[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.
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
Wednesday 14 July 2010
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".
Tuesday 21 December 2010
UK officials greased Lockerbie bomber's release, report finds
[This is the headline over an article just published on the msnbc.com website based on an advance copy of the report to be issued today by US Senators Menendez, Lautenberg, Schumer and Gillibrand. It reads in part:]
Intense political pressures and "commercial warfare" waged by the regime of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi led to last year’s release of the "unrepentant terrorist" who blew up Pam Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, according to a new report prepared by four US senators.
The report is being released Tuesday, 22 years to the day after a terrorist bomb exploded aboard the Pan Am airliner, killing 270 people — including 189 Americans — in one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism prior to 9/11.
An advance copy of the report – titled Justice Undone: The Release of the Lockerbie Bomber — was provided to NBC News.
The report finds that senior officials under former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown quietly and repeatedly pressured Scottish authorities to release Abdel Baset Ali al-al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the bombing.
They did so in order to protect British business interests in Libya, including a $900 million BP oil deal that the Libyans had threatened to cut off, as well as a $165 million arms sale with a British defense firm that was signed the same month al-Megrahi was freed from prison, the report states.
“This was a case in which commercial and economic considerations trumped the message of our global fight against terrorism,” said Sen Bob Menendez, D-NJ, one of the four senators, who commissioned the report by a Senate investigator.
"God forbid there should be another terrorist attack. We have to make it impossible that anything like this injustice takes place again," he added.
The report also concludes that, in releasing Megrahi last year on the grounds that he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and had only three months to live, Scottish authorities relied on a "false" and "flawed" medical prognosis that was possibly influenced by a doctor hired by the Libyan government. (Although there were recent reports that Megrahi was in a coma, that account has been disputed. As the Senate report notes, he remains alive, reportedly living in a luxury villa in Tripoli.)
The Senate report calls for a renewed investigation into Megrahi’s release by the State Department and a public apology by both the British and Scottish governments.
That request was rejected this week by both British and Scottish officials. "We totally reject their false interpretation," a Scottish government spokesperson said in an emailed response to NBC News. The decision to release Megrahi "was not based on political, economic or diplomatic considerations, but on the precepts of Scots law and nothing else."
[For those with a strong stomach, the full report by the four senators can be read here.
There is now a report on the Telegraph website which can be read here.]
Intense political pressures and "commercial warfare" waged by the regime of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi led to last year’s release of the "unrepentant terrorist" who blew up Pam Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, according to a new report prepared by four US senators.
The report is being released Tuesday, 22 years to the day after a terrorist bomb exploded aboard the Pan Am airliner, killing 270 people — including 189 Americans — in one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism prior to 9/11.
An advance copy of the report – titled Justice Undone: The Release of the Lockerbie Bomber — was provided to NBC News.
The report finds that senior officials under former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown quietly and repeatedly pressured Scottish authorities to release Abdel Baset Ali al-al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the bombing.
They did so in order to protect British business interests in Libya, including a $900 million BP oil deal that the Libyans had threatened to cut off, as well as a $165 million arms sale with a British defense firm that was signed the same month al-Megrahi was freed from prison, the report states.
“This was a case in which commercial and economic considerations trumped the message of our global fight against terrorism,” said Sen Bob Menendez, D-NJ, one of the four senators, who commissioned the report by a Senate investigator.
"God forbid there should be another terrorist attack. We have to make it impossible that anything like this injustice takes place again," he added.
The report also concludes that, in releasing Megrahi last year on the grounds that he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and had only three months to live, Scottish authorities relied on a "false" and "flawed" medical prognosis that was possibly influenced by a doctor hired by the Libyan government. (Although there were recent reports that Megrahi was in a coma, that account has been disputed. As the Senate report notes, he remains alive, reportedly living in a luxury villa in Tripoli.)
The Senate report calls for a renewed investigation into Megrahi’s release by the State Department and a public apology by both the British and Scottish governments.
That request was rejected this week by both British and Scottish officials. "We totally reject their false interpretation," a Scottish government spokesperson said in an emailed response to NBC News. The decision to release Megrahi "was not based on political, economic or diplomatic considerations, but on the precepts of Scots law and nothing else."
[For those with a strong stomach, the full report by the four senators can be read here.
There is now a report on the Telegraph website which can be read here.]
Wednesday 14 July 2010
The only US newspaper to acknowledge that doubters exist?
While some of the family members of Britons who were killed in the Lockerbie bombing supported Mr Megrahi’s release, in part because of lingering doubts about his guilt, the families of several American victims were dismayed by the decision. The fact that Mr Megrahi has not yet died from his illness nearly a year after his release was the subject of several recent reports on both sides of the Atlantic. One doctor who examined him before his release told London’s Sunday Times this month, “There was always a chance he could live for 10 years, 20 years.”
