[This is the headline over a Deutsche-Presse Agentur news agency report on the Monsters and Critics website. It reads as follows:]
Libya's former foreign minister Musa Kusa has decided to stay in Qatar for the time being due to worries that the relatives of Libyan terror attack victims want him prosecuted, the Al Arabiya broadcaster said Thursday.
Kusa fled to London at the end of March, around six weeks after the start of the uprising against Moamer Gaddafi, and dissociated himself from the Libyan ruler.
It appears he initially thought he could play a role in the new Libya. But most opposition figures distrust him and Western countries are interested in information he could provide as former head of the intelligence service rather than cooperation with him.
After his arrival in London, Kusa was questioned about the bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 that killed 270 people. Gaddafi allegedly ordered the attack. Kusa was not detained.
Kusa's predecessor as foreign minister, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, described him as the 'black box' of the Gaddafi regime.
Britain's decision to allow Kusa to attend a meeting of the Libya Contact Group in Qatar on Wednesday was criticized by some human rights groups and relatives of terror attack victims.
[A report published today on the Sify website reads in part:]
The Libyan rebels have refused to talk to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa at a summit in Qatar, saying he has blood on his hands, having been part of Gaddafi's inner circle.
Koussa, who is accused of being involved in the Lockerbie bombing case, fled to Qatar yesterday for an international summit on Libya to talk to Arab leaders about how to oust Gaddafi.
But a spokesmen for rebels attendingthe meet made it clear that they want nothing to do with the former intelligence chief, who was an integral part of Gaddafi's inner circle until he fled to Britain earlier this month.
"We did not invite him here. He is not part of our delegation," the Daily Mail quoted rebel spokesman Mahmoud Shamman, as saying.
In Benghazi, opposition spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga said talks with Koussa were 'not on the agenda'.
Senior Government sources said he has only been granted a 'time-limited' visa to stay in Britain, meaning he could be gone within six months.
Thursday, 14 April 2011
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Tony Blair defends Colonel Gaddafi desert meeting
[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
Tony Blair has defended his treatment of Muammar Gaddafi while in office, saying it was "great" the Libyan leader had stopped sponsoring terrorism.
The former PM shook hands with Colonel Gaddafi after talks in Libya in 2004 and re-opened diplomatic links.
On Wednesday a group of countries including the UK, US and France called on the Libyan leader to step down.
Mr Blair said he agreed that change had to be "forced" but added that he had not been "wrong" to restore relations. (...)
In 2004, Mr Blair met Col Gaddafi in the desert near Tripoli for talks following the Libyan leader's renunciation of weapons of mass destruction.
At the same time it was announced that Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell had signed a deal worth up to £550m for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast.
But the meeting came after years of strained relations following the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.
[Prime Minister David] Cameron has criticised Mr Blair's government for conducting "dodgy deals in the desert". [RB: It was during a second desert meeting in 2007 that agreement was reached on a UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement.]
However, Mr Blair told the BBC: "I don't think we were wrong to make changes in our attitude to Libya when they changed their attitude to us.
"So I think the fact they gave up their chemical and nuclear programme, the fact they stopped sponsoring terrorism and cooperate in the fight against it was great."
Mr Blair, who is now Middle East envoy for "the Quartet", made up of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States, also said: "But what didn't happen - and people hoped it would but it didn't - was that the external changes in Libyan policy were matched by internal changes.
"And now what you've got over these past few weeks has been totally unacceptable and that's why I think there's no option but to take action and force change there."
Tony Blair has defended his treatment of Muammar Gaddafi while in office, saying it was "great" the Libyan leader had stopped sponsoring terrorism.
The former PM shook hands with Colonel Gaddafi after talks in Libya in 2004 and re-opened diplomatic links.
On Wednesday a group of countries including the UK, US and France called on the Libyan leader to step down.
Mr Blair said he agreed that change had to be "forced" but added that he had not been "wrong" to restore relations. (...)
In 2004, Mr Blair met Col Gaddafi in the desert near Tripoli for talks following the Libyan leader's renunciation of weapons of mass destruction.
At the same time it was announced that Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell had signed a deal worth up to £550m for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast.
But the meeting came after years of strained relations following the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.
[Prime Minister David] Cameron has criticised Mr Blair's government for conducting "dodgy deals in the desert". [RB: It was during a second desert meeting in 2007 that agreement was reached on a UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement.]
However, Mr Blair told the BBC: "I don't think we were wrong to make changes in our attitude to Libya when they changed their attitude to us.
"So I think the fact they gave up their chemical and nuclear programme, the fact they stopped sponsoring terrorism and cooperate in the fight against it was great."
Mr Blair, who is now Middle East envoy for "the Quartet", made up of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States, also said: "But what didn't happen - and people hoped it would but it didn't - was that the external changes in Libyan policy were matched by internal changes.
"And now what you've got over these past few weeks has been totally unacceptable and that's why I think there's no option but to take action and force change there."
UK Foreign Secretary speaks prior to flight to Qatar
[What follows are excerpts from a report on the BBC News website on an interview with Foreign Secretary William Hague prior to his departure for the gathering in Doha.]
The UK cannot put a timescale on its involvement in the conflict in Libya, the foreign secretary has said.
William Hague told the BBC it was not possible to predict when the operation would end but said air strikes "saved thousands of lives" and Col Muammar Gaddafi's rule "has no future". (...)
He and other delegates are meeting in Qatar to discuss Libya, amid calls for Nato to intensify its campaign.
Speaking on his way to the talks, Mr Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme "Are we able to say which week these things will come to an end? Of course not, because it is a fast-moving and unpredictable situation.
"But I think it is clear that the Gaddafi regime has no future... the question is how and when it unravels."
He also spoke of the effect which Nato air strikes have had so far, insisting that this should not be underestimated.
"Thousands of lives have been saved in places like Benghazi and possibly in Misrata," he said.
"We would now be looking at a pariah state completely under the control of Col Gaddafi, destabilising an already unstable Middle East, if we had not taken the action we have taken."
Former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa, who fled to the UK late last month, is among those attending the talks.
He is due to meet rebels and the Qatari government on the sidelines of the talks and offer "insights" on the current situation in Libya, according to British officials.
Mr Koussa is a former head of Libyan intelligence and has been accused of being involved in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
The foreign secretary defended the decision to let Mr Koussa travel to the summit.
Mr Hague said: "We behave according to the law. The matter of arrests is for prosecuting authorities and police; that is not for ministers to decide.
"He is not detained; he came here of his own volition. If he was under arrest, he wouldn't be allowed to leave."
[The following are two paragraphs from a report just published on the CNN website:]
Among the high-profile attendees in Doha is Gadhafi's former intelligence chief and foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, who fled to Britain last month. It's unclear how opposition leaders will receive Koussa's efforts in Doha.
On Tuesday, Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, deputy chairman of Libya's Transitional National Council, did not explicitly reject the idea of meeting Koussa but said such a meeting was "not on the agenda."
The UK cannot put a timescale on its involvement in the conflict in Libya, the foreign secretary has said.
William Hague told the BBC it was not possible to predict when the operation would end but said air strikes "saved thousands of lives" and Col Muammar Gaddafi's rule "has no future". (...)
He and other delegates are meeting in Qatar to discuss Libya, amid calls for Nato to intensify its campaign.
Speaking on his way to the talks, Mr Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme "Are we able to say which week these things will come to an end? Of course not, because it is a fast-moving and unpredictable situation.
"But I think it is clear that the Gaddafi regime has no future... the question is how and when it unravels."
He also spoke of the effect which Nato air strikes have had so far, insisting that this should not be underestimated.
"Thousands of lives have been saved in places like Benghazi and possibly in Misrata," he said.
"We would now be looking at a pariah state completely under the control of Col Gaddafi, destabilising an already unstable Middle East, if we had not taken the action we have taken."
Former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa, who fled to the UK late last month, is among those attending the talks.
He is due to meet rebels and the Qatari government on the sidelines of the talks and offer "insights" on the current situation in Libya, according to British officials.
Mr Koussa is a former head of Libyan intelligence and has been accused of being involved in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
The foreign secretary defended the decision to let Mr Koussa travel to the summit.
Mr Hague said: "We behave according to the law. The matter of arrests is for prosecuting authorities and police; that is not for ministers to decide.
"He is not detained; he came here of his own volition. If he was under arrest, he wouldn't be allowed to leave."
[The following are two paragraphs from a report just published on the CNN website:]
Among the high-profile attendees in Doha is Gadhafi's former intelligence chief and foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, who fled to Britain last month. It's unclear how opposition leaders will receive Koussa's efforts in Doha.
