[What follows is the text of a press release issued yesterday by Senator Frank Lautenberg:]
US Senator Frank R Lautenberg (D-NJ) released the following statement today after video footage showed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi attending a pro-Qaddafi rally in Libya. Megrahi is the only person convicted of the Pan Am 103 bombing and was released from prison on August 20, 2009, under the presumption he had only three months to live.
“The families of the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 have suffered so much already, and the images of Megrahi at a pro-Qaddafi rally in Libya only add salt to their wounds,” said Lautenberg. “Parading one terrorist out to support another is an affront to justice and further affirmation that Megrahi was released from prison on false pretenses. We will continue to fight for justice on behalf of the Pan Am 103 families.”
Last month, Lautenberg and Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder to continue working to bring to justice those responsible for the Pan Am 103 bombing, which killed 189 Americans, as well as to return convicted terrorist Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to prison. A copy of their letter can be found here.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query lautenberg. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query lautenberg. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday 28 July 2011
Tuesday 13 July 2010
Senator Lautenberg asks Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate
BP's role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish prison is being questioned in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Sen Frank Lautenberg, who is requesting an investigation into the oil company's success in securing a drilling contract in Libya.
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, won early release from prison last year after a doctor testified that he was near death and it would be compassionate to let him die a free man. But there are suggestions that Megrahi, who was given just weeks to live but is still alive and kicking, may have been the linchpin in BP's efforts to secure drilling rights in the Gulf of Sidra.
"The prospect that oil contracts between BP and the government of Libya may have affected the release, as well as new questions about the veracity of medical reports detailing Mr Megrahi’s health at the time, are disturbing developments that demand the attention of Congress, Lautenberg, D-NJ, wrote to Sens John Kerry, D-Mass, and Richard Lugar, R-Ind, the co-chairmen of the Foreign Relations Committee. (...)
The UK-based BP, which is responsible for the oil spill that has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for 85 [days], admitted that in 2007 it raised concern that a "prisoner transfer agreement with the Libyan government might hurt" the oil deal, according to Lautenberg.
Megrahi originally had not been part of the prisoner transfer, but former British Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw later cited "overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom" in including Megrahi.
BP could earn as much as $20 billion from the deal with Libya, set to begin next month.
"It is shocking to even contemplate that BP is profiting from the release of a terrorist with the blood of 189 Americans on his hands," Lautenberg wrote. "The families of the victims of Pan Am flight 103 deserve to know whether justice took a back seat to commercial interests in this case."
[From a report published today on the website of FOX News. The Senator's letter can be read here.
An article on the website of the New York Daily News contains the following:]
BP admits it had an interest in the prsioner swap, and was concerned it would derail its drilling deal, but the company insists it did push the Megrahi case.
BP spokesman Mark Salt e-mailed the following:
*It is a matter of public record that in late 2007 BP discussed with the UK government our concern at the slow progress in concluding a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya.
*Like many others we were aware that a delay might have negative consequences for UK commercial interests, including ratification of BP’s exploration agreement.
*However, we did not express a view about the specific form of the agreement, which was a matter for the UK and Libyan governments, or make representations over the al-Megrahi case, which was solely a matter for the Scottish Executive and not for the UK Government.
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, won early release from prison last year after a doctor testified that he was near death and it would be compassionate to let him die a free man. But there are suggestions that Megrahi, who was given just weeks to live but is still alive and kicking, may have been the linchpin in BP's efforts to secure drilling rights in the Gulf of Sidra.
"The prospect that oil contracts between BP and the government of Libya may have affected the release, as well as new questions about the veracity of medical reports detailing Mr Megrahi’s health at the time, are disturbing developments that demand the attention of Congress, Lautenberg, D-NJ, wrote to Sens John Kerry, D-Mass, and Richard Lugar, R-Ind, the co-chairmen of the Foreign Relations Committee. (...)
The UK-based BP, which is responsible for the oil spill that has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for 85 [days], admitted that in 2007 it raised concern that a "prisoner transfer agreement with the Libyan government might hurt" the oil deal, according to Lautenberg.
Megrahi originally had not been part of the prisoner transfer, but former British Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw later cited "overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom" in including Megrahi.
BP could earn as much as $20 billion from the deal with Libya, set to begin next month.
"It is shocking to even contemplate that BP is profiting from the release of a terrorist with the blood of 189 Americans on his hands," Lautenberg wrote. "The families of the victims of Pan Am flight 103 deserve to know whether justice took a back seat to commercial interests in this case."
[From a report published today on the website of FOX News. The Senator's letter can be read here.
An article on the website of the New York Daily News contains the following:]
BP admits it had an interest in the prsioner swap, and was concerned it would derail its drilling deal, but the company insists it did push the Megrahi case.
BP spokesman Mark Salt e-mailed the following:
*It is a matter of public record that in late 2007 BP discussed with the UK government our concern at the slow progress in concluding a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya.
*Like many others we were aware that a delay might have negative consequences for UK commercial interests, including ratification of BP’s exploration agreement.
*However, we did not express a view about the specific form of the agreement, which was a matter for the UK and Libyan governments, or make representations over the al-Megrahi case, which was solely a matter for the Scottish Executive and not for the UK Government.
Friday 21 November 2008
US Senate confirms ambassador to Libya
The US Senate has confirmed career diplomat Gene Cretz to be the first US Ambassador to Libya in 36 years. His nomination had been held up by Senate Democrats until Libya made good on its promise to fully compensate the families of victims of terrorist acts in the 1980s.
The Senate action late Thursday came after the Senate Democrat who had led the effort to block the nomination cleared the way for confirmation by noting that Libya last month paid $1.5 billion to relatives of victims of acts of terrorism for which Tripoli accepted responsibility.
"I lifted my hold. The process will work its way now," said Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat. (...)
Relatives of those who died in the Pan Am bombing joined Senator Lautenberg at a Capitol Hill news conference Thursday to mark the settlement of claims. "We are here today to say that a measure of justice has finally prevailed," he said.
Kara Weipz lost her brother in the tragedy. "We are free now to close this chapter in our nightmare. Does it change the majority of feelings of families towards Mr. Gadhafi? Absolutely, positively not. And do the families believe that he himself or those high-ranking officials in his regime were responsible for this? Absolutely. And that does not change just because this was completed."
The Pan Am bombing claimed the lives of 270 people.
[From the website of Voice of America. The full article can be read here.]
The Senate action late Thursday came after the Senate Democrat who had led the effort to block the nomination cleared the way for confirmation by noting that Libya last month paid $1.5 billion to relatives of victims of acts of terrorism for which Tripoli accepted responsibility.
"I lifted my hold. The process will work its way now," said Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat. (...)
Relatives of those who died in the Pan Am bombing joined Senator Lautenberg at a Capitol Hill news conference Thursday to mark the settlement of claims. "We are here today to say that a measure of justice has finally prevailed," he said.
Kara Weipz lost her brother in the tragedy. "We are free now to close this chapter in our nightmare. Does it change the majority of feelings of families towards Mr. Gadhafi? Absolutely, positively not. And do the families believe that he himself or those high-ranking officials in his regime were responsible for this? Absolutely. And that does not change just because this was completed."
The Pan Am bombing claimed the lives of 270 people.
[From the website of Voice of America. The full article can be read here.]
Thursday 25 September 2008
US lawmakers block ambassador to Libya over fund
Reuters reports that the confirmation of the United States ambassador to Libya has been blocked in the Senate until the last payment of compensation is actually made to the relatives of those killed at Lockerbie. The report reads in part:
'On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey put on hold the nomination of diplomat Gene Cretz to become Washington's envoy to Libya until American victims were paid from a fund agreed on last month by both countries.
'"Libya has not yet satisfied its obligations to U.S. victims of its terrorist acts and I will object to this nomination's moving forward until those victims receive justice," said Lautenberg, a Democrat.(...)
'Appointing a U.S. ambassador was seen as one of the rewards for Libya giving up its weapons of mass destruction program in 2003, which led to a warming of ties between the former foes.
'Relatives of the Pan Am victims welcomed the Senate foreign relations committee's decision.
'"The committee's action ... has sent an unequivocal message to the administration and Libya that the Senate will not appoint a U.S. ambassador until Libya has fulfilled the agreement," said a statement from a group of families.'
The full report can be read here. I am grateful to Big David for drawing this story to my attention.
'On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey put on hold the nomination of diplomat Gene Cretz to become Washington's envoy to Libya until American victims were paid from a fund agreed on last month by both countries.
'"Libya has not yet satisfied its obligations to U.S. victims of its terrorist acts and I will object to this nomination's moving forward until those victims receive justice," said Lautenberg, a Democrat.(...)
'Appointing a U.S. ambassador was seen as one of the rewards for Libya giving up its weapons of mass destruction program in 2003, which led to a warming of ties between the former foes.
