[This is the headline over an article by John Forsyth in today's edition of The Scotsman. It focusses on Frank Duggan, President of the US relatives' organisation, Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 Inc. Mr Duggan is not himself a relative of anyone killed in the disaster. The article reads in part:]
Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 has tended to win arguments in the US. Mr Duggan is proud to record that it has probably been the most effective congressional lobbying group of the last 20 years.
He says: "There are about 500 members of the group. Most are family members, now into the third generation – grandchildren of people who were killed. Security service and investigators keep in touch. This is the most important case in their professional careers and they don't want to lose touch."
Mr Duggan's connection with the families started when he was appointed "Liaison to the Families" on the 1989 President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism. (...)
Mr Duggan was appointed president of the group last year: "I could not say no to them. I told them I didn't think there was much more to do. Legally and politically the battle was over. Libya was recognised and compensation had been paid. Then they released Al Megrahi and a 20-year-old story was back on the front pages again."
Today's memorial service [at Arlington National Cemetery] will be addressed by John Brennan, currently assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism in the Obama administration. (...)
The spectre at the ceremony, of course, will be Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, convicted of the murder of the passengers and crew on the flight and of 11 men, women and children killed on the ground in Dumfries-shire by the wreckage falling out of the sky.
Al Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds because of his terminal illness in August. He remains the focus of the outrage expressed by the Victims of Pan Am 103 group and of the present US administration that he was shown compassion when he offered none to his victims.
But Al Megrahi is equally the focus of outrage on the part of campaigners in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK that he was wrongfully convicted in the first place. Christine Grahame MSP says she has moved from an initial disinterested lawyer's perception that the prosecution had not proven its case against him to a conviction that he is in fact innocent. She says: "I don't have the support of the First Minister or the Justice Secretary in this but this miscarriage of justice is a serious matter for Scotland and the Scottish legal system."
She does have the support of Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed that night, as well as Professor Robert Black, whose early diplomacy prepared the way for the trial of two accused, Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, in a Scottish criminal trial in 2000 relocated to Holland. Fhimah was acquitted.
The two sides – Mr Duggan and the campaigners in Scotland – have become bitter adversaries.
It is not uncommon for opponents in a long-running and infinitely complex dispute to develop something of a relationship. A connection can begin to develop through their common history of opposition in radio or TV discussions. Not in this case. They have never actually met face to face and neither side can think of a single instance in which they thought. "actually, that's a good point" made by the other and amended their position accordingly.
Ms Grahame and Prof Black refuse to comment at all on Mr Duggan, preferring general statements of regret that the manifest anger in the US following the release of Al Megrahi is rooted in a false narrative of events.
Mr Duggan tends to be less circumspect. He calls them "deniers" and can't understand why they continue to pick at a case that had as good a trial as Scotland could muster and had the conviction upheld on appeal. He is unimpressed by the issues raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.
"Al Megrahi had the opportunity to clear up some of the questions but chose not to testify and then dropped his next appeal when he got sent home," he contends. (...)
"We still have friends in Congress who keep in touch with us. I was asked whether the families want a congressional committee to take hearings on the Scottish compassionate release. I would love to say this case is over, and it is over in court, but the bombing of Pan Am 103 will be fodder for lots of stories and theories. There doesn't seem much we can do about that, but I for one am through trying to reason with Prof Black or MSP Grahame," he says.
[For the record, Mr Duggan has made no attempt whatsoever to "reason" with me. What he does is to make bald, largely unsubstantiated, assertions and to flounce off in a fit of pique when those assertions are not immediately and uncritically accepted.
Many of today's Scottish and UK newspapers contain follow-up articles to the stories that broke yesterday about Abdelbaset Megrahi's bank account and his deteriorating health. The most interesting of these articles is to be found in The Herald. It ends with an abbreviated version of the address to be delivered later today at Arlington National Cemetery by Canon Pat Keegans, who was parish priest of Lockerbie at the time of the disaster. The full text of this address will be published on this blog after the ceremony has taken place.]
Monday, 21 December 2009
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Megrahi's health reported to be deteriorating
Abdel Basset al Megrahi's health is deteriorating, according to a Libyan hospital source. (...)
The Libyan was controversially released from jail in August on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.
Now Tripoli Medical Centre has released a statement saying Megrahi's condition has worsened and the cancer has spread throughout his body.
The 57-year-old arrived at the hospital on Saturday coughing and vomiting, the statement said.
"A scan has shown a worsening of the disease which has spread more than before," it added.
[From a report on the Sky News website. A similar report on the BBC News website can be read here. A longer and more detailed report appears on The Times website.]
The Libyan was controversially released from jail in August on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.
Now Tripoli Medical Centre has released a statement saying Megrahi's condition has worsened and the cancer has spread throughout his body.
The 57-year-old arrived at the hospital on Saturday coughing and vomiting, the statement said.
"A scan has shown a worsening of the disease which has spread more than before," it added.
[From a report on the Sky News website. A similar report on the BBC News website can be read here. A longer and more detailed report appears on The Times website.]
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi had secret £1.8m
[The following are excerpts from yet another breathless article in The Sunday Times.]
The Lockerbie bomber had £1.8m in a Swiss bank account when he was convicted eight years ago, it has been revealed.
The Crown Office, Scotland’s equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service, has confirmed it refused to grant bail to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi as recently as November last year because of concerns he might try to gain access to the money.
[Note by RB: At no time during the bail hearing, which I attended, did the Crown oppose interim liberation on the basis that Mr Megrahi had a bank account in Switzerland with large amounts of money in it. Nor was this one of the reasons for refusing bail given by the court in its judgment. Is the Crown Office being economical with the truth here, or did the ST journalist misunderstand what was being said to him?]
The existence of such a large sum in a personal account casts doubt on claims by the Libyan government that Megrahi was a low-ranking airline worker. (...)
[Note by RB: It has never been claimed by the Libyan government or by Mr Megrahi or his lawyers that he was "a low-ranking airline employee". He was Head of Security for Libyan Arab Airlines, a very high-level post. But that obviously does not fit the spurious case that The Sunday Times is trying to punt.]
Sources close to Megrahi’s defence team said they were aware of the bank account and had several explanations prepared ahead of his trial in the Netherlands in 2000.
They included the claim that he had been given the money by Libyan Arab Airlines, his employer, to buy aircraft parts abroad in breach of the western trade embargo in place against his country at the time of the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am plane over Scotland, in which 270 people died.
Another explanation would have been that Megrahi had been entrusted with the funds to finance an attempt to include Libya in the Paris to Dakar rally. The issue of the account was never raised by the prosecution because it came too late to be introduced as evidence at his trial. (...)
Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am 103, which represents American families, said: “This new evidence shows one more reason why Megrahi was not willing to testify.
“It seems to me that he was never the little family man who was unjustly incarcerated, as he has portrayed. He was a lifetime terrorist. The latest revelations about the money in Megrahi’s bank account are devastating to those who still say he was an innocent, low-level airline employee.”
However, Martin Cadman, whose son Bill, 32, died in the bombing, said: “I believe the case wasn’t proved against Megrahi and the easiest thing to do was to ship him back to Libya before we could hear his appeal. The money doesn’t mean he carried out the bombing.” (...)
[The following is an excerpt from the High Court's judgment in Mr Megrahi's bail application:
"[13] Another factor which can bear on release on bail is any risk of flight. The Advocate depute submitted that, although the Crown had no information to suggest that the applicant, if released on bail, had any intention of absconding, there were elements in his history, including his involvement with the Libyan intelligence services, which presented a possible risk of flight. He urged the court not to rely on the recent undertakings given by a senior official of the Libyan Diplomatic Corps to the effect that the applicant would not, if he were to attempt to abscond, be received into Libya.
"[14] The Court is not persuaded that there is a material risk of the applicant absconding, particularly if any liberation ad interim was made subject to the kind of conditions which the Crown would seek or which the applicant would accept. The applicant's historical connection with security services, which at some time may have given him access to false passports and other like facilities, does not, standing the Libyan Government's assurances, appear to the Court to be of significant current relevance."
The Journalists blog has some harsh things to say about Mark Macaskill, the journalist responsible for this and other Lockerbie stories in The Sunday Times.]
The Lockerbie bomber had £1.8m in a Swiss bank account when he was convicted eight years ago, it has been revealed.
The Crown Office, Scotland’s equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service, has confirmed it refused to grant bail to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi as recently as November last year because of concerns he might try to gain access to the money.
[Note by RB: At no time during the bail hearing, which I attended, did the Crown oppose interim liberation on the basis that Mr Megrahi had a bank account in Switzerland with large amounts of money in it. Nor was this one of the reasons for refusing bail given by the court in its judgment. Is the Crown Office being economical with the truth here, or did the ST journalist misunderstand what was being said to him?]
The existence of such a large sum in a personal account casts doubt on claims by the Libyan government that Megrahi was a low-ranking airline worker. (...)
[Note by RB: It has never been claimed by the Libyan government or by Mr Megrahi or his lawyers that he was "a low-ranking airline employee". He was Head of Security for Libyan Arab Airlines, a very high-level post. But that obviously does not fit the spurious case that The Sunday Times is trying to punt.]
Sources close to Megrahi’s defence team said they were aware of the bank account and had several explanations prepared ahead of his trial in the Netherlands in 2000.
They included the claim that he had been given the money by Libyan Arab Airlines, his employer, to buy aircraft parts abroad in breach of the western trade embargo in place against his country at the time of the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am plane over Scotland, in which 270 people died.
Another explanation would have been that Megrahi had been entrusted with the funds to finance an attempt to include Libya in the Paris to Dakar rally. The issue of the account was never raised by the prosecution because it came too late to be introduced as evidence at his trial. (...)
Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am 103, which represents American families, said: “This new evidence shows one more reason why Megrahi was not willing to testify.
