'This is a sensible compromise solution, accept it'

[On this date in 1998 Dr Jim Swire and I had a meeting in Cairo with Dr Esmat Abdel-Meguid, the Secretary-General of the Arab League. What follows is a report on the meeting:]

The Scottish lawyer Robert Black said on the 16th of April in Cairo after the talks with Abdel Maguid, that his latest proposal to end a dispute between Libya, Britain and the United States over the trial of two Libyan suspects in a 1988 airliner bombing would be his last. Black gave no details on the modifications in the more recent proposal. But he said there was “fine-tuning” to make it more acceptable to the British and Americans.

“What we are hoping for is that continued pressure on these two governments will cause them to see the error of their ways,” Black said.

Robert Black told a news conference he was “51 percent sure” the Libyans would accept the modified proposal. He would not give details, but Black and Swire are suggesting the suspects be tried under Scottish law in a neutral venue by an international panel of judges, without a jury. But Robert Black, a legal expert advising the victims' families, said there was little hope the United States would accept the proposal, although international pressure might succeed in winning Britain's support. “One simply has to give up on the American government,” Black said. “They are unmovable.”

“It's now plain that the United States and the United Kingdom as far as I know are the only two nations in the civilised world which are not saying 'this is a sensible compromise solution, accept it',” Black said after meeting the head of the Cairo-based Arab League. “What I am hoping is that the United Kingdom can see the error of its ways if it is given an opportunity marginally to save face. They have to find a solution. If this proposal does not work, then I suspect that this may very well be the end of the line.

“I can't very well go on drafting scheme after scheme, that are accepted by one side but rejected outright by the other. All three are going to have to accept something with which they are not 100% happy in order for there to be a compromise,” he said. "If they are prepared to do that then there is a remote possibility of progress. But I wouldn't put it above saying there is a slight chance. But any chance is better than no chance."

Swire slammed the British government for not moving fast enough to end the crisis. “For six years, I have been waiting for the men charged with the brutal murder of my daughter to be put on trial but on March 20, the permanent representative of my country in the United Nations was busy telling the Security Council that the sanctions they imposed on Libya were not working.

“Why have you kept us waiting for six years when they are not working? They are demolishing the thing they invited us to depend on and if that doesn't make you angry, then it should.”

Jim Swire, who acted as representative for British victims of the bombing, said Abdel-Meguid would pass the new proposal to the Libyans.

[RB: Just over four months later the UK and US governments finally accepted the solution of a Scottish court sitting in a neutral country.]

UN sanctions against Libya

On this date in 1992 United Nations sanctions against came into effect against Libya for failing to hand over Megrahi and Fhimah for trial in the United Kingdom or the United States, as the Security Council had ordered in Resolution 731 (21 January 1992). The sanctions imposed pursuant to Resolution 748 (31 March 1992) required UN member states to 

(a) deny permission for any Libyan aircraft to take off from, land in or overfly their territory if it had taken off from Libyan territory, excluding cases of humanitarian need;

(b) prohibit the supply of aircraft or aircraft components or the provision or servicing of aircraft or aircraft components;

(c) prohibit the provision of weapons, ammunition or other military equipment to Libya and technical advice or training;

(d) withdraw officials present in Libya that advise the Libyan authorities on military matters;

(e) significantly reduce diplomatic and consular personnel in Libya;

(f) prevent the operation of all Libyan Airlines offices;

(g) deny entry or expel Libyan nationals who had been denied entry or expelled from other states for terrorist activities.

These sanctions were greatly extended by Security Council Resolution 883 (11 November 1993). The sanctions were suspended when the suspects arrived for trial in the Netherlands in April 1999 and were finally lifted in 2003 after the Libyan “acceptance of responsibility” letter and payment of compensation to the families of the victims.

Anniversary of US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi

It was on the night of 14 April 1986 that United States military aircraft took off from RAF Lakenheath and RAF Upper Heyford on a mission to bomb targets in Tripoli and Benghazi. Operation El Dorado Canyon was ordered by President Ronald Reagan in retaliation for the bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin on 5 April in which two US servicemen were killed and 79 injured. Those who accept that Libya was responsible for the destruction of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie twenty months later regard this US operation as supplying the motivation.

