Libyan NTC head: Megrahi's appeal might have proved his innocence

[A report in today’s edition of the Sunday Express reads in part:]

The Lockerbie bomber was paid up to £15million by Colonel Gaddafi’s regime to “buy his silence” over who really blew up a passenger jet over the Scottish town.

This is the latest claim by outgoing Libyan leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil.

He said Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was paid 150,000 euros a month.

From his arrest in 1999 to his release in 2009, that would total £14.6million.

Jalil denied ever saying the late tyrant personally ordered the bombing, adding: “All I said is that the regime was involved.”

He said Megrahi, who protested his innocence over the 1988 atrocity in which 270 people died, was ordered to drop his appeal by Gaddafi who feared the truth would be revealed.

[This story was reported in a post on this blog more than three weeks ago, on 21 June 2012. The Express has always been at the forefront of news-gathering and dissemination, of course. 

A longer report by Ben Borland is the front page lead story in the Scottish edition of today's Sunday Express. It reads in part:]

The head of the Libyan government has revealed his country's true role in the Lockerbie bomber's release in a sensational television interview.

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who has been running the war-torn North African state since the downfall of Colonel Gaddafi last year, broke his silence to expose the contents of secret government files in Tripoli.

He revealed that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi - the only man convicted of Britain's worst ever terror atrocity - and his family were paid up to £15million in monthly installments to "buy his silence".

Jalil also disclosed that Megrahi was ordered to drop his appeal by Gaddafi, who was terrified he would "release critical and confidential information" and have his conviction overturned.

In addition, Jalil said the new regime would continue to work with Scottish and American investigators to "reopen past files that can deliver the truth".

And, in a further astonishing claim, he suggested that Gaddafi deliberately blew up a Libyan passenger jet in 1992 in a ruthless tit-for-tat bid to frame the West.

Speaking to Dubai-based TV station Al Arabiya, Jalil - the head of the ruling National Transitional Council - said Megrahi was paid 150,000 Euros per month "to keep him quiet".

If the payments ran from when he was handed over to Scottish police, in April 1999, to his release in August 2009, they would total 18.6million Euros - or £14.6million at today's exchange rates.

In the interview, Jalil - who was also Gaddafi's Justice Minister from 2007 to 2011 - said he had been "advised to keep away from cases linked to external affairs, and this includes the Lockerbie case".

He added: "However, I witnessed two things. First, the insistence of both Saif [al-Islam Gaddafi, the dictator's son] and his father that I get back [Megrahi] by whatever means necessary...

"Meanwhile, the sentence was not completed and the appeal was getting closer.

"But the insistence of the country for Abdelbaset to waive his appeal and his fast return indicates the country was in a crisis, considering that the late Abdelbaset wanted to release critical and confidential information about Lockerbie."

Megrahi's decision to drop his appeal, just days before his release from prison, has always been shrouded in mystery - especially because he continued to protest his innocence right up until his death in May.

Jalil added: "The Libyans wanted him back as soon as possible, in return for the waiver of the appeal. If the appeal had persisted maybe some critical evidence that proved his innocence would have surfaced.

"And perhaps evidence that convicted him would have resurfaced as well. So, they preferred that he returns to Libya at this point to ensure that he does not reveal confidential information."

However, he insisted he had been misquoted by a Swedish newspaper last year which claimed he had evidence that Gaddafi personally ordered the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which claimed 270 lives.

He said: "All I said then is what I say right now, which is that the regime was involved in this case, evident by insisting he returns and that they spent a lot of money on him while he was in jail."

Jalil also hinted at the existence of government files which could finally establish once and for all whether the bombing was the work of Megrahi and other Libyan agents, under orders from Gaddafi - or was in fact an Iranian-backed plot, as many campaigners believe.

He said: "We sympathize with the families of the innocent victims and we are willing to reopen past files that can deliver the truth."

Megrahi, who developed terminal prostate cancer during eight years behind bars in Scotland, is known to have had a number of Swiss bank accounts, including one which allegedly held £1.8million at the time of his trial in 2000.

But the full extent of the fortune paid to ensure his silence will appal many of those who lost loved ones in December 1988.

However, campaigners calling for a public inquiry into Lockerbie said the new evidence supports claims that Megrahi was simply a well-paid "fall guy".

Robert Black, Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, said: "He was getting a lot of money because he had taken the fall for something he didn't do.

"By surrendering himself for trial in Scotland he brought Libya under Gaddafi back into world commerce. That was something the Libyans thought worth paying for."

Jalil and the Sunday Express debunked

[This is the headline over an item posted today on the website Megrahi: You are my Jury.  It contains John Ashton’s reaction to today’s Scottish Sunday Express article and reads as follows:]

The following article appears on the front of today’s Scottish Sunday Express under the ludicrously overblown headline Lockerbie: the truth at last. It reports on the latest claims of the leaders of Libya’s National Transitional Council and interim head of state Mustafa Abdul Jalil. As so often with the Sunday Express, the article recycles claims that are already in the public domain (the interview and was first reported last month) and when analysed in detail, is really thin stuff. My comments are in normal typeface.