“It seems to me that he was never the little family man who was unjustly incarcerated, as he has portrayed. He was a lifetime terrorist. The latest revelations about the money in Megrahi’s bank account are devastating to those who still say he was an innocent, low-level airline employee.”
However, Martin Cadman, whose son Bill, 32, died in the bombing, said: “I believe the case wasn’t proved against Megrahi and the easiest thing to do was to ship him back to Libya before we could hear his appeal. The money doesn’t mean he carried out the bombing.” (...)
[The following is an excerpt from the High Court's judgment in Mr Megrahi's bail application:
"[13] Another factor which can bear on release on bail is any risk of flight. The Advocate depute submitted that, although the Crown had no information to suggest that the applicant, if released on bail, had any intention of absconding, there were elements in his history, including his involvement with the Libyan intelligence services, which presented a possible risk of flight. He urged the court not to rely on the recent undertakings given by a senior official of the Libyan Diplomatic Corps to the effect that the applicant would not, if he were to attempt to abscond, be received into Libya.
"[14] The Court is not persuaded that there is a material risk of the applicant absconding, particularly if any liberation ad interim was made subject to the kind of conditions which the Crown would seek or which the applicant would accept. The applicant's historical connection with security services, which at some time may have given him access to false passports and other like facilities, does not, standing the Libyan Government's assurances, appear to the Court to be of significant current relevance."
The Journalists blog has some harsh things to say about Mark Macaskill, the journalist responsible for this and other Lockerbie stories in The Sunday Times.]
Friday, 18 December 2009
Has al-Megrahi paid his council tax?
[This is the headline over a column by Hugo Rifkind (son of Tory grandee and former Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm) in today's edition of The Times. The relevant section reads as follows:]
This is not a job for East Renfrewshire Council
There are some matters at which, I’m sure, East Renfrewshire Council must excel. Bins, maybe. Say Auld Dick from No 32 is being kept awake by the stench of the leftovers and egg boxes in the wheelie belonging to Mrs McGinty from No 34. Nae problem. In other areas, though, I suspect it might be out of its depth. A purely random example: international diplomacy.
How has this happened? How has the whereabouts of the man behind the greatest terrorist atrocity on British soil become the responsibility not of the British Government, nor even of the Scottish Executive, but of the same people who empty Mrs McGinty’s bins? I’m talking about Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, otherwise known as the Libyan bomber. The good officers of East Renfrewshire Council, apparently, have been going quite frantic this week. Apparently, the terms of al-Megrahi’s compassionate release dictate that he must check in with the council every two weeks, and this week he couldn’t be contacted. As if they didn’t have enough to worry about, what with the Christmas lights in Giffnock going on.
What, I’m wondering, would the councillors of East Renfrewshire have done to Megrahi, had he not finally got in touch? Torn up his library card? Cancelled his bus pass? Or would they have sent a crack team of council officers, all in fleeces and clip-on ties, all with clipboards, to make an amphibious landing on the Libyan coast? Would they have stormed Tripoli to bring him home, like a cross between Navy Seals and a novel by Evelyn Waugh? As I have never personally lived in East Renfrewshire this is mere conjecture, but my hunch would be probably not.
The case of al-Megrahi was always a farce. Wasn’t he supposed to be dead by now? Plainly, nobody has any control over his whereabouts other than that nice Gaddafi bloke. Instead of anybody admitting that, though, we’ve just got this weird pretence otherwise, with every responsible body fobbing him off downwards, like a hot and quite embarrassing potato. Pretty soon we’ll have East Renfrewshire Council doing the same; you just wait and see. “This,” the Prime Minister will tell the House of Commons, “is purely a matter for Auld Dick and Mrs McGinty and their Neighbourhood Watch.”
[Mr Rifkind makes a good point. Requiring East Renfrewshire Council officials to pretend to monitor and supervise Mr Megrahi was always a nonsense. Even if he were to breach the terms of the licence under which he was released, there is not the slightest chance of his being recalled to prison by the Scottish Government. After all, one of the principal reasons for releasing him was that there was nowhere within the Scottish prison system that was suitable for the care of a dying man in his last weeks and months.
However, it is ironical that this good point should be being made in The Times, which is the newspaper that (a) manufactured a spurious crisis by claiming, on the very flimsiest of evidence, that Mr Megrahi had disappeared and (b) concussed officials of the Council into attempting to contact him outside the normal schedule of fortnightly phone calls. It is to be hoped that the Council submits to The Times a bill for the cost of this entirely unnecessary phone call to Tripoli.]
This is not a job for East Renfrewshire Council
There are some matters at which, I’m sure, East Renfrewshire Council must excel. Bins, maybe. Say Auld Dick from No 32 is being kept awake by the stench of the leftovers and egg boxes in the wheelie belonging to Mrs McGinty from No 34. Nae problem. In other areas, though, I suspect it might be out of its depth. A purely random example: international diplomacy.
How has this happened? How has the whereabouts of the man behind the greatest terrorist atrocity on British soil become the responsibility not of the British Government, nor even of the Scottish Executive, but of the same people who empty Mrs McGinty’s bins? I’m talking about Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, otherwise known as the Libyan bomber. The good officers of East Renfrewshire Council, apparently, have been going quite frantic this week. Apparently, the terms of al-Megrahi’s compassionate release dictate that he must check in with the council every two weeks, and this week he couldn’t be contacted. As if they didn’t have enough to worry about, what with the Christmas lights in Giffnock going on.
What, I’m wondering, would the councillors of East Renfrewshire have done to Megrahi, had he not finally got in touch? Torn up his library card? Cancelled his bus pass? Or would they have sent a crack team of council officers, all in fleeces and clip-on ties, all with clipboards, to make an amphibious landing on the Libyan coast? Would they have stormed Tripoli to bring him home, like a cross between Navy Seals and a novel by Evelyn Waugh? As I have never personally lived in East Renfrewshire this is mere conjecture, but my hunch would be probably not.
The case of al-Megrahi was always a farce. Wasn’t he supposed to be dead by now? Plainly, nobody has any control over his whereabouts other than that nice Gaddafi bloke. Instead of anybody admitting that, though, we’ve just got this weird pretence otherwise, with every responsible body fobbing him off downwards, like a hot and quite embarrassing potato. Pretty soon we’ll have East Renfrewshire Council doing the same; you just wait and see. “This,” the Prime Minister will tell the House of Commons, “is purely a matter for Auld Dick and Mrs McGinty and their Neighbourhood Watch.”
[Mr Rifkind makes a good point. Requiring East Renfrewshire Council officials to pretend to monitor and supervise Mr Megrahi was always a nonsense. Even if he were to breach the terms of the licence under which he was released, there is not the slightest chance of his being recalled to prison by the Scottish Government. After all, one of the principal reasons for releasing him was that there was nowhere within the Scottish prison system that was suitable for the care of a dying man in his last weeks and months.
However, it is ironical that this good point should be being made in The Times, which is the newspaper that (a) manufactured a spurious crisis by claiming, on the very flimsiest of evidence, that Mr Megrahi had disappeared and (b) concussed officials of the Council into attempting to contact him outside the normal schedule of fortnightly phone calls. It is to be hoped that the Council submits to The Times a bill for the cost of this entirely unnecessary phone call to Tripoli.]
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Bernard Ingham on Lockerbie
[The following is an excerpt from a Yorkshire Post column written by Sir Bernard Ingham, Chief Press Secretary to Mrs Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister.]
[A]fter the IRA's present to me of a bomb-in-a book, and the Brighton atrocity, nothing quite shook me as did Lockerbie, the sad destination of Pan Am's Clipper Maid of the Seas and its 243 passengers and 16 crew en route from Heathrow to JFK.
The day began with the discovery of an IRA bomb gang in Clapham. It ended with us waiting for the Prime Minister's return from the Commons to No 10 to face, with her steely calm resolution, the possibility that the plane had been blown out of the skies. But by whom? After 24 hours, we still did not know or, precisely, the cause or the death toll.
That was not surprising, Bodies were scattered over the countryside. In Sherwood Crescent, where 11 residents were killed, we found a 150ft-long crater and houses vaporised where the wings had fallen, the black stink of kerosene polluting the air.
Three miles east of the town, we were taken to the nose cone of the plane in a field, surrounded by belongings and bodies, and the gruesome visible remains of two stewardesses frozen in death in the wreckage. It seemed an awful intrusion just to look, but there was no point in going unless we took in the full horror.
It was a very shaken and troubled party that returned to No 10, leaving Britain's smallest police force – the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary – leading Britain's largest criminal inquiry.
They eventually put Abdelbaset al-Megrahi behind bars, only for our contemptible politicians to release him after only eight years allegedly on compassionate grounds but really to oil the wheels of trade with Libya.
It is not that which unduly troubles me. I have grown used to Labour's perfidy. Incidentally, I do hope they don't make things worse by trying again to kid us it was all the governing Scottish Nationalists' doing.
Instead, I can never work out what manner of people can make a profession out of blasting jumbos out of the sky. What cause can possibly be enhanced by following up Lockerbie by flying jets into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon?
Who will benefit from the Taliban and al-Qaida murderously and repressively taking over Afghanistan as a base for more potential terrorist spectaculars?
These are the questions first posed by Lockerbie that every Islamic leader now has to answer. In our season of goodwill, their silence is deafening.
[The following comment comes from Peter Biddulph.]
I'm sending this to your email address, because I can never get the ID right on your blog site comment. (...)
Sir Bernard Ingram ends his piece about Islamists: "In this time of goodwill, their silence is deafening."
You and I - and countless others - recall another time of goodwill, Christmas 1988, when the Iron Lady sheltered behind the excuse of silence.
In the following extract, Lady Thatcher claimed to Tam Dalyell that she "knew nothing of Lockerbie". A fair interpretation of Sir Bernard Ingram's account of the event would be that in 1995 the Lady lied, and continues to lie, through her teeth.