On Monday, Senator Lautenberg and three Democratic colleagues asked the State Department to press British authorities to open their own investigation into the release of Mr Megrahi, The Associated Press reported.
A spokesman for the State Department, PJ Crowley, said on Monday, “There was an expectation from last August that Mr. Megrahi had only a few months to live. We’ve been on the Megrahi watch since that time.” He added, “Every day that he lives as a free man, we think is an affront to the families of and victims of Pan Am 103.”
[From a post on The New York Times's news blog, The Lede by the blog's editor, Robert Mackey.]
On Monday, Senator Lautenberg and three Democratic colleagues asked the State Department to press British authorities to open their own investigation into the release of Mr Megrahi, The Associated Press reported.
A spokesman for the State Department, PJ Crowley, said on Monday, “There was an expectation from last August that Mr. Megrahi had only a few months to live. We’ve been on the Megrahi watch since that time.” He added, “Every day that he lives as a free man, we think is an affront to the families of and victims of Pan Am 103.”
[From a post on The New York Times's news blog, The Lede by the blog's editor, Robert Mackey.]
Thursday 16 September 2010
US team to discuss Megrahi release
[This is the headline over a report just issued by The Press Association news agency. It reads in part:]
US senators' interest in the Lockerbie bomber's release has "waxed and waned", a spokesman for First Minister Alex Salmond said ahead of a meeting on the issue.
Justice officials from the Scottish Government will hold talks in Edinburgh with representatives of a US Senate committee investigating the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi last year. (...)
The US politicians want to investigate concerns that the bomber's release was linked to an oil deal - a suggestion strongly denied by all parties involved.
A spokesman for Mr Salmond said: "It was the First Minister who revealed to the world that the UK Government and the Libyan Government were planning or negotiating a prisoner transfer agreement clearly with the specific purpose of Al Megrahi being transferred to Libya. We've looked at all the records and asked the senators for them to furnish us with any public comment they issued at that time - there was no public comment.
"Senator Menendez and his colleagues' interest in the matter certainly seems to have waxed and waned. It seemed to be non-existent at the time when it was revealed to the world there was this 'deal in the desert'."
The UK Government has rejected requests to meet with US officials. One is a staff member of committee chairman Sen Menendez and another is an official of the committee.
[The following is an excerpt from a report on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm:]
Neither MacAskill or Salmond are scheduled to meet with the team, representing Senator Robert Menendez. However it has not been revealed which "justice officials" they will meet with, or what role those officials may have played in the release of Megrahi or the aborted appeal process.
US Senators Robert Menendez, Kirstin Gillibrand, Frank Lautenberg and Charles Schumer have so far failed to respond to an invitation to back an international petition calling for a full review of the entire circumstances of the Pan Am 103 event and its judicial aftermath.
[A similar report on the BBC News website can be read here and Newsnet Sotland's treatment can be read here.]
US senators' interest in the Lockerbie bomber's release has "waxed and waned", a spokesman for First Minister Alex Salmond said ahead of a meeting on the issue.
Justice officials from the Scottish Government will hold talks in Edinburgh with representatives of a US Senate committee investigating the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi last year. (...)
The US politicians want to investigate concerns that the bomber's release was linked to an oil deal - a suggestion strongly denied by all parties involved.
A spokesman for Mr Salmond said: "It was the First Minister who revealed to the world that the UK Government and the Libyan Government were planning or negotiating a prisoner transfer agreement clearly with the specific purpose of Al Megrahi being transferred to Libya. We've looked at all the records and asked the senators for them to furnish us with any public comment they issued at that time - there was no public comment.
"Senator Menendez and his colleagues' interest in the matter certainly seems to have waxed and waned. It seemed to be non-existent at the time when it was revealed to the world there was this 'deal in the desert'."
The UK Government has rejected requests to meet with US officials. One is a staff member of committee chairman Sen Menendez and another is an official of the committee.
[The following is an excerpt from a report on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm:]
Neither MacAskill or Salmond are scheduled to meet with the team, representing Senator Robert Menendez. However it has not been revealed which "justice officials" they will meet with, or what role those officials may have played in the release of Megrahi or the aborted appeal process.
US Senators Robert Menendez, Kirstin Gillibrand, Frank Lautenberg and Charles Schumer have so far failed to respond to an invitation to back an international petition calling for a full review of the entire circumstances of the Pan Am 103 event and its judicial aftermath.
