BP says Hayward won't testify at hearing

BP has said that outgoing chief executive Tony Hayward will not testify at a US Senate hearing examining whether the British oil giant influenced the release of the Lockerbie bomber, the office of Senator Robert Menendez said on Tuesday. (...)

BP has offered to send another representative to testify at Thursday's hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be chaired by Menendez, an aide to the senator told Reuters, without giving the BP official's name.

[From a Reuters news agency report on the ABC News website.

Perhaps Sen Menendez might learn some lessons or pick up some hints from "What if you threw a party and no-one came?"]

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

[What follows is an excerpt from an article headed Alex Salmond is in the US schmoozing away. But Americans won't forget in a hurry that he freed the Lockerbie bomber by Professor Tom Gallagher, a virulently anti-SNP commentator, published today on The Telegraph website:]

Whether a coincidence or not, at the start of Alex Salmond’s five-day visit to the United States, the Scottish National Party has suddenly launched a peace offensive after a bruising referendum campaign that has raised fears that society will be polarised for years to come. Party sources have told a Scottish newspaper that they intend to concentrate their energies on healing political wounds if Scotland votes Yes.

But to those who recall SNP rhetoric about the party preserving the best of Britishness in a social union, it needs to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt. It smacks too much of a serial wife-beater turning round to his family after a traumatic night and saying that from now on life will be totally different.

It remains to be seen if the era of good tidings will last beyond the conclusion of Salmond’s trip which includes a speaking engagement at the IMF in Washington DC. He can turn from being a political bruiser to acting as a charmer in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately for him, plenty of Americans, both influential folk and everyday citizens, have seen both sides of the coin.

It is not only relatives of the 180 US citizens killed when a bomb blew up a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 who were astonished when his government released the man convicted by a Scottish court, in 2001, for the attack on the grounds that he had little time left to live. The release of the Libyan national Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was announced with much fanfare on 20 August 2009. Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice minister, read a long statement insisting that the decision was based on "the values, beliefs, and common humanity that defines us as Scots". Hillary Clinton, then the US Secretary of State, twice spoke to MacAskill in the hope that he would reconsider the release of al-Megrahi who, instead of dying within weeks, enjoyed a comfortable life in a Tripoli suburb until 2012. [RB: It requires a really quite special sensibility to describe taking over two years to die of cancer in a war-ravaged and militia-ridden locality as enjoying a comfortable life in a Tripoli suburb.]

On 15 August 2009, Robert Mueller III, director of the FBI for nearly a decade, wrote to MacAskill in terms which had rarely been used between a senior US official and a friendly government:

"I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors. Your decision to release al-Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice… I do so because I am familiar with the facts of the law , having been the assistant Attorney general in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991. And I do so because I am outraged by your decision, blithely defended on the grounds of “compassion”’. [RB: More details about Robert Mueller’s “foolish and intemperate letter” (as I described it) can be found here. I commented: “In civilised countries decisions regarding liberation of prisoners are not placed in the hands of policemen and prosecutors, nor are they accorded a veto over those decisions. Mr Mueller (and Mr Marquise) would probably wish that this were otherwise. The rest of us can be grateful that it is not.”]

The British lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, the first president of the UN war crimes court [RB: Not so. He sat as an appeal judge in the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, something rather different.], observed that the decision taken was ‘lacking in compassion to every victim of terrorism and made an absurdity of the principle of punishment as a deterrent' ". [RB: Geoffrey Robertson’s idiosyncratic views on the Lockerbie case and Megrahi’s release can be followed here.]

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened hearings on the affair but Salmond refused point-blank to cooperate. [RB: this is tendentious in the extreme. A more accurate account of the episode can be found here and here.]

It is hard to imagine such a scenario being played out if the Pan Am flight had exploded over Irish, Danish or even French territory. It is likely that the authorities of each of these countries would have avoided such a rupture in bilateral relations with an allied country.

Senators want UK officials at Lockerbie hearing

[This is the headline over a report from Associated Press just published on the website of The Washington Post. It reads in part:]

British and Scottish officials who have declined to appear at a hearing this week on the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi should reconsider in order to dispel "a cloud of suspicion" over the issue, two US senators said Monday.

US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Sen Robert Menendez of New Jersey, standing in Times Square along with relatives of some of those killed in the bombing, said it was important to get the facts surrounding the circumstances of al-Meghrahi's 2009 release. The senators are probing whether an oil exploration deal between oil giant BP and Libya influenced the decision. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has a hearing scheduled for Thursday.

"The abundance of incredible coincidences surrounding al-Megrahi's release deserves a real open, transparent hearing," Menendez said Monday.

"A cloud of suspicion will hang over the entire issue at least until all the looming questions are answered," he added.

[Does anyone think for even an instant that "a real open, transparent hearing" could be obtained before a committee composed of these grandstanding clowns?]

Alex Salmond will not publish Lockerbie bomber medical records

[This is the headline over a report just published on The Guardian website. The following are extracts:]

Alex Salmond is to reject renewed calls from a group of US senators to publish the full medical records of the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

The first minister's officials are writing a "courteous" letter to the four Democrat senators turning down their requests to disclose Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's private medical reports, with the names and expertise of his doctors, and to ask the Libyan for permission to release the papers. (...)

Salmond officials will tell the four senators that the only published statement on al-Megrahi's illness, written by Andrew Fraser, director of health with the Scottish prison service and released last year, is the definitive medical report.

They believe medical notes written by his doctors and specialists should remain private as they belong to him as the patient. It is understood that al-Megrahi would also refuse that request.

Scottish government officials privately believe the four senators are exploiting the issue for domestic political reasons: Gillibrand and Schumer are fighting for reelection in November.

Sources in Edinburgh point out their demands have not been supported by the Senate's foreign relations committee, which first began an inquiry into allegations that BP influenced al-Megrahi's release. Of the four, only Menendez and Gillibrand are committee members.

But the senator's demands were supported by the Scottish Labour party and Scottish Tories, who repeated their requests for the full disclosure of all the medical evidence.

