Chomsky on Malaysia Airlines flight 17 and Iran Air flight 655

[Since the early days of the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines flight 17, I have been at pains to suggest that a better comparator than the Pan Am 103 disaster that lazy politicians and journalists were regularly pointing to was the shooting down by the USS Vincennes of Iran Air flight 655 in July 1988. I am delighted that Justice for Megrahi member Noam Chomsky takes the same view.  Here are excerpts from an article published by him on 14 August:]

Almost every day brings news of awful crimes, but some are so heinous, so horrendous and malicious, that they dwarf all else. One of those rare events took place on July 17, when Malaysian Airlines MH17 was shot down in Eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people.

The Guardian of Virtue in the White House denounced it as an “outrage of unspeakable proportions,” which happened “because of Russian support.” His UN Ambassador thundered that “when 298 civilians are killed” in the “horrific downing” of a civilian plane, “we must stop at nothing to determine who is responsible and to bring them to justice.” She also called on Putin to end his shameful efforts to evade his very clear responsibility.

True, the “irritating little man” with the “ratlike face” (Timothy Garton Ash) had called for an independent investigation, but that could only have been because of sanctions from the one country courageous enough to impose them, the United States, while Europeans cower in fear.

On CNN, former US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor assured the world that the irritating little man “is clearly responsible ... for the shoot down of this airliner.” For weeks, lead stories reported the anguish of the families, details of the lives of the murdered victims, the international efforts to claim the bodies, the fury over the horrific crime that “stunned the world,” as the press reports daily in grisly detail.

Every literate person, and certainly every editor and commentator, instantly recalled another case when a plane was shot down with comparable loss of life: Iran Air 655 with 290 killed, including 66 children, shot down in Iranian airspace in a clearly identified commercial air route. The crime was not carried out “with US support,” nor has its agent ever been uncertain. It was the guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes, operating in Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf.

The commander of a nearby US vessel, David Carlson, wrote in the US Naval Proceedings that he “wondered aloud in disbelief” as “The Vincennes announced her intentions” to attack what was clearly a civilian aircraft. He speculated that “Robo Cruiser,” as the Vincennes was called because of its aggressive behavior, “felt a need to prove the viability of Aegis (the sophisticated anti-aircraft system on the cruiser) in the Persian Gulf, and that they hankered for the opportunity to show their stuff.”

Two years later, the commander of the Vincennes and the officer in charge of anti-air warfare were given the Legion of Merit award for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service” and for the “calm and professional atmosphere” during the period of the destruction of the Iranian Airbus. The incident was not mentioned in the award.

President Reagan blamed the Iranians and defended the actions of the warship, which “followed standing orders and widely publicized procedures, firing to protect itself against possible attack.” His successor, Bush I, proclaimed that “I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are ... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.”

No evasions of responsibility here, unlike the barbarians in the East.

There was little reaction at the time: no outrage, no desperate search for victims, no passionate denunciations of those responsible, no eloquent laments by the US Ambassador to the UN about the “immense and heart-wrenching loss” when the airliner was downed. Iranian condemnations were occasionally noted, and dismissed as “boilerplate attacks on the United States.”

Small wonder, then, that this insignificant earlier event merited only a few scattered and dismissive words in the US media during the vast furor over a real crime, in which the demonic enemy might (or might not) have been indirectly involved.

One exception was in the London Daily Mail, where Dominic Lawson wrote that although “Putin's apologists” might bring up the Iran Air attack, the comparison actually demonstrates our high moral values as contrasted with the miserable Russians, who try to evade their responsibility for MH 17 with lies while Washington at once announced that the US warship had shot down the Iranian aircraft — righteously.

We know why Ukrainians and Russians are in their own countries, but one might ask what exactly the Vincennes was doing in Iranian waters. The answer is simple. It was defending Washington’s great friend Saddam Hussein in his murderous aggression against Iran. For the victims, the shoot-down was no small matter. It was a major factor in Iran’s recognition that it could not fight on any longer, according to historian Dilip Hiro.