'Relatives of the Pan Am victims welcomed the Senate foreign relations committee's decision.
'"The committee's action ... has sent an unequivocal message to the administration and Libya that the Senate will not appoint a U.S. ambassador until Libya has fulfilled the agreement," said a statement from a group of families.'
The full report can be read here. I am grateful to Big David for drawing this story to my attention.
Saturday 5 March 2011
Libyan leader ordered Lockerbie bombing, envoy tells NJ senators
[This is the headline over a report published on Thursday on the New Jersey Courier Post Online website. I refer to it (and to a further news report that can be read here) because the ambassador to the US, Ali Aujali, had previously stated that Libya had agreed to compensate the relatives of the victims only in order to get back into normal diplomatic and commercial relations with the US, the UK and the rest of the Western world, and not because of any recognition of responsibility for the bombing. The report reads in part:]
But Ali Suleiman Aujali didn’t produce evidence to back up his claim during a meeting with New Jersey Democrats Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg and New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand.
He offered to put U.S. officials in touch with the just-resigned Libyan justice minister, who has proof, Lautenberg said. (...)
Before the U.S. establishes diplomatic ties with a new government, Menendez said he would push for the Libyans to extradite Abdel Basset al-Megrahi so he could spend the rest of his life in an American prison. (...)
Of the 189 Americans on board, 38 were from New Jersey.
[Because of continuing problems with the telephone service and with electricity supply here in the Roggeveld Karoo, postings on this blog are likely to remain intermittent.]
But Ali Suleiman Aujali didn’t produce evidence to back up his claim during a meeting with New Jersey Democrats Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg and New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand.
He offered to put U.S. officials in touch with the just-resigned Libyan justice minister, who has proof, Lautenberg said. (...)
Before the U.S. establishes diplomatic ties with a new government, Menendez said he would push for the Libyans to extradite Abdel Basset al-Megrahi so he could spend the rest of his life in an American prison. (...)
Of the 189 Americans on board, 38 were from New Jersey.
[Because of continuing problems with the telephone service and with electricity supply here in the Roggeveld Karoo, postings on this blog are likely to remain intermittent.]
Monday 21 December 2015
A gaping hole
I have often on this blog had occasion to bemoan the apparent blindness of the mainstream media and commentators in the United States to the shakiness of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi, to the weakness of the evidence on which it was based and to the fact that it has now been referred back to the High Court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission because there may have been a miscarriage of justice. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that I draw attention to an article on the Congressional Quarterly website, CQ Politics by their National Security Editor, Jeff Stein. In this article, he outlines the problems with the official US/UK version of events and explores the most compelling of the alternative scenarios, with quotes from US security and intelligence operatives who doubt the official version. A welcome transatlantic breath of fresh air.
[Mr Stein’s article no longer appears on the CQ Politics (now Roll Call) website. However, it is to be found at other locations, including Ed’s Blog City. It reads as follows:]
Libya is close to getting off the hook for millions of dollars in payments to relatives of the 189 Americans who died in the bombing of Pan American Flight 103, amid a stiff new challenge to the 2001 verdict and rapidly warming relations between the erstwhile terrorist state and Washington.
It was 19 years ago this weekend that the airliner, bound from London to New York with 259 passengers, 189 of them Americans, exploded in the night skies over Scotland, killing all aboard as well as 11 residents of Lockerbie, the village where the fiery chunks of steel and other debris came crashing down.
A memorial service was planned for Friday at Arlington National Cemetery to mark the anniversary.
Back in 1988, Iran was immediately suspected of authoring the mass murder, in retaliation for the accidental downing of one of its own airliners by a US Navy warship in the Persian Gulf a few months earlier.
US intelligence agencies, in overdrive to find the culprits, quickly compiled evidence that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, or PFLP-GC, had carried out the plot on behalf of Iran and Syria. (The PFLP-GC was formed to opposed PLO leader Yassir Arafat’s movement toward detente with Israel.)
Nevertheless, on Jan 31, 2001, a panel of three Scottish judges found Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, officially the head of security for Libyan Airlines, guilty of carrying out the plot and sentenced him to life in jail. A Libyan co-defendant was set free.
Libya always denied any guilt in the crime, but agreed to compensate relatives of the dead to open the door for normal relations with the United States. It also agreed to compensate victims of the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle discotheque in West Berlin, a gathering place for US soldiers. Libya also denied complicity in that attack, which killed three and wounded scores more, but likewise agreed on compensation payments.
Megrahi, now serving a life sentence in Scotland, could be freed soon, British authorities hinted on Thursday, as part of a broad normalization of relations with Libya.
Only a day earlier, the Bush administration managed to stave off a congressional effort, led by Sen. Frank R Lautenberg , D-NJ, to deny it funds to build an embassy in Tripoli until Libya completed payments to the relatives of those who died on Pan Am 103.
While Lautenberg lost that battle, he and his allies in the House did manage to prohibit the administration from giving Libya any US aid until the payments are completed.
‘A Gaping Hole’
The ranks of critics of the 2001 verdict have steadily grown through the years.
Among them is Hans Koehler, the eminent Austrian jurist who was appointed by the United Nations to ensure the trial was conducted fairly.
“It is highly likely that the sentenced Libyan national is not guilty as charged and that one or more countries other than Libya, through their intelligence services and/or financial and logistical support for a terrorist group, may have responsibility for the crime,” Koehler said in a formal statement this year.
Likewise, Robert Black, the senior University of Edinburgh legal scholar who devised the trial of the Lockerbie defendants in the Netherlands under Scottish law, noted that the prosecution never produced any direct evidence tying the defendants to the bomb that brought the plane down.
It was entirely “circumstantial,” he said, based on a single computer print-out of a baggage manifest, which was contradicted by other evidence. “A gaping hole in the prosecution’s case,” he called it.
But more sinister factors were at work in the investigation, Black and other authoritative sources close to the case told me.
Black told me that he suspected Libya was framed to avoid a case that would hold Iran and Syria responsible.
The first Bush administration needed Syria to stay in the broad Middle East coalition that it was readying to oust Iraq’s troops from Kuwait.
“I have been told by persons involved in the Lockerbie investigation at a very high level, that a public announcement of PFLP-GC responsibility for the bombing was imminent in early 1991,”
Black told me, confirming earlier UK press reports. “Then suddenly, and to the mystification and annoyance of many on the investigation team, the focus of the investigation changed to Libya.”
Robert Baer, the former CIA officer who was based in Paris at the time and tracking Iranian terrorist operations, agrees.
Baer told me the Scottish commission reviewing evidence in the case was able to confirm that Iran and Syria paid the PFLP-GC to carry out the bombing.
Indeed, Vincent Cannistraro, who headed the CIA’s investigation of the crash, was quoted several times in 1989 blaming Iran, and right after the 1991 verdict he said it “was outrageous to pin the whole thing on Libya.” (Oddly, last week he told me the evidence “always pointed to the Libyans.”)
But Baer says, “Everybody” in US intelligence knew about “Iran’s intention to bomb an American airliner” in response to the downing of one of its own only months earlier.”
“We knew that,” Baer added. “We had that solid.”
The Defense Intelligence Agency also thought the Iranians paid the PFLP-GC to do it.
Patrick Lang, chief of the DIA’s Middle East section at the time, told me he “signed off” on the DIA’s conclusion that “The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorized and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur), the former Iranian minister of Interior.”
“The operation was contracted to Ahmad Jabril” [the head of the PFLP-GC] . . . for $1 million,” said the Sept 24, 1989, memo, first reported last week in a London tabloid. “The remainder was to be paid after successful completion of the mission.”
Lang said on Friday, “I still agree with that. We felt quite sure that this was a PFLP thing.”
“The CIA wouldn’t listen to that,” Lang added, because it couldn’t find proof of Iranian or Syrian complicity and was under immense pressure to solve the case.
Just last week, a Scottish newspaper, citing “sources close to the investigation,” recently cited specific transactions that the SCCRC allegedly had uncovered, including amounts and dates.
“This doesn’t exonerate Libya,” Baer cautioned. “Iran and Syria and Libya could have been working together.”
Plenty of Theories
Conspiracy theories have grown like barnacles on the much-questioned verdict, including far-fetched allegations of Israeli and even South African involvement in the crime.
On the Internet, some bloggers see the hand of the White House in the growing evidence of Iranian complicity in the Pan Am bombing, suggesting that the administration is further laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran.
The available evidence, however, suggests that the administration is primarily interested in getting Western companies’ access to Libya’s oil fields.
A particularly persistent rumor is that key witnesses were paid off by American intelligence to finger the Libyans.
Edwin Bollier, head of the Swiss company that was said to have manufactured the timer used to detonate the Pan Am bomb, has claimed variously that he was offered “bribes” by the FBI and CIA to finger Libya.