[A similar report on the BBC News website can be read here and Newsnet Sotland's treatment can be read here.]
Sunday 11 July 2010
Senators call on Britain to probe release of Lockerbie bomber, who has outlived prognosis
[This is the headline over an Associated Press report in the Los Angeles Times of 7 July 2010. It reads as follows:]
Four US senators are calling on Britain to investigate the circumstances of last year's release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie airliner bombing.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison in September because a doctor said the cancer-stricken man had only three months to live. However, the doctor later said al-Megrahi could live for another decade.
Al-Megrahi had served eight years of a life sentence for the Dec 21, 1988, bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 as it flew from London to New York.
Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer of New York and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey requested the investigation Wednesday in a letter to the UK's ambassador to the US.
[The reply by the UK ambassador, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, to Senator Gillibrand can be read here. The reply to the senators from the Scottish Government Counsellor, North America, can be read here.
Many other organs of the media have since picked up the story, among them BBC News and STV News.]
Four US senators are calling on Britain to investigate the circumstances of last year's release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie airliner bombing.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison in September because a doctor said the cancer-stricken man had only three months to live. However, the doctor later said al-Megrahi could live for another decade.
Al-Megrahi had served eight years of a life sentence for the Dec 21, 1988, bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 as it flew from London to New York.
Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer of New York and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey requested the investigation Wednesday in a letter to the UK's ambassador to the US.
[The reply by the UK ambassador, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, to Senator Gillibrand can be read here. The reply to the senators from the Scottish Government Counsellor, North America, can be read here.
Many other organs of the media have since picked up the story, among them BBC News and STV News.]
Sunday 20 July 2008
Lockerbie Appeal : Making Haste Slowly
Here, reproduced with his permission, is the text of an e-mail sent earlier today by Patrick Haseldine to Professor Hans Köchler and myself:
Today I extracted from the FCO's Libya website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/country-profiles/middle-east-north-africa/libya?profile=intRelations&pg=4) the following section related to the Lockerbie bombing:
"The Lockerbie trial began on 3 May 2000. On 31 January 2001 Al-Megrahi was found guilty and Fhimah not proven. Al-Megrahi subsequently appealed against his conviction. His appeal was refused on 14 March 2002.
On 23 September 2003 Al-Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for his conviction to be reviewed. On 28 June 2007 the Commission referred his case back to the High Court, allowing him to appeal against his conviction for a second time.
Trilateral talks began on 13 February 2001 to discuss how Libya could meet the Security Council’s remaining requirements. As a result of these talks, in August 2003 the UK tabled a resolution recommending that the Security Council lift UN sanctions. That resolution was passed by the Security Council on 12 September 2003."
On 10 July 2008 Prof. Black e-mailed the FCO pointing out that the verdict on Fhimah was in fact not guilty but the error has not yet been corrected (see Lockerbie verdict posted on Prof. Koechler's website http://i-p-o.org/Lockerbie_Verdict-31Jan2001.htm).
As regards the delay of over a year in arranging Mr Megrahi's second appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing, Prof. Black wrote an article on 17 July 2008 entitled 'Justice Delayed...', posing these two questions:
"Why has no date yet been fixed for the hearing of the appeal? Why does it now seem impossible that the appeal can be heard and a judgement delivered by the twentieth anniversary of the disaster on 21 December 2008?" (see http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/07/justice-delayed.html)
US and British diplomats (as I used to be) would probably deny that there has been a delay. Rather, they would euphemistically say it is a case of making haste slowly. I offer three reasons that might be seen, from an American perspective, to justify maintaining the slow progress in having Mr Megrahi's wrongful conviction overturned:
1. The Lockerbie bombing took place during the Reagan/Bush Snr interregnum. President Bush Jr is unlikely to allow the case to unravel and the convicted Pan Am Flight 103 bomber to be acquitted before the new president gets sworn in next January.
2. PA103 relatives and US politicians (eg Senators Hillary Clinton and Frank Lautenberg) insist that Libya should pay a further $540 million in compensation for the Lockerbie bombing (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103#Compensation_from_Libya).
3. Lifting of UN Security Council sanctions against Libya hinged upon the payment of compensation for UTA772 as well as PA103 (see http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/sc7868.doc.htm and http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/03/libyas-lockerbie-compensation-proposal.html) The US will doubtless want Libya to pay some or all of the $6 billion compensation for the UTA772 bombing before Mr Megrahi's appeal can be heard.
And finally here is a question from me: since the twentieth anniversary of the PA103 disaster is on 21 December 2008, will a future criminal prosecution (perhaps of apartheid South Africa) in respect of the Lockerbie bombing be ruled out by the 20-year statute of limitations?
