US-British conflict over release of Libyan convicted of Lockerbie bombing

[On the afternoon of this date in 2009 Abdelbaset Megrahi was released from HMP Greenock and flew back to Libya. What follows is excerpted from an article by Steve James that was published on the WSWS.org website earlier that day:]

The release of Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, convicted for the 1988 bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, is expected today. (...)

The Obama administration intervened directly to oppose his release and made clear that it would prefer Megrahi to die in Greenock jail, in Scotland, where he has been incarcerated since 2001. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton “fairly strongly” told Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill that “our view is that Megrahi should serve out his entire sentence in Scotland.”

The phone call was followed up by a public statement from Clinton that it would be “absolutely wrong” to release Megrahi. The BBC described this as “uncharacteristically undiplomatic language.” (...)

The trial process was organised as part of a drive to re-open Libyan oil fields to US and UK oil companies (...). Megrahi’s conviction was followed by the Libyan government accepting responsibility for the attack and the payment of billions of dollars in compensation to the families of the 270 victims. In the intervening years Libya has been the focus of an oil bonanza for corporations once excluded by the former pariah regime of Colonel Muammar Gadhaffi. (...)

The claim that Megrahi was solely responsible for the Lockerbie bombing is absurd on its face. His co-accused, Fhimah, was acquitted in 2001 on the basis of there being no evidence against him. Megrahi has consistently maintained his innocence, but could do little more given his inability to directly criticise the Libyan government.

In 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), the organisation tasked with investigation into miscarriages of justice, announced that in their opinion there was “no reasonable basis” to place Megrahi in Malta where he had been identified as allegedly purchasing clothing later found to have been wrapped around the bomb. The review agreed that a miscarriage of justice may have taken place and authorised a further appeal. The 800-page SCCRC report has never been published.

Key items, in addition to the disputed identification of Megrahi by Maltese shop keeper Tony Gauci, that might be explored in open court at an appeal include the break-in at Heathrow airport adjacent to where PanAm 103 was parked on the evening prior to the attack. In addition, in 2007, in an affidavit to a Swiss court by Ulrich Lumpert, manufacturer, along with Edmund Bollier of MEBO AG, of the MST13 circuit board alleged to have triggered the bomb, admitted that the MST13 fragment produced in court in 2001 was from a non-operational circuit board handed to Lockerbie investigators in 1989.

The August 16 Sunday Times reported that Megrahi’s defence team were intending to produce cables in court from the US Defence Intelligence Agency accusing Iran of the attack in reprisal for the USS Vincennes destruction of an Iranian airbus in 1987. Writing in the Scottish Mail on Sunday, also August 16, 2009, former Labour MP and father of the House of Commons Tam Dalyell alleged that the US government knew an attack was planned by Iran and that a warning was posted to key US personnel and their diplomatic allies to avoid PanAm 103, while the suddenly available cheap seats in the pre-Christmas flight were taken up by students.

Another article in the Scottish Mail on Sunday claimed that much of the defence case was intended to rest on a report by Jessica de Grazia, a former senior New York prosecutor, and Philip Corbett, a former deputy head of Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch. They point to Abu Talb, an associate of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, (PFLP-GC) to whom the Lockerbie attack is alleged to have been contracted, and suggest he was in London with an un-primed bomb. It notes that in return for Libya being blamed for the Lockerbie attack, US planes were allowed to use Iranian airspace during the US 1991 attack on Iraq. The report concludes, “We have never seen a criminal investigation in which there has been such a persistent disregard of an alternative and far more persuasive theory of the case.”

Megrahi’s illness has provided an opportunity to bury the issue once and for all. A Scottish National Party member of the Scottish parliament, Christine Grahame, warned in the press that she had seen a leaked mail from the Scottish justice department warning that “senior Scottish officials were exerting undue pressure to have Megrahi drop his appeal.”

Release to Libya would only end such difficulties if Megrahi’s continued silence could be counted upon. A number of exchanges have been reported between leading British figures and the Libyan government to smooth Megrahi’s release. A spokesman for Lord Peter Mandelson, the UK business secretary, hinted that “fleeting conversation about the prisoner” had been held between Mandelson and Gadhaffi’s son and likely successor. In addition, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, has travelled on at least three occasions to Libya as a trade representative, while Gadhaffi junior has stayed at Buckingham Palace. Palace courtiers conceded that the prince and Seif al-Islam had “quite possibly” discussed Megrahi. (...)

For their part, the Libyan regime would welcome the re-appearance of someone who has been portrayed as a martyr and hostage. Offering Megrahi a hero’s welcome would serve to prop up the increasingly unpopular regime.

Clinton’s unprecedented intervention into the legal workings of a major ally comes despite the US’s own desire for deeper relations with Tripoli. The Obama administration faces political pressure from the families of US Lockerbie victims, most of who support Megrahi’s conviction as opposed to a large number of UK relatives who do not, and could not be seen to condone the release.

