[This is the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire in today's edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]
Since December 1988 when my beloved daughter, Flora, was murdered at Lockerbie I have searched diligently for the truth as to why the warnings that Pan Am was to be attacked had not been heeded.
A detailed warning from West Germany in October 1988 told our government that improvised bombs had been recovered near Frankfurt which, though stable on the ground, if put anywhere aboard a plane would automatically sense take-off and explode 35 to 40 minutes later.
My daughter’s doomed flight flew for 38 minutes before exploding over Lockerbie. None of the families knew of the warnings received beforehand. Yet the US’s Moscow embassy had given permission to staff to abandon Pan Am 103. The 747 was only two thirds full that night.
Margaret Thatcher forbade an inquiry and no subsequent prime minister has allowed one, often on the basis that “there is an ongoing criminal investigation” now alleged to involve the Stasi. At the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands that convicted Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi a piece of timer circuitboard was produced by Scottish police as evidence. It seemed to implicate a Swiss maker of digital timers. These had been supplied not only to Libya but to the Stasi. Since 2012 we have known that whatever its origin, the metallurgy on that fragment cannot be matched to that in use in Switzerland. This link between the Stasi and Lockerbie does not exist.
Before he died, a key leader of the Scottish police investigation told the world that “he would like to wring the neck of anyone who disagrees with the police findings”.
We have met many important people who tried to help. Nelson Mandela warned us that “no one country should be complainant prosecutor and judge”. Douglas Hurd, the Tory home and foreign secretary, referred to us in cabinet as responsible people who should be kept informed. Cecil Parkinson, the transport secretary, protected me from acquiring a criminal record when I demonstrated post hoc that Heathrow’s security had still not improved, by attempting to board an aircraft with a fake bomb, and Robin Cook, the Labour foreign secretary, talked to the families and seemed to favour an inquiry.
What have we done to deserve this extra burden of unknowing, piled upon that terrible bereavement?
Dr Jim Swire has been campaigning for justice for the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, in which his daughter died
Showing posts sorted by date for query Robin Cook. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Robin Cook. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Wednesday 27 March 2019
Friday 21 December 2018
Lockerbie bombing 30 years on: What is the truth behind UK's deadliest terrorist atrocity?
[This is the headline over a long article in The Independent today. The following are excerpts:]
Thirty years ago on Friday the name Lockerbie became synonymous with disaster.
The grim sequel is that today, Lockerbie does not just conjure up images of tragedy.
It brings to mind suggestions of conspiracy, of murky deals done in the diplomatic margins, of international machinations that betrayed justice, ensuring – some say – that the only person convicted in connection with the bombing, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was an innocent man. (...)
It still took nearly 12 years before the trial of two Libyan suspects began on May 3 2000, at a specially convened tribunal, operating under Scottish law and heard by three Scottish judges without a jury, at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands.
The tortuous road to trial included the imposition of sanctions on Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya, suggestions the international consensus on sanctions was collapsing, and lengthy secret negotiations between the UK, US and the Netherlands, initiated by Tony Blair’s foreign secretary Robin Cook.
The investigation that put Megrahi and alleged accomplice Lamin Khalifa Fhimah in the frame had involved interviewing 15,000 people and examining 180,000 pieces of evidence.
When the trial began in the Netherlands, Dr [Jim] Swire was convinced both men were guilty.
By the time the judges acquitted Fhimah and found Megrahi guilty on 31 January 2001, Dr Swire was convinced that the only man convicted was innocent.
He befriended Megrahi, visiting him, exchanging Christmas cards, becoming relentless in his efforts to clear the Libyan’s name, and thus to find his daughter’s ‘real killers’. (...)
The Scottish Crown Office - backed it should be said by many American victims' families - remains sure Megrahi was a Libyan agent, a key player in a plot where an unwitting Air Malta worker checked the Samsonite onto a Frankfurt-bound flight as a favour for a “friend” in Germany, where the suitcase was routed to Heathrow, then loaded on to Pan Am 103.
Tony Gauci, whose shop Mary’s House was near Malta’s airport, identified Megrahi as the man who bought clothes from him that were later found to have been packed into the Samsonite, concealing the bomb.
But there were reports of large undisclosed payments going from the US Justice Department to Mr Gauci.
The suspicion was growing that, either by accident or cover-up, Megrahi had become the innocent fall guy who got a life sentence for mass murder.
The Libyan was described, by The Independent among others, as less secret agent and more “Tripoli airport control manager briefly assigned to Libyan intelligence for bureaucratic rather than specialist tradecraft reasons.”
Many came to believe the Lockerbie atrocity was the work of Palestinian militants, with suspicion falling in particular on the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
The trial, for example, had heard evidence from FBI agent Edward Marshman that Jordanian bomb maker Marwan Khreesat told him he had supplied the PFLP-GC with explosive devices similar to the one used to down Pan Am 103.
By contrast there was considerable scepticism about the prosecution’s attempts to link Libya’s intelligence services to the improvised explosive device that destroyed the jet.
A fingernail-sized fragment of circuit board found in the wreckage was identified by prosecutors as being part of a timer made by contractor Thuring and sold by Swiss company Mebo to the Libyan armed forces.
But sceptics said independent analysis of the timer fragment showed it had a pure tin coating, whereas Thuring devices were covered in a tin-lead alloy.
Dr Swire came to disbelieve the official story of a bomb going from Malta to Frankfurt to London, thinking instead that the bomb had been smuggled through Heathrow and only ever travelled on one aeroplane: Pan Am 103.
One Heathrow staff member reportedly told police in January 1989 that he had seen a hard-shell Samsonite in a luggage container heading for the Boeing 747’s hold before the Frankfurt feeder flight that was supposed to have carried the bomb had even landed at the London airport.
Some accounts were prepared to accept that Libyan money might have helped fund the Palestinian militants – the US bombing raid on Tripoli in 1986 certainly gave Gaddafi plenty of motive for becoming (or continuing as) a terrorist paymaster.
But the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by a missile fired in error from a US warship in July 1988 gave another Middle East government a far more recent grievance, one that would have made targeting American civilian air passengers particularly appealing.
Whatever the truth, the conflicting accounts and the seeming entanglement with Middle Eastern intrigue left many with the sense that Lockerbie had become a decidedly murky affair. (...)
In 2015 Scottish prosecutors effectively re-opened the Lockerbie investigation by naming two Libyans they wanted to talk to: Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddaffi’s brother-in-law and formerly a senior Libyan intelligence official, and Abu Agila Masud, a man believed to have bomb-making skills.
Both men are in jail in Libya. Scottish and American prosecutors are said to be hopeful they will be allowed, despite the chaos now bedevilling Libya, to talk to the two suspects.
A report in this week’s Times suggested prosecutors were “closing in” on their two targets. The response from the Libyan government – or at least the UN-backed version of it – was said to have been “positive and constructive”.
Megrahi’s family, meanwhile, has launched a fresh appeal against his conviction to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).
When he died in 2012, his brother Abdulhakim said: “Just because Abdulbaset is dead doesn’t mean the past is now erased. We will always tell the world my brother was innocent.”
For his part, Dr Swire described the death of his friend as “a very sad event”. He praised the way that Megrahi, even when dying and in great pain, had sought to pass on the information amassed by his defence team.
