The prisoner transfer débâcle

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in The Guardian on this date in 2007:]

Scotland's justice secretary today labelled as "ludicrous" Westminster's claim that a prisoner exchange agreement with Libya did not cover the Lockerbie bomber.

Kenny MacAskill poured scorn on Downing Street's insistence that a memorandum of understanding signed last week during a trip by Tony Blair to Libya did not apply to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, has protested to Tony Blair over the agreement, which he suggested could lead to the Lockerbie bomber being transferred from Scotland to his homeland.

The SNP leader made an emergency statement in the Holyrood parliament complaining that "at no stage" had he been made aware of a British-Libyan agreement on extradition and prisoner release before it was signed.

The agreement has sparked the first major row between the government and the minority SNP administration in Holyrood.

Mr MacAskill told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland that Westminster's handling of the affair was "at minimum, discourteous to the first minister and the Scottish parliament".

Mr MacAskill continued: "There's no mention of al-Megrahi [in the memorandum] but we have many people in our prisons ... but we have only one Libyan national in our prisons.

"So when we're talking about the transfer of Libyan prisoners they are not secreted in Barlinnie, Saughton, Perth or anywhere else.

"We have only one Libyan national in custody and when we talk about the transfer of prisoners, frankly it is ludicrous to suggest that we are talking in a context other than this major atrocity that was perpetrated on Scottish soil and which was dealt with by a Scottish court and with a sentence provided by Scottish judges." (...)

No 10 denied Megrahi's case was covered by the document, saying: "There is a legal process currently under way in Scotland reviewing this case which is not expected to conclude until later this summer.

"Given that, it is totally wrong to suggest the we have reached any agreement with the Libyan government in this case.

"The memorandum of understanding agreed with the Libyan government last week does not cover this case."

But Mr MacAskill rejected any suggestion that the agreement would only apply to the transfer of al-Qaida suspects.

He said: "We haven't been given clarification [by Downing Street].

"All we've been told is that a memorandum of understanding has been signed.

"Mr al-Megrahi is not specifically excluded. It refers to the transfer of prisoners so this is London's interpretation of it.

"I doubt it very much if it's the interpretation being placed upon it by the government of Libya."

The row comes in the middle of an examination of Megrahi's case by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

The body will decide later this month whether to refer his conviction back to an appeal court.

Mr MacAskill said: "It [the memorandum] is undermining the fabric of the Scottish judicial system that has been independent long before the Scottish parliament was established.

David Mundell, the Tory MP whose Dumfriesshire constituency covers Lockerbie, said he was "appalled" by Mr Blair's handling of the matter.

"Not only has he ridden roughshod over Scotland's parliament and legal system, but his actions threaten to undermine a legal process which took years to put in place and was agreed with the United Nations and international community," he said.

[RB: Here is something previously written by me on this matter:]

It was on [29 May] 2007 that the “deal in the desert” was concluded between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi at a meeting in Sirte. This was embodied in a “memorandum of understanding” that provided, amongst other things, for a prisoner transfer agreement to be drawn up. In later years UK Government ministers, particularly Justice Secretary Jack Straw, sought to argue either (i) that the prisoner transfer element of the deal was not intended to apply to Abdelbaset Megrahi or (ii) that if it was intended to cover him, all parties appreciated that the decision on transfer would be one for the Scottish Government not the UK Government. Here is what I wrote about that on this blog:

According to Jack Straw "the Libyans understood that the discretion in respect of any PTA application rested with the Scottish Executive." This is not so. In meetings that I had with Libyan officials at the highest level shortly after the "deal in the desert" it was abundantly clear that the Libyans believed that the UK Government could order the transfer of Mr Megrahi and that they were prepared to do so. When I told them that the relevant powers rested with the Scottish -- not the UK -- Government, they simply did not believe me. When they eventually realised that I had been correct, their anger and disgust with the UK Government was palpable. As I have said elsewhere:

"The memorandum of understanding regarding prisoner transfer that Tony Blair entered into in the course of the "deal in the desert" in May 2007, and which paved the way for the formal prisoner transfer agreement, was intended by both sides to lead to the rapid return of Mr Megrahi to his homeland. This was the clear understanding of Libyan officials involved in the negotiations and to whom I have spoken.