The positioning of the Lockerbie bomb

[What follows is the text of an article by Steve James that was published on WSWS.org on this date in 2000:]

Testimony in the trial of the two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 has deepened speculation regarding the bomb's location in the airplane and exposed divisions among the original air accident investigators.

Last week, prosecution witnesses robustly defended their view that the bomb that brought down the Boeing 747 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 259 passengers and crew as well as 11 local residents, had been in luggage container AVE 4041. The prosecution maintains that the two Libyan defendants, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, had loaded a suitcase containing the bomb onto a feeder flight in Malta, which was then transferred onto Flight 103 at Frankfurt. This scenario rests on the assumption that the bomb was located inside a suitcase. If it was not, then the prosecution's charges against the two Libyans is in danger of collapse

Peter Claydon, one of the Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) team looking into the disaster, explained that investigators came to the conclusion the bomb was in a suitcase after studying the pattern of damage to container AVE 4041 and the rest of the surrounding aircraft. Blast damage was most concentrated around the rear quarter of the container, beside the aircraft's hull. Claydon, pressed by the prosecution lawyers, stated several times that he was certain that the "event" took place inside the container. He disagreed with a defence suggestion that damage to the neighbouring container, AVN 7511PA, pointed to the blast occurring outside AVE 4041. He also stated that he thought the luggage item containing the explosive was not on the floor of the container, as the floor showed signs of having been protected from the direct effects of the blast by another piece of luggage. He explained how he found a tiny charred fragment of a circuit board lodged in the container's marker plate.

Claydon's testimony was followed by that of Ian Cullis, an explosives expert, and Christopher Peel, both from the UK's Defence Research Establishment (DERA). Their names do not appear on the list of contributors to the initial AAIB report. Cullis claimed that the sooting of the container remains, and pitting in both the fuselage and container, showed that the explosion had taken place inside the container. He said that deformations of the container floor again pointed to another piece of luggage having been forced into the floor by a blast above it. Peel, who has subsequently worked on a research project into the effects of small bombs on pressurised aircraft, narrated a video on the results of this work, which including exploding 450g of plastic explosive inside a Boeing 747. He claimed that using complex mathematical calculations, he could accurately place the bomb inside the luggage container.

Defence lawyer Richard Keen QC said to Peel, "You have not simply developed an analytical model, but gone back and altered your view of the facts in order to apply the analytical model."

Later, during three days of cross-examination, Peel admitted to Alan Turnbull QC that an earlier calculation put the bomb 17 inches from the aircraft hull, rather than the 24 inches currently suggested by Peel, and other analytical models suggested a distance of as little as 12 inches.

The three investigators' evidence directly contradicts analyses made by another prosecution witness, Edmund Bollier of MEBO AG, the Swiss electronics firm who manufactured the timer alleged to have triggered the explosion. Bollier has claimed in two reports that the bomb was attached directly to the aircraft's hull.

Bollier's claims were strengthened by the testimony of accident investigator Christopher Protheroe, who was a member of the AIIB team along with Claydon.

The 1990 report from the AAIB team [https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/2-1990-boeing-747-121-n739pa-21-december-1988] was quite clear in locating the bomb inside container AVE 4041, reassembled from fragments scattered around the Scottish countryside. But Protheroe admitted in court that there had been a significant mathematical error in the official report of the accident. According to his examination of the "Mach stem" effect used to calculate blast wave effects after an initial explosion, correct calculations would place the bomb 12 inches from the fuselage and therefore outside luggage container AVE 4041. After Protheroe's testimony the court adjourned so the remains of the shredded container could be assembled inside the courtroom.

The recent resignation of the head of Glasgow University's Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit, Andrew Fulton, following his exposure as a long-standing MI6 operative points to the US and UK intelligence services maintaining an acute interest in Pan Am 103 from the moment it crashed until the present trial. The Briefing Unit was set up in late 1998 to provide "impartial" advice on the legal aspects of the Lockerbie trial and has been contacted by many representatives of the world's media. Fulton, a British diplomat for 30 years, had been MI6 station chief in Washington DC in his last position. He was appointed to the unit 18 months ago as a "visiting law professor", despite his complete lack of legal experience. He was placed in charge of press briefings and controlled the flow of information from the unit.

“It is not difficult to achieve a conviction of the innocent"

[What follows is the text of an article by Steve James that was published on the World Socialist Web Site on this date in 2009:]

Leading British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce has stated that, in her opinion Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the only man accused and convicted of the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was framed.

Pierce has a long track record of defending those caught in the British legal system’s most notorious miscarriages of justice. Her clients have included the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and Judith Ward, all of whom were Irish people accused and wrongly convicted of IRA bomb attacks in the 1970s. More recently Peirce has taken up a number of high profile cases of individuals accused in the so-called “war on terror”, including the Tipton Three and Moazam Begg, held illegally by the US government in Guantánamo Bay. She has represented the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man shot dead by British police in Stockwell underground station in 2005.

