Compensation negotiations following Lockerbie trial

[What follows is the text of a report published in The Independent on this date in 2002:]

Millions of dollars for bomb victims' families if Gaddafi accepts responsibility  

Relatives of the 270 people who died in the Lockerbie bombing stand to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in a secret deal being finalised by senior officials from Libya, Britain and the US. Senior Libyan officials met their British and American counterparts at the Foreign Office in London this month to discuss the deal, which would also see Tripoli accept general responsibility for the 1988 attack on Pan Am Flight 103, which killed all the passengers and crew and 11 people from the small Scottish border town. In return, the way would be opened for the north African country to resume oil deals worth billions of dollars. The negotiations are going on as Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer convicted last year of planting the bomb that destroyed the airliner, prepares for his appeal, due to start on Wednesday at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. His co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was found not guilty.

"A meeting took place on 10 January to discuss Libya's response to the requirements set down by the UN Security Council," a Foreign Office spokesman said. "There are two requirements – that Libya accept responsibility for the actions of its officers and that it pay compensation to the families of the victims." The meeting was the latest in a series of three-way engagements that have taken place since Megrahi's conviction last year. One person with knowledge of what transpired at the most recent meeting said: "Libya wants to get out of the shadow of Lockerbie, and the only way it can do that is to accept responsibility." Underlining the importance of the 10 January meeting, all three countries sent officials of the highest level. The US was represented by William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, while a spokesman for the Libyan embassy in London said that a special negotiating team was dispatched from Tripoli. Britain said it sent a senior Foreign Office official.

It is not clear how much compensation will be paid. Dr Jim Swire, who leads the group of 31 bereaved British families, said the relatives had been asked that they keep private the sums being discussed but that the total would come to "many, many millions". (...) 

Dr Swire said the families supported the efforts to bring Libya back into the international arena. "Our view is that it would be unhelpful to look at Libya now as it was in the mid-1980s," said Dr Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing. "We feel it would be more of a memorial to our loved ones if we can play a small part in [ensuring Libya does not return to the path of terrorism]." Glenn Johnson, the chairman of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, the group that represents the vast majority of the families of the 169 US victims, was also encouraged that Libya was taking part in the talks. "Over the last 13 years I have spent around $100,000, pursuing the case," said Mr Johnson, who lost his 21-year-old daughter, Beth, in the incident.

Libya, which has already regained diplomatic relations with Britain, has much to gain from a normalisation of relations with the US – most importantly, the resumption of oil deals worth billions of dollars. The US believes that Libya is no longer involved in terrorism and was heartened by Colonel Gaddafi's comments condemning the attacks of 11 September. The US imposed its own sanctions in 1986, after Libyan agents bombed a Berlin disco frequented by US soldiers, killing two of them. US President Ronald Reagan responded by bombing Tripoli. The UN sanctions, suspended in 1999 after Libya handed over the two Lockerbie suspects, were imposed in 1992. The UN requirement that Libya pay compensation is not dependent on the outcome of Megrahi's appeal. After last year's verdict, Mohammed Azwai, Libya's ambassador to Britain, said Tripoli would pay if the conviction was upheld. "After the appeal result, at that time we will speak about compensation. We will fulfil our duty to the Security Council."

US-Libya rapprochement following Lockerbie trial

[The following are excerpts from an article by Robert S Greenberger published in The Wall Street Journal on this date in 2002:]

Libya's Col Moammar Gadhafi, is attempting a rehabilitation.

Top US and Libyan officials have held several unpublicized meetings in England and Switzerland in recent years to discuss improving ties. Public-relations campaigns and lobbying efforts on Libya's behalf are under way, funded in part by oil money and driven by a desire to cash in on future deals or resume business interrupted by sanctions. The Libyan leader himself has been taking steps and sending signals that suggest he may want to get out of the terrorism business, US officials say.

The Gadhafi makeover could be reaching a critical moment. Last week, a top US official and a Libyan intelligence operative met near London in another attempt to talk about the steps Libya must take before ties can be resumed. Later this month, a Scottish court is scheduled to hear the appeal of a Libyan intelligence agent found guilty in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, including 189 Americans. Libya has signaled to US officials directly and through intermediaries that when the legal process ends, the Gadhafi government may compensate the victims' families and take responsibility for the bombing, US officials say. Many US officials believe Col. Gadhafi himself was involved in the Pan Am bombing, the bloodiest terrorist attack on Americans before Sept 11.

In October, William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, who was at last week's meeting outside London, addressed a congressional committee about the purpose of US diplomacy toward Libya. He said it was meant "to make clear that there are no shortcuts around Libya ... accepting responsibility for what happened and also for paying appropriate compensation" for the Pan Am bombing.

There's a lot to be gained on both sides from rapprochement. Resolving the bombing could persuade Washington to lift the sanctions imposed in 1986. That would open the way for American companies to do business with the oil-rich country and for Libya to do some much-needed repair work on its economy. (...)

Still, the diplomatic dance between the US and Libya has produced a stark change in Libya's previously sharp anti-American rhetoric. It began in secret more than two years before Sept 11, in a series of meetings on the outskirts of London and in Geneva, Switzerland. Those meetings brought together senior officials of the Clinton administration, British officials and a top Libyan intelligence operative, Musa Kusa, according to US officials.

The idea to meet emerged in February 1998, when the US was embroiled in one of its periodic crises with Iraq. British Prime Minister Tony Blair telephoned President Clinton to discuss growing complaints by moderate Arab allies that the West was dealing unfairly with Arab states. Mr Blair suggested it might be helpful to resolve the Libya issue in some way, a Clinton administration official recalls. (...)