It is worth remembering the extent of Washington’s devotion to its friend Saddam. Reagan removed him from the terrorist list so that aid could be sent to expedite his assault on Iran, and later denied his murderous crimes against the Kurds, blocking congressional condemnations. He also accorded Saddam a privilege otherwise granted only to Israel: there was no notable reaction when Iraq attacked the USS Stark with missiles, killing 37 crewmen, much like the case of the USS Liberty, attacked repeatedly by Israeli jets and torpedo ships in 1967, killing 34 crewmen.

Reagan’s successor, Bush I, went on to provide further aid to Saddam, badly needed after the war with Iran that he launched. Bush also invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to come to the US for advanced training in weapons production. In April 1990, Bush dispatched a high-level Senate delegation, led by future Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, to convey his warm regards to his friend Saddam and to assure him that he should disregard irresponsible criticism from the “haughty and pampered press,” and that such miscreants had been removed from Voice of America. The fawning before Saddam continued until he turned into a new Hitler a few months later by disobeying orders, or perhaps misunderstanding them, and invading Kuwait, with illuminating consequences that are worth reviewing once again though I will leave the matter here.

"This is not just conspiracy theory"

[Following yesterday’s post about Magnus Linklater’s Lockerbie stance two years ago, here, from an item published exactly five years ago, is more from Mr Linklater as reported originally in Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm:]

Magnus Linklater, the editor of The Scotsman newspaper at the time of the Lockerbie investigation, has revealed that UK Government and intelligence services influenced coverage of the Lockerbie inquiry to implicate Iran and Syria.

Linklater admitted that both the police and UK Government ministers directed the newspaper to concentrate their coverage on Iranian and Syrian links with the downing of Pan Am 103, the suspects initially favoured by the US and UK administrations. 

"This is not just conspiracy theory," Linklater said.

"It is sometimes forgotten just how powerful the evidence was, in the first few months after Lockerbie, that pointed towards the involvement of the Palestinian-Syrian terror group the PFLP-GC, backed by Iran and linked closely to terror groups in Europe. At The Scotsman newspaper, which I edited then, we were strongly briefed by police and ministers to concentrate on this link, with revenge for an American rocket attack on an Iranian airliner as the motive." (...)

Linklater does not disclose why the newspaper did not undertake its own investigations. However he did state how former Lord Advocate Lord Fraser expressed concerns to him about whether the CIA could have been involved in planting some of the "evidence".

"I don’t know. No one ever came to me and said, ‘Let’s go for the Libyans’, it was never as straightforward as that. The CIA was extremely subtle," Fraser is reported to have said.

"Crazy conspiracy" slur remembered

[On this date two years ago, The Times published Magnus Linklater’s article headlined Has Scotland really swallowed this crazy conspiracy? Here is what he wrote:]

A remarkable thing happened at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday. Eight senior Scottish judges were accused of presiding over a major miscarriage of justice in the Lockerbie affair — and a packed Scottish audience applauded.

That trust in the judiciary should have descended to this level says much about the way that the long saga of this terrorist atrocity has evolved. A determined campaign to absolve the convicted bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, of guilt, has succeeded to the extent that not only does it appear to have swayed public opinion in his favour, it has also undermined confidence in the most important legal process Scotland has been involved in since the Second World War.

The man who lodged the accusation was Hans Köchler, the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial. He believes that the judges, both at the original trial, and the appeal, were prepared to overlook flawed evidence to ensure a conviction. His fellow panel members, Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing, and the writer John Ashton, who has ghosted al-Megrahi’s own account of the affair, agreed.

They believe not only that the evidence was deliberately manipulated at the trial, but that, from the outset, there was a conspiracy to point the finger at Libya and divert attention from the real instigator, Iran.

Yet that contention has never been challenged in any detail. Because the trial judges and the Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecution service, are bound by convention to remain silent, the counter-argument has gone by default so that we have only heard one side of the case. The opportunity of a second appeal, which might have tested the allegations, was abandoned by al-Megrahi himself when he was released on compassionate grounds and returned to Libya.

But the case mounted by the pro-Megrahi campaigners is every bit as flawed as the one it seeks to dismantle. To demonstrate that Libya was framed, they have to prove that there was a calculated decision to do so. That decision would have had to lead to the planting or suppression of forensic evidence, the control of witnesses by intelligence services, the approval of senior politicians, the complicity of police officers, a prosecution team prepared to bend every rule to secure a conviction, and a set of senior Scottish judges willing to go along with that.