Writing in the September edition of the London Review of Books, Peirce, of the law firm headed by Benedict Birnberg, summarises some of the most concerning, and well known, aspects of the entire Lockerbie disaster in which 270 people died, and the subsequent investigation.

She points to the advance warnings of an attack on Pan Am flights from London, the role of the FBI and others who flooded the crash site, the lack of security on the site and tampered evidence, including moved bodies. She notes the initial trajectory of the investigation, which pointed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) acting on behalf of Iran having used a barometric bomb to bring down the 747. She also notes that a barometric bomb, one triggered by changes in air pressure, would have exploded only after PA 103 reached a certain height—some 38 minutes into the flight from Heathrow—precisely when the plane disintegrated.

She reviews the subsequent change in focus from Syria and Iran to Libya, which was in line with US foreign policy objectives at the time. Firstly, then US President George Bush, senior, instructed then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to keep the Lockerbie investigation “low key” to assist hostage negotiations underway in Beirut. As a result, rather than a judicial inquiry and prosecution, a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) with no powers of subpoena was held.

Then, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991, Iran and Syria both assisted the US invasion of Iraq. It was at this time that the focus of the Lockerbie investigation was shifted. Vincent Cannistraro, the architect of the Reagan administration’s CIA campaign of destabilisation against the Libyan government of Colonel Muammar Gadhaffi, was brought out of retirement to head the new line of investigation.

Peirce writes, “It is not difficult to achieve a conviction of the innocent. Over many decades several common factors have been identified, and the majority of them are present, centre stage, in this case: achieving the cooperation of witnesses by means of a combination of inducements and fear of the alternative (the tried and tested method of obtaining evidence for the prosecution on which many US cases rely); the provision of factual information by scientists where there is no proper basis for it (a recurrent theme in UK convictions as well as in the US); reliance on ‘identification’ evidence which is no such thing. Add to that the political will to achieve a prosecution, and the rest is easy”.

Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and his co-accused, Llamen Khalifa Fhimah, were handed over by the Libyan government in 1999. The trial opened at a converted US airbase in the Netherlands in 2000. The indictment against Megrahi read that an MST 13 bomb timer was made in Switzerland, by MEBO AG, and sold exclusively to Libya. Identification of the timer rested on the efforts of Thomas Hayes and Alan Feraday of the Royal Armament and Development Establishment (RARDE), along with Thomas Thurman of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In 1997, following an investigation by the US inspector general, Michael Bromwich, Thurman was barred from being called as an expert witness. Bromwich described Thurman as “circumventing procedures and protocols, testifying to areas of expertise that he had no qualifications in...therefore fabricating evidence”.

Thomas Hayes claimed that on May 12, 1989, he found a fragment of circuit board in the collar of a shirt later traced to a Maltese shop. The fragment itself had been found in January 1989 by British police investigating the crash site.

Peirce states, “Even if one knew nothing of the devastating findings of the public inquiry in the early 1990s into the false science that convicted the Maguire Seven or of the succession of thunderous judgments in the Court of Appeal in case after case in which RARDE scientists had provided the basis for wrongful convictions, Hayes’s key evidence in this case on the key fragment should be viewed as disgraceful”.

“Hayes”, Peirce continues, “played his part in the most notorious of all, endorsing the finding of an explosive trace that was never there, and speculating that a piece of chalk mentioned to the police by Vincent Maguire, aged 16, and a candle by Patrick Maguire, aged 13, ‘fitted the description better’ of a stick of gelignite wrapped in white paper”.

Hayes’s information regarding this crucial piece of Lockerbie evidence was also flawed. Despite having carefully documented every other piece of evidence he found, Hayes had made no drawing of this particular item and had not assigned it a reference number on discovery. He had not carried out a test for explosives. Hayes said he had “no idea” when the pagination of his notes recording findings had been altered to include an additional page, and it was an “unfathomable mystery” as to why the alterations should have occurred.

Following an investigation into RARDE by Sir John May, Hayes resigned and is now reported to be working as a chiropodist.

Pierce then turns to the visual identification of Megrahi.

“Even if the science that convicted al-Megrahi had not offended against every minimum standard, then the second pillar of the prosecution case, his identification by Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper, would remain spectacular in its noncompliance with any safeguard”.

Pierce notes the numerous failings in the evidence provided by Gauci, his initial identification of Abu Talb, of the PFLP-GC, and reiterates the suggestion that Gauci was “handsomely rewarded” for his services.

She describes the verdict delivered in 2001 by three experienced judges, upheld later by five appeal court judges as “profoundly shocking”, and makes the following devastating assessment:

“Al-Megrahi’s trial constituted a unique legal construct, engineered to achieve a political rapprochement, but its content was so manipulated that in reality there was only ever an illusion of a trial”.

Peirce concludes that there is “pressing need to investigate in details how it has come about that there has been a form of death in this case—the death of justice—and who should be found responsible”.

