Deal done to get Megrahi to drop appeal

[What follows is the text of an article that appeared on the Channel 4 News website on this date in 2010:]

How does an ex-spy link BP, Libya and Lockerbie bomber? Who Knows Who investigates the key players at the heart of a growing transatlantic rift - from deals in the desert to the boardroom, via MI6.

The only man convicted in connection with the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing over Scotland, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, was released in 2009 on compassionate grounds. He is terminally ill with prostate cancer.

He returned home, personally escorted by Saif Gaddafi, son of Libya's leader Colonel Gaddafi, to a hero's welcome in August 2009.

The celebrations sparked fury around the world and were condemned by President Obama and then prime minister Gordon Brown. Nearly a year on, al-Megrahi is still alive in Libya and his name is back in global headlines.

Thousands of miles away in the US, a group of senators has called for an inquiry into an admission by British energy giant BP that it lobbied UK ministers to get them to speed up the signing of a prisoner transfer agreement, in order to rescue an oil deal with Libya. BP insists it never lobbied about Mr al-Megrahi personally.

The witnesses the US politicians call could include Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, former justice secretary Jack Straw, Lord Browne, the former BP chief executive, and Tony Blair.

So who sped up the process which may have led to al-Megrahi's release? What did Tony Blair agree at the "deal in the desert"? And what is the BP connection?

Shortly after al-Megrahi's return home, Britain's former "man in Tripoli" Sir Oliver Miles told Channel 4 News he believed a deal had been done between the UK and Libya, to get al-Megrahi to drop an appeal against his conviction.

The former UK ambassador to Libya said: "I think Tony Blair originally thought that he could deal with it quite simply by [sending] al-Megrahi back to Libya under the prisoner transfer agreement. It turned out it wasn't as simple as that."

One man who knows more than most about what took place is Sir Nigel Sheinwald - Britain's ambassador to the US since 2007. Once Blair's right-hand man, he has been at David Cameron's side throughout the new prime minister's first official US trip.

Sir Nigel previously served as an adviser on foreign policy to Blair. Libyan ministers and diplomats are said to refer to the "Nigel and Tony" double act.

In 2003, with US approval, he chaired the secret meetings in London with the Libyans that led to an easing of international relations with Colonel Gaddafi.

Intriguingly, Mr Cameron's coalition partner also has a connection to Gaddafi. Before entering parliament, Deputy PM Nick Clegg worked for a lobby firm called GJW. One of its clients was Libya and a key project is said to have been "improving the reputation" of its controversial leader.

Sir Nigel Sheinwald was at the heart of this rehabilitation of Libya in the eyes of the West. He was sitting next to Tony Blair at the now infamous meeting in Gaddafi's tent in 2004.

Sir Nigel was again at Blair's side in 2007 when a prisoner transfer agreement was struck. On the same day Blair looked on as BP boss Tony Hayward signed a provisional agreement over $900m gas and oil exploration rights in Libya. Both deals later stalled and al-Megrahi's ill-health was the official reason for his release.

Another key player, and a name which should interest the US senators, is Sir Mark Allen. He was in charge of the Middle East and Africa department at MI6 until he left in 2004 to become an adviser to BP.

It is known Sir Mark lobbied then justice secretary Jack Straw to speed up an agreement over prisoner transfers to avoid jeopardising a major trade deal with Libya.

He made two phone calls to Mr Straw - who later let slip Sir Mark's involvement to a select committee. He said: "I knew Sir Mark from my time at the Foreign Office - he has an extensive knowledge of Libya and the Middle East and I thought he was worth listening to."

Sir Mark, an Oxford graduate and a fan of falconry, has been credited with helping to persuade the Libyans to abandon development of weapons of mass destruction in 2003. He is said to have "charmed" Gaddafi out of his international isolation.

But has BP's influence been overplayed? Sir Oliver Miles, the former British ambassador, believes so. He says that the US senators, angry at the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, are trying to "kick BP while it's down".

He said that Libya had signed deals not just with BP, but also with Shell and ExxonMobil - the three biggest energy firms in the world.

Speaking to Channel 4 News he added: "Libya knows the only way it can achieve a boost in oil production is by bringing in the world's biggest oil companies.

"You don't have to look for any dirty business to explain why they're doing business with BP."

‘Deal in the desert’ put Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi on path to freedom

[This is the headline over a long article in The Times. It reads in part:]

Supported by a walking stick, and wearing clothes that hung off his clearly diminished frame, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi did not look like the biggest mass murderer in British history as he boarded the flight yesterday that would take him home.

The Libyan known to the world as the Lockerbie bomber returned to his native country a free man after being granted compassionate release by the Scottish government, a decision that some believe has its roots in a deal made between Tony Blair and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi more than two years ago.