[Extract from book Moving the World by Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph]
The Lady's not for Remembrance.
November 1993.
The Downing Street Years,[1] the official memoirs of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, became an immediate best seller around the globe. One day after the Lockerbie explosion, she walked upon the hillside where lay the crushed cockpit of Maid of the Seas. By the Church of Tundergarth Main she stood wrapped against the Scottish cold, around her across the hills and town streets and gardens two hundred and seventy bodies and bits of bodies.
Her memories regarding other happenings around the time of Lockerbie were interesting. While at the Rhodes European Council[2] of December 1988, she was invited by German Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl to meet him at his home in the charming village of Deidesheim near Ludwigshafen in the Rhineland-Palatinat. During a subsequent visit in the spring of 1989, she remembered that "lunch was potato soup, pigs stomach (which the German Chancellor clearly enjoyed), sausage, liver dumplings and sauerkraut." They drove together to the great cathedral at Speyer, in whose crypt were to be found the tombs of at least four holy roman emperors. She recalled that as the party entered the cathedral the organ struck up a Bach fugue.
In July 1989, on a visit to the USA, she remembered standing in the heat of Houston, Texas, and remained untroubled in the hot sun.[3] The Americans had fitted underground air conditioning and blew cool air from below so that the assembled dignitaries would feel comfortable.
Among the important international events of 1990 she mentioned the restoration of relationships with the Syrians. She related that immediately after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, she and President Bush assembled their potential allies. Turkey was one of the first on the list, and soon came President Assad's Syria, whom she saw as a "less savoury ally" against Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Indeed, three years earlier, just weeks after the April 1986 American bombing of Tripoli, the Syrian government had backed an attempt by a terrorist, Nezar Hindawi, to plant a bomb on an El Al aircraft at Heathrow. This too she recalls in some detail.[4]
Nine months after the night of the Lockerbie attack, she travelled to Siberian Russia on a stopover from Tokyo. Her plane refuelled at the frozen town of Bratsk. In her diary she recorded finding herself in a chilly barn-like building with local Communist Party leaders, engrossed in two hours of coffee and conversation regarding the intricacies of growing beetroot in a Russian climate. As she departed, firmly imprinted on her excellent memory was the request by Oleg, the KGB guard outside the door, who asked for a signed photograph. This she immediately provided, and then - equally quickly observed - a general request for more photographs.[5]
Yet that freezing Lockerbie hillside and town strewn with the remains of the dead; that first traumatic memorial service in the tiny church of Lockerbie; repeated pleadings by the bereaved for a personal hearing at Downing Street; revelations of international terrorism on a massive scale; German, Iranian, Syrian and Palestinian reputations questioned; the most severe peace-time attack on her nation since the Second World War[6] – all in some mysterious way were expunged from the Thatcher version of history. Among nine hundred and fourteen pages of tightly written text, hidden deep in the chronology, the reader would find but four simple words: ‘December 21 - Lockerbie bombing’.
Such an event demanded an entire chapter of its own. Yet in the main text not a word, not a whisper. Could it be that the Lady wished to erase the event from Britain's memory? That would have been a naive expectation, and Thatcher was not naive. We are left with but one conclusion. To use a word frequently employed by the Justices who would five years later come to a verdict on the Libyan suspects, we may draw an inference. The Lady had been got at. Her long-time friend America did not wish her memoirs to include the story of Lockerbie.
We on the British relatives' group sent her a respectful and polite letter, asking why her memoirs made no mention of our tragedy. She replied, regally: "We wish to add nothing to the text". This, from the comfort of her Chester Square home she presumed sufficient of a reply. By her silence in 1989 and since she persists in her insult to our dead. Her weakness in the face of American imperialism set in train a procedure that prevents - and will continue to prevent - an inquiry into the tragedy. Such would reveal too much of American covert activities and use of Pan Am - and now that Pan Am is no more, their successor carrier - for US intelligence work and "high risk" operations.
It would take another fifteen years before the truth would finally emerge and our suspicions be confirmed. In August 2009, the then retired Member of Parliament for Linlithgow and Father of the House Tam Dalyell revealed that in 2002, in a conversation with Thatcher, she claimed that she had not written about Lockerbie because she "knew nothing" of Lockerbie.
At the time of our 1989 series of meetings with Cecil Parkinson, there was only one British Cabinet colleague who could possibly have told Parkinson that he was forbidden to do something in his own department. That was Prime Minister Thatcher. Thus, when Parkinson came back to us to convey the cabinet refusal, it was clear who had imposed it.
"Fast forward thirteen years," said Dalyell. "I was the chairman of the all-party House of Commons group on Latin America. I had hosted Dr Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, between the time that he won the election and formally took control in Bogota. The Colombian ambassador, Victor Ricardo, invited me to dinner at his residence as Dr Uribe wanted to continue the conversations with me.
The South Americans are very polite. A woman, even a widow, never goes alone into a formal dinner. And so, to make up numbers, Ricardo invited me to accompany his neighbour Margaret Thatcher. I had not spoken to her, nor her to me, for seventeen years. I'd been expelled from the House of Commons for accusing her of a self-serving lie in relation to the Westland affair.
As we were sitting down to dinner, I tried to break the ice with a joke about a recent vandal attack on her statue in the Guildhall. I said I was sorry about the damage.
She replied pleasantly: 'Tam, I'm not sorry for myself, but I am sorry for the sculptor.' Raising the soup spoon I ventured: 'Margaret, tell me one thing - why in eight hundred pages...'
She purred with obvious pleasure. 'Have you read my autobiography?'
‘Yes, I have read it. Very carefully. Why in eight hundred pages did you not mention Lockerbie?'
She 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. You witnessed it first hand.'
She insisted: 'Yes, but I don't know about it and I don't write in my autobiography things I don't know about.'"
Tam's honest conclusion was that Thatcher had been told by Washington on no account to delve into the circumstances of Lockerbie. And she'd complied. In one unguarded moment at a Chester Square dinner table she had revealed an abandonment of responsibility for the care of her citizens. Friendly obedience to a US administration for a British Prime Minister transcended everything, even the truth.
[1] Published by Harper Collins, November 1993.
[2] Pp 747-748.
[3] P 764.
[4] P 510.
[5] September 1989, p 792.
[6] It would later emerge that the bombing of Pan Am 103 accounted for 40% of all casualties in 1988 resulting from terrorism throughout the entire world.
[A]fter the IRA's present to me of a bomb-in-a book, and the Brighton atrocity, nothing quite shook me as did Lockerbie, the sad destination of Pan Am's Clipper Maid of the Seas and its 243 passengers and 16 crew en route from Heathrow to JFK.
The day began with the discovery of an IRA bomb gang in Clapham. It ended with us waiting for the Prime Minister's return from the Commons to No 10 to face, with her steely calm resolution, the possibility that the plane had been blown out of the skies. But by whom? After 24 hours, we still did not know or, precisely, the cause or the death toll.
That was not surprising, Bodies were scattered over the countryside. In Sherwood Crescent, where 11 residents were killed, we found a 150ft-long crater and houses vaporised where the wings had fallen, the black stink of kerosene polluting the air.
Three miles east of the town, we were taken to the nose cone of the plane in a field, surrounded by belongings and bodies, and the gruesome visible remains of two stewardesses frozen in death in the wreckage. It seemed an awful intrusion just to look, but there was no point in going unless we took in the full horror.
It was a very shaken and troubled party that returned to No 10, leaving Britain's smallest police force – the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary – leading Britain's largest criminal inquiry.
They eventually put Abdelbaset al-Megrahi behind bars, only for our contemptible politicians to release him after only eight years allegedly on compassionate grounds but really to oil the wheels of trade with Libya.
It is not that which unduly troubles me. I have grown used to Labour's perfidy. Incidentally, I do hope they don't make things worse by trying again to kid us it was all the governing Scottish Nationalists' doing.
Instead, I can never work out what manner of people can make a profession out of blasting jumbos out of the sky. What cause can possibly be enhanced by following up Lockerbie by flying jets into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon?
Who will benefit from the Taliban and al-Qaida murderously and repressively taking over Afghanistan as a base for more potential terrorist spectaculars?
These are the questions first posed by Lockerbie that every Islamic leader now has to answer. In our season of goodwill, their silence is deafening.
[The following comment comes from Peter Biddulph.]
I'm sending this to your email address, because I can never get the ID right on your blog site comment. (...)
Sir Bernard Ingram ends his piece about Islamists: "In this time of goodwill, their silence is deafening."
You and I - and countless others - recall another time of goodwill, Christmas 1988, when the Iron Lady sheltered behind the excuse of silence.
In the following extract, Lady Thatcher claimed to Tam Dalyell that she "knew nothing of Lockerbie". A fair interpretation of Sir Bernard Ingram's account of the event would be that in 1995 the Lady lied, and continues to lie, through her teeth.
[Extract from book Moving the World by Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph]
The Lady's not for Remembrance.
November 1993.
The Downing Street Years,[1] the official memoirs of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, became an immediate best seller around the globe. One day after the Lockerbie explosion, she walked upon the hillside where lay the crushed cockpit of Maid of the Seas. By the Church of Tundergarth Main she stood wrapped against the Scottish cold, around her across the hills and town streets and gardens two hundred and seventy bodies and bits of bodies.
Her memories regarding other happenings around the time of Lockerbie were interesting. While at the Rhodes European Council[2] of December 1988, she was invited by German Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl to meet him at his home in the charming village of Deidesheim near Ludwigshafen in the Rhineland-Palatinat. During a subsequent visit in the spring of 1989, she remembered that "lunch was potato soup, pigs stomach (which the German Chancellor clearly enjoyed), sausage, liver dumplings and sauerkraut." They drove together to the great cathedral at Speyer, in whose crypt were to be found the tombs of at least four holy roman emperors. She recalled that as the party entered the cathedral the organ struck up a Bach fugue.