Bollier’s company did in fact supply the circuit boards to Libya, he admitted, but also East Germany, where the PFLP-GC had an office.
Since Bollier had ongoing business with the Qaddafi regime, his veracity has often been questioned.
In response to my query, a CIA spokesman ridiculed Bollier’s accusations that it offered or paid him anything.
“It may disappoint the conspiracy buffs, but the CIA doesn’t belong in your story,” he said, insisting on anonymity.
An FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed, however, that the bureau met with Bollier in Washington in 1991, but denied he was offered anything to implicate Libya.
In a formal statement, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko emphatically rejected any suggestions of a payoff.
“Any accusations that any witness was paid to lie are complete fabrications and these ridiculous statements should be immediately discounted as the untruths they are,” Kolko said. “That is not the way the FBI operates.”
Likewise, allegations have persisted that Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper on Malta who testified, in spite of contrary evidence, that he sold Megrahi clothing that ended up in the suitcase bomb, was paid to finger the Libyans.
But Gauci was paid approximately $2 million from the State Department’s USA Rewards program, an authoritative source told me, along with another, still unidentified witness.
Together, they were paid somewhere between $3 million and $4 million for information leading to the conviction of Megrahi, the source said.
The State Department acknowledged to me that rewards were paid.
“A reward was paid out in the Lockerbie-Pan Am 103 case,” a spokesperson there said on condition of anonymity, “but due to operational and security concerns we are not disclosing details regarding specific amounts, sources, or types of assistance the sources provided.”
Freeing Megrahi
All this — and much more questionable evidence related to the electronic timers and witnesses — may soon be moot.
A British Ministry of Justice spokeswoman confirmed on Thursday that Foreign Minister Jack Straw had been in contact with Scotland’s justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, about a deal that would send Megrahi back to Libya.
Such a move could well make irrelevant a Scottish appeals court’s expected judgment that a “miscarriage of justice” occurred in the case.
Reopening the investigation to present evidence of an Iranian/Syrian connection to the Pan Am bombing would be extremely difficult if not impossible, in the view of all observers.
The commercial pressure against such a move would be extreme. Western oil companies are eager to develop Libya’s reserves.
How this will affect Libya’s stalled payments to relatives of the Lockerbie and LaBelle discotheque victims is unknown, but if past patterns hold true, they cannot be optimistic.
In July 2006, a lawyer for the LaBelle families was about to finalize a deal with Libya when the State Department announced its intention to take Libya off the terrorist list.
The deal evaporated, said attorney Thomas Fay.
“They had made an offer and we accepted and at their request had every client execute release of claims forms” he told me by e-mail late Friday.
“In short, we were not close to a deal, we had made the deal,” Fay said. “They just refused to pay when they came off the terrorist list.”
Friday 17 June 2011
Lautenberg, Menendez call on Clinton & Holder to seek justice for Pan Am 103 bombing
[What follows is the text of a letter sent on 15 June by Senators Lautenberg and Menendez to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder.]
Dear Secretary Clinton and Attorney General Holder:
As high-level Libyan officials continue to defect from the Qaddafi regime, we urge you to do everything in your power to obtain information regarding and hold the responsible parties accountable for the bombing of Pan Am 103 and other terrorist attacks perpetrated by Libyan officials.
Defecting Libyan officials like former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa may hold valuable information regarding the Pan Am 103 bombing – or may be culpable themselves. The US case to prosecute this heinous crime remains open and our government must do everything possible to gather evidence and any information that could help bring all of those responsible, including Qaddafi, to justice.
As you know, the only person that has been convicted in the Pan Am bombing is now living freely in Libya. On August 20, 2009, the Scottish government released al-Megrahi, based on the assertion that he had less than three months to live. Almost 22 months later, the convicted terrorist is living in luxury in Libya. The families of the victims of Pan Am 103 waited over a decade to see justice with the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, only to have that justice taken away. This is an entirely unacceptable situation and every effort must be made to return al-Megrahi to prison.
The current upheaval in the Libyan government provides a new opportunity to demand responsibility for this act of terrorism. While we recognize there are many critical foreign policy decisions to be made with regard to Libya at this extraordinary time, we ask that justice for the Lockerbie bombing victims and their families remain a top priority and not be overlooked.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Dear Secretary Clinton and Attorney General Holder:
As high-level Libyan officials continue to defect from the Qaddafi regime, we urge you to do everything in your power to obtain information regarding and hold the responsible parties accountable for the bombing of Pan Am 103 and other terrorist attacks perpetrated by Libyan officials.
Defecting Libyan officials like former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa may hold valuable information regarding the Pan Am 103 bombing – or may be culpable themselves. The US case to prosecute this heinous crime remains open and our government must do everything possible to gather evidence and any information that could help bring all of those responsible, including Qaddafi, to justice.
As you know, the only person that has been convicted in the Pan Am bombing is now living freely in Libya. On August 20, 2009, the Scottish government released al-Megrahi, based on the assertion that he had less than three months to live. Almost 22 months later, the convicted terrorist is living in luxury in Libya. The families of the victims of Pan Am 103 waited over a decade to see justice with the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, only to have that justice taken away. This is an entirely unacceptable situation and every effort must be made to return al-Megrahi to prison.
The current upheaval in the Libyan government provides a new opportunity to demand responsibility for this act of terrorism. While we recognize there are many critical foreign policy decisions to be made with regard to Libya at this extraordinary time, we ask that justice for the Lockerbie bombing victims and their families remain a top priority and not be overlooked.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Wednesday 14 July 2010
BP must halt Libya wells, say senators seeking Lockerbie probe
[This is the headline over a report just published on the Bloomberg Businessweek website. It reads in part:]
BP plc should stop a planned drilling campaign in Libya while links between the oil producer and the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi are investigated, a group of US Senators said.
The London-based company has a rig in place to start a well in the Gulf of Sirte after completing a seismic survey last year. BP also plans to drill onshore in the Ghadames basin by the end of the year, Robert Wine, a spokesman for BP, said today.
BP, under political pressure to stop and clean up the worst oil spill in US history, signed an exploration agreement with Libya’s National Oil Corp in May 2007 during a visit by then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. US senators, who yesterday asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to examine whether BP helped secure al-Megrahi’s freedom from a Scottish jail to facilitate the deal, held a press conference today demanding BP stop drilling in Libya.
“Evidence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster seems to suggest that BP would put profit ahead of people,” Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York wrote in the letter to Clinton yesterday. “The question we now have to answer is, was this corporation willing to trade justice in the murder of 270 innocent people for oil profits?”
Menendez, Schumer and Lautenberg held a press conference in Washington this morning “to call for BP to suspend its oil drilling plans in Libya,” Mike Morey, a spokesman for Schumer, wrote in an e-mail.
Libya has proved oil reserves of 44.3 billion barrels, the most in Africa, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. (...)
“Libya due to start in a matter of weeks,” Wine said today in an e-mail. “Rig is being made ready, final preparations and checks are underway.” (...)
“It is a matter of public record that in late 2007 BP discussed with the UK government our concern at the slow progress in concluding a Prisoner Transfer Agreement,” the company said today.
Libya formally accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack in 2003 and agreed to pay up to $2.7 billion in damages to families of the victims. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi finished settling claims of US Lockerbie victims with a $1.5 billion installment last year.
The country was removed from the US list of states sponsoring terrorism in 2006 after Qaddafi agreed to give up chemical weapons and compensate Lockerbie victims.
BP plc should stop a planned drilling campaign in Libya while links between the oil producer and the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi are investigated, a group of US Senators said.
The London-based company has a rig in place to start a well in the Gulf of Sirte after completing a seismic survey last year. BP also plans to drill onshore in the Ghadames basin by the end of the year, Robert Wine, a spokesman for BP, said today.
BP, under political pressure to stop and clean up the worst oil spill in US history, signed an exploration agreement with Libya’s National Oil Corp in May 2007 during a visit by then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. US senators, who yesterday asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to examine whether BP helped secure al-Megrahi’s freedom from a Scottish jail to facilitate the deal, held a press conference today demanding BP stop drilling in Libya.
“Evidence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster seems to suggest that BP would put profit ahead of people,” Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York wrote in the letter to Clinton yesterday. “The question we now have to answer is, was this corporation willing to trade justice in the murder of 270 innocent people for oil profits?”
Menendez, Schumer and Lautenberg held a press conference in Washington this morning “to call for BP to suspend its oil drilling plans in Libya,” Mike Morey, a spokesman for Schumer, wrote in an e-mail.
Libya has proved oil reserves of 44.3 billion barrels, the most in Africa, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. (...)
“Libya due to start in a matter of weeks,” Wine said today in an e-mail. “Rig is being made ready, final preparations and checks are underway.” (...)
“It is a matter of public record that in late 2007 BP discussed with the UK government our concern at the slow progress in concluding a Prisoner Transfer Agreement,” the company said today.