[Note by RB: On one issue I can reassure Mr Haseldine. There is no statute of limitations applicable to common law crimes like murder in Scotland.]
Today I extracted from the FCO's Libya website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/country-profiles/middle-east-north-africa/libya?profile=intRelations&pg=4) the following section related to the Lockerbie bombing:
"The Lockerbie trial began on 3 May 2000. On 31 January 2001 Al-Megrahi was found guilty and Fhimah not proven. Al-Megrahi subsequently appealed against his conviction. His appeal was refused on 14 March 2002.
On 23 September 2003 Al-Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for his conviction to be reviewed. On 28 June 2007 the Commission referred his case back to the High Court, allowing him to appeal against his conviction for a second time.
Trilateral talks began on 13 February 2001 to discuss how Libya could meet the Security Council’s remaining requirements. As a result of these talks, in August 2003 the UK tabled a resolution recommending that the Security Council lift UN sanctions. That resolution was passed by the Security Council on 12 September 2003."
On 10 July 2008 Prof. Black e-mailed the FCO pointing out that the verdict on Fhimah was in fact not guilty but the error has not yet been corrected (see Lockerbie verdict posted on Prof. Koechler's website http://i-p-o.org/Lockerbie_Verdict-31Jan2001.htm).
As regards the delay of over a year in arranging Mr Megrahi's second appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing, Prof. Black wrote an article on 17 July 2008 entitled 'Justice Delayed...', posing these two questions:
"Why has no date yet been fixed for the hearing of the appeal? Why does it now seem impossible that the appeal can be heard and a judgement delivered by the twentieth anniversary of the disaster on 21 December 2008?" (see http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/07/justice-delayed.html)
US and British diplomats (as I used to be) would probably deny that there has been a delay. Rather, they would euphemistically say it is a case of making haste slowly. I offer three reasons that might be seen, from an American perspective, to justify maintaining the slow progress in having Mr Megrahi's wrongful conviction overturned:
1. The Lockerbie bombing took place during the Reagan/Bush Snr interregnum. President Bush Jr is unlikely to allow the case to unravel and the convicted Pan Am Flight 103 bomber to be acquitted before the new president gets sworn in next January.
2. PA103 relatives and US politicians (eg Senators Hillary Clinton and Frank Lautenberg) insist that Libya should pay a further $540 million in compensation for the Lockerbie bombing (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103#Compensation_from_Libya).
3. Lifting of UN Security Council sanctions against Libya hinged upon the payment of compensation for UTA772 as well as PA103 (see http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/sc7868.doc.htm and http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/03/libyas-lockerbie-compensation-proposal.html) The US will doubtless want Libya to pay some or all of the $6 billion compensation for the UTA772 bombing before Mr Megrahi's appeal can be heard.
And finally here is a question from me: since the twentieth anniversary of the PA103 disaster is on 21 December 2008, will a future criminal prosecution (perhaps of apartheid South Africa) in respect of the Lockerbie bombing be ruled out by the 20-year statute of limitations?
[Note by RB: On one issue I can reassure Mr Haseldine. There is no statute of limitations applicable to common law crimes like murder in Scotland.]
Wednesday 30 December 2015
Lockerbie trial-related documents classified by US government
[What follows is the text of a report published by USA Today on this date in 1999. It no longer appears on the magazine’s website but can still be found here on The Pan Am 103 Crash Website:]
The Clinton administration has classified two documents related to an upcoming trial in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, intensifying concern among some victims' relatives about how thorough the prosecution will be. ''These are documents that need to be released,'' says Rosemary Wolfe of Alexandria, Va. Her stepdaughter, Miriam, 20, was one of 189 Americans killed when the Boeing 747 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, Dec 21, 1988.
The documents are a letter and the annex to the letter by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Sent to Gadhafi in February to persuade him to turn over two suspects for prosecution, they assured the Libyan leader that the trial was not intended to ''undermine'' the Libyan regime, according to US officials who have seen the text. The annex also promised that if convicted, the two Libyan intelligence agents -- Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah -- would not be questioned about other acts of the Libyan government.
State Department and White House officials say the assurances were necessary to persuade Gadhafi to cooperate and that no secret deals were struck. The trial, which begins in May in the Netherlands, will be held before Scottish judges who are not legally bound by the Annan letter or any other private assurances to Gadhafi. ''We've always said the evidence has to lead where it will lead,'' says Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman.