The notorious “deal in the desert” was a significant step towards Libya’s rehabilitation among world leaders after it was held responsible for the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988, and also helped to clear the way for BP to invest £450 million in exploring Libya’s vast untapped reserves of oil. The prisoner transfer arrangement that the leaders agreed was also the first indication that al-Megrahi could one day return home.

By the time the memorandum of understanding between the two countries was announced, Scotland’s first nationalist government had come into power and Alex Salmond, the SNP First Minister, was furious that he had not been consulted. The issue became the subject of the first serious cross-border row — in a letter to Mr Blair, the First Minister made it clear that he thought his behaviour “unacceptable”.

“This government is determined that decisions on any individual case will continue to be made following the due process of Scots law,” Mr Salmond said.

The storm subsided when Downing Street claimed that the agreement did not extend to al-Megrahi, but by the end of the year a deal that involved the Libyan was agreed, with Scottish ministers being given a veto over any future request.

At the time it seemed unlikely that a transfer deal would ever be pursued. In June 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had referred al-Megrahi’s case back to court, highlighting six areas in his original trial that could have constituted a miscarriage of justice. A series of hearings, some of which were held behind closed doors, started at the High Court in Edinburgh (...)

In the following months rumours began to circulate that al-Megrahi’s health really was in terminal decline. Reports suggested that his cancer had spread to his bones, and supporters urged the courts to speed up his appeal against the conviction. In April the first block of hearings in his appeal began in Edinburgh.

As defence lawyers were preparing their submissions Westminster was laying the grounds for an alternative option, and on April 29 this year the controversial prisoner transfer treaty was ratified. A week later the Libyan Government created a diplomatic headache for Scottish ministers by formally applying for al-Megrahi’s repatriation.

Consideration of the request was the sole responsibility of Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary and a lawyer by trade. As part of his deliberations he began to meet all “relevant parties”. Among those he spoke to were families of the British victims and relatives of the 11 Lockerbie residents who lost their lives when falling wreckage crashed on to the ground.

Not all of them held the same view, but many of the British relatives were in agreement: al-Megrahi, they said, should not be in jail. The families of American victims were also given a say. In an emotional video-conference call between Washington and Edinburgh relatives of the 189 American victims — including 35 young students from Syracuse University — delivered the directly opposite verdict, calling for the Libyan to remain behind bars. Extracts of their testimonies, released this week, reveal the strength of their feeling. (...)

Just as it seemed that Mr MacAskill was caught in a no-win situation, the stakes were raised even higher. On July 24 al-Megrahi lodged another application with the Scottish government, this time seeking to be freed on compassionate grounds.

Yesterday the text of this plea was made public for the first time. His letter states: “I am terminally ill. There is no prospect of my recovery. My continued incarceration in HMP Greenock is not conducive to my wellbeing as my life nears it end ... I have never publicly taken a stance which would seek to impugn your nation and its system of justice. I have behaved with respect to the due legal process which I am subject to. It is with the same respect that I make the application to you to enable me to return to my country and my family with what is left of my life, as a son, husband, father and grandfather.” (...)

The decison over the fate of the Lockerbie bomber is quasi-judicial in that the Scottish Justice Minister must act free from political considerations. The opposition parties in Scotland instinctively refrained from commenting on the issue for fear of appearing to undermine the judicial process.

The united front broke down, though, at the sight of the Justice Secretary’s car driving through the gates of HMP Greenock before he granted the mass murderer the kind of face-to-face meeting that any other killer would be denied.

Mr MacAskill said that he was duty bound to hold the meeting because under the prisoner transfer agreement al-Megrahi had the right to representation. The opposition argument was that representation from his defence team was sufficient under the terms of the agreement.

The charge levelled at Mr MacAskill that he struck a deal with al-Megrahi that day is likely to follow him despite fierce denials. The Scottish government says it was a coincidence that al-Megrahi went on to drop his appeal against conviction. Mr MacAskill faced further allegations of resorting to leaks in an unsubtle attempt to gauge reaction to the biggest decision taken by the nationalist government. (...)

Suspicions of a deal deepened when al-Megrahi’s defence team withdrew his appeal at the High Court in Edinburgh. The court was told that the Lockerbie bomber believed that the course of action would increase his chances of being sent home.

The Lord Advocate’s failure to withdraw the Crown’s outstanding appeal against al-Megrahi’s conviction rendered as inadmissable his application to be considered under the prisoner transfer agreement, with the legal process incomplete.

The only remaining option for the Scottish government was the one that it has long been suspected of favouring — release on compassionate grounds.

With medical reports making clear that the criteria for such a decision had been met, and a recommendation from the parole board in favour of release on his desk, Mr MacAskill was faced with making the lonely decision for which his post dictates he must take responsibility.

When Mr Salmond declared this week that “international power politics” would not play a part in the decision, the die was cast.