Libya formally accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack in 2003 and agreed to pay up to $2.7 billion in damages to families of the victims. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi finished settling claims of US Lockerbie victims with a $1.5 billion installment last year.
The country was removed from the US list of states sponsoring terrorism in 2006 after Qaddafi agreed to give up chemical weapons and compensate Lockerbie victims.
Saturday 24 July 2010
Kenny MacAskill rejects Lockerbie plea
[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill has again refused to attend a US senate hearing over the release of the Lockerbie bomber. (...)
Mr MacAskill said the only documents which the Scottish government had not already put in the public domain were correspondence with the US government.
A US senator has "pleaded" with the Scottish government to appear before the hearing next week. (...)
Mr MacAskill told the BBC the Scottish government had not yet received Mr Lautenberg's letter, but had received one from New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, a member of the Senate's foreign affairs committee, who had asked for further information.
He said: "The point has already been made quite clear by the First Minister of Scotland - I am the justice secretary of Scotland, I am elected by the people of Scotland and I am answerable to the parliament of Scotland.
"I have been made available and co-operated with enquiries both in the Scottish Parliament and in Westminster, and that is where jurisdiction lies."
Mr MacAskill said he would be happy to provide Mr Menendez with the information he had requested, which the Scottish government had already published on the internet.
He added: "The only matter that remains outstanding is communications between the American government and ourselves.
"The only reason that has not been published is that the American government has refused to give us consent to publish it.
"If Senator Menendez, and indeed Senator Lautenberg, wish to lobby or persuade the United States government to allow the release of that information, we will publish it forthwith."
[If the claim in the editorial in The Herald is correct that the letter from the US State Department to the Scottish Government effectively accepts the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds as preferable to repatriation under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, it is unlikely -- in a mid-term election year -- that the US government would consent to its release or that Democrat senators would seriously try to persuade it to do so.]
Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill has again refused to attend a US senate hearing over the release of the Lockerbie bomber. (...)
Mr MacAskill said the only documents which the Scottish government had not already put in the public domain were correspondence with the US government.
A US senator has "pleaded" with the Scottish government to appear before the hearing next week. (...)
Mr MacAskill told the BBC the Scottish government had not yet received Mr Lautenberg's letter, but had received one from New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, a member of the Senate's foreign affairs committee, who had asked for further information.
He said: "The point has already been made quite clear by the First Minister of Scotland - I am the justice secretary of Scotland, I am elected by the people of Scotland and I am answerable to the parliament of Scotland.
"I have been made available and co-operated with enquiries both in the Scottish Parliament and in Westminster, and that is where jurisdiction lies."
Mr MacAskill said he would be happy to provide Mr Menendez with the information he had requested, which the Scottish government had already published on the internet.
He added: "The only matter that remains outstanding is communications between the American government and ourselves.
"The only reason that has not been published is that the American government has refused to give us consent to publish it.
"If Senator Menendez, and indeed Senator Lautenberg, wish to lobby or persuade the United States government to allow the release of that information, we will publish it forthwith."
[If the claim in the editorial in The Herald is correct that the letter from the US State Department to the Scottish Government effectively accepts the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds as preferable to repatriation under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, it is unlikely -- in a mid-term election year -- that the US government would consent to its release or that Democrat senators would seriously try to persuade it to do so.]
Friday 5 August 2016
Lockerbie fake goes on
[This is part of the headline over an article by the late Henk Ruyssenaars that was published on this date in 2008 on the Storming Heaven’s Gates website. It reads in part:]
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Professor H Köchler in April 2000 as the international UN-observer at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands concerning the Lockerbie Trial, and his comments on the Scottish Court's verdict in August 2003 were bitter. "This has been a political court case, where the verdict already was decided upon in advance", a shocked Professor Köchler, the UN-observer at the Scottish Lockerbie Court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands stated. "The whole is a spectacular miscarriage of justice." he said.
"This was a classical case of a "Show Process" from the time of the Cold War. Like they had in the Soviet Union and East Germany before the Iron Curtain fell," Professor Hans Köchler commented, after the verdict of the Scottish Court's conclusion in the Lockerbie Trial.
In a 'strange' way his remarks have since 2003 hardly been used by the international propaganda media, covering the biggest and most expensive mass murder trial in British legal history which ended when the court upheld the conviction of the Libyan agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed al-Megrahi." - The rest is at www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4460.htm
It's all a fake, but this is what Reuters now spreads from Washington: ''US President George W Bush on Monday (Aug 4th 2008) signed into law legislation paving the way for Libya to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate US victims of bombing attacks that Washington blames on Tripoli. The Libyan Claims Resolution Act clears the way to resolve all outstanding US claims related to what Washington regards as Libyan terrorist acts. These include the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people and the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco that killed three people and wounded 229.
"For too many years, Libya has refused to accept responsibility for its horrific acts of terrorism against American victims," said Sen Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat who sponsored the original legislation to allow compensation. "But after the pressure we applied, Libya will finally be held accountable for these devastating events. Our bill becoming law means these victims and their families can get the long overdue justice they deserve." The United States and Libya worked out a tentative deal to resolve all the outstanding cases. Libya has yet to sign the agreement but US officials said they expected it to do so after the deal was signed into US law.
Bush signed the bill before leaving Washington on a week-long visit to Asia. A group of Lockerbie victims' families said the new moves brought them a step closer to holding Libya accountable. "It is a relief to say that this part of our fight is coming to an end. There's still more work to be done and the families aren't done fighting for the truth," said Kara Weipz, spokeswoman for the Families of the Victims of Pan Am 103. "There are still a lot of things that we want to know."
Under the arrangement, Libya would not accept responsibility for the acts, but would provide the money to compensate the victims. If carried out, the deal could end the legal liability to Libya stemming from multiple lawsuits by families of the US victims, and it could herald a further warming in ties between Tripoli and Washington. - Source: 2008 The International Herald Tribune http://tinyurl.com/63wc7u
Bush and his criminal buddies, including Sen Lautenberg who sponsored the original legislation to allow this criminal 'compensation', know that Libya had absolutely nothing to do with either the La Belle disco bombing or the Lockerbie disaster, and even part of the families of the victims know Bush and his ilk are lying: plane-truth.com/megrahi_innocent.htm
The Guardian partly shows how it also was done: "The key prosecution witness in the Lockerbie bombing trial was allegedly offered a $2m reward in return for giving evidence, raising fresh doubts about the safety of the case. Lawyers for Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people on board Pan Am Flight 103, have evidence that detectives investigating the bombing recommended that Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper from Malta, be given the payment after the case ended.
Mr Gauci's testimony at the trial was crucial to al-Megrahi's conviction. He told the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands that the Libyan had bought clothes at his shop which the prosecution claimed were packed into the suitcase bomb that exploded over Lockerbie on December 21 1988. The defence team believe Mr Gauci may have received a larger sum from the US authorities. His role in the case is to be central to al-Megrahi's appeal against his conviction, which the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said was unsafe.
They are to press for full disclosure of these payments, and the release of a potentially vital US document which is thought to cast doubt on official accounts about the timer allegedly used in the bombing, at an appeal hearing next week.
The secret document is believed to dispute prosecution claims that al-Megrahi used a digital timer bought from a Swiss company, Mebo, and then planted the bomb on a flight from Malta to Germany - a disclosure which would fatally undermine his conviction." Fresh doubts on Lockerbie conviction: The Guardian http://tinyurl.com/5vzxem
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Professor H Köchler in April 2000 as the international UN-observer at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands concerning the Lockerbie Trial, and his comments on the Scottish Court's verdict in August 2003 were bitter. "This has been a political court case, where the verdict already was decided upon in advance", a shocked Professor Köchler, the UN-observer at the Scottish Lockerbie Court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands stated. "The whole is a spectacular miscarriage of justice." he said.
"This was a classical case of a "Show Process" from the time of the Cold War. Like they had in the Soviet Union and East Germany before the Iron Curtain fell," Professor Hans Köchler commented, after the verdict of the Scottish Court's conclusion in the Lockerbie Trial.
In a 'strange' way his remarks have since 2003 hardly been used by the international propaganda media, covering the biggest and most expensive mass murder trial in British legal history which ended when the court upheld the conviction of the Libyan agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed al-Megrahi." - The rest is at www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4460.htm
It's all a fake, but this is what Reuters now spreads from Washington: ''US President George W Bush on Monday (Aug 4th 2008) signed into law legislation paving the way for Libya to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate US victims of bombing attacks that Washington blames on Tripoli. The Libyan Claims Resolution Act clears the way to resolve all outstanding US claims related to what Washington regards as Libyan terrorist acts. These include the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people and the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco that killed three people and wounded 229.