In July 1989, on a visit to the USA, she remembered standing in the heat of Houston, Texas, and remained untroubled in the hot sun.[3] The Americans had fitted underground air conditioning and blew cool air from below so that the assembled dignitaries would feel comfortable.
Among the important international events of 1990 she mentioned the restoration of relationships with the Syrians. She related that immediately after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, she and President Bush assembled their potential allies. Turkey was one of the first on the list, and soon came President Assad's Syria, whom she saw as a "less savoury ally" against Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Indeed, three years earlier, just weeks after the April 1986 American bombing of Tripoli, the Syrian government had backed an attempt by a terrorist, Nezar Hindawi, to plant a bomb on an El Al aircraft at Heathrow. This too she recalls in some detail.[4]
Nine months after the night of the Lockerbie attack, she travelled to Siberian Russia on a stopover from Tokyo. Her plane refuelled at the frozen town of Bratsk. In her diary she recorded finding herself in a chilly barn-like building with local Communist Party leaders, engrossed in two hours of coffee and conversation regarding the intricacies of growing beetroot in a Russian climate. As she departed, firmly imprinted on her excellent memory was the request by Oleg, the KGB guard outside the door, who asked for a signed photograph. This she immediately provided, and then - equally quickly observed - a general request for more photographs.[5]
Yet that freezing Lockerbie hillside and town strewn with the remains of the dead; that first traumatic memorial service in the tiny church of Lockerbie; repeated pleadings by the bereaved for a personal hearing at Downing Street; revelations of international terrorism on a massive scale; German, Iranian, Syrian and Palestinian reputations questioned; the most severe peace-time attack on her nation since the Second World War[6] – all in some mysterious way were expunged from the Thatcher version of history. Among nine hundred and fourteen pages of tightly written text, hidden deep in the chronology, the reader would find but four simple words: ‘December 21 - Lockerbie bombing’.
Such an event demanded an entire chapter of its own. Yet in the main text not a word, not a whisper. Could it be that the Lady wished to erase the event from Britain's memory? That would have been a naive expectation, and Thatcher was not naive. We are left with but one conclusion. To use a word frequently employed by the Justices who would five years later come to a verdict on the Libyan suspects, we may draw an inference. The Lady had been got at. Her long-time friend America did not wish her memoirs to include the story of Lockerbie.
We on the British relatives' group sent her a respectful and polite letter, asking why her memoirs made no mention of our tragedy. She replied, regally: "We wish to add nothing to the text". This, from the comfort of her Chester Square home she presumed sufficient of a reply. By her silence in 1989 and since she persists in her insult to our dead. Her weakness in the face of American imperialism set in train a procedure that prevents - and will continue to prevent - an inquiry into the tragedy. Such would reveal too much of American covert activities and use of Pan Am - and now that Pan Am is no more, their successor carrier - for US intelligence work and "high risk" operations.
It would take another fifteen years before the truth would finally emerge and our suspicions be confirmed. In August 2009, the then retired Member of Parliament for Linlithgow and Father of the House Tam Dalyell revealed that in 2002, in a conversation with Thatcher, she claimed that she had not written about Lockerbie because she "knew nothing" of Lockerbie.
At the time of our 1989 series of meetings with Cecil Parkinson, there was only one British Cabinet colleague who could possibly have told Parkinson that he was forbidden to do something in his own department. That was Prime Minister Thatcher. Thus, when Parkinson came back to us to convey the cabinet refusal, it was clear who had imposed it.
"Fast forward thirteen years," said Dalyell. "I was the chairman of the all-party House of Commons group on Latin America. I had hosted Dr Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, between the time that he won the election and formally took control in Bogota. The Colombian ambassador, Victor Ricardo, invited me to dinner at his residence as Dr Uribe wanted to continue the conversations with me.
The South Americans are very polite. A woman, even a widow, never goes alone into a formal dinner. And so, to make up numbers, Ricardo invited me to accompany his neighbour Margaret Thatcher. I had not spoken to her, nor her to me, for seventeen years. I'd been expelled from the House of Commons for accusing her of a self-serving lie in relation to the Westland affair.
As we were sitting down to dinner, I tried to break the ice with a joke about a recent vandal attack on her statue in the Guildhall. I said I was sorry about the damage.
She replied pleasantly: 'Tam, I'm not sorry for myself, but I am sorry for the sculptor.' Raising the soup spoon I ventured: 'Margaret, tell me one thing - why in eight hundred pages...'
She purred with obvious pleasure. 'Have you read my autobiography?'
‘Yes, I have read it. Very carefully. Why in eight hundred pages did you not mention Lockerbie?'
She 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. You witnessed it first hand.'
She insisted: 'Yes, but I don't know about it and I don't write in my autobiography things I don't know about.'"
Tam's honest conclusion was that Thatcher had been told by Washington on no account to delve into the circumstances of Lockerbie. And she'd complied. In one unguarded moment at a Chester Square dinner table she had revealed an abandonment of responsibility for the care of her citizens. Friendly obedience to a US administration for a British Prime Minister transcended everything, even the truth.
[1] Published by Harper Collins, November 1993.
[2] Pp 747-748.
[3] P 764.
[4] P 510.
[5] September 1989, p 792.
[6] It would later emerge that the bombing of Pan Am 103 accounted for 40% of all casualties in 1988 resulting from terrorism throughout the entire world.
Megrahi turns up after alarm over whereabouts
Concern over the whereabouts of the Lockerbie bomber has eased after East Renfrewshire council was able to contact Abdelbaset al-Megrahi this morning.
Journalists from the Times trying to reach Megrahi yesterday reported that the convicted bomber was neither at his home nor in the hospital where he has been receiving treatment. The newspaper reported that the bomber was not at home on Sunday or Monday and said his monitors in Scotland had been unable to reach him by telephone.
Jonathan Hinds from East Renfrewshire council has spoken to Megrahi every two weeks since his release in August, never missing a conversation. Prompted by the Times, Hinds tried to contact Megrahi yesterday – an unscheduled call – and was told he was too ill too speak.
East Renfrewshire's criminal justice team continued efforts to contact Megrahi this morning, as a spokesman said they were prepared to refer the case to the Scottish government if officials were unable to speak to the Libyan.
However at about 9.30am today the council was able to speak to Megrahi on the telephone.
"In the last five minutes the criminal justice team have spoken to Megrahi at home in Tripoli," a spokesman for East Renfrewshire council said.
He said officials had no concerns regarding Megrahi's whereabouts and would not be taking the matter further. (...)
Megrahi returned to Libya and has not been seen in public since September when he was photographed looking frail in a wheelchair and reportedly coughing badly.
[The above are excerpts from a report on the website of The Guardian.
The Times, which set this hare running with its alarmist twaddle, now has a report on its website in which it tries to save face. It can be read here.]
Journalists from the Times trying to reach Megrahi yesterday reported that the convicted bomber was neither at his home nor in the hospital where he has been receiving treatment. The newspaper reported that the bomber was not at home on Sunday or Monday and said his monitors in Scotland had been unable to reach him by telephone.
Jonathan Hinds from East Renfrewshire council has spoken to Megrahi every two weeks since his release in August, never missing a conversation. Prompted by the Times, Hinds tried to contact Megrahi yesterday – an unscheduled call – and was told he was too ill too speak.
East Renfrewshire's criminal justice team continued efforts to contact Megrahi this morning, as a spokesman said they were prepared to refer the case to the Scottish government if officials were unable to speak to the Libyan.
However at about 9.30am today the council was able to speak to Megrahi on the telephone.
"In the last five minutes the criminal justice team have spoken to Megrahi at home in Tripoli," a spokesman for East Renfrewshire council said.
He said officials had no concerns regarding Megrahi's whereabouts and would not be taking the matter further. (...)
Megrahi returned to Libya and has not been seen in public since September when he was photographed looking frail in a wheelchair and reportedly coughing badly.
[The above are excerpts from a report on the website of The Guardian.
The Times, which set this hare running with its alarmist twaddle, now has a report on its website in which it tries to save face. It can be read here.]
Mystery as Lockerbie bomber goes missing from home and hospital
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
Mystery surrounded the Lockerbie bomber last night after he could not be reached at his home or in hospital.
Libyan officials could say nothing about the whereabouts of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, and his Scottish monitors could not contact him by telephone. They will try again to speak to him today but if they fail to reach him, the Scottish government could face a new crisis.
Under the terms of his release from jail, the bomber cannot change his address or leave Tripoli, and must keep in regular communication with East Renfrewshire Council.
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic and relatives of the 270 people who died in the 1988 bombing expressed anger about al-Megrahi’s disappearance. (...)
On Sunday evening The Times called at the bomber’s home in suburban Tripoli. A policeman sitting on a plastic chair outside was asked to deliver a message to al-Megrahi. He spoke no English, but indicated that al-Megrahi was not there.
The next day The Times visited the Tripoli Medical Centre where alMegrahi was treated soon after his return to Libya. The receptionists said he had left the hospital some time ago.
Back at al-Megrahi’s home, there was no sign of activity. One of three security officers sitting in a grey Mercedes car outside said: “They’ve all gone.” He refused to elaborate.
Alerted by The Times, Jonathan Hinds, of East Renfrewshire Council, tried to telephone al-Megrahi at his home yesterday. He spoke to a Libyan man who said al-Megrahi was too ill to speak to him. (...)
It is entirely possible that al-Megrahi was too ill to speak. Libyan doctors have sent monthly reports on his health to Scottish officials, but these have been kept private. Al-Megrahi has not been seen in public since September 9, when he briefly met a delegation of African politicians at the Tripoli Medical Centre. He was in a wheelchair, said nothing and coughed repeatedly. Observers said he looked frail. His older brother, Mohammed, has told The Times that al-Megrahi had been examined by Italian cancer specialists and that he was receiving his fourth dose of chemotherapy. He asked that he be left alone.
