US Secretary of State Clinton and Musa Kusa

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009:

Hillary meets Musa

Mrs Clinton also met Tuesday with Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa, formerly Tripoli's intelligence chief. Many US officials believe he had knowledge of the 1988 plot to blow up a US-bound airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. Mrs. Clinton didn't raise the Lockerbie case with Mr Kusa, a US official said, but focused on US cooperation with Libya on counterterror measures and efforts to stabilize Sudan.

[From an article on the Secretary of State's Middle East tour in today's edition ofThe Wall Street Journal. The following excerpt from a press briefing given by State Department spokesman P J Crowley is taken from the Still4Hill website.]

MR CROWLEY: And then she met with Foreign Minister Musa Kusa — M-u-s-a, K-u-s-a – who’s a – he’s a graduate of Michigan State University. At one point, he said, Spartans and gave a thumbs up.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

QUESTION: Wasn’t Musa Kusa indicted for terrorism at one point? Can you check, because was the intelligence chief before he became the foreign minister?

QUESTION: I thought he was indicted for killing Americans.

QUESTION: Were you going to tell us about this? Can I have the next question?

QUESTION: Yeah.

QUESTION: Why was this not on the schedule and why was there no photo opportunity of this?

MR CROWLEY: The short answer is it happened almost – let me back up. I mean, we had a limited time and we had a number of potential candidates for bilats. And in some cases, there were a couple countries that we were looking at bilats. And for example, and – but the Secretary was able to have pull-asides during the GCC meeting, for example. I mean, Libya is a country that we are – we have an emerging relationship with. And we think it’s best to continue talking to them and seeing where we can continue to advance the relationship.

And that – but I mean, it was something that – this was just a – kind of like a target of opportunity where the ministers found themselves with a similar hole and they got pulled into a room and sat for about 15 minutes.

QUESTION: Did they discuss the Lockerbie bomber’s recent release back home?

MR CROWLEY: I was in the meeting; that did not come up. They –

QUESTION: She didn’t bring it up? I mean, you guys – excuse me, sorry. I mean, you and Ian were having to brief for about 10 days straight to us. Every single day we were asking you – hammering you guys with questions about the seeming welcome parade that he got and how upset people were about that, and you guys kept saying how upset the U.S. was about that. She didn’t bring that up when she had an opportunity?

MR CROWLEY: We didn’t bring up the tent either. (Laughter.) Sorry.

QUESTION: The tent’s a little bit less of foreign policy issue.

MR CROWLEY: No, the – I mean, Libya has a perspective on the region. They have been very helpful and integrally involved in developments in Sudan, so we did talk about Sudan, talked about Darfur. There has been cooperation from the countries on counterterrorism. And they continue to talk about advancing our relationship. But it was about a 10- or 15-minute meeting.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.) Sorry, you just said it was only 10 or 15 minutes. Was that the first time (inaudible)?

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MR CROWLEY: I’ll check.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MR CROWLEY: Yes, that’s the first time that they’ve met.

The winding path towards Zeist

[Two items from this date in 1997 serve to illustrate some of the difficulties involved in seeking to overcome resistance to a neutral venue Lockerbie trial:]

1. Hansard (HC Deb 03 November 1997 vol 300 c46W)

Mr [Tam] Dalyell To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will consider amending the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill to permit a Scottish court to sit overseas to try those accused in respect of Lockerbie.

Mr [Henry] McLeish [holding answer 30 October 1997]: The Government remain committed to trial of the two Libyan accused in Scotland or the United States and it would therefore be inappropriate and unnecessary to amend the criminal procedure legislation.

2. The Herald Arabs knock back Lockerbie offer

Hopes of a breakthrough in the Lockerbie stalemate were dented last night when the Arab League rejected an offer to visit Scotland to inspect the legal system.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook invited the Arab League, the Organisation of African Unity, and the UN Secretary-General to send observers to Scotland to study its judicial system at first hand.