James Kelly, Labour's community safety spokesman and the brother of al-Megrahi's Scottish lawyer, Tony Kelly, said MacAskill should have nothing to hide. "The Scottish government keep talking about the array of doctors that were spoken to but no one knows what they actually said," Kelly said.

"It's time for full transparency and anything less that full disclosure smacks of cover-up."

Tony Kelly would not comment on his client's views.

Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Tory leader, said: "Every day that the SNP refuses to publish their evidence, suspicions only grow that the prison doctor's opinion was not supported by the cancer experts. Until we see that evidence, we do not know."

[James Kelly and Annabel Goldie should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. But they are, of course, respectively, Labour and Tory politicians so perhaps no better can be expected. It is to be hoped that the First Minister in his letter to the senators does not overdo the courtesy.]

US declines to allow release of note of MacAskill-Holder phone call

The Obama administration has no plans to release any further correspondence with Scotland relating to the release of the Libyan convicted in the Lockerbie bombing.

“Nothing more needs to be released,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told CNSNews on Monday, after the department made public the text of a letter sent to Scottish ministers eight days before Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was freed and flown home to Libya.

Earlier, the Scottish government said there were two documents relating to last year’s correspondence between Scottish and US officials on Megrahi, which the US government had withheld permission for Edinburgh to release. (...)

The second document cited by Scotland was described as “our note of the conversation” between Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill and Attorney General Eric Holder. The two apparently spoke by telephone on June 26, 2009.

Ahead of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the matter scheduled for Thursday, CNSNews asked Crowley whether that final, still-unreleased document would now be made available.

Crowley said there were multiple phone conversations “over a number of months” with Scottish officials relating to Megrahi, involving Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration officials.

He questioned how the US would be in a position to verify the authenticity of a Scottish description of a single conversation. “How can we agree on a Scottish account of a phone conversation between leaders?”

Crowley said that all phone conversations on the matter were consistent with the position laid out in the LeBaron letter – “that Megrahi should never leave Scotland.”

[The above are excerpts from a report just published on the CNS News website.]

Megrahi's conviction "entirely unsustainable"

The White House has told Scottish Ministers that they should return the Lockerbie bomber to jail in Scotland, amid fresh calls for a full public inquiry into his conviction and subsequent release.

John Brennan, counter-terrorism adviser to President Barack Obama, said Washington had expressed "strong conviction" to officials in Edinburgh over what he described as the "unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision" to free Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. (...)

But campaigners who believe in Megrahi's innocence are now arguing that the backlash over his freeing should not obscure more fundamental questions surrounding his conviction.

It came as it emerged that the Egyptian-born terrorist Mohammed Abu Talb - the man many suspect as the real figure behind the bomb - was released from jail in Sweden.

Michael Mansfield QC, one of the country's best-known defence lawyers, said a full judicial inquiry was required to settle the doubts over the case. Mansfield said he had no doubt that the evidence given to secure Megrahi's conviction was "entirely unsustainable".

[From a report in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday.

The same newspaper runs an opinion piece by Kenny Farquharson headlined "Scotland itself is in the dock" arguing that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice should go to Washington to testify on the compassionate release decision before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As is so often the case with Scotsman publications these days, the readers' comments are much more interesting than the article.]

US Senator Robert Menendez 'faces corruption charge'

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

The US justice department is preparing to bring criminal corruption charges against Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, US media reports say.

The politician from New Jersey is alleged to have used his office to promote the interests of a Democratic donor, in exchange for gifts.

Attorney General Eric Holder has reportedly given prosecutors permission to proceed with charges.

Senator Menendez has labelled the probe a smear campaign.

"I am not going anywhere," he said on Friday at a press conference in New Jersey.

"Let me very clear, very clear. I have always conducted myself appropriately and in accordance with the law."

An official announcement from prosecutors is expected in the coming weeks.

Sen Menendez is one of the highest-ranking Hispanic members of Congress and a former chairman of the Senate's foreign relations committee.

[Senator Menendez has been one of the most high-profile US politicians to intervene in Lockerbie matters. His history in this regard can be followed here.]

Libyan oil official: Lockerbie wasn't part of BP talks

[This is the headline over a report on the CNN website. It reads in part:]

A top Libyan oil official on Friday denied allegations of an agreement to free the Lockerbie bomber in exchange for bolstered BP commercial interests in the country.

Britain and Libya had sparred over whether Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi should be included in a prisoner transfer agreement the two nations were negotiating. Under the agreement, Libyan prisoners in Britain would be transferred to Libya to serve out their sentences.

British officials and BP said the oil company's interests -- mainly, seeking a huge deal to drill for oil in Libya -- were a consideration in those talks.

In the end, al Megrahi was included in the transfer agreement, but he was never transferred to a Libyan jail. Instead, he was freed on what officials in Scotland said were humanitarian grounds separate from the agreement. (...)

"I was leading the negotiations on BP," said Shokri Ghanem, chairman of the National Oil Corp of Libya, [and a former prime minister] in an interview Friday with CNN's Richard Quest.

"I was the person who was negotiating the technical [points] and the whole agreement" for the oil company to drill off the Libyan coast, he said. "I never spoke on any political [issues], not did I accept any political interference."

Ghanem insisted Friday that the oil agreement was ratified in 2007 -- two years before al Megrahi's release. (...)

Earlier Friday, Britain's ambassador to the United States, Nigel Sheinwald, said the government believes it was wrong to let al Megrahi out of prison in August 2009 and return to his native Libya, but it was a decision taken by the Scottish executive, not the British government. Scotland has its own government that is responsible for most of the day-to-day issues there, including the justice system. (...)

The ambassador's statement came a day after the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced it will hold a hearing July 29 to examine whether BP may have played a role in lobbying for al Megrahi's release.

Ghanem dismissed the announcement as political posturing. "The US can do any hearing they want, this is their business," he said. "But we're a sovereign country. ... American Congress can do whatever they want, but senators, they have to give the impression they are US senators."