On Tuesday, Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, deputy chairman of Libya's Transitional National Council, did not explicitly reject the idea of meeting Koussa but said such a meeting was "not on the agenda."
Libya contact group meets in Qatar
[This is the headline over a report published today on the Aljazeera English language website. It reads in part:]
Libyan rebels seeking international recognition are to tell world powers at a meeting in the Qatari capital Doha that Muammar Gaddafi's removal from power is the only way out of their country's deepening crisis.
Wednesday's conference of the "International Contact Group on Libya" is expected to focus on the future of Libya after an African Union attempt to broker a peace deal between rebel groups and Gaddafi collapsed.
On the eve of the meeting, a spokesman for the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC) said it will accept nothing short of the removal of Gaddafi and his sons from the country.
Mahmud Shammam, whose group seeks international recognition as the legitimate government of Libya, also stressed: "We want to move from the de facto recognition of the council to an internationally-recognised legitimacy."
Shammam said the contact group is comprised of high-level international diplomats, and was set up at a conference in London last month.
The Libyan government has dismissed the talks and Qatar's role in the ongoing conflict.
"We are very hopeful that the American people and the American government will not buy into the Qatari lies and Qatari schemes," a spokesman of the Libyan regime told reporters in Tripoli on Tuesday.
"Qatar is hardly a partner of any kind. It's more of an oil corporation than a true nation," the spokesman said.
Among those expected to come to the Doha talks is Moussa Koussa, Libya's former foreign minister, who fled to Britain last month after he defected. He has reportedly arrived in Qatar to meet Libyan rebels.
Koussa, a long-time top aide to Gaddafi, will not formally participate in the meeting but is expected to hold talks on the sidelines, British sources said.
"He's not connected to (the rebel) Transitional National Council in any way or shape," Mustafa Gheriani, a media liaison official of the rebels, said.
Gheriani added that he was personally surprised to learn that Koussa was leaving Britain to attend the Qatar talks, and suggested that British officials should explain why he was going and in what capacity.
Koussa, the most prominent Libyan government defector, sought refuge in Britain on March 30. A friend said he quit in protest at attacks on civilians by Gaddafi's forces.
The former spy chief was questioned by Scottish police over the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, which killed 270 people, but the British government said he was now free to travel.
"We understand he is travelling today to Doha to meet with the Qatar government and a range of Libyan representatives to offer insight in advance of the contact group meeting," a Foreign Office spokesman said.
No Gaddafi representatives are expected to attend.
"Moussa Koussa is a free individual who can travel to and from the United Kingdom as he wishes," the spokesman said.
British government sources said they expected Koussa to return to Britain after his talks, although others questioned the wisdom of letting him leave. (...)
Scottish police interviewed him last week but do not have power over his movements.
"We have every reason to believe that the Scottish authorities will be able to interview him again if required," Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, said.
US and Scottish authorities had hoped Koussa would provide intelligence on Lockerbie which could lead to more convictions.
Pamela Dix, whose brother Peter was killed in the bombing, said she could not understand why Koussa had been allowed to leave Britain. "I'm astonished that he is apparently free to come and go in this way," she told Reuters news agency.
"This current government has been very quick to condemn the previous one over Lockerbie, but they too have been very hands off. This demonstrates their continuing lack of interest in solving the biggest mass murder we have seen in this country."
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan agent, was sentenced to life in prison in 2001 for his alleged part in blowing up the US airliner but was released by the Scottish government in 2009 when he was judged to be terminally ill with cancer.
Koussa played a key role in the release of Megrahi, who is still alive. Britain's Conservative-led coalition government, which came to power in May 2010, has heavily criticised the decision to let Megrahi go.
Koussa is believed to be no longer under the supervision of British security agencies who had questioned him at a secret location after his defection to Britain.
[The Scotsman's long report on reaction to Moussa Koussa's departure can be read here.]
Libyan rebels seeking international recognition are to tell world powers at a meeting in the Qatari capital Doha that Muammar Gaddafi's removal from power is the only way out of their country's deepening crisis.
Wednesday's conference of the "International Contact Group on Libya" is expected to focus on the future of Libya after an African Union attempt to broker a peace deal between rebel groups and Gaddafi collapsed.
On the eve of the meeting, a spokesman for the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC) said it will accept nothing short of the removal of Gaddafi and his sons from the country.
Mahmud Shammam, whose group seeks international recognition as the legitimate government of Libya, also stressed: "We want to move from the de facto recognition of the council to an internationally-recognised legitimacy."
Shammam said the contact group is comprised of high-level international diplomats, and was set up at a conference in London last month.
The Libyan government has dismissed the talks and Qatar's role in the ongoing conflict.
"We are very hopeful that the American people and the American government will not buy into the Qatari lies and Qatari schemes," a spokesman of the Libyan regime told reporters in Tripoli on Tuesday.
"Qatar is hardly a partner of any kind. It's more of an oil corporation than a true nation," the spokesman said.
Among those expected to come to the Doha talks is Moussa Koussa, Libya's former foreign minister, who fled to Britain last month after he defected. He has reportedly arrived in Qatar to meet Libyan rebels.
Koussa, a long-time top aide to Gaddafi, will not formally participate in the meeting but is expected to hold talks on the sidelines, British sources said.
"He's not connected to (the rebel) Transitional National Council in any way or shape," Mustafa Gheriani, a media liaison official of the rebels, said.
Gheriani added that he was personally surprised to learn that Koussa was leaving Britain to attend the Qatar talks, and suggested that British officials should explain why he was going and in what capacity.
Koussa, the most prominent Libyan government defector, sought refuge in Britain on March 30. A friend said he quit in protest at attacks on civilians by Gaddafi's forces.
The former spy chief was questioned by Scottish police over the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, which killed 270 people, but the British government said he was now free to travel.
"We understand he is travelling today to Doha to meet with the Qatar government and a range of Libyan representatives to offer insight in advance of the contact group meeting," a Foreign Office spokesman said.
No Gaddafi representatives are expected to attend.
"Moussa Koussa is a free individual who can travel to and from the United Kingdom as he wishes," the spokesman said.
British government sources said they expected Koussa to return to Britain after his talks, although others questioned the wisdom of letting him leave. (...)
Scottish police interviewed him last week but do not have power over his movements.
"We have every reason to believe that the Scottish authorities will be able to interview him again if required," Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, said.
US and Scottish authorities had hoped Koussa would provide intelligence on Lockerbie which could lead to more convictions.
Pamela Dix, whose brother Peter was killed in the bombing, said she could not understand why Koussa had been allowed to leave Britain. "I'm astonished that he is apparently free to come and go in this way," she told Reuters news agency.
"This current government has been very quick to condemn the previous one over Lockerbie, but they too have been very hands off. This demonstrates their continuing lack of interest in solving the biggest mass murder we have seen in this country."
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan agent, was sentenced to life in prison in 2001 for his alleged part in blowing up the US airliner but was released by the Scottish government in 2009 when he was judged to be terminally ill with cancer.
Koussa played a key role in the release of Megrahi, who is still alive. Britain's Conservative-led coalition government, which came to power in May 2010, has heavily criticised the decision to let Megrahi go.
Koussa is believed to be no longer under the supervision of British security agencies who had questioned him at a secret location after his defection to Britain.
[The Scotsman's long report on reaction to Moussa Koussa's departure can be read here.]
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Lockerbie families attack UK over Moussa Koussa travel plans
[This is the headline over a report just published on The Guardian website. It reads in part:]
Families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing have accused the British government of "betrayal" after it allowed Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister, to leave the UK to attend an international conference.
Koussa, who defected to Britain at the end of last month, was en route to Doha in Qatar on Tuesday, where an international conference on the future of Libya is to be held with representatives from the Benghazi-based opposition.
He is expected to return to the UK after the conference, but is free to travel as he pleases.
Brian Flynn, the brother of JP Flynn, who died in the 1988 attack and now organises the Victims of Pan Am 103 Incorporated campaign group in New York, said the UK authorities had "crossed a line" by allowing Koussa to attend the conference and thereby suggest he is a peace negotiator rather than, as they believe, a key instigator of the bombing.
"I think the British are being played by him … he has convinced them he can be valuable in this process, but he is not the suave diplomat in the suit sitting on the sidelines, he is one of the key guys who mastermined [the bombing of] Pan Am flight 103," Flynn said.