The Wikipedia account of the La Belle disco bombing can be read here. Among those who question whether Libya was responsible are former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky in his The Other Side of Deception (1994 -- the relevant passage can be read here) and William Blum in his Killing Hope (updated to 2008 -- the relevant chapter can be read here).

US hounds accusers over claims of Lockerbie crash cover-up

[This is the headline over an article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard that was published in issue 688 of the Electronic Telegraph on this date in 1997. As reproduced on the website DCDave.com it reads as follows:]

The US Justice Department appears to be waging a campaign of persecution against those who have challenged the official explanation of the Lockerbie disaster.

The FBI has used its immense power to sift through the background of whistle-blowers, investigators, and their employers, searching for vulnerabilities that could be exploited in a criminal prosecution.

The chief targets have been those who allege that the bombing of Pan Am 103, which took 270 lives on Dec 22, 1988, was an Iranian-Syrian plot that exploited a security breach in a bungled CIA operation. The US government says this is a conspiracy theory cooked up by the US Aviation Insurance Group (USAIG), the underwriters for Pan Am, to try to avoid liability for up to $500 million in damages for families of the victims. Both the US and British authorities insist that the bombing was the work of Libyan terrorists.

Insurance disputes of this kind are typically adjudicated in civil court. But the Justice Department began an extremely aggressive criminal investigation of Pan Am's lawyers and insurers. The investigation, begun in 1992, was unable to muster evidence of a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Lockerbie case. But after broadening the scope of its inquiry the FBI managed to sustain a case of fraud against the former chairman of USAIG, John Brennan. This involved insurance claims over a 1987 crash of a USAir commuter plane. Brennan was convicted in July 1996. He is expected to be sentenced later this month. USAIG has accused the government of engaging in a malicious vendetta.

The Justice Department was less successful in its efforts to destroy Juval Aviv, an expert on terrorism employed by Pan Am's insurers to investigate the bombing. He was acquitted on federal charges of fraud last December after an ordeal lasting more than four years. Aviv, head of a New York security firm, Interfor, was indicted in 1995 for supposedly defrauding a client, General Electric, in a minor security contract involving a fee of $20,683.

But General Electric had never issued a complaint. FBI agents nevertheless visited Aviv's clients demanding files. They were the same agents, Chris Murray and David Edward, who had conducted the Lockerbie investigation. "The whole thing was obviously trumped up in revenge for his role in the Pan Am 103 disaster case," said a juror afterwards.

Aviv has now filed a claim alleging malicious prosecution, violation of constitutional rights, and the launch of a campaign to discredit him "in retaliation for his report to Pan Am".

It was Aviv's report in 1989 that first sketched the outlines of a cover-up. He claimed that a rogue CIA unit had allowed a Syrian drug ring to smuggle heroin on Pan Am flights from Frankfurt to New York. He said this was to gain help in the release of US hostages in Lebanon. But the operation was penetrated by Iranian-backed terrorists who exploited the Pan Am channel to plant a bomb on flight 103.

"Aviv stirred up a lot of trouble, playing on the emotions of the families," said Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of counter-intelligence for the CIA. "He goes around saying that he used to be a member of Mossad, but the office of the Israeli prime minister has written a letter denying it. The man's a fraud."

But documents introduced at his trial paint a more complex picture. An internal FBI memo, marked secret, confirmed his "past association with the Mossad". Other documents corroborated his claim to have served as a security consultant to the FBI, Secret Service and other US agencies. Aviv believes that he was indicted in 1995 to destroy his credibility just as claims of a Lockerbie cover-up were gathering momentum. A film that supported his theories, The Maltese Double Cross, was about to be shown in Britain for the first time. It was never broadcast, but families of the victims had a private screening.

The US embassy in London, joined by the Crown Office, went on the offensive, calling him a "fabricator ... recently arrested in the US for defrauding an American company".

The same treatment was meted out to another source for the film, Lester Coleman, who had worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The embassy said he was "a fugitive from justice, wanted in the US for perjury related to the Lockerbie case and for passport fraud".