However the head of the Arab League, Esmat Abdel-Meguid, said yesterday that he did not intend to take up the invitation, and that Libya would never hand over its citizens to Scotland or the US for trial.

Mr Cook issued the invitation in the hope of breaking the logjam over Lockerbie, with Libya facing UN sanctions for refusing to surrender for trial two men accused of the 1988 PanAm aircraft bombing which killed 270 people.

Libya has offered to hand them over for trial in a ''neutral'' country with some elements of Scottish legal procedures, but refuses to countenance a trial in Britain or the US.

The Foreign Office had no immediate comment on the Arab League refusal.

A spokesman said: ''There is nothing I can add to what the Foreign Secretary said on Tuesday. He has issued the invitation in good faith, and we would be very happy for people to come and see for themselves.''

At a press conference in Abu Dhabi, the head of the Arab League said it was not possible for one country to hand over its citizens to another without a mutual extradition agreement.   

''Britain's insistence that the trial takes place in Scotland is rejected,'' he said.

He said Britain could resolve the legal complications of moving a Scottish court outside its territory by having the UN Security Council issue a special resolution setting up such a court.

SCCRC report plus terminal cancer not enough for bail

[What follows is the text of an article headlined Judgment will resonate round the world that was published on the website of The Scotsman on this date in 2008.  It reads in part:]

Few would relish the decision. Three of Scotland's most senior judges must decide whether to free on bail the man convicted of the biggest single act of mass murder in Scottish history.

Their job is to decide whether the grounds for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi's current appeal against conviction are so compelling that they outweigh the horrors of the Lockerbie bombing.

The law in the case is straightforward. An appellant seeking release on bail has to show that the grounds of his appeal would, if sustained, lead to his conviction being quashed.

Professor Robert Black, a leading expert in the Lockerbie case, believes the Libyan has more than enough grounds.

He has stressed the appeal stems from a report from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which warned his conviction may have been a miscarriage of justice. But there are other, perhaps more compelling factors facing Lord Hamilton, Scotland's most senior judge, and two colleagues at Edinburgh's High Court who must decide later this week whether releasing Megrahi poses any danger to the public – or any risk of flight.

Here Megrahi's supporters can be confident. The 56-year-old faces a painful death from cancer within 12 months. Is he fit to flee the jurisdiction of Scottish justice? No. Is he likely to kill if freed?

As his conviction was for a politically motivated act of terror, a repeat attack hardly seems plausible, particularly in his physical state.

The Libyan's lawyers have declined to comment on their application. However, they may play the compassion card, saying Megrahi cannot receive the treatment he needs in Greenock Prison. And they may also stress the amount of time Megrahi has spent waiting for the outcome of the SCCRC review.

The Crown will have to decide whether to oppose bail, which it has in the past, arguing it should only be granted to convicted prisoners in 'exceptional' circumstances.

[RB: The Crown did oppose bail and the High Court, on 14 November, duly refused it: Interim liberation refused.]

Obituary of Lockerbie activist Martin Cadman

[What follows is an obituary by Tam Dalyell of Martin Cadman which has been published today on the website of The Independent:]

Martin Cadman: Geologist and pressure-group activist whose son was killed in the Lockerbie bombing

Cadman was forensic in his search for the truth

Bill Cadman, a young theatre sound designer taking a Christmas holiday, was one of those who perished when the Pan Am airliner Maid of the Seas was brought down by a bomb over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 on its way to New York. His father, Martin, and his mother, Rita, became prominent members of that doggedly determined band of remarkable individuals widely known over the years as the British Lockerbie Relatives.

Dr Jim Swire, their chairman, told me, “It was a pleasure to have worked with Martin Cadman in trying to establish the truth about who murdered his son, Bill, and my daughter, Flora. Martin and I soon acquired a healthy distrust of the information provided by the governments of the US and the UK.”

I became publicly involved in the case following a visit to my house by a police sergeant, a constituent from South Queensferry, who had been assigned to the Lockerbie crash site. He had been shocked by the behaviour of US officials, which would have been totally unacceptable in a Scottish murder investigation.