Mr MacAskill, who was little-known outside of Holyrood before the implications of the case became clear, had decided to ignore the will of the Obama Administration and instead adhere to what he believes to be a key Scottish virtue — compassion.

[Further coverage in The Times can be read here.]

The Sunday Herald on the BP/Megrahi furore

[The Sunday Herald contains a long article by James Cusick. The following are excerpts:]

In the current open season on oil company BP, a core of senators have switched their attentions from the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to BP’s exploration deals with Libya – and allegations that the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi helped BP secure a $900 million deal.

In his visit to Washington next week, Prime Minister David Cameron will discover if the senators are merely showboating ahead of their mid-term elections or whether they are serious about dissecting the role of international diplomacy and back-stage politics in the rehabilitation of oil-rich rogue states. For one leading energy consultant in London, who has commercial ties to oil and gas companies operating in the Middle East, showboating would be the preferred option.

“If Capitol Hill really wants the full, dark picture, they’ll need to do more than call in BP to answer a few questions,” he says.

“They might start with George Bush, Tony Blair and Condi Rice. Jack Straw would help; so would Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the United States. As well as BP, they should talk to Shell, Marathon, Amerada Hess, ConocoPhillips, all of them. And, if they’ve time, Colonel Gaddafi’s son Seif and Musa Kusa, Libya’s former head of intelligence [and currently Foreign Minister]. This is a Pandora’s Box.”

Sir Nigel will be alongside Cameron in DC this week, just as he was alongside Tony Blair during his years as the British ambassador to the European Union, and later as Blair’s foreign policy adviser. Ahead of Cameron’s visit, it fell to Sir Nigel to state the coalition’s position on the release of Megrahi. “The new British Government is clear that Megrahi’s release was a mistake,” he said.

For Libyan diplomats, that will have come as a surprise. “Nigel and Tony” are regarded in Tripoli as the two figures who helped bring Megrahi home.

Operating behind the scenes and in direct contact with Gaddafi’s closest aides, it was Sir Nigel who – on Blair’s direct orders – helped broker the secret talks in 2003 between the UK and the US that eventually ended Libya’s exile and coaxed Gaddafi into ending his ambition to build a nuclear arsenal. After he and Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, had met Libyan officials, it was Sir Nigel who chaired a series of meetings in London with Libyan diplomats which sealed the deal.

In March the following year, Sir Nigel was with Blair when he visited Gaddafi’s tented complex in the desert outside Tripoli. One news paper report noted that it was 5,573 days since Pan Am Flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie. Blair was the first British prime minister to visit Tripoli since Churchill, and his job was to confer international respectability on the Gaddafi regime and to re-open the commercial opportunities in one of the world’s least explored oil territories. (...)

Lurking in the background, however, was one unresolved issue: one that regularly presented tribal difficulties for Gaddafi in internal Libyan politics. This was Megrahi’s imprisonment in Scotland. (...)

After Blair’s meeting with Gaddafi in 2004, pressure increased on both the UK and US governments to create the necessary conditions for further commercial activity. But Megrahi was still an unresolved part of the Libyan jigsaw – and, felt many in the Foreign Office, a vital one. Quietly, the prospect of a prisoner transfer deal crept on to the ­diplomatic agenda.

Gaddafi’s son Seif has said that Megrahi’s release was a constant reference point in any trade talks. And in a meeting with Megrahi after he returned to Tripoli last year, Seif told him: “When British interests came to Libya, I used to put you on the table.”

According to a US embassy source in London, Seif would “scare the hell out of Capitol Hill” if he gave a witness testimony. It would not be what he had to say about BP – but what he could say about anyone from any country, including the US, trying to secure new and lucrative business with Libya. (...)

When Blair eventually returned to Tripoli in May 2007 to sign the so-called deal in the desert – a major step towards Libya’s international rehabilitation – it was Sir Nigel who had designed the “memorandum of understanding”. This included, for the first time, an outline of a legal agreement on prisoner transfer. On the same day that Blair and Gaddafi shook hands, both Blair and Sir Nigel travelled to the Libyan city of Sirt to watch BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward and the Libyan National Oil Company’s chairman Shokri Ghanem sign an exploration deal worth $900m.

Hayward knew he was delivering something big for BP. “Our agreement is the start of an enduring long-term and mutually beneficial partnership with Libya,” he said. “With its potentially large resources of gas, favourable geographic location and improving investment climate, Libya has an enormous opportunity to be a source of clean energy for the world.” (...)

BP expected the prisoner transfer agreement to be dealt with quickly by Westminster. But shortly after the signing ceremony between Hayward and Ghanem – which, although it looked formal enough, was still only an outline deal – Libyan officials were told by UK lawyers that there might be a problem with returning Megrahi to Tripoli. Transfer or release of prisoners from a Scottish jail was not a matter for Number 10 but for the devolved government at Holyrood.