"He is a stated enemy of the British government. Our feeling is that the British government gave a nod to Lockerbie by questioning him two days before this conference, but that feels disingenuous. The Scottish and American prosecutors on Lockerbie are being betrayed by the politicians and the diplomats. Cameron has been good on Libya, but this sounds an awful lot like Tony Blair is back in charge."
Flynn's organisation, the largest victims' group in the US, seeks to discover the truth behind the bombing and win justice for those who died. He said the families believed the decision to allow Koussa to travel to the meeting in Qatar was part of a British strategy to encourage other defectors to flee to Britain from Gaddafi's regime, as there was no way either the rebels or the regime would trust him as an intermediary.
"He blatantly betrayed the Libyan regime and for more than 25 years he betrayed the Libyan people, so why is this the guy we are sending [to the talks]?" said Flynn.
Koussa is said to be travelling to Doha in order to establish whether he has a role to play in the rebel movement along with other senior defectors from the Gaddafi regime – perhaps by brokering a deal between Tripoli and Benghazi. (...)
Jean Berkley, co-ordinator of the UK Families Flight 103 group, who lost her 29-year old son Alistair when the Pan Am flight was blown up in mid-air, said she was mystified by the decision to let Koussa travel.
"It is very unexpected," she said. "Is he the basis of a new Libyan opposition, or what? He doesn't seem a very suitable person. Our aim is always to get more of the truth and we want a full public inquiry. Koussa must have some interesting knowledge. It is hard to know what to make of it. We will wait and see and watch with interest."
[A report on the CBS News website reads in part:]
Libya's former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa is traveling to Qatar to share his insight on the workings of Muammar Qaddafi's inner circle, a British government official said Tuesday.
Koussa has been asked to attend the conference on Libya being held in Doha as a valuable Qaddafi insider, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
MI6 agents stopped questioning Koussa last week, according to the official. Koussa had been staying in a safehouse until late Monday night, according to Norman Benotman, an ex-member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and relative of Koussa who has been in regular contact with the former foreign minister since he fled to Britain.
Although Koussa was provided with legal advice, Benotman said he believed he had "cleared most of the legal hurdles in the UK" surrounding his alleged involvement in the Lockerbie bombing and arming the IRA.
Britain's Foreign Office confirmed the trip in a statement Tuesday, saying that Koussa was "traveling today to Doha to meet with the Qatari government and a range of other Libyan representatives."
The statement added that Koussa was "a free individual, who can travel to and from the UK as he wishes."
[A report on The Independent website reads in part:]
The coalition was accused of turning Britain into a "transit lounge for alleged war criminals" today after it was disclosed that Libyan defector Moussa Koussa had been allowed to leave the country.
Muammar Gaddafi's former right-hand man is travelling to Qatar ahead of a meeting of the international alliance's Contact Group tomorrow. (...)
But Tory MP Robert Halfon, whose family fled Libya when Gaddafi took power, insisted the coalition was repeating mistakes made with Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
"Many people will be very anxious that Britain is being used as a transit lounge for alleged war criminals," Mr Halfon said.
"We should learn from the release of Megrahi that we should not release those people associated with Gaddafi or let them out of the UK until they have faced the full course of the law, whether in British courts or international courts." (...)
Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, said: "Mr Moussa Koussa was interviewed by Scottish police last Thursday as a potential witness in the Lockerbie investigation.
"He has not been under Scottish jurisdiction, and therefore the Crown Office has no power over his movements.
"However, we have every reason to believe that the Scottish authorities will be able to interview him again if required."
Susan Cohen, who lost her 20 year-old daughter Theodora in the Lockerbie bombing, said the British Government had now "lost all credibility".
Speaking from her home in New Jersey, she said she was "concerned" about the actions of the UK Government and called for the US to intervene.
She said: "I was hoping that the CIA would be able to speak with Moussa Koussa.
"After what happened with the release of Megrahi I no longer trust the British - the English or the Scots - on this.
"I want the US involved in this. After they let Megrahi out, why should we trust the Scots or the English to handle this?
"To me Moussa Koussa is nowhere near as important as Gaddafi, but he is helpful to us in terms of information he has on Lockerbie. That is very, very important.
"My concerns are how long he is going for, and whether he will come back.
"I am mostly worried about how much access the Americans will have to him and how much he will share with us, and when this information about Lockerbie will become public.
"How can we trust the British anymore? I think they have lost all credibility."
Families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing have accused the British government of "betrayal" after it allowed Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister, to leave the UK to attend an international conference.
Koussa, who defected to Britain at the end of last month, was en route to Doha in Qatar on Tuesday, where an international conference on the future of Libya is to be held with representatives from the Benghazi-based opposition.
He is expected to return to the UK after the conference, but is free to travel as he pleases.
Brian Flynn, the brother of JP Flynn, who died in the 1988 attack and now organises the Victims of Pan Am 103 Incorporated campaign group in New York, said the UK authorities had "crossed a line" by allowing Koussa to attend the conference and thereby suggest he is a peace negotiator rather than, as they believe, a key instigator of the bombing.
"I think the British are being played by him … he has convinced them he can be valuable in this process, but he is not the suave diplomat in the suit sitting on the sidelines, he is one of the key guys who mastermined [the bombing of] Pan Am flight 103," Flynn said.
"He is a stated enemy of the British government. Our feeling is that the British government gave a nod to Lockerbie by questioning him two days before this conference, but that feels disingenuous. The Scottish and American prosecutors on Lockerbie are being betrayed by the politicians and the diplomats. Cameron has been good on Libya, but this sounds an awful lot like Tony Blair is back in charge."
Flynn's organisation, the largest victims' group in the US, seeks to discover the truth behind the bombing and win justice for those who died. He said the families believed the decision to allow Koussa to travel to the meeting in Qatar was part of a British strategy to encourage other defectors to flee to Britain from Gaddafi's regime, as there was no way either the rebels or the regime would trust him as an intermediary.
"He blatantly betrayed the Libyan regime and for more than 25 years he betrayed the Libyan people, so why is this the guy we are sending [to the talks]?" said Flynn.
Koussa is said to be travelling to Doha in order to establish whether he has a role to play in the rebel movement along with other senior defectors from the Gaddafi regime – perhaps by brokering a deal between Tripoli and Benghazi. (...)
Jean Berkley, co-ordinator of the UK Families Flight 103 group, who lost her 29-year old son Alistair when the Pan Am flight was blown up in mid-air, said she was mystified by the decision to let Koussa travel.
"It is very unexpected," she said. "Is he the basis of a new Libyan opposition, or what? He doesn't seem a very suitable person. Our aim is always to get more of the truth and we want a full public inquiry. Koussa must have some interesting knowledge. It is hard to know what to make of it. We will wait and see and watch with interest."
[A report on the CBS News website reads in part:]
Libya's former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa is traveling to Qatar to share his insight on the workings of Muammar Qaddafi's inner circle, a British government official said Tuesday.
Koussa has been asked to attend the conference on Libya being held in Doha as a valuable Qaddafi insider, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
MI6 agents stopped questioning Koussa last week, according to the official. Koussa had been staying in a safehouse until late Monday night, according to Norman Benotman, an ex-member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and relative of Koussa who has been in regular contact with the former foreign minister since he fled to Britain.
Although Koussa was provided with legal advice, Benotman said he believed he had "cleared most of the legal hurdles in the UK" surrounding his alleged involvement in the Lockerbie bombing and arming the IRA.
Britain's Foreign Office confirmed the trip in a statement Tuesday, saying that Koussa was "traveling today to Doha to meet with the Qatari government and a range of other Libyan representatives."
The statement added that Koussa was "a free individual, who can travel to and from the UK as he wishes."
[A report on The Independent website reads in part:]
The coalition was accused of turning Britain into a "transit lounge for alleged war criminals" today after it was disclosed that Libyan defector Moussa Koussa had been allowed to leave the country.
Muammar Gaddafi's former right-hand man is travelling to Qatar ahead of a meeting of the international alliance's Contact Group tomorrow. (...)
But Tory MP Robert Halfon, whose family fled Libya when Gaddafi took power, insisted the coalition was repeating mistakes made with Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
"Many people will be very anxious that Britain is being used as a transit lounge for alleged war criminals," Mr Halfon said.
"We should learn from the release of Megrahi that we should not release those people associated with Gaddafi or let them out of the UK until they have faced the full course of the law, whether in British courts or international courts." (...)
Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, said: "Mr Moussa Koussa was interviewed by Scottish police last Thursday as a potential witness in the Lockerbie investigation.
"He has not been under Scottish jurisdiction, and therefore the Crown Office has no power over his movements.