After I raised these concerns in the House of Commons, Cadman contacted me to give vent to his huge dissatisfaction at the way the relatives were represented at the Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry. Lawyers could not pull the wool over Cadman’s eyes – and that would be the case for the next 25 years.

Cadman, by profession a geological scientist, was forensic in his search for the truth. Did the tragic events originate in the shooting down of an Iranian airliner carrying pilgrims to Mecca by the USS Vincennes in 1988? What was the role of Ali Akbar Mohtashami, Interior Minister in Tehran at the time of the incident – and Iran’s ambassador to Damascus from 1982-86, when he had contact with the terrorist gangs of the Bekaa Valley, particularly that led by Ahmed Jibril?

Above all, Cadman demanded – but never received – an explanation for why, on 24 December 1988, three days after the Lockerbie disaster, $10m from Iranian sources was paid into the coffers of the General Command of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Given his background, it was scarcely surprising that Cadman should focus on such issues. His father had been chief chemist of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, while his uncle, John Cadman, created first Baron Cadman of Silverdale in 1937, was an influential member of the Royal Commission which reported on Iran’s oilfields. Martin Cadman told me he believed that much trouble had originated in the way the British government had toppled Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.

From Merchant Taylors’, Cadman went into the RAF in 1942. To his regret, he saw no action: he was so gifted a pilot that he was detailed to go to Miami to train others. Taking the view that being away from his family for long periods would be unfair, he eschewed the idea of becoming a commercial pilot and went instead to Selwyn College, Cambridge to read geology. In 1989, after Bill’s death, he took up flying and gliding again, and would fly solo around the East Anglian skies as a mid-octogenarian.

His working life began in the scientific section of the Coal Board. One of his mentors was, in his words, “its inspiring director [of research], Dr Jacob Bronowski.” There followed a period at ICI’s Millbank headquarters in London, with Sir Paul Chambers at the helm. “The only main board member my colleagues and I could not stand,” Cadman told me, “was Dr Richard Beeching, the rudest and most sarcastic man in England.”

Somewhat ruefully, because he knew I was a friend and colleague, Cadman told me that he moved to the Department of Energy, but did not have a high regard for his Minister, Tony Benn – “albeit the politest man in England.” Cadman’s career culminated in a senior position with the engineering firm WS Atkins.

My lasting memory of Martin Cadman is of his clarity of thought during the course of many, many telephone calls. It was ironic that so gifted an RAF instructor should be involved in Lockerbie.

Martin Henry Cadman, geologist: born Merton, London 26 September 1924; married 1950 Rita Allen (two daughters, one son, and one son deceased); died East Bilney, Norfolk 7 October 2015.

Every lawyer who has read the judgment says 'this is nonsense'

[What follows is the text of a report headlined Architect of Lockerbie trial vows to fight for an appeal that was published in The Scotsman on this date in 2005:]

One of the key architects of the Lockerbie trial has vowed to continue his fight to have the murder conviction of the Libyan bomber brought back to the appeal courts. In an interview with The Scotsman, Professor Robert Black said it was "the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice in Scotland for 100 years".

The professor of Scots law, who devised the non-jury trial that saw the case heard in 2000, said a failure to address concerns about the case would "gravely damage" the reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi is serving a life sentence for murdering 270 people by bombing Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is looking at his case.

Prof Black said he felt "a measure of personal responsibility" for persuading Libya to allow Megrahi and his co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima, who was acquitted, to stand trial under Scots law.

"I have written about this and nobody is interested," he said. "Every lawyer who has ... read the judgment says 'this is nonsense'. It is nonsense. It really distresses me; I won't let it go."

Dr Jim Swire, a spokesman for the UK families of Lockerbie victims, also doubts that the conviction is sound. After a meeting involving Prof Black and former Labour MP Tam Dalyell yesterday, the families are to write to the SCCRC urging it to pursue the case, even if Megrahi decides not to take the case further.