According to a senior UK judicial source, when the prospect of delays in any prisoner transfer was suggested to Libya, it was dismissed as nonsense. One Libyan source claimed there would be no delay; that “Nigel and Tony have assured us”. This source also believed Megrahi would be back in Libya within six months.

But BP had begun to appreciate the Scottish problem. By the late autumn of 2007, the company was said to be worried about the slow progress being made in concluding the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.

Last week BP officially acknowledged this concern. “We were aware this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan Government of BP’s exploration agreement,” the company said.

BP admits it lobbied the government, seeking to speed up the process of getting the transfer agreement into law. However, it denied it tried to intervene in the case of Megrahi in particular.

But Professor Black, the man who helped engineer the case at Zeist, says: “The prisoner transfer agreement and the potential release of Megrahi back to Libya have always been one and the same thing. It is disingenuous of BP to say they were different. Megrahi was always the name on the table. He was the only high-profile prisoner that mattered.”

Last year, Megrahi was released from jail on compassionate grounds by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary. MacAskill said the Libyan was in the final stages of prostate cancer and was expected to die within three months. He added that he was bound by Scottish values to release him and allow him to die in his home country. The transfer agreement – which the Scottish Government had criticised as unconstitutional because it had not been consulted – did not figure in the minister’s deliberations. (...)

The senate committee in Washington will care little about the constitutional in-fighting between Edinburgh and London. The former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, has said that if Westminster had wanted to stop Megrahi leaving, it had the power to do so. “The last time I looked, Scotland wasn’t independent and doesn’t have powers over foreign policy,” said Bolton.

Although Sir Nigel says the UK Government believes the release of Megrahi was a mistake, he does not say if he thought it was mistake.

[Also in the Sunday Herald is an article by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill. It reads in part:]

My decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi last August was, as I made clear at the time and many times since, the right decision for the right reasons.

It was a decision based entirely upon the application for compassionate release that I was duty bound to consider. As I said then, it was not a decision I chose to make, but one I was obliged to make as Scotland’s Justice Secretary.

Megrahi was sent home to die according to the due process of Scots law, based on the medical report of the Scottish Prison Service director of health and care, and the recommendations of the parole board and prison governor – all of which have been published by the Scottish Government.

However, I was also faced with another, separate decision, in respect of Megrahi. That was the application before me for a transfer from Scotland under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed by the UK and Libyan governments.

I rejected that application because the US Government and the families of Lockerbie victims in the US had been led to believe such a prisoner transfer would not be possible for anyone convicted of the atrocity.

The Scottish Government has always totally opposed the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated between the UK and Libyan governments. The memorandum that led to the Agreement was agreed without our knowledge and against our wishes.

That is why we chose to reveal the secret talks between the then Labour Government and the Libyans, as soon as we learned of the “deal in the desert” between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi, with the First Minister making a statement to the Scottish Parliament on the issue as far back as June 2007. (...)

Let us be clear: the issues now being raised in the United States about BP refer to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement negotiated by the governments of the UK and Libya, and so have nothing to do with the decision on compassionate release, which was a totally different process based on entirely different criteria.

And the Scottish Government had no contact from BP in relation to Megrahi.

We would always look to assist any properly constituted inquiry – and indeed we very much support a wider UK public inquiry or United Nations investigation capable of examining all the issues related to the Lockerbie atrocity, which go well beyond Scotland’s jurisdiction. That remains the case.

In terms of the new UK Government’s position on the Megrahi issue, we have known the Prime Minister’s opinion since last August, and he knows the due process of Scotland’s independent legal system was followed.

We also now know Professor Karol Sikora has rejected news paper reports that misrepresented his comments about Megrahi’s condition.

I said last August that Megrahi may die sooner or may die later than the three-month prognosis the experts then deemed to be a reasonable estimate of life expectancy – that is something over which we have had no control.

What is certain is the man rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing remains terminally ill with prostate cancer.

[Mr MacAskill's opinion that Mr Megrahi was "rightly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" is one that many, including the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, do not share.]

The prisoner transfer débâcle

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in The Guardian on this date in 2007:]

Scotland's justice secretary today labelled as "ludicrous" Westminster's claim that a prisoner exchange agreement with Libya did not cover the Lockerbie bomber.

Kenny MacAskill poured scorn on Downing Street's insistence that a memorandum of understanding signed last week during a trip by Tony Blair to Libya did not apply to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, has protested to Tony Blair over the agreement, which he suggested could lead to the Lockerbie bomber being transferred from Scotland to his homeland.

The SNP leader made an emergency statement in the Holyrood parliament complaining that "at no stage" had he been made aware of a British-Libyan agreement on extradition and prisoner release before it was signed.

