was obvious - Pan Am 103 was sacrificed by the intelligence community to get rid of Major McKee. But the Interfor report was greeted with widespread scepticism.
V
is for Vincent Cannistraro
In the early 1990s the Lockerbie investigation shifted from the Scottish Borders to the CIA base in America. The man in charge there was Vincent Cannistraro. Mr Cannistraro had worked with Oliver North in President Reagan's National Security Council and, Paul Foot and John Ashton argue, he "specialised in the US vendetta against Libya". Mr Cannistraro was part of a secret programme to destabilise the Libyan regime which culminated in the US bombing of Libya in 1986. He retired from the CIA in September 1990 but by then had helped lay the foundations for a completely new approach to the bombing investigation, in which the chief suspect was not Iran or Syria, but Libya.
W
is for warning
Three days before the Helsinki threat (see H), an intelligence source in the US state department's office of diplomatic security warned that a team of Palestinians, not associated with the PLO, was targeting Pan Am airline and US military bases in Europe. The comment attached to the message read: "We cannot refute or confirm this".
X
is for xenophobia
In 1989 Anglo-American intelligence services and politicians widely blamed the Lockerbie bomb on a Palestinian terror group (see P), backed by Syria and Iran. In 1990, (see K) Iraq became the Anglo-American Arab enemy number one in the run-up to the Gulf war; Iran became neutral and Syrian troops joined the Allied forces. Only Libya remained adamantly aligned with Iraq. Suddenly, coincidentally, the Lockerbie bomb was blamed on the Libyans.
Y
is for Yvonne Fletcher
PC Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984, causing diplomatic relations between Britain and Libya to be severed. The file on Yvonne Fletcher is still open and Britain continues to demand Libyan co-operation on the matter. The fairness of the trial of the two Libyan suspects could yet affect this case.
Z
is for Zeist
Camp Zeist is the former US air base in The Hague where the two Libyans are being tried under Scottish law. But even the conviction of Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah seems unlikely to still the disquiet and conspiracies that continue to surround flight Pan Am 103.
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