Tony Kelly, al-Megrahi’s Scottish lawyer, refused to discuss his client, and the British Embassy in Tripoli had no comment, but other British sources were adamant that al-Megrahi was terminally ill.
Even so, Bill Aitken, the Scottish Conservative justice spokesman, called for an immediate investigation. He said: “This is outrageous and there will be intense anger that Britain’s biggest mass murderer appears to be able to disappear.”
Pamela Dix, whose brother Peter died on Pan Am Flight 103, said: “I’d certainly wish to know what is happening to him. This is a demonstration of how it is almost impossible to keep tabs on him — but he could also be seriously ill, so that must not be ruled out.”
[In a further article Sam Lister, The Times's Health Editor, writes:]
The apparent disappearance of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi poses several questions about his health. When examined by British doctors earlier in the year, he had all the features of aggressive prostate cancer. The tumour was described as “stage 4”, meaning it had spread to other parts of his body, and his PSA count (an indicator of cancer spread) was continuing to rise. His PSA levels had dropped briefly the previous year, after he had responded to hormone therapy, but since then had shown all the signs of continuing deterioration. It was on this evidence that he was given a speculative survival time of three or four months.
Back in Tripoli, he was put on a course of chemotherapy involving the drug docetaxol, which is given in three or one-week cycles. That he appears not to have attended hospital in many weeks suggests that treatment may have ended, or that it has been stopped because no further benefit could be gained.
This would suggest that he may be on palliative care, and in the final stages of the disease. He may be on a morphine drip away from hospital, he could be semi-conscious at home, or he could have sought somewhere else to spend his final days, away from the noise of Tripoli. Or he may have left for less obvious reasons.
Predicting cancer survival is not an exact science. That the cancer was continuing to spread quickly does point to a poor outcome. But about a third of men with advanced prostate cancer live for at least five years after diagnosis.
Al-Megrahi is younger than the average sufferer at stage 4 and the same type of cancer can grow at different rates in different people. What can be said with some certainty, however, is that a prolonged stay away from hospital is unlikely to be a positive sign.
Mystery surrounded the Lockerbie bomber last night after he could not be reached at his home or in hospital.
Libyan officials could say nothing about the whereabouts of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, and his Scottish monitors could not contact him by telephone. They will try again to speak to him today but if they fail to reach him, the Scottish government could face a new crisis.
Under the terms of his release from jail, the bomber cannot change his address or leave Tripoli, and must keep in regular communication with East Renfrewshire Council.
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic and relatives of the 270 people who died in the 1988 bombing expressed anger about al-Megrahi’s disappearance. (...)
On Sunday evening The Times called at the bomber’s home in suburban Tripoli. A policeman sitting on a plastic chair outside was asked to deliver a message to al-Megrahi. He spoke no English, but indicated that al-Megrahi was not there.
The next day The Times visited the Tripoli Medical Centre where alMegrahi was treated soon after his return to Libya. The receptionists said he had left the hospital some time ago.
Back at al-Megrahi’s home, there was no sign of activity. One of three security officers sitting in a grey Mercedes car outside said: “They’ve all gone.” He refused to elaborate.
Alerted by The Times, Jonathan Hinds, of East Renfrewshire Council, tried to telephone al-Megrahi at his home yesterday. He spoke to a Libyan man who said al-Megrahi was too ill to speak to him. (...)
It is entirely possible that al-Megrahi was too ill to speak. Libyan doctors have sent monthly reports on his health to Scottish officials, but these have been kept private. Al-Megrahi has not been seen in public since September 9, when he briefly met a delegation of African politicians at the Tripoli Medical Centre. He was in a wheelchair, said nothing and coughed repeatedly. Observers said he looked frail. His older brother, Mohammed, has told The Times that al-Megrahi had been examined by Italian cancer specialists and that he was receiving his fourth dose of chemotherapy. He asked that he be left alone.
Tony Kelly, al-Megrahi’s Scottish lawyer, refused to discuss his client, and the British Embassy in Tripoli had no comment, but other British sources were adamant that al-Megrahi was terminally ill.
Even so, Bill Aitken, the Scottish Conservative justice spokesman, called for an immediate investigation. He said: “This is outrageous and there will be intense anger that Britain’s biggest mass murderer appears to be able to disappear.”
Pamela Dix, whose brother Peter died on Pan Am Flight 103, said: “I’d certainly wish to know what is happening to him. This is a demonstration of how it is almost impossible to keep tabs on him — but he could also be seriously ill, so that must not be ruled out.”
[In a further article Sam Lister, The Times's Health Editor, writes:]
The apparent disappearance of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi poses several questions about his health. When examined by British doctors earlier in the year, he had all the features of aggressive prostate cancer. The tumour was described as “stage 4”, meaning it had spread to other parts of his body, and his PSA count (an indicator of cancer spread) was continuing to rise. His PSA levels had dropped briefly the previous year, after he had responded to hormone therapy, but since then had shown all the signs of continuing deterioration. It was on this evidence that he was given a speculative survival time of three or four months.
Back in Tripoli, he was put on a course of chemotherapy involving the drug docetaxol, which is given in three or one-week cycles. That he appears not to have attended hospital in many weeks suggests that treatment may have ended, or that it has been stopped because no further benefit could be gained.
This would suggest that he may be on palliative care, and in the final stages of the disease. He may be on a morphine drip away from hospital, he could be semi-conscious at home, or he could have sought somewhere else to spend his final days, away from the noise of Tripoli. Or he may have left for less obvious reasons.
Predicting cancer survival is not an exact science. That the cancer was continuing to spread quickly does point to a poor outcome. But about a third of men with advanced prostate cancer live for at least five years after diagnosis.
Al-Megrahi is younger than the average sufferer at stage 4 and the same type of cancer can grow at different rates in different people. What can be said with some certainty, however, is that a prolonged stay away from hospital is unlikely to be a positive sign.
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Committee asks The Sunday Times for Lockerbie documents
[Two weeks ago The Sunday Times ran, as if it were news, a report based on a seventeen year old US State Department press release claiming that Abdelbaset Megrahi was involved in Libya'a WMD programme. No evidence to this effect was led at his trial. His lawyer, Tony Kelly, commented that the documents were “unsubstantiated and unattributed intelligence rumours. If there was any evidence backing any of this up I am absolutely certain it would have been introduced at trial, and it wasn’t,” he said.
Today The Sunday Times carries a report stating that the UK Parliament's Scottish Affairs Committee has asked the newspaper to provide it with a copy of the documents. It reads in part:]
A Westminster committee investigating the circumstances surrounding the release of the Lockerbie bomber has asked for documents obtained by The Sunday Times that appear to implicate the Libyan in the purchase of chemical weapons.
The papers will form part of the Scottish Affairs committee’s inquiry into the decision earlier this year to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds.
The committee will examine the arrangements between the UK and Scottish governments, and has invited Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister who granted Megrahi his freedom, Alex Salmond and Jack Straw, the UK justice secretary, to give evidence. (...)
The papers, dated 1992, were based on information gathered by the CIA to bolster the case against Libya for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people.
Ben Wallace, the [Conservative] MP for Lancaster and Wyre and a committee member, said the Megrahi deal had damaged relations with the US. “I am trying to demonstrate to people that Megrahi was a seriously bad man and that this government decided Libyan trade was more important than American trade,” said Wallace.
“These documents will feature because we’ll be asking government officials why they wanted someone like this, who was engaged in terrorist activities, not to die in prison, yet have allowed 140 people in the UK to die in prison of cancer since 2001?”
Today The Sunday Times carries a report stating that the UK Parliament's Scottish Affairs Committee has asked the newspaper to provide it with a copy of the documents. It reads in part:]
A Westminster committee investigating the circumstances surrounding the release of the Lockerbie bomber has asked for documents obtained by The Sunday Times that appear to implicate the Libyan in the purchase of chemical weapons.
The papers will form part of the Scottish Affairs committee’s inquiry into the decision earlier this year to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds.
The committee will examine the arrangements between the UK and Scottish governments, and has invited Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister who granted Megrahi his freedom, Alex Salmond and Jack Straw, the UK justice secretary, to give evidence. (...)
The papers, dated 1992, were based on information gathered by the CIA to bolster the case against Libya for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people.
Ben Wallace, the [Conservative] MP for Lancaster and Wyre and a committee member, said the Megrahi deal had damaged relations with the US. “I am trying to demonstrate to people that Megrahi was a seriously bad man and that this government decided Libyan trade was more important than American trade,” said Wallace.
“These documents will feature because we’ll be asking government officials why they wanted someone like this, who was engaged in terrorist activities, not to die in prison, yet have allowed 140 people in the UK to die in prison of cancer since 2001?”
Saturday, 12 December 2009
A treat from Caustic Logic
The three most recent Lockerbie-related posts on Adam (Caustic Logic) Larson's blog The 12/7-9/11 Treadmill and Beyond are a delight. They can be read here, here and here.
I am confident that all of my readers, unlike some of those commenting directly on Adam's posts, will appreciate his beguiling irony.
I am confident that all of my readers, unlike some of those commenting directly on Adam's posts, will appreciate his beguiling irony.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Report to slate MacAskill over early release of Megrahi
[This is the headline over a speculative report in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill will face stinging criticism in a parliamentary report over the way he handled the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Members of Holyrood's justice committee have made it clear that they do not believe the minister followed Scottish Prison Service (SPS) guidelines in allowing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya on compassionate grounds because he was dying of prostate cancer.
They will say the minister should have sought a second opinion supporting the prognosis that Megrahi only had three months to live.