"It was only after the memorandum of understanding was concluded that [it belatedly sunk in] that the decision on repatriation of this particular prisoner was a matter not for Westminster and Whitehall but for the devolved Scottish Government in Edinburgh, and that government had just come into the hands of the Scottish National Party and so could no longer be expected supinely to follow the UK Labour Government's wishes. That was when the understanding between the UK Government and the Libyan Government started to unravel, to the considerable annoyance and distress of the Libyans, who had been led to believe that repatriation under the PTA was only months away.

“Among the Libyan officials with whom I discussed this matter at the time were Abdulati al-Obeidi, Moussa Koussa and Abdel Rahman Shalgam.”

UK Government prevarication over prisoner transfer

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2007:]

The UK Government has published details of a deal struck with Libya on prisoner exchange, which it insists does not cover the Lockerbie bomber's case.

Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond had voiced concern at Holyrood that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi could be transferred back to a jail in Libya.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said no deal had been signed over the future of al-Megrahi. (...)

The memorandum of understanding with Libya was signed last week by Mr Blair during a trip to the country. It was created on 29 May.

It states that the two sides will shortly "commence negotiations" on prisoner transfer, extradition and mutual assistance in criminal law, with a final deal signed within 12 months.

It will be based on a "model agreement" that, according to the document, has already been hammered out.

Mr Salmond had demanded clarification from the UK Government about al-Megrahi's case and made an emergency statement at Holyrood on Thursday.

He said that "at no stage" was the Scottish government made aware of the memorandum, despite the deal being struck on 29 May.

Addressing MSPs, he said: "I have today written to the prime minister expressing my concern that it was felt appropriate for the UK government to sign such a memorandum on matters clearly devolved to Scotland, without any opportunity for this government and indeed this parliament to contribute."

The first minister reminded politicians that al-Megrahi's case was being reviewed by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which could send his case back to appeal judges in Edinburgh. (...)

Scotland's top law officer, the Lord Advocate Eilish Angiolini, supported the decision to write to Mr Blair, Mr Salmond said.

He added that while the Scottish Executive supported the UK Government's desire for better relations with Libya, the lack of consultation with Holyrood over the memorandum was "clearly unacceptable".

"This government is determined that decisions on any individual case will continue to be made following the due process of Scots law," the first minister said.

A Downing Street statement said: "There is a legal process currently under way in Scotland reviewing this case which is not expected to conclude until later this summer.

"Given that, it is totally wrong to suggest the we have reached any agreement with the Libyan Government in this case.

"The memorandum of understanding agreed with the Libyan Government last week does not cover this case."

A spokesman for the prime minister said a deal covering Libyan prisoner exchange was reached between Mr Blair and the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.

When asked if after the legal review al-Megrahi could be returned to serve his sentence in Libya, the spokesman would not be drawn.

Opposition politicians in Scotland condemned the lack of consultation with the Scottish government.

Labour leader Jack McConnell said: "As former first minister I would have expected and demanded no less than prior consultation on such a memorandum.

"Scottish ministers, as far as I understand the letter of the law, have an absolute veto over prison transfers. I want to know if this memorandum contradicts that in any way." (...)

Mr Salmond told him he became aware of the memorandum on Friday, discussed it at the Scottish Cabinet meeting on Tuesday and then consulted the lord advocate on Wednesday.

Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie said: "Tony Blair has quite simply ridden roughshod over devolution and treated with contempt Scotland's distinct and independent legal system."

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said: "The government's ineptitude in handling this matter has given Mr Salmond precisely what he wanted.

"Westminster and the Labour government have given the impression of disdain for the Scottish authorities.

"The issue is not large in itself but it has played right in Mr Salmond's hands."

Former Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who has believed throughout in al-Megrahi's innocence, said: "The prime minister may think he can draw a line under all this.

"Surprisingly I am sympathetic to Mr Salmond. The only way that Megrahi can prove his innocence is through the Scottish legal system."

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing and who speaks for other British victims, said Scotland had been insulted by the British-Libyan agreement.

Referring to the document, he said: "Incredibly it seems that we are being asked to believe that this concerns other Libyan nationals, but not Megrahi.

"No mention of any discussion was given to us, the Lockerbie relatives.

"Mr Salmond should indeed remain indignant: Scotland has been insulted."

US lobbied to have Megrahi imprisoned in Libya

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2011.

