Libya's acceptance of responsibility

[Twelve years ago today Libya reached agreement with the United Kingdom and the United States over the terms of its “acceptance of responsibility” for the Lockerbie bombing and the compensation payable to the families of those who died. The following report is taken from The Guardian website:]

Libya today reached agreement with the United States and Britain to accept civil responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and compensate victims' relatives, a source close to the talks said.

"History is in the making. A deal could be announced at any moment," the source told the Reuters news agency after US, British and Libyan officials met in London.

Under the arrangement, Libya would compensate families of the 259 passengers and crew killed in the mid-air explosion of the Pan Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 and the 11 people killed on the ground.

Tripoli would pay up to £6.2m per victim into a special trust account in return for a series of steps to remove sanctions against it, the source said.

That would make the total value of the settlement roughly £1.68bn if all conditions were met.

The deal would end a lingering dispute between the west and an Arab state shortly before a likely US-led war against Iraq.

A Libyan intelligence agent, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, was convicted of the crime by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands.

[A report on the BBC News website was somewhat more cautious:]

Further talks have taken place aimed at securing agreement on a compensation deal for relatives of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

The talks in London - the latest in a series - between Britain, the United States and Libya have been aimed at ending UN sanctions imposed on Libya following the atrocity.

The London talks were attended by William Burns, a key member of the US State Department, with responsibility for Middle Eastern Affairs. (...)

United Nations sanctions, currently suspended, can only be lifted completely when Libya complies with four key demands.

Among these is adequate compensation and a deal has already been worked out under which a total of $2.7bn would be paid to relatives of those who died, representing $10m per victim.

But another demand - that Libya accepts responsibility for the atrocity - has so far proved to be a stumbling block.

It is understood Britain agreed the wording of a Libyan statement but the Americans were unhappy.

If an agreement is reached, relatives from both the UK and the US will study its wording.

[The terms ultimately agreed for Libya’s “acceptance of responsibility” can be read here.]

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.

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."