Other US officials, however, say Gadhafi would never have turned over the two men if he believed that they would implicate him or Libyans close to him. Relatives of the suspects are being held in Libya, essentially as hostages, the officials say, inhibiting the defendants from testifying fully. A half-dozen alleged co-conspirators also have ''passed away under various circumstances,'' according to a US official who asked not to be named. Wolfe and other relatives of victims have been read only portions of the documents by State Department and UN officials.
On Oct 12, Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival, a conservative, anti-UN group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents. It was denied on Dec 15 by Margaret Grafeld, director of the State Department's Office of Information Resources Management Programs and Services. Grafeld's letter, a copy of which was made available to USA Today, said the documents were classified ''in the interest of national defense or foreign relations.'' Kincaid says he will appeal.
The decision to classify the documents has intensified anger among some relatives of the victims. ''If these documents were classified all along, why were we read portions?'' Wolfe asks. She plans a separate Freedom of Information Act request. Sens Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, and Robert Torricelli, D-NJ, and Rep Benjamin Gilman, R-NY, also have written Secretary of State Madeleine Albright seeking release of the documents. They have been turned down.
State Department officials say they cannot release the items because they are UN documents. Fred Eckhard, Annan's spokesman, says they are private correspondence ''on a highly sensitive subject. How can you do diplomacy if you go making such things public?'' Some of the assurances to Gadhafi were negotiated by South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela and Saudi envoy to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Many US officials regard the complicated diplomacy leading to the trial -- including seven-year UN sanctions that were suspended when the suspects were turned over in April -- as a victory that has gotten Libya out of the terrorism business. Since turning over the two suspects, Gadhafi has expelled the Abu Nidal terrorist group and transferred support from other radical Palestinians to the mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization. Recognizing the change in Libyan behavior, Britain has sent an ambassador back to the Libyan capital. US oil company executives have been allowed to tour old property in Libya. A State Department provision barring the use of a US passport to travel to Libya is under ''active review,'' Reeker says.
US officials also are considering taking Libya off a State Department list of terrorist-sponsoring states. That would ease the way for US trade sanctions against Libya to be lifted if the trial proceeds smoothly and Gadhafi compensates families of the Pan Am victims. ''I think we can expect that Libya's reintegration into the international community will continue, whether we like it or not, so long as Libya avoids new terrorism or blatant challenges to the international order,'' Ronald Neumann, deputy assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, told the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.
US officials note that leaders of countries and groups responsible for heinous acts are rarely subjected to personal punishment. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is now regarded as a peacemaker and the same diplomatic rehabilitation is likely for Syrian President Hafez Assad.
Those spending another difficult holiday season without their relatives might never accept Gadhafi's return to the fold, however, especially if they continue to believe that important information has been denied to them. ''We totally caved in,'' Wolfe says.
Wednesday 22 December 2010
This Lockerbie bomber nonsense shows US senators have lost the plot
The US Senate's conspiracy theory about Megrahi shows just how ignorant it is of British politics, writes Alan Cochrane.
It is always uncomfortable to be attacked by a supposed friend, all the more so when the onslaught is so unreasonable and wrong-headed. However, the main criticism that must be levelled against the report compiled by four US senators on the circumstances surrounding the release of the Lockerbie bomber is that it is naive – stunningly and embarrassingly so.
What appears to have happened is that Senators Robert Menéndez, Frank Lautenberg, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand decided from the "off" that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was freed as a result of base political, diplomatic, but above all commercial, motives.
They further believed that the UK Government had, for a combination of these disreputable reasons, lent on the devolved administration of Alex Salmond in Edinburgh to release the mass murderer.
The senators decided to produce a report to "prove" their theory and, lo and behold, that is precisely what it came up with.
Along with others who should know better, they refuse to believe that a separatist SNP administration in Edinburgh would never give in to pressure from the unionist UK government in London over a wholly devolved issue, such as the Scottish justice system.
As a result, the senators produced a very poor piece of work that demonstrates the incredible ignorance evinced by these four conspiracy-theorists about how politics and governance works in this country, a not at all unusual state of affairs for American politicians' knowledge about what they would call foreign parts.
Scotland's First Minister and Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Minister, have said repeatedly that Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds because Mr MacAskill had been told by medical experts that he was suffering from terminal cancer and had only three months to live. For the record, I should repeat at this juncture that I supported that decision. That that prognosis was spectacularly wrong has, sadly, been proved by the passage of 16 months since his release.
It is not difficult to understand the anger and hurt of the relatives of those killed, many of whom are constituents of the senators.
However, the cause of the bereaved would have been served better had the senators steered clear of this elaborate conspiracy theory.
Time and time again, their 58-page report points the finger at the UK government.