The head of the Libyan government has revealed his country’s true role in the Lockerbie bomber’s release in a sensational television interview.  Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who has been running the war-torn North African state since the downfall of Colonel Gaddafi last year, broke his silence to expose the contents of secret government files in Tripoli.

He revealed that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi – the only man convicted of Britain’s worst ever terror atrocity – and his family were paid up to £15million in monthly installments to “buy his silence”.

Jalil also disclosed that Megrahi was ordered to drop his appeal by Gaddafi, who was terrified he would “release critical and confidential information” and have his conviction overturned.

In addition, Jalil said the new regime would continue to work with Scottish and American investigators to “reopen past files that can deliver the truth”.

And, in a further astonishing claim, he suggested that Gaddafi deliberately blew up a Libyan passenger jet in 1992 in a ruthless tit-for-tat bid to frame the West.

Speaking to Dubai-based TV station Al Arabiya, Jalil – the head of the ruling National Transitional Council – said Megrahi was paid 150,000 Euros per month “to keep him quiet”.

If the payments ran from when he was handed over to Scottish police, in April 1999, to his release in August 2009, they would total 18.6million Euros – or £14.6million at today’s exchange rates.

The fact that Abdelbaset’s family were paid by the government is no secret and hardly surprising. He was the main breadwinner of a family of five who, by the time he gave himself up for trial in 1999, had endured seven and a half very difficult years. In agreeing to stand trial, Abdelbaset and Lamin Fhimah helped free the country from years of crippling sanctions. In that context, the figures cited are paltry, especially when compared to the billions spent by the Libyan government to settle the case. There is absolutely no evidence that the payments were to keep Abdelbaset quiet. If that was Gadafy’s aim, then surely Fhimah would also have been paid (in a newspaper interview last year he claimed that he had had to sell his farm because the government had left him financially high and dry). Alternatively, Gadafy could have had them both killed well before the trial was mooted.

In the interview, Jalil – who was also Gaddafi’s Justice Minister from 2007 to 2011 – said he had been “advised to keep away from cases linked to external affairs, and this includes the Lockerbie case”.

This is hardly surprising. As justice minister, he had responsibility for the domestic justice system, rather than international relations. Furthermore, Abdelbaset’s return to Libya in August 2009 effectively closed the case. It’s worth noting that Jalil’s successor as justice minister, Mohamed al-Alagi, who is now head of Libya’s human rights commission, has publicly stated that Abdelbaset is innocent.

He added: “However, I witnessed two things. First, the insistence of both Saif [al-Islam Gaddafi, the dictator's son] and his father that I get back [Megrahi] by whatever means necessary…

“Meanwhile, the sentence was not completed and the appeal was getting closer.

“But the insistence of the country for Abdelbaset to waive his appeal and his fast return indicates the country was in a crisis, considering that the late Abdelbaset wanted to release critical and confidential information about Lockerbie.”

It’s not clear here whether the country referred to is Libya or Scotland. The only critical and confidential information that Abdelbaset sought the release of was held by the Crown Office and the UK authorities.

Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal, just days before his release from prison, has always been shrouded in mystery – especially because he continued to protest his innocence right up until his death in May.

Jalil added: “The Libyans wanted him back as soon as possible, in return for the waiver of the appeal. If the appeal had persisted maybe some critical evidence that proved his innocence would have surfaced.


“And perhaps evidence that convicted him would have resurfaced as well. So, they preferred that he returns to Libya at this point to ensure that he does not reveal confidential information.”

Again, it’s unclear exactly what Jalil means (perhaps owing to poor translation). The Libyan government had no power to make abandonment of the appeal a condition of his release and had no interest in doing so. The appeal would not have produced any evidence of Libyan government involvement, because it was focused on the narrow issue of the safety of Abdelbaset’s conviction. There was no prospect of Abdelbaset revealing confidential information concerning Libyan government involvement in the bombing, firstly, because he almost certainly had none and, secondly, because, if he had, he would have both undermined his own appeal and jeopardised the safety of his family in Libya.

However, he insisted he had been misquoted by a Swedish newspaper last year which claimed he had evidence that Gaddafi personally ordered the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which claimed 270 lives.

He said: “All I said then is what I say right now, which is that the regime was involved in this case, evident by insisting he returns and that they spent a lot of money on him while he was in jail.”

Really? Sounds like backpedalling to me.

Jalil also hinted at the existence of government files which could finally establish once and for all whether the bombing was the work of Megrahi and other Libyan agents, under orders from Gaddafi – or was in fact an Iranian-backed plot, as many campaigners believe.

He said: “We sympathize with the families of the innocent victims and we are willing to reopen past files that can deliver the truth.”

Megrahi, who developed terminal prostate cancer during eight years behind bars in Scotland, is known to have had a number of Swiss bank accounts, including one which allegedly held £1.8million at the time of his trial in 2000.