The agreement has sparked the first major row between the government and the minority SNP administration in Holyrood.

Mr MacAskill told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland that Westminster's handling of the affair was "at minimum, discourteous to the first minister and the Scottish parliament".

Mr MacAskill continued: "There's no mention of al-Megrahi [in the memorandum] but we have many people in our prisons ... but we have only one Libyan national in our prisons.

"So when we're talking about the transfer of Libyan prisoners they are not secreted in Barlinnie, Saughton, Perth or anywhere else.

"We have only one Libyan national in custody and when we talk about the transfer of prisoners, frankly it is ludicrous to suggest that we are talking in a context other than this major atrocity that was perpetrated on Scottish soil and which was dealt with by a Scottish court and with a sentence provided by Scottish judges." (...)

No 10 denied Megrahi's case was covered by the document, saying: "There is a legal process currently under way in Scotland reviewing this case which is not expected to conclude until later this summer.

"Given that, it is totally wrong to suggest the we have reached any agreement with the Libyan government in this case.

"The memorandum of understanding agreed with the Libyan government last week does not cover this case."

But Mr MacAskill rejected any suggestion that the agreement would only apply to the transfer of al-Qaida suspects.

He said: "We haven't been given clarification [by Downing Street].

"All we've been told is that a memorandum of understanding has been signed.

"Mr al-Megrahi is not specifically excluded. It refers to the transfer of prisoners so this is London's interpretation of it.

"I doubt it very much if it's the interpretation being placed upon it by the government of Libya."

The row comes in the middle of an examination of Megrahi's case by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

The body will decide later this month whether to refer his conviction back to an appeal court.

Mr MacAskill said: "It [the memorandum] is undermining the fabric of the Scottish judicial system that has been independent long before the Scottish parliament was established.

David Mundell, the Tory MP whose Dumfriesshire constituency covers Lockerbie, said he was "appalled" by Mr Blair's handling of the matter.

"Not only has he ridden roughshod over Scotland's parliament and legal system, but his actions threaten to undermine a legal process which took years to put in place and was agreed with the United Nations and international community," he said.

[RB: Here is something previously written by me on this matter:]

It was on [29 May] 2007 that the “deal in the desert” was concluded between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi at a meeting in Sirte. This was embodied in a “memorandum of understanding” that provided, amongst other things, for a prisoner transfer agreement to be drawn up. In later years UK Government ministers, particularly Justice Secretary Jack Straw, sought to argue either (i) that the prisoner transfer element of the deal was not intended to apply to Abdelbaset Megrahi or (ii) that if it was intended to cover him, all parties appreciated that the decision on transfer would be one for the Scottish Government not the UK Government. Here is what I wrote about that on this blog:

According to Jack Straw "the Libyans understood that the discretion in respect of any PTA application rested with the Scottish Executive." This is not so. In meetings that I had with Libyan officials at the highest level shortly after the "deal in the desert" it was abundantly clear that the Libyans believed that the UK Government could order the transfer of Mr Megrahi and that they were prepared to do so. When I told them that the relevant powers rested with the Scottish -- not the UK -- Government, they simply did not believe me. When they eventually realised that I had been correct, their anger and disgust with the UK Government was palpable. As I have said elsewhere:

"The memorandum of understanding regarding prisoner transfer that Tony Blair entered into in the course of the "deal in the desert" in May 2007, and which paved the way for the formal prisoner transfer agreement, was intended by both sides to lead to the rapid return of Mr Megrahi to his homeland. This was the clear understanding of Libyan officials involved in the negotiations and to whom I have spoken.

"It was only after the memorandum of understanding was concluded that [it belatedly sunk in] that the decision on repatriation of this particular prisoner was a matter not for Westminster and Whitehall but for the devolved Scottish Government in Edinburgh, and that government had just come into the hands of the Scottish National Party and so could no longer be expected supinely to follow the UK Labour Government's wishes. That was when the understanding between the UK Government and the Libyan Government started to unravel, to the considerable annoyance and distress of the Libyans, who had been led to believe that repatriation under the PTA was only months away.

“Among the Libyan officials with whom I discussed this matter at the time were Abdulati al-Obeidi, Moussa Koussa and Abdel Rahman Shalgam.”

BP, the USA and the repatriation of Megrahi

[Today's edition of The Herald contains two letters on the current furore over BP and its alleged role in the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The first, from Dr Jim Swire, reads:]

Any genuine attempt to uncover any aspect of the truth about the Lockerbie disaster and its aftermath is welcome (“Clinton to probe BP link to Megrahi”, The Herald, July 15).

But unless Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, believes that our new coalition government is so keen to castigate our previous administration that it would be glad to cooperate, she can hardly call upon the UK government to explain itself. Would that not be to put the fox in charge of the hencoop?