Dr Swire himself is now 82.
Thirty years on from being called from his study to watch a TV news bulletin that changed his life, he is still searching for simple, undisputed truth about what happened to his daughter and 269 others.
Given what we now know about Lockerbie, it seems rash to assume that anyone will ever find it.
Thirty years ago on Friday the name Lockerbie became synonymous with disaster.
The grim sequel is that today, Lockerbie does not just conjure up images of tragedy.
It brings to mind suggestions of conspiracy, of murky deals done in the diplomatic margins, of international machinations that betrayed justice, ensuring – some say – that the only person convicted in connection with the bombing, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was an innocent man. (...)
It still took nearly 12 years before the trial of two Libyan suspects began on May 3 2000, at a specially convened tribunal, operating under Scottish law and heard by three Scottish judges without a jury, at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands.
The tortuous road to trial included the imposition of sanctions on Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya, suggestions the international consensus on sanctions was collapsing, and lengthy secret negotiations between the UK, US and the Netherlands, initiated by Tony Blair’s foreign secretary Robin Cook.
The investigation that put Megrahi and alleged accomplice Lamin Khalifa Fhimah in the frame had involved interviewing 15,000 people and examining 180,000 pieces of evidence.
When the trial began in the Netherlands, Dr [Jim] Swire was convinced both men were guilty.
By the time the judges acquitted Fhimah and found Megrahi guilty on 31 January 2001, Dr Swire was convinced that the only man convicted was innocent.
He befriended Megrahi, visiting him, exchanging Christmas cards, becoming relentless in his efforts to clear the Libyan’s name, and thus to find his daughter’s ‘real killers’. (...)
The Scottish Crown Office - backed it should be said by many American victims' families - remains sure Megrahi was a Libyan agent, a key player in a plot where an unwitting Air Malta worker checked the Samsonite onto a Frankfurt-bound flight as a favour for a “friend” in Germany, where the suitcase was routed to Heathrow, then loaded on to Pan Am 103.
Tony Gauci, whose shop Mary’s House was near Malta’s airport, identified Megrahi as the man who bought clothes from him that were later found to have been packed into the Samsonite, concealing the bomb.
But there were reports of large undisclosed payments going from the US Justice Department to Mr Gauci.
The suspicion was growing that, either by accident or cover-up, Megrahi had become the innocent fall guy who got a life sentence for mass murder.
The Libyan was described, by The Independent among others, as less secret agent and more “Tripoli airport control manager briefly assigned to Libyan intelligence for bureaucratic rather than specialist tradecraft reasons.”
Many came to believe the Lockerbie atrocity was the work of Palestinian militants, with suspicion falling in particular on the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
The trial, for example, had heard evidence from FBI agent Edward Marshman that Jordanian bomb maker Marwan Khreesat told him he had supplied the PFLP-GC with explosive devices similar to the one used to down Pan Am 103.
By contrast there was considerable scepticism about the prosecution’s attempts to link Libya’s intelligence services to the improvised explosive device that destroyed the jet.
A fingernail-sized fragment of circuit board found in the wreckage was identified by prosecutors as being part of a timer made by contractor Thuring and sold by Swiss company Mebo to the Libyan armed forces.
But sceptics said independent analysis of the timer fragment showed it had a pure tin coating, whereas Thuring devices were covered in a tin-lead alloy.
Dr Swire came to disbelieve the official story of a bomb going from Malta to Frankfurt to London, thinking instead that the bomb had been smuggled through Heathrow and only ever travelled on one aeroplane: Pan Am 103.
One Heathrow staff member reportedly told police in January 1989 that he had seen a hard-shell Samsonite in a luggage container heading for the Boeing 747’s hold before the Frankfurt feeder flight that was supposed to have carried the bomb had even landed at the London airport.
Some accounts were prepared to accept that Libyan money might have helped fund the Palestinian militants – the US bombing raid on Tripoli in 1986 certainly gave Gaddafi plenty of motive for becoming (or continuing as) a terrorist paymaster.
But the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by a missile fired in error from a US warship in July 1988 gave another Middle East government a far more recent grievance, one that would have made targeting American civilian air passengers particularly appealing.
Whatever the truth, the conflicting accounts and the seeming entanglement with Middle Eastern intrigue left many with the sense that Lockerbie had become a decidedly murky affair. (...)
In 2015 Scottish prosecutors effectively re-opened the Lockerbie investigation by naming two Libyans they wanted to talk to: Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddaffi’s brother-in-law and formerly a senior Libyan intelligence official, and Abu Agila Masud, a man believed to have bomb-making skills.
Both men are in jail in Libya. Scottish and American prosecutors are said to be hopeful they will be allowed, despite the chaos now bedevilling Libya, to talk to the two suspects.
A report in this week’s Times suggested prosecutors were “closing in” on their two targets. The response from the Libyan government – or at least the UN-backed version of it – was said to have been “positive and constructive”.
Megrahi’s family, meanwhile, has launched a fresh appeal against his conviction to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).
When he died in 2012, his brother Abdulhakim said: “Just because Abdulbaset is dead doesn’t mean the past is now erased. We will always tell the world my brother was innocent.”
For his part, Dr Swire described the death of his friend as “a very sad event”. He praised the way that Megrahi, even when dying and in great pain, had sought to pass on the information amassed by his defence team.
Dr Swire himself is now 82.
Thirty years on from being called from his study to watch a TV news bulletin that changed his life, he is still searching for simple, undisputed truth about what happened to his daughter and 269 others.
Given what we now know about Lockerbie, it seems rash to assume that anyone will ever find it.
Saturday 8 December 2018
Thirty years is a long time to grieve…without answers
[What follows is excerpted from an article by Marcello Mega published in today's edition of the Daily Express:]
Flight PanAm 103 was only 38 minutes into its flight from London to New York in December 1988 when a bomb hidden in a Toshiba cassette recorder and smuggled into its hold exploded.
The force of the blast punched a 20-inch hole in the left hand side of the fuselage of the jumbo jet and a subsequent investigation concluded that the nose of the plane was blown off within three seconds of the bomb’s detonation.
Victims and debris were flung over an 81-mile corridor covering 845 square miles. One wing section hit number 13 Sherwood Crescent in the Scottish border town of Lockerbie at 500 miles per hour. Its occupants Doris and Maurice Henry were killed instantly and nine other residents of the street also died.
Disputes over who planted the bomb have raged ever since and, on this side of the Atlantic, Dr Jim Swire – who lost his daughter Flora in the disaster – has been the most prominent campaigner against the official version of events. Now aged 82 he fears he might not live to see justice done for his daughter.
Swire is always dignified and articulate despite the quiet fury that has burned within him since Flora was murdered, on the eve of her 24th birthday, along with 258 others on the plane.
On December 21, he and other relatives who lost loved ones will mark the 30th anniversary of Europe’s most devastating terrorist atrocity but Swire notes pointedly that their numbers are dwindling.
“Thirty years is a long time to grieve, especially without answers,” he says. “We are beginning to die out in this group of relatives. Justice has been slow and inconsiderate. We above all deserve to know who murdered our loved ones and why it was not prevented.”
Swire and the other UK relatives have never believed in the guilt of the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the bombing by a specially-created Scottish court in the Netherlands in 2001.