"However, we have every reason to believe that the Scottish authorities will be able to interview him again if required."
Susan Cohen, who lost her 20 year-old daughter Theodora in the Lockerbie bombing, said the British Government had now "lost all credibility".
Speaking from her home in New Jersey, she said she was "concerned" about the actions of the UK Government and called for the US to intervene.
She said: "I was hoping that the CIA would be able to speak with Moussa Koussa.
"After what happened with the release of Megrahi I no longer trust the British - the English or the Scots - on this.
"I want the US involved in this. After they let Megrahi out, why should we trust the Scots or the English to handle this?
"To me Moussa Koussa is nowhere near as important as Gaddafi, but he is helpful to us in terms of information he has on Lockerbie. That is very, very important.
"My concerns are how long he is going for, and whether he will come back.
"I am mostly worried about how much access the Americans will have to him and how much he will share with us, and when this information about Lockerbie will become public.
"How can we trust the British anymore? I think they have lost all credibility."
Moussa Koussa to leave Britain
[This is the headline over a report just published on The Guardian website. It reads in part:]
Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain, is being allowed to leave the country after being questioned by Scottish police about his role in the Lockerbie affair, the Guardian can reveal.
Koussa is expected in the Qatari capital of Doha on Wednesday where an international conference on the future of Libya is being held with representatives from the Benghazi-based opposition.
Koussa is said to be seeking to establish whether he has a role to play in the rebel movement along with other senior defectors from the Gaddafi regime – perhaps by brokering a deal between Tripoli and Benghazi.
It is believed he has links with some of the leading rebel figures, including the opposition leader Mahmoud Jibril.
It is understood Koussa spent a week being debriefed by officials from MI6 at a safe house before being allowed to go free. He was questioned by Dumfries and Galloway police about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in which 270 people died, though was he was not a suspect.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, had insisted that Koussa would not be given immunity from prosecution. (...)
It is expected that he will return to the UK in the next few days after the trip to the Middle East.
The hope in Whitehall is that Koussa's lenient treatment by the UK authorities will send a positive signal to other would-be Libyan defectors as part of a broader strategy of eroding Muammar Gaddafi's position. (...)
On Monday Koussa made his first public statement since leaving Libya 12 days ago. (...)
Speaking in Arabic, Koussa made no reference in his statement to questions about his past and any knowledge or involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. It is understood he has a lawyer representing him.
[A report just published on The Scotsman website can be read here.]
Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain, is being allowed to leave the country after being questioned by Scottish police about his role in the Lockerbie affair, the Guardian can reveal.
Koussa is expected in the Qatari capital of Doha on Wednesday where an international conference on the future of Libya is being held with representatives from the Benghazi-based opposition.
Koussa is said to be seeking to establish whether he has a role to play in the rebel movement along with other senior defectors from the Gaddafi regime – perhaps by brokering a deal between Tripoli and Benghazi.
It is believed he has links with some of the leading rebel figures, including the opposition leader Mahmoud Jibril.
It is understood Koussa spent a week being debriefed by officials from MI6 at a safe house before being allowed to go free. He was questioned by Dumfries and Galloway police about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in which 270 people died, though was he was not a suspect.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, had insisted that Koussa would not be given immunity from prosecution. (...)
It is expected that he will return to the UK in the next few days after the trip to the Middle East.
The hope in Whitehall is that Koussa's lenient treatment by the UK authorities will send a positive signal to other would-be Libyan defectors as part of a broader strategy of eroding Muammar Gaddafi's position. (...)
On Monday Koussa made his first public statement since leaving Libya 12 days ago. (...)
Speaking in Arabic, Koussa made no reference in his statement to questions about his past and any knowledge or involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. It is understood he has a lawyer representing him.
[A report just published on The Scotsman website can be read here.]
Ex-Gaddafi aide Moussa Koussa warns against civil war
[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]
The most high-profile minister to flee Libya has warned against the risks of civil war and the possibility of his country becoming "a new Somalia".
Speaking publicly for the first time since coming to the UK, Moussa Koussa told the BBC that the unity of Libya was essential to any settlement.
His comments came after rebels rejected an African Union ceasefire proposal.
The AU says Col Muammar Gaddafi has accepted the plan, but on Monday his forces attacked the city of Misrata. (...)
BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera said he was told Mr Koussa was not ready to be interviewed, but would give a prepared statement.
"I ask everybody to avoid taking Libya into civil war," Mr Koussa said. "This would lead to so much blood and Libya would be a new Somalia."
"More than that, we refuse to divide Libya. The unity of Libya is essential to any solution and settlement for Libya."
Libya's Minister for Social Affairs, Ibrahim Zarouk al-Sharif, said he could not comment on Mr Koussa's statement while the former foreign minister was "captured" in a hostile country.
Mr Koussa is a former head of Libyan intelligence and has been accused of being involved in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. (...)
In his statement on Monday he said he had been "devoted" to his work for 30 years under Col Gaddafi, and was confident that it was serving the Libyan people.
However, he said, after recent events "things changed and I couldn't continue".
"I know that what I did to resign will cause me problems, but I'm ready to make that sacrifice for the sake of my country," he said.
He added that the solution in Libya would come from the Libyans themselves, through discussion and democratic dialogue.
The UK and its allies have a responsibility to ease the dialogue so that Libyans can build a democratic country, he said.
The BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen said Mr Koussa's decision to speak in Arabic suggested he wanted to send a message back home - to both sides.
[A report from The Press Association news agency can be read here.]
The most high-profile minister to flee Libya has warned against the risks of civil war and the possibility of his country becoming "a new Somalia".
Speaking publicly for the first time since coming to the UK, Moussa Koussa told the BBC that the unity of Libya was essential to any settlement.
His comments came after rebels rejected an African Union ceasefire proposal.
The AU says Col Muammar Gaddafi has accepted the plan, but on Monday his forces attacked the city of Misrata. (...)
BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera said he was told Mr Koussa was not ready to be interviewed, but would give a prepared statement.
"I ask everybody to avoid taking Libya into civil war," Mr Koussa said. "This would lead to so much blood and Libya would be a new Somalia."
"More than that, we refuse to divide Libya. The unity of Libya is essential to any solution and settlement for Libya."
Libya's Minister for Social Affairs, Ibrahim Zarouk al-Sharif, said he could not comment on Mr Koussa's statement while the former foreign minister was "captured" in a hostile country.
Mr Koussa is a former head of Libyan intelligence and has been accused of being involved in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. (...)
In his statement on Monday he said he had been "devoted" to his work for 30 years under Col Gaddafi, and was confident that it was serving the Libyan people.
However, he said, after recent events "things changed and I couldn't continue".
"I know that what I did to resign will cause me problems, but I'm ready to make that sacrifice for the sake of my country," he said.
He added that the solution in Libya would come from the Libyans themselves, through discussion and democratic dialogue.
The UK and its allies have a responsibility to ease the dialogue so that Libyans can build a democratic country, he said.
The BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen said Mr Koussa's decision to speak in Arabic suggested he wanted to send a message back home - to both sides.
[A report from The Press Association news agency can be read here.]
Monday, 11 April 2011
A message from Susan Lindauer
[The following message was posted yesterday on Facebook by Susan Lindauer.]
The current situation creates an unexpected opportunity for the Pan Am 103 families to demand that the Scottish courts review the sealed deposition of Dr Richard Fuisz, in the closing days of the Lockerbie trial. The deposition was given in the US Federal Court of Alexandria, Virginia in January, 2001, and sworn before Judge White. Curiously, the deposition was sealed in the US and could only be read overseas, putting it out of reach to the US families concerned with Lockerbie. However, within the sealed portion of the deposition is a Double Seal. Attorneys for Butera & Andrews in Washington were prohibited from advising Edward MacKechnie [RB: solicitor for Fhimah during the Zeist trial and later solicitor for Megrahi] about its contents. However, as Dr Fuisz's former asset of many years, I have privileged access to know what that contains: a list of 11 names of the individuals involved in the attack, and the map laying out their conspiracy.
By gathering together now, while attention's hot on this Libyan defector, [Moussa] Koussa, we can force the issue, and compel the Scottish courts to examine the double seal.
[More on Susan Lindauer can be read here and by inserting her name in this blog's search facility.]