She would soon see how desperate Jack Straw (as Justice Minister) was to push through the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) in time for the start of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s second appeal, even overriding the request of the House of Commons Select Committee on Human Rights for more time.

She might then stop to wonder what the motivation might have been for Straw’s clumsy haste, and why the UK authorities seem to have been desperate to neutralise Megrahi’s attempts to overturn a verdict influenced by multiple instances of government and Crown Office withholding of documents from the defence and indeed the court.

Interference in criminal justice for political reasons would be a far more serious charge than a mere grubby oil deal, of which there are so many examples in both our and her own country’s history.

As her husband once commented: “It’s the economy, stupid”, and oil is central to the economies of both our nations but, currently, flogging BP is such a popular cause in the US.

Clinton would find that the PTA from “the deal in the desert” was not, in fact, used by Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary. He used the compassionate release route which was no part of that deal but is a precedent in our criminal law, and which did not dictate the withdrawal of Megrahi’s appeal. His decision weakens the scope for bashing BP. But, then, what influenced his choice?

The US is often accused of seeking to impose its own law overseas. Bill Clinton’s brave decision to allow the holding of the Lockerbie trial outwith the US removed the near certainty of a summary death penalty for Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima, his co-defendant. Subsequent doubts amplified by our Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission have amply justified that relief.

[The second, from Iain A D Mann, reads:]

Why do Americans always think they have a God-given right to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations? Pan-Am flight 103 fell to earth in Scotland, which, under international law, meant that all investigations and subsequent trials and criminal prosecutions came under the jurisdiction of Scots law.

If former barrister Tony Blair did not understand or ignored this when he made a deal with [Colonel] Gaddafi to release Megrahi (as I suspect he did), that does not alter the fact. And if the deal was made in exchange for Libyan oil concessions to BP (which I suspect it was), neither Blair nor the UK government was in a position to deliver the prisoner exchange. Many like me have concerns about the trial and conviction of Megrahi, but it was carried out under the independent Scottish justice system, as was the decision of Kenny MacAskill to release him on compassionate grounds.

What do the Americans find difficult to understand and accept about this? If the situation were reversed, would they be willing to let British politicians interfere in the US judicial process? I find distasteful the apparent American thirst for revenge and retribution, as if incarcerating one terminally-ill old man in a prison cell would make them feel better and somehow assuage the tragic loss of so many American (and Scottish) lives. Has it never occurred to them to wonder why Libya would have wanted to undertake such a massive operation against the United States, and why a low-ranking Libyan security officer would have been entrusted with the operation?

Is it not more likely that another country was responsible, in direct retaliation for the reckless shooting down of one of their civilian air liners by a US warship just five months earlier?

And is it not strange that the [Maltese] shopkeeper who provided virtually the only evidence of Megrahi’s involvement was later financed by the CIA and set up in a new life in Australia?

The American senators and Hillary Clinton would be better engaged in addressing some of the many short comings in their own criminal justice system, including holding untried foreigners for years at Guantanamo Bay and many convicted prisoners for 25 years on death row before executing them, rather than criticising the British and Scottish legal systems, which still try to uphold the principles of both justice and compassion.

Clinton seeks UK explanation on Megrahi

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

Hillary Clinton last night urged the UK Government to explain to American politicians the circumstances that led to the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing after David Cameron described the decision as wrong.

The US Secretary of State, who is looking into claims from US senators that BP lobbied for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Megrahi’s release in August last year as part of an oil deal with Libya, made the suggestion in a call to Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Her spokesman said Clinton had indicated “it might be appropriate for the UK Government to communicate with Congress to make sure they fully understand ... what transpired a year ago”.

The Prime Minister said through his official spokesman that he believed it had been a mistake to free Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal cancer, repeating the view of Britain’s ambassador to Washington Sir Nigel Sheinwald.

Cameron’s spokesman said: “He has said in the past that he believes that the decision was wrong. Obviously he respects the process (that allowed the Scottish Government to release Megrahi) ... but he said at the time he thought it was wrong.”

Last night Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy, criticised the “mass hysteria” and “misunderstanding” in the US in relation to the decision to release Megrahi.

“The public attitude in the US is to seek revenge against BP and this is harming America’s image,” he told The Herald. “There is no surprise in the idea of BP lobbying the UK Government but that does not change the fact that the decision to release Megrahi was not made by the UK Government.

“I think there is a mass hysteria in the US. Pursuing this line that BP lobbied for Megrahi’s release comes perilously close to saying the UK Government somehow put pressure on Scotland to release him.”

Sheinwald had said the UK Government believed that the decision had been a mistake. He also said claims Megrahi was released because of an oil deal involving BP were not true.