This last contention is perhaps the most controversial. As Brian McConnachie, a senior Scottish QC, puts it: “The idea that eight Scottish judges took part in a deliberate manipulation of evidence for political reasons is simply preposterous.”

But for the conspiracy theorists, who have excluded reason and logic, the preposterous is all that remains.

[And here is the commentary that I appended on this blog to Mr Linklater’s article:]

Mr Linklater made the same points at the EIBF session.  The audience was rightly unimpressed.  As Rolfe commented on this blog:

“Today, I wanted to tell Magnus Linklater he was an idiot. Miscarriages of justice happen all the time, and they don't need a huge conspiracy of eminent people who know the defendant is innocent but conspire to convict him anyway. They just need the cops to latch on to the wrong person and then see guilt in everything they say and everything they do. Then confirmation bias and groupthink do the rest. Although there was a lot of politicking surrounding Lockerbie which added to the pressure, especially the determination of the authorities that SOMEONE had to be fingered for the atrocity, there's nothing fundamentally different about it. Ask the Maguire Seven.”

Mr Linklater is also well aware, but chooses not to mention, that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent and expert body, in 2007 (well after the eight judges mentioned by him had made their respective rulings) reported that on a factual issue absolutely central to Megrahi’s conviction the trial judges had reached a conclusion that, on the evidence, no reasonable court could have reached.

Pan Am insurer suing US Government over Lockerbie pay-out

[What follows is a part of a brief report published yesterday on the website of The Insurance Insider:]

Lloyd's run-off vehicle Equitas is suing the US government for $97mn after it prevented insurers from pursuing the Libyan government for its involvement in terrorism attacks, including the Lockerbie bombing.

Lloyd's insurers, alongside US legacy carrier Aviation & General, paid out $55mn in 1988 after the Pan Am plane exploded over the small town in southern Scotland, killing 270 people.

[Part of the background to this story can be found in a 2003 report in the Scottish Daily Record newspaper:]

The Lockerbie bomber is being sued for £400 million by Pan Am's insurers. 

A record civil action will be raised at the Court of Session this week in Edinburgh against ex-Libyan secret agent Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi. 

Insurers acting on behalf of the now-defunct airline want compensation for the money they paid out to the victims of the disaster. 

The case is the biggest single damages action ever lodged in a Scottish court. 

Megrahi's former co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who was acquitted, the Libyan government and Libyan Airlines have also been named in the lawsuit. 

Last week, Megrahi, 51, was told at the High Court in Glasgow he must serve at least 27 years before he can be considered for parole. 

The action at the Court of Session has been tabled by Equitas of London, a subsidiary of Lloyd's of London. 

The legal move comes 15 years after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown to pieces by a bomb, killing 270 people. 

Equitas want to claw back some of the £600 million paid to their families. 

They are also trying to recover money on behalf of creditors of Pan Am, who went bust in 1991. Pan Am were sued by the families of the victims, including the 11 residents killed in Lockerbie. 

Claims were also made by residents whose homes were damaged. 

After the airline folded, power of attorney was transferred to Equitas. 

Equitas who have been pursuing Libya and the bombers since the 1990s have hired Edinburgh legal firm [Shepherd and Wedderburn] to represent them. 

A spokesman for Equitas said: “We are continuing to try and pursue our recoveries and the action in the Court of Session is part of that.'' 

Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi has agreed to pay £1.7 billion compensation to the victims' families after taking responsibility. [RB: The sum was $2.7 billion. The contingency fees of the lawyers representing the families swallowed up around one third of this.]

Equitas hope a win will put pressure on Libya to pay on behalf of the other parties, including Megrahi. 

Yesterday, Dr Iain Scobbie, a lecturer in international law at Glasgow University, said it would be difficult for Equitas to get compensation, even if they win. 

He said: “Under international law, a sovereign state is immune from any action of this kind.'' 

Megrahi's lawyer, Eddie McKechnie, said he could not comment, as he only represents his client on the criminal charge. 