First Minister's letter to US Senators

[What follows is the text of the First Minister's most recent letter to Senators Menendez, Lautenberg, Gillibrand and Schumer.]

Thank you for your letters of 19 and 20 August 2010.

Your letter of 19 August attempts to suggest that there is circumstantial evidence that commercial interests played a role in the release of Al-Megrahi. This seems to be a considerable weakening of your original position, but is still totally wrong. There is no evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that links decisions made by the Scottish Government to commercial interests. Indeed, the substantial evidence that does exist shows that the Scottish Government specifically rejected any attempt to bring commercial or business considerations into the decision-making process on compassionate release, and stated that decisions would be based on judicial grounds alone.

I am also concerned that, in your letter of 20 August, you once again quote from letters published by the Scottish Government setting out the representations that were made to us, without drawing attention to the responses which make clear that commercial considerations would play no part in the decision-making process. To then accuse the Scottish Government of selectively publishing correspondence, when it is you who are selectively quoting from material published proactively by the Scottish Government, significantly undermines your credibility.

The evidence of commercial influence that does exist relates to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) that the UK Government signed with Libya. Indeed, you quote Saif Gaddaffi as publicly commenting that the commercial issues were related to the PTA.

As I highlighted in my letter of 2 August, it was the Scottish Government, on 7 June 2007, which first drew attention to the UK Government's negotiations with the Libyan Government, highlighting our strong opposition to them. I asked you, in my letter of 15 August, for copies of any public comments on this important issue which you may have made at the time, either individually or collectively. It appears that when the Scottish Government was using every means at its disposal to oppose the PTA between the UK and Libya, you were silent.

You refer to extensive correspondence between the Scottish and UK Governments regarding the PTA. Once again, however, you fail to mention that this shows the Scottish Government consistently opposing the signing of any PTA unless it specifically excluded Al-Megrahi. This, and the fact that the application for prisoner transfer was rejected, fatally undermines your line of argument.

You refer to comments that the Scottish Government would have to deal with the consequences of the UK's decision not to exclude Al-Megrahi from the PTA with Libya. This is a statement of fact. The UK Government had gone against our wishes and left the Scottish Government to deal with any application for prisoner transfer that was submitted, a situation that it is clear we were and are very unhappy with. You suggest that it is uncertain how the Scottish Government dealt with those consequences. This is simply not true. The consideration and rejection of the prisoner transfer application are matters of public record and to pretend otherwise, as you attempt to do, appears very contrived.

Your letter of 19 August goes on to conflate the process of application for prisoner transfer with the quite separate process of applying for compassionate release. I have explained these separate processes at some length in our previous correspondence. It is of great concern that, despite these explanations, you seem unable or unwilling to understand the nature of these separate legal processes.

On some of the points of detail you raise, I would note that the only redaction from the letter of 22 June to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office was the name of the UK Government official to whom it was addressed. Permission to publish this name has been refused by the UK Government and, in any event, has absolutely no bearing on the facts of the matter. In the 16 July 2009 letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice to the UK Foreign Secretary, the only passage that has been redacted is due to the US Government withholding permission to release material relating to it. Finally, the letter from the Qatari Minister which was attached to correspondence from the Qatari Embassy in London dated 31 July 2009 is available on the Scottish Government website. The letter from Khalid Bin Mohamed al-Attiyah, dated 17 July 2009, was also received direct and therefore appears twice in the correspondence on the website.

Given the consistent and compelling information I have now provided, I would ask you to confirm you accept that:

The Scottish Government had no contact with BP in relation to decisions made about Al-Megrahi; The Scottish Government consistently opposed the signing of a PTA between the UK and Libyan Governments unless Al-Megrahi was excluded; and The Scottish Government made the decision on compassionate release on judicial grounds alone and made this clear to those who made representations to us.

If you are not able to accept these irrefutable and well-evidenced facts, which I have set out clearly in our correspondence and are supported by extensive documentation, it calls into question your ability to conduct any credible and impartial investigation into these matters.

I am aware that staff from Senator Menendez's office have been in contact with my office to try to arrange meetings with Scottish Government Ministers and officials. As I have said previously, the Scottish Government has nothing to hide and nothing to fear from any properly constituted inquiry, but the Scottish Government is rightly accountable to the Scottish Parliament and not to the US Senate. Nevertheless, as a matter of courtesy, I would be willing to make appropriate officials available to meet staff from your offices should they decide to visit Scotland. The purpose of any such meeting would be to provide whatever further background information may be helpful to your understanding of these matters. Officials would not be giving evidence in any formal context.

There are other points of detail in your 19 August 2010 letter, but none of these raises any new issues of substance or challenge the view that the decisions the Scottish Government made in relation to Al-Megrahi were made with integrity and according to the due process of Scots Law.

I believe that the Scottish Government has given every assistance to you and to the Foreign Relations Committee on this matter and, as noted above, I am content to offer the courtesy of an official level meeting if staff from your offices visit Scotland. However, as your recent letters raise no new issues of substance, I am now drawing a line under this correspondence.

Alex Salmond

Doubt, guilt and Megrahi

[This is the heading over a letter from Martin Allen in today's edition of the Sunday Herald. It reads as follows:]

It used to be the case that, to secure a conviction, it had to be shown “beyond reasonable doubt” that the accused had committed the crime (Lockerbie: now pressure switches to America, News, July 25). Now it seems that when a crime has been committed, justice is served if a guilty verdict is served on the person who seems most likely to have committed it, regardless of such holes as there may be in the prosecution’s case.

In the case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi there are such holes. His defence team were denied access to alleged key evidence, and the veracity of a key witness for the prosecution is thrown into doubt by evidence suggesting they were offered huge rewards by overseas organisations to testify.

Megrahi’s abandonment of his appeal cannot be taken as an admission of guilt, given the likelihood of his belief that to continue with it would prevent a compassionate release. His case is one in which a not proven verdict would have been appropriate. Since the Camp Zeist verdict cannot be changed except by a further court hearing, it would be appropriate if those legal experts who have reason to doubt his guilt were to sign a letter to that effect, addressed to the governments of Scotland, the UK, the US and Libya.