Sheinwald served as Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser during the negotiations that led to the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya in 2007. The Herald revealed that as early as 2005 secret talks were ongoing between the UK, US and Libya to get Megrahi back to Libya. Sheinwald was present at these negotiations and helped agree the infamous deal in the desert.

The deal was denounced by the Scottish Government.

Scottish ministers released Megrahi on compassionate grounds 11 months ago because medical experts said he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and was not expected to live more than three months.

A separate application between the UK and Libyan governments under the terms of the PTA was rejected by Scottish ministers. However, US senators are angry that in 2007 BP also sealed a £590 million exploration agreement with Libya. (...)

[An editorial headed "Misunderstandings muddy the waters over Megrahi’s release" in the same newspaper reads:]

Still they do not get it. It should not be a surprise that the heightening clamour over the freeing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is founded on a massive misunderstanding of the circumstances leading to his release.

Facts can be conflated, manipulated or simply ignored when politics come into play. Such has happened in the case of Megrahi, who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, and the role of the Scottish Government in sanctioning his release on compassionate grounds some 11 months ago.

There is a debate to have, one that takes on a sharper focus the longer Megrahi lives, about whether that decision, based on a medical report taking account of the views of oncologists involved in his care, was correct. But there is no sustainable debate about BP being prepared to “trade justice for oil profits”, despite the best (or worst) efforts of certain American senators to push that line. The allegation, which cannot be separated from anger in the United States with BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, has no basis in fact, unless we have all been deceived on a massive scale (of which there is no evidence).

The claim BP lobbied the Scottish Government for Megrahi’s release is based on a failure to understand.

Perish the thought that such misunderstanding might also be wilful. BP has said it pressed Tony Blair’s government over the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) with the Libyans. But that deal had nothing to do with Megrahi’s release, a decision taken on separate grounds and by different means by an SNP administration that denounced the agreement. Yet it serves a purpose to conflate the two.

David Cameron had an opportunity to clarify matters ahead of meeting Barack Obama. By repeating his contention that Megrahi’s release was a mistake (also the President’s view) hours after Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Britain’s ambassador to the US, affirmed that was the UK Government’s position, the Prime Minister has failed to clarify matters. Singing from the same hymn sheet on Megrahi might serve the purposes of the special relationship but Sir Nigel’s role as Blair’s foreign policy adviser during the talks leading to the PTA has added to a sense of corrosive obfuscation. The choreography has been so rehearsed that we are now told Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, and William Hague, Foreign Secretary, agree Megrahi’s release was a mistake. That will play well in America, for all the wrong reasons. But it will serve no positive or substantive purpose in this country. If you must meddle, do so on the basis of fact.

[The Scotsman runs a report headlined "MacAskill could be summoned to Washington to testify on Megrahi". It can be read here. Once again, the readers' comments outshine the article.]

Secrets and lies: Gaddafi and the Labour Party

[This is the headline over an article published yesterday on the Newsnet.scot website which includes a long excerpt from a forthcoming book by G A Ponsonby. The whole article merits close attention. The following are extracts:]

Secret documents emerged recently to confirm details of how British intelligence agencies engaged in a series of joint operations with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s government.

The revelations, made first in The Guardian newspaper, indicate the bizarre attitudes of Labour while in government in London and in opposition in Edinburgh. The party said one thing in opposition, and did the opposite – simultaneously – in government.

According to The Guardian: “The papers recovered from the dictatorship’s archives include secret correspondence from MI6, MI5 reports on Libyans living in the UK, a British intelligence assessment marked “UK/Libya Eyes Only – Secret”

“Gaddafi’s agents recorded MI5 as warning in September 2006 that the two countries’ agencies should take steps to ensure that their joint operations would never be ‘discovered by lawyers or human rights organisations and the media’.”

At the time of the joint operations, which it is claimed involved the rendition of Libyans for torture at the hands of Gaddafi’s regime, Tony Blair had also been negotiating a secret deal aimed at extraditing a healthy Abdelbaset al-Megrahi back to Libya.  The Labour Prime Minister also helped broker an oil deal for BP in what came to be known as the “Deal in the Desert”. (...)

In December 2010 the story took an unexpected twist.  News emerged of the publication of confidential US Government files by controversial free-speech group Wikileaks.  Listed in the files were details of confidential top level communications involving US and UK officials.  The communications included discussions on Megrahi and they revealed the UK Labour Government had been secretly helping the Libyans.

The files proved that far from being against the release of Megrahi as they had claimed, the Labour government had fully supported the decision to free the Libyan.

Britain feared “harsh and immediate” consequences, according to the leaked cables, if Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison.

The US charge d’affaires in London, Richard LeBaron, wrote in a cable to Washington in October 2008:

“The Libyans have told HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] flat out that there will be ‘enormous repercussions’ for the UK-Libya bilateral relationship if Megrahi’s early release is not handled properly.”