Subsequent to Peirce’s comments, more revelations have emerged about the crucial piece of MST 13 circuit board. Following a Freedom of Information request raised by Scottish Nationalist Member of the Scottish Parliament Christine Grahame, the Scottish Crown Office has confirmed that evidence item PT-35, the piece of circuit board found by Hayes, was taken for examination to both Germany and the US. Graham claimed that this was done with the knowledge of the then chief prosecutor, Lord Fraser of Carmylie, who recently told a Dutch television company that he was unaware of the fragment’s movements.

Megrahi was released by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny Macaskill in August, allegedly on humanitarian grounds. It occurred at a time when the Libyan government had made clear that, if the terminally ill Megrahi had been allowed to die in Greenock prison, British oil contracts would have been imperilled. In addition, Megrahi had agreed to drop a long delayed appeal against his conviction in order to secure his release.

The release triggered outrage from the US in particular and was attacked by President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the head of the FBI, and the US Joint Chief of Staff amongst many. Commentary went as far as suggesting that the so-called “special relationship” between British and US imperialism, and Scotland in particular, was imperiled.

All this has been forgotten. On September 21, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly informed the world that the US had “deep abiding ties with Scotland”. Kelly continued, “We are very close allies, and I don’t think we’re looking to punish anybody per se. There’s no tit for tat here”.

Three weeks later, speaking before a meeting with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Clinton stated, “I have a special relationship with the prime minister. And of course, I think it can’t be said often enough, we have a special relationship between our countries”.

What was said between the two regarding Lockerbie is not clear, but the meeting came immediately prior to the British government’s decision to send an additional 500 troops to Afghanistan. Brown has subsequently ruled out a public inquiry into the bombing, while the Scottish government have denied they had the power to hold an authoritative inquiry in the first place.

Clinton also called in the Libyan government, speaking for 15 minutes en route to Egypt with Libyan Foreign Minister and former intelligence chief Musa Kusa. According to US Assistant Secretary Philip Crowley, the two talked of “Sudan, Darfur, cooperation about terrorism and the possibility of advancing our relationship”.

Crowley claimed that Megrahi was not discussed, lamely stating that “the Libyans understand our concerns about Megrahi very, very well”.

Pan Am 103: Lockerbie verdict politically motivated

[This is the headline over an article by Steve James and Chris Marsden that was published on the World Socialist Web Site on this date in 2001. It reads as follows:]

The guilty verdict issued on January 31 by three Scottish judges at the conclusion of the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie trial is unsound by all normal legal criteria.

The trial of the two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 began on May 3 last year. It was held under Scottish law at a specially constructed court in the Netherlands. With the agreement of the defence and prosecution, the case was heard without a jury before a bench of three Scottish judges. On January 31, after 84 days of evidence and controversy, and many weeks of adjournments, Abdelbaset Ali Muhammad Al-Megrahi was found guilty of planting a Semtex-packed cassette player on board the Boeing 747, which destroyed the plane, killing its 259 passengers and crew, as well as 11 Lockerbie residents. However, his sole alleged accomplice, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted on all charges.

The Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing was an indiscriminate terrorist attack upon innocent air travellers, many of whom were US students returning home for the Christmas holiday. But the horrific nature of the crime must not be allowed to obscure the fact that the prosecution case against the two Libyans was an extremely weak one, which under normal circumstances would have been thrown out of court. Robert Black, the Scottish law professor who devised the format of the Netherlands-based trial, has said he was "absolutely astounded" that Al Megrahi had been found guilty. Black said he believed the prosecution had "a very, very weak circumstantial case" and he was reluctant to believe that Scottish judges would "convict anyone, even a Libyan" on such evidence. This view is supported by some of the families of UK victims of the bombing, who are calling for a public inquiry to find "the truth of who was responsible and what the motive was".

In their 82-page verdict, the Scottish judges—Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and Maclean—expose the weakness of the prosecution case and how they ignored, or simply dismissed, a mass of contradictory forensic and circumstantial evidence in order to bring a guilty verdict against Al Megrahi.

Significantly they rejected in its entirety the defence argument that other individuals and groups—namely the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)—were responsible for the bomb, on the grounds that the evidence against them was circumstantial and inconclusive.

This raises the question, why was there such a discrepancy between the standards applied to the defence's arguments seeking to implicate others for the bombing and those employed by the prosecution against Al Megrahi? The case against the two Libyans was no less circumstantial and flimsy, a fact acknowledged in part by the acquittal of Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. Under Scottish law, moreover, it was possible to return a verdict of “not proven” that would free but not completely exonerate Al Megrahi on the basis that the court could not accept his guilt "beyond reasonable doubt".

An explanation as to why a guilty verdict was delivered must be sought in the political rather than the judicial arena. The demonisation of the “rogue state” Libya has long played an important part of US policy in the Middle East. Libyan leader Colonel Gadhaffi's anti-imperialist rhetoric, his regime's support for the Palestinians and opposition to Israel all drew the ire of the US, which designated Libya a "terrorist" nation in 1979. In 1986 the US bombed Tripoli and Benghazi, in an action launched from British bases that killed Gadhaffi's daughter. The US imposed unilateral economic sanctions the same year, and led the calls for UN-approved sanctions to be imposed in 1992.