Three Scottish judges sat without a jury and concluded that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was guilty, while his co-accused, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was not.
Swire sat through every minute of evidence over many months firmly believing he would see and hear the proof of Libyan guilt but he was so sure after hearing all the witnesses that both men were innocent that he fainted on hearing the guilty verdict.
Those close to him in the court feared he had dropped dead from the shock as he was out cold for several minutes.
In the years between the verdict and Megrahi’s death from cancer aged 60 in 2012, having been released from prison on compassionate grounds in 2009, Swire befriended the “bomber” and visited him in jail and later at his home in Tripoli, even apologising for the injustice he had suffered.
“When I met Baset, I had no problem shaking his hand because I sat in court every day and listened to all the evidence and I knew his hands had not been involved in the murder of my daughter,” he says.
“There was a natural warmth between us and each could sympathise with the other. He understood how I might feel having lost my much-loved daughter in the most atrocious way and I understood the pain he and his family must feel at their separation. I could also imagine how devastating it must be to be labelled a mass murderer unfairly.
“We became friends. He comforted me over the loss of my daughter and I apologised to him for what he and his family were being put through by the Scottish justice system and most of the time we talked about how we could get to the truth.”
Totally convinced that Megrahi’s conviction had been engineered for political reasons after the West’s relationships with Middle-Eastern states changed because of the first Gulf War – when Iran allowed the US and UK to attack Iraq from its air bases – Swire has played his part in trying to discover the truth.
Five years ago, he travelled to Sweden to confront Mohammed Abo Talb, a convicted terrorist then recently released from a 20-year sentence in that country, hoping to question him over his suspected role in the bombing.
The terrorist hid from the then 77-year-old behind his wife, refusing even to talk through an open second-floor window.
In Scotland and in the US, the authorities continue to maintain that Megrahi was guilty and that the bombing was planned and paid for by Libya, though the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to refer Megrahi’s case for a posthumous appeal shortly.
In 2007, the commission referred the case for appeal, stating there may have been a miscarriage of justice on six grounds, among them the fact that no reasonable court could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence presented, a damning condemnation of the verdict.
In 2009, Megrahi, by then diagnosed with terminal cancer, abandoned his appeal to secure a transfer home. Swire is certain that the SCCRC cannot ignore the evidence it had unearthed more than a decade earlier.
“I am certain there will be another appeal, and that the conviction cannot be maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence that points away from my friend,” he says. “But the authorities are in no hurry.
“They like to delay. They create the delays, and I wonder whether I will even see the conviction quashed, never mind the investigation that must follow into who really did it.”
Swire, like many informed Lockerbie watchers, believes the terror group, the PFLP-GC, the first suspects in the case, were the culprits, and that the bombing was ordered and paid for by Iran.
When an Iran Airbus carrying pilgrims to Mecca was shot down over the Gulf by the US vessel Vincennes five months before Lockerbie, killing all 290 on board, the Iranians said the skies would run with the blood of Americans.
Rather than offer an apology, the Americans further provoked the Iranians by giving William C Rogers III, the captain of the Vincennes, an award for “bravery”.
Swire was appalled by the disregard the US displayed for the victims and remains certain that it contributed to the awful fate endured by his daughter and 269 others.
His anger, however, is not confined to the real culprits, or even to the US and Scottish investigators, who he believes wilfully ignored the evidence against Iran and the PFLP-GC to pursue Libya for political reasons.
He is also angry with successive UK governments for allowing it to happen in the first place and then for failing to deliver truth and justice. He still craves the full public inquiry that would force senior politicians and senior intelligence figures to reveal what they knew.
“When Sheriff Principal John Mowatt QC published his report in October 1990 into the fatal accident inquiry he chaired, he said the bombing had been avoidable,” he says.
“Cecil Parkinson, who became Secretary of State for Transport in 1989, promised the relatives a full public inquiry, then had to let us down because Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t allow it.
“In the lead-up to Labour winning the election in 1997, we met with Robin Cook and Tony Blair and were promised it would be different when they won power. After they won, they stopped returning our calls.
“We know there were warnings to intelligence agencies about a threat to Pan Am flights at this time. We know this plane was only two-thirds full when every other flight from Heathrow to JFK in that week before Christmas flew at least at 95 per cent capacity and we know that some VIPs who were booked on the flight didn’t travel.
“We also believe the three-flights’ theory to be nonsense, and it was never proved in court. The judges said the Crown had failed to prove there was an unaccompanied case on the flight from Malta to Frankfurt and clung to the flimsiest possibility of an unaccompanied case on the flight to Heathrow.
“All the evidence tells us the bomb was loaded at Heathrow. It was our government’s responsibility to keep Flora and all the others safe.
“Any parent who lost a child in these circumstances would be shouting for answers, and 30 years on we are still shouting and we need to be heard.”
Flight PanAm 103 was only 38 minutes into its flight from London to New York in December 1988 when a bomb hidden in a Toshiba cassette recorder and smuggled into its hold exploded.
The force of the blast punched a 20-inch hole in the left hand side of the fuselage of the jumbo jet and a subsequent investigation concluded that the nose of the plane was blown off within three seconds of the bomb’s detonation.
Victims and debris were flung over an 81-mile corridor covering 845 square miles. One wing section hit number 13 Sherwood Crescent in the Scottish border town of Lockerbie at 500 miles per hour. Its occupants Doris and Maurice Henry were killed instantly and nine other residents of the street also died.
Disputes over who planted the bomb have raged ever since and, on this side of the Atlantic, Dr Jim Swire – who lost his daughter Flora in the disaster – has been the most prominent campaigner against the official version of events. Now aged 82 he fears he might not live to see justice done for his daughter.
Swire is always dignified and articulate despite the quiet fury that has burned within him since Flora was murdered, on the eve of her 24th birthday, along with 258 others on the plane.
On December 21, he and other relatives who lost loved ones will mark the 30th anniversary of Europe’s most devastating terrorist atrocity but Swire notes pointedly that their numbers are dwindling.
“Thirty years is a long time to grieve, especially without answers,” he says. “We are beginning to die out in this group of relatives. Justice has been slow and inconsiderate. We above all deserve to know who murdered our loved ones and why it was not prevented.”
Swire and the other UK relatives have never believed in the guilt of the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the bombing by a specially-created Scottish court in the Netherlands in 2001.
Three Scottish judges sat without a jury and concluded that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was guilty, while his co-accused, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was not.
Swire sat through every minute of evidence over many months firmly believing he would see and hear the proof of Libyan guilt but he was so sure after hearing all the witnesses that both men were innocent that he fainted on hearing the guilty verdict.
Those close to him in the court feared he had dropped dead from the shock as he was out cold for several minutes.
In the years between the verdict and Megrahi’s death from cancer aged 60 in 2012, having been released from prison on compassionate grounds in 2009, Swire befriended the “bomber” and visited him in jail and later at his home in Tripoli, even apologising for the injustice he had suffered.
“When I met Baset, I had no problem shaking his hand because I sat in court every day and listened to all the evidence and I knew his hands had not been involved in the murder of my daughter,” he says.