"For too many years, Libya has refused to accept responsibility for its horrific acts of terrorism against American victims," said Sen Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat who sponsored the original legislation to allow compensation. "But after the pressure we applied, Libya will finally be held accountable for these devastating events. Our bill becoming law means these victims and their families can get the long overdue justice they deserve." The United States and Libya worked out a tentative deal to resolve all the outstanding cases. Libya has yet to sign the agreement but US officials said they expected it to do so after the deal was signed into US law.
Bush signed the bill before leaving Washington on a week-long visit to Asia. A group of Lockerbie victims' families said the new moves brought them a step closer to holding Libya accountable. "It is a relief to say that this part of our fight is coming to an end. There's still more work to be done and the families aren't done fighting for the truth," said Kara Weipz, spokeswoman for the Families of the Victims of Pan Am 103. "There are still a lot of things that we want to know."
Under the arrangement, Libya would not accept responsibility for the acts, but would provide the money to compensate the victims. If carried out, the deal could end the legal liability to Libya stemming from multiple lawsuits by families of the US victims, and it could herald a further warming in ties between Tripoli and Washington. - Source: 2008 The International Herald Tribune http://tinyurl.com/63wc7u
Bush and his criminal buddies, including Sen Lautenberg who sponsored the original legislation to allow this criminal 'compensation', know that Libya had absolutely nothing to do with either the La Belle disco bombing or the Lockerbie disaster, and even part of the families of the victims know Bush and his ilk are lying: plane-truth.com/megrahi_innocent.htm
The Guardian partly shows how it also was done: "The key prosecution witness in the Lockerbie bombing trial was allegedly offered a $2m reward in return for giving evidence, raising fresh doubts about the safety of the case. Lawyers for Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people on board Pan Am Flight 103, have evidence that detectives investigating the bombing recommended that Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper from Malta, be given the payment after the case ended.
Mr Gauci's testimony at the trial was crucial to al-Megrahi's conviction. He told the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands that the Libyan had bought clothes at his shop which the prosecution claimed were packed into the suitcase bomb that exploded over Lockerbie on December 21 1988. The defence team believe Mr Gauci may have received a larger sum from the US authorities. His role in the case is to be central to al-Megrahi's appeal against his conviction, which the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said was unsafe.
They are to press for full disclosure of these payments, and the release of a potentially vital US document which is thought to cast doubt on official accounts about the timer allegedly used in the bombing, at an appeal hearing next week.
The secret document is believed to dispute prosecution claims that al-Megrahi used a digital timer bought from a Swiss company, Mebo, and then planted the bomb on a flight from Malta to Germany - a disclosure which would fatally undermine his conviction." Fresh doubts on Lockerbie conviction: The Guardian http://tinyurl.com/5vzxem
Wednesday 12 June 2013
Odd obituary of US Senator Frank Lautenberg
Today's edition of The Herald contains an obituary of US Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died on 3 June. There is only one good reason that I can think of for a Scottish newspaper to run an obituary of this minor American politician: his rôle on the periphery of the Lockerbie case. But The Herald's obituary never mentions this!
Thursday 25 August 2011
US lawmakers urge new moves against Lockerbie bomber
[This is the headline over a Reuters news agency report issued yesterday evening. It reads in part:]
New York and New Jersey politicians are demanding that any new government in Tripoli extradite to the United States a Libyan official convicted in Britain for the December 1988 bombing of a US-bound airliner. (...)
Representative Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, called on the Libyan rebels' Transitional National Council "to engage responsibly with the world community by extraditing Abdel Baset al-Megrahi to the United States to face justice for the Lockerbie bombing."
New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, also a Democrat, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggesting that if Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is ever brought before the International Criminal Court, he should also be prosecuted, for ordering the Pan Am 103 bombing.
However, a representative of the TNC indicated the US discussion about Megrahi and Lockerbie is premature. In a written statement, Libyan ambassador Ali Aujali said: "Before we can deliver justice to Gaddafi's many victims, we must first bring down the regime and then turn to the important work of forming a new government, writing a constitution, and establishing the rule of law."
"The Libyan people, the TNC will obviously have to look at this when they can," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
"The secretary's made clear this guy should be behind bars. The Department of Justice has the lead on these issues," she said. "No decisions have been made, we have to let Justice do its job here and we also have to have a Libyan government back in Tripoli before these conversations can happen." (...)
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd, said: "We remain firmly committed to bringing to justice everyone who may have been involved in the Pan Am 103 bombing. The Justice Department investigation into the Pan Am 103 bombing that was initiated on December 21, 1988 remains open and active."
While the decision to release Megrahi was made by Scottish officials, documents published by the Scottish government indicated that officials of the British government, which at the time was headed by Labor Party prime minister Gordon Brown, supported the Scottish decision.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the British Embassy in Washington sought to distance Britain's current Conservative leader, David Cameron, from the Megrahi release decision, saying that the "Prime Minister has made clear that the Scottish Government decision to release Al-Megrahi was wrong and misguided."
But the spokesperson added that Britain had "no mechanism in place to request a person who has been released on compassionate grounds to be returned to prison if they have survived for longer than the period diagnosed by the relevant medical authorities."
New York and New Jersey politicians are demanding that any new government in Tripoli extradite to the United States a Libyan official convicted in Britain for the December 1988 bombing of a US-bound airliner. (...)
Representative Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, called on the Libyan rebels' Transitional National Council "to engage responsibly with the world community by extraditing Abdel Baset al-Megrahi to the United States to face justice for the Lockerbie bombing."
New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg, also a Democrat, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggesting that if Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is ever brought before the International Criminal Court, he should also be prosecuted, for ordering the Pan Am 103 bombing.
However, a representative of the TNC indicated the US discussion about Megrahi and Lockerbie is premature. In a written statement, Libyan ambassador Ali Aujali said: "Before we can deliver justice to Gaddafi's many victims, we must first bring down the regime and then turn to the important work of forming a new government, writing a constitution, and establishing the rule of law."
"The Libyan people, the TNC will obviously have to look at this when they can," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
"The secretary's made clear this guy should be behind bars. The Department of Justice has the lead on these issues," she said. "No decisions have been made, we have to let Justice do its job here and we also have to have a Libyan government back in Tripoli before these conversations can happen." (...)
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd, said: "We remain firmly committed to bringing to justice everyone who may have been involved in the Pan Am 103 bombing. The Justice Department investigation into the Pan Am 103 bombing that was initiated on December 21, 1988 remains open and active."
While the decision to release Megrahi was made by Scottish officials, documents published by the Scottish government indicated that officials of the British government, which at the time was headed by Labor Party prime minister Gordon Brown, supported the Scottish decision.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the British Embassy in Washington sought to distance Britain's current Conservative leader, David Cameron, from the Megrahi release decision, saying that the "Prime Minister has made clear that the Scottish Government decision to release Al-Megrahi was wrong and misguided."
But the spokesperson added that Britain had "no mechanism in place to request a person who has been released on compassionate grounds to be returned to prison if they have survived for longer than the period diagnosed by the relevant medical authorities."
Thursday 13 November 2008
Justice for families of Pan Am 103
On Dec. 21, 1988, my brother was killed aboard Pan Am Flight 103 when it was bombed by Libyan terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland. Two decades later, my family and the families of the 189 other Americans killed on that flight are finally able to claim some form of justice for our lost loved ones.
The Scottish high court convicted one Libyan intelligence officer for his involvement after the initial investigation, but the complexities of a crime perpetrated by a foreign government made it impossible to seek traditional criminal justice for all those responsible, so we turned to the civil court.
After many painful years of negotiations, the Libyan government finally agreed to pay $10 million to each victim's family. The first 80 percent of this sum was paid as planned, but the Libyan government withheld the remaining 20 percent as it negotiated restored diplomatic relations with the United States. The closer the restoration of these ties came, the harder we fought to ensure that the Libyan government was held accountable for its debt.
In July, the United States and Libya agreed that relations could be normalized only after Libya paid its full debt for its state-sponsored terrorism. On Oct. 31, the Libyan government executed full payment to the victims and their families.
While we may never know the names of all of those involved in this crime or see them face the punishment they so justly deserve, we can gain some peace from forcing the Libyan government to be accountable for its crimes. We thank Sen. Frank Lautenberg and others who stood by us the last two decades.
Kara Weipz
President
Victims of Pan Am Flight 103
[Letter from the president of the largest US organisation of relatives of those who died in the Lockerbie disaster, published in today's issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer]
The Scottish high court convicted one Libyan intelligence officer for his involvement after the initial investigation, but the complexities of a crime perpetrated by a foreign government made it impossible to seek traditional criminal justice for all those responsible, so we turned to the civil court.
After many painful years of negotiations, the Libyan government finally agreed to pay $10 million to each victim's family. The first 80 percent of this sum was paid as planned, but the Libyan government withheld the remaining 20 percent as it negotiated restored diplomatic relations with the United States. The closer the restoration of these ties came, the harder we fought to ensure that the Libyan government was held accountable for its debt.