[An interesting suggestion. But I fear that such a letter would be pointless: the four governments mentioned just want the whole Lockerbie affair to go away. The only thing that will cause the first two to change their attitude is (a) extreme public and media pressure or (b) legal action that compels them to do so.

A letter from Kevin Donnelly in Scotland on Sunday reads:]

Scotland's reputation has again been dragged through the mud on a world stage, this time by a combination of US politicians seeking to boost their home popularity ahead of elections, a British Prime Minister keen to protect the reputation of oil giant BP, and some home politicians opposed to the SNP on any issue.

It was wrong and profoundly misguided of the four senators to use the world's media to summon Scotland's First Minister and justice secretary to account before its foreign affairs committee. It also displays a misunderstanding of the Scottish Government's role and limited powers under devolution.

The problem for the senators is that no one with half a brain believes the Scottish Government had any involvement with oil deals in the desert.

The fact remains that Kenny MacAskill rejected the Prisoner Transfer request (the basis of the oil deal claims), but was bound by precedent set by previous Scottish Governments and Scottish Office ministers to release al Megrahi on compassionate grounds - it's that simple.

While Scotland can be proud that First Minister Alex Salmond and his justice secretary were diplomatic but firm in their responses to the US Senate committee, we have witnessed the appalling spectacle of a UK prime minister, foreign secretary and ambassador in Washington falling over themselves in a clumsy effort to rubbish Scotland and defend BP.

It must now be a profound question for everyone in Scottish society whether Scottish foreign relations are best served by a UK Government, which has set itself so clearly and fundamentally against Scottish interests abroad.

Letter from Dr Swire to Senator Kerry

[What follows is the text of a letter sent yesterday by Dr Jim Swire to Senator John Kerry, chairman of the US Senate committee on foreign relations, which has scheduled a hearing into the release of Abdelbaset Megrahi. An article based on the letter can be found on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm.]

My deeply loved elder daughter Flora aged 23 was among the victims aboard the plane. I think that all affected families, both here and in the US would welcome knowing the whole truth about every aspect of who caused the disaster and why they were not stopped.

I’m sure we are all united in that, though many of those you represent are much more confident in believing in the integrity of the trial process to which Mr Megrahi was subjected than are some of us over here.

So may I welcome you and your band of 4 Senators in your search for aspects of that truth, but this letter proposes reasons why it would be wise to consider the question of why the atrocity was not prevented as well as Megrahi’s guilt or innocence rather than only the reasons for his release.

I do not feel proud of the circumstances that have led me to hope that representatives of the USA rather than my own nation should be searching for the truth on our behalf. Below are some reasons why that is now a hope for us.

A Fatal Accident Inquiry (= inquest) was held in Scotland which found that the disaster had been preventable, and that the aircraft had been under the ‘Host State Protection of the United Kingdom’ at all relevant times. The failure of any UK Prime Minister to date to inquire into this ghastly failure of UK responsibility is enough in itself to justify this letter appealing to you.

We have approached every Prime Minster to seek a full inquiry and been as often rejected. David Cameron has not had time to reply yet, but I think you should know a little of the roles of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair in particular.

Mrs Thatcher refused even to meet us (our group is called UK Families-Flight 103) to discuss an inquiry. She decreed that the Dumfries and Galloway (D&G) police, the UK's smallest police force should conduct the criminal investigation, even though she must have known that The Metropolitan police, through their special anti-terrorist branch, had already discovered a break-in at Heathrow airport the night before Lockerbie, which had given the untraced intruder access to the Iran Air facilities there, close to where bags were loaded for Pan Am 103 the next night.

The information concerning the break-in remained unknown to the Megrahi trial it only became known after the verdict had been reached,. when a junior Heathrow security man publicly complained that his evidence to the Metropolitan police early in 1989 had not been heard in the trial. Why did that happen?

In 1993 (two years after the indictment of the Libyans) Mrs Thatcher published a book The Downing Street Years. In it (p 449) she wrote that following the USAF raid on Tripoli/Bengazi in 1986 Gaddafi had been humbled and “the much vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place. There was a marked decrease in Libyan terrorism in succeeding years.”

‘Succeeding years’ would include 1988 and therefore the Lockerbie disaster. Why did she write that, though in power when Lockerbie happened?

We also requested Tony Blair to launch a full inquiry. He did meet with us but after a month of ‘asking the relevant people’ told us that ‘they’ did not consider any further inquiry necessary. When he went to see Colonel Gaddafi for the so called ‘Deal in the Desert’, the first we heard of it was through the media.

Scotland’s Criminal Case Review Commission meanwhile had found that the trial might well have been a miscarriage of justice, while the UN’s special observer to the trial, Professor Hans Koechler of Vienna had strongly criticised the trial as biased and the verdict as ‘incomprehensible’. Many jurists agree, and some would voluntarily give evidence before you.

As a result of the SCCRC’s comments Mr Megrahi’s case was referred back to the High Court in Edinburgh. Many believed that re-examination of the evidence would be bound to overturn the verdict.

However a succession of delays ensued, but even so Mr Jack Straw, the Labour government’s Minister of Justice was reduced to overriding the wishes of the House of Commons Select Committee on Human Rights, in order to have the Prisoner Transfer Agreement up and running by the start of the appeal.

Many thought this looked like an attempt to stop the appeal and thus ‘save’ the verdict by sending Mr Megrahi home. It was a unusual and unwelcome breech of custom for a Committee to be overridden in this way.

In the event the Scots did not use the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, but compassionate release, an option long enshrined in Scots law, when a prisoner has a short life prognosis (there is no ‘deadline’ of three months by the way) but for some reason Mr Megrahi withdrew his appeal, though this was not required for Compassionate release.

Was pressure put upon him to do so? Maybe a proper inquiry would answer that question too.