[Another report, from June 2004, can be read here on the website of The Herald. The Court of Session action was settled on 18 February 2005: see Jonathan B Schwartz Dealing with a "rogue state": the Libya precedent, pages 568-69, footnote 92. It appears from an Associated Press news agency report on the website of The Washington Post that the settlement involved a payment in excess of US$31 million.

Given the various successful legal actions taken by Pan Am's insurers against Libya that the above sources specify, it is not immediately clear to me what their present action against the US Government relates to.]

If powerful governments want a guilty verdict they will get it

[A prominent European Union businessman who, over many years, has taken a keen interest in the Lockerbie case, has given me access to a paper that he has recently written about the international reaction to the destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight 17. He wishes at present to remain anonymous. The full text of the paper can be read here. The following are extracts:]

The Crime

First let us try and define what the crime is we talk about here.  If it were the rebels who shot down MH17 then what most likely happened is the following. The rebels are engaged in combat with Ukrainian troops which they consider their enemy. The combat involves ground forces and from Ukrainian side also the air force that brings support to the Ukrainian ground forces. The rebels mistake MH17 for a Ukrainian military plane such an IL76 they had shot down recently and launch the fatal missile. If I understand correctly, this is a crime if they did not do proper checks on whether the target was civilian.

A Trial?

So if it would come to a trial, I presume that such trial, provided it was fair, should establish if the rebels did indeed properly check this and condemn them or clear them.  At this point most western European politicians have climbed on the bandwagon to call for action to hold ‘them’ responsible.  It is not completely clear who they mean by ‘them’ but it seems that Russia is included in ‘them’ and for some is even the prime suspect. How one can justify this legally is not very clear but many politicians say that Russia bears responsibility for having supplied the missiles. That reasoning assumes two things: 1) the Russians supplied the rockets and 2) whoever supplied them is also guilty.  We are now entering complicated territory. Let us suppose that Russia did supply the rockets. Under what law would that make them responsible for the use or misuse of the weapons?

Presumed Guilty

It is clear from their public utterances that western politicians ‘want’ a guilty verdict. It would be impossible in the eyes of the world to acquit someone in such a high profile case. One can thus reasonably expect that all means will be used to reach such a verdict. History has told us that if these powerful governments want a guilty verdict in such a case, they will get it (Lockerbie is good enough an example).  In the case of Lockerbie not only was Megrahi found guilty, Libya as a country was also found guilty and condemned to pay huge compensation.  It is not unreasonable to assume that legally sound or not, Russia would be found guilty in this case as well.

Previous incidents

Interestingly, in none of the previous cases of mistakenly shooting down civil airliners did it come to court cases where the people who pulled the trigger or their superiors were found guilty:

• El Al 402  (London-Tel Aviv) shot down by Bulgaria in 1955. 58 death, An apology was eventually issued and compensation paid.

• Libyan Arab Airlines 114 (Tripoli-Cairo) Shot down by Israel over the Sinai in 1973. 108 deaths, 5 survivers; Israel's Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, called it an "error of judgment", and Israel paid compensation to the victims' families.

• Itavia 870 (Bologna-Palermo), shot down in 1980 near Ustica (Sicily). 81 deaths. So far no official prosecution although an Italian court has deposited a complaint with France, suspected of shooting down the plane. Justice has for 30 years been seriously obstructed by the Italian Air Force.

• Korean Air 007 (New York-Séoul), shot down 1983 over Soviet territory, 269 deaths. Cold war situation. Due to cold war status no-one was prosecuted but Korean airlines paid compensation money since the plane had made a navigational error.

• Iran Air 655 (Bandar Abbas-Dubai), Shot down by US Navy in 1988. 290 deaths. Blaming it on Iran, United States recognized the aerial incident of 3 July 1988 as a terrible human tragedy and expressed deep regret over the loss of lives caused by the incident. Nobody was prosecuted but compensation money was paid.  

• TWA 800 (New York-Paris-Rome),  Explodes near Long Island, on 17 July 1996. Official inquiry very likely manipulated since earlier denied Navy exercises nearby later turned out to have taken place. 230 deaths. Following the official inquiry, no-one was ever prosecuted. A fatal mistake by US Navy however very likely.