“There was a natural warmth between us and each could sympathise with the other. He understood how I might feel having lost my much-loved daughter in the most atrocious way and I understood the pain he and his family must feel at their separation. I could also imagine how devastating it must be to be labelled a mass murderer unfairly.
“We became friends. He comforted me over the loss of my daughter and I apologised to him for what he and his family were being put through by the Scottish justice system and most of the time we talked about how we could get to the truth.”
Totally convinced that Megrahi’s conviction had been engineered for political reasons after the West’s relationships with Middle-Eastern states changed because of the first Gulf War – when Iran allowed the US and UK to attack Iraq from its air bases – Swire has played his part in trying to discover the truth.
Five years ago, he travelled to Sweden to confront Mohammed Abo Talb, a convicted terrorist then recently released from a 20-year sentence in that country, hoping to question him over his suspected role in the bombing.
The terrorist hid from the then 77-year-old behind his wife, refusing even to talk through an open second-floor window.
In Scotland and in the US, the authorities continue to maintain that Megrahi was guilty and that the bombing was planned and paid for by Libya, though the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to refer Megrahi’s case for a posthumous appeal shortly.
In 2007, the commission referred the case for appeal, stating there may have been a miscarriage of justice on six grounds, among them the fact that no reasonable court could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence presented, a damning condemnation of the verdict.
In 2009, Megrahi, by then diagnosed with terminal cancer, abandoned his appeal to secure a transfer home. Swire is certain that the SCCRC cannot ignore the evidence it had unearthed more than a decade earlier.
“I am certain there will be another appeal, and that the conviction cannot be maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence that points away from my friend,” he says. “But the authorities are in no hurry.
“They like to delay. They create the delays, and I wonder whether I will even see the conviction quashed, never mind the investigation that must follow into who really did it.”
Swire, like many informed Lockerbie watchers, believes the terror group, the PFLP-GC, the first suspects in the case, were the culprits, and that the bombing was ordered and paid for by Iran.
When an Iran Airbus carrying pilgrims to Mecca was shot down over the Gulf by the US vessel Vincennes five months before Lockerbie, killing all 290 on board, the Iranians said the skies would run with the blood of Americans.
Rather than offer an apology, the Americans further provoked the Iranians by giving William C Rogers III, the captain of the Vincennes, an award for “bravery”.
Swire was appalled by the disregard the US displayed for the victims and remains certain that it contributed to the awful fate endured by his daughter and 269 others.
His anger, however, is not confined to the real culprits, or even to the US and Scottish investigators, who he believes wilfully ignored the evidence against Iran and the PFLP-GC to pursue Libya for political reasons.
He is also angry with successive UK governments for allowing it to happen in the first place and then for failing to deliver truth and justice. He still craves the full public inquiry that would force senior politicians and senior intelligence figures to reveal what they knew.
“When Sheriff Principal John Mowatt QC published his report in October 1990 into the fatal accident inquiry he chaired, he said the bombing had been avoidable,” he says.
“Cecil Parkinson, who became Secretary of State for Transport in 1989, promised the relatives a full public inquiry, then had to let us down because Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t allow it.
“In the lead-up to Labour winning the election in 1997, we met with Robin Cook and Tony Blair and were promised it would be different when they won power. After they won, they stopped returning our calls.
“We know there were warnings to intelligence agencies about a threat to Pan Am flights at this time. We know this plane was only two-thirds full when every other flight from Heathrow to JFK in that week before Christmas flew at least at 95 per cent capacity and we know that some VIPs who were booked on the flight didn’t travel.
“We also believe the three-flights’ theory to be nonsense, and it was never proved in court. The judges said the Crown had failed to prove there was an unaccompanied case on the flight from Malta to Frankfurt and clung to the flimsiest possibility of an unaccompanied case on the flight to Heathrow.
“All the evidence tells us the bomb was loaded at Heathrow. It was our government’s responsibility to keep Flora and all the others safe.
“Any parent who lost a child in these circumstances would be shouting for answers, and 30 years on we are still shouting and we need to be heard.”
Friday 30 November 2018
Lockerbie files: Bombing originally thought to be revenge by Iranian terrorists
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
At the end of an eight-month trial that heard from 230 witnesses and pored over 621 pieces of evidence it took the presiding judge, Lord Cullen, seconds to announce the verdict. [RB: The presiding judge at the Lockerbie trial was Lord Sutherland. Lord Cullen's first involvement was to preside over the first appeal.]
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was unanimously found guilty of the bombing in 1988 which led to the deaths of 270 people when Pan Am’s Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie. On January 31, 2001, at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. (...)
The verdict was hailed by the White House and Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, who described the attack as “among the most brutal acts of mass murder” but added “at last those relatives know that in a fair trial, before an open court, justice has been done”.
However, declassified documents seen by The Times reveal that the British and American governments originally believed that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), an Iranian-sponsored terrorist group based in Syria, was behind the atrocity, and that Flight 103 had been destroyed in revenge for the US downing an Iranian Airbus with 290 people on board.
Six weeks before the bombing, a West German anti-terrorist operation raided the Syrian terrorist cell, led by Hafez Dalkamoni, a Palestinian militant. It was to prove valuable to the investigation.
On February 6, 1989, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Margaret Thatcher’s chief legal officer in Scotland, wrote to Douglas Hurd, the home secretary, saying “Evidence has been obtained which has led to the firm conclusion that the bomb was contained in a radio cassette player of Toshiba make.
“A very similar radio cassette player of the same make was discovered by the German police during an operation last October when they raided a flat in Frankfurt occupied by Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni, who is said to be a member of the PFLP-GC. In that flat, plastic explosives were discovered and in his car the police found a Toshiba radio cassette player containing plastic explosive and sophisticated circuitry.”
On July 26, Lord Fraser went further, telling Hurd: “While there is, as yet, no direct evidence of Dalkamoni’s involvement in the Pan Am 103 bombing there is some information and circumstantial evidence of his complicity in its preparation.”
Dalkamoni was in custody at the time of the Lockerbie bombing but one of the five known Toshiba devices created by his cell has never been recovered. He was jailed in Germany, for separate terrorist offences, before being extradited to Syria in 1995.
A secret Ministry of Defence (MoD) briefing paper stated: “Those with the closest interests were the PFLP-GC.”
Some months earlier, on March 29, 1989, details of a meeting with Brent Scowcroft, the US national security adviser, and Lawrence Eagleburger, the deputy US secretary of state, were sent to the UK. It was noted: “Neither Eagleburger nor Scowcroft ruled out action against PFLP-GC bases. I urged them to keep in touch with us before developing ideas too strongly and Scowcroft agreed to do so.”
On May 29, an MoD document detailed the reports of a discussion with Alvin P Adams Jr, deputy director for counterterrorism at the US State Department, noting: “Adams indicated that there were a number of people in Washington who firmly believed that the Iranians had inspired the attack on Pan Am 103 and who wanted action taken against them.
“It was argued that the Iranians knew that they were responsible and that they knew that the Americans had a shrewd idea that this was the case.
“The possibility of military action against the Iranians should not be excluded. For example, a strike against the Iranian navy would have a significant effect on their capabilities.” It noted that Mr Adams also wanted measures to be taken against Syria but cautioned that he reflected “the more hawkish wing of opinion in Washington”.