For instance: "The UK government played a direct, critical role in al-Megrahi's release"; " … evidence suggests that UK officials pressured Scotland to facilitate al-Megrahi's release"; " … it would not be surprising that the Scottish government would be susceptible to pressure from the UK government."
Entitled "Justice Undone", the report charts what it sees as a series of suspicious meetings between British politicians – including Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – diplomats and businessmen, all hell-bent on securing a massive oil deal for BP, and Libyan officials. Not surprisingly, given his "non-person" status in the US over the Gulf oil spill, BP chairman Tony Hayward is given a walk-on part in all of this jiggery-pokery. The senators conclude that the UK Government knew that, in order to maintain commercial relations with Libya, "it had to give in to political demands".
"The threat of commercial warfare was a motivating factor", it adds.
The senators may be on firmer ground over their challenging of the medical evidence used as the basis for Megrahi's release. But even here they cannot resist sketching out an elaborate plot, involving Dr Andrew Fraser, the senior doctor at the Scottish Prison Service – accusing him of attending "political meetings" that "may have influenced his decision".
They also come up with a frankly spurious list of supposed powers that the UK Government could have used to stop Megrahi being freed and also claim that another reason for freeing the bomber was pressure from the Qataris who were poised to take over Sainsbury's, which the senators say is a "Scottish food producer". News to me!
Where the senators will find many supporters, however, is in their final conclusion – namely that the release was a straightforward bit of grandstanding: "The compassionate release option allowed First Minister Salmond to inject Scotland on the international stage."
The sad fact remains that this report is nothing more than supposition dressed up as fact, opinion masquerading as truth.
It has unleashed a great deal of Brit-bashing, too. That is unfortunate but is as nothing when compared to the grief of the bereaved families. Their cause has not been aided by this nonsense of a report.
Given that he is still alive more than a year later proves that the release of this mass murderer may well have been a mistake. But he was released on compassionate, not commercial, grounds.
[From an opinion piece on the website of the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph by the paper's Scottish Editor.]
It is always uncomfortable to be attacked by a supposed friend, all the more so when the onslaught is so unreasonable and wrong-headed. However, the main criticism that must be levelled against the report compiled by four US senators on the circumstances surrounding the release of the Lockerbie bomber is that it is naive – stunningly and embarrassingly so.
What appears to have happened is that Senators Robert Menéndez, Frank Lautenberg, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand decided from the "off" that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was freed as a result of base political, diplomatic, but above all commercial, motives.
They further believed that the UK Government had, for a combination of these disreputable reasons, lent on the devolved administration of Alex Salmond in Edinburgh to release the mass murderer.
The senators decided to produce a report to "prove" their theory and, lo and behold, that is precisely what it came up with.
Along with others who should know better, they refuse to believe that a separatist SNP administration in Edinburgh would never give in to pressure from the unionist UK government in London over a wholly devolved issue, such as the Scottish justice system.
As a result, the senators produced a very poor piece of work that demonstrates the incredible ignorance evinced by these four conspiracy-theorists about how politics and governance works in this country, a not at all unusual state of affairs for American politicians' knowledge about what they would call foreign parts.
Scotland's First Minister and Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Minister, have said repeatedly that Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds because Mr MacAskill had been told by medical experts that he was suffering from terminal cancer and had only three months to live. For the record, I should repeat at this juncture that I supported that decision. That that prognosis was spectacularly wrong has, sadly, been proved by the passage of 16 months since his release.
It is not difficult to understand the anger and hurt of the relatives of those killed, many of whom are constituents of the senators.
However, the cause of the bereaved would have been served better had the senators steered clear of this elaborate conspiracy theory.
Time and time again, their 58-page report points the finger at the UK government.
For instance: "The UK government played a direct, critical role in al-Megrahi's release"; " … evidence suggests that UK officials pressured Scotland to facilitate al-Megrahi's release"; " … it would not be surprising that the Scottish government would be susceptible to pressure from the UK government."
Entitled "Justice Undone", the report charts what it sees as a series of suspicious meetings between British politicians – including Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – diplomats and businessmen, all hell-bent on securing a massive oil deal for BP, and Libyan officials. Not surprisingly, given his "non-person" status in the US over the Gulf oil spill, BP chairman Tony Hayward is given a walk-on part in all of this jiggery-pokery. The senators conclude that the UK Government knew that, in order to maintain commercial relations with Libya, "it had to give in to political demands".
"The threat of commercial warfare was a motivating factor", it adds.
The senators may be on firmer ground over their challenging of the medical evidence used as the basis for Megrahi's release. But even here they cannot resist sketching out an elaborate plot, involving Dr Andrew Fraser, the senior doctor at the Scottish Prison Service – accusing him of attending "political meetings" that "may have influenced his decision".
