A commentary on the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the murder of 270 people in the Pan Am 103 disaster.
Thursday 20 April 2017
Gaddafi expresses support for neutral venue trial
Friday 14 September 2012
Libyan newspaper report on Lockerbie compensation trial
The charges have surprised many observers as they imply that the two should have been more effective in serving the Qaddafi regime and that the Lockerbie deal should not have happened.
Both men denied the charges in court.
Their lawyer made several requests, the most important of which was a postponement of proceedings in order to give the defence time to examine all the documentary evidence. He also asked to see his clients in private and, pending a postponement, requested the court to release them on bail.
Bail was refused but the court permitted the lawyer to meet the defendents in private. It accepted the request to photocopy some of the evidence but none of the classified documents.
The trial was adjourned to 15 October 2012.
At a press conference on Sunday, former Justice Minister Mohamed Al-Alagy claimed that this trial and and those of other Qaddafi officials were “invalid” because the law was not being properly implemented. He said that the prosecution was sidestepping due process whereby such cases must first go the Indictment Court to be processed.
[When I first met Mr Zway (or Zwai or al-Zwai) in 1994, he was himself Libya’s Minister of Justice. He was one of the army officers who, with Muammar Gaddafi, mounted the 1969 coup against the king, Idris al-Senussi, and the only one still holding high office in the regime. Abdel Ati al-Obeidi was then Libyan ambassador to Morocco but subsequently held many other offices, including ambassador to Italy, Deputy Foreign Minister with responsibility for European relations, head of Gaddafi’s private office and Foreign Minister. In all of these incarnations he remained as chairman of the Libyan Government committee on Lockerbie.]
Monday 14 April 2014
Gaddafi sons, officials, go on trial in Libya
Thursday 20 August 2009
Megrahi release today to prevent 'martyrdom'
The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will be released today on compassionate grounds but Libya has given an undertaking that there will be no "triumphalism".
The Herald understands that one compelling reason for allowing the Libyan to return to Tripoli is to avoid him dying as a "martyr" in prison and putting Scotland on the map for all the wrong reasons.
The public announcement will be made at 1pm by Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, who has been considering an application for prisoner transfer and for Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer and has less than three months to live, will fly home to his family in time for Ramadan - as The Herald stated last week.
Megrahi, who is serving 27 years in HMP Greenock for the bombing that killed 270 people in December 1988, is expected to fly to Tripoli in a private jet owned by the Libyan government.
The Foreign Office yesterday advised the State Department of the decision.
Despite concerns that Megrahi will be paraded through the streets to a hero's welcome, The Herald understands that Libyan delegates have told ministers that there would be no such triumphalism.
There is also a tacit agreement that the Libyan government will make no comment until after his return and that, even then, it will not use Megrahi as a big part of Colonel Gaddafi's September celebrations for 40 years in power.
Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, the Libyan minister and former ambassador who was key to the talks to resume diplomatic relations with the UK and has been involved in the discussions about Megrahi, was in London yesterday. Obeidi is expected to fly from Luton to collect Megrahi at lunchtime.
[The same newspaper has a further article by Lucy Adams headed "Scotland caught in the middle of an international drama" on the diplomatic manoeuvrings that got us where we are today; and a thoughtful and moving opinion piece by Anne Johnstone entitled "Ability to show compassion is a gift more precious to the giver".]
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Megrahi to be released within hours
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer and has less than three months to live, will fly home to his family in time for Ramadan - as the paper stated last week.
Megrahi, who is serving 27 years in HMP Greenock for the bombing which killed 270 people in December 1988, is expected to fly to Tripoli in a private jet owned by the Libyan Government.
A public announcement is expected at 1pm (BST) - 8am Eastern standard time - on Thursday from Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, who has been considering an application for prisoner transfer and for Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds. (...)
Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, the Libyan Minister and former ambassador who was key to the talks to resume diplomatic relations with the UK and has been involved in the discussions about Megrahi, was in London yesterday. Obeidi usually flies to the UK in a private jet.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "We have a strong justice system in Scotland and people can be assured that the Justice Secretary's decisions have been reached on the basis of clear evidence and on no other factors."
[The above are excerpts from a report just posted on the heraldscotland website. I suspect that the author is The Herald's chief reporter, Lucy Adams.
The STV News website has a report that contains the following sentence:
"Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has been released from Greenock Prison on compassionate grounds, STV News sources have learned." [The sentence has since been altered to read "will be released".]
Under the headline "Police stage Megrahi departure rehearsal via Prestwick airport", Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm has this afternoon posted an article containing the following sentences:
'A police exercise involving motorcycle outriders and a mock target vehicle with blacked out windows was undertaken last night between Greenock and Prestwick airport. It is understood the exercise was carried out as a rehearsal to prepare for the flight of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmad Al Megrahi to Libya, understood to be taking place imminently.
'The convoy were sighted simulating the necessary road and junction closures along the M77 from Glasgow.']
Tuesday 28 July 2015
Verdicts due in Tripoli trial of Gaddafi-era officials
BBC News reports that Saif and eight others have been sentenced to death: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-33688391. None of the reports so far available (11.40 am) mentions Obeidi, Zwai and Dorda.