You may of course believe that it was pressure from BP which caused the panic, if Libya or BP were claiming that the UK was dragging her feet over her share of the ‘Deal in the Desert’.

Maybe you can find out whether it was that or a desire to 'protect' the verdict which motivated Mr Straw's precipitate actions.

Senator Kerry, I am heartened to hear that UK Prime Minister David Cameron has just undertaken to meet with you after all, according to today’s press. But I do wonder in view of the behaviour of successive UK governments, with all their delays and withholding of information over the past 21 years, and their failure to protect the plane in the first place, whether the Government of the UK is the right entity to hold an inquiry into this atrocity.

Would it be putting the fox in charge of the hencoop?

Previous UK governments have tried to ‘pass the buck’ to Scotland over the release of Megrahi, but there are far greater issues than that here. I do hope that David Cameron will be sufficiently independent of his predecessors to rebut the above fear: we too have just asked for a meeting with him to discuss an inquiry.

I understand that the Scottish authorities have agreed to cooperate with any appropriately empowered inquiry. Would you consider, in view of the multinational complexity of this case, whether a multinational board of respected individuals, a panel of jurists perhaps, should examine all aspects, including the behaviour of our Westminster administrations?

If so they would have to command the respect of the world and be seen to be independent of all those nations directly involved, which includes the USA of course. Such an inquiry would presumably require at least the full cooperation of the present UK administration.

Nelson Mandela said publicly just as the trial court was announced ‘No one country should be complainant prosecutor and judge’. We should not fall into the same trap again.

Please do not allow your determination to investigate this tragedy be thwarted by any one, it will be a tough call, but we relatives have a right to the whole truth.

MacAskill accuses his critics of hypocrisy

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

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill yesterday accused UK governments both past and present of hypocrisy after high-level condemnation of his decision to allow the man convicted of Lockerbie bombing to return home to die.

MacAskill said he would not apologise for freeing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, despite the fact that he has long outlived the medical opinion that he had only three months to live at the time of his release 11 months ago.

In an interview in yesterday’s Herald, David Milband, the former Foreign Secretary, said the decision to free Megrahi was wrong.

Responding, MacAskill stood by his decision to sanction the return of Megrahi to Tripoli on compassionate grounds, stressing that the Scottish Government was the sole opponent of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) between the UK and Libya.

The PTA followed the Deal in the Desert struck between Colonel Gaddafi and Tony Blair, which paved the way for BP to invest £450 million in exploring Libya’s vast oil reserves.

MacAskill said yesterday that Miliband was part of that government and should explain the details of the PTA to US senators, adding that the PTA was opposed by neither David Cameron nor William Hague at the time. He added: “I think there is a great deal of hypocrisy. If they are so opposed [to Megrahi’s release], why didn’t they oppose the PTA? At the end of the day, the only people to oppose the PTA was the Scottish Government. I don’t recall William Hague condemning the PTA.”

BP has admitted lobbying the British government in 2007 over a PTA with Libya, but denied specifically discussing Megrahi.

MacAskill said: “There are considerable questions that American senators are entitled to ask the UK Government but I can give every body a complete assurance that oil had never been a factor in my decision.

“There was before me an application for compassionate release to allow him to go home. We balance justice with mercy in this country.”

The Justice Secretary said he would be happy to assist US investigators if requested, but added that it was down to David Miliband and his colleagues to set out what they were doing “cavorting with Gaddafi.”

“There are questions about BP and the US Government. They are questions that I can’t answer. They are questions that David Miliband can answer.”

[An opinion piece by Brian Currie in the same newspaper headed "Just what don’t they get about devolution?" reads in part:]

What is it about devolution that Westminster politicians don’t understand?

After 11 years, it should be reasonable to assume even the most small-minded Little Englanders would know Scotland can make big decisions on its own.

But the message hasn’t penetrated some of the more obdurate minds of their Scottish colleagues in the Commons.

Comments by the hitherto unknown backbencher Daniel Kawczynski on the decision to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing suggest that the Scottish justice system and those in charge of it are somehow answerable to Westminster. Kawczynski was educated at Stirling University but perhaps he doesn’t realise the extent of the Scottish Government’s authority and maybe he is unaware that Scotland has its own judicial system.

But as chair of Westminster’s all-party committee on Libya he should know there have been two inquiries into the decision by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds.

A Scottish Parliament inquiry and another by Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Select Committee were clear in their conclusions, yet Kawczynski has written to David Cameron asking for Scottish Ministers to be held to account. Since Cameron can’t do this, perhaps he’s just trying to catch the PM’s eye in the hope of promotion.

It seems odd that a man who called for Megrahi to be used as a foreign policy bargaining chip chairs a committee whose aim is to promote and understand the culture, history and politics of Libya and engage in relations between that country’s legislature and the UK’s.

Some leeway, but not much, can be granted to the US Senators holding a hearing into whether there was a link between Megrahi’s release and BP oil deals. But they, too, should be better informed about what devolution means. America is a federal country and different states have different powers, the ultimate being the death penalty.

The Senators should surely grasp the concept of devolved powers and be able to distinguish between Prisoner Transfer Agreements between Westminster and Libya and the compassionate grounds on which the Scottish Government’s Justice Secretary based his decision. (...)

More than 50 US companies are reported to have signed contracts with Libya compared to four from the UK and the smell coming from the States isn’t just oil pollution – it’s the reek of hypocrisy.

It is also faintly nauseating to see the Prime Minister, his Foreign Secretary and Labour leadership favourite David Miliband queue up to blame MacAskill for releasing Megrahi. Would the decision have been different had it been made in Whitehall or would the interests of big business and the economy have resulted in the same outcome?

MacAskill had an enormous decision to make when considering whether to free the man convicted of murdering 270 people and the debate over whether he got it right or wrong remains the focus of controversy. In all the debate it seems to have been forgotten that people suffering from cancer are not given a set date on which to die and MacAskill acted only after considering the medical evidence that Megrahi had around three months to live.