A letter sent on behalf of William Waldegrave, a Foreign Office minister, hoped America could be persuaded to resist launching reprisals for Lockerbie. It suggested the European view was that Iran had acted in revenge for an “unjustified US attack”.
After the raids in 1988 the West German authorities had warned the British and Americans that radio cassettes could be used to blow up passenger planes. Tom King, the defence minister, feared this would be highlighted if the government agreed to a public inquiry,
In a letter he wrote: “The terms of reference would need to be drawn up with extreme care, so as to avoid the risk of classified matters of high sensitivity becoming disclosed publicly.”
John Major, the foreign secretary who would succeed Mrs Thatcher as prime minister within months, also privately lobbied against a public investigation into the disaster.
The Americans later discounted the Iranian/PFLP-GC connection and instead focused on Libya, whose leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was unabashed over his financial support for global terrorist groups, including the IRA.
The suggestion that the need for a new suspect was prompted by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and subsequent Gulf War, which required the tacit compliance of Iran and Syria, has been strongly rejected by successive British and US administrations.
At the end of an eight-month trial that heard from 230 witnesses and pored over 621 pieces of evidence it took the presiding judge, Lord Cullen, seconds to announce the verdict. [RB: The presiding judge at the Lockerbie trial was Lord Sutherland. Lord Cullen's first involvement was to preside over the first appeal.]
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was unanimously found guilty of the bombing in 1988 which led to the deaths of 270 people when Pan Am’s Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie. On January 31, 2001, at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. (...)
The verdict was hailed by the White House and Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, who described the attack as “among the most brutal acts of mass murder” but added “at last those relatives know that in a fair trial, before an open court, justice has been done”.
However, declassified documents seen by The Times reveal that the British and American governments originally believed that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), an Iranian-sponsored terrorist group based in Syria, was behind the atrocity, and that Flight 103 had been destroyed in revenge for the US downing an Iranian Airbus with 290 people on board.
Six weeks before the bombing, a West German anti-terrorist operation raided the Syrian terrorist cell, led by Hafez Dalkamoni, a Palestinian militant. It was to prove valuable to the investigation.
On February 6, 1989, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Margaret Thatcher’s chief legal officer in Scotland, wrote to Douglas Hurd, the home secretary, saying “Evidence has been obtained which has led to the firm conclusion that the bomb was contained in a radio cassette player of Toshiba make.
“A very similar radio cassette player of the same make was discovered by the German police during an operation last October when they raided a flat in Frankfurt occupied by Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni, who is said to be a member of the PFLP-GC. In that flat, plastic explosives were discovered and in his car the police found a Toshiba radio cassette player containing plastic explosive and sophisticated circuitry.”
On July 26, Lord Fraser went further, telling Hurd: “While there is, as yet, no direct evidence of Dalkamoni’s involvement in the Pan Am 103 bombing there is some information and circumstantial evidence of his complicity in its preparation.”
Dalkamoni was in custody at the time of the Lockerbie bombing but one of the five known Toshiba devices created by his cell has never been recovered. He was jailed in Germany, for separate terrorist offences, before being extradited to Syria in 1995.
A secret Ministry of Defence (MoD) briefing paper stated: “Those with the closest interests were the PFLP-GC.”
Some months earlier, on March 29, 1989, details of a meeting with Brent Scowcroft, the US national security adviser, and Lawrence Eagleburger, the deputy US secretary of state, were sent to the UK. It was noted: “Neither Eagleburger nor Scowcroft ruled out action against PFLP-GC bases. I urged them to keep in touch with us before developing ideas too strongly and Scowcroft agreed to do so.”
On May 29, an MoD document detailed the reports of a discussion with Alvin P Adams Jr, deputy director for counterterrorism at the US State Department, noting: “Adams indicated that there were a number of people in Washington who firmly believed that the Iranians had inspired the attack on Pan Am 103 and who wanted action taken against them.
“It was argued that the Iranians knew that they were responsible and that they knew that the Americans had a shrewd idea that this was the case.
“The possibility of military action against the Iranians should not be excluded. For example, a strike against the Iranian navy would have a significant effect on their capabilities.” It noted that Mr Adams also wanted measures to be taken against Syria but cautioned that he reflected “the more hawkish wing of opinion in Washington”.
A letter sent on behalf of William Waldegrave, a Foreign Office minister, hoped America could be persuaded to resist launching reprisals for Lockerbie. It suggested the European view was that Iran had acted in revenge for an “unjustified US attack”.
After the raids in 1988 the West German authorities had warned the British and Americans that radio cassettes could be used to blow up passenger planes. Tom King, the defence minister, feared this would be highlighted if the government agreed to a public inquiry,
In a letter he wrote: “The terms of reference would need to be drawn up with extreme care, so as to avoid the risk of classified matters of high sensitivity becoming disclosed publicly.”
John Major, the foreign secretary who would succeed Mrs Thatcher as prime minister within months, also privately lobbied against a public investigation into the disaster.
The Americans later discounted the Iranian/PFLP-GC connection and instead focused on Libya, whose leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was unabashed over his financial support for global terrorist groups, including the IRA.
The suggestion that the need for a new suspect was prompted by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and subsequent Gulf War, which required the tacit compliance of Iran and Syria, has been strongly rejected by successive British and US administrations.
Thursday 17 May 2018
Shameless behaviour over Libya
[What follows is excerpted from an article by Kenny MacAskill in today's edition of The Scotsman:]
Robin Cook became Foreign Secretary in 1997 amid much fanfare about an ethical foreign policy. That lasted a matter of weeks before arms sales to Indonesia intervened and a muting of the sound was required.
To be fair, Cook was a good man who tried to do the right thing and showed his mettle and his principles by resigning from office over the Iraq War. However, it also showed how difficult it can be to abide by ethical values when the needs of a state intrude. (...)
However, New Labour gave up any pretence of an ethical foreign policy after Tony Blair rode shotgun for George W Bush on the invasion of Iraq. It was without any ethical basis and predicated on a lie. Having supped with the devil, Blair seemed to lose any moral scruples on foreign policy, as shown by the shameless behaviour over Libya.
When news of a UK and Libya ‘Prisoner Transfer Agreement’ first broke, Jack Straw sallied north to appease the new SNP administration’s concerns about its effect on Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The UK Justice Secretary seemingly genuinely willing to remove Scotland’s only Libyan prisoner from the document until overruled by the Treasury and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which made clear the demands of Libya and the needs of the British state. [RB: See Jack Straw and the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement.]
Straw was no innocent on Libyan affairs as shown by the parliamentary apology tendered last week over the case of Abdel Belhaj, a Libyan dissident rendered into the Gadhafi regime’s hands by the US with the complicity of the UK. (...)
Belhaj and his pregnant wife weren’t the only prisoners rendered to Gadhafi’s Libya by the CIA and UK’s security services. There were others and they were returned to a despot that the UK was imposing international sanctions on and rightly condemned. To be fair to Cook, his initial involvement with Libya was simply to seek the release of the Lockerbie suspects for the trial that took place at Camp Zeist. His successors though discarded all pretence at justice and policy was dictated by the shameless pursuit of UK economic interests, irrespective of the welfare of innocents.