Coleman was indicted in 1993, four days before the British launch of his book, Trail of the Octopus - still unpublished in the US - confirming that the American government was indeed running "controlled" heroin deliveries from Lebanon on Pan Am flights out of Frankfurt.

He returned to the US from exile in Sweden last year to clear his name and now awaits trial in New York. The US government's actions clearly indicate that something is amiss in the Lockerbie case. Fabricators are usually ignored, so perhaps it is time to pay closer attention to the charges of Juval Aviv, Lester Coleman, and apostles of the "Syrian Connection".

"It is not us who did that"

[An article published yesterday on the Inquisitr website included a quotation about Lockerbie from Colonel Gaddafi that I was unfamiliar with. It comes from a November 2009 interview carried on the Turkish National Turk website. The exchange reads as follows:]

Q: I know that the Lockerbie case has come to a legal end, but there are people in the United States who would still say, in 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for its officials but it would be wonderful if it was a heartfelt expression of remorse and an apology for what happened. That might help thaw the ice.

A: It was always said that it is not us who did that and they don’t accept the fact that they have a responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. And all the nonaligned nations used to support the Libyan claim. But we go through the resolutions adopted by … more than 150 countries, both of the resolutions of the Arab League, all of the resolutions adopted by the African Union, all of the organizations … conflict resolutions.

But of course, Americans, Libyans, the whole world express sympathy or regret over such tragedies. No one would be happy over such tragedies, no one would welcome such a tragedy, indeed, of course. Do the American people feel happy, are the American people happy over the killing of the Libyan citizens in 1986? And is the world happy about the Gaza massacre? By the same token none of us are happy over the tragedy of Lockerbie. Up to now, if you visit the house that was bombed in the American raid, you will find a picture of my daughter, a picture of the daughter of Jim Swire, in a frame there, and everybody goes there. Our children are all victims. I mean, these pictures, just to say the fact that we are all fathers of victims.

Moussa Koussa allowed to leave UK

[What follows is excerpted from a report in The Guardian on this date in 2011:]

Families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing have accused the British government of "betrayal" after it allowed Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister, to leave the UK to attend an international conference.

Koussa, who defected to Britain at the end of last month, was en route to Doha in Qatar on Tuesday, where an international conference on the future of Libya is to be held with representatives from the Benghazi-based opposition.

He is expected to return to the UK after the conference, but is free to travel as he pleases.

Brian Flynn, the brother of JP Flynn, who died in the 1988 attack and now organises the Victims of Pan Am 103 Incorporated campaign group in New York, said the UK authorities had "crossed a line" by allowing Koussa to attend the conference and thereby suggest he is a peace negotiator rather than, as they believe, a key instigator of the bombing.

"I think the British are being played by him … he has convinced them he can be valuable in this process, but he is not the suave diplomat in the suit sitting on the sidelines, he is one of the key guys who mastermined [the bombing of] Pan Am flight 103," Flynn said.

"He is a stated enemy of the British government. Our feeling is that the British government gave a nod to Lockerbie by questioning him two days before this conference, but that feels disingenuous. The Scottish and American prosecutors on Lockerbie are being betrayed by the politicians and the diplomats. Cameron has been good on Libya, but this sounds an awful lot like Tony Blair is back in charge." (...)

It is understood Koussa spent a week being debriefed by MI6 at a safehouse before being allowed to go free. He was questioned by Dumfries and Galloway police about the 1988 bombing, in which 270 people died, though was he was not a suspect.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, had insisted that Koussa would not be given immunity from prosecution.

He was helped to defect by MI6 after leaving Tripoli for Tunisia on what was initially described as a private visit.

Jean Berkley, co-ordinator of the UK Families Flight 103 group, who lost her 29-year old son Alistair when the Pan Am flight was blown up in mid-air, said she was mystified by the decision to let Koussa travel.

"It is very unexpected," she said. "Is he the basis of a new Libyan opposition, or what? He doesn't seem a very suitable person. Our aim is always to get more of the truth and we want a full public inquiry. Koussa must have some interesting knowledge. It is hard to know what to make of it. We will wait and see and watch with interest." (...)