The current situation creates an unexpected opportunity for the Pan Am 103 families to demand that the Scottish courts review the sealed deposition of Dr Richard Fuisz, in the closing days of the Lockerbie trial. The deposition was given in the US Federal Court of Alexandria, Virginia in January, 2001, and sworn before Judge White. Curiously, the deposition was sealed in the US and could only be read overseas, putting it out of reach to the US families concerned with Lockerbie. However, within the sealed portion of the deposition is a Double Seal. Attorneys for Butera & Andrews in Washington were prohibited from advising Edward MacKechnie [RB: solicitor for Fhimah during the Zeist trial and later solicitor for Megrahi] about its contents. However, as Dr Fuisz's former asset of many years, I have privileged access to know what that contains: a list of 11 names of the individuals involved in the attack, and the map laying out their conspiracy.
By gathering together now, while attention's hot on this Libyan defector, [Moussa] Koussa, we can force the issue, and compel the Scottish courts to examine the double seal.
[More on Susan Lindauer can be read here and by inserting her name in this blog's search facility.]
Libya: Britain told US not to intervene in Lockerbie bomber release
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Daily Telegraph. It reads in part:]
The British ambassador to the US told America it should not intervene to stop the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish prison, according to leaked diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to the Daily Telegraph.
Nigel Sheinwald told James Steinberg, the US Deputy Secretary of State, that he was "concerned" that the demands of victims' families were unduly influencing US policy.
His comments came during critical negotiations over whether Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the murder of 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103, should be switched to a Libyan jail to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Sir Nigel was Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser between 2003 and 2007 and played a key role, alongside the Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, in bringing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi back into the international fold. He was at Mr Blair's side for the first meeting with Colonel Gaddafi in 2007 that resulted in a substantial BP oil contract. [RB: Sheinwald was at Blair's side throughout the negotiations that resulted in the "deal in the desert".]
The cable, obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to the Daily Telegraph, is dated February 2009. It states: "Sheinwald asked that the US continue to consult with the UK in the possible transfer of ailing Pan Am bomber Abdel-Basset al-Megrahi from the UK to Libya. Specifically, he said HMG supported the discussions this week between UK and US officials to define a common strategy.
"Sheinwald cited concern that the Pan Am victims' families were asking for direct US intervention to stop the transfer. He asked that the United States delay "for a few days" any intervention with the Scottish authorities, who will ultimately decide on the transfer." [RB: At this stage, only repatriation under the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement was in issue. No application for compassionate release was made by Megrahi until several months later.]
He was firmly rebuffed by Deputy Secretary Steinberg. The cable states: "The Deputy said the UK government needed to understand the sensitivities in this case, and noted he was acutely aware of the concerns of Lockerbie victim's groups from his previous time in government."
Mr Megrahi was controversially released on compassionate grounds seven months later after being diagnosed with cancer.
Last night the victim's families were furious that British diplomats actively lobbied to stop the US intervening in Megrahi's release.
Kathleen Flynn, whose son John Patrick died in the bombing, said: "It is disgraceful that the British were complicit in his release. This man was a killer who took 270 innocent lives but was allowed go free and live the life of riley in Tripoli."
Sir Nigel Sheinwald also reportedly gave Gaddafi's son, Saif, help with his PhD thesis. The doctorate awarded him by the London School of Economics was already thought suspect because he followed it with a £1.5 million donation. Mr Sheinwald denied the allegation, saying he met Saif Gaddafi while he was writing his thesis but had not helped him. (...)
Senior Labour Cabinet ministers always denied being involved in any backstairs deals over the release in August 2009, yet a secret Foreign Office memo referred to a "game plan" to facilitate Megrahi's move to Libya.
Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, said in an analysis of the papers: "Once Megrahi had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in September 2008, (government) policy was based upon an assessment that UK interests would be damaged if Megrahi were to die in a UK jail."
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We do not comment on leaked documents."
The British ambassador to the US told America it should not intervene to stop the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish prison, according to leaked diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to the Daily Telegraph.
Nigel Sheinwald told James Steinberg, the US Deputy Secretary of State, that he was "concerned" that the demands of victims' families were unduly influencing US policy.
His comments came during critical negotiations over whether Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the murder of 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103, should be switched to a Libyan jail to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Sir Nigel was Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser between 2003 and 2007 and played a key role, alongside the Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, in bringing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi back into the international fold. He was at Mr Blair's side for the first meeting with Colonel Gaddafi in 2007 that resulted in a substantial BP oil contract. [RB: Sheinwald was at Blair's side throughout the negotiations that resulted in the "deal in the desert".]
The cable, obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to the Daily Telegraph, is dated February 2009. It states: "Sheinwald asked that the US continue to consult with the UK in the possible transfer of ailing Pan Am bomber Abdel-Basset al-Megrahi from the UK to Libya. Specifically, he said HMG supported the discussions this week between UK and US officials to define a common strategy.
"Sheinwald cited concern that the Pan Am victims' families were asking for direct US intervention to stop the transfer. He asked that the United States delay "for a few days" any intervention with the Scottish authorities, who will ultimately decide on the transfer." [RB: At this stage, only repatriation under the UK-Libya prisoner transfer agreement was in issue. No application for compassionate release was made by Megrahi until several months later.]
He was firmly rebuffed by Deputy Secretary Steinberg. The cable states: "The Deputy said the UK government needed to understand the sensitivities in this case, and noted he was acutely aware of the concerns of Lockerbie victim's groups from his previous time in government."
Mr Megrahi was controversially released on compassionate grounds seven months later after being diagnosed with cancer.
Last night the victim's families were furious that British diplomats actively lobbied to stop the US intervening in Megrahi's release.
Kathleen Flynn, whose son John Patrick died in the bombing, said: "It is disgraceful that the British were complicit in his release. This man was a killer who took 270 innocent lives but was allowed go free and live the life of riley in Tripoli."
Sir Nigel Sheinwald also reportedly gave Gaddafi's son, Saif, help with his PhD thesis. The doctorate awarded him by the London School of Economics was already thought suspect because he followed it with a £1.5 million donation. Mr Sheinwald denied the allegation, saying he met Saif Gaddafi while he was writing his thesis but had not helped him. (...)
Senior Labour Cabinet ministers always denied being involved in any backstairs deals over the release in August 2009, yet a secret Foreign Office memo referred to a "game plan" to facilitate Megrahi's move to Libya.
Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, said in an analysis of the papers: "Once Megrahi had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in September 2008, (government) policy was based upon an assessment that UK interests would be damaged if Megrahi were to die in a UK jail."
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We do not comment on leaked documents."
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Zuma to meet Gaddafi in Libya
[This is the headline over a report on the South African News24 website. It reads in part:]
President Jacob Zuma will travel to Libya on Sunday for a meeting with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the Department of International Relations and Co-operation said on Friday.
Zuma will participate in the meeting in his capacity as a member of the African Union Ad Hoc High Level Committee on Libya.
"The committee has been granted permission by Nato to enter Libya and to meet in Tripoli with the Libyan leader, HE Muammar Gaddafi," the department said.
"The AU delegation will also meet with the Interim Transitional National Council in Benghazi on 10 and 11 April 2011." (...)
Zuma will take part in an AU meeting on Libya in Nouakchott, Mauritania on Saturday.
"President Zuma will participate in the meeting in his capacity as a member of the African Union Ad Hoc High Level Committee on Libya which has been mandated by the African Union Peace and Security Council to engage the opposing parties in Libya in order to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the current conflict in accordance with the will of the Libyan people."
The AU committee comprises the heads of state of Mauritania, Congo Republic, Mali, Uganda and South Africa.
"It is anticipated that the committee will hold discussions on the recent developments in Libya and deliberate on the way forward in fulfilling its mandate."
[Since the presidency of Nelson Mandela, the South African ANC government has had close relations with the Gaddafi regime in Libya. In the mid-1990s President Mandela and his then aide Jakes Gerwel played a significant part in encouraging the resolution of the Lockerbie impasse through a trial under Scots law in the Netherlands.
The Guardian website now has a report on the Zuma visit. It can be read here. A report on the outcome of the visit, headlined Libya: Gaddafi has accepted roadmap to peace, says Zuma appears in Monday's edition of the same newspaper. However, the BBC News website on Monday evening runs a report headed Libya: Benghazi rebels reject African Union truce plan.]
President Jacob Zuma will travel to Libya on Sunday for a meeting with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the Department of International Relations and Co-operation said on Friday.
Zuma will participate in the meeting in his capacity as a member of the African Union Ad Hoc High Level Committee on Libya.
"The committee has been granted permission by Nato to enter Libya and to meet in Tripoli with the Libyan leader, HE Muammar Gaddafi," the department said.
"The AU delegation will also meet with the Interim Transitional National Council in Benghazi on 10 and 11 April 2011." (...)