When Blair made his deal in the desert and embraced Gadhafi, other connected events quickly followed. First was the signing of a huge oil deal and second the commencement of the prisoner renditions. For the deal was a two-way street with benefits for the Libyan regime as much as the UK. It wasn’t just a lessening of sanctions but also involved the supply of arms and even the training of Gadhafi’s elite troops by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
That was exposed in an Amnesty International report shortly after I made the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds – and not because of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement. Individuals are entitled to their view on that, but the criticism of it by Labour was brazen given the actions they were involved in. America was equally Brazen with Clinton and Obama pursuing commercial deals with Libya, as well as courting him as an ally against Islamism. They embraced the Gadhafi family before Megrahi was even released but were equally craven in their denunciations.
The great irony is that when the West realised that Gadhafi was neither going to change nor be reliable they turned on him once more.
Robin Cook became Foreign Secretary in 1997 amid much fanfare about an ethical foreign policy. That lasted a matter of weeks before arms sales to Indonesia intervened and a muting of the sound was required.
To be fair, Cook was a good man who tried to do the right thing and showed his mettle and his principles by resigning from office over the Iraq War. However, it also showed how difficult it can be to abide by ethical values when the needs of a state intrude. (...)
However, New Labour gave up any pretence of an ethical foreign policy after Tony Blair rode shotgun for George W Bush on the invasion of Iraq. It was without any ethical basis and predicated on a lie. Having supped with the devil, Blair seemed to lose any moral scruples on foreign policy, as shown by the shameless behaviour over Libya.
When news of a UK and Libya ‘Prisoner Transfer Agreement’ first broke, Jack Straw sallied north to appease the new SNP administration’s concerns about its effect on Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The UK Justice Secretary seemingly genuinely willing to remove Scotland’s only Libyan prisoner from the document until overruled by the Treasury and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which made clear the demands of Libya and the needs of the British state. [RB: See Jack Straw and the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement.]
Straw was no innocent on Libyan affairs as shown by the parliamentary apology tendered last week over the case of Abdel Belhaj, a Libyan dissident rendered into the Gadhafi regime’s hands by the US with the complicity of the UK. (...)
Belhaj and his pregnant wife weren’t the only prisoners rendered to Gadhafi’s Libya by the CIA and UK’s security services. There were others and they were returned to a despot that the UK was imposing international sanctions on and rightly condemned. To be fair to Cook, his initial involvement with Libya was simply to seek the release of the Lockerbie suspects for the trial that took place at Camp Zeist. His successors though discarded all pretence at justice and policy was dictated by the shameless pursuit of UK economic interests, irrespective of the welfare of innocents.
When Blair made his deal in the desert and embraced Gadhafi, other connected events quickly followed. First was the signing of a huge oil deal and second the commencement of the prisoner renditions. For the deal was a two-way street with benefits for the Libyan regime as much as the UK. It wasn’t just a lessening of sanctions but also involved the supply of arms and even the training of Gadhafi’s elite troops by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
That was exposed in an Amnesty International report shortly after I made the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds – and not because of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement. Individuals are entitled to their view on that, but the criticism of it by Labour was brazen given the actions they were involved in. America was equally Brazen with Clinton and Obama pursuing commercial deals with Libya, as well as courting him as an ally against Islamism. They embraced the Gadhafi family before Megrahi was even released but were equally craven in their denunciations.
The great irony is that when the West realised that Gadhafi was neither going to change nor be reliable they turned on him once more.
Thursday 24 August 2017
Neutral venue Lockerbie trial accepted by UK and USA
[On this date in 1998 the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States, succumbing to international pressure, announced that they had reversed their stance on the matter of a "neutral venue" trial, such as I had proposed (and the Libyan Government, and the Libyan lawyer for Megrahi and Fhimah, had accepted) in January 1994. What follows is the text of a report published on the website of The Independent on the evening of 24 August:]
Britain and the United States took the unprecedented step yesterday of agreeing to hold a special trial in The Hague, under Scottish law, to bring to justice the alleged terrorists behind the Lockerbie bombing.
In a U-turn by the two governments, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said the decision to hold the trial in a neutral country 10 years after the bombing of PanAm 103, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground, should be seen as a signal to other terrorists responsible for the attacks on the US embassies in East Africa that "however long it takes, they will be brought to justice".
The trial could take place by next May, but there was widespread scepticism at the highest levels of Government that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would surrender the two suspects for trial - Abdul Basset al-Megrahi and al- Amin Khalifa Fhimah - despite repeated Libyan demands for a trial in a neutral country, such as the Netherlands.
"I cannot answer for Colonel Gaddafi. His government has said they would accept a trial by a Scottish court with Scottish judges. If they choose not to take up that offer, it will very severely undermine the credibility that they will have for making that undertaking earlier this year," said Mr Cook. He added that sanctions against Libya could be lifted the moment the two accused were handed over for trial. The terms were not negotiable. The Lord Advocate, Lord Hardie, said the two could not be tried in their absence. There will be extradition proceedings, and, if they submit themselves for trial, a full committal procedure with a trial by three Scottish judges under full Scottish law held within 110 days.
They would be held "in a special facility" in The Hague by Scottish prison officers until the trial, and if found guilty, would serve their sentence in Scotland. Lord Hardie rejected calls for an international court, with a presiding Scottish judge, "because there is no body of international criminal law and procedure under which it could operate".
The move won support from Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Tory Lord Advocate at the time of the bombing. He said that,10 years on, "the anguish of the relatives of all those who died in the tragedy and the way that conspiracy theories have proliferated" dictated holding a trial.
Families of the victims welcomed the decision. Jim Swire whose 23-year- old daughter, Flora, died on flight 103 on 21 December 1988, was "euphoric". He said: "Anyone in their right mind would welcome this decision." Mr Swire, the spokesman for the UK Families Flight 103 group, said: "This is something that our group have been working for six years for."
Alistair Duff, Scottish lawyer for the two Libyans, said the issue of the judges was not insurmountable. But Mr Duff told BBC Radio the men would need various reassurances, such as the condition of their custody and access to lawyers before agreeing to leave Tripoli.
Until recently the British and American governments maintained that the Libyans must be handed over for trial in Britain or the United States.
The US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, announcing the joint proposal in Washington, called for Libya to end its "10 years of evasion". She said: "We now challenge Libya to turn promises into deeds. The suspects should be surrendered for trial promptly."
The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, welcomed the joint initiative and offered the UN's services to arrange the transfer of the accused men to the Netherlands, if Libya agreed. Details of the proposed compromise were to be given to Tripoli by Mr Annan.
The US and Britain are expected to submit the draft of a new resolution to the UN Security Council that will envisage an end to international sanctions against Libya if it agrees to surrender the accused men for trial.
[RB: The UK/US government statement is contained in a letter to the UN Secretary-General. It can be read here.]
