Tony Blair visited Libya last month and met Colonel Muammar Gaddafi just days after denying he was an adviser to the country, it was disclosed last night.
By Alex Spillius and Robert Winnett in Washington
Published: 8:00AM BST 17 Jul 2010
Mr Blair was “treated like a brother” and discussed a wide range of subjects, a Libyan source said.
Since leaving Downing Street, the former prime minister has been advising firms including JP Morgan about investment opportunities in Libya.
On June 5 a spokesman for Mr Blair denied that the former prime minister was an adviser to the Libyan leader
A spokesman for Mr Blair confirmed the visit in Tripoli on June 10 but said Mr Blair “has no role whatsoever, paid or otherwise, with the Libyan government or the Libyan Investment Authority”.
The disclosure of his visit threatens to overshadow David Cameron’s first visit to Washington as Prime Minister next week when he is to reiterate that BP’s Libyan oil contracts were not behind the release of Abdulbaset al-Megrahi.
The growing controversy over BP's role in the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber is threatening to overshadow David Cameron 's first visit to Washington as Prime Minister.
US President Barack Obama is expected to raise the issue when they meet at the White House on Tuesday.
It comes just days after a powerful senate committee announced it wants to question BP executives at a hearing into the affair in 10 days' time.
Mr Cameron is set to reiterate that BP's Libyan oil contracts were not behind the release of Abdulbaset al-Megrahi by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds.
The prime minister is expected to defend BP reminding President Obama about how important it is for funds for British pensioners.
A British diplomat said: "I am sure the fact that senators have said they want a hearing means they will touch upon it."
Senior BP executives are to be called to Washington later this month to appear before a senate committee scrutinising any role the oil giant played in the controversial release of the former Libyan spy.
The renewed controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber is a blow for BP after the firm announced it had finally capped the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
The vast oil spill from BP's Deepwater Horizon well has already strained relations between London and Washington, after sharp criticism from Mr Obama drove down the share price of Britain's biggest firm.
Downing Street aides are understood to be dismayed that another issue involving BP may overshadow Mr Cameron's first official visit to America.
The British ambassador to Washington has written a letter to US Senators probing BP's role in the release of al-Megrahi attempting to distance Mr Cameron from the row.
Sir Nigel Sheinwald wrote: "The view of the new British Government is that Megrahi's release was a mistake.
"The British Government deeply regrets the continuing anguish that his release on compassionate grounds has caused the families of Megrahi's victims in the UK as well as in the US." Sir Nigel also stressed that the decision was taken by the Scottish government and had no connection to BP's commercial interests in Libya.
However, the influential Senate Foreign Affairs Committee announced that it would hold a hearing on BP's potential involvement later this month. It will summon BP officials to attend.
The senators are likely to be interested in the role played by Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 official who is now a special adviser to BP. The oil company has admitted that Sir Mark had two conversations, and wrote a letter to Jack Straw, the then Justice Secretary, about the prisoner transfer agreement.
Sir Mark is also understood to have travelled to Libya to broker oil deals on behalf of BP with Colonel Gaddafi. It was not clear last night whether Sir Mark will be called to appear before the Senate. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2010 10:30 am Post subject:
Scottish Review's take on Megrahi:
http://www.scottishreview.net/index.shtml _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
This seems to check out, but like the 9/11 fog, who can really know without an unbiased international inquiry?
Quote:
Lockerbie is about heroin.
More than one group was involved in smuggling heroin out of Lebanon and into the USA using PanAm flights.
Reportedly, these groups included:
A. The group working for Syrian Monzer al Kassar, a CIA asset with reported links to Oliver North and Mohammed Atta. (Monzer al-Kassar - Wikipedia / Madcow Morning News.)
B. Members of the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command) which had links to Monzer al Kassar, the CIA asset.
The PFLP-GC bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat was a Jordanian intelligence service (GID) agent with links to the CIA. (Pan Am Flight 103.)
C. The CIA unit known as Corea, which worked with Monzer al Kassar. (Franklin, Dutroux, Mossad, McKee)
Lester Coleman
According to Lester Coleman, formerly an agent of the US government:
"Members of the Jafaar clan and other DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) couriers would arrive at Larnaca (Cyprus) with suitcases full of high- grade heroin, white and crystal, and be met off the boat from the Christian-controlled port of Jounieh (Lebanon) by officers of the Cypriot Police Narcotics Squad, who then drove them up to the Eurame office in Nicosia...