• Siberian Airlines 1812 (Tel Aviv-Novosibirsk), shot down 2001 over Black Sea by Ukrainian army. 78 deaths.  On August 22, 2007 Kiev Appeals Court dismissed the victims' relatives suit against the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, ruling that military of Ukraine bear no liability for the accident.

So in none of the previous cases did somebody go to jail for having pulled the trigger. Nor did anybody who supplied the weapons ever get prosecuted. In the above cases the suppliers were:

Soviet Union

USA

(Most probably) France

It is interesting to see that in all the earlier mentioned cases the people who pulled the trigger and their political leaders denied responsibility and in some cases simply denied they ever did it.  The current position of whoever brought down MH17 is thus no exception. (...)

Public accusers

The two loudest “public accusers” in the case of MH17 are the governments in Kiev and, of course, Washington.

Let us have a look at the current prime minister of Ukraine, the loudest voice in the condemnation of the rebels and Russia. What did this man do when the Ukrainian governments denied all responsibility for the shooting down of Siberian Airlines 1812: Arseniy Yatsenyuk served in the government of Ukraine as Minister of Economy from 2005 to 2006; subsequently he was Foreign Minister of Ukraine in 2007.  So this man was part of the governments that denied justice to the victims of Siberian Airlines 1812.

What about the second loudest voice, the US government?  That their track record in the case of Iran Air 655 and in the case of Lockerbie is highly questionable should by now be clear.  Their position towards the International Criminal Court of Justice is also very clear:  On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by a vote of 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were Iraq, Israel, Libya, the People's Republic of China, Qatar, Yemen, and the United States. (...)

So here we are….

Probably some rebels made a dramatic cock-up. As dramatic as the people who fired the missiles on the planes mentioned in the various earlier examples.

So what to do if you are a Russian rebel that made the fatal mistake?  Admit your mistake and turn yourself in? Hand yourself over to Kiev? Washington? ICC?  Nobody previously did it in any case of a mistakenly shot down plane.  Ironically, the only example of someone turning himself in for an air disaster was Megrahi and his co-accused Fhimah. Maybe they naively turned themselves in because they were innocent.  

With all the knowledge we now have of how the world has dealt with these kind of incidents in the past I cannot really blame the rebels for not admitting their mistake. A fair trial being highly unlikely if we look at who is pulling the strings.  As regards Russia, if the USA, France and Britain who have supplied plenty of arms to governments and rebels all over the world that have killed innocent civilian have never been prosecuted, I guess it is not sure that there is a legal ground for prosecution here either.

One thing is however for sure, the sad death of hundreds of innocent victims is again being exploited by politicians.

All in all, a sad analysis and summing up of the way the world is dealing with air disasters.

The last thing that Washington wants is the truth about Lockerbie

[On the occasion of Tam Dalyell‘s 82nd birthday, I was trawling through posts on this blog that mentioned him and came upon one from 17 August 2009 headed The truth about Lockerbie? That’s the last thing the Americans want the world to know. Here are some excerpts:]

Why have US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her officials responded to the return of Megrahi with such a volcanic reaction? The answer is straightforward. The last thing that Washington wants is the truth to emerge about the role of the US in the crime of Lockerbie. (...)

Not only did Washington not want the awful truth to emerge, but Mrs Thatcher, a few - very few - in the stratosphere of Whitehall and certain officials of the Crown Office in Edinburgh, who owe their subsequent careers to the Lockerbie investigation, were compliant.

It all started in July 1988 with the shooting down by the warship USS Vincennes of an Iranian airliner carrying 290 pilgrims to Mecca - without an apology.

The Iranian minister of the interior at the time was Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, who made a public statement that blood would rain down in the form of ten western airliners being blown out of the sky.

Mohtashemi was in a position carry out such a threat - he had been the Iranian ambassador in Damascus from 1982 to 1984 and had developed close relations with the terrorist gangs of Beirut and the Bekaa Valley - and in particular terrorist leader Abu Nidal and Ahmed Jibril, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.

Washington was appalled. I believe so appalled and fearful that it entered into a Faustian agreement that, tit-for-tat, one airliner should be sacrificed. This may seem a dreadful thing for me to say. But consider the facts. A notice went up in the US Embassy in Moscow advising diplomats not to travel with Pan Am back to America for Christmas. (...)