Zuma will take part in an AU meeting on Libya in Nouakchott, Mauritania on Saturday.
"President Zuma will participate in the meeting in his capacity as a member of the African Union Ad Hoc High Level Committee on Libya which has been mandated by the African Union Peace and Security Council to engage the opposing parties in Libya in order to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the current conflict in accordance with the will of the Libyan people."
The AU committee comprises the heads of state of Mauritania, Congo Republic, Mali, Uganda and South Africa.
"It is anticipated that the committee will hold discussions on the recent developments in Libya and deliberate on the way forward in fulfilling its mandate."
[Since the presidency of Nelson Mandela, the South African ANC government has had close relations with the Gaddafi regime in Libya. In the mid-1990s President Mandela and his then aide Jakes Gerwel played a significant part in encouraging the resolution of the Lockerbie impasse through a trial under Scots law in the Netherlands.
The Guardian website now has a report on the Zuma visit. It can be read here. A report on the outcome of the visit, headlined Libya: Gaddafi has accepted roadmap to peace, says Zuma appears in Monday's edition of the same newspaper. However, the BBC News website on Monday evening runs a report headed Libya: Benghazi rebels reject African Union truce plan.]
Saturday, 9 April 2011
More defectors 'set to point the finger' over Lockerbie inquiry
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]
Relatives of American victims of the Lockerbie bombing are expecting more Libyan defectors to shed further light on the atrocity that killed 270 people.
Those who lost loved ones in the UK's worst mass-murder claim that they have been told that more defectors are set to follow in the footsteps of Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who has defected to Britain.
Frank Duggan, the Washington-based lawyer who represents many of the US families, yesterday said he was hopeful that future defectors would provide more evidence, the day after Scottish prosecutors and police officers interviewed Mr Koussa.
"Moussa Koussa is not going to be the only defector," Mr Duggan said. "I have heard that there are other people who are going to be willing to talk. I doubt that any of them will say anything that would incriminate themselves, but they might point the finger at other people who were involved in the bombing.
"Moussa Koussa is a very smooth character, but he is also a very bad man. He has got blood on his hands. I don't know what he is going to say about the bombing of Pan Am 103, but he obviously knows a great deal. Whether that translates into evidence that the prosecution can use in court for future indictments remains to be seen."
Representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Constabulary travelled to London to meet with Mr Koussa on Thursday. Neither organisation would release any details about their inquiries, saying that it was a "live investigation".
A joint statement added: "In order to preserve the integrity of that investigation it would not be appropriate at this time to offer any further details of the meeting or the details of ongoing inquiries."
Mr Duggan added: "We get updates of these meetings, but they don't say much. I understand that because we don't want to jeopardise the prosecution." (...)
From the police side, questioning was led by Det Supt Michael Dalgliesh, of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary. Yesterday, First Minsister Alex Salmond said: "I am pleased that Dumfries and Galloway police have had access to Moussa Koussa as requested, and no doubt officers will question him again if required as part of their ongoing investigation. It is very important for the integrity of the process that the police and Crown authorities are given the freedom to pursue their investigation without unwarranted speculation on the substance of their inquiries." (...)
Megrahi is the only man ever to be convicted of the crime, but it has always been suspected that many more people were behind the crime. A second man, [al-]Amin Khalifa Fhimah, stood trial with Megrahi, but was acquitted.
Yesterday it was suggested that he could face a retrial in the wake of reforms to the double jeopardy law, which will clear the way for an accused person to stand trial more than once.
Relatives of American victims of the Lockerbie bombing are expecting more Libyan defectors to shed further light on the atrocity that killed 270 people.
Those who lost loved ones in the UK's worst mass-murder claim that they have been told that more defectors are set to follow in the footsteps of Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who has defected to Britain.
Frank Duggan, the Washington-based lawyer who represents many of the US families, yesterday said he was hopeful that future defectors would provide more evidence, the day after Scottish prosecutors and police officers interviewed Mr Koussa.
"Moussa Koussa is not going to be the only defector," Mr Duggan said. "I have heard that there are other people who are going to be willing to talk. I doubt that any of them will say anything that would incriminate themselves, but they might point the finger at other people who were involved in the bombing.
"Moussa Koussa is a very smooth character, but he is also a very bad man. He has got blood on his hands. I don't know what he is going to say about the bombing of Pan Am 103, but he obviously knows a great deal. Whether that translates into evidence that the prosecution can use in court for future indictments remains to be seen."
Representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Constabulary travelled to London to meet with Mr Koussa on Thursday. Neither organisation would release any details about their inquiries, saying that it was a "live investigation".
A joint statement added: "In order to preserve the integrity of that investigation it would not be appropriate at this time to offer any further details of the meeting or the details of ongoing inquiries."
Mr Duggan added: "We get updates of these meetings, but they don't say much. I understand that because we don't want to jeopardise the prosecution." (...)
From the police side, questioning was led by Det Supt Michael Dalgliesh, of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary. Yesterday, First Minsister Alex Salmond said: "I am pleased that Dumfries and Galloway police have had access to Moussa Koussa as requested, and no doubt officers will question him again if required as part of their ongoing investigation. It is very important for the integrity of the process that the police and Crown authorities are given the freedom to pursue their investigation without unwarranted speculation on the substance of their inquiries." (...)
Megrahi is the only man ever to be convicted of the crime, but it has always been suspected that many more people were behind the crime. A second man, [al-]Amin Khalifa Fhimah, stood trial with Megrahi, but was acquitted.
Yesterday it was suggested that he could face a retrial in the wake of reforms to the double jeopardy law, which will clear the way for an accused person to stand trial more than once.
Re-open appeal hearing and deal with Lockerbie in a legal manner
[This is the headline over four letters published in today's edition of The Herald. They read as follows:]
I welcome advocate Brian Fitzpatrick’s support for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing and the Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi conviction (Letters, April 8).
I have also called for such an inquiry, although my personal preference would be for the second appeal hearing to be re-opened so that the Scottish justice system could deal with the matter in the proper legal sequence.
At least this would allow the concerns of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to be tested in court, but the Scottish political and legal establishments seem determined not to allow this to happen.
I am sure that if they wanted they could find some way to reconstitute this court procedure, perhaps on the grounds that Megrahi may not have understood that withdrawing his appeal was not a pre-condition of his being granted compassionate release.
Mr Fitzpatrick strongly defends the police officers, the judges and those of his colleagues involved in the original investigation and he is right to do so. It is a pity that he should then demean himself and weaken his argument by describing honourable people uneasy with the verdict, such as the bereaved parent Jim Swire, the UN observer Dr Hans Kochler and many others as “conspiracy theorists weaving a tale of deceit and intrigue to blacken the names of better men”. Such comments are objectionable and uncalled for.
The fact remains that the guilty verdict at Camp Zeist was largely influenced by two pieces of very dodgy evidence – the Malta shopkeeper’s identification of a customer he saw only once several months earlier until he was shown photographs of Megrahi by US agents and prompted by $2 million dollars of State Department cash – and the miraculous find of a fingernail-size piece of a timing device in a Lockerbie field by US security men six months after every other fragment of the plane and its contents had been collected in the most extensive search ever carried out by Scottish police officers.
The trial and subsequent investigations were also compromised by the withholding of certain information from the defence team and the refusal of both British and American governments to release relevant documents to the court. The weakness of the evidence resulted in a not proven verdict for one of the accused, and Megrahi’s guilty verdict must have been at best very marginal. No other evidence has yet been produced to prove any Libyan involvement in the atrocity.
Surely Mr Fitzpatrick’s legal experience, if not his political activities, must convince him that justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, especially in such a contentious case with the eyes of the world upon our Scottish justice system.
Iain AD Mann
Brian Fitzpatrick defends his fellow advocates who worked at the Camp Zeist trial for their efforts, yet heaps criticism on the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and First Minister Alex Salmond when he knows full well that Mr MacAskill followed due process of Scots law when taking the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
I admit to having no legal training, but during the trial I could not help but feel an uneasiness, which has steadily increased the more I have studied the available evidence on the Lockerbie tragedy. From the very beginning I thought it strange that two Libyan intelligence officers should be charged but only one found guilty; surely these intelligence officers would have been working together.
I don’t have sufficient knowledge to say whether Megrahi is innocent or guilty, but the SCCRC believes that there may have been a miscarriage of justice and some of the bereaved families who attended the trial also believe that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
Mistakes have been made before, and it seems to me that there are enough questions requiring answers to justify the holding of a full independent public inquiry to establish the truth, which need be feared only by the guilty.
