"Standards violated in most serious and fundamental way" in Lockerbie case

[On this date in 2002, the International Progress Organization issued a press release in the following terms:]

Lockerbie appeal: miscarriage of justice

Court not in conformity with European human rights standards

Camp Zeist / Vienna, 15 March 2002/P/RE/17525c-is

In interviews for BBC television and radio and for Dutch Television, Professor Hans Köchler, international observer at the Lockerbie Trial, stated yesterday that the decision of the Appeal Court in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al-Megrahi was not justified and did not properly take into account the contradictions and inconsistencies in the original verdict of the trial court. He spoke of a “spectacular miscarriage of justice” that occurred in the highly politicized context of the Lockerbie trial.

In additional remarks made after his return from Camp Zeist, Professor Köchler expressed the view that the handling of the appeal by the five judges demonstrated their bias towards the position of the prosecution as can be clearly seen from the 370 paragraphs of the Opinion of the Appeal Court.

Professor Köchler expressed the view that appeal proceedings are rendered meaningless if an Appeal Court does not seriously deal with new evidence brought before it and does not examine the grounds of appeal in a careful and systematic manner, based on reason and common sense. He furthermore raised serious questions about the performance of Al-Megrahi’s defense.

Professor Köchler stated that reference to the adversarial nature of the Scottish legal system can be no excuse for the total lack of fairness of the proceedings. Whether a legal system is of adversarial or inquisitive nature, whether we deal with a system based on Common Law or on Roman Law, the basic principles of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms have to be respected in any court proceedings in member states of the Council of Europe having acceded to the Convention.

Article 6(1) of the Convention states that “In the determination of … any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. …” From the conduct of the trial and of the appeal it is obvious that these basic European standards, by which Scottish courts are legally bound, have been violated in the most serious and fundamental way in the proceedings of the High Court of Justiciary in the Lockerbie case.

In his capacity as international observer nominated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the basis of Security Council resolution 1192 (1998), adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter, Professor Köchler had made a comprehensive report after the announcement of the original verdict of the Trial Court on 3 February 2001. He announced today that he will present a comprehensive report on and evaluation of the appeal proceedings and that he will submit his observations to the President of the United Nations Security Council and to UN member states.

The International Progress Organization will make the report available to the international public at the proper time. [RB: Professor Köchler’s report on the appeal proceedings can be read here.]

How the first appeal was lost

[On this date in 2002, Abdelbaset Megrahi’s appeal against conviction was dismissed by five judges of the High Court of Justiciary sitting at Camp Zeist. Here is my analysis of their decision:]

Introduction

Megrahi duly intimated his intention to appeal against his conviction. Pending the appeal he remained incarcerated in the Netherlands in HM Prison, Zeist. On 14 March 2002 the appeal was dismissed. An Opinion of the Court extending to 200 typed pages divided into 370 paragraphs was delivered(fn1). The appeal was against conviction only: there was no attempt to challenge the recommendation, that a minimum of twenty years should be served before release was considered, which accompanied the trial court’s mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.

As required by the provisions of the High Court of Justiciary (Proceedings in the Netherlands) (United Nations) Order 1998, the Appeal Court consisted of five Lords Commissioners of Justiciary and sat in the premises of the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands(fn2). The hearing extended from 23 January to14 February 2002. The proceedings (except when the evidence of witnesses was being heard) were televised live over the internet on a website maintained by the BBC, the first occasion in Scotland (or elsewhere in the United Kingdom) that live public broadcasting of judicial proceedings has been permitted. The consensus of opinion was that the administration of justice was not impaired by the presence of the television cameras, but that the level of excitement and drama was such that there is unlikely to be much clamour in the foreseeable future from either broadcasters or the viewing public for the experiment to be repeated.