Koussa's links to the UK go back to the period when he was deputy foreign minister in the mid-1990s and was involved in talks that revealed the Gaddafi regime's past support for the IRA. He was head of Libya's foreign intelligence service in the 1990s – after the Lockerbie bombing. He was also involved in still inconclusive talks about the 1984 murder of Constable Fletcher.

In 2003 he played a pivotal role in talks about surrendering Libya's programme for weapons of mass destruction – the decision which paved the way for Gaddafi's temporary rehabilitation with the west. In 2009 he took part in negotiations over the controversial return home of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Elevation to peerage of Lord Advocate Colin Boyd

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in The Herald on this date in 2006:]

Colin Boyd, the lord advocate, was yesterday made a working peer in the House of Lords, fuelling the debate about the independence of his role as head of the prosecution service in Scotland.

Questions were also asked of his ability to carry out this new function while still retaining his other role as legal adviser within the Scottish Cabinet.

There was confusion over the status of Mr Boyd, with the Crown Office stating that he would become a Labour working peer, while Downing Street said that he would sit as a crossbencher.

Mr Boyd said: "It is a great honour, both personally and professionally, to be appointed to serve in the House of Lords. I look forward to playing an effective role in policy-making for the UK, especially in relation to Scottish affairs.

"In particular, I will be in a position to make a significant contribution to debate on reserved issues which affect Scotland. The ability to represent in the House views which are relevant to my duties as a Scottish law officer is welcome, and I will take all opportunities to make useful contribution to debate in this regard.

"I remain firmly committed to the full-time role of lord advocate, leading the Crown Office and procurator-fiscal service, and seeing through the programme of reform I initiated four years ago. I see the appointment to the House of Lords as a natural extension of my duties as lord advocate."

Nicola Sturgeon, SNP leader at Holyrood, said: "The role of lord advocate is already too political by being in Cabinet, I fear this may make it worse. The time has come for the lord advocate to become genuinely independent of politics and not a member of the Cabinet."

David Mundell, the Tories' shadow Scottish secretary, said: "This shows the complete contempt Labour has for the House of Lords and the institutions of democracy. Either Colin Boyd is a member of the government or he is a crossbencher - he can't be both."

[RB: It was Colin Boyd who as Lord Advocate, after consulting other members of the prosecution team, made to the Lockerbie trial court the false assertion that there was nothing in the CIA Giaka cables that could assist the defence in their cross-examination of the Libyan defector. This incident forms the basis of one of the allegations of criminality in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial that are currently under investigation by Police Scotland.]

Lockerbie: the investigation remains live

[This is the headline over the fifth and final instalment of Dr Morag Kerr’s series of articles on the Lockerbie case. It appears in the April edition of iScot magazine and reads in part:]

Not even those who believed Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty of the Lockerbie bombing ever imagined he acted alone.  This was always understood to have been an act of state-sponsored terrorism, and the official line was that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had ordered the attack in revenge for the US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi two years earlier in 1986.  Megrahi was merely the pawn who had been caught.  However, the acquittal of his co-accused Lamin Fhimah, who had originally been proposed as the man who put the bomb on the plane, left the identity of the other conspirators entirely up in the air.

Recognising this, the Lockerbie investigation remained live even after Megrahi’s conviction.  Initially it was largely a paper exercise, and the search for his supposed accomplices was seldom mentioned before August 2009, when he was released on compassionate grounds.  Instead the debate centred around whether Megrahi himself had been wrongly convicted, with the SCCRC report of 2007 enumerating no less than six grounds on which they believed a miscarriage of justice might have occurred.

Megrahi’s abandoning of the resulting appeal a few days before his release is mired in controversy.  On the face of it, the timing strongly implies some sort of quid pro quo.  His advocate Maggie Scott stated straight out that her client had been forced to give up the appeal as a condition of being allowed to return to Libya, but Kenny MacAskill, Justice Secretary at the time, has always denied putting pressure on Megrahi.