The £1.8 million claim originates from a Sunday Times article of 20 December 2009. In fact there is only evidence of one Swiss bank account, which was dormant from 1993 onwards, and had a balance of only $23,000. Had Abdelbaset given evidence at trial, he could have accounted for all the payments in and out of the account.

But the full extent of the fortune paid to ensure his silence will appal many of those who lost loved ones in December 1988.

However, campaigners calling for a public inquiry into Lockerbie said the new evidence supports claims that Megrahi was simply a well-paid “fall guy”.

Robert Black, Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, said: “He was getting a lot of money because he had taken the fall for something he didn’t do.

“By surrendering himself for trial in Scotland he brought Libya under Gaddafi back into world commerce. That was something the Libyans thought worth paying for.”

This wrongly implies that Abdelbaset’s supporters believe that he took the rap for Gadafy. I’m not aware of any of his prominent supporters, including Prof Black, who believe that to be the case. [RB: John Ashton is correct. On the evidence currently available, I do not believe Gaddafi or Libya to have been responsible for the destruction of Pan Am 103.]

Gaddafi ordered 1992 bombing
COLONEL Gaddafi may have deliberately blown up a passenger jet, killing 157, in a bizarre bid to frame the American and British governments and sue for compensation.

Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 1103 was involved in a mid-air collision with a Libyan MiG 23 fighter jet as it was approaching Tripoli Airport on December 22, 1992.

The fighter pilot and navigator safely ejected, but all of the Boeing 727′s passengers or crew were killed – including oil worker Victor Prazak, from London.

At the time, Gaddafi was under growing pressure to hand over the Lockerbie suspects and facing severe UN sanctions.

In his TV interview, current Libyan leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil said: “This trip was chosen on a day that coincides with the Lockerbie bombings and the flight number was almost identical.

“It was confirmed that the plane, going from Benghazi to Tripoli, was stuffed with explosives. It was given a new route deep into the sea, that no other plane has taken before.

“It was in the landing stages at Tripoli when, some say, it was intersected by another plane that bombed it.

“Nothing was left intact from the bombing.”

I have not studied the case of LAA flight 1103, but find Jalil’s suggestion bizarre.


[RB: As far as I can see from an internet trawl, the only UK newspaper to have featured on Monday this Sunday Express story is the Daily Record, whose report can be read here. A typically ill-informed and wrong-headed comment from the moribund Scottish Conservatives can be read here.]

Lockerbie: Scoundrel Time

[This is the headline over the most recent post on Ian Bell's blog. It reads as follows:]

“There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world,
and the worst of it is that half of them are true.”
Churchill.

Expressen’s Kassem Hamade has been filing non-stop from Libya since he found his way into the country. You can hardly blame him. It’s not often a journalist winds up in the middle of a revolution, with a historic tale unfolding wherever he happens to look. Hamade files like a man in a hurry.

His Swedish newspaper is one of Europe’s more lurid tabloids, which is, of course, saying something. At a glance, it seems to publish just about anything its war correspondent elects to send. Whether it then asks many questions is another matter. You don’t dick around, as the Swedes may or may not say, with world exclusives. Print first, worry later.

Hamade is either a very good journalist, or a very bad one. Which is to say that either he has an instinct for a tale, or more luck than is strictly credible. This week, in any case, Expressen’s man found himself outside “a local parliament build­ing” in an unnamed Libyan town, just as someone important was being greeted by several hundred locals.

Given that it appears the gent in the “dark winter suit” and burgundy hat had only decided to switch sides and “join the people” on February 19, Hamade was luckier than usual. Here he was with a “40-minute interview” (readable in less than ten) with a top-level defector no more than three days after the event. This was smart work, on someone’s part.

Even better, the new-born patriot had the sound-bite of the year, perhaps of the decade: Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing. How about that?

Given that Mustafa Abdel-Jalil’s words reach us from Arabic via Swedish via (Googleised) English, we should probably exercise a little caution. This would set us apart from just about every newspaper, Scottish titles included, and web-site in the world, who excelled themselves if they remembered the word “claim”, and who oth­erwise didn’t give a toss. Gaddafi’s “justice minister” had spoken: gossip was proof.

Did any journalist, Hamade included, know anything at all about the erstwhile “Secretary of the General People’s Committee for Justice”, lately of Tripoli’s al-Salad Street, former recipient of numerous file-and-forget Amnesty petitions, nominal stew­ard of an arbitrary system of murder, torture, kidnapping, and “disappearance”? Thought not.

Did anyone know how close – or not – this individual had ever been to Gaddafi, particularly in December of 1988? A mere detail.

Did anyone pause to wonder why Abdel-Jalil’s revulsion at a massacre – the first he had ever heard of in Libya? – had coincided neatly with the regime’s collapse? Did they ask what he might have to gain, or to lose? But that sort of talk can seriously damage a world exclusive.

Hamade appears not to have allowed such words to enter his head. He did at least ask whether Abdel-Jalil possesses such a thing as proof, however, but was reas­sured by the functionary’s claim to have “information that is 100% sure” and “nothing I think... 100%.”