WikiLeaks Megrahi cables in The Scotsman

[The Scotsman newspaper today runs a series of stories based on WikiLeaks cables covering US anticipation of and reaction to the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi in August 2009. The principal report, headlined Wikileaks: Inside story of Megrahi's return home, contains the following:]

Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi's motive for giving a hero's welcome to freed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is revealed today in secret US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and seen by The Scotsman.

The cables reveal that the regime's handling of the homecoming was heavily influenced by Col Gaddafi's simmering resentment towards the West over the case of six Bulgarian nurses freed from a Libyan jail in 2007.

The nurses had been jailed for life for allegedly infecting 400 Libyan children with the HIV virus. European Union diplomats negotiated their release - but then reneged on a deal that the nurses should serve the rest of their sentences in jail in Bulgaria.

Col Gaddafi's lingering anger at this diplomatic "insult" is revealed in a cable, written by a diplomat, describing a meeting in Tripoli between the colonel and US senator John McCain, shortly before Megrahi's release. The Libyan leader refused to give any guarantees about the tenor of Megrahi's homecoming, the cable reports, despite Mr McCain's warning that a hero's welcome could severely damage Libya's new friendship with the United States.

Col Gaddafi cited the celebrations that met the nurses in Bulgaria after their release. (...)

The US government has criticised The Scotsman for its tie-up with WikiLeaks, saying: "Any unauthorised disclosure of classified material is regrettable as it has the potential to harm individuals as well as efforts to advance foreign policy goals."

But the cables provide valuable new insights into one of the most iconic moments in recent Scottish history. They reveal:

* The United States tried to add conditions to the Scottish terms of Megrahi's release, demanding he be imprisoned for the rest of his life in Libya following his compassionate release.

* Megrahi's homecoming and how to handle it became a tussle within the Libyan regime, between reformers who favoured friendlier ties with the West and hardliners who saw such moves as a weakening of Libya's strongman status.

* Western diplomats who urged a low-key return for Megrahi believed they had an ally in Moussa Koussa, the Libyan foreign minister who subsequently defected to the West shortly after Nato sided by the rebels in the Libyan uprising this spring.

* The triumphant return of Megrahi to Libya was in fact a much lower-key welcome than some hardliners planned, with a crowd of many thousands scaled down to a few hundred at the last minute.

[Further related reports in the same newspaper can be accessed here, as can the cables themselves, including one headed Demarche delivered, in which US diplomats in Tripoli are to be found urging Moussa Koussa to secure that Megrahi is imprisoned in Libya, notwithstanding the fact that his return was under compassionate release, not prisoner transfer. Moussa is reported to have "raised his eyebrows" at this point.] 

New claim overshadows Lockerbie trial

[What follows is the text of a Reuters news agency report that appeared on the South African IOL website on this date in 2000:]

Defence lawyers at the Lockerbie trial sniped at prosecution forensic witnesses on Monday in a bid to sow doubt over exactly how the Pan Am jumbo jet was blasted out of the air over Scotland in 1988.

But a US television report that the attack was masterminded by Iran, not Libya, overshadowed the highly technical in-court wrangling over explosives, baggage containers, suitcases and scraps of clothes that fell from the sky amid thousands of pieces of flaming debris.

CBS television reported on Sunday that a senior Iranian intelligence service defector, now being debriefed in Turkey by the CIA, had said he had documents to prove Iran trained a group of Libyans to stage the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Iran was initially blamed for the attack, which killed all 259 people on board and 11 residents of the town of Lockerbie.

It had vowed the skies would "rain blood" after a US warship shot down an Iranian passenger plane six months earlier.

Forensic evidence later shifted the focus to Libya. In 1999, after tortuous UN-brokered negotiations, Libya agreed to turn over suspects Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, to be tried under Scottish law in a specially built court in the Netherlands.

Briton Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing, said if the material contained in the CBS report were true, the CIA should submit it to Scottish police.

"It's very important. As far as we're concerned, as seekers after truth and justice, we welcome all new material," he said.

"This man has admitted being the man who selected terrorist targets. If so, he is a suspect in this case. We need to see what they (the prosecution) are going to do about it."

The defence need only create "reasonable doubt" in the minds of the panel of three judges hearing the case to win an acquittal.

It suggested on Monday that two key fragments of wreckage had been contaminated with several kinds of explosive residue during British laboratory tests and not just by one kind from a bomb in the plane's hold.