"After that, the Cypriot police would take them out to the airport and put them on flights to Frankfurt, where the bag-switch routine used by 'legitimate' smugglers was employed to bypass the airport's security arrangements and load the 'dirty' suitcases on to trans-Atlantic flights." (Trail of the Octopus.)
Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 5:25 am Post subject: Fight continues to identify the REAL Lockerbie bombers
Fight to clear Megrahi goes on
Tuesday 26 October 2010
by Paddy McGuffin
Campaigners lobbied the Scottish parliament today calling for a full independent inquiry into the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing.
The Justice for Megrahi (JFM) campaign, which includes families of some of those killed in the 1988 atrocity, believes that Mr Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and wants a review of the 2001 conviction.
Among the serious concerns surrounding the trial are the paid testimony of the key prosecution witness Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci and the failure of prosecutors to secure evidence, namely a fragment of a timing device alleged to have triggered the bomb.
Mr Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, was freed on compassionate grounds by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill in August last year.
The Libyan dropped his appeal against conviction, in a decision some believe he was coerced into making in exchange for his release.
JFM handed over a petition today urging the Scottish parliament to open an independent inquiry into the conviction.
The campaign has received the backing of the leader of Scotland's Catholic church Cardinal Keith O'Brien.
The senior cleric said today: "Global accusations of wrongful conviction made against our system must be dealt with.
"Left unheeded they will weaken the administration of justice in Scotland by casting doubts on its probity and ability."
Mr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, has long protested against Mr Megrahi's conviction.
He said: "It is imperative that the Scottish government opens an inquiry under its own auspices to deal with the corrosive and deeply damaging effects the Lockerbie case has had upon the Scottish criminal justice system."
Scottish National Party MSP Christine Grahame, who represents the Lockerbie area and who has met Mr Megrahi on several occasions said:
"Very serious questions remain which cast grave doubt over the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
"Key prosecution witnesses were paid millions of US dollars for their evidence, other material evidence was being transported around the world without the knowledge of the senior prosecutor and now former FBI and CIA officials have expressed concerns that evidence was fabricated to frame Libya and Mr Megrahi for this atrocity.
"These questions are not going to go away and the only way to address them will be through an independent inquiry."
An investigation by BBC's Newsnight has cast doubts on the key piece of evidence which convicted the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
Tests aimed at reproducing the blast appear to undermine the case's central forensic link, based on a tiny fragment identified as part of a bomb timer.
The tests suggest the fragment, which linked the attack to Megrahi, would not have survived the mid-air explosion.
Thanks for posting. I had not seen this one. However, I do remember a Sunday Times full page or possibly two page spread, questioning the authenticity of the fragment. While my memory is not great, I clearly remember, two photos side by side, one was 'the fragment' and the other a sample of an alleged trigger and there were clear differences. As the reporter said, "... without the fragment, the whole case; Malte, Libya, Megrahi, falls apart".
Conspiracy theorists; 1 point, Zionists; 0
I wonder what that reporters career chances in the ZBBC are? _________________ In the end, it's not the words of your enemies you will remember, but the silence of your friends. Martin Luther King
......In August 2009 the lone Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, Abdelbasset Megrahi, won a compassionate release from Scottish prison. Ostensibly, the British government and Scottish Courts granted Megrahi's request to die at home with dignity from advance stage cancer—in exchange for dropping a legal appeal packed with embarrassments for the European Courts. The decision to free Megrahi followed shocking revelations of corruption at the special Court of The Hague that handled the Lockerbie Trial. Prosecution witnesses confessed to receiving payments of $4 million each from the United States, in exchange for testimony against Megrahi, a mind-blowing allegation of judicial corruption.
The Lockerbie conviction was full of holes to begin with. Anybody who knows anything about terrorism in the 1980s knows the CIA got mixed up in heroin trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley during the hostage crisis in Lebanon. The Lockerbie conspiracy had been a false flag operation to kill off a joint CIA and Defense Intelligence investigation into kick backs from Islamic Jihad, in exchange for protecting the heroin transit network.