Labour politicians had claimed publicly that the decision to release Megrahi was an embarrassment to Scotland – but the documents showed the Labour leadership were in fact favouring his release.

The cables showed that the UK government was aware of dire repercussions should Megrahi die in a Scottish prison:

“GOL (Govt of Libya) officials have warned U.K. Emboffs in demarches here that the consequences for the U.K.-Libya bilateral relationship would be “dire” were al-Megrahi to die in Scottish prison. Specific threats have included the immediate cessation of all U.K. commercial activity in Libya, a diminishment or severing of political ties and demonstrations against official U.K. facilities. GOL officials also implied, but did not directly state, that the welfare of U.K. diplomats and citizens in Libya would be at risk.”

The documents also revealed that the US had been privately suspicious of Tony Blair’s “Deal in the Desert” in 2007. The cable stated:

“Saif al-Islam implied that former UK PM Tony Blair had raised Megrahi with the Libyan leader in connection with lucrative business deals during Blair’s 2007 visit to Libya. [Note: Rumors that Blair made linkages between Megrahi’s release and trade deals have been longstanding among Embassy contacts. End note.]”

The Guardian reported that the leaked documents claimed:  “Anger with the British persists in some American circles, and UK ministers, Labour and Tory, have attempted to distance London from the release insisting it was purely a Scottish decision.”

Further cables from the US ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, revealed that the US position was to resist voicing opposition to Megrahi’s release at the time, so as not to risk Libyan retaliation against US interests.

Mr Cretz warned the US itself should keep quiet in order to protect its interests:  “If the [US government] publicly opposes al-Megrahi’s release or is perceived to be complicit in a decision to keep al-Megrahi in prison, [America’s Libyan diplomatic] post judges that US interests could face similar consequences.”

The documents suggested that both the UK Labour government and its US counterpart had unleashed false, and seemingly co-ordinated, furore about the Scottish government’s decision to release a dying Megrahi.

The cables also made clear that bribes in the form of “treats” were offered to the Scottish Government by Libyan diplomats, but refused point blank.  The cables revealed that US officials had privately acknowledged that the Scottish Government had acted in good faith at all times and had nothing to gain whereas the UK government, according to the leaked documents, gained massively from Megrahi’s illness and subsequent release.

The cables revealed the Americans were aware that the issue had been hijacked by Unionist politicians at Holyrood who were trying to capitalise on it for political gain: “Meanwhile, local Scottish opposition politicians are using the issue to call into question the SNP government’s credibility and competence.”

“Naysmith underscored that Scotland received “nothing” for releasing Megrahi (as has been widely suggested in the UK and U.S. media), while the UK Government has gotten everything – a chance to stick it to Salmond’s Scottish National Party (SNP) and good relations with Libya.”

The publication of the secret cables was very bad news for Labour.  If true, then Blair himself had offered Megrahi as a bribe in order to clinch the BP oil deal. Both the UK and US governments were aware of the possible economic and geo-political repercussions for both nations if Megrahi was allowed to die in prison.

The documents featured as the main news item on BBC Scotland that day.  However it wasn’t the Labour party which found itself the target of the BBC’s reporting.  Somehow the corporation had managed to turn the incredible story into one attacking the SNP.

“First Minister made the decision to release the Lockerbie Bomber” was the introduction read out by the newsreader on the lunchtime news.

An online article appeared on the BBC Scotland news site with a headline that read:

“Salmond rejects new Megrahi claim”

Incredibly, BBC Scotland had decided the main story from the secret cables was not the former UK Labour government’s privately backing Megrahi’s release, but a short sentence related to Alex Salmond.

The BBC said:

“The leaked documents also appeared to contradict the official Scottish government position on who would make the final decision to release Megrahi.

“In August last year, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill insisted it was his decision and his alone.

“But the cables claimed Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond told the UK Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, he would make that call.”

Faced with a virtual banquet of information relating to Libya, the UK Labour government and the US government, BBC Scotland had managed to find something they could use against Salmond.  On that evening’s Reporting Scotland the real revelations were ignored as BBC Scotland embellished the reference to Salmond and managed to turn it into that evening’s main news story.

Like the BP oil deal, the BBC had managed to deflect attention away from Labour and towards the SNP.  It was an incredible editorial decision by BBC Scotland news editors.  More so because in a radio interview earlier that day, Jack Straw had let slip that David Miliband, when Foreign Secretary, had written to the Scottish Government saying the UK Government did not want Megrahi to die in prison.

Straw told interviewer John Humphrys: “Somebody did write to the Scottish Government, that’s a matter of public record.

“It’s been out for well over a year, which is a letter from the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband which set out that, and here I significantly paraphrase, but it said ‘other things being equal we think it would be better if al-Megrahi did not die in prison.”