It is against this political background that the Lockerbie investigation and eventual trial must be evaluated. Initial police investigations focused on the claim that it was a reprisal attack for the unprovoked US shooting down of an Iranian Airbus six months before the Pan Am bombing, in which all 290 people on board were killed. This possible reprisal was alleged to have been financed by the Iranian regime, which had hired the Syrian backed PFLP-GC to carry out the Pan Am bombing. In 1990, however, the Republican administration in the US, led by President George Bush, placed maximum pressure on the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher in Britain to drop this line of inquiry. According to relatives of those killed in the disaster, Thatcher refused a public inquiry at this time, on the grounds that it was against the "national interest".

Accusations of Libyan responsibility for the Pan Am 103 bombing first emerged during US preparations for the assault on Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. In their efforts to assemble support for military aggression against Iraq by NATO, US officials shuttled frantically around the various Arab regimes in the Middle East. Secretary of State James Baker visited Syria on numerous occasions in 1990 and Bush himself pronounced that Syria had taken a "bum rap" over the bombing (i.e. that it was not responsible).

Libya, which stood out in opposition to the US attack on Iraq, became the focus of political and media blame for the Lockerbie bombing. In 1992 a UN resolution imposed economic sanctions against Libya after it refused to hand over Al Megrahi and Fhimah for trial in Britain or America, and demanded compensation payment be made, should the Libyans be found guilty.

Washington and London never expected Libya to hand over its own citizens, including at least one of its intelligence officers, Al Megrahi. But this became possible through the efforts of Gadhaffi's regime to initiate a rapprochement with the West, and the major European powers in particular. From 1994 onwards, Tripoli repeatedly offered its citizens up for trial, provided only this was on "neutral" territory.

Over the next few years, Gadhaffi sought to cultivate the support of the European powers. He acted as mediator in conflicts such as the Eritrean-Ethiopian war, the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sudanese civil war and the war in Sierra Leone—while signing numerous oil and other commercial deals with Italian and French companies.

Resolving the outstanding issue of Lockerbie became essential for the US and Britain if they were not to be left out of the rich pickings now being made available in Libya, a country whose oil reserves are equivalent to those of the US. Negotiations commenced in earnest in 1999, culminating in the suspension of UN sanctions against Libya on April 5, after the US, Britain and Libya agreed on the hand-over and conditions for the trial of the two men in the Netherlands.

The US continued to take a harder stance against Libya than Europe. It did not agree to the lifting of UN sanctions, and opposed the efforts of Britain and others to restore diplomatic relations—demanding that Libya "end and renounce all forms of terrorism" and "acknowledge responsibility for the actions of Libyan officials" with regards to the Pan Am bombing. But it nevertheless did offer the prospect of a normalisation of relations in future. In a 1999 speech to the Middle East Institute, a US foreign policy think-tank, for example, Ronald Neumann proclaimed that "Libya's surrender of the Pan Am 103 suspects for trial and the ensuing suspension of international sanctions have changed the political landscape of the last ten years... Libya is not Iraq. We do not seek to maintain sanctions until there is a change of regime in Tripoli. We have seen definite changes in Libya's behavior, specifically declining support for terrorism and increasing support for peace processes in the Middle East and Africa."

A rapprochement with Libya had to take place on US terms, however. This meant accepting the validity of US assertions of Libya's guilt for the bombing, even seeking to solicit a public acknowledgement of this from Gadhaffi. In order to justify more than a decade of US-led hostilities against Libya, therefore, it was essential that at least one of the defendants was found guilty, despite the threadbare character of the case against them.

It is impossible, on the basis of the evidence presented in the Netherlands, to ascertain who was truly responsible for the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing. Al Megrahi's guilt was not proven beyond reasonable doubt, but nor was his innocence. Nothing presented definitively ruled out Libyan involvement in the bombing, but nor did the trial exclude the possible involvement of Syria, Iran or several Palestinian groups. Of all the possible scenarios, the one, which received least scrutiny, was the possibility raised by some interested parties that the bombing was the inadvertent product of a CIA operation that badly backfired. But the purpose of the trial was never the search to expose the truth about this terrible attack. Instead the verdict provides the US with the necessary propaganda vehicle through which it can continue to exert maximum pressure on Libya to accede to its demands, and thereby strengthen America's grip on the entire Middle East region.

Gadhaffi has so far refused to accept American calls to acknowledge Libya's guilt regarding Pan Am 103 and has even promised to release new information proving Al Megrahi's innocence. But he has not done so yet, however. Given that it was Gadhaffi who agreed to hand over the two accused in 1999, his outrage seems largely designed for domestic consumption. It is also directed against what he no doubt sees as the failure of the US and Britain to honour their tacit agreement to limit the matter to a criminal trial of the two individuals accused, and not to use it to continue attacking his government. Given the bellicose stance of the newly installed Bush administration regarding Middle East policy, such fears appear well founded.