Dr Swire is also concerned by comments attributed to the former lord advocate Lord Fraser, which appeared to doubt the credibility of a key prosecution witness, Tony Gauci.

[The full published text of the interview can be read here: Why Robert Black won't let the Lockerbie trial lie.

Exactly two years later, I had my first and only meeting with Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Here is how I recorded it on this blog:]

Today I had a two-hour meeting in Her Majesty's Prison Greenock with Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, at his invitation (my first). Since the date of the trial court's verdict against him, my position has been a clear one: on the evidence led at the trial his conviction was simply an outrageous miscarriage of justice, about which the Scottish criminal justice system should feel nothing but shame. As a result of today's meeting I am satisfied that not only was there a wrongful conviction, but the victim of it was an innocent man. Lawyers, and I hope others, will appreciate this distinction.

I will not be disclosing the content of my discussions with Mr Megrahi, but I can say that he now speaks English with a fine Scottish accent (his first words to me were "Thank you for visiting me on such a dreich day") and that his taste in mints is impeccable.

["dreich" in relation to weather means dreary, cheerless, bleak. See http://www.dsl.ac.uk/]

US dictation in Lockerbie case

[This is the headline over a group of three letters published in The Herald on this date in 1997, reflecting views that were commonly held at that time. They read as follows:]

[1]  Asked by Tam Dalyell, MP, whether the Americans might be unwilling to give information to the Dumfries and Galloway Police on the Lockerbie air disaster in order to facilitate a “neutral country trial”, Mr Robin Cook replied: “We have had full co-operation...from the United States authorities. It would not be possible, however, to mount a prosecution without the co-operation of the US authorities, who hold part of the evidence. Most of those killed on the Pan-Am jet were Americans, and the majority of their relatives do not want a trial to take place outside Scotland or the United States.”

Throughout the past nine years we have constantly been assured that the criminal investigation was being conducted by the Dumfries and Galloway Police, with Scotland's Lord Advocate having overall responsibility.

At the one inquiry we have so far been allowed - which was mandatory under Scots law anyway - namely the Lockerbie Fatal Accident Inquiry, it was concluded that the plane, although American, had been loaded from empty (and therefore acquired the bomb) at London's Heathrow airport. It was deemed to have been “under the host-state protection of the United Kingdom”.

Soon after crossing the Border my daughter and 258 others aboard the plane (over 30 of them British) were cruelly done to death by the action of that bomb. The debris then fell upon Lockerbie, 31,000 feet below, where 11 Scots citizens not even associated with the aircraft also died.

By what metamorphosis of his position as the Foreign Secretary of our country does Robin Cook propose that America should dictate that a path be followed which, over the past six years, has shown itself incompetent to deliver the accused to trial, thus obstructing the process of truth and justice, which is what we, his citizens, seek?

Dr Jim Swire  Bromsgrove.

[2]  Was ever a dead horse flogged as hard and as long as the Lockerbie air disaster?

One cannot fail to be impressed with the tenacity of Dr Jim Swire and his fellow sufferers, who have been determined to ''keep the faith'' with their loved ones, lost in such terrible circumstances.

Having watched and read every serious report available, allied to information available locally, I conclude that neither this British Government nor any American one (certainly not the latter) will ever permit this case to come to trial.

Much of the evidence against the Libyans centres on occurrences in Malta, and particularly the miraculous memory of a Maltese shopkeeper, who can remember perfectly the appearance of some shopper plus all the common or garden items he bought on just another mundane day, months after the event.

Much hinges on this ordinary case of ordinary clothes, identified with amazing precision by investigators and shopkeeper alike. I would have more confidence in this detection had there been any report that the owner/s of the suitcases of powder found in a field on a local farm had ever been formally identified.

We may of course be told that this is merely a piece of local mythology, but I remember very well the farmer saying to me deadpan, and with only his eyes smiling, that he was worried in case his sheep developed a taste for the stuff!

If the cases had ordinary labels on them, the culprit/s should have been identified at once. If the cases had no labels on them, it confirms everything about the institutionalised breaching of security at Munich and Heathrow airports, as has been suggested by security experts in the past.