Places became available. Who took them at the last minute? The students. Jim Swire's daughter, John Mosey's daughter, Martin Cadman's son, Pamela Dix’s brother, other British relatives, many of whom you have seen on television in recent days, and, crucially, 32 students of the University of Syracuse, New York.

If it had become known - it was the interregnum between Ronald Reagan demitting office and George Bush Snr entering the White House - that, in the light of the warning, Washington had pulled VIPs but had allowed [Bernt] Carlsson, the UN negotiator for [Namibia] whom it didn't like, and the youngsters to travel to their deaths, there would have been an outcry of US public opinion.

No wonder the government of the United States and key officials do not want the world to know what they have done.

If you think that this is fanciful, consider more facts. When the relatives went to see the then UK Transport Secretary, Cecil Parkinson, he told them he did agree that there should be a public inquiry.

Going out of the door as they were leaving, as an afterthought he said: 'Just one thing. I must clear permission for a public inquiry with colleagues'.

Dr Swire, John Mosey and Pamela Dix, the secretary of the Lockerbie relatives, imagined that it was a mere formality. A fortnight later, sheepishly, Parkinson informed them that colleagues had not agreed.

At that time there was only one colleague who could possibly have told Parkinson that he was forbidden to do something in his own department. That was the Prime Minister. Only she could have told Parkinson to withdraw his offer, certainly, in my opinion, knowing the man, given in good faith.

[Tam then tells the story of a conversation he had with Margaret Thatcher at a dinner in 2001 hosted by the Colombian ambassador:]

Raising the soup spoon, I ventured: 'Margaret, tell me one thing - why in 800 pages...'

'Have you read my autobiography?' she interrupted, purring with pleasure.

‘Yes, I have read it very carefully. Why in 800 pages did you not mention Lockerbie once?' Mrs Thatcher replied: 'Because I didn't know what happened and I don't write about things that I don't know about.'

My jaw dropped. 'You don't know. But, quite properly as Prime Minister, you went to Lockerbie and looked into First Officer Captain Wagner's eyes.'

She replied: 'Yes, but I don't know about it and I don't write in my autobiography things I don't know about.'

My conclusion is that she had been told by Washington on no account to delve into the circumstances of what really happened that awful night. Whitehall complied. I acquit the Scottish judges Lord Sutherland, Lord Coulsfield and Lord MacLean at Megrahi's trial of being subject to pressure, though I am mystified as to how they could have arrived at a verdict other than 'Not Guilty' -or at least 'Not Proven'.

As soon as I left the Colombian ambassador's residence, I reflected on the enormity of what Mrs Thatcher had said. Her relations with Washington were paramount. She implied that she had abandoned her natural and healthy curiosity about public affairs to blind obedience to what the US administration wished. Going along with the Americans was one of her tenets of faith.

On my last visit to Megrahi, in Greenock Prison in November last year, he said to me: 'Of course I am desperate to go back to Tripoli. I want to see my five children growing up. But I want to go back as an innocent man.'

I quite understand the human reasons why, given his likely life expectancy, he is prepared, albeit desperately reluctantly, to abandon the appeal procedure.

The importance of being awkward

Today is the 82nd birthday of Tam Dalyell, former Labour MP (1962-2005) and Father of the House of Commons (2001-2005), former Rector of the University of Edinburgh (2003-2006) and continuing stalwart of the Justice for Megrahi campaign. During the seven years of this blog's life he has featured frequently. His appearances are gathered together here.

A verdict contrary to the evidence

[On this date three years ago, an item appeared on this blog that contained the following excerpts from an article in The Times:]

One of Scotland’s top legal experts claimed last night that the three judges at the trial of the Lockerbie bomber reached a guilty verdict “contrary to the evidence” because “consciously or subconsciously” they were under pressure to convict from the then Lord Advocate.

Robert Black, Professor Emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, added that there was no doubt that the conviction of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi for mass murder had been a miscarriage of justice. (...)

Professor Black dismissed the notion that the trial judges, Lord Sutherland, Lord Coulsfield and Lord MacLean, had been “nobbled” by politicians, but instead said that they had been influenced by the power of the Lord Advocate, Scotland’s leading legal official. (...)