"Frankly speaking I am not convinced"

[What follows is the text of an article by Steve James published on this date in 2002 on the World Socialist Web Site:]

Five senior Scottish judges at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, have thrown out the appeal by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi against his conviction, January 2001 for the mass murder of 270 people killed at Lockerbie on December 21, 1988. Al-Megrahi has now been transported to Glasgow’s notorious Barlinnie prison, where a special wing has been built for him to serve his 20-year sentence.

Scotland’s leading legal officials have fully defended a conviction based on flimsy and contested circumstantial evidence that has been criticised by several observers as a miscarriage of justice. One of five United Nations observers to the Lockerbie trial, Hans Koechler has previously criticised the initial verdict. Having sat through the entire trial and the appeal, he told BBC Radio Scotland, “I am sorry to admit that my impression is that justice was not done and that we are dealing here with a rather spectacular case of a miscarriage of justice... Frankly speaking I am not convinced. I was not convinced when I read the opinion of the court after the trial last year and I was not convinced when I went through the text presented today. I am not convinced at all that the sequence of events that led to this explosion of the plane over Scotland was as described by the court. Everything that is presented is only circumstantial evidence.” Koechler said he believed other members of the UN team shared his concerns.

Speaking later, Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, was killed in the explosion said, “We think there has been miscarriage of justice. Thank God that Britain does not have the death penalty.” Swire reiterated the long-standing call of several relatives of Lockerbie victims for a public inquiry “that has real authority” to be convened.

Professor Robert Black, the lawyer who has worked closely with the relatives for many years and the architect of the trial process itself, also described the trial as a miscarriage of justice. He told The Scotsman, “We have not seen the end of this case... There is a hell of lot of more evidence that appeared neither at the trial or the appeal.”

In contrast to the alarm felt by close observers of the trial, many of Scotland’s leading politicians showed an indecent haste to support an appeal decision they can hardly have had the time to read.

Scottish Justice Minister Jim Wallace claimed, “Everyone will have breathed a collective sigh of relief at the decision of the appeal judges.” Scottish National Party justice spokesman Roseanna Cunningham announced, “This unique trial has shown the Scottish justice system to be robust and effective in the eyes of the world—right from the actions of the police officers investigating the immediate aftermath of this terrible crime up to today’s verdict.”

Based on the evidence presented at the Lockerbie trial and the subsequent appeal, it is impossible to say with certainty which persons, movements or governments were responsible for the destruction of Pan Am flight 103. Libya could have been responsible for the bombing, but a number of alternative scenarios have been presented—from the involvement of Palestinian groups to direct allegations of CIA involvement. What has become clear is that the assertion that al-Megrahi planted the bomb in Luqa airport in Malta that blew up PA103 is based on deeply problematic circumstantial evidence. Moreover, the case against him is contradicted by somewhat stronger circumstantial evidence pointing to the bomb’s insertion into the plane at Frankfurt or Heathrow airports.

Despite this, in a 200-page verdict, the five judges, led by Lord Cullen, rejected all but the most minor of the appeal team’s questioning of the numerous holes in the prosecution case. Explaining their decision, the appeal judges’ claimed they had no right to comment on the initial verdict. Where some comment became unavoidable, they always defended the trial judges’ line of reasoning, on the basis it was not for an appeal to re-evaluate the original evidence. In only a small number of instances they accepted there might have been mistakes, but insisted that these errors had no impact on the final outcome.

The appeal court concluded that new evidence, highlighted in the press, that there had been a break-in at Heathrow airport, near the luggage area, the night before PA103 took off for New York, had no bearing on the verdict. While the court accepted there had been a break-in, there was a significant degree of confusion over the movement and positioning of cases that answered the description of the Samsonite suitcase supposedly containing the bomb, and that there was evidence suggesting that it had arrived in a luggage container by unknown means, it concluded that this did not constitute circumstantial evidence strong enough to overcome the assertion that the bomb case was loaded at Luqa.

The appeal court accepted that the judges misdirected themselves when they stated that the records showing 13.10 as the time when luggage destined for PA103 (a feeder flight from Frankfurt to London) was processed. The appeal judges agreed that they had no basis to prefer this to the 13.16 suggested as an alternative time by the defence—the record itself is difficult to read. Flights from several aircraft were being processed at Frankfurt at the time, and a six-minute difference significantly increases the window through which luggage from flights other than KM180 from Luqa in Malta could have been processed for transfer to PA103A. The judges found that in the end, nothing could be concluded from this and “the misdirection... had no material consequences to the appellant’s interest.”