They will also criticise him for the flimsiness of the medical evidence. (...)
Despite only taking verbal evidence in one session from the minister and his officials and receiving a limited number of written submissions, a majority of MSPs on the committee decided that they would produce a final report in the new year. The conclusions are supported by all the opposition parties.
The Scotsman understands that they also intend to reprimand the minister for failing to get written assurances that Megrahi would not receive a hero's welcome when he returned to Libya. The minister admitted to them he only received verbal promises and never asked for them in writing. (...)
Some organisations, such as the US government, refused to give evidence and the inquiry was unable to look into the dealings between the UK government and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi which led to the prisoner transfer agreement, which was ultimately rejected by Mr MacAskill. This is being looked at by a separate inquiry in Westminster.
Former minister Stewart Maxwell, an SNP member of the justice committee, said: "The fact that this inquiry has had to be brought to an end so soon just underlines how Kenny MacAskill took the right decisions for the right reasons, as every scrap of information demonstrated."
The Scottish Government argue that the limited inquiry has only confirmed that Mr MacAskill made the decision correctly.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "The justice secretary took the right decision for the right reasons, based on the recommendations of the parole board and the prison governor, and supported by the medical report submitted by Dr Andrew Fraser, director of Health and Care of the Scottish Prison Service, whose clinical assessment was that a three-month life expectancy was a reasonable estimate for this patient."
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill will face stinging criticism in a parliamentary report over the way he handled the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Members of Holyrood's justice committee have made it clear that they do not believe the minister followed Scottish Prison Service (SPS) guidelines in allowing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya on compassionate grounds because he was dying of prostate cancer.
They will say the minister should have sought a second opinion supporting the prognosis that Megrahi only had three months to live.
They will also criticise him for the flimsiness of the medical evidence. (...)
Despite only taking verbal evidence in one session from the minister and his officials and receiving a limited number of written submissions, a majority of MSPs on the committee decided that they would produce a final report in the new year. The conclusions are supported by all the opposition parties.
The Scotsman understands that they also intend to reprimand the minister for failing to get written assurances that Megrahi would not receive a hero's welcome when he returned to Libya. The minister admitted to them he only received verbal promises and never asked for them in writing. (...)
Some organisations, such as the US government, refused to give evidence and the inquiry was unable to look into the dealings between the UK government and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi which led to the prisoner transfer agreement, which was ultimately rejected by Mr MacAskill. This is being looked at by a separate inquiry in Westminster.
Former minister Stewart Maxwell, an SNP member of the justice committee, said: "The fact that this inquiry has had to be brought to an end so soon just underlines how Kenny MacAskill took the right decisions for the right reasons, as every scrap of information demonstrated."
The Scottish Government argue that the limited inquiry has only confirmed that Mr MacAskill made the decision correctly.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "The justice secretary took the right decision for the right reasons, based on the recommendations of the parole board and the prison governor, and supported by the medical report submitted by Dr Andrew Fraser, director of Health and Care of the Scottish Prison Service, whose clinical assessment was that a three-month life expectancy was a reasonable estimate for this patient."
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Lockerbie bomber release inquiry could be closed
[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
A Scottish Parliament committee could [today] decide to close its inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
The justice committee has been investigating the decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, on compassionate grounds.
It is due to decide whether the move by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has been adequately scrutinised.
The committee has already been told that medical advice on Megrahi's health was "quite clear".
MSPs must now decide whether there are further issues to pursue surrounding the release of the Libyan in August this year.
Last week the committee heard from Mr MacAskill, who insisted medical advice had been clear. (...)
Megrahi's release angered many US families of the victims of the bombing.
However, the committee inquiry is not considering whether the justice secretary was correct to conclude that compassionate release was justified.
[The above report has now been superseded by one which contains the following:
"The Scottish Parliament inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber is to be closed. (...)
"MSPs on the cross-party committee have decided not to take any further evidence, although they will still publish a report, due next year. (...)
"The inquiry has already heard from Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who insisted the medical advice surrounding the release which was given had been clear.
"MSPs, who were considering whether there were further issues to pursue surrounding the release of the Libyan in August this year, decided to bring the inquiry to an end."
The inquiry is, and always was, a complete waste of time and resources, given that among the other matters excluded from the scope of the committee's inquiry are:
• the circumstances surrounding the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988
• the trial and conviction of Mr al-Megrahi for murder, his subsequent appeals against conviction, or the findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in relation to his case
• the circumstances surrounding the negotiation of the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement, or the content of that agreement.]
A Scottish Parliament committee could [today] decide to close its inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
The justice committee has been investigating the decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, on compassionate grounds.
It is due to decide whether the move by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has been adequately scrutinised.
The committee has already been told that medical advice on Megrahi's health was "quite clear".
MSPs must now decide whether there are further issues to pursue surrounding the release of the Libyan in August this year.
Last week the committee heard from Mr MacAskill, who insisted medical advice had been clear. (...)
Megrahi's release angered many US families of the victims of the bombing.
However, the committee inquiry is not considering whether the justice secretary was correct to conclude that compassionate release was justified.
[The above report has now been superseded by one which contains the following:
"The Scottish Parliament inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber is to be closed. (...)
"MSPs on the cross-party committee have decided not to take any further evidence, although they will still publish a report, due next year. (...)
"The inquiry has already heard from Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who insisted the medical advice surrounding the release which was given had been clear.
"MSPs, who were considering whether there were further issues to pursue surrounding the release of the Libyan in August this year, decided to bring the inquiry to an end."
The inquiry is, and always was, a complete waste of time and resources, given that among the other matters excluded from the scope of the committee's inquiry are:
• the circumstances surrounding the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988
• the trial and conviction of Mr al-Megrahi for murder, his subsequent appeals against conviction, or the findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in relation to his case
• the circumstances surrounding the negotiation of the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement, or the content of that agreement.]
Monday, 7 December 2009
Dr Swire on "Pan Am 103: what really happened?"
[What follows is a response by Dr Jim Swire to some of the comments made by readers on the Pan Am 103: what really happened? thread.]
I must congratulate 'Rolfe' and Patrick Haseldine on the interesting set of comments re Pik Botha, Carlsson and Pan Am 103. At the same time I hope they will forgive me for pointing out that to us the relatives, this all falls into the category of 'speculation'.
That is so due to the flat refusal of successive UK governments despite our lobbying of every single Prime Minister since 1988 to allow any meaningful inquiry into the events leading up to the disaster. Had they fulfilled their legal obligation to provide such an inquiry, then hopefully much of this speculation would have reached at least the level of confidence given to those aspects of the disaster which were the subject of the Zeist court and inquiries.
Personally I entered the Zeist courtroom expecting to see the murderers of my daughter condemned and punished. The effect was the opposite, the evidence and the way in which it was derived and used, convinced me that neither Megrahi nor Fhimah were guilty as charged. But I was left with some relatively reliable information, compared with that derived from the best efforts of those people, may of them so well meaning, who previously had had no access whatever to any means of penetrating the official wall of silence, being obliged to speculate as a result of their (and our) exclusion.
As 'Rolfe' says, if it is true that Botha's party had reached London early, enabling the embassy 'on the spur of the moment' to book them on the earlier PA101, I see nothing suspicious in that, but as 'Rolfe' points out, if it is true that they were rebooked onto PA101 at the last minute, 'but some of their retinue could not get seats on that flight and thereupon returned to South Africa' that would be very, very interesting.
The logical speculation from that point would be that they must have known that PA103 was unsafe, for PA103 was only 2/3 full that night. 'Rolfe''s conclusion that such a development would constitute support for knowledge of a much more specific warning than those provided in the 'Helsinki' warning and other warnings already known to have been received would be valid. Patrick correctly confirms that not a single member of the Botha team was on PA103.
Why was PA103 only 2/3 full just before Christmas?
Is 'Rolfe' able to provide chapter and verse for his comment that 'instead of taking up their existing bookings on PA103 [they] just turned round and went home'?
The Zeist court had little to say about any regime's involvement, nor about those who might have been involved in the run up to the massacre itself. The nearest it came to that, for me, was the detailed account provided by the Germans of the PFLP-GC's technology, and of their known workshop on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria's capital city. They were making IEDs which however long they had lain about in an airport before being put aboard an aircraft, were still obligated to explode around 40 minutes following take off, without anyone in the relevant airport having to touch them, or even to open any container which they might be hidden in. An irrefutable fact is that my daughter's death occurred 38 minutes after her plane had left the Heathrow tarmac, just as would have been inevitable had one of these IEDs been used.
The court did not in my view exclude the use of this technology, far from it, it believed the prosecution's speculation - for that was all it was - that Megrahi (whose identification as 'the clothes buyer' was blatantly inadequate) had somehow while passing through Luqa airport penetrated security there (not supported by any evidence), to enable a profoundly unwise route of attack through 2 changes of aircraft, using a digital timer perfectly capable of being set to explode over mid-Atlantic.
Their Lordships were however operating under a severe Handicap, due to the suppression of vitally significant evidence (see below under DC Crawford).
Possible motivation was covered in terms of the past experiences of both Libya and Iran, at the hands of US military forces, but motivation for the assassination of Botha, Carlsson or the US McKee intelligence team was not established. The court's (the defence's actually) interest in Syria was snubbed by that country, leading to the inexplicable abandonment of their 'defence of incrimination' by the Megrahi defence team.
Since Megrahi's second appeal was stopped, his defence team have started to put some very interesting material on the web at and this is where investigating policeman Harry Bell enters the scene. Harry recorded in a diary written while on the island of Malta, how US official(s) was/were suggesting the payment of '$10,000 up front' with' $2,000,000 to follow, to Tony Gauci plus a payment of $1,000,000 to Gauci's brother Paul.
It is not clear to me whether Bell passed this on to the Crown Office, nor what his response was to the US agent suggesting it.