According to my own CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, who'd been stationed in Lebanon and Syria at the time, the CIA had established a protected drug route from Lebanon to Europe and on to the United States. His statements support other sources that "Operation Corea" allowed Syrian drug dealers led by Monzer al-Kassar (also linked to Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal) to ship heroin to the U.S. ON Pan Am flights, in exchange for intelligence on the hostages' whereabouts in Lebanon. The CIA allegedly made sure that suitcases carrying heroin were not searched at customs. Nicknamed the "Godfather of Terror," Al Kassar is now serving a prison sentence for conspiring with Colombian drug cartels to assassinate U.S. nationals.
Building up to Lockerbie, the Defense Intelligence team in Beirut, led by Maj. Charles Dennis McKee and Matthew Gannon, suspected that CIA infiltration of the heroin network might be prolonging the hostage crisis. If so, the consequence was severe. AP Reporter Terry Anderson got chained in a basement for 7 years, while 96 other high profile western hostages suffered beatings, mock executions and overall trauma. McKee's team raised the alarms in Washington that a CIA double agent profiting from the narco-dollars might be warning the hostage takers whenever their dragnet closed in. Washington sent a fact-finding team to Lebanon to gather evidence.
On the day it was blown out of the sky, Pan Am 103 was carrying that team of CIA and FBI investigators, the CIA's Deputy Chief assigned to Beirut, and three Defense Intelligence officers, including McKee and Gannon, on their way to Washington to deliver a report on the CIA's role in heroin trafficking, and the impact on terrorist financing and the hostage crisis. In short, everyone with direct knowledge of CIA kickbacks from heroin trafficking died on Pan Am 103. A suitcase packed with $500,000 worth of heroin was found in the wreckage. It belonged to investigators, as proof of the corruption.
The punch line was that the U.S. State Department issued an internal travel advisory, warning that government officials should get off that specific flight on that specific day, because Pan Am 103 was expected to get bombed. That's right, folks! The U.S. had prior knowledge of the attack.
Unforgivably, nobody told Charles McKee or Matthew Gannon. But other military officials and diplomats got pulled off the flight—maaking room for a group of students from Syracuse University traveling stand by for the Christmas holidays.
It was a monstrous act! But condemning Megrahi to cover up the CIA's role in heroin trafficking has struck many Lockerbie afficiandos as grossly unjust. Add the corruption of purchased testimony-- $4 million a pop— and Megrahi''s life sentence struck a nerve of obscenity.
It struck Gadhaffi as grievously offensive, as well—The United Nations hadd forced Libya to fork over $2.7 billion in damages to the Lockerbie families, a rate of $10 million for every death. Once it became clear the U.S. paid two key witnesses $4 million each to commit perjury, spook gossip throughout the summer was rife that Gadhaffi had taken bold action to demand compensation from U.S. (and probably British) oil corporations operating in Libya. More than likely, Libya's demands for kick backs and compensation extended to other European oil conglomerates as well—particularly France and Italy—who are now spearheading attacks on Libya.
I knew last summer there would be trouble. Payback would be a b—tch on both sides. You don't lock an innocent man in prison for 10 years on bogus charges of terrorism, and expect forgiveness. The United States and Britain had behaved with remarkable selfishness. You've got to admit that Gadhaffi's attempt to balance the scales of justice demonstrated a flair of righteous nationalism.
Alas, Gadhaffi was playing with fire, no matter how justified his complaint. You don't strike a tyrant without expecting a tyrant to strike back.
And that's exactly what's happening today.
Don't kid yourself. This is an oil war, and it smacks of imperialist double standards. Two articles by Prof. Chossudovsky at the Global Research Centre are must reading: "Operation Libya and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa" and "Insurrection and Military Intervention: The US-NATO Attempted Coup d'Etat in Libya?"
There is simply no justification for U.S. or NATO action against Libya. The U.N. charter acknowledges the rights of sovereign nations to put down rebellions against their own governments. Moreover, many observers have commented that plans for military intervention appear to have been much more advanced than U.S. and European leaders want to admit.
For myself, I know in my gut that war planning started months before the democratization movement kicked off throughout the Arab world—a lucky cover for U.S. and European oil policcy. Perhaps too lucky.