The grounds of appeal

The only ground upon which a criminal appeal can succeed in Scotland is that there has been a miscarriage of justice. In the Note of Appeal lodged on behalf of Megrahi there were set out in 21 paragraphs (many of them subdivided) the grounds upon which, individually or in combination, it was contended that a miscarriage had occurred. One of those grounds related to the existence and significance of evidence which was not heard during the original proceedings. This evidence related to a breach of security at Heathrow Terminal 3 (potentially giving access to the baggage build-up area) the night before Pan Am 103 departed from that terminal on its fatal flight. The Appeal Court allowed the new evidence to be led before it, but ultimately concluded that it could not be regarded as possessing such importance as to have been likely to have had a material bearing on the trial court’s determination of the critical issue of whether the suitcase containing the bomb was launched on its progress from Luqa Airport in Malta (an essential plank in the prosecution case) or from Heathrow. This ground of appeal was accordingly rejected.

As far as the appeal based on the remaining twenty paragraphs of the written grounds of appeal was concerned, its failure appears to have been rendered virtually inevitable by two concessions made in the course of argument by the appellant’s counsel. The first of these, as recorded in the Opinion of the Court (paragraph 4) is as follows:

“At the trial it was not submitted on the appellant’s behalf that there was insufficient evidence in law to convict him. In its judgment the trial court rejected parts of the evidence relied upon by the Crown at the trial. Nevertheless, it was not contended in the appeal that those parts of the evidence not rejected by the trial court did not afford a sufficient basis in law for conviction.”

The second concession is recorded in the following terms (paragraph 5):

“Under subsection (3) [of s106 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995] an appellant may bring under review of the High Court:

‘any alleged miscarriage of justice, which may include such a miscarriage

based on –

(b) the jury’s having returned a verdict which no reasonable jury, properly

directed, could have returned.’ …

Mr Taylor, who appeared for the appellant, expressly disavowed any reliance on para (b).”

The importance of these concessions is emphasised by the Appeal Court in the penultimate paragraph of its Opinion (paragraph 369):

“When opening the case for the appellant before this court Mr Taylor stated that the appeal was not about sufficiency of evidence: he accepted that there was a sufficiency of evidence. He also stated that he was not seeking to found on section 106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act. His position was that the trial court had misdirected itself in various respects. Accordingly in this appeal we have not required to consider whether the evidence before the trial court, apart from the evidence which it rejected, was sufficient as a matter of law to entitle it to convict the appellant on the basis set out in its judgment. We have not had to consider whether the verdict of guilty was one which no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have returned in the light of that evidence.”

The issues that the appeal did not address

The limitations under which the Appeal Court was thus constrained to operate effectively disabled it from considering the issues of (a) whether there was sufficient evidence in law to justify such absolutely crucial findings-in-fact by the trial court as (i) that the date of purchase in Malta of the clothes surrounding the bomb was 7 December 1988, (ii) that Megrahi was the purchaser and (iii) that the case containing the bomb started its progress from Malta’s Luqa Airport and (b) whether those findings or any of them (on the assumption that there was a legal sufficiency of evidence) were such as no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have made, or been satisfied of beyond reasonable doubt, in the light of (i) justifiable criticisms of the evidence and witnesses supporting them and (ii) ex facie credible contrary evidence.

The issues that the appeal did address

What the appellant instead invited the Appeal Court to do was to hold that various findings-in-fact made by the trial court (a) were based upon a misunderstanding of the evidence or were without a basis in the evidence; or (b) were arrived at by giving undue weight to evidence that supported them or insufficient weight or “proper regard(fn3)” to evidence that contradicted them; or (c) were in the nature of inferences from primary facts drawn in situations where other, non-incriminating, inferences were equally open.

As regards (a) the Appeal Court held that in two or three instances the trial court had found a fact proved on the basis of a misunderstanding of the evidence led, or where there was no evidential basis for the finding. But in each such case the Appeal Court went on to decide that the error was insignificant, could not have affected the ultimate outcome of the case and, hence, was not such as to give rise to a miscarriage of justice.