In July, the United States and Libya agreed that relations could be normalized only after Libya paid its full debt for its state-sponsored terrorism. On Oct. 31, the Libyan government executed full payment to the victims and their families.
While we may never know the names of all of those involved in this crime or see them face the punishment they so justly deserve, we can gain some peace from forcing the Libyan government to be accountable for its crimes. We thank Sen. Frank Lautenberg and others who stood by us the last two decades.
Kara Weipz
President
Victims of Pan Am Flight 103
[Letter from the president of the largest US organisation of relatives of those who died in the Lockerbie disaster, published in today's issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Monday 17 August 2009
Senators want Lockerbie bomber kept behind bars
[What follows is an article posted on the website of the Washington DC publication The Hill.]
Seven senators called on the Scottish government on Monday to keep Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi behind bars for his role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 following recent media reports that he may be released.
Following his conviction in 2001, al-Megrahi – a former Libyan intelligence officer – was sentenced to serve 27 years in a Scottish prison for his role in the bombing of the transatlantic flight that killed 270 people – including 180 Americans on board and 11 Scots on the ground in southern Scotland.
“Our international agreement called for his sentence to be served in Scotland and we believe strongly their should be no deviation from this sentence,” said Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in their letter.
The letter, which calls the bombing “horrific” and “heinous,” was sent to the Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill after recent media reports have speculated that the Scottish government is set to consider al-Megrahi’s early release or transfer back to a prison in his homeland of Libya.
Al-Megrahi is expected to drop his appeal this week, which legally would allow the Scottish government, if it desired, to take action on his imprisonment status.
MacAskill has met with both al-Megrahi and the families of the victims in recent weeks. The meetings have further fueled reports that MacAskill may be considering the Libyan government’s calls for al-Megrahi’s release.
Al-Megrahi, 57, has terminal prostate cancer and has used his health as a reason in pleas for his own “compassionate” release.
The senators’ letter made the case for his continued imprisonment by comparing the bombing to more recent terrorist attacks on Americans.
“Until the tragic events of September 11, 2001, no terrorist act had killed more American civilians,” said the letter of the bombing of the flight, which was headed from London’s Heathrow Airport to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport with a majority of Americans on board.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has also recently called on MacAskill to continue al-Megrahi’s imprisonment until his sentence has been completed.
MacAskill’s aides said no decision has been made regarding al-Megrahi’s release, continued imprisonment, or transfer, according to the Associated Press.
Seven senators called on the Scottish government on Monday to keep Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi behind bars for his role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 following recent media reports that he may be released.
Following his conviction in 2001, al-Megrahi – a former Libyan intelligence officer – was sentenced to serve 27 years in a Scottish prison for his role in the bombing of the transatlantic flight that killed 270 people – including 180 Americans on board and 11 Scots on the ground in southern Scotland.
“Our international agreement called for his sentence to be served in Scotland and we believe strongly their should be no deviation from this sentence,” said Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in their letter.
The letter, which calls the bombing “horrific” and “heinous,” was sent to the Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill after recent media reports have speculated that the Scottish government is set to consider al-Megrahi’s early release or transfer back to a prison in his homeland of Libya.
Al-Megrahi is expected to drop his appeal this week, which legally would allow the Scottish government, if it desired, to take action on his imprisonment status.
MacAskill has met with both al-Megrahi and the families of the victims in recent weeks. The meetings have further fueled reports that MacAskill may be considering the Libyan government’s calls for al-Megrahi’s release.
Al-Megrahi, 57, has terminal prostate cancer and has used his health as a reason in pleas for his own “compassionate” release.
The senators’ letter made the case for his continued imprisonment by comparing the bombing to more recent terrorist attacks on Americans.
“Until the tragic events of September 11, 2001, no terrorist act had killed more American civilians,” said the letter of the bombing of the flight, which was headed from London’s Heathrow Airport to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport with a majority of Americans on board.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has also recently called on MacAskill to continue al-Megrahi’s imprisonment until his sentence has been completed.
MacAskill’s aides said no decision has been made regarding al-Megrahi’s release, continued imprisonment, or transfer, according to the Associated Press.
Sunday 21 August 2011
Court should have heard ID evidence
[This is the headline over a report published yesterday evening on the Mirror website. It reads as follows:]
The veracity of identification evidence that led to the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing "could and should have been judged in a court of law", according to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.
Mr Salmond said it is unfortunate that Megrahi's appeal against his conviction never reached the High Court.
However, the First Minister said he has "never doubted Mr Megrahi's guilt".
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is currently withholding a report which raises questions about identification evidence that led to Megrahi's conviction, and contains its statement of reasons for referring the conviction back to the High Court.
The Libyan dropped his appeal shortly before Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to release him.
Speaking at a charity race day in Perth on the second anniversary of Megrahi's release, Mr Salmond said: "The SCCRC wanted to remit the case back to the court of appeal.
"That wasn't based on the forensics, which it upheld, but on identification evidence upon which there was a question mark which could and should have been judged in a court of law. Unfortunately that wasn't possible. I have never doubted Mr Megrahi's guilt."
The Scottish Government has pledged to bring about a change in the law to allow the SCCRC report to be published.
Mr Salmond said this publication would negate the need for a public inquiry, saying the report "will give more information than any public inquiry ever could".
The First Minister said he knows nothing about reports that the United States has made a "secret deal" with anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya to seize Megrahi and try him in a US court. He said: "I've read a number of reports, mutually contradictory incidentally, and I suspect they are based on very little indeed."
[It is clear that if the First Minister has "never doubted" Megrahi's guilt he simply has not read the Zeist court's reasons for convicting him or Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result or The SCCRC Decision.
Meanwhile, US Senators Menendez and Lautenberg are at it again.]
The veracity of identification evidence that led to the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing "could and should have been judged in a court of law", according to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.
Mr Salmond said it is unfortunate that Megrahi's appeal against his conviction never reached the High Court.
However, the First Minister said he has "never doubted Mr Megrahi's guilt".
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is currently withholding a report which raises questions about identification evidence that led to Megrahi's conviction, and contains its statement of reasons for referring the conviction back to the High Court.
The Libyan dropped his appeal shortly before Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to release him.
Speaking at a charity race day in Perth on the second anniversary of Megrahi's release, Mr Salmond said: "The SCCRC wanted to remit the case back to the court of appeal.
"That wasn't based on the forensics, which it upheld, but on identification evidence upon which there was a question mark which could and should have been judged in a court of law. Unfortunately that wasn't possible. I have never doubted Mr Megrahi's guilt."
The Scottish Government has pledged to bring about a change in the law to allow the SCCRC report to be published.
Mr Salmond said this publication would negate the need for a public inquiry, saying the report "will give more information than any public inquiry ever could".
The First Minister said he knows nothing about reports that the United States has made a "secret deal" with anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya to seize Megrahi and try him in a US court. He said: "I've read a number of reports, mutually contradictory incidentally, and I suspect they are based on very little indeed."
[It is clear that if the First Minister has "never doubted" Megrahi's guilt he simply has not read the Zeist court's reasons for convicting him or Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result or The SCCRC Decision.
Meanwhile, US Senators Menendez and Lautenberg are at it again.]
Sunday 25 July 2010
Lockerbie: now pressure switches to America
[This is the headline over an article in today's edition of The Sunday Herald. It reads in part:]
Pressure is growing on the US government to release secret documents which detail its position on the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
As the trans-Atlantic row deepens over why Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish jail last summer, the US government is being urged to drop its ban on the publication of letters it sent to both the Scottish Government and Whitehall on the issue.
The US government refused Holyrood permission to make the papers public in a strongly worded letter last September, a month after Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, was allowed to return to Libya following his compassionate release.
But the move to make the documents public took a step forward as the Senate committee on foreign affairs prepares for Thursday’s inquiry into the prisoner’s release, with chairman Senator Robert Menendez requesting that the Scottish Government provide information on Megrahi’s release in five key areas.
They include “any documents including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the US government’s position on Al Megrahi’s release or transfer to Libyan custody.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said last night: “We have received another letter from Senator Menendez, who will chair next week’s hearing, and who has now asked for us to provide five categories of documents relating to the case. We are more than happy to do so, and indeed have already published all we hold on this issue, with the exception of some documents where permission for publication has so far been declined.
“These unpublished documents include correspondence between the Scottish Government and the US Government, whose release Senator Menendez has now requested. We would urge the Senator and his colleagues to work with their own Government so that the remaining information we hold can be published in the interests of maximum transparency.”
The Scottish Government also denied reports that Alex Salmond received a letter from committee member Senator Frank Lautenberg, who is said to have “pleaded” with the First Minister to send a representative to the hearing to add “credibility” to proceedings.