As the week wore on, this turned out to be the evidence heard around the world. It was enough, as any glance at the web will show, for almost every media outlet on the planet to go on. For most, the exciting follow-up was Abdel-Jalil’s loyal promise that “the devil” (Gaddafi) will “die like Hitler”, rather than a simple, scepti­cal question or two.

A pity. Had anyone read on, they would have found that Hamade did in fact get a little more change from his 40-minute investment. Why couldn’t his subject – who seemed to have returned to the business of governing in short order – just spill the beans?

Answer: “It is not time to reveal everything now”. Why not? Second answer: “I do not want to reveal the names involved, for the sake of the country”.

Aside from the fact that numerous individuals around the world involved with the Lockerbie case could – and have – allowed themselves the same excuse, this was interesting. Many of Gaddafi’s once stalwart ministers and diplomats have hit the rat runs; Abdel-Jalil is no different. But he seals his discretion in an odd fashion.

So he names Gaddafi as a mass murderer: that will suit Washington and Lon­don. It won’t upset Edinburgh much, either. Another slaughter to add to a lunatic’s charge sheet, and to bury therein. If the lunatic winds up dead “like Hitler”, so much the better. But Abdel-Jalil seems to be extending his insurance cover: having named a name, he retains “names”, and all “for the sake of the country”.

Things took another turn on Friday night. With his usual taste for self-dramatisa­tion, the BBC’s John Simpson secured an interview in the vicinity of Ben­ghazi with an escapee from the crumbling regime more significant than Abdel-Jalil. Until the end of last week, General Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abidi was Gaddafi’s trusted Interior Minister. He has also known the Colonel for 47 years.

Here was still another Libyan big shot who suddenly found himself unable to stomach the day job. In his own account, al-Abidi was sent to Benghazi to crush the demonstrations there. When he decided to break the habit of a lifetime – or simply failed in the task – he pleaded with Gaddafi, he claims, not to bomb the protesters, and suffered an assassination attempt for his trouble.

So the general also felt the urge to “join the people”. He was also able to con­firm that his former friend and leader will commit suicide or be killed. And the gen­eral also felt able to say for certain that Gaddafi had ordered the Lockerbie bombing.

Except he did nothing of the sort. Simpson, like Hamade, was content, oddly in this case, just to hear a lapsed member of the regime pin the blame for mass murder on his old boss. Nothing in the way of proof was sought. All that al-Abidi told the BBC’s correspondent was, “There is no doubt about it. Nothing happens without Gaddafi’s agreement. I’m sure this was a national, governmental decision.” What a coincidence: two superannuated thugs with the same gambit.

Writing on the BBC’s web-site, Simpson prefaced the general’s quote with the following: “Although he was a military man rather than a politician at the time of the Lockerbie bombing in the 1980s, he [al-Abidi] maintains that Col Gaddafi was per­sonally responsible for the decision to blow up the Pan Am flight”.

There is no argument here for argument’s sake: if Gaddafi did it, he did it. But thus far we are being asked to accept – as the world is being asked to accept – the tes­timony of two men (no doubt there will be more) with skins to save and plenty of questions of their own still to answer. Yet even as they “confirm” they evade.

Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but persuasive testimony runs from remarks such as “It was common knowledge in the regime” to “I was there when he gave the order” to “This is how it was done”. The general was latterly Interior Minister, in Simpson’s words “one of the most powerful men in Libya”. Yet the best he can manage is “I’m sure this was a national, governmental decision”? What else would it be?

Stories and alibis are being assembled. Were you in the shoes of al-Abidi or Abdel-Jalil, bartering for your life and manoeuvring for a place in whatever power structure emerges when Gaddafi has gone, you would probably do the same. There’s no surprise in that.

My interest lies in how these off-handed confirmations, glib yet vague, con­nect with the Scottish justice system, the activities of successive British governments, and the statement of reasons – all 800-plus pages of it – produced by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in June of 2007 identifying “six grounds where (the Commission) believes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred” in the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, “the Lockerbie Bomber”.

The short answer is that they do not, on the face of it, connect. Yet if there is somehow a connection the demand for explanations from the Scottish, British and American political and legal establishment is liable to become more, rather than less, intense. I’m betting we never reach that point. Our two new “witnesses” thus far re­semble nothing more than a pair of concentration camp guards who know the game is up, and who rack their brains for tales to tell.

These two emerge from the fog of war with hands full of mist. Here in Scot­land, meanwhile, that statement of reasons is locked still in a hall of legal mirrors, along with a Scottish government’s courage to insist on its legal right to inquire into the bombing. Which is worse?

In less than a week, a few evasive remarks by two tainted, desperate men have become common currency around the world, disseminated happily by those who know nothing, and gratefully by those who know better. Meanwhile, the evidence of crucial choices touching at the heart of justice lie buried from sight. Every party of government available to Scotland – Tory, Labour, and Nationalist – has been content to settle for that. Is it the questions they fear, or the answers? That could be settled easily enough.