The judges considered the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who provided the only visual identification of al-Megrahi as having been associated with clothes that were found, charred, at the crash site, and were thought to be in the same suitcase as the bomb. Gauci’s evidence was upheld despite numerous discrepancies over the date, time, weather, which football matches were on the television and even whether or not Christmas decorations were up. No significance was attached to the fact that Gauci had previously identified a member of a Palestinian group, Abu Talb, currently serving a sentence for bomb attacks for which he does not deny responsibility.

What is undeniable is that there were significant political pressures on the court to uphold the initial trial verdict, whatever evidence was presented in al-Megrahi’s defence.

Libya has been the focus of US-inspired sanctions and sustained aggression for 16 years. In 1990, blame for the Lockerbie attack was shifted by the Scottish investigating authorities and the US government to Libya and away from the countries initially targeted for suspicion such as Iran and Syria. At the time, Iranian and Syrian acquiescence in the first US attack on Iraq in 1991 was considered imperative. Indeed, US Secretary of State James Baker had been shuttling around the region prior to the sudden discovery of evidence supposedly linking the attack to Libya.

In the intervening years, Lockerbie has been continually utilised to justify US and UN sanctions against Libyan “state terrorism”. As a result successive administrations have invested a great deal of political capital in their insistence that Libya was responsible for the bombing.

However, relations with Libya have improved in recent years as Colonel Gaddafi has made repeated overtures to the Western powers. In Britain, the election victory of Tony Blair in 1997 was seen as a chance to remove the main political obstacle to renewed friendly relations with a country whose oil reserves its European rivals were exploiting.

A limited trial of the two defendants—al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah—was offered, provided that more general attacks on Libya were downplayed. The US government was reluctant to agree to such a compromise, but was eventually persuaded. American business was also anxious to exploit Libyan oil, and was caught in the contradiction created by years of anti-Libya propaganda and the lust for oil profit. There was also concern that some of the secret activities of the CIA and FBI would be exposed to public scrutiny and US intelligence operatives sat on the prosecution benches through much of the trial proceedings in order to offset this danger. Even so, the CIA’s “star witness” in the case, Abdul Majid Giacka, was exposed as a fraud and the case against the two accused Libyans suffered repeated setbacks.

The verdict against al-Megrahi—his alleged sole accomplice Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah was acquitted—was the minimum requirement for the US. Libyan guilt and compensation payments to victims, already agreed by Gaddaffi, provided retrospective justification for years of punitive sanctions. At the same time the relatively low-key conclusion—with just one person deemed to be directly responsible—would allow Conoco, Marathon, Amerada Hess, and Occidental to develop a lucrative relationship with the Libyan National Oil Corporation.

The house of cards that is the legal frame-up of Megrahi

[What follows is taken from an article by Steve James published today on the WSWS.org website:]

Five Scottish judges have upheld the 2001 verdict against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the only person convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.

Last week's decision is the second time an appeal on Megrahi's behalf has been rejected by the courts amid the continued suppression of contradictory evidence.

In 2002, an initial appeal was thrown out. In 2009, Megrahi, already terminally ill, was tacitly offered release from Greenock prison on compassionate grounds if a contemporary appeal was dropped as part of rapprochement between the Libyan and British governments. The most recent appeal was launched by Megrahi's son, Ali Al-Megrahi, to clear his father's name posthumously.

The appeal hearing heard from Claire Mitchell QC that Megrahi's original conviction hinged on Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci’s uncorroborated identification of Megrahi. She pointed to contradictions in Gauci’s testimony and challenged the trial judges' decision that the clothing was purchased on 7 December 1988, rather than 23 November, which was supported by the evidence. Megrahi was not in Malta in November.

Mitchell noted that while the trial verdict "cherry picked" items from a mass of conflicting evidence, no evidence existed that the bomb started its journey from Malta.

The appeal was allowed to go forward following a decision by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), that a miscarriage of justice may only have occurred because of the manner in which Megrahi was identified by Gauci. Gauci first identified someone else, appeared confused, and was found to have been coached by police in expectation of a huge reward. $2 million was duly paid, a matter about which the trial defence was not informed.

The SCCRC did not consider (...) analysis of the metallurgical characteristics of the alleged bomb timer--proving it was not part of a batch sold to Libya--or devastating evidence of the bomb suitcase entering the luggage system at Heathrow Airport, London, as grounds for appeal.

The reason for the appeal being restricted to Megrahi's identification by Gauci is increasingly clear. Any broader querying of the original verdict threatens to bring down the house of cards that is the legal frame-up of Megrahi.

It is worth recalling some of the contradictions and unconfirmed assertions in the official version of events leading to PA103's destruction, upheld at the 2001 trial and again on two subsequent appeals.

Megrahi was found guilty of loading a suitcase, containing a bomb armed with a complex electronic timer, in Luqa airport, Malta, onto a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. No viable evidence has been presented confirming that such a suitcase existed. No explanation has been given of how Megrahi overcame Luqa's tight security. (...) No explanation has been offered of how Frankfurt airport's X-ray scanning missed a bomb in a cassette recorder when staff had been advised to look out for one.