The astoundingly amateurish attitude attributed to DC Crawford, as to the significance of Carlsson in all this supports my worst fears as to the competence of the police force involved to cope with so great a disaster and investigation. If DC Crawford or his force really was prepared to write off the possible significance of Carlsson on the hearsay evidence of a single librarian, that says a great deal about the confidence we should have in other aspects of the investigation. The agreement to this decision by Stuart Henderson does little to reassure either, for Henderson has publicly claimed in front of a crowd of US relatives that he 'would like to wring the neck of anyone who disagreed with the police findings.' Do not these sound rather like the words of someone trying to defend something he knows to be indefensible?
Nowhere are doubts about the calibre of the investigating police more worrying than in the case of the Heathrow break-in. That occurred in the very early morning of 21/12/88 through the appropriate sector of Heathrow security to give access to where the PanAm containers were being loaded that evening. It was known to Heathrow through the night security file records on the morning of 21/12/88, and to the Met's special branch, who interviewed Manley, the night security guard in January 1989.
Yet the information about this break-in 'disappeared' for 12 years, till after the Zeist court had convicted Megrahi.
I wrote to the Crown Office to ask them if they had known about the break-in during these 12 years, and they denied knowing. They then made the disingenuous comment that the break-in didn't matter because the first appeal did know but did not overturn the verdict.
Think about their Lordships in the trial who said that the absence of evidence as to how Megrahi penetrated security at Luqa was 'a difficulty for the Crown', and compare that with what they were denied knowing - a fully documented break-in appropriate in time and position to the spot from which the fatal aircraft was actually loaded with its cargo. It seems pretty obvious to me that had they known they would have had to have found Megrahi not guilty, since Heathrow was strongly supported by evidence, whereas Luqa was not.
But glossing over the Crown's outrageous misrepresentation of the likely effect of the missing evidence upon the court's verdict, and assuming that they really didn't know during those 12 years, then it looks most likely that since the Met would surely have told the investigating Scots about it, the Scottish police probably failed to pass it on to the Crown Office.
What would be their motive for that? Well again we speculate, but the Heathrow evidence was desperately dangerous to the hypothesis that the device had come from Malta, simply because the clothing had. The annals of police investigations are full of instances where the driving hypothesis has destroyed the objectivity of the investigating force, and caused a tunnel vision where only matters that fit that hypothesis are considered.
Owing to the refusal to launch a properly empowered inquiry, it has been impossible thus far to probe the work of the Dumfries and Galloway police, nor indeed the Thatcher government's decision to put them in charge rather than the more experienced teams available in London.
In speculating about how much was known beforehand about the impending disaster, and by whom, we are discussing the worst fear that we have about this cruel business, the real possibility that our families were allowed to march on board an aircraft known by some of those who should have protected it to be doomed. To resolve that issue really would be a huge help in advancing our recovery from the loss of those we loved. Even if it turned out to be true, we would rather know the truth than be left any longer in such doubt, through the absence of a properly endowed inquiry.
Lest there be any doubt about it by the way our Fatal Accident Inquiry, though also denied knowledge of the Heathrow break-in, concluded that the disaster was preventable and that the aircraft was under the 'Host State Protection of the United Kingdom'.
I am a signatory to the appeal put out by JFM (Justice for Megrahi) to the UN for a UN based inquiry. The silence from them thus far is as dense as that from Whitehall has been for 21 years. The issues about which we speculate here appear more appropriate for a UN inquiry than simply a UK one, but the latter at least is obligatory under UK law.
Fortunately current ECHR legislation in this country entitles us as next of kin of the dead, to a suitably empowered inquiry.
Absent a fully supportive reply from Gordon Brown to our request for such an inquiry, for which we are still waiting, we shall have to see what Gareth Peirce and the UK justice system can do for us.
I must congratulate 'Rolfe' and Patrick Haseldine on the interesting set of comments re Pik Botha, Carlsson and Pan Am 103. At the same time I hope they will forgive me for pointing out that to us the relatives, this all falls into the category of 'speculation'.
That is so due to the flat refusal of successive UK governments despite our lobbying of every single Prime Minister since 1988 to allow any meaningful inquiry into the events leading up to the disaster. Had they fulfilled their legal obligation to provide such an inquiry, then hopefully much of this speculation would have reached at least the level of confidence given to those aspects of the disaster which were the subject of the Zeist court and inquiries.
Personally I entered the Zeist courtroom expecting to see the murderers of my daughter condemned and punished. The effect was the opposite, the evidence and the way in which it was derived and used, convinced me that neither Megrahi nor Fhimah were guilty as charged. But I was left with some relatively reliable information, compared with that derived from the best efforts of those people, may of them so well meaning, who previously had had no access whatever to any means of penetrating the official wall of silence, being obliged to speculate as a result of their (and our) exclusion.
As 'Rolfe' says, if it is true that Botha's party had reached London early, enabling the embassy 'on the spur of the moment' to book them on the earlier PA101, I see nothing suspicious in that, but as 'Rolfe' points out, if it is true that they were rebooked onto PA101 at the last minute, 'but some of their retinue could not get seats on that flight and thereupon returned to South Africa' that would be very, very interesting.
The logical speculation from that point would be that they must have known that PA103 was unsafe, for PA103 was only 2/3 full that night. 'Rolfe''s conclusion that such a development would constitute support for knowledge of a much more specific warning than those provided in the 'Helsinki' warning and other warnings already known to have been received would be valid. Patrick correctly confirms that not a single member of the Botha team was on PA103.
Why was PA103 only 2/3 full just before Christmas?
Is 'Rolfe' able to provide chapter and verse for his comment that 'instead of taking up their existing bookings on PA103 [they] just turned round and went home'?
The Zeist court had little to say about any regime's involvement, nor about those who might have been involved in the run up to the massacre itself. The nearest it came to that, for me, was the detailed account provided by the Germans of the PFLP-GC's technology, and of their known workshop on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria's capital city. They were making IEDs which however long they had lain about in an airport before being put aboard an aircraft, were still obligated to explode around 40 minutes following take off, without anyone in the relevant airport having to touch them, or even to open any container which they might be hidden in. An irrefutable fact is that my daughter's death occurred 38 minutes after her plane had left the Heathrow tarmac, just as would have been inevitable had one of these IEDs been used.
The court did not in my view exclude the use of this technology, far from it, it believed the prosecution's speculation - for that was all it was - that Megrahi (whose identification as 'the clothes buyer' was blatantly inadequate) had somehow while passing through Luqa airport penetrated security there (not supported by any evidence), to enable a profoundly unwise route of attack through 2 changes of aircraft, using a digital timer perfectly capable of being set to explode over mid-Atlantic.
Their Lordships were however operating under a severe Handicap, due to the suppression of vitally significant evidence (see below under DC Crawford).
Possible motivation was covered in terms of the past experiences of both Libya and Iran, at the hands of US military forces, but motivation for the assassination of Botha, Carlsson or the US McKee intelligence team was not established. The court's (the defence's actually) interest in Syria was snubbed by that country, leading to the inexplicable abandonment of their 'defence of incrimination' by the Megrahi defence team.
Since Megrahi's second appeal was stopped, his defence team have started to put some very interesting material on the web at
It is not clear to me whether Bell passed this on to the Crown Office, nor what his response was to the US agent suggesting it.
The astoundingly amateurish attitude attributed to DC Crawford, as to the significance of Carlsson in all this supports my worst fears as to the competence of the police force involved to cope with so great a disaster and investigation. If DC Crawford or his force really was prepared to write off the possible significance of Carlsson on the hearsay evidence of a single librarian, that says a great deal about the confidence we should have in other aspects of the investigation. The agreement to this decision by Stuart Henderson does little to reassure either, for Henderson has publicly claimed in front of a crowd of US relatives that he 'would like to wring the neck of anyone who disagreed with the police findings.' Do not these sound rather like the words of someone trying to defend something he knows to be indefensible?
Nowhere are doubts about the calibre of the investigating police more worrying than in the case of the Heathrow break-in. That occurred in the very early morning of 21/12/88 through the appropriate sector of Heathrow security to give access to where the PanAm containers were being loaded that evening. It was known to Heathrow through the night security file records on the morning of 21/12/88, and to the Met's special branch, who interviewed Manley, the night security guard in January 1989.
Yet the information about this break-in 'disappeared' for 12 years, till after the Zeist court had convicted Megrahi.
I wrote to the Crown Office to ask them if they had known about the break-in during these 12 years, and they denied knowing. They then made the disingenuous comment that the break-in didn't matter because the first appeal did know but did not overturn the verdict.
Think about their Lordships in the trial who said that the absence of evidence as to how Megrahi penetrated security at Luqa was 'a difficulty for the Crown', and compare that with what they were denied knowing - a fully documented break-in appropriate in time and position to the spot from which the fatal aircraft was actually loaded with its cargo. It seems pretty obvious to me that had they known they would have had to have found Megrahi not guilty, since Heathrow was strongly supported by evidence, whereas Luqa was not.
But glossing over the Crown's outrageous misrepresentation of the likely effect of the missing evidence upon the court's verdict, and assuming that they really didn't know during those 12 years, then it looks most likely that since the Met would surely have told the investigating Scots about it, the Scottish police probably failed to pass it on to the Crown Office.
What would be their motive for that? Well again we speculate, but the Heathrow evidence was desperately dangerous to the hypothesis that the device had come from Malta, simply because the clothing had. The annals of police investigations are full of instances where the driving hypothesis has destroyed the objectivity of the investigating force, and caused a tunnel vision where only matters that fit that hypothesis are considered.
Owing to the refusal to launch a properly empowered inquiry, it has been impossible thus far to probe the work of the Dumfries and Galloway police, nor indeed the Thatcher government's decision to put them in charge rather than the more experienced teams available in London.