Instead, we are asked to swallow the pronouncements of two individuals who worked hand in bloody glove with Gaddafi.

[Ian Bell ends his blog post with a graceful tribute to this blog. I find it difficult to express how much I appreciate this. To my mind Ian Bell (whom I have never met) is the best politics and current affairs commentator operating in the Scottish media today. Only Kenneth Roy and Iain Macwhirter play in the same league.

The following are excerpts from an article by Nigel Horne published yesterday on The First Post website:]

A senior member of Col Gaddafi's administration has claimed that Gaddafi himself ordered the the bombing of the PanAm jetliner which exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing a total of 270 people, the majority of them Americans.

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who was Libya's justice minister until he resigned in protest at Gaddafi's orders to murder unarmed protesters, has told the Swedish tabloid Expressen that he possesses proof that Gaddafi gave the order.

Conspicuously, neither Abdel-Jalil nor the paper's correspondent, Kassem Hamade, can reveal what the 'proof' is. (...)

But is Abdel-Jalil telling the truth - or is this a convenient lie, told in the hope that Gaddafi will go to his grave with the secret intact?

The fact is, many politicians and journalists - not nutcase conspiracy theorists, but serious investigative reporters - who have observed and reported into the Lockerbie bombing from the outset have never been persuaded that Libya masterminded the attack. They remain convinced that Libya only ever acted as an agent for another Middle Eastern power and/or - as Alexander Cockburn reported here last year - that Libya and Megrahi were framed.

Iran, Syria, Hezbollah - all have been held up over the past two decades as likely candidates for ordering the bombing.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, still alive in Tripoli, will likely die without giving up his story: recent reports suggest the prostate cancer that was supposed to kill him in 2009 has spread through his body and he has little time left.

But if Gaddafi should die in some final conflagration as the Libyan endgame approaches, there is a real danger that the Lockerbie relatives seeking 'closure' will have been fooled if they accept Abdel-Jalil's claim.

Their best hope of learning the truth is that Gaddafi gets out of Libya alive and in handcuffs, to appear before the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and that he is persuaded to tell the whole truth about the worst terrorist atrocity ever perpetrated on British soil.

Such is the nature of what he could tell the court, however, that there are some western governments who might prefer that he meets his end before that can happen.

How you build a lie

What follows is excerpted from an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2011:

Lockerbie, Guilt & Gaddafi

[This is the heading over a post published yesterday on Ian Bell's blog. It reads in part:]

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil is quick on his feet, if nothing else. From senior functionary in a despised and brutish regime to freedom-loving “head of the provisional government” in under a fortnight is smart work indeed.

It is reassuring, too, that Gaddafi’s former justice minister has been “chosen”, in the Scotsman’s words, “to head new regime”. Alternatively – the Sky News version – Abdel-Jalil has been “elected... president of Libya’s newly-formed National Council”.

As it turns out, the born-again democrat appears to have done all the electing and choosing himself, backed by the overwhelming support of persons named Abdel-Jalil. (...)

He calculates, no doubt, that his access to the world’s media will bolster his status in a post-Gaddafi Libya. Name recognition, they call it. But to pull off that trick, Abdel-Jalil must first tell the western press what the western press wants to hear, and bet – a safe enough bet – that reporters will not think beyond the headlines. Over the weekend, he made excellent use of his brief spell as Mr President.

So here’s Murdoch’s Sunday Times, a paper to which the phrase “once great” attaches itself like a faded obituary. “Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing” was done and dusted by the weekend. A new line was required. Any ideas?

The Lockerbie bomber blackmailed Colonel Gaddafi into securing his re­lease from a Scottish prison by threatening to expose the dictator’s role in Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity, a former senior Libyan official [guess who] has claimed.

Now, let’s keep this simple. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was handed over to Scot­tish police on April 5, 1999, and released on compassionate grounds on August 20, 2009. Clearly, this was the most patient blackmailer the world has seen. If we believe a word, the man nursed his threat to exact “revenge” for over a decade, until terminal cancer intervened. As you do.

According to Abdel-Jalil and the Sunday Times, nevertheless, “Megrahi’s ploy led to a £50,000-a-month slush fund being set up to spend on legal fees and lobbying to bring him back to Tripoli”. Since the entire Libyan exchequer was Gaddafi’s per­sonal slush fund, the sum seems niggardly. If vastly more was not spent on the case, I’d be astonished. And why wouldn’t it be spent? Wasn't Megrahi threatening to “spill the beans”?

But here Abdel-Jalil pulls out another of his plums. Again, he provides noth­ing resembling the whiff of proof. Al-Megrahi “was not the man who carried out the planning and execution of the bombing, but he was ‘nevertheless involved in facili­tating things for those who did’”.

So where does that leave us? Megrahi – what with “planning and execution” omitted – didn’t do it. Another sensation. Or is that revelation perhaps designed to solve several tiny issues raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) and others over a miscarriage of justice and sundry associated issues?