Defence lawyer Richard Keen grilled former Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) forensic scientist John Douse on possible sources of contamination, including storage procedures and equipment used to prepare samples.

Clearly riled, Douse dismissed Keen's arguments.

"That is unscientific...I have conclusive proof which I believe can refute this," he said from beside the reconstructed remains of the shattered aircraft luggage container said to have been torn apart by the bomb.

But Douse lamented the fact that his agency had not been able to test fragments of an electronic timer and the tape recorder thought to have hidden the bomb, citing cost savings at the laboratory.

"I would have given my right arm to examine them all," he said.

In his testimony on Friday, Douse said that his tests on metal fragments from the luggage container found minute traces of PETN and RDX, components used to make the plastic explosive Semtex.

Former DERA forensic explosives director Thomas Hayes, testifying on Monday after Douse, told the court he was certain a bomb in a brown Samsonite case had destroyed the jet.

"It was established without any doubt that this item had been subjected to a large internal explosion and therefore had originally contained an explosive device," he said.

Hayes said the nature of the damage indicated the suitcase had been either on the floor of the baggage container or on top of another case, corroborating blast pattern evidence from previous witnesses.

His testimony could hamper defence hopes to show that the bomb exploded outside the container and therefore could not have been planted in a suitcase by the accused.

The prosecution says the defendants were Libyan intelligence agents who used cover as employees of Libyan Arab Airlines to put a bomb in an unaccompanied suitcase in Malta, which was eventually loaded onto the doomed flight in London.

The defence is expected to blame Palestinian extremists operating in Frankfurt. 

We will know one day why it happened

[What follows is the text of an article published in The Spectator on this date in 2011:]

‘We will know one day why it happened,’ said the mother of Helga Mosey. Helga was just 19 when she was killed in the bomb that destroyed PanAm flight 103 as it flew over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on the night of 21 December 1988. Mrs Mosey was being interviewed the day after, doorstepped at her home in the Midlands by several news teams anxious for a story, a reaction, a headline.

This week’s Archive on 4 was the first in a series, ‘A Life Less Ordinary’, which is not so much reliving history as looking back at the radio interviews, the TV reporting, the newspaper stories to examine the ways in which these very dramatic events impact on the people at their heart. How do they cope? How does it change them? And, especially, how damaging is the attention of the world’s media? It was almost like an episode of The Reunion in the way the producer, Geoff Bird, sought to analyse as well as recall the experience as he looked back through the tapes with the Mosey family and some of the journalists who had been the first on the scene in Lockerbie.

The Moseys discovered what had happened to their daughter as they were watching the BBC’s nine o’clock news, two hours after the bomb had exploded. At first they looked on as bystanders, aghast at the story of a plane falling out of the sky in a ball of fire and killing all those on board plus several people on the ground, murdered in their homes just a few days before Christmas. They had no inkling their daughter was on the plane, failing (or unwilling) to make the connection that earlier in the day John Mosey had driven Helga to Birmingham on the first leg of her journey to New York. Only at the end of the news report was the flight number flashed across the screen, PanAm 103. ‘That’s Helga’s plane,’ said her mother.

As Helga’s father relived the scene with such clarity and spareness of detail, it was one of those radio moments when everything beyond the radio set, the voice, the words being spoken, receded into the distance. His 15-year-old son screamed, ‘No, no, no, no.’ John Mosey was himself literally struck dumb by the shock, speechless. But the next night, by which time the reporters had tracked down Helga’s family in their home, he made a conscious decision to speak out. ‘This is where you prove whether what you’ve taught and preached and said “This is what we believe” is real or just a game.’ He wanted to test himself.

‘You’re a Christian minister,’ he was asked (Mosey is a Pentecostal priest). ‘Hasn’t this destroyed your faith?’ Just 24 hours after hearing the news, he replied, ‘So far the grace of God has been more real than we ever dared believe.’

You might have thought he would have resented being required to answer such a blunt and troubling question. But now he’s grateful. He believes it forced him to rationalise what he was feeling, and to find a form of words to express it. ‘The moment when you encapsulate what’s happened in words, it becomes more real.’