In speculating about how much was known beforehand about the impending disaster, and by whom, we are discussing the worst fear that we have about this cruel business, the real possibility that our families were allowed to march on board an aircraft known by some of those who should have protected it to be doomed. To resolve that issue really would be a huge help in advancing our recovery from the loss of those we loved. Even if it turned out to be true, we would rather know the truth than be left any longer in such doubt, through the absence of a properly endowed inquiry.
Lest there be any doubt about it by the way our Fatal Accident Inquiry, though also denied knowledge of the Heathrow break-in, concluded that the disaster was preventable and that the aircraft was under the 'Host State Protection of the United Kingdom'.
I am a signatory to the appeal put out by JFM (Justice for Megrahi) to the UN for a UN based inquiry. The silence from them thus far is as dense as that from Whitehall has been for 21 years. The issues about which we speculate here appear more appropriate for a UN inquiry than simply a UK one, but the latter at least is obligatory under UK law.
Fortunately current ECHR legislation in this country entitles us as next of kin of the dead, to a suitably empowered inquiry.
Absent a fully supportive reply from Gordon Brown to our request for such an inquiry, for which we are still waiting, we shall have to see what Gareth Peirce and the UK justice system can do for us.
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Lockerbie doubters branded ‘Holocaust deniers’
[This is the headline over a report in today's Scottish edition of The Sunday Times. It reads as follows:]
A representative of families of American victims of the Lockerbie disaster has likened those questioning the guilt of the convicted Libyan bomber to “Holocaust deniers”.
Frank Duggan, an official spokesman for Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, described those who believe Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is innocent as a “shameless band of conspiracy mavens”.
Those criticised include Christine Grahame, the nationalist MSP, her researcher Mark Hirst, Robert Black, the Edinburgh-based legal expert who helped broker Megrahi’s trial in the Netherlands and Gareth Peirce, the London-based human rights lawyer.
In an email sent to Richard Marquise, a former FBI official who headed the investigation, Duggan said Grahame, Hirst, Black and Peirce were “no worse than Holocaust deniers who will not accept the facts before their faces”.
Grahame, who believes that Iran, not Libya, was behind the 1988 bombing, which claimed 270 lives, said Duggan’s comments were ludicrous. “My father and the fathers and grandfathers of many of the other people who are seeking the truth about who attacked Pan Am 103 were fighting the perpetrators of the Holocaust for three years before the US saw fit to get involved,” she said.
Hirst accused Duggan of a “highly personal” smear campaign against those who doubted the safety of Megrahi’s conviction.
The row reflects anger among the families of the American victims at the decision by Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, to free Megrahi on compassionate grounds. Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, has outlived his three-month prognosis. Last week, MacAskill defended his decision to a Holyrood inquiry into the handling of Megrahi’s release, insisting that the medical advice was “quite clear”.
US intelligence files published last week claim Megrahi was involved in buying and developing chemical weapons for Libya.
Black declined to comment and Peirce was unavailable for comment.
[I declined to comment since I was unwilling to descend into the gutter with Mr Duggan.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which, on six grounds, found that Mr Megrahi's conviction may have amounted to a miscarriage of justice, no better than Holocaust deniers, forsooth!
According to The Chambers Dictionary "maven" or "mavin" is US slang, from Yiddish, for pundit or expert.
The full e-mail exchange between Mr Duggan, Richard Marquise and Mr Hirst can be read here.
An interesting commentary (in German) on The Sunday Times article can be found on the Austrian Wings website. A more general article on the Lockerbie affair on the same website by Editor in Chief Patrick Radosta can be read here.]
A representative of families of American victims of the Lockerbie disaster has likened those questioning the guilt of the convicted Libyan bomber to “Holocaust deniers”.
Frank Duggan, an official spokesman for Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, described those who believe Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is innocent as a “shameless band of conspiracy mavens”.
Those criticised include Christine Grahame, the nationalist MSP, her researcher Mark Hirst, Robert Black, the Edinburgh-based legal expert who helped broker Megrahi’s trial in the Netherlands and Gareth Peirce, the London-based human rights lawyer.
In an email sent to Richard Marquise, a former FBI official who headed the investigation, Duggan said Grahame, Hirst, Black and Peirce were “no worse than Holocaust deniers who will not accept the facts before their faces”.
Grahame, who believes that Iran, not Libya, was behind the 1988 bombing, which claimed 270 lives, said Duggan’s comments were ludicrous. “My father and the fathers and grandfathers of many of the other people who are seeking the truth about who attacked Pan Am 103 were fighting the perpetrators of the Holocaust for three years before the US saw fit to get involved,” she said.
Hirst accused Duggan of a “highly personal” smear campaign against those who doubted the safety of Megrahi’s conviction.
The row reflects anger among the families of the American victims at the decision by Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, to free Megrahi on compassionate grounds. Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, has outlived his three-month prognosis. Last week, MacAskill defended his decision to a Holyrood inquiry into the handling of Megrahi’s release, insisting that the medical advice was “quite clear”.
US intelligence files published last week claim Megrahi was involved in buying and developing chemical weapons for Libya.
Black declined to comment and Peirce was unavailable for comment.
[I declined to comment since I was unwilling to descend into the gutter with Mr Duggan.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which, on six grounds, found that Mr Megrahi's conviction may have amounted to a miscarriage of justice, no better than Holocaust deniers, forsooth!
According to The Chambers Dictionary "maven" or "mavin" is US slang, from Yiddish, for pundit or expert.
The full e-mail exchange between Mr Duggan, Richard Marquise and Mr Hirst can be read here.
An interesting commentary (in German) on The Sunday Times article can be found on the Austrian Wings website. A more general article on the Lockerbie affair on the same website by Editor in Chief Patrick Radosta can be read here.]
Friday, 4 December 2009
From Prime Minister's Questions on 2 December 2009
Q2. [303209] Mr Ben Wallace (Lancaster and Wyre) (Con): Recently revealed figures show that, since 2001, 140 inmates have been allowed to die of cancer while serving their sentences in UK jails. In the light of the Business Secretary's recent country sports activity, is there, under this Government, one rule for British inmates and another one for Libyan mass murderers?
The Prime Minister: As the hon Gentleman knows, the decision on Libya was made by the Scottish Administration. It was their decision to make; it was not our decision to make.
[The above question and answer are taken from House of Commons Hansard for 2 December 2009. The Business Secretary is Lord Mandelson who was recently reported to have attended a country house shooting party at which one of the other guests was Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi.]
The Prime Minister: As the hon Gentleman knows, the decision on Libya was made by the Scottish Administration. It was their decision to make; it was not our decision to make.
[The above question and answer are taken from House of Commons Hansard for 2 December 2009. The Business Secretary is Lord Mandelson who was recently reported to have attended a country house shooting party at which one of the other guests was Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi.]
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Labour MSP criticised for not declaring he is brother of Lockerbie lawyer
[This is the headline over a report on the heraldscotland website. It reads in part:]
An MSP has been criticised for not declaring that he is related to the Lockerbie bomber's lawyer.
Labour's James Kelly is Tony Kelly's brother and sits on the Holyrood committee investigating the Scottish Government's handling of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's release from jail.
He was among those on the committee to question Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill as the inquiry got under way today.
The Glasgow Rutherglen MSP joined the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee on November 10 and told the convener he had no declarations of interest.
Mr Kelly insisted today the SNP criticism was "frankly ludicrous" and that his relationship was "well known".
But SNP committee member Stewart Maxwell said: "In the interests of transparency I am surprised that Mr Kelly did not see fit to declare his personal relationship to Mr Megrahi's lawyer.
"In a case which has caused such controversy, for any cloud to hang over today's hearing is deeply unfortunate.
"There is so far no suggestion that anything Mr Kelly asked was inappropriate, but without this potential conflict on the record, members and the public are unable to judge." (...)
Mr Kelly said: "The fact that Tony Kelly is my brother is well known and has been for years. It has certainly been reported in national newspapers.
"The fact is, myself and my brother have differing views and the idea that there was any conflict of interest is frankly ridiculous."
[Just how ridiculous the conflict of interest claim is, can be seen from Mr James Kelly's voting record on 2 September 2009 on the motions and amendments following the Scottish Parliament debate on the release of Abdelbaset Megrahi. In each one of these votes Mr Kelly supported the Labour Party's criticism of Kenny MacAskill for repatriating his brother's client.]
An MSP has been criticised for not declaring that he is related to the Lockerbie bomber's lawyer.
Labour's James Kelly is Tony Kelly's brother and sits on the Holyrood committee investigating the Scottish Government's handling of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's release from jail.
He was among those on the committee to question Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill as the inquiry got under way today.
The Glasgow Rutherglen MSP joined the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee on November 10 and told the convener he had no declarations of interest.
Mr Kelly insisted today the SNP criticism was "frankly ludicrous" and that his relationship was "well known".
But SNP committee member Stewart Maxwell said: "In the interests of transparency I am surprised that Mr Kelly did not see fit to declare his personal relationship to Mr Megrahi's lawyer.
"In a case which has caused such controversy, for any cloud to hang over today's hearing is deeply unfortunate.
"There is so far no suggestion that anything Mr Kelly asked was inappropriate, but without this potential conflict on the record, members and the public are unable to judge." (...)
Mr Kelly said: "The fact that Tony Kelly is my brother is well known and has been for years. It has certainly been reported in national newspapers.
"The fact is, myself and my brother have differing views and the idea that there was any conflict of interest is frankly ridiculous."
[Just how ridiculous the conflict of interest claim is, can be seen from Mr James Kelly's voting record on 2 September 2009 on the motions and amendments following the Scottish Parliament debate on the release of Abdelbaset Megrahi. In each one of these votes Mr Kelly supported the Labour Party's criticism of Kenny MacAskill for repatriating his brother's client.]
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