President Clinton didn't move until after Col. Gadhafi agreed in April 1999 to hand over two Libyan suspects in the Pan Am 103 bombing. The White House then sent Martin Indyk, the assistant secretary of state for the Middle East at the time, and Bruce Riedel, the top White House Middle East staffer, to meet with Mr Kusa, who often handles delicate missions for Col Gadhafi. Mr Kusa has been associated for more than 20 years with Libyan intelligence, which has been connected to assassinations of Libyan dissidents abroad and the Pan Am bombing. (...)

In the highest-level contacts since President Reagan imposed sanctions in 1986, the US held four meetings in which Clinton administration officials laid out the steps Col Gadhafi must take to warm up relations with Washington. US officials hammered away at one theme: Libya must compensate the families of Pan Am 103 victims and take responsibility for the terrorist bombing to make normal ties possible. A United Nations resolution also calls for Libya to compensate the victims' families and take responsibility for the bombing.

Then, the day after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, Col Gadhafi condemned the actions publicly as "horrifying, destructive." In October, in a previously planned secret meeting, Mr Kusa met in England with Mr Burns. Mr Kusa talked about what he called their common enemy, terrorism, according to a diplomat familiar with the session. Mr Kusa offered information on the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is believed to be linked to al Qaeda and which also targets Col Gadhafi.

On Dec 5, the US included the group on an expanded list of terrorist organizations whose members will be automatically barred from the US or expelled if found here. At last week's meeting outside London, Mr Burns reiterated the American stance on Pan Am 103, according to a State Department official. (...)

Turning over the terrorism suspects also bolstered a public-relations and lobbying campaign conducted by Libya and its supporters, with quiet help from American companies. Four days after Col Gadhafi agreed to the handover, the US-Libya Dialogue Group held its first meeting, in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Mustafa Fitouri, a Libyan who is an information-technology professor at the Maastricht School of Management, helped arrange the session. He says the nonprofit group was set up "to show people in both countries, away from government, that people can communicate, work with each other." (...)

Mr Fitouri says some funds for the meeting were provided by US and Libyan companies, which he won't name. He adds that he doesn't know where all the money comes from because it's handled by a person, whom he also won't name, at a Libyan university. Until the Pan Am 103 case is resolved and sanctions are lifted, US companies don't want to be identified as being close to Tripoli.

Gadaffi lawyer says Libya probe is futile

[This is the headline over an article (behind the paywall) in today’s edition of The Sunday Times. It picks up on an item posted on this blog over a week ago.  The article (with its eccentric spelling of Gaddafi) reads in part:]

Colonel Gadaffi’s former lawyer has said that a Scottish police visit to Libya to investigate the Lockerbie bombing will yield no credible evidence implicating the country.

David Cameron announced last week that the Libyan government was to allow officers from Dumfries and Galloway to travel to north Africa to seek fresh evidence about Britain’s worst terrorist attack.

Scottish prosecutors believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan agent convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, could not have acted alone.

Investigators are interested in interviewing other Libyan suspects about the atrocity which killed 270 people and in viewing Libyan files relating to the attack.

However, Francis Boyle, a professor of international law who represented Gadaffi at the world court in the 1990s, said he was convinced that Libya was not responsible.

He added that the dictator’s personal files were “blown to hell” during the 2011 uprising which led to Gadaffi’s death in October that year.

Boyle said families of those who died in the 1988 attack stood a better chance of discovering the truth if Cameron ordered Britain’s intelligence agencies and police to release their own files.

Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, said he had warned Gadaffi’s regime that, while Iran was viewed as the prime suspect for the attack, Libya would be used by the American government as “a convenient scapegoat”.

He claims that British files held on the case before British and US investigators switched their focus on Libya “would get closer to what really happened in this terrible tragedy”.

“My client Muammar Gadaffi had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing, he was not involved with it, he did not order it and Libya had nothing to do with it. Megrahi was just a scapegoat,” said Boyle.

“The truth as understood by the British government is in the files of MI5, MI6 and Scotland Yard and I believe that is where the next stage of the investigation should be.

“David Cameron should order up a paper — what evidence did they have, what were their working premises prior to the decision to blame it all on Libya?”

Boyle said he believes Gadaffi’s presidential files were destroyed when his Bab al-Azizia military barracks and compound were reduced to rubble in the uprising. While he believes files from the foreign ministry, security minister and ministry for justice may remain, he also voiced concerns about the authenticity of any files found.

However, news of a likely visit by Scottish police next month was welcomed by Susan Cohen of New Jersey, whose daughter Theodora was killed in the atrocity.

Cohen, who is convinced Libya was to blame, said: “I am encouraged by it. I don’t know how many files monsters like Gadaffi kept but that the police are going is very good.” (...)

[A letter from William Burns in The Scotsman of Monday, 4 February reads as follows:]

The announcement by David Cameron (...) in a joint news conference in Tripoli, with his Libyan counterpart Ali Zeidan, that officers from Dumfries and Galloway constabulary had been granted permission to visit the country and examine all files relating to the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, looks like a thin excuse to try to find a loophole to vindicate bringing to trial Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah.

This new, apparently puppet-regime of the western powers in Libya should be demanding, more appropriately, that officers from Libya visit Scotland to examine all files relating to what was, in the eyes of many, and for all practical purposes, a “show trial” of two innocent Libyans.

It was well documented in the earliest days that the bombing was largely financed by Iran and carried out by Syrians. It was to Britain and America’s advantage to turn a blind eye to Iran’s involvement at the time because Iran sided with the so-called Allies in the Desert Storm offensive against Iraq. On the other hand, Libya’s Colonel Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi, verbally supported Iraq.

However, if the Prime Minister is allowed to use this ploy to pull the final curtain down on the Lockerbie trial, he will be doing a grave disservice to the victims of the bombing and to their families, and not least to the people in Scotland who are fighting to expose the deep-rooted corruption that permeates the Scottish legal system.