As regards (b) and (c) the Appeal Court insisted that, as long it was (as here) not contended that no reasonable trial court could have made the finding-in-fact, challenge of findings on these grounds was simply not competent. The weight to be given to evidence or the “proper regard” to be accorded to it were matters entirely for the trial court, as was the question of what inferences to draw from the primary facts that it held proved. Even where, as here, the tribunal of fact was not an inscrutable jury but a bench of judges who gave reasons for their findings, the Appeal Court was simply not entitled to substitute its own views for those of the trial judges. It followed that all of the grounds of appeal directed towards issues of “weight” or “proper regard” fell to be rejected as raising matters not within the competence or powers of the Appeal Court. This is emphasised at various points in the Opinion of the Court(fn4) but principally in the section headed “The function of an appeal court.(fn5)”

Conclusion

Before the verdicts in the original trial were delivered, I expressed the view at http://www.thelockerbietrial.com/in_order_to_convict.htm that for the judges to return verdicts of guilty they would require (i) to accept every incriminating inference that the Crown invited them to draw from evidence that was on the face of it neutral and capable of supporting quite innocent inferences, (ii) to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, positively identified Megrahi as the person who bought from his shop in Sliema the clothes and umbrella contained in the suitcase that held the bomb and (iii) to accept that the date of purchase of these items was proved to be 7 December 1988 (as distinct from 23 November 1988 when Megrahi was not present on Malta). I went on rashly to express the opinion that, for the judges to be satisfied of all these matters on the evidence led at the trial, they would require to adopt the posture of the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, when she informed Alice "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." In convicting Megrahi, it is submitted that this is precisely what the trial judges did.

As far as the outcome of the appeal is concerned, some commentators have confidently opined that, in dismissing Megrahi’s appeal, the Appeal Court endorsed the findings of the trial court. This is not so. The Appeal Court repeatedly stresses that it is not its function to approve or disapprove of the trial court’s findings-in-fact, given that it was not contended on behalf of the appellant that there was insufficient evidence to warrant them or that no reasonable court could have made them. These findings-in-fact accordingly continue, as before the appeal, to have the authority only of the court which, and the three judges who, made them.

Until such time as an appellate court (perhaps on a reference from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) is required to address the fundamental issues of (i) whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant the incriminating findings, (ii) whether any reasonable trial court could have made those findings (and could have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of the guilt of Megrahi) on the evidence led at Camp Zeist and (iii) whether Megrahi’s representation at the trial and the appeal was adequate, I will continue to maintain that a shameful miscarriage of justice has been perpetrated and that the Scottish criminal justice system has been gravely sullied.

Footnotes

1. Al Megrahi v H M Advocate 2002 SCCR 509, available at www.scotcourts.gov.uk/index1.asp

2. The High Court (Proceedings in the Netherlands) (United Nations) Order 1998, SI 1998 No 2251, art 14(1), (2) available at www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1998/19982251.htm

3. "Proper regard" is an expression used frequently in the written grounds of appeal.

4. For examples of grounds of appeal being rejected on this basis, see Opinion of the Court, paras 76, 80, 84, 118, 129,262, 274, 288, 327, 351.

5. See Opinion of the Court, paras 20-27.

Delaying tactics, errors and malpractices

[On this date in 2009, the International Progress Organization  issued a press release about a forthcoming article by Professor Hans Köchler, one of the United Nations observers at the Lockerbie trial. It reads as follows:]

"The Lockerbie Trial and the Rule of Law"

Criminal Justice in the Framework of International Power Politics

In an article for the forthcoming issue of the National Law School of India Review (NLSIR), the international observer appointed by the United Nations at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands, Dr Hans Köchler, has summarized his evaluation of the handling of the Lockerbie case by the Scottish and British authorities.