As Chossudovsky writes, "Hundreds of US, British and French military advisers arrived in Cyrenaica, Libya's eastern breakaway province" on February 23 and 24— seven (7) dayys after the start of Gadhaffi's domestic rebellion. "The advisers, including intelligence officers, were dropped from warships and missile boats at the coastal towns of Benghazi and Tobruk." (DEBKAfile, US military advisers in Cyrenaica, Feb. 25, 2011) Special forces on the ground in Eastern Libya provided covert support to the rebels." Eight British Special Forces commandos were arrested in the Benghazi region, while acting as military advisers to opposition forces, according to the Times of London.
Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 2568 Location: One breath from Glory
Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:26 pm Post subject:
Quote:
Prosecution witnesses confessed to receiving payments of $4 million each from the United States, in exchange for testimony against Megrahi, a mind-blowing allegation of judicial corruption.
Cant find anything on net about the truth of this statement. Any references? _________________ JO911B.
"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12
Prosecution witnesses confessed to receiving payments of $4 million each from the United States, in exchange for testimony against Megrahi, a mind-blowing allegation of judicial corruption.
Cant find anything on net about the truth of this statement. Any references?
From Episode 2 'If it is not in our archives then it does not exist' _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 8:11 pm Post subject:
fish5133 wrote:
Quote:
Prosecution witnesses confessed to receiving payments of $4 million each from the United States, in exchange for testimony against Megrahi, a mind-blowing allegation of judicial corruption.
Cant find anything on net about the truth of this statement. Any references?
There are plenty; here's one, took about twenty seconds to find:
Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 2568 Location: One breath from Glory
Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:16 pm Post subject:
outsider wrote:
fish5133 wrote:
Quote:
Prosecution witnesses confessed to receiving payments of $4 million each from the United States, in exchange for testimony against Megrahi, a mind-blowing allegation of judicial corruption.
Cant find anything on net about the truth of this statement. Any references?
There are plenty; here's one, took about twenty seconds to find:
Not really thats just the same wording in a different article. I found plenty on the net but they were all the same. No real references just cut and pasted. Was trying to find it in the MSM _________________ JO911B.
"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 8:02 pm Post subject:
fish5133 wrote:
outsider wrote:
fish5133 wrote:
Quote:
Prosecution witnesses confessed to receiving payments of $4 million each from the United States, in exchange for testimony against Megrahi, a mind-blowing allegation of judicial corruption.
Cant find anything on net about the truth of this statement. Any references?
There are plenty; here's one, took about twenty seconds to find:
Not really thats just the same wording in a different article. I found plenty on the net but they were all the same. No real references just cut and pasted. Was trying to find it in the MSM
'Was trying to find it in the MSM'
Don't hold your breath! A bit like looking for Larry Silverstein and his multi-billion $ 'killing', or any other serious bit of 9/11 Truth. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
US paid reward to Lockerbie witness, legal papers claim
AFP
Published: Saturday October 3, 2009
A key witness in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber was secretly paid up to two million dollars (1.4 million euros) in a deal approved by the US government, according to legal papers released Friday.
The claims were made in new documents published by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, which he maintains prove he is innocent of the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.
(snip)
************************************************************
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_paid_reward_to_Lockerbie_witness_10032 009.html
This is the final proof that al-Megrahi was set up by the US as the patsy for the bombing of Pan Am 103. Its implication is explosive: American intelligence knew that the plane carrying many US citizens would be destroyed, yet cynically did nothing to stop it because it realised that the outrage would help to convict Libya in the eyes of the world as a terrorist state and provide justification for whatever action America planned against the country.
There can be little doubt that Al-Megrahi dropped his appeal, which would have exposed to the world his frame-up and caused great political damage to both America and Britain, which colluded in it, because he was threatened he would be left to die in prison unless he did so.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 5:55 pm Post subject:
Why won't Magrahi hurry up and die (gnashing of teeth) along with the possible testimony he may give for a rougue drug dealing CIA unit being complicit in the Lockerbie crash?
Why won't Magrahi hurry up and die (gnashing of teeth) along with the possible testimony he may give for a rougue drug dealing CIA unit being complicit in the Lockerbie crash?