They also come up with a frankly spurious list of supposed powers that the UK Government could have used to stop Megrahi being freed and also claim that another reason for freeing the bomber was pressure from the Qataris who were poised to take over Sainsbury's, which the senators say is a "Scottish food producer". News to me!
Where the senators will find many supporters, however, is in their final conclusion – namely that the release was a straightforward bit of grandstanding: "The compassionate release option allowed First Minister Salmond to inject Scotland on the international stage."
The sad fact remains that this report is nothing more than supposition dressed up as fact, opinion masquerading as truth.
It has unleashed a great deal of Brit-bashing, too. That is unfortunate but is as nothing when compared to the grief of the bereaved families. Their cause has not been aided by this nonsense of a report.
Given that he is still alive more than a year later proves that the release of this mass murderer may well have been a mistake. But he was released on compassionate, not commercial, grounds.
[From an opinion piece on the website of the Conservative-supporting Daily Telegraph by the paper's Scottish Editor.]
Tuesday 20 July 2010
British PM agrees to see US senators on Lockerbie
[This is the headline over an Agence France Presse news agency report. It reads in part:]
British Prime Minister David Cameron has agreed to meet during his visit to Washington with four US senators angry over the Lockerbie bomber's release, his spokesman said Tuesday.
The British embassy in the US capital had originally said Cameron would not have time to meet the lawmakers as he had a full schedule, and would instead ask British Ambassador Nigel Sheinwald to see them.
But his spokesman later said the prime minister, on his first visit to Washington since taking office in May, had changed his plans and would invite the senators for a discussion later Tuesday at the British ambassador's residence.
"The prime minister recognises the strength of feeling and knows how important it is to reassure the families of the victims," said the spokesman.
"We are happy to see them face to face and find time in the diary."
Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey wrote a letter to Cameron Monday asking to meet with him to discuss the Lockerbie case. (...)
Menendez earlier described Cameron's initial refusal to meet with him and his fellow senators as "disappointing", adding that "it is critical for us to get the full story from the British government."
[Well, it certainly didn't take long for this British poodle to see the wisdom of complying with his US master's wishes.
The BBC News report on the Prime Minister's speedy volte face can be read here.]
British Prime Minister David Cameron has agreed to meet during his visit to Washington with four US senators angry over the Lockerbie bomber's release, his spokesman said Tuesday.
The British embassy in the US capital had originally said Cameron would not have time to meet the lawmakers as he had a full schedule, and would instead ask British Ambassador Nigel Sheinwald to see them.
But his spokesman later said the prime minister, on his first visit to Washington since taking office in May, had changed his plans and would invite the senators for a discussion later Tuesday at the British ambassador's residence.
"The prime minister recognises the strength of feeling and knows how important it is to reassure the families of the victims," said the spokesman.
"We are happy to see them face to face and find time in the diary."
Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey wrote a letter to Cameron Monday asking to meet with him to discuss the Lockerbie case. (...)
Menendez earlier described Cameron's initial refusal to meet with him and his fellow senators as "disappointing", adding that "it is critical for us to get the full story from the British government."
[Well, it certainly didn't take long for this British poodle to see the wisdom of complying with his US master's wishes.
The BBC News report on the Prime Minister's speedy volte face can be read here.]
Sunday 3 July 2011
US tells Libya rebels: Capture the Lockerbie bomber for us
[This is the headline over a report published today on the Mail Online website. It reads in part:]
A dramatic mission to capture the freed Lockerbie bomber from Libya and return him to face justice in the United States was revealed last night.
Under a secret deal between Barack Obama and Libyan rebel leaders, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi would be detained by opposition troops and then handed over to US Special Forces.
Senior Congressional sources in Washington have disclosed to The Mail on Sunday that President Obama has told the Libyan rebels through intermediaries that a condition of continued support from the US is that they must hand over Megrahi if they enter Tripoli.
The mission would involve Megrahi being flown to a neutral Arab country by US Special Forces once he is handed over by the rebels, and then on to America to face trial. [RB: Megrahi has already faced trial and been convicted -- wrongly, in my view -- in a process supported by the United States. He could not be tried again in the USA unless Federal Law were changed to allow it.] British SAS soldiers are unlikely to be directly involved in the operation.
The plan to capture the bomber came after US Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez met Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder last week to demand the US ‘continue working to return Abdelbaset Al Megrahi to prison’.
Mr Menendez has amended a Congressional Bill authorising the continued use of force in Libya to include a paragraph ordering ‘the continuation of Federal investigations into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103’.
Congressional sources disclosed that the US will ‘grab’ Megrahi as soon as they can.