Most importantly, however, the decision was taken in Scotland by a Scottish Government Minister and whether they sit in the US Senate or in the Commons, politicians should respect that because that is devolution in action. In this area Scotland is subservient to no-one.

[A Reuters news agency report contains the following comments from Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond:]

"We had no contact with BP either written or verbal or any lobbying of that kind as far as the process of compassionate release was concerned," Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond told BBC Radio 4. (...)

Salmond, who leads the pro-independence Scottish National Party and heads a minority government in Scotland's dissolved assembly, defended the decision to release Megrahi.

"You can only take a decision based on information at the time. It is not unheard of for people released on compassionate grounds to live longer than the estimated three months."

Salmond criticized former Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying he was negotiating on prisoner exchanges with Libya at the same time as discussing business deals in 2007 in what the Scottish leader called a "tainted process."

"I think it was deeply unfortunate that you should negotiate a prisoner transfer agreement on a judicial matter on the same day that you sign an agreement on oil exploration and concessions," Salmond said.

"But that's what the then Prime Minister Tony Blair did in June 2007." Blair visited Libya in late May 2007, a few weeks before he stood down as prime minister to be replaced by party colleague Gordon Brown. (...)

The agreement took effect in April 2009 but the Scottish authorities did not use it when releasing Megrahi, a fact that Salmond said proved there was no conspiracy.

"A lot of people would have wanted the Scottish government to invoke the Prisoner Transfer Agreement. If we had done then the U.S. Senators who are arguing for this conspiracy on economic and oil concessions would have something to go on," Salmond said.

[A similar report on The Scotsman website can be read here.]

Don’t limit Lockerbie probe to BP claims, campaigners urge US senators

[This is the headline over an article on the CNS News website by international editor Patrick Goodenough. It reads in part:]

If the US Senate wants to get to the bottom of the early release of the Libyan convicted in the Lockerbie bombing, it should look beyond allegations of links to an oil deal and ask whether the prisoner was sent home to preempt an appeal that could have overturned the trial verdict, campaigners said Wednesday.

Twenty-two years after Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, close observers of the drawn-out affair have many unanswered questions about the attack, the subsequent trial and conviction in 2001 of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.

The Senate Foreign Affairs Committee plans a hearing next Thursday on the “circumstances surrounding” Megrahi’s release last August. The Libyan was serving a life sentence in a Scottish prison for murdering 270 people, but after contracting terminal cancer was freed “on compassionate grounds,” with Scottish officials citing medical advice that he likely had three months to live.

Megrahi remains alive almost a year later, and a group of US Senators have called for answers, focused particularly on suspicions that British officials did a deal to safeguard a lucrative BP oil exploration contract in Libya.

BP acknowledges having lobbied the British government during negotiations between London and Tripoli in 2007 over a “prisoner transfer agreement” (PTA), concerned that delays in finalizing the deal could jeopardize its contract.

Scotland’s devolved government last summer rejected a Libyan request to send Megrahi home under the PTA (which would have seen him serve out his sentence in a Libyan jail) but then in late August released him on compassionate grounds, “to return to Libya to die.”

Two men who have long campaigned for the truth – the father of one of the victims, and a UN-nominated international observer at the 84-day Lockerbie trial – called Wednesday for any new inquiry to dig deep.

Jim Swire, whose daughter died on Flight 103, wrote a letter to the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Sen John Kerry. Hans Kochler, the Austrian academic who observed the 84-day trial, issued a statement.

Both men are among those who believe justice was not done in the trial.

In his letter, Swire said it would be wise if the inquiry looked beyond Megrahi’s release, and examined whether he should have been convicted in the first place.

Why was the appeal dropped?

Something that has puzzled Swire, Kochler and many others was Megrahi’s abrupt decision just days before his release to abandon a second appeal against his conviction and sentence. (A first appeal failed in 2002).

The Libyan had throughout insisted he was not guilty and had for years been pushing for a second appeal. In 2007, the independent Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which had been investigating the case since 2003, concluded that there “may have been a miscarriage of justice” and recommended that he be allowed to go ahead with the appeal.

After lengthy procedural delays, the appeal process finally got underway in mid-2009 and the case was set down for a substantive court session starting November 2.

On Aug 12, however, Megrahi applied to the High Court in Edinburgh to drop his appeal, and on Aug 18 the court agreed. Two days later he was freed and flew home.

Legal experts have pointed out that dropping the legal case was not a prerequisite for being released on compassionate grounds (although it would have been a requirement for a transfer under the PTA.)

“Was pressure put upon him to do so?” Swire asked in his letter to Kerry. “Maybe a proper inquiry would answer that question too.”

Hans Koechler, who served as a UN-nominated international observer at the Lockerbie trial.

Koechler in his statement also raised questions about Megrahi’s decision to drop the appeal he had been fighting for for so long. (...)

At the time of Megrahi’s application to drop the appeal Christine Grahame, a Scottish lawmaker whose electoral region includes Lockerbie and who had met with the convict in prison, also voiced doubts.

“I know from the lengthy discussions I had with him that he was desperate to clear his name, so I believe that the decision is not entirely his own,” she said.

The Scottish government at the time denied that any pressure had been placed on Megrahi to drop his appeal.

Questions

The prosecution case was that Megrahi, who was based in Malta, planted the bomb in a suitcase there which was loaded onto a flight to Frankfurt. There it was transferred as unaccompanied baggage to a feeder flight for Pan Am 103, the London Heathrow to New York flight.

Swire and others believe that Megrahi’s appeal, had it gone ahead, would have heard evidence calling into question the testimony of a key prosecution witness, Maltese store owner Tony Gauci, who supposedly sold Megrahi clothing that was packed in the suitcase containing the bomb. In its review of the case, the SCCRC questioned the reliability of Gauci’s evidence.

Also unclear is the significance, if any, of an unusual break-in at a baggage area at Heathrow Airport used by Pan Am 18 hours before the Lockerbie bomb exploded.