Saturday 8 July 2017
Restoration of diplomatic relations with Libya
[The following are three snippets from this date in 1999 that appear on the Libya: News and Views website:]
The UK has announced it is restoring full diplomatic links with Libya after a break of 15 years. The move follows the Libyan Government's acceptance of "general responsibility" for the killing of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot dead outside its London embassy in 1984. It has also agreed to pay substantial compensation to the Fletcher family and to co-operate in the investigation to find the killer. The compensation is understood to reach six figures, although the actual amount is not being revealed. [BBC]
Libya's UN ambassador on Wednesday attributed Libya's thaw in relations with Britain to Tripoli's surrender of two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing case and said it was time UN sanctions were lifted. Ambassador Abuzed Omar Dorda said a resumption of ties with Britain, announced by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, “is the natural thing.” Dorda was reacting to Cook's announcement on Wednesday that London was resuming diplomatic relations with Libya after Tripoli agreed to cooperate in police investigations into the 1984 shooting of a British policewoman outside Libya's embassy in London. Cook told parliament Libya had also agreed to pay compensation for the killing. [Reuters]
The United States will not follow Britain's example and resume ties with Libya, at least until Tripoli offers compensation for the Americans killed over Lockerbie in 1988, the State Department said on Wednesday. Britain is reopening diplomatic relations after 15 years because Tripoli has agreed to cooperate in police investigations into the fatal shooting in 1984 of a British policewoman outside Libya's embassy in London. In Washington, US State Department spokesman James Foley noted the Libyan concessions and said the United States would seek the same for the families of victims of Pan Am flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie in Scotland. [Reuters]
Monday 10 April 2017
The waiting game of Lockerbie
[This is the headline over an article that appeared in the Melbourne newspaper The Age on this date in 1999. The following are excerpts:]
The Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands will be neither brisk nor easy for lawyers or the accused, writes Sonia Harford.
The accused wear their own clothes and receive visitors. Part of the bustle in and out of the camp gates is catering staff who provide meals in strict accordance with the Libyans' Muslim requirements. A prayer room has also been provided with a compass indicating the direction of Mecca.
Up the road in Soesterberg proper, the Dutch locals are characteristically phlegmatic. They notice and quite enjoy the barrage of media passing through, but become more enthusiastic when remarking on how the presence of the Scots will boost local business.
The Americans abandoned Camp Zeist four years ago, and with them went many guilders spent in the town on food and other supplies. "The Americans bought lots of fruit," said Toft the Groenteman (vegetableman) from his fruit and , vegetable shop in Rademakerstraat. "When they were here, everyone from the petrol station to McDonald's benefited."
Bartender Rob Westra, having an off-duty beer at the Het Wapen van Soesterberg bar, had a different form of self-interest. "You have to be careful with the drinking now, because the whole village is full of police."
About 100 Scottish prison service staff and police are assigned to guard the camp at any given time, housed in dormitories inside the gates. When the trial begins, the converted buildings will also house legal teams and witnesses.
Anyone expecting an air of menace at the prison compound will be disarmed by the site's tranquility. Local residents walk or cycle past, just metres from the camp gates. And, nearby, visitors continue to arrive at the aviation museum, a popular collection of old planes and jets dotted around the flat ground.
Depending on their cell's location, it's not impossible that the two Libyan suspects could hear the chatter and laughter of children playing outside the prison grounds.
The detention of the two men comes after a decade of US and British legal and diplomatic manoeuvering to force Libya to hand over the suspects for trial before a Scottish court.
In 1991, Britain and the US said investigations into the crash had unearthed evidence that pointed towards Tripoli. But Libya's President, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, refused to surrender the prime suspects, claiming they would not receive a fair trial outside Libya, frustrating the US and British authorities and the hopes of the victims' families.
The Netherlands is regarded as having sound experience, having hosted the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. Gaddafi continued to delay, and, in February, the US laid down a deadline, demanding the suspects surrender within a month. By March, Gaddafi finally agreed. The two men would be handed over.
The men are described as airline officials for Libyan Arab Airlines, but are believed to be intelligence agents. Both have denied the charges. It has been alleged that a more senior agent, perhaps even Gaddafi, was behind the bombing, but he has denied any involvement.
The surrender has long been sought by the British, and the week's Government statements had a subtle air of triumph. "There can be no question of prejudging the outcome, but the very fact that the trial will now take place represents real and significant progress," said the Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar.
Immediately after the suspects' arrival at the renamed HM Prison Zeist, the UN suspended its sanctions against Libya, leading this week to speculation that European oil companies, sensing an oil boom, will soon renew investment links with the country. However, Washington is expected to continue sanctions it imposed independently in the '80s when terrorist incidents forced Americans to leave Libya.
A Scottish Office spokeswoman said the level of international cooperation at Camp Zeist was unprecedented. "Never before has there been a Scottish trial taking place on foreign ground," she said. It was also likely to be the longest and most expensive Scottish trial ever.
In the week that Scotland began an historic election campaign for its own Parliament, the legal procedures begun at Camp Zeist also came under scrutiny. The Lockerbie bombing trial will be heard by a panel of three Scottish judges no jury, as it is believed to be almost impossible to find Scottish residents not prejudiced by reporting of the Lockerbie bombing. Most observers believe the trial could be a long process for the legal teams and the victims' families, and could last up to a year.
Scottish law requires that those charged with murder must be tried within 110 days, but it is widely believed in the Lockerbje case that the defence , lawyers will ask for an extension to examine investigations going back over 10 years.
If convicted, the men will serve their sentences at the high-security Barlinnie Jail in Glasgow, monitored by UN observers. The trial is not expected to begin for several months. For now, the prisoners are on remand.
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, 46, and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, 42, were this week handed over to Dutch authorities and charged with mutder and conspiracy in connection with the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Their arrest marks the culmination of years of intense international efforts to bring the men" to trial.
The two are accused of planting a bomb, concealed in a cassette recorder, that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York on 21 December, 1988, killing 270 people on board the plane and on the ground in the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
On Monday, the two Libyan suspects left Tripoli seven years after they were indicted by Britain and the US. The next day they made their first appearance before a Scottish sheriff, Graham Cox QC, in a makeshift courtroom in the Netherlands. Officials read out the warrants for their arrest in English and Arabic and, in a brief hearing, the suspects made no plea.
As the Libyans settle in, their arrival focuses world attention on Soesterberg, a quiet Dutch town outside the city of Utrecht. Under an extraordinary, UN-brokered diplomatic deal, the Netherlands has ceded a small patch of its territory to Scotland for the term of the trial to satisfy Libya's demands that the charges be heard in a neutral country.
In a matter of months, Camp Zeist, a former US air base, has been refitted to provide a secure prison and courtroom under Scottish jurisdiction. As a result, Scottish prison staff and Dutch police share guard duties at the camp's front gate, beyond which lie 40 hectares deemed to be Scottish soil.
In the past week, residents of Soesterberg have become accustomed to a large media pack descending on their community, and police and military vehicles making regular convoys through their homely streets. Camp Zeist is reached at the end of a long, straight road lined with quaint brown cottages. Over a freeway bridge, on a grassed heath, the former base is a surprisingly pleasant place ("not when it rains" mutters a Scottish guard), ringed by forest and trees blossoming in the European spring.
The two-metre front gates, covered in plastic, appear hastily erected at what is regarded as a temporary facility, which is surrounded by a long perimeter fence. The front gates swing open regularly as armed police, and catering staff enter the camp.
In 1992 the United Nations tried to force Libya's hand by imposing sanctions, banning air travel to and from Libya, and prohibiting trade in equipment used in the nation's vital oil industry. Intense international pressure followed, including the tireless efforts of one victim's father, Jim Swire, who represented the other families, and whose patient, lined face became a moving symbol of their struggle for justice.