In the article, written upon invitation by the Student Advocate Committee of the National Law School of India (Bangalore), Köchler deals with the delaying tactics and the apparent strategy of the political establishment and judicial authorities to cover up the errors and malpractices that have led to a situation in which, ten years after the beginning of the trial and seven years after the end of the first appeal proceedings, still no plausible explanation is (officially) available for the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

The article concludes with a quote from Köchler's keynote speech at the Law Awards of Scotland 2008, which highlights the dilemma of the new appeal proceedings that are eventually to begin in April 2009:

Whether those in public office like it or not, the Lockerbie trial has become a test case for the criminal justice system of Scotland. At the same time, it has become an exemplary case on a global scale - its handling will demonstrate whether a domestic system of criminal justice can resist the dictates of international power politics or simply becomes dysfunctional as soon as "supreme state interests" interfere with the imperatives of justice.

[RB: The full text of Professor Köchler’s important article can be read here.]

Where, oh where, is the evidence that Gaddafi ordered Lockerbie?

[The following are questions and answers as recorded in House of Commons Hansard for this date in 2012:]

Mr [Denis] MacShane: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps he is taking to ensure that the Lord Advocate's letter to the Libyan Government on Lockerbie is acted upon. [98285]

Alistair Burt [Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs]: Our ambassador in Libya has encouraged the Libyan authorities to respond to the Lord Advocate's letter requesting Libyan co-operation with the Lockerbie investigation under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the UK and Libya when he handed the letter over to the Libyan Foreign Minister on 21 February. The Government will continue to press the Libyan Transitional Government for a positive and timely response.

Mr MacShane: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will ask the Libyan Government to publish all documents, letters, records of meetings and other material relating to the Lockerbie bombing. [98286]

Alistair Burt: The Government will continue to urge the Libyan Transitional Government to co-operate with the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary's open investigation into the Lockerbie bombing, including allowing access to information and individuals relevant to their investigation.

[RB: Since the statement in February 2011 by former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil that Gaddafi personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing, increasingly desperate calls have been made for the Libyan authorities to supply the documentary or other evidence demonstrating this. No evidence has been forthcoming.]

Libya's acceptance of responsibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blair and Gaddafi

[The Daily Mail is currently publishing extracts from Blair Inc: The Man Behind The Mask by Francis Beckett, David Hencke and Nick Kochan. Here is part of yesterday’s instalment:]

The confusion Blair creates with his business methods is typified by his contacts with the Libyan dictator, Colonel Gaddafi — as Tim Collins, billionaire founder of a Wall Street investment company and now an ex-friend of the former Prime Minister, discovered to his disgust and dismay.

In April 2009, two years after leaving office, Blair was holding secret talks with Gaddafi about the possible release from prison in the United Kingdom of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

Libya was threatening to cut all business links if Megrahi stayed in a British jail.

Blair, who flew to Libya at Gaddafi’s expense — and in Gaddafi’s private jet — invited Collins along.

Collins thought he was going in his capacity as a trustee of Blair’s Faith Foundation to promote a campaign for anti-mosquito nets for children in Africa.

When he got there, he found Gaddafi eager to discuss investment to build beach resorts on the Libyan coast.

Mosquito nets were barely mentioned. (...)

Whatever the truth, Collins cringed at Blair’s deferential attitude towards the dictator.

He himself thought Gaddafi quite mad and refused to do business with him.

Blair, however, seems to have had no qualms about an ever closer association with Gaddafi.

In an interview in 2010, a Gaddafi associate acknowledged that the dictator ‘talks regularly to Blair as a friend’ and ‘consults him on many issues.’

Papers found in Tripoli after Gaddafi’s overthrow in 2011 show that Blair held at least six private meetings with him in the three years after he left No 10 Downing Street.

Blair’s involvement with Libya goes back to his days as Prime Minister, when he spotted the considerable commercial benefits to be gained from access to Libya’s colossal reserves of oil and gas, as well as huge opportunities for foreign firms to renew its ancient infrastructure.

In seeking to take advantage of this, he was ably assisted by Sir Mark Allen, a former British spy who spent much of his operational career in the Middle East. He was head of MI6’s counter-terrorism unit, which is alleged to have colluded in the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ to torture terror suspects in Libya.