Never fear: Gaddafi certainly did do it. That’s “on the record”, placed there by the erstwhile “head of the provisional government”, no less. So what then of “plan­ning and execution”; what of “those who did”? Yet again, Abdel-Jalil doesn’t say. Why not?

Smoke and mirrors is a cliché, God knows. You only wish they would polish the mirrors occasionally, and puff up some properly thick smoke. But why bother? It works. First: make sure that “everyone knows” Gaddafi did it. Secondly, as though inferentially, throw in a few details based on a “fact” established by hearsay and mere assertion. This is how you build a lie.

What happened – what is established by the evidence as having happened – matters less than perception and belief. Gaddafi, with his multifarious actual crimes, is now the handiest scapegoat imaginable. Perhaps he should complain to Tony Blair.

Or perhaps he should get himself to the Hague, and to a proper court. It would do the dictator no good, but it might do wonders, even now, for the reputation of Scottish justice. I put the chances of that at zero.

Lockerbie, Guilt & Gaddafi

[This is the heading over a post published yesterday on Ian Bell's blog. It reads in part:]

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil is quick on his feet, if nothing else. From senior functionary in a despised and brutish regime to freedom-loving “head of the provisional government” in under a fortnight is smart work indeed.

It is reassuring, too, that Gaddafi’s former justice minister has been “chosen”, in the Scotsman’s words, “to head new regime”. Alternatively – the Sky News version – Abdel-Jalil has been “elected... president of Libya’s newly-formed National Council”.

As it turns out, the born-again democrat appears to have done all the electing and choosing himself, backed by the overwhelming support of persons named Abdel-Jalil. (...)

He calculates, no doubt, that his access to the world’s media will bolster his status in a post-Gaddafi Libya. Name recognition, they call it. But to pull off that trick, Abdel-Jalil must first tell the western press what the western press wants to hear, and bet – a safe enough bet – that reporters will not think beyond the headlines. Over the weekend, he made excellent use of his brief spell as Mr President.

So here’s Murdoch’s Sunday Times, a paper to which the phrase “once great” attaches itself like a faded obituary. “Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing” was done and dusted by the weekend. A new line was required. Any ideas?

The Lockerbie bomber blackmailed Colonel Gaddafi into securing his re­lease from a Scottish prison by threatening to expose the dictator’s role in Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity, a former senior Libyan official [guess who] has claimed.

Now, let’s keep this simple. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was handed over to Scot­tish police on April 5, 1999, and released on compassionate grounds on August 20, 2009. Clearly, this was the most patient blackmailer the world has seen. If we believe a word, the man nursed his threat to exact “revenge” for over a decade, until terminal cancer intervened. As you do.

According to Abdel-Jalil and the Sunday Times, nevertheless, “Megrahi’s ploy led to a £50,000-a-month slush fund being set up to spend on legal fees and lobbying to bring him back to Tripoli”. Since the entire Libyan exchequer was Gaddafi’s per­sonal slush fund, the sum seems niggardly. If vastly more was not spent on the case, I’d be astonished. And why wouldn’t it be spent? Wasn't Megrahi threatening to “spill the beans”?

But here Abdel-Jalil pulls out another of his plums. Again, he provides noth­ing resembling the whiff of proof. Al-Megrahi “was not the man who carried out the planning and execution of the bombing, but he was ‘nevertheless involved in facili­tating things for those who did’”.

So where does that leave us? Megrahi – what with “planning and execution” omitted – didn’t do it. Another sensation. Or is that revelation perhaps designed to solve several tiny issues raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) and others over a miscarriage of justice and sundry associated issues?

Never fear: Gaddafi certainly did do it. That’s “on the record”, placed there by the erstwhile “head of the provisional government”, no less. So what then of “plan­ning and execution”; what of “those who did”? Yet again, Abdel-Jalil doesn’t say. Why not?

Smoke and mirrors is a cliché, God knows. You only wish they would polish the mirrors occasionally, and puff up some properly thick smoke. But why bother? It works. First: make sure that “everyone knows” Gaddafi did it. Secondly, as though inferentially, throw in a few details based on a “fact” established by hearsay and mere assertion. This is how you build a lie.

What happened – what is established by the evidence as having happened – matters less than perception and belief. Gaddafi, with his multifarious actual crimes, is now the handiest scapegoat imaginable. Perhaps he should complain to Tony Blair.

Or perhaps he should get himself to the Hague, and to a proper court. It would do the dictator no good, but it might do wonders, even now, for the reputation of Scottish justice. I put the chances of that at zero.

[Also published yesterday was a Libya piece on Peter Hitchens's blog on the Mail on Sunday website. It reads in part:]

But how ridiculous it all is. Supposedly we are now terribly moral about the wicked Libyan regime, denying diplomatic immunity to its leaders, freezing its assets, refusing to print its banknotes. Tough, eh? This Libyan wickedness does not seem to have troubled the existing British government (or its predecessor) at all until about two weeks ago, or why was a British firm printing those banknotes and why were there so many British personnel in Libya in the first place?