Ruth Marr
I was incensed by Brian Fitzpatrick’s views, ostensibly in reply to Iain AD Mann but covering all those who have appealed for a proper investigation into the circumstances of the Lockerbie tragedy (Letters, April 8).
Does he think that the estimable Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of the victims “would rather secure a headline than undertake any study of the evidence”? How dare he assert that.
Or what about Dr Hans Kochler who was the international observer at Camp Zeist appointed by the United Nations who wrote, amongst other things: “The trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.”
If Mr Fitzpatrick, as a defence lawyer, found out that the main prosecuting witness was being paid a large sum of money for his “evidence”, would he not wonder if this compromised proceedings? No, what I and all the others who have queried this long-running saga want is simply the truth. Only then will the relatives of the victims at least have their doubts and suspicions cleared up.
I do, however, agree with his final paragraph in which he says that our country has been diminished by those who have weaved a tale of deceit and intrigue.
The sooner these people are asked to answer for that deception, the better. This can only be achieved once the truth comes out.
Raymond Hendry
Why on earth does everyone appear to assume that Moussa Koussa will tell the truth when questioned about Lockerbie?
David Clark
I welcome advocate Brian Fitzpatrick’s support for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing and the Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi conviction (Letters, April 8).
I have also called for such an inquiry, although my personal preference would be for the second appeal hearing to be re-opened so that the Scottish justice system could deal with the matter in the proper legal sequence.
At least this would allow the concerns of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to be tested in court, but the Scottish political and legal establishments seem determined not to allow this to happen.
I am sure that if they wanted they could find some way to reconstitute this court procedure, perhaps on the grounds that Megrahi may not have understood that withdrawing his appeal was not a pre-condition of his being granted compassionate release.
Mr Fitzpatrick strongly defends the police officers, the judges and those of his colleagues involved in the original investigation and he is right to do so. It is a pity that he should then demean himself and weaken his argument by describing honourable people uneasy with the verdict, such as the bereaved parent Jim Swire, the UN observer Dr Hans Kochler and many others as “conspiracy theorists weaving a tale of deceit and intrigue to blacken the names of better men”. Such comments are objectionable and uncalled for.
The fact remains that the guilty verdict at Camp Zeist was largely influenced by two pieces of very dodgy evidence – the Malta shopkeeper’s identification of a customer he saw only once several months earlier until he was shown photographs of Megrahi by US agents and prompted by $2 million dollars of State Department cash – and the miraculous find of a fingernail-size piece of a timing device in a Lockerbie field by US security men six months after every other fragment of the plane and its contents had been collected in the most extensive search ever carried out by Scottish police officers.
The trial and subsequent investigations were also compromised by the withholding of certain information from the defence team and the refusal of both British and American governments to release relevant documents to the court. The weakness of the evidence resulted in a not proven verdict for one of the accused, and Megrahi’s guilty verdict must have been at best very marginal. No other evidence has yet been produced to prove any Libyan involvement in the atrocity.
Surely Mr Fitzpatrick’s legal experience, if not his political activities, must convince him that justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, especially in such a contentious case with the eyes of the world upon our Scottish justice system.
Iain AD Mann
Brian Fitzpatrick defends his fellow advocates who worked at the Camp Zeist trial for their efforts, yet heaps criticism on the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and First Minister Alex Salmond when he knows full well that Mr MacAskill followed due process of Scots law when taking the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
I admit to having no legal training, but during the trial I could not help but feel an uneasiness, which has steadily increased the more I have studied the available evidence on the Lockerbie tragedy. From the very beginning I thought it strange that two Libyan intelligence officers should be charged but only one found guilty; surely these intelligence officers would have been working together.
I don’t have sufficient knowledge to say whether Megrahi is innocent or guilty, but the SCCRC believes that there may have been a miscarriage of justice and some of the bereaved families who attended the trial also believe that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
Mistakes have been made before, and it seems to me that there are enough questions requiring answers to justify the holding of a full independent public inquiry to establish the truth, which need be feared only by the guilty.
Ruth Marr
I was incensed by Brian Fitzpatrick’s views, ostensibly in reply to Iain AD Mann but covering all those who have appealed for a proper investigation into the circumstances of the Lockerbie tragedy (Letters, April 8).
Does he think that the estimable Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of the victims “would rather secure a headline than undertake any study of the evidence”? How dare he assert that.
Or what about Dr Hans Kochler who was the international observer at Camp Zeist appointed by the United Nations who wrote, amongst other things: “The trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.”
If Mr Fitzpatrick, as a defence lawyer, found out that the main prosecuting witness was being paid a large sum of money for his “evidence”, would he not wonder if this compromised proceedings? No, what I and all the others who have queried this long-running saga want is simply the truth. Only then will the relatives of the victims at least have their doubts and suspicions cleared up.
I do, however, agree with his final paragraph in which he says that our country has been diminished by those who have weaved a tale of deceit and intrigue.
The sooner these people are asked to answer for that deception, the better. This can only be achieved once the truth comes out.
Raymond Hendry
Why on earth does everyone appear to assume that Moussa Koussa will tell the truth when questioned about Lockerbie?
David Clark
Families of Lockerbie victims make plea to talk to Koussa
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]
Lawyers acting for the British relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing will approach officials to ask for a meeting with former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa.
Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died when Pan Am flight 103 blew up in December 1988, told The Herald he had asked their legal team to request a meeting with Mr Koussa, who defected to the UK last week.
The Libyan was interviewed by Scottish prosecutors and police investigating the Lockerbie bombing on Thursday although the Crown Office has said that to preserve the integrity of the inquiry it could not give any more details. But officials have stressed that Mr Koussa has not been offered diplomatic immunity.
Dr Swire, who has met Mr Koussa and described him as “more frightening than Gaddafi himself”, said he had asked lawyers acting for the British relatives to request a meeting with Mr Koussa, although he urged caution in relying on any information given by the Libyan.
He said: “Anyone who has dealings with Moussa Koussa or people in Benghazi should take what they hear with a huge pinch of salt.”
Dr Swire has written to other British families after it emerged that a group of relatives are setting up the Gaddafi Terror Victims’ Initiative, calling for an investigation by US authorities into Libya’s role in the Lockerbie bombing.
In the letter, reproduced on a blog written by Professor Robert Black, Dr Swire said he feared it was unwise and may lead to unnecessary grief for relatives of those killed in the atrocity.
He said: “So far as Lockerbie is concerned, this initiative is, I believe, based on profoundly insecure foundations. Its title presupposes the guilt of the Gaddafi regime, its content presupposes the guilt of Megrahi.
“The words of defectors to Benghazi, or of Moussa Koussa, should be regarded with the greatest circumspection, taking their present situations into account. War generates fog, and truth is then even harder to come by.
“Without the certainty that Megrahi was guilty, which is implicit in this initiative, there can as yet be no certainty that the Libyan regime itself was involved, at least in the way that most in America believe.”
[The BBC News website now also features a report on this matter.]
Lawyers acting for the British relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing will approach officials to ask for a meeting with former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa.
Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died when Pan Am flight 103 blew up in December 1988, told The Herald he had asked their legal team to request a meeting with Mr Koussa, who defected to the UK last week.
The Libyan was interviewed by Scottish prosecutors and police investigating the Lockerbie bombing on Thursday although the Crown Office has said that to preserve the integrity of the inquiry it could not give any more details. But officials have stressed that Mr Koussa has not been offered diplomatic immunity.
Dr Swire, who has met Mr Koussa and described him as “more frightening than Gaddafi himself”, said he had asked lawyers acting for the British relatives to request a meeting with Mr Koussa, although he urged caution in relying on any information given by the Libyan.
He said: “Anyone who has dealings with Moussa Koussa or people in Benghazi should take what they hear with a huge pinch of salt.”
Dr Swire has written to other British families after it emerged that a group of relatives are setting up the Gaddafi Terror Victims’ Initiative, calling for an investigation by US authorities into Libya’s role in the Lockerbie bombing.
In the letter, reproduced on a blog written by Professor Robert Black, Dr Swire said he feared it was unwise and may lead to unnecessary grief for relatives of those killed in the atrocity.
He said: “So far as Lockerbie is concerned, this initiative is, I believe, based on profoundly insecure foundations. Its title presupposes the guilt of the Gaddafi regime, its content presupposes the guilt of Megrahi.
“The words of defectors to Benghazi, or of Moussa Koussa, should be regarded with the greatest circumspection, taking their present situations into account. War generates fog, and truth is then even harder to come by.