Saturday 22 June 2013
Libya's judges confront the past
Thursday 3 March 2016
If he wanted to go home, he had no real choice
Wednesday 3 June 2015
Verdict awaited in trial of Gaddafi-era officials
Saturday 23 October 2021
‘I had most to gain and nothing to lose about the whole truth coming out’
[What follows is the third and final extract from chapter 15 of The Colonel and I: My Life with Gaddafi by Daad Sharab. Articles about this book can be found in The National here and here. The previous extracts on this blog can be read here and here.]
As he was released, al-Megrahi said he bore the people of Scotland no ill will, and thanked the prison staff at Barlinnie and Greenock for their kindness. He received a hero’s welcome back in Tripoli. [RB: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in an article in The New York Times denied that there had been a hero's welcome.] I was in Jordan at the time but watched on television, noticing that al-Megrahi flew home on the same jet I’d helped Gaddafi buy from Prince al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. Also on board was the Colonel’s son, Saif, in his white robes and holding al-Megrahi’s arm aloft as he stepped on to Libyan soil.
Saif was basking in the glory of the triumphant homecoming, although in reality I knew he’d barely been involved. I was seething inside as I watched him steal all the credit, while the real hard workers were nowhere to be seen. Saif regularly went to London, but he never once bothered to hop on a domestic flight to Glasgow to visit al-Megrahi in prison at either Barlinnie or Greenock. The jubilant scenes didn’t go down well in the West, which had requested a restrained welcome, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. It was rare that Libya got the upper hand against America.
However, when he came home I hardly recognised al-Megrahi who was walking with a stick and had to be helped down the steps of the aircraft. He looked nothing like the healthy man I’d last visited a few years earlier. It was said at the time of his release that he would die within three months. In fact he lingered on for another three years, even outliving Gaddafi which no one could have envisaged at the time. I found the outcry from the West over al-Megrahi’s failure to die sooner distasteful. I always felt very sorry for him and never doubted his innocence. What reason did he have to lie to me, an agent of the regime?
In a moment of desperation, he once told me in prison: ‘They would be very happy for me to die here.’ There is a suspicion in my mind that al-Megrahi did not receive very good medical attention in prison, because prostate cancer usually responds well to treatment if it is caught early. He died at his villa in the suburbs of Tripoli, in May 2012, aged 60. I hope he found peace and was able to enjoy precious time with his family. In my eyes al-Megrahi was the 271st Lockerbie victim.
By then the final compensation cheques had been paid to the families, much to the dismay of Gaddafi. Although he appreciated the importance of keeping up the instalments, he often railed against the unfairness and how the handing over of compensation would be interpreted. ‘Why should I do this when Libya is innocent?’ he asked many times.
For those working behind the scenes it was a constant battle to persuade the Colonel to take a pragmatic approach. Finally Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, one of his key advisors on Lockerbie, spelled this out in very direct terms. At one of our regular Lockerbie briefing meetings with Gaddafi, he told the leader: ‘Look, we don’t want to see you suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein. If the cost is money, then we have a lot of money. Let’s just pay them, get rid of this issue, open up our country and keep it stable. America can do anything it wants. Do you want us to end up watching you on TV like Saddam Hussein?’
It was a very blunt reference to Saddam’s capture and humiliation by US forces, which had so rattled Gaddafi. For all his bluster he knew that America and its allies could topple him at the drop of a hat. The bombing of his compound in 1986 by the Americans was a constant reminder of the West’s power. After al-Obeidi’s intervention the Colonel didn’t make such a fuss about the blood money.
The burning question remains: if al-Megrahi was innocent, as I firmly believe, then who brought down the Pan Am flight?
At the time of the Lockerbie bombing there were loose alliances between various states and organisations. They were generally opposed to the ideals of the West, and pooled resources. Bombing an aircraft is no easy matter, so if one country didn’t have the expertise to carry out an attack it simply funded a group that did. I don’t carry a smoking gun but al-Megrahi, who knew the case inside out and had access to Libya’s files on Lockerbie, was convinced that it was a joint enterprise between Iran, Syria and The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [-General Command]. The shooting down of the Iranian passenger jet by the American warship Vincennes, six months before Lockerbie, was too much of a coincidence. It was the crucial link, but by the time the evidence began to stack up no one wanted to point the finger at Iran or Syria, who had helped Western coalition forces in the first Gulf War. My time on the fringes of international diplomacy taught me that politicians are like shifting sands in the desert.
Sadly I never got the opportunity to see al-Megrahi following his release but I know he intended to present fresh evidence at his appeal, insisting he had nothing to fear or hide. ‘I had most to gain and nothing to lose about the whole truth coming out,’ he said.
I am sure the British intelligence services know the truth about Lockerbie, but it has been covered up. Al-Megrahi’s early death was convenient, although his family did eventually get a posthumous appeal. It came as no surprise to me that it was rejected, or that al-Megrahi’s family have called on the British government to release secret files which implicate Iran. Justice has not been done and, for political reasons, I fear we may never learn the truth.
In another recent development the US has named and charged another so-called suspect, Abu Agila Mohammad Masud. I don’t claim to know every member of the Libyan intelligence services but I can tell you I never encountered him during my many years in Libya, or heard his name mentioned by Gaddafi. Why did the Americans choose to make this announcement on the 32nd anniversary of Lockerbie? In my opinion it is nothing more than another crass political stunt.