By the way, please don't go on at me about the supposed 'Lockerbie Bomber'. There is absolutely no evidence that the Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi had anything to do with the Lockerbie bombing, almost certainly carried out by terrorists under Syrian control, at the behest of Iran.

The truth is that Colonel Gadaffi's government is being punished not because it is wicked (so is Syria's, for instance, as I keep needing to mention) but because it is weak and tottering. How embarrassing all this will be if the Gadaffi family manage somehow to regain control of the country. Terribly sorry, your colonelship, sir. Hope you understand we were only going through the motions? Can we have our printing contract back? No hard feelings, eh?

Libyan NTC head on Gaddafi's payments to Megrahi

[The English language website of the Arabic newspaper Al-Arabiya has today published an interview with the head of the Libyan National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil.  It reads in part:]

Abdul Jalil said that Qaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam suggested his name for minister of justice as one of several other officials who were meant to take part in a reform plan.

“This plan was part of another plan to groom Seif al-Islam to inherit the presidency from his father.”

Abdul Jalil said that he had later regretted accepting this position. 

He also talked about the Lockerbie incident and explained that Libya handed the two main suspects Abdul Baset al-Megrahi and al-Amin Fahima to Britain because of the sanctions.

“Qaddafi used to pay Megrahi 150,000 Euros per month while he was in jail in return for his silence.” [RB: I would be interested to know what evidence Mr Abdul Jalil has for the allegation that payments to Abdelbaset Megrahi were for his silence.]

In the first episode of Political Memory, Abdul Jalil said he would resign from his position following the legislative elections scheduled for July 7.

“I plan to quit politics and go back to the judiciary.” 

[Mr Abdul Jalil said in February that he had proof that Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing. No such proof was produced.]

Ian Bell on Lockerbie - five years ago today

What follows is the text of an item that was posted on this date in 2011 on this blog. It demonstrates perfectly just how much we have lost through the tragically early death of Ian Bell:

Lockerbie: Scoundrel Time

[This is the headline over the most recent post on Ian Bell's blog. It reads as follows:]

“There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world,

and the worst of it is that half of them are true.”

Churchill.

Expressen’s Kassem Hamade has been filing non-stop from Libya since he found his way into the country. You can hardly blame him. It’s not often a journalist winds up in the middle of a revolution, with a historic tale unfolding wherever he happens to look. Hamade files like a man in a hurry.

His Swedish newspaper is one of Europe’s more lurid tabloids, which is, of course, saying something. At a glance, it seems to publish just about anything its war correspondent elects to send. Whether it then asks many questions is another matter. You don’t dick around, as the Swedes may or may not say, with world exclusives. Print first, worry later.

Hamade is either a very good journalist, or a very bad one. Which is to say that either he has an instinct for a tale, or more luck than is strictly credible. This week, in any case, Expressen’s man found himself outside “a local parliament build­ing” in an unnamed Libyan town, just as someone important was being greeted by several hundred locals.

Given that it appears the gent in the “dark winter suit” and burgundy hat had only decided to switch sides and “join the people” on February 19, Hamade was luckier than usual. Here he was with a “40-minute interview” (readable in less than ten) with a top-level defector no more than three days after the event. This was smart work, on someone’s part.

Even better, the new-born patriot had the sound-bite of the year, perhaps of the decade: Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing. How about that?

Given that Mustafa Abdel-Jalil’s words reach us from Arabic via Swedish via (Googleised) English, we should probably exercise a little caution. This would set us apart from just about every newspaper, Scottish titles included, and web-site in the world, who excelled themselves if they remembered the word “claim”, and who oth­erwise didn’t give a toss. Gaddafi’s “justice minister” had spoken: gossip was proof.

Did any journalist, Hamade included, know anything at all about the erstwhile “Secretary of the General People’s Committee for Justice”, lately of Tripoli’s al-Salad Street, former recipient of numerous file-and-forget Amnesty petitions, nominal stew­ard of an arbitrary system of murder, torture, kidnapping, and “disappearance”? Thought not.

Did anyone know how close – or not – this individual had ever been to Gaddafi, particularly in December of 1988? A mere detail.

Did anyone pause to wonder why Abdel-Jalil’s revulsion at a massacre – the first he had ever heard of in Libya? – had coincided neatly with the regime’s collapse? Did they ask what he might have to gain, or to lose? But that sort of talk can seriously damage a world exclusive.

Hamade appears not to have allowed such words to enter his head. He did at least ask whether Abdel-Jalil possesses such a thing as proof, however, but was reas­sured by the functionary’s claim to have “information that is 100% sure” and “nothing I think... 100%.”

As the week wore on, this turned out to be the evidence heard around the world. It was enough, as any glance at the web will show, for almost every media outlet on the planet to go on. For most, the exciting follow-up was Abdel-Jalil’s loyal promise that “the devil” (Gaddafi) will “die like Hitler”, rather than a simple, scepti­cal question or two.