I have heard Dr Swire state that he wants to know who was responsible for the death of all the victims, a reasonable enough request from a grieving parent.

Look no further than the commanding officer of the United States warship which, equipped with every state-of-the-art electronic artifice, blew to smithereens an unarmed, fully laden civilian Iranian aircraft.

Are we supposed to forget the obfuscation which followed, with the White House spokesman firstly describing the plane as if it was a divebombing Stuka, and then as time passed conceding bit by bit that the plane was not quite as close as detailed the last time he was briefed? And then his final statement, that it was in fact miles away from the warship?

It was, we were then told, an ''unfortunate accident''. Indeed it was. Just how unfortunate, we learnt one December night in and above Lockerbie, long after that same commanding officer was welcomed home to the ''Land of the Free'', feted as some conquering hero.

Though they got precious little, it has never been my belief that the Iranian families were due any less sympathy and understanding than the families of those who suffered the inevitable repercussions of that heinous original crime.

Small wonder that neither our Government, nor the American Government to whom we seem so beholden, will agree to holding a trial outwith territory which they control, where elimination would be simple.

On the basis that ''if the mountain will not go to Mohammed'' I suggest, not that we seek a neutral country, but that we select an entire judicial team, court staff, and jury, and then request Libya to host the trial, to be run under Scots law by Scottish professionals in Libya, and with no TV cameras allowed anywhere near the court.

We control the trial, and they control the surrounding security. Whoever refuses to accept such a solution to the current impasse just might have a good deal to hide.

And I haven't mentioned the CIA once!

R S Carlaw  Lockerbie.

[3]  It has pained me for years that the anguished relatives of the Lockerbie massacre are still being led by the move to seek a Scottish trial for the Libyan accused.

Every adult in the UK knows that the bastard verdict, Not Proven, would be brought.   

Malcolm Campbell  Girvan.

Questions that demand an answer

[What follows is the text of an item posted on this blog on this date in 2008:]

Lockerbie questions demand an answer

This is the headline over an article in today's issue of The Times by Magnus Linklater, the newspaper's Scotland Editor (and the editor of The Scotsman in the bygone days when that title was still a serious and responsible journal).

The article reads in part:

'You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise that nagging questions have gnawed away at the Lockerbie case since the first investigations began. The veteran campaigner, Tam Dalyell, who describes himself as a “professor of Lockerbie studies”, is convinced that neither al-Megrahi nor the Libyan Government had any involvement. He, along with the Rev John Mosey and Dr Jim Swire, who both lost daughters in the atrocity, believe that there has been a spectacular miscarriage of justice.

'They have raised questions about basic evidence in the original case. They have challenged eyewitness accounts offered by the chief prosecution witness, the Maltese shopowner who originally identified Megrahi as a suspect. They have raised doubts about the forensic evidence, and have pointed out that al-Megrahi, a civilised and intelligent man, is a most unlikely terrorist.

'Last weekend, their campaign was given fresh impetus when Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent, reported that Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist responsible for some of the worst attacks of the 1970s and 1980s, may have been working for the Americans before the invasion of Iraq. Secret documents - the very phrase is a conspiracy idiom - written by Saddam Hussein's security services state that he had been colluding with the Americans trying to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda. Abu Nidal's alleged suicide in 2002 may have been an execution by the Iraqis for his betrayal.

'From this tenuous connection stems the idea that the US security services may have had previous contacts within Abu Nidal's terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which many experts have long believed was the real perpetrator of Lockerbie.

'Mr Dalyell, who thinks there may be some weight to this theory, points to incidents such as notices that went up in the US Embassy in Moscow in the days before the bombing, warning diplomats not to travel on PanAm flights, and how senior South African figures were hauled off the plane before the flight, almost as if there had been advance warning.