Mosey, along with Jim Swire, has been a key figure in the long battle by the families of those killed at Lockerbie to find out not just what happened, who planted the bomb, who was behind it, but also why the political establishment kept secret the fact that there had been very specific warnings about a bomb which would be hidden on a PanAm flight bound for New York from Frankfurt. Flight 103 was the only plane flying across the Atlantic not to be absolutely full in this week before Christmas. Helga was a student needing a cheap flight.

Since then, Mosey has given countless interviews, as many as 47 in a single day. Did this constant media attention begin to take over? Did he get a buzz out of it?

‘Yes,’ he admits. But having realised that he was becoming addicted to being on TV and radio and that his eagerness to be interviewed was unhealthy he still went on campaigning. ‘We’ve exploited the media shamelessly.’

It was a fascinating reversal of what I would have expected him to say. He felt that he could use the media to convey to the political world that the families of the victims were not going to go away. They wanted to know the truth. And with one or two exceptions (such as the reporter who picked up a seatbelt as a trophy to take back to the offices of his Scottish tabloid newspaper) most of the reporting was very sensitive, refusing to use photographs of the bodies scattered across the hillside.

Is Helga’s mother any closer to an answer to that question of why such a terrible thing had happened to her daughter? ‘The question is not why,’ she suggests, hesitating just slightly. ‘It’s what you do with it…How you react.’

“Tehran behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103”

[What follows is the text of a report that appeared on the CBS News website on this date in 2000:]

An Iranian defector who said he could prove Iran was responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing has been exposed by the CIA and FBI as an impostor, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

CBS News 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt said the allegations were not unexpected. "We expected the CIA and FBI to do this."

The man, who had given his name as Ahmad Behbahani and said he was a former Iranian intelligence officer, had told 60 Minutes associate producer Roya Hakakian that he had documents showing Tehran was behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

Two Libyans have been on trial for the bombing — which killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground — since May 3 at a special Scottish court in the Netherlands.

But following debriefing sessions in Turkey, where the man is in protective custody, the CIA and FBI have concluded the 32-year-old defector is not Behbahani, the Post quoted a senior US official as saying.

The man "lacks basic knowledge of Iran's intelligence apparatus" and "has been lying about lots of stuff," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

However, a British Iran expert said after the 60 Minutes broadcast but before the newspaper report that it was possible Iran rather than Libya planned the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, saying Behbahani had been involved in international terrorism.

The man's real identity had not been established, the newspaper said.

"He knows a few things, but nothing very much — stuff that could have possibly come from somebody else," the official was quoted as saying.

"But when it comes to serious stuff that he should know, he comes up empty. He still has not provided anything that has led CIA and FBI folks to believe his story."

The defector told producer Hakakian that he had documents to prove Iran trained a group of Libyans to carry out the Lockerbie bombing.

The United States had said that while it stood by Scottish prosecutors trying the two Libyans for the bombing, it would fully assess the defector's claims.

Tehran has dismissed the charges, with Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi saying that no one named Ahmad Behbahani had ever worked for the country's intelligence service.

On Friday, Iran's former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, slammed the Western media as a "mafia network" out to tarnish Iran's image with false claims that Tehran was behind the Lockerbie bombing.

Lord Avebury said in a telephone interview that a parliamentary report he wrote in 1996 named Behbahani as an Iranian official responsible for international terrorism.

"He was at that time an official in (Akbar Hashemi) Rafsanjani's office, when Rafsanjani was president, who was responsible for links with the Ministry of Intelligence in planning and carrying out (attacks)," he said.

Asked how he knew that, Avebury said: "The information came from Behbahani's brother, who left Iran and spilled the beans."

He said Iran had not actually denied employing Behbahani.

"I thought they'd been very careful in the phraseology of the denial. In fact he worked in Rafsanjani's office and not in the Ministry of Intelligence, so what they are saying is not technically a lie," he said.

Iran suggests Behbahani made false claims to gain asylum abroad. "Those Iranians who wish to be granted asylum in Western countries are usually trying to achieve their aims through libellous statements against the Islamic Republic of Iran," Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said last week.

Avebury said fear of Iranian retribution may well have motivated Behbehani to flee, but that his claims seemed valid and might affect the Lockerbie trial.

"What he is (reported as) saying now tallies with what we said in the report," he said. "I'm sure what he's saying can be corroborated and that the CIA will be checking what he is saying against their records.

"It would be very interesting to have the complete transcript. The obvious thing is for the Scottish police to go (to Turkey) and conduct their own inquiries."