In 2004 his bid to become head of MI6 failed and he retired from public service.

But Prime Minister Blair cleared him to take work immediately as a special adviser for the oil giant BP, despite rules that would normally have prevented a former civil servant from taking money from a large corporation so soon after retirement.

As Blair’s premiership was coming to an end in 2007, Allen used his contacts in both the UK and Libya to resolve issues surrounding the release of Lockerbie bomber al-Megrahi.

This in turn enabled a deal in which BP announced it would return to operations in Libya after a 30-year absence.

Libya under Gaddafi turned out to be a natural place for Blair to exercise his entrepreneurial talent.

On behalf of British companies, he courted the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) and the National Oil Corporation (NOC).

Both the LIA and the NOC were massive and corrupt institutions with fabulous wealth. Regime figures describe Blair lobbying extensively for clients, and in return he intervened personally to aid the Gaddafi clan on several occasions.

He tried to persuade Oxford University to give a place to Saif, Gaddafi’s son, and is thought to have been instrumental in the eventual decision of the LSE to admit him as a PhD student.

His relationship with Gaddafi continued right up to the dictator’s fall.

During the Libyan Revolution, Blair telephoned Gaddafi twice on February 27, 2011, reportedly to ask him to stop the violent crackdown on his opponents.

Gaddafi might reasonably have expected a little help at the time of his greatest need, but that was the last time the two spoke, and a few weeks later Gaddafi was captured and slaughtered.

Perhaps Blair shed a tear for his old chum. Then again, perhaps he didn’t.

Libya, UTA 772 and Pan Am 103

[On this date in 1999 a French court convicted in absentia six Libyans, including Abdullah al-Senussi, for the bombing of UTA flight 772 over Niger and the murder of the 170 passengers and crew. A BBC News report contains the following:]

Colonel Gaddafi's brother-in-law and five other Libyans have been found guilty of bombing a French airliner.

They were sentenced to life in prison by a special court in Paris. However, they were tried in absentia and will be allowed another hearing if they are ever taken into French custody.

The aircraft, a DC-10 operated by the French airline UTA, crashed in Niger in September 1989, killing all 170 people on board. Debris was scattered over hundreds of kilometres in the Sahara desert.

Libya helped France during part of the investigation but did not offer full co-operation and refused to hand over the suspects. (...)

Prosecutors said a package containing a bomb had been planted on a young Congolese with links to Libyan agents in the Congolese capital Brazzaville, from where the UTA flight to Paris had set off.

The prosecution said the six had been working for the Libyan secret service, which is also accused of bombing Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. (...)

Correspondents have highlighted differences between France's handling of the case and the way the UK and US Governments have sought the extradition of those accused of the Lockerbie bombing.

Evidence against the UTA suspects is said to be much stronger than that against the two Lockerbie suspects.

Libya has been under UN sanctions since 1992 in connection with the UTA and Pan Am bombs.

[RB: As with Pan Am 103, Libya eventually paid compensation to the families of those who died on UTA 772. The most detailed account of the UTA 772 bombing and its relationship to Lockerbie is to be found here on The Masonic Verses website.]

Lockerbie: the CIA drug-running scenario

[On this date in 2011, Susan Lindauer’s article Lockerbie Diary: Gadhaffi, Fall Guy for CIA Drug Running was published on the Scoop website. The following are excerpts:]

From May 1995 until March 2003, I performed as a back channel to Tripoli and Baghdad, supervised by my CIA handler, Dr Richard Fuisz, who claimed from day one to know the origins of the Lockerbie conspiracy and the identity of the terrorists. http://issuepedia.org/1998-12-04_Susan_Lindauer_Deposition He swore that no Libyan participated in the attack.