'For me, this kind of evidence strays into the territory of “the second gunman theory” that bedevilled the Kennedy assassination. But there is one aspect of the case that I have never understood: why was it that, for the first 18 months of the investigation, Scottish police, US investigators and European security agents were convinced that the perpetrators were Abu Nidal's PFLP? And why was it that, in the run-up to the Gulf War, when good relations with Syria and Iran were important to Western interests, attention switched abruptly from Abu Nidal's terrorists, and on to Libya?

'These matters have never satisfactorily been explained, and in the interests of common justice they should be addressed. For the sake of the Flight 103 victims, for the wider interests of Western security, and for the man now dying in a Scottish prison, there is a need for a proper inquiry. It does not have to be as wideranging as the Warren Commission that examined the Kennedy case, but it does need to be international, and to have US backing. The appeal in Edinburgh next year will examine legal aspects of the case, but it cannot extend to the wider issues that demand resolution.

'Just possibly a new president taking office next January will find in his in-tray persuasive evidence pointing to a reopening of the case. There are powerful moral reasons for dusting it off and asking a basic question: who was responsible for Britain's worst terrorist outrage?'

[RB: Although this article is mentioned on Mr Linklater’s page on journalisted, it no longer appears on the website of The Times. The most recent article by Magnus Linklater in The Times can be read here. A very different stance is adopted. What has changed over the past seven years? Certainly no new evidence has emerged supporting Megrahi’s guilt. And much evidence has surfaced that further undermines the conviction. What is it, then, that has changed Mr Linklater’s mind? It’s a mystery.]

What Megrahi and Fhimah were tried for

On this date in 1999 the indictment for the forthcoming Lockerbie trial was served on Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and al-Amin Fhimah at Camp Zeist. It can be read here.

Libya, Iran and the riddle of Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article published yesterday on the Libya Business Info website.  It reads as follows:]

The evening of the 21st December 1988 was thick with gloom and chill. At London’s Heathrow airport, a myriad of humanity meandered and milled around the terminals. It was the holiday season, and the cosmopolitan crowds coursing through Heathrow were heading home. The mostly American passengers on Pan Am Flight 103 boarded their 747 and settled into their seats, expecting that in six or so hours’ time their jet would be kissing the tarmac in New York. Surely, as the plane gently pushed back from its gate, no one on board would have guessed that within the next hour, all on board would be dead.

As the twenty-seventh anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster approaches, the official story of events remains embroiled in doubt and disbelief. The Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who died maintaining his innocence, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001, after being found guilty of planting the suitcase bomb that detonated above the Scottish borders. Allegedly enacted on the orders of Muammar Gaddafi, the Lockerbie bombing has been touted as an act of revenge for US actions in Libya during the 1980s. A succession of tit-for-tat events occurred throughout the decade, including the Libyan-sponsored bombing of a West German nightclub frequented by US servicemen and the American backing of Chadian troops against Libyan militias, which culminated in the former’s capture of the Aouzou Strip.

The support offered to Chad by the US lingered on Gaddafi’s mind, already soaked with anti-Western, anti-imperialist vitriol. Certainly, the notion that the maverick North African leader, with his support for terrorist groups across the globe, could have ordered the bombing of an American airliner in the run up to Christmas. In fact in 2011, in the midst of the Libyan Civil War, the former Libyan Justice Minister claimed he held proof that Gaddafi had personally ordered the bombing (to date, however, he has not released it).

Last week saw the first real developments in the Lockerbie narrative since the trial some fifteen years ago. Scottish and American investigators released the identities of two Libyans wanted for questioning. Mohammed Abouajela Masud and Abdullah al-Senussi are suspected of having acted with al-Megrahi, and like that man, both held positions of power in Gaddafi’s regime. Senussi was Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, and is currently in jail awaiting execution, whilst Masud is serving a sentence for bomb-making. Documentation from the initial investigation places both men in the same circles as Megrahi, and Masud was apparently in Malta at the same time as he was. This is very relevant, as the testimony of one Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper, identified Megrahi as the man who purchased clothing from his establishment that was later found in the suitcase the bomb had been planted in: it is thought that the bomb entered the air freight system at Malta’s Luqa airport, with the help of Libyan Arab Airlines’ station controller there.