[Another article in the same newspaper by James Cusick contains the following:]
Of all the missing pieces in the jigsaw of information on the Lockerbie bombing and its aftermath one of the most confusing is Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal against his conviction for the greatest terrorist atrocity ever perpetrated over Scottish soil. (...)
The Scottish Government had repeatedly branded the 2007 Prisoner Transfer Agreement between the UK and Libya – brokered in Tripoli in May 2007 by the then-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his foreign affairs adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald – as unconstitutional because it took no account of Scotland’s separate legal identity from the UK Government,
For the prisoner transfer agreement to go ahead Megrahi would have had to drop his appeal. But MacAskill rejected the PTA and opted instead to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, under the terms of which the appeal could have gone ahead as planned. Yet Megrahi opted to drop it. Why? (...)
MacAskill will have known the full facts that lay behind the SCCRC’s decision to grant the appeal. The commission produced an 800-page report of the decision taken at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001. It was a Scottish court sitting in an independent country, and heard by three high court judges. A further 14 pages offered evaluation of new evidence and new circumstances surrounding the case against Megrahi, and identified six key areas where a potential miscarriage of justice may have taken place. (...)
Perhaps the most damning fall-out from the imminent appeal process, however, is the potential shredding of the evidence used to convict Megrahi and the unanswered questions about why they were admitted to court in the first place. Other uncomfortable questions centre on why wider investigations into the background of key witnesses did not take place on any scale that would have routinely been tested in a different legal arena.
Crucial to Megrahi’s conviction was the prosecution’s ability to place him in Malta on December 7, 1988. That was the day the court identified as the date a purchase was made at Mary’s House, a shop run by Tony Gauci. Clothes bought in the Sliema shop on this specific date were said to have been in the Samsonite case containing the explosive device.
Gauci was the witness who identified Megrahi as buying the clothes from his shop, on December 7. (...) This is crucial because the Libyan’s passport states that he was in Malta at that time. But if the clothes purchase was made earlier then Megrahi couldn’t have been in Malta at the time. That is the new picture painted in the evidence reviewed by the SCCRC. Gauci’s identification of Megrahi in his shop is also questioned.
Documents also allege that at an early stage of the US-UK investigation Gauci asked for, and was given, $2m by the US Department of Justice for his contributions to the case.
Other new areas of evidence which cast doubt on the conviction included documents said to have come from the CIA which relate to the ‘Mebo’ timer that is said to have been the key device which detonated the bomb on the aircraft. Details of these documents were not given to Megrahi’s defence counsel.
The owner of the Mebo firm, Edwin Bollier, is also listed in review of the evidence as claiming that in 1991 the FBI offered him $4m to testify that the fragments of a timer found near the scene of the crash were part of a Mebo MST-13 timer which the company said had been supplied to Libya.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is supposed to be the outcome of any legal process seeking justice. The appeal of Megrahi, had it gone ahead, suggests that Scottish justice fell short in the way it dealt with Lockerbie.
[A third article in The Sunday Herald by Tom Gordon reads in part:]
To many observers, it was the day Kenny MacAskill crossed a line. Before BP’s oil spill made it the focus for conspiracy theories, it was also the moment some felt ministers pressured a dying man to spare the blushes of the Scots legal system.
Just before 9am on Wednesday, August 5 last year, the Justice Secretary entered Greenock Prison for a meeting with inmate 55725. (...)
On May 5, the Libyan government had applied for Megrahi’s release under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) initiated by Tony Blair.
The following month, on the advice of George Burgess, head of the government’s criminal law and licensing division, MacAskill agreed to meetings with key players in the Lockerbie case, including Megrahi.
On July 24, Megrahi made a separate application for release on compassionate grounds. (...)
MacAskill came with Robert Gordon, director of the Justice Department, and Linda Miller, from the Criminal Law and Licensing Division.
According to official notes of the meeting, MacAskill said he would be considering both applications for release “in parallel”.
After asserting his innocence, Megrahi gave a history of his case, from his surrender in 1999, to trial at Camp Zeist in 2001, up to the present day, his illness, separation from his family, and feeling of “desolation”.
MacAskill stressed he could only grant a PTA transfer if there were no court proceedings ongoing – in other words, if Megrahi dropped his appeals against conviction and sentence.
“Mr Megrahi confirmed he understood this point,” the note recorded.
However, according to one of those close to events, Megrahi wrongly took this to mean that dropping his appeals was also a pre-condition of compassionate release. It wasn’t.
“MacAskill said something stupid. He shouldn’t have mentioned the appeal at all. “[The two processes] were conflated. That’s ultimately what Megrahi took from it,” said the source.
A week later, Megrahi signalled he was dropping his appeals.
His QC, Maggie Scott, told the High Court her client thought this would “assist in the early determination of these applications”.
Note the “applications” plural. (...)
A senior legal source told the Sunday Herald Megrahi was definitely under the false impression that abandoning his appeals would help secure compassionate release.
However the Libyan may simply have calculated that with MacAskill considering the PTA and compassionate applications at the same time, ending his appeals would leave both options open rather than just one. [Note by RB: This is the correct interpretation. Mr Megrahi was very well aware that compassionate release did not require abandonment of the appeal. Equally, he knew that prisoner transfer did; and he, like his government, was still labouring under the lingering impression created by Blair and Sheinwald during the "deal in the desert" that his repatriation under the PTA was really a done deal. Release under the PTA was what was really expected, because that was what Nigel and Tony had led the Libyan government to believe.]
On September 2, by a majority vote, the Scottish Parliament declared MacAskill had “mishandled” the release decision, and that meeting Megrahi while considering his application for compassionate release was “wrong”, and an “inappropriate precedent”.
[An editorial in the same newspaper headlined "Don’t let America give us lessons in justice" contains the following:]
[E]ven if MacAskill’s decision was flawed – and that is surely a subjective opinion – there remains no evidence that BP played any role whatsoever in persuading the Justice Minister to release Megrahi. The Scottish Government has insisted it received no representations from the oil company, and that it had no contact with it. There is no evidence, or indeed any serious suggestion, that is not the case.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that the Westminster Government wanted Megrahi free and that it was lobbied by BP to pave the way for his return to Libya.
It was the Westminster Government – albeit not the present Government – that agreed the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya when Megrahi was the only significant Libyan in a British jail. It was a Westminster Government which specifically agreed not to exclude Megrahi from that agreement. And it was a Westminster Government that decided to agree a strategy of bringing Libya back in from the cold. BP has already admitted lobbying Westminster for a quick conclusion to the prisoner transfer agreement so that trade with Libya could resume. Indeed, a deal between the Libyan government and BP was signed almost immediately after the prisoner transfer agreement was approved. All this is in the public domain. It does not require an inquiry in America to establish these facts.
It was only when it became apparent that Westminister did not have the legal authority to release Megrahi that the matter landed on MacAskill’s desk. Westminster may have officially kept its wishes to itself while MacAskill was making his deliberations but there can be no doubt that it privately wished Megrahi freed. It had already agreed a deal to make that happen.
In the end, MacAskill went against the prisoner transfer agreement but instead decided on compassionate release. It is acceptable to question the wisdom of that decision. It is not acceptable to question MacAskill’s right to make it.
Yet if the events surrounding Megrahi’s death are known, there are many facts about his conviction, and in particular his appeal against that conviction, which remain shrouded in mystery.
By all means we should have an inquiry which would allow the serious doubts about the veracity of the evidence against Megrahi to be aired. But we do not need the inquiry currently being demanded and we do not need America to give us lessons in justice. Alex Salmond is right to have nothing to do with it.
Pressure is growing on the US government to release secret documents which detail its position on the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
As the trans-Atlantic row deepens over why Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish jail last summer, the US government is being urged to drop its ban on the publication of letters it sent to both the Scottish Government and Whitehall on the issue.
The US government refused Holyrood permission to make the papers public in a strongly worded letter last September, a month after Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, was allowed to return to Libya following his compassionate release.
But the move to make the documents public took a step forward as the Senate committee on foreign affairs prepares for Thursday’s inquiry into the prisoner’s release, with chairman Senator Robert Menendez requesting that the Scottish Government provide information on Megrahi’s release in five key areas.
They include “any documents including communications to or from Scottish Government officials, relating to the US government’s position on Al Megrahi’s release or transfer to Libyan custody.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said last night: “We have received another letter from Senator Menendez, who will chair next week’s hearing, and who has now asked for us to provide five categories of documents relating to the case. We are more than happy to do so, and indeed have already published all we hold on this issue, with the exception of some documents where permission for publication has so far been declined.
“These unpublished documents include correspondence between the Scottish Government and the US Government, whose release Senator Menendez has now requested. We would urge the Senator and his colleagues to work with their own Government so that the remaining information we hold can be published in the interests of maximum transparency.”
The Scottish Government also denied reports that Alex Salmond received a letter from committee member Senator Frank Lautenberg, who is said to have “pleaded” with the First Minister to send a representative to the hearing to add “credibility” to proceedings.