A security guard’s report to anti-terror police about the break-in was not presented during the trial but in a later sworn affidavit he said it could have been possible for an unauthorized person to have obtained tags for a particular flight and then placed a tagged bag at a baggage collection point.

News of the Heathrow break-in contributed to conjecture that the bombers may have introduced the device in London, rather than Malta, thus calling into question the Megrahi link altogether.

Koechler said the families of the Lockerbie victims deserve to know the truth, and any alleged BP role in Megrahi’s release was only one of many aspects that need investigating. (...)

Libyan ‘admission’

Libya’s agreement in 1999 to surrender for trial Megrahi and a co-accused – later acquitted – and its payment of compensation to families of the Pan Am victims resulted in a lifting of U.N. sanctions and improving relations with Western governments.

Key to the ending of sanctions was a letter Libya sent to the UN Security Council in August 2003, widely interpreted as Libya’s admission of responsibility for the bombing.

What the letter actually said was that Libya “has facilitated the bringing to justice of the two suspects charged with the bombing of Pan Am 103, and accepts responsibility for the actions of its officials.”

In 2004 Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem caused a stir when he told the BBC that Libya had only agreed to the admission and compensation to “buy peace.”

“After the sanctions and after the problems we faced because of the sanctions, the loss of money, we thought it was easier for us to buy peace and this is why we agreed on compensation,” he said.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi later rebutted the remarks but his son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi – who played a key role in Libya’s return to diplomatic respectability – made similar comments four years later.

“Yes, we wrote a letter to the Security Council saying we are responsible for the acts of our employees, or people,” he told the BBC. “But it doesn’t mean that we did it in fact.”

“I admit that we played with words – we had to,” he said. “What can you do? Without writing that letter we would not be able to get rid of sanctions.”

Lockerbie: 25 years of geopolitics over truth

[This is the headline over an article by David Samel, an attorney in New York City, published today on the Mondoweiss website. It reads in part:]

It has now been a quarter-century since Pan Am 103 exploded in the air and dropped onto the quiet town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 passengers and crew and 11 villagers.  No credible claim of responsibility was ever made, and the saga of the search for the guilty parties, still continues with various twists and turns.  A Libyan was convicted of the mass murder, but according to an Al Jazeera documentary that aired in the US last week, he was innocent. Relying in part on disclosures made by a recent defector from the Iranian intelligence service, Abolghassem Mesbahi, the documentary concludes that Iran, Syria, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC, headquartered in Damascus), were to blame.

Ordinarily, the “revelations” of an intelligence service defector that conveniently accuse the enemies du jour of some spectacular crime should be treated with skepticism, if not downright contempt.  But this is no ordinary case.  In fact, the new documentary’s theory was the original focus of British and U.S. investigators for nearly two years following the air disaster.  Six months before Lockerbie, a U.S. Navy ship engaging in unnecessarily provocative games in the Mediterranean had mistaken an Iranian civilian airliner as a threatening military response and shot it down, killing all 290 aboard.  Iran had vowed revenge, and was believed to have recruited the “Syrian-sponsored” PFLP group to carry out the retaliatory attack against the Pan Am jet.  Mohammed Abu Talb, a Palestinian arrested in Sweden shortly after Lockerbie and charged with several other bombings, was suspected of being one of the principals who had the bomb placed on board the plane. (...)

Public attention first turned to Libya around October, 1990.  Not surprisingly, there also was brief mention of Iraq as a possible culprit.  It took a little while for official disinterest in Syria to filter down to the media.  In November, 1990, the NY Times still pronounced that “Syria is home to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which is believed to have been deeply involved in the bombing of a Pan American World Airways jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, two years ago with the loss of 270 lives.”

But soon, the focus was entirely on Libya.  By the end of 1991, two Libyans, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, had been indicted and the UK/US were demanding their extradition for trial.  When Libya balked at turning over the suspects, sanctions already imposed were tightened. The standoff continued for years, until finally, in 1999, after suffering tens of billions of dollars in sanctions, Libya complied with the demand and handed over Fhimah and Megrahi.

The 2000 trial was held in the Netherlands before a panel of three Scottish judges and no jury.  While interest in a Libyan connection may at first have been genuinely based on circumstantial evidence worth investigating, it wasn’t long before the case against Fhimah and Megrahi looked thin and tenuous at best.  For just one example, the prosecution, with the assistance of a large cash reward of two million dollars, managed to obtain at best the lukewarm identification testimony of a Malta clothing store owner who sold garments packed next to the bomb.  The store owner, named Gauci, identified Megrahi as someone who looked like the clothes buyer, although his physical description of the suspect was of a much taller man.

The NY Times coverage of the trial was actually quite fair, with reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr repeatedly expressing skepticism about the prosecution, and giving prominence to commentators, such as Scottish Law Professor Robert Black, whose criticism of the Crown’s presentation bordered on ridicule.  In one article, Professor Black was quoted as stating unequivocally, “A conviction is — I kid you not – impossible.” Journalists Andrew and Alexander Cockburn wrote at length of the legal farce in a less Times-like manner, calling it a “frame-up.” [RB: I have no recollection of saying what is attributed to me above (and the link is broken) but I am prepared to accept that I did.  I certainly have said the following: “Before the verdicts in the original trial were delivered, I expressed the view that for the judges to return verdicts of guilty they would require (i) to accept every incriminating inference that the Crown invited them to draw from evidence that was on the face of it neutral and capable of supporting quite innocent inferences, (ii) to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, positively identified Megrahi as the person who bought from his shop in Sliema the clothes and umbrella contained in the suitcase that held the bomb and (iii) to accept that the date of purchase of these items was proved to be 7 December 1988 (as distinct from 23 November 1988 when Megrahi was not present on Malta). I went on rashly to express the opinion that, for the judges to be satisfied of all these matters on the evidence led at the trial, they would require to adopt the posture of the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, when she informed Alice "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." In convicting Megrahi, it is submitted that this is precisely what the trial judges did.”] 