Following Megrahi’s return to Libya the Crown Office announced that it was pursuing fresh inquiries into the circumstances of the bombing, with a team of detectives assigned to the case and forensic evidence being reviewed.  Initially this was assumed to be a new, open-minded investigation prompted by the very real doubts highlighted by the SCCRC.  However, it soon became clear that it was anything but.  Despite Megrahi’s continuing protestations of innocence and the SCCRC’s findings remaining untested in court, the Crown Office decided to treat his withdrawal of appeal proceedings as a de facto admission of guilt.  There was to be no question of reconsidering the case against Megrahi.  The new investigation was focussed, exclusively, on identifying his presumed accomplices.

Initially the Gaddafi regime provided at least token co-operation, but little progress was made in the first two years.  In late 2011 the fall of Gaddafi  provided an entirely new playing field, with the Libyan rebels anxious to curry favour with the western powers, and in particular to lay the blame for every evil deed of the past forty years firmly at Gaddafi’s feet.  Nevertheless, this again amounted to very little.  The only relevant document found in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s overthrow was a letter from Megrahi to a Libyan official, in which he protested his innocence and asked for help to clear his name.  Several renegade Gaddafi-era officials anxious to reposition themselves in the new order advertised that they had evidence that Gaddafi had personally ordered the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, but this “evidence” turned out to be no more than a declaration that Megrahi wouldn’t have dared to do such a thing without an express order from Gaddafi, and pointing out the well-known fact that Gaddafi had paid for Megrahi’s legal representation and supported him while he was in prison.  The Crown Office issued periodic press releases emphasising their commitment to identifying the “others” with whom Megrahi had supposedly acted, but details of any actual progress were scanty to nonexistent.

Meanwhile those campaigning for Megrahi’s conviction to be reviewed were also active.  Members of the committee of Justice for Megrahi were concerned that not only were there serious grounds for believing the conviction to be a miscarriage of justice, but that the original inquiry and court proceedings might well have been tainted by misconduct.  After considerable discussion and soul-searching it was decided to lay these suspicions before the relevant authorities.

Formal allegations of criminality were drawn up against a number of individuals involved in both the 1988-92 police investigation and the 2000-01 court proceedings, eventually amounting to nine allegations in total supported by a 63-page dossier of evidence and legal argument.  Given that these allegations involved members of the Dumfries and Galloway police force and Crown Office personnel, it was difficult to know to whom the dossier should be submitted.  Accused bodies can’t themselves investigate the accusations against them – can they?  A letter was sent to Kenny MacAskill asking, in confidence, how Justice for Megrahi should proceed.

The reply was that the allegations should be submitted to the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary.  While JFM was unhappy with this instruction there was no option but to comply, and the dossier was sent to the then Chief Constable of the D&G, Patrick Shearer.  The reaction from the Crown Office was even more disconcerting.  Even before the detailed allegations had been submitted the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland branded them “deliberately false and malicious” in the pages of the Scotsman, and dismissed the Justice for Megrahi group as “conspiracy theorists”.

The initial 2013 investigation of the allegations was unimpressive. (...)

The establishment of Police Scotland, combined with some pointed complaints, heralded a transformation.  A team of detectives was assigned to investigate the allegations, codenamed “Operation Sandwood”.  These officers have been working diligently on the material submitted by JFM for over two years.  Although a report was originally expected by the summer of 2015, the need to follow up additional leads and the desire to do a thorough job caused this to be postponed, and submission is currently expected in May 2016.

The allegations cover three main headings.  First, that the original police and forensic investigation ignored or sidelined crucial evidence demonstrating that the bomb was already in the baggage container an hour before the feeder flight from Frankfurt landed at Heathrow.  Second, that while police and forensic investigators knew very well that the metallurgical analysis of the printed circuit board fragment PT/35b showed that it had never been part of one of the MST-13 timers supplied to the Libyan armed forces, this information was concealed from the defence and the court, even to the point of a witness giving misleading testimony in the witness box.  Third, that the handling of the witness Tony Gauci was improper even by the standards of 1991-92, with the police investigation focussed on acquiring statements that could be represented as identifying Megrahi as the man who bought the clothes packed in the bomb suitcase rather than investigating dispassionately whether this was actually likely to be the case.  A fourth ground concerns misleading and untrue information supplied to the court by a member of the prosecution team, concerning the credibility of the witness Abdul Majid Giaka.