[Another article in the same newspaper by James Cusick contains the following:]
Of all the missing pieces in the jigsaw of information on the Lockerbie bombing and its aftermath one of the most confusing is Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal against his conviction for the greatest terrorist atrocity ever perpetrated over Scottish soil. (...)
The Scottish Government had repeatedly branded the 2007 Prisoner Transfer Agreement between the UK and Libya – brokered in Tripoli in May 2007 by the then-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his foreign affairs adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald – as unconstitutional because it took no account of Scotland’s separate legal identity from the UK Government,
For the prisoner transfer agreement to go ahead Megrahi would have had to drop his appeal. But MacAskill rejected the PTA and opted instead to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, under the terms of which the appeal could have gone ahead as planned. Yet Megrahi opted to drop it. Why? (...)
MacAskill will have known the full facts that lay behind the SCCRC’s decision to grant the appeal. The commission produced an 800-page report of the decision taken at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001. It was a Scottish court sitting in an independent country, and heard by three high court judges. A further 14 pages offered evaluation of new evidence and new circumstances surrounding the case against Megrahi, and identified six key areas where a potential miscarriage of justice may have taken place. (...)
Perhaps the most damning fall-out from the imminent appeal process, however, is the potential shredding of the evidence used to convict Megrahi and the unanswered questions about why they were admitted to court in the first place. Other uncomfortable questions centre on why wider investigations into the background of key witnesses did not take place on any scale that would have routinely been tested in a different legal arena.
Crucial to Megrahi’s conviction was the prosecution’s ability to place him in Malta on December 7, 1988. That was the day the court identified as the date a purchase was made at Mary’s House, a shop run by Tony Gauci. Clothes bought in the Sliema shop on this specific date were said to have been in the Samsonite case containing the explosive device.
Gauci was the witness who identified Megrahi as buying the clothes from his shop, on December 7. (...) This is crucial because the Libyan’s passport states that he was in Malta at that time. But if the clothes purchase was made earlier then Megrahi couldn’t have been in Malta at the time. That is the new picture painted in the evidence reviewed by the SCCRC. Gauci’s identification of Megrahi in his shop is also questioned.
Documents also allege that at an early stage of the US-UK investigation Gauci asked for, and was given, $2m by the US Department of Justice for his contributions to the case.
Other new areas of evidence which cast doubt on the conviction included documents said to have come from the CIA which relate to the ‘Mebo’ timer that is said to have been the key device which detonated the bomb on the aircraft. Details of these documents were not given to Megrahi’s defence counsel.
The owner of the Mebo firm, Edwin Bollier, is also listed in review of the evidence as claiming that in 1991 the FBI offered him $4m to testify that the fragments of a timer found near the scene of the crash were part of a Mebo MST-13 timer which the company said had been supplied to Libya.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is supposed to be the outcome of any legal process seeking justice. The appeal of Megrahi, had it gone ahead, suggests that Scottish justice fell short in the way it dealt with Lockerbie.
[A third article in The Sunday Herald by Tom Gordon reads in part:]
To many observers, it was the day Kenny MacAskill crossed a line. Before BP’s oil spill made it the focus for conspiracy theories, it was also the moment some felt ministers pressured a dying man to spare the blushes of the Scots legal system.
Just before 9am on Wednesday, August 5 last year, the Justice Secretary entered Greenock Prison for a meeting with inmate 55725. (...)
On May 5, the Libyan government had applied for Megrahi’s release under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) initiated by Tony Blair.
The following month, on the advice of George Burgess, head of the government’s criminal law and licensing division, MacAskill agreed to meetings with key players in the Lockerbie case, including Megrahi.
On July 24, Megrahi made a separate application for release on compassionate grounds. (...)
MacAskill came with Robert Gordon, director of the Justice Department, and Linda Miller, from the Criminal Law and Licensing Division.
According to official notes of the meeting, MacAskill said he would be considering both applications for release “in parallel”.
After asserting his innocence, Megrahi gave a history of his case, from his surrender in 1999, to trial at Camp Zeist in 2001, up to the present day, his illness, separation from his family, and feeling of “desolation”.
MacAskill stressed he could only grant a PTA transfer if there were no court proceedings ongoing – in other words, if Megrahi dropped his appeals against conviction and sentence.
“Mr Megrahi confirmed he understood this point,” the note recorded.
However, according to one of those close to events, Megrahi wrongly took this to mean that dropping his appeals was also a pre-condition of compassionate release. It wasn’t.
“MacAskill said something stupid. He shouldn’t have mentioned the appeal at all. “[The two processes] were conflated. That’s ultimately what Megrahi took from it,” said the source.
A week later, Megrahi signalled he was dropping his appeals.
His QC, Maggie Scott, told the High Court her client thought this would “assist in the early determination of these applications”.
Note the “applications” plural. (...)
A senior legal source told the Sunday Herald Megrahi was definitely under the false impression that abandoning his appeals would help secure compassionate release.
However the Libyan may simply have calculated that with MacAskill considering the PTA and compassionate applications at the same time, ending his appeals would leave both options open rather than just one. [Note by RB: This is the correct interpretation. Mr Megrahi was very well aware that compassionate release did not require abandonment of the appeal. Equally, he knew that prisoner transfer did; and he, like his government, was still labouring under the lingering impression created by Blair and Sheinwald during the "deal in the desert" that his repatriation under the PTA was really a done deal. Release under the PTA was what was really expected, because that was what Nigel and Tony had led the Libyan government to believe.]
On September 2, by a majority vote, the Scottish Parliament declared MacAskill had “mishandled” the release decision, and that meeting Megrahi while considering his application for compassionate release was “wrong”, and an “inappropriate precedent”.
[An editorial in the same newspaper headlined "Don’t let America give us lessons in justice" contains the following:]
[E]ven if MacAskill’s decision was flawed – and that is surely a subjective opinion – there remains no evidence that BP played any role whatsoever in persuading the Justice Minister to release Megrahi. The Scottish Government has insisted it received no representations from the oil company, and that it had no contact with it. There is no evidence, or indeed any serious suggestion, that is not the case.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that the Westminster Government wanted Megrahi free and that it was lobbied by BP to pave the way for his return to Libya.
It was the Westminster Government – albeit not the present Government – that agreed the prisoner transfer agreement with Libya when Megrahi was the only significant Libyan in a British jail. It was a Westminster Government which specifically agreed not to exclude Megrahi from that agreement. And it was a Westminster Government that decided to agree a strategy of bringing Libya back in from the cold. BP has already admitted lobbying Westminster for a quick conclusion to the prisoner transfer agreement so that trade with Libya could resume. Indeed, a deal between the Libyan government and BP was signed almost immediately after the prisoner transfer agreement was approved. All this is in the public domain. It does not require an inquiry in America to establish these facts.
It was only when it became apparent that Westminister did not have the legal authority to release Megrahi that the matter landed on MacAskill’s desk. Westminster may have officially kept its wishes to itself while MacAskill was making his deliberations but there can be no doubt that it privately wished Megrahi freed. It had already agreed a deal to make that happen.
In the end, MacAskill went against the prisoner transfer agreement but instead decided on compassionate release. It is acceptable to question the wisdom of that decision. It is not acceptable to question MacAskill’s right to make it.
Yet if the events surrounding Megrahi’s death are known, there are many facts about his conviction, and in particular his appeal against that conviction, which remain shrouded in mystery.
By all means we should have an inquiry which would allow the serious doubts about the veracity of the evidence against Megrahi to be aired. But we do not need the inquiry currently being demanded and we do not need America to give us lessons in justice. Alex Salmond is right to have nothing to do with it.
Saturday 15 July 2017
BP lobbied UK Government to speed up prisoner transfer agreement
BP admitted today that it put pressure on the British Government to speed up talks on a deal that led directly to the early release of the Lockerbie bomber.
In a statement the oil giant said that in "late 2007" it told ministers that "we were concerned about the slow progress that was being made in concluding a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya".
The agreement was a key piece of the complex diplomatic jigsaw that ended in the dramatic return of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi to Tripoli on compassionate grounds last August. The lobbying came after BP signed a $900 million exploration agreement with Libya in May 2007.
BP said it was aware that any delay in signing the agreement "could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan government of BP's exploration agreement".
However, the company insisted that it did not get involved in the detail of al-Megrahi's release.
It said: "The decision to release Mr al- Megrahi in August 2009 was taken by the Scottish government. It's not for BP to comment on the decision of the Scottish government. BP was not involved in any discussions with the UK Government or the Scottish government about the release of Mr al-Megrahi."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would look at requests from US Senators to investigate the role BP played in the release.
Yesterday, Mrs Clinton confirmed she had received the letter from Democratic Senators Robert Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer "and we will obviously look into it".
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