“Without the certainty that Megrahi was guilty, which is implicit in this initiative, there can as yet be no certainty that the Libyan regime itself was involved, at least in the way that most in America believe.”
[The BBC News website now also features a report on this matter.]
We need truth about absurdity of unsafe Lockerbie conviction
[This is the headline over the version of Ian Bell's article that is published in today's edition of The Herald. I would not normally reproduce the text of a piece that had appeared here earlier in a slightly different form. But this merits an exception to that rule. It reads as follows:]
One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session.
It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.
I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.
Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.
Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.
So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?
Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?
We get a legal letter to The Herald instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame”.
Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.
The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the “bribing” ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.
But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.
“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.
The real mistake was to believe that Colonel Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?
More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries and Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I thought – certainly in the case of Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?
Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.
What was asked of Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.
The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the apparent suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.
You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought that an SNP Government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.
Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were legal cabs for hire.
Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.
How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Koussa under close arrest? Why does the Government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?
So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our legal system has fallen in with “a tribe”.
I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence – with an SCCRC judgment to hand – for Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?
Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.
[Coincidentally (?) the Lallands Peat Worrier blog today features a post on Cockburn, one of my Scottish legal heroes.]
One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session.
It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.
I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.
Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.
Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.
So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?
Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?
We get a legal letter to The Herald instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame”.
Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.
The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the “bribing” ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.
But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.
“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.
The real mistake was to believe that Colonel Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?
More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries and Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I thought – certainly in the case of Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?
Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.
What was asked of Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.
The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the apparent suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.
You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought that an SNP Government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.
Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were legal cabs for hire.
Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.
How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Koussa under close arrest? Why does the Government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?
So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our legal system has fallen in with “a tribe”.
I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence – with an SCCRC judgment to hand – for Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?
Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.
[Coincidentally (?) the Lallands Peat Worrier blog today features a post on Cockburn, one of my Scottish legal heroes.]
Friday, 8 April 2011
Lockerbie: lawyers, guns & money
[This is the heading over another brilliant article posted today on Ian Bell's Prospero blog and a version of which will appear in tomorrow's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session. It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.
I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.
Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.
Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.
So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?
Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?
We get a legal letter instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame".
Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.
The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the bribing ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.
But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work, and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of al Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.
“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.
The real mistake was to believe that Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?
More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries & Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I had thought – certainly in the case of al Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?
Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.
What was asked of Moussa Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense be prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.
The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.
You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought, if naive, that an SNP government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.
Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were just legal cabs for hire.
Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.
How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Moussa Koussa under close arrest? Why does the government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?
So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our judiciary has fallen in with “a tribe”.
I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence strategy – with an SCCRC judgement to hand – for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?
Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.
One of my favourite pictures is Raeburn’s portrait of Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn, once judge within the Court of Session. It’s there in a glance, cool as you like, direct from an age of reason. It says: here are my principles; convince me.
I once entertained a theory that most of Scotland’s high-end prose, Walter Scott’s most obviously, descended from Scots law. Years ago, I even tried to convince an audience that Robert Louis Stevenson could not have written nit-picking tales of moral difficulty without Hume and the Faculty of Advocates. They wondered what I was on about.
Scotland is soaked in the language of lawyers. After the churches and education, the law was the one inviolable (supposedly) thing we rescued from Union. We are a country of laws, of legal tradition, and of reasoned prose. Most of our politicians have been lawyers, and most of our hired legal hands have been political. They can’t help themselves.
Cockburn concludes his Memorials with the news that he’s getting on in the world. Thanks to the usual patronage, the boy from Edinburgh’s Hope Park is to be Solicitor-General. He writes: “I trust that we [Jeffrey had bagged Lord Advocate] shall do our duty. If we do, we cannot fail to do some good to Scotland. In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”.
So, Cocky: what would you have made of Moussa Koussa?
Here we have an unresolved mass murder. Here we have a witness. Here we have (it is suggested) “abuses of our representative and municipal systems”. Here we have certain subservient protocols attendant to a treaty of Union. Still, one would wish to at least detain the witness, surely?
We get a legal letter instead. The indefatigable Brian Fitzpatrick writes, in timely fashion, to the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world with a note of support, it seems, for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie atrocity.
Or rather, one from the Faculty suggests, there might be “scope” – Cockburn would have flinched – “for laying to rest some of the more egregious claims of the tribe of Lockerbie conspiracy theorists – those who have made a life’s work of the now unravelling assertion that somehow Libya and its senior operatives, including Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, were not to blame".
Send lawyers, as the song used to go, guns and money.
The brief then goes on to lavish praise on pillars of our legal temples. He suggests that the Camp Zeist trial was terribly hard – unpaid? – work for those who allowed security spooks to infest the well of the court. He overlooks the Socratic wisdom that entertained the bribing ($3 million to a pair of those crucial Maltese witnesses) of participants by American “authorities”. He does not trouble himself with forensic difficulties.
But, first and foremost, this lawyer nowhere mentions the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It counts as a significant omission. It makes no odds to me whether “Gaddafi did it” or not. I just want to know what went wrong with Scots law, why the SCCRC found six reasons – after years of work, and 800 pages – for doubting the conviction of al Megrahi, and why the rest of us, we sometime citizens, are barred from knowledge granted as pub gossip to every lawyer in the land. And then told to forget about it.
“Conspiracy theorists” is neat. It suggests that anyone who might wonder about the habits of our legal-political establishment has problems – a ticklish inversion – with reality. It is meant to shut down argument. The conviction is as safe, it seems, as all those blasted, bloodied Lockerbie houses that no longer stand.
The real mistake was to believe that Gaddafi’s fall would give oxygen to the truth. Instead, in the blood and the mire, there’s a big carpet being unfurled, and a lot of sweeping going on. On this point, I am liable to sound repetitive: why isn’t Moussa Koussa under arrest?
More particularly: why has he not been taken into custody by officers from Dumfries & Galloway? Students of the Treaty of Union may take another view, but I had thought – certainly in the case of al Megrahi – that Scots law held sway. So why has our Crown Office been “negotiating” with the Foreign Office over this witness, of all witnesses?
Saif Gaddafi, heir to idiocy, says there are no secrets. Washington and London, he tells the BBC, know all there is to know about Lockerbie. Scotland’s lawyers, some of them, know exactly what he means. But Scotland’s people have been given no such advantages.
What was asked of Moussa Koussa? That’s not a complicated, nor legally compromised, question. Having won London’s sanction – ignoring questions of jurisdiction – what followed? Just state the question, or the area of inquiry: we have a right to know. Disclosure is in no sense be prejudicial to a possible trial, far less to a public inquiry.
The obvious fact is this: “Gaddafi did it” is not the point. The safety of a conviction, and the suborning of a legal system by security services is another, bigger, deal. Cockburn wouldn’t have sat still for it. Brian Fitzpatrick prefers a lesser prose.
You have to ask yourself: why does it still matter, and matter so much, to those who promenade around Parliament Hall? Why does it still, after all these years, infect every party? You might have thought, if naive, that an SNP government would be rushing to settle the Lockerbie business, if only to discomfit Labour placemen and Tory hacks. No chance.
Three hundred and odd strollers in the Faculty count for more, in Scottish public life, than any other constituency. Which is odd. Lockerbie wasn’t their doing. They did not infect the evidence. They didn’t nobble the politicians, or write the editorials, nor do a squalid deal in the desert. They were just legal cabs for hire.
Henry Cockburn saw them coming. I don’t even know if Memorials of His Time is in print. Still, the good judge had witty things to say about small countries and the profession of principle. The reason we don’t know about Lockerbie is this: the lawyers don’t like it. And they respond to argument by any means necessary.
How come? What worries them so much? Why has there been no public inquiry? Who – pace Fitzpatrick – would be harmed? Why isn’t Moussa Koussa under close arrest? Why does the government of Scotland, another party to the safety of an absurd conviction, fail to assert the rights of an independent legal code?
So: is Brian Fitzpatrick supporting a properly independent public inquiry into all that befell the Lockerbie prosecutions? He doesn’t quite say as much. Why not? Instead, he seems to believe that anyone in doubt over the independence of our judiciary has fallen in with “a tribe”.
I’d be interested in a test case. What would one propose, tomorrow, as a paid defence strategy – with an SCCRC judgement to hand – for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi? And how would the betting go, up at the courts, around the dockets, or by the Shirra’s seat, for that one?
Cockburn said: “In the abuses of our representative and municipal systems alone, our predecessors have left us fields in which patriotism may exhaust itself”. Two hundred and seventy were murdered, and still we fail them.
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