Armed with that assurance, our team started talks with Libya's diplomats for the Lockerbie Trial, and I attended over 150 meetings at the Libyan Embassy in New York. After the hand over of Libya's two accused men, our team engaged in a concerted fight to gain permission for Dr. Fuisz to give a deposition about his primary knowledge of the conspiracy, during the Lockerbie Trial In a surprise twist, the US Federal Judge in Alexandria, Virginia imposed a double seal on a crucial portion of Dr Fuisz's deposition. The double seal can only be opened by a Scottish judge. In my opinion, that should be a priority, as testimony hidden by the double seal maps out the whole Lockerbie conspiracy. Most significantly, it identifies 11 terrorists involved in the attack. Dr Fuisz's testimony could put the whole matter to rest forever.

There's good reason for my confidence. Much to my surprise, during the Lockerbie talks, Dr Fuisz's allegations of CIA opium running in Lebanon received unusual corroboration. One day, as I left the office of Senator Carol Moseley-Braun on my lunch break, an older spook caught up with me in front of the US Supreme Court. From out of nowhere, he stepped in my path and invited me to lunch. With extraordinary candor, he debriefed me as to what motivated the CIA's actions. I remember it as one battle-hardened old spook sharing the perils of fieldwork with a gung ho young Asset, anxious to get started on great adventures.

It was a morality tale for sure. According to him, the CIA infiltrated opium and heroin trafficking in Lebanon as part of a crisis operation to rescue AP reporter Terry Anderson and 11 other American and British hostages in Beirut, including CNN bureau chief Jeremy Levin and Anglican envoy Terry Waite. The hostage crisis was a legitimate CIA concern. The CIA Station Chief of Beirut, William Buckley, was also kidnapped by Islamic Jihad and brutally tortured to death, his body dumped in the street in front of CIA headquarters. The rescue was protracted and complicated by Lebanon's Civil War—ultimately, Terry Anderson's captivity lasted seven years. Many of the hostages suffered beatings, solitary confinement chained to the floor, and mock executions.

The older spook who refused to identify himself swore that the CIA considered it urgently necessary to try every possibility for recovering the hostages. The concept of infiltration into criminal networks cuts to the murky nature of intelligence itself. Drug enforcement frequently rely on the same strategies. Where the CIA went far wrong was in pocketing some of those heroin profits for itself along the way. The dirty little secret is that the CIA continued to take a percentage cut of opium and heroin production out of Lebanon well into the 1990s.

As for the hostage rescue itself, considering the operation took years to accomplish, it's always been whispered that a corrupted CIA officer enjoying those opium profits might have swallowed reports on the hostages' locations, or otherwise diverted his team in order to protect his narcotics income.

That appears to have become a serious fear at the time, among other US officers jointly involved in the rescue.

In December 1988, infuriated Defense Intelligence agents issued a formal protest, exposing CIA complicity in Middle East heroin trafficking. When teams from both agencies got summoned back to Washington to attend an internal hearing, they boarded Pan Am 103. A wing of militant Hezbollah led by Ahmed Jibril, his nephew Abu Elias, Abu Talb and Abu Nidal took out both teams in order to protect their lucrative cartel.

Classified Defense Intelligence records show that Jibril and Talb had been toying with a conspiracy to bomb a US airplane during the 1988 Christmas holidays anyway. They planned to bomb a US airliner in revenge for the USS Vincennes, which shot down an Iranian commercial airliner loaded with Hajiis returning from Mecca in July, 1988. However the Defense Intelligence threat to expose their heroin network put the bombing plan into action. Islamic Jihad's ability to discover actionable intelligence on the flight schedules would definitely confirm that somebody at CIA was operating as a double agent, keeping Islamic Jihad a step ahead of the rescue efforts.

That's the dirty truth about Lockerbie. It ain't nothing like you've been told. (...)

But the bottom line is that Libya had nothing to do with the bombing of Pan Am 103, which exploded over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland. We should care about Lockerbie because of the serious problem that it exposed. Opium trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley provides a major source for global heroin production. In turn, the global pipeline of narco-dollars keep militant operations alive world-wide from the Middle East to Indonesia, Colombia, Burma and the Far East.