Prof Black’s prediction was wrong, of course, as the Scottish judges found Megrahi guilty while acquitting co-defendant Fhimah.  The judges’ written decision acknowledged the ”uncertainties and qualifications” of the prosecution’s case, that key witnesses had repeatedly lied, and that the prosecution had not explained how the bomb had been placed on the Pan Am plane.  Perhaps it was these deficiencies that led Professor Black to his misplaced certainty of total acquittal, but apparently he did not count on the intangible forces at work behind the scenes, including government pressure for at least some vindication of the high-profile accusation against a public enemy country.

Once again, Times reporter McNeil critically assessed  the judges’ reasoning.  However, once the verdict was in, Megrahi’s status as terrorist/bomber/murderer of 270 more or less became etched in stone.  If anything, the verdict acquitting Fhimah was portrayed as the more scandalous finding.

Megrahi’s initial preliminary appeal was denied, but after a four-year investigation, another Scottish appellate tribunal issued a mostly secret 800-page report concluding that “a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.”  [RB: Not an appellate tribunal, but the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.] This would be one of the rare cases in Scottish jurisprudence, fewer than 10%, in which the defendant would be entitled to a full-blown second appeal, the majority of which result in overturning convictions.

So the stage was set for a fresh look at all the facts, including new evidence not considered by the original three-judge panel, such as the multimillion dollar payment to secure Gauci’s ID testimony.  But fate intervened.  Megrahi contracted [prostate] cancer, which by 2009 appeared likely to be imminently fatal.  The British eagerly jumped at the opportunity to release Megrahi on “humanitarian” grounds to die in his home country.

It rightfully seemed bizarre and outrageous, especially to many grieving families, that a man who deliberately murdered hundreds of innocent people would be released for compassionate reasons rather than be allowed to die in prison, a fate far less horrendous than that suffered by his victims.  It seemed even more outrageous when Megrahi refused to die on schedule and lasted three more years rather than three months. But there obviously was more to Megrahi’s release than British officials were eager to publicize.  One of the conditions for release was that he withdraw his pesky appeal, which promised new scrutiny and new evidence that would have been highly embarrassing to governments and law enforcement and judicial authorities alike.

Against the backdrop of condemnation of Megrahi’s release by the likes of John Kerry, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and President Obama himself, Robert Mackey, in his Lede blog at the Times, valiantly revisited the case.  Mackey acknowledged the “firestorm of anger” over the compassion shown to a convicted mass murderer, but observed that such outrage was “clearly based on the belief that [Megrahi] was responsible for the bombing.”  Mackey also refused to classify doubts about the conviction as the product of wild imagination, noting that such doubts “existed outside the murky precincts of the Internet where wild conspiracy theories are spun out.”  He then proceeded to review the questionable trial evidence in detail, and rue the fact that Megrahi’s appeal would never be heard.

Nearly a year later, a mini-scandal erupted when it was disclosed that oil giant BP, which had recently achieved mega-villain status for its Gulf Coast oil spill, had lobbied the British government for Megrahi’s release to protect an investment off the Libyan coast.  Kerry thundered that “commercial interests — oil or otherwise — should never be prioritized over justice for victims of terrorist acts and severe punishment for convicted terrorists.”  He might have added, “Geopolitical interests?  Well that’s a different story.”

By the time Megrahi died in 2012, the troubling questions about his guilt, including the original focus of investigators on Iran and Syria, had predictably been reduced to dismissible “conspiracy theories.” Times reporter Harvey Morris noted that Megrahi had “either cheated the Scottish justice system or … cheated death by surviving beyond his allotted time.”  Morris asked, “But has he also cheated relatives of the Lockerbie victims by taking the real truth about the bombing to the grave?”  Apparently unfamiliar with the far superior coverage appearing in his own paper by McNeil and Mackey, Morris did not contemplate that the man might be innocent.

So if it was not Libya, was there any credibility to the original theory of Iran/Syria/PFLP-GC/Abu Talb complicity, the one that exclusively occupied investigators’ attention for two years after Lockerbie?  Alex Cockburn thought so, and this conclusion has now been embraced by the new Al Jazeera documentary.  Libya is no longer on the official enemies’ list, and with the existence of bona fide evidence against Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians, will there be renewed interest in this theory that was dropped in 1990 for no apparent reason other than galvanizing support for the first Gulf War?  David Horovitz,  the British-Israeli neocon at the Times of Israel, already has heartily endorsed the Alex Cockburn/Al Jazeera version.  I wonder if he ever thought he would side with those two against the official US/UK line.  There have been a handful of others to take notice as well.

Will the UK and US jump on board?  Very doubtful.  The UK already risked, and received, public criticism and ridicule for releasing Megrahi, deemed a small price to pay to save the embarrassment of his probably successful appeal.  Although it was a British prosecution, the US was steadfast in its support throughout. Together, these two countries deliberately suppressed the truth, hounded an innocent Libyan man to his grave, perverted the Scottish justice system with political pressure, fabricated testimony purchased with millions of dollars, protected the guilty parties, extorted billions of dollars from Libya in sanctions and compensation payments to the families, and cared not one iota for the hundreds of grieving families who depended on their officials to seek actual justice.  One can hardly expect them to acknowledge perpetration of a two-decade long miscarriage of justice just to claim that Iran and Syria committed an awful crime in 1988.

And what about Israel?  Netanyahu, who professes to be 100% certain of Iranian guilt for every atrocity before the smoke clears and bodies are removed, has so far held his tongue.  On the one hand, Iranian guilt for one of the worst acts of terrorism in recent decades, at least against the West, seems too good to be true, not that truth matters a whole lot to Netanyahu.  On the other hand, even a credible allegation of Iran’s role is a little stale by now, and it may not be worth embarrassing Israel’s closest allies.

While this tale of government fabrication and suppression of truth for craven purposes is hardly unique, the scope of this dishonesty and the ease with which it was carried out are somewhat astonishing.  The last word goes to Cockburn, who loved to quote his father Claud:  “Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.”