“The Lockerbie case was the most important criminal case there had ever been in Scotland,” Professor Black said. “For the outcome of that case, after all the publicity about the investigation ... for that investigation, and that prosecution to result in two verdicts of not guilty would have been a slap in the face of the Lord Advocate. Consciously or subconsciously these judges were not willing [to do that].” [RB: It is noteworthy that one of the six reasons given by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for finding that Megrahi's conviction might have been a miscarriage of justice was that no reasonable tribunal could, on the evidence, have made the finding in fact that Megrahi was the purchaser on Malta of the clothes that surrounded the bomb. Without that finding, Megrahi could not in law have been convicted.]

Professor Black was sharing a stage with Jim Swire, 75, the GP whose daughter Flora was among the victims of the bombing, following a production of the play Lockerbie [: Unfinished Business] at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Written and performed by David Benson, it dramatised Dr Swire’s emotional journey, from his first anxiety about his daughter’s safety when news of a terrorist bomb broke in December 1988, through his decades of struggle to establish the identity of the terrorists who had killed her.

[The Lord Advocate at the time of the Zeist trial, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, now a judge of the Court of Session and High Court of Justiciary, reacted angrily to my comments.  His response and my rejoinder are recorded on this blog here and here.]

Lockerbie investigators "hand in hand ... praying for justice"

[Various Dutch newspapers are today running an article headlined De lessen van Lockerbie (The lessons of Lockerbie). What follows are excerpts taken from Dagblad van het Noorden, translated courtesy of Google Translate, as modified by me via my knowledge of Afrikaans. The original Dutch text is appended.]

The Pan Am flight 103 disaster on December 21, 1988 sowed death and destruction in the small village of Lockerbie. Exactly 38 minutes after the plane takes off from London Heathrow, at a height of 10 kilometers, something goes terribly wrong. The ‘Clipper Maid Of The Seas' explodes, falls into thousands of pieces, and destroys much of Lockerbie. Eleven residents and 259 passengers are killed.

Because there were 189 Americans on board, the FBI is also involved in the investigation. The leader of the team was Richard Marquise. With pain in his heart, he looks at what is happening in Ukraine.  “We both have many compatriots lost in a foreign country. But we had one great advantage, and that was that the Scottish police did ​​a very good job. Directly after the disaster there were thousands of police and soldiers on hand to help search for victims and wreckage."

Marquise calls the war in Ukraine a nightmare for the Dutch investigators who ultimately have to find the perpetrators. There are, according to him, so many people who have an interest in ensuring that there is no evidence to be found. International observers have already indications that wreckage has been tampered with. “It is hoped that these were people who did not know exactly where to go looking. So perhaps forensic experts with all their advanced techniques can still find something useful."

Yet there is one bright spot, according to Marquise. The Netherlands already knows that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was probably downed with a rocket.  “The first few days we still had no idea why the Pan Am aircraft had crashed.” (...)

A piece of wreckage, however small, can be invaluable, as became clear in the investigation into the Lockerbie disaster. Investigators found a tiny chip from the timer that activated the bomb in a suitcase. By means of this, investigators eventually exposed the Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. He smuggled the bomb suitcase on board the Pan Am aircraft. But in the absence of this kind of hard evidence it will be a very tough job to identify the perpetrators, predicts Marquise. “Unless someone comes forward who says ‘It was him.’”

What Marquise would like to see is a “golden informant” such as they had in the Lockerbie investigation. (...) [RB: Presumably this is a reference to Abdul Majid Giaka. If that is so, it is interesting that he should still today be being referred to as “golden” after his performance at Zeist.]

If the Dutch - despite all the difficulties - find the perpetrators then a suspect can be arrested even after years of waiting, as the Lockerbie investigators have cause to know. Al-Megrahi, the man who placed the bomb suitcase in the Pan Am aircraft, was a Libyan. That country already had a reputation as a rogue state that was not cooperative. “Gaddafi simply denied that it had happened,” says Marquise.

Only after years of economic sanctions did Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi give in and two suspects were extradited in 1999. One of them was acquitted. Al-Megrahi was imprisoned in 2001 for life. So there was finally justice, thirteen years after the disaster.