From Frankfurt, the feeder flight travelled to London’s Heathrow airport, where the bomb was allegedly transferred to Pan Am 103. No such suitcase has been identified.

Not accounted for is the fact that a suitcase closely resembling the one containing the bomb appeared unexpectedly at Heathrow airport before the feeder flight from Frankfurt arrived and was reportedly inserted onto PA103 at Heathrow.

This suitcase was seen by witnesses on the floor of the luggage container in which the explosion later occurred. No explanation or significance has been attached to a break in at Heathrow airport, where security was poor, the night before, adjacent to the luggage loading area for PA103.

The explosion that destroyed the Boeing 747 took place 38 minutes after take-off from Heathrow. This is exactly the time at which a well-known design of barometric bomb, triggered by a fall in air pressure, would explode had one been loaded at Heathrow.

Barometric bombs of this design were, at the time, being manufactured in Germany by a Syrian backed Palestinian group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a group with a history of aircraft bombing. Four of these bombs were seized by German police, a fifth went missing for unexplained reasons.

No explanation has been offered of why the stated design of electronic timer, an MST-13 manufactured by Swiss company MeBo-AG, would not be set to explode at a time much later, over the Atlantic, where any evidence would sink to the ocean floor.

Nor has an explanation been offered as to why evidence relating to the belated appearance of a fragment of MST-13 timer in the Lockerbie wreckage showed evidence of having been doctored, as had the records relating to its discovery. Or why this timer fragment has subsequently been proved NOT to be part of a consignment of timers admittedly sold to Libya by Mebo-AG.

Days before the appeal hearing, the judges ruled that documentation in the possession of the British government since shortly after PA103 was brought down should remain hidden, upholding a public interest immunity certificate signed by Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in August this year. One of Raab's predecessors, Labour's David Miliband, signed a similar order in 2008 before Megrahi's previous appeal was dropped.

Carloway upheld Raab's view that the documentation was relevant but revealing it would "damage counter-terrorism liaison and intelligence gathering between the UK and other states".

The documentation is reportedly a letter from then Jordanian ruler, King Hussein, an ally of the Western powers and a CIA asset, implicating Jordanian intelligence agent and PFLP-GC supporter Marween Khreesat in making the bomb. King Hussein claimed the attack was revenge commissioned by the Iranian government for the US Vincennes' shoot-down of an Iran Airbus at the cost of 255 lives in July 1988. Khreesat was arrested as part of the group that was making bombs in Germany in 1988, but was quickly released. He died in Syria in 2016.

Another remarkable intervention on the eve of the appeal, which coincided with the December 21 anniversary of the disaster, came from outgoing US Justice Secretary William Barr.

Barr announced charges against the hitherto little-known Libyan, Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi (Masud), whom Barr accused of helping Megrahi make the bomb used in the attack and whose extradition to the US is now being sought. Barr claimed the then-Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi personally thanked Masud for his efforts. Masud has been held in a Libyan jail since 2012. Gaddafi's government was violently overthrown by the US and European war machine, and Libya pitched into a catastrophic and ongoing civil war in 2011, but this claim of involvement only surfaced years later.

Barr has a history with the Lockerbie case. Prior to his installation by Donald Trump in 2019, he was known for a series of cover-ups arising from his first period as US Attorney General, between 1991 and 1993, during George H W Bush's term as US President, arising from the successive debacles of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

It was on Barr's watch that Bush handed out pardons to senior state officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, including former defence secretary Caspar Weinburger, who had been charged with crimes of perjury, lying to Congress and obstruction of justice.

Barr oversaw a fundamental shift in the focus of investigation into the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 from the PFLP-GC and Iran to Libya, and announced the November 14, 1991 indictments against Megrahi, and his then co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah.

The transition took place during US preparations for the assault on Iraq in the first Gulf War, launched earlier in 1991. Prior to the war, US officials shuttled around the various Arab regimes in the Middle East seeking support and acquiescence in the planned bloodbath. Then Secretary of State James Baker visited Syria repeatedly and extracted regime support for the assault on neighbouring Iraq. Iran remained neutral.

Speaking of Lockerbie when the war was over and days after the unexpected indictment of the two Libyans, Bush said, "A lot of people thought it was the Syrians. The Syrians took a bum rap on this."

None of this mattered to the Scottish judges. Instead, the 64-page verdict sought to strengthen the case against Megrahi by attributing sinister significance to entries in co-accused Fhimah's diary referring to "luggage tags". Fhimah, however, was acquitted in the original 2001 trial. Both men worked at the airport.

Speaking outside the court, lawyer Aamer Anwar said Megrahi's family were heartbroken by the verdict and intend to take the case to the UK Supreme Court. Jim Swire, 84, whose daughter Flora died in the disaster said, "For a long time I have been persuaded that it isn’t likely the truth will come out during my time left on the planet."

[RB: Another recent article can be read here: Lockerbie 32 years on: imperialism, framings and cover-ups.]