A dramatic mission to capture the freed Lockerbie bomber from Libya and return him to face justice in the United States was revealed last night.
Under a secret deal between Barack Obama and Libyan rebel leaders, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi would be detained by opposition troops and then handed over to US Special Forces.
Senior Congressional sources in Washington have disclosed to The Mail on Sunday that President Obama has told the Libyan rebels through intermediaries that a condition of continued support from the US is that they must hand over Megrahi if they enter Tripoli.
The mission would involve Megrahi being flown to a neutral Arab country by US Special Forces once he is handed over by the rebels, and then on to America to face trial. [RB: Megrahi has already faced trial and been convicted -- wrongly, in my view -- in a process supported by the United States. He could not be tried again in the USA unless Federal Law were changed to allow it.] British SAS soldiers are unlikely to be directly involved in the operation.
The plan to capture the bomber came after US Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez met Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder last week to demand the US ‘continue working to return Abdelbaset Al Megrahi to prison’.
Mr Menendez has amended a Congressional Bill authorising the continued use of force in Libya to include a paragraph ordering ‘the continuation of Federal investigations into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103’.
Congressional sources disclosed that the US will ‘grab’ Megrahi as soon as they can.
Thursday 1 September 2011
US: No plans to tie Libya aid to Lockerbie case
[This is the headline over a report issued today by The Associated Press news agency. It reads in part:]
The Obama administration said Wednesday it will continue to press Libyan rebels to review the case of the convicted Lockerbie bomber but ruled out making the transfer of frozen Gadhafi regime assets contingent on his return to prison.
Getting the money to the opposition is a higher initial priority than handling the case of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the State Department said. (...)
Some lawmakers, including Clinton's former Senate colleague, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer have called on the Obama administration to withhold U.S. support for the rebels until Megrahi is jailed and independently examined by medical professionals to determine his health status. Other lawmakers and at least one Republican presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, have urged the administration to demand that the opposition arrest and extradite al-Megrahi.
But [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland said that the Libyan opposition's most important tasks are finishing its apparent victory over Gadhafi, restoring stability and starting a democratic transition. She said the administration would keep up pressure over the al-Megrahi case but would not link it to the return of assets. She also noted that it was Gadhafi, not his foes, who had treated al-Megrahi as a hero.
"We all have to take a hard line, and we have been, on Megrahi and anybody else who has blood on their hands from the Lockerbie bombing, and we will continue to do so," she told reporters.
"We need to give the TNC a chance to do job one, which is to finish the job of ousting Gadhafi and his regime; begin the job of establishing Libya on a democratic path," Nuland said. "And we are very gratified by the fact that they have made clear that they are willing to look into this. We will continue to talk to them about it, and we will certainly make sure that Congress's views are conveyed."
The opposition has pledged to look at the handling of the al-Megrahi case once it has established itself as a fully functioning government.
That is apparently not soon enough for some. (...)
New York's other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, and New Jersey Sens Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg have also made the al-Megrahi case an issue.
The Obama administration said Wednesday it will continue to press Libyan rebels to review the case of the convicted Lockerbie bomber but ruled out making the transfer of frozen Gadhafi regime assets contingent on his return to prison.
Getting the money to the opposition is a higher initial priority than handling the case of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the State Department said. (...)
Some lawmakers, including Clinton's former Senate colleague, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer have called on the Obama administration to withhold U.S. support for the rebels until Megrahi is jailed and independently examined by medical professionals to determine his health status. Other lawmakers and at least one Republican presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, have urged the administration to demand that the opposition arrest and extradite al-Megrahi.
But [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland said that the Libyan opposition's most important tasks are finishing its apparent victory over Gadhafi, restoring stability and starting a democratic transition. She said the administration would keep up pressure over the al-Megrahi case but would not link it to the return of assets. She also noted that it was Gadhafi, not his foes, who had treated al-Megrahi as a hero.
"We all have to take a hard line, and we have been, on Megrahi and anybody else who has blood on their hands from the Lockerbie bombing, and we will continue to do so," she told reporters.
"We need to give the TNC a chance to do job one, which is to finish the job of ousting Gadhafi and his regime; begin the job of establishing Libya on a democratic path," Nuland said. "And we are very gratified by the fact that they have made clear that they are willing to look into this. We will continue to talk to them about it, and we will certainly make sure that Congress's views are conveyed."
The opposition has pledged to look at the handling of the al-Megrahi case once it has established itself as a fully functioning government.
That is apparently not soon enough for some. (...)
New York's other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, and New Jersey Sens Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg have also made the al-Megrahi case an issue.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)