Thus, for the past two years, two fundamentally conflicting Lockerbie inquiries have been ongoing within Police Scotland.  The Crown Office’s own investigation, predicated entirely on the assumption that the bomb was introduced into the airport baggage system on Malta, and Operation Sandwood, which is examining evidence showing that the crime happened at Heathrow airport.  Something has to give.

The Lord Advocate has made it entirely clear that he gives credence to one position and one position only, the Malta origin theory. (...)

Operation Sandwood is due to submit its report in a few weeks time.  The dispute now centres on who will consider that report and decide whether charges should be brought as a result of the investigation.  As Crown Office personnel are among those accused, Justice for Megrahi strongly believes that the Crown Office should stand aside in favour of an independent prosecutor appointed from another jurisdiction.  The Lord Advocate however insists that the report will be considered by the Crown Office, merely conceding that he will not personally become involved in the process.

The Lord Advocate has fatally compromised his own position.  He has repeatedly attacked Justice for Megrahi in the most intemperate manner, publicly denouncing the original allegations as “defamatory, deliberately false and malicious” before he had even read them.  How or why the organisation he heads should not be excluded from the process on the same grounds has not been explained.  At a press conference on 16th March 2016 Mr. Len Murray, one of Scotland's most distinguished court practitioners and committee member of Justice for Megrahi, denounced Mr. Mulholland’s behaviour as scandalous and declared that his position was now untenable.

Nevertheless, this is perhaps not the fundamental issue.  If Operation Sandwood recommends criminal proceedings should follow as a result of their investigations, the law should take its course.  However, such a recommendation is by no means certain.  If there is insufficient evidence of wrongdoing to warrant any prosecutions, should the matter end there?

The reputation of Scotland’s criminal justice system rests on how this matter is handled.  A scandal of monumental proportions is brewing.  If the Operation Sandwood report confirms that the original Lockerbie investigation was completely off the rails, that it was looking for the bomb in the wrong airport, that it accused Libya on the basis of a fragment of printed circuit board that was never part of a device supplied to that country, and that it cajoled and bribed a witness to identify a man he’d never seen before as the purchaser of the clothes packed in the bomb suitcase, this cannot and must not be buried in top secret archives to spare the blushes of the Crown Office.

The answer to the most fundamental question about the Lockerbie disaster lies within the report being prepared by the Operation Sandwood detectives.  Where did the bomb that blew apart Pan Am flight 103 nearly six miles above the town begin its journey?  The people of Scotland, and the relatives of the dead, have the right to know.

[RB: This blog’s coverage of the four previous articles by Dr Kerr can be found here.]

The Lockerbie ‘cover-up’

This is the headline over an article by Derek Lambie published in the Sunday Express on this date in 2006. It is in large part based on an interview with Dr David Fieldhouse. A fuller account of the shocking treatment to which Dr Fieldhouse was subjected by the Crown over his involvement in the aftermath of the Lockerbie disaster can be read here.

Officials 'did not cancel trips on Lockerbie flight'

[This is the headline over a report published on The Herald website on this date in 1989. It reads as follows:]

A State Department official denied today that US Government personnel, benefiting from a Government warning, cancelled flights on the Pan American airliner blown up over Lockerbie last December.

Mr Clayton McManaway, associate coordinator at the department's counter-terrorism office, said the conclusion had been backed up by an extensive analysis of Pan Am's reservation, cancellation and ''no-show'' records of Flight 103.

Allegations that officials with inside knowledge cancelled flights followed disclosure that the US embassy in Moscow posted a Federal Aviation Administration bulletin reporting that a bomb threat against US planes flying from Frankfurt to the United States had been received in Helsinki.

Mr McManaway told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing the posting was made in contravention of Government policy and that FAA bulletins were meant for US airlines so they could take counter-measures.

He said 31 US Government personnel were on board Flight 103 and were among the 259 killed when the Boeing 747 exploded in midair on December 21. Eleven people died on the ground in Lockerbie.

He said the flight, which had a capacity of 400, had never been sold out and that only 17 passengers were ''no-shows'' -- well within the percentage expected on such a flight.