This news is pivotal for more than just the fact that two men, who may very well have been connected with the deaths of two-hundred and seventy people, have been identified and are now wanted for questioning. For some time, there has been scepticism about who is really behind Lockerbie. The people holding these views are not just run of the mill conspiracy theorists, who refute official government explanations as a modus operandi. Rather, some relatives of the deceased have stated that they do not believe Megrahi was behind the atrocity, and there are doubts over whether Libya was the ultimate perpetrator: some point to Iran as the true instigator of the attack.

In July this year, high court judges in Edinburgh ruled against an appeal launched by twenty-six British relatives of victims who, alongside the Megrahi family, believed that a miscarriage of justice had been carried out in his conviction. Senior Scottish prosecutors have held up their judgement of Megrahi’s guilt, and American victims have supported this decision. Previous appeals, in particular one held in 2007 after a four-year review of the original trial, outlined some of the main contentions with the verdict. Amongst them, Gauci was purportedly paid some $2million to provide testimony against Megrahi; the withholding of vital documents relating to the Mebo (a Swiss firm) timer that was supposed to have detonated the bomb and the fact that the head of the company was apparently offered a $4million bribe by the FBI to testify that the timer debris belonged to a device supplied to Libya; and finally the fact a Mebo employee swore he had stolen a timer and backhandedly supplied it to Lockerbie investigators the year after the bombing. All in all, some decide that Megrahi, and perhaps Libya, were scapegoats.

Those who hold such opinions lean toward Iran as the masterminds of the attack. Two years before Lockerbie, the USS Vincennes, an American warship, shot down an Iran Air flight from Tehran to Dubai, killing all on board. This was doubtless an atrocity also, especially considering the aircraft was in Iranian airspace, over Iranian waters and following its standard flight path. Many journalists, and (possibly) even Margaret Thatcher, thought the Iranian revenge motive more plausible than the Libyan slake for blood following the aforementioned tensions with the USA. Potential further evidence came in the form of the former head of Iranian intelligence in Europe, whom, upon defecting to Germany, elaborated that his former country had contracted Libya and a Palestinian guerrilla to carry out the attack.

The waters of international affairs are some of the murkiest, and no one would be surprised to learn of political manoeuvring on behalf of the US to paint perceived hostile nations as responsible for atrocities. Certainly, there is more to this story than meets the eye, although if Iran had ultimately ordered the attacks, questions remain as to why the investigators never followed that path when that country’s government was an obvious suspect. Regardless, the naming of two new suspects may present new hope for the families of the victims in pinpointing who exactly is to blame for the murder of their loved ones. One can only hope, in the current Libyan climate, those two men can be reached and give their testimonies. It could change the face of the investigation after all these years of scepticism.

When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

[What follows is the text of a report headlined Bill would double reward in Lockerbie bombing to $10 million published yesterday on the NJ.com website:]

With the news that there may be two more suspects in the 1988 bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the US Senators from New Jersey and New York have introduced a bill doubling the reward for evidence resulting in a conviction to $10 million.

"Nothing we do will bring back home the 270 mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters we lost that day, including 34 New Jerseyans," New Jersey's junior senator, Cory Booker, said in a statement. "But our hope is that this legislation will empower the State Department to continue seeking justice for the victims and their families."

The Dec 21 terrorist bombing of the London-New York flight killed all 259 people on board, many traveling home for the holidays, plus another 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie.

Lybian [sic] intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 2001, but was released in 2009 and allowed to return to Lybia in a  controversial decision that Scottish authorities said was prompted by his terminal cancer. He died in 2012.

Booker and fellow Democrats Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York introduced the bill after the Associated Press reported earlier this month that Scottish prosecutors had identified two other Libyans as suspects.

[RB: In the light of the problems created by the payments to the Gauci brothers from the US Rewards for Justice scheme, one may perhaps be forgiven for thinking that this is actually a Baldrick-style cunning plan.]