Marquise remembers that day like yesterday. He was with the Scottish detectives at Camp Zeist, when the judges delivered judgment. Hand in hand they listened to the verdict, praying for justice. “All those years of hard work had led us to this man. But only when the judge pronounced the word "guilty", were we sure: ‘we got him’.”

De ramp met Pan Am-vlucht 103 zaait op 21 december 1988 dood en verderf in het kleine dorpje Lockerbie. Precies 38 minuten nadat het toestel is opstegen vanaf Londen Heathrow, gaat het op 10 kilometer hoogte vreselijk mis. De ‘Clipper Maid Of The Seas' explodeert, valt in duizenden stukjes uiteen en vermorzelt een groot deel van Lockerbie. Elf bewoners en 259 passagiers komen om het leven.

Omdat er 189 Amerikanen aan boord waren, wordt ook de FBI bij het onderzoek betrokken. Leider van het team was destijds Richard Marquise. Met pijn in zijn hart kijkt hij naar wat er nu in Oekraïne gebeurt. ,,Wij hebben beide veel landgenoten verloren in een vreemd land. Maar wij hadden één groot voordeel en dat was dat de Schotse politie heel goed werk verrichtte. Na de ramp waren er direct duizenden agenten en militairen op de been om te helpen zoeken naar slachtoffers en wrakstukken.''

De oorlog in Oekraïne noemt Marquise een nachtmerrie voor de Nederlandse onderzoekers die uiteindelijk de daders moeten zien te vinden. Er zijn volgens hem zo veel mensen die er belang bij hebben dat er helemaal geen bewijsstukken worden gevonden. Internationale waarnemers hebben al aanwijzingen dat er met de wrakstukken zou zijn gerommeld. ,,Het is te hopen dat de mensen die dat hebben gedaan niet precies wisten waar ze naar moesten zoeken. Zo kunnen forensische experts met al hun geavanceerde technieken misschien toch nog iets bruikbaars vinden.''

Toch is er volgens Marquise een lichtpuntje. Nederland weet al dat vlucht MH17 van Malaysia Airlines hoogstwaarschijnlijk naar beneden is gehaald met een raket. ,,Wij hadden de eerste dagen nog helemaal geen idee waarom het Pan Am-toestel was neergestort.'' (...)

Een wrakstuk, hoe klein ook, kan goud waard zijn, zo is duidelijk geworden in het onderzoek naar de ramp in Lockerbie. De minuscule chip die onderzoekers vinden, blijkt een deel van de timer waarmee de bom in een koffer is geactiveerd. Rechercheurs ontmaskeren hiermee uiteindelijk de Libische geheim agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Hij heeft de bomkoffer aan boord van het Pan Am-toestel gesmokkeld. Maar als dit soort harde bewijzen uitblijven, wordt het achterhalen van de daders een heel zware klus, voorspelt Marquise. ,,Of er moet iemand opstaan die zegt: hij was het.''

Wat had Marquise graag gezien dat er ook in het Lockerbie-onderzoek een gouden tipgever was opgestaan. (...)

Slagen de Nederlanders er – ondanks alle moeilijkheden – toch in de daders te vinden, dan kan het daadwerkelijk arresteren van een verdachte nog jaren op zich laten wachten, weten de onderzoekers van Lockerbie. Al-Megrahi, de man die de bomkoffer in het Pan Am-toestel plaatste, was een Libiër. Dat land had toen al de reputatie van een schurkenstaat waarmee niet viel samen te werken. ,,Gaddafi ontkende simpelweg dat het was gebeurd'', zegt Marquise.

Pas na jarenlange economische sancties zwichtte de Libische leider Muammar Gaddafi en werden in 1999 twee verdachten uitgeleverd. Een van hen werd vrijgesproken. Al-Megrahi kreeg in 2001 levenslang. Zo was er dertien jaar na de ramp eindelijk gerechtigheid.

Marquise herinnert zich die dag nog als gisteren. Hij zat samen met de Schotse rechercheurs in Kamp Zeist, waar de rechters het oordeel velden. Hand in hand luisterden ze naar de uitspraak, biddend voor gerechtigheid. ,,Al die jaren hard werken hadden ons naar deze man geleid. Maar pas toen de rechter het woord ‘schuldig' uitsprak, wisten we het zeker: we got him.''