Last year, after South Africa's President Nelson Mandela had helped mediate, Britain made some headway in bringing the suspects to trial. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook suggested the Netherlands as an impartial third party.
Tuesday 14 February 2017
Approaching the end game
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has said that efforts to bring to trial two Libyan suspects in the 1988 airliner bombing over the Scottish town of Lockerbie "could be approaching the end game".
Britain, the United States and Libya are nearer than ever to an accord on trying two Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 but looseremain, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said on Sunday (February 14).
"What we now need is to tie down the general agreement to the principle of a trial in the Netherlands, with a very clear specific undertaking from (Libyan leader) Colonel (Muammar) Gaddafi," Cook told reporters.
"What we want to see is justice carried out in a fair and open trial.We now look as if we are closer to that than we have ever been so far," he said during a break in diplomatic efforts to broker a peace in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
South Africa said on Saturday that envoys from Pretoria and Saudi Arabia, who had been in talks this week with Gaddafi, had reached agreement over trying the men accused of the bombing of the Pan American jetliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
A total of 270 people, mostly Americans, were killed when the plane blew up and crashed.
Cook, speaking to reporters from the steps of the chateau in Rambouillet outside Paris where the Kosovo talks are taking place, said he would talk to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan about the agreement later in the day.
Libya has been under UN sanctions since 1992 over its refusal to surrender the two suspects in the bombing, Abdel Basset Ali Mohammed al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.
"I'm not going to sigh with relief until the two men touch down in the Netherlands.But I am encouraged at the progress that has been made.After months of very hard progress, it looks as if we could be approaching the end game," Cook said.
Cook said on Saturday that Britain and the United States would not compromise on insisting that the suspects serve any sentence in a Scottish prison if they were found guilty by a court in the Netherlands.
Bert Ammerman, a New Jersey school principal whose brother, Tom, was killed in the bombing, said he and other relatives of victims won't believe Gaddafi has agreed to cooperate until they actually see the defendants arrive in the Hague, where a trial would be held.
[RB: Megrahi and Fhimah arrived at Camp Zeist on 5 April 1999.]
Friday 2 December 2016
Kofi Annan in Lockerbie trial mission
[This is the headline over a report that appeared in The Independent on this date in 1998. It reads as follows:]
Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, is expected to meet Muammar Gaddafi this weekend, amid mounting speculation that the Libyan leader is on the verge of handing over two suspects, wanted for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Speaking in Algiers, Mr Annan said he was in contact with the Libyan Government, and "might go" to Libya when he ends a visit to Tunisia.
In fact it is assumed he will go - and, possibly, seal arrangements for Abdel Basset Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah to face trial at a court in The Hague.
With the 10th anniversary of the destruction of PanAm's flight 103 just 18 days away, the Foreign Office is bending over backwards to avoid any impression of a deadline.
Only too aware of Mr Gaddafi's proven capacity for stalling, officials in London merely express encouragement at the "serious engagement" of the Libyans in seeking a resolution of the issue.
Exactly what Mr Annan will do in Tripoli is unclear.
If the end game is at hand, he would be expected to confirm that, once the suspects had been surrendered, the UN's sanctions against Libya would be lifted.
But during a phone conversation last week with Mr Annan, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, made it clear that there could be no negotiation.
The ball, Britain insists, is firmly in the Libyan court. The hope is, as one official put it, "that Annan's going there will be a peg for Gaddafi to make an announcement."
But the Libyan's intentions are as mysterious as ever. Years of total deadlock were broken in August when the US and Britain, fearful that UN sanctions aimed at isolating Libya were slowly dying by default, abandoned their long standing insistence that the two men's trial be held in Scotland or America.
In return, Tripoli seemed to agree in principle to hand over the suspects.
Nonetheless, prevarication over the details had continued, before the waters were further muddied last week by reports from Tripoli of the trial and imprisonment of three senior Libyan security officials, allegedly on the grounds of "dereliction of duty" over the bombing, in which 270 people were killed.
That step was interpreted in some quarters as a sign that the crucial breakthrough was at hand, and that by jailing three key witnesses who would otherwise have been called to testify in The Hague, the Libyans were seeking to make it hard, if not impossible, to convict Megrahi and Fhimah.
Other analysts however maintain that the three - one of them the brother- in-law of Mr Gaddafi himself - are so senior that their belated "imprisonment", if such it is, may presage a definitive refusal to deliver the two men accused by the West of actually planting the suitcase bomb which blew the PanAm Jumbo jet apart.
According to this theory, the Libyan president would argue that the individuals who had plotted the crime had been punished and justice done, so that no grounds any longer existed for a trial of the mere foot soldiers in Britain's worst ever terrorist outrage.
Friday 4 November 2016
Steps on the path towards a neutral venue trial
[The following are two snippets published on this date in 1997 on the Libya: News and Views website:]
The head of the Arab League said on Sunday that Libya would never extradite two of its citizens to Britain or the United States for trial on charges of bombing a US airliner in 1988. Esmat Abdel-Meguid told a news conference on the sidelines of a symposium on the future of the Arab world [in Abu Dhabi] that Libya maintained its offer to let the two men stand trial in a neutral country but with Scottish judges. “Libya would not turn over its citizens because, under international law, it is not possible for one country to surrender its citizens to another country unless the two are bound by a mutual extradition agreement,” Abdel-Meguid said. [Reuter]
Libya has said it is impossible for two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing to get a fair trial in Scotland although the Scottish justice system is fair. The Libyan Foreign Ministry said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's invitation to the United Nations to send observers to Scotland to evaluate the Scottish legal system in action was a ploy to undermine other initiatives to solve the problem. “Libya does not doubt the fairness of the Scottish judiciary or its equity,” the Libyan Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued at the weekend and obtained from the official Libyan news agency JANA on Monday. “But...the campaign through the press and statements by officials in Britain and the United States has led to a prior condemnation of the two suspects, ruling out any possibility of a fair and just trial for them in Scotland,” it added. [Reuter]
The head of the Arab League said on Sunday that Libya would never extradite two of its citizens to Britain or the United States for trial on charges of bombing a US airliner in 1988. Esmat Abdel-Meguid told a news conference on the sidelines of a symposium on the future of the Arab world [in Abu Dhabi] that Libya maintained its offer to let the two men stand trial in a neutral country but with Scottish judges. “Libya would not turn over its citizens because, under international law, it is not possible for one country to surrender its citizens to another country unless the two are bound by a mutual extradition agreement,” Abdel-Meguid said. [Reuter]
Libya has said it is impossible for two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing to get a fair trial in Scotland although the Scottish justice system is fair. The Libyan Foreign Ministry said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's invitation to the United Nations to send observers to Scotland to evaluate the Scottish legal system in action was a ploy to undermine other initiatives to solve the problem. “Libya does not doubt the fairness of the Scottish judiciary or its equity,” the Libyan Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued at the weekend and obtained from the official Libyan news agency JANA on Monday. “But...the campaign through the press and statements by officials in Britain and the United States has led to a prior condemnation of the two suspects, ruling out any possibility of a fair and just trial for them in Scotland,” it added. [Reuter]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)