A pity. Had anyone read on, they would have found that Hamade did in fact get a little more change from his 40-minute investment. Why couldn’t his subject – who seemed to have returned to the business of governing in short order – just spill the beans?

Answer: “It is not time to reveal everything now”. Why not? Second answer: “I do not want to reveal the names involved, for the sake of the country”.

Aside from the fact that numerous individuals around the world involved with the Lockerbie case could – and have – allowed themselves the same excuse, this was interesting. Many of Gaddafi’s once stalwart ministers and diplomats have hit the rat runs; Abdel-Jalil is no different. But he seals his discretion in an odd fashion.

So he names Gaddafi as a mass murderer: that will suit Washington and Lon­don. It won’t upset Edinburgh much, either. Another slaughter to add to a lunatic’s charge sheet, and to bury therein. If the lunatic winds up dead “like Hitler”, so much the better. But Abdel-Jalil seems to be extending his insurance cover: having named a name, he retains “names”, and all “for the sake of the country”.

Things took another turn on Friday night. With his usual taste for self-dramatisa­tion, the BBC’s John Simpson secured an interview in the vicinity of Ben­ghazi with an escapee from the crumbling regime more significant than Abdel-Jalil. Until the end of last week, General Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abidi was Gaddafi’s trusted Interior Minister. He has also known the Colonel for 47 years.

Here was still another Libyan big shot who suddenly found himself unable to stomach the day job. In his own account, al-Abidi was sent to Benghazi to crush the demonstrations there. When he decided to break the habit of a lifetime – or simply failed in the task – he pleaded with Gaddafi, he claims, not to bomb the protesters, and suffered an assassination attempt for his trouble.

So the general also felt the urge to “join the people”. He was also able to con­firm that his former friend and leader will commit suicide or be killed. And the gen­eral also felt able to say for certain that Gaddafi had ordered the Lockerbie bombing.

Except he did nothing of the sort. Simpson, like Hamade, was content, oddly in this case, just to hear a lapsed member of the regime pin the blame for mass murder on his old boss. Nothing in the way of proof was sought. All that al-Abidi told the BBC’s correspondent was, “There is no doubt about it. Nothing happens without Gaddafi’s agreement. I’m sure this was a national, governmental decision.” What a coincidence: two superannuated thugs with the same gambit.

Writing on the BBC’s web-site, Simpson prefaced the general’s quote with the following: “Although he was a military man rather than a politician at the time of the Lockerbie bombing in the 1980s, he [al-Abidi] maintains that Col Gaddafi was per­sonally responsible for the decision to blow up the Pan Am flight”.

There is no argument here for argument’s sake: if Gaddafi did it, he did it. But thus far we are being asked to accept – as the world is being asked to accept – the tes­timony of two men (no doubt there will be more) with skins to save and plenty of questions of their own still to answer. Yet even as they “confirm” they evade.

Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but persuasive testimony runs from remarks such as “It was common knowledge in the regime” to “I was there when he gave the order” to “This is how it was done”. The general was latterly Interior Minister, in Simpson’s words “one of the most powerful men in Libya”. Yet the best he can manage is “I’m sure this was a national, governmental decision”? What else would it be?

Stories and alibis are being assembled. Were you in the shoes of al-Abidi or Abdel-Jalil, bartering for your life and manoeuvring for a place in whatever power structure emerges when Gaddafi has gone, you would probably do the same. There’s no surprise in that.

My interest lies in how these off-handed confirmations, glib yet vague, con­nect with the Scottish justice system, the activities of successive British governments, and the statement of reasons – all 800-plus pages of it – produced by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in June of 2007 identifying “six grounds where (the Commission) believes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred” in the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, “the Lockerbie Bomber”.

The short answer is that they do not, on the face of it, connect. Yet if there is somehow a connection the demand for explanations from the Scottish, British and American political and legal establishment is liable to become more, rather than less, intense. I’m betting we never reach that point. Our two new “witnesses” thus far re­semble nothing more than a pair of concentration camp guards who know the game is up, and who rack their brains for tales to tell.

These two emerge from the fog of war with hands full of mist. Here in Scot­land, meanwhile, that statement of reasons is locked still in a hall of legal mirrors, along with a Scottish government’s courage to insist on its legal right to inquire into the bombing. Which is worse?

In less than a week, a few evasive remarks by two tainted, desperate men have become common currency around the world, disseminated happily by those who know nothing, and gratefully by those who know better. Meanwhile, the evidence of crucial choices touching at the heart of justice lie buried from sight. Every party of government available to Scotland – Tory, Labour, and Nationalist – has been content to settle for that. Is it the questions they fear, or the answers? That could be settled easily enough.

Instead, we are asked to swallow the pronouncements of two individuals who worked hand in bloody glove with Gaddafi.

[Ian Bell ends his blog post with a graceful tribute to this blog. I find it difficult to express how much I appreciate this. To my mind Ian Bell (whom I have never met) is the best politics and current affairs commentator operating in the Scottish media today.]