An investigation by BBC's Newsnight has cast doubts on the key piece of evidence which convicted the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
Tests aimed at reproducing the blast appear to undermine the case's central forensic link, based on a tiny fragment identified as part of a bomb timer.
The tests suggest the fragment, which linked the attack to Megrahi, would not have survived the mid-air explosion.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2011 10:55 pm Post subject:
Great article - included in full for the first time here
FINGER OF BLAME FOR LOCKERBIE POINTED AT AMERICAN CITIZEN http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/12732
NOT GUILTY? Convicted bomber Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi
Sunday July 8, 2007 - By Derek Lambie
AN AMERICAN citizen living close to the White House has emerged as the real Lockerbie bomber, the Sunday Express can reveal.
In a sensational twist, Abu Elias, currently living near Washington DC, will be named with others believed to be in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) as part of a terror cell behind the Pan Am disaster.
Lawyers claim the radical Palestinian organisation was hired for $10million to avenge the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the US five months earlier.
Two weeks ago Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, 55, was given the right to appeal his conviction. Elias - who has a new identity the Sunday Express cannot divulge - is the nephew of the terror group's leader, Ahmed Jibril, the man believed to be the mastermind of the bombing.
The Sunday Express understands new documents - likely to form the basis for al-Megrahi's appeal - show the American was described as "the primary target" early in the investigation. They also state he conspired with Mohammed Abu Talb, an Egyptian named by Dumfries and Galloway Police as the initial chief suspect.
Lockerbie relatives last night said they are more convinced than ever that the PFLP-GC are the perpetrators of the atrocity. Dr Jim Swire, who lost daughter Flora in the disaster, said: "My view has always been that Abu Talb was involved but that he was not the actual bomber. This development is encouraging and opens new avenues."
Pan Am Flight 103 was just 38 minutes into its journey from London to New York when it was blown up. Investigators concluded a Semtex bomb was in a cassette player rigged with a Swiss electronic timing device. Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2002 following a £75million trial at a Scottish Court, at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, although his co-accused Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima was cleared.
But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has identified six grounds where it believes a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, with its main focus on the evidence from Tony Gauci, who said al-Megrahi had come into his shop in Malta and bought clothes found at the scene of the disaster.
With the decision, the finger of blame is once again being pointed at the PFLP-GC. Jibril was suspected of organising the bombing on behalf of Iran as revenge on the US for shooting down Iran Air 655 over the Persian Gulf in 1988.
Evidence submitted to the SCCRC named Jibril, now 79, as the mastermind, with his nephew working with Abu Talb, a member of a splinter group and later jailed for life in Sweden for a bomb attack that left one person dead.
The defence case included a US Defence Intelligence Agency cable from September 24, 1989, which states: "The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur), the former Iranian Minister of Interior.
"The operation was contracted to Ahmad Jabril (sic)... for $1million. The remainder was to be paid after successful completion of the mission."
Documents viewed by the Sunday Express allege the plot began when a man named Mobdi Goben supplied material for the bomb to Hafez Dalkamoni, the leader of the PFLP-GC's European cell. He was then introduced to the alleged bomb maker Marwan Khreesat, by Elias, who has both Syrian and American passports.
Very little is known about Elias, but the defence insists he was paid in travellers' cheques by terror leader Dalkamoni in Cyprus, before he took delivery of the bomb in Frankfurt. Elias was identified as the key suspect although it was never explored in court, even after documents about his role suddenly emerged during the trial.
The Goben Memorandum, said to have been written by a dying member of the PFLP-GC, was handed to the Lord Advocate detailing the group's activities and a confession about Elias. Elias was concerning the FBI before the bombing and was quizzed about cheques deposited in his bank. In August 1988 he met with agents, who
knew he was Jibril's nephew. While the SCCRC said there is dubiety over whether Gauci had correctly identified al-Megrahi, documents show the shopkeeper had no such problems identifying Abu Talb.
Despite the evidence, the investigation took an unexpected twist and the Syrian terror group's suspected role in the disaster was dropped. Meanwhile, it emerged Talb could be brought to trial in Scotland because he does not have lifetime immunity from prosecution as had been believed. During al-Megrahi's trial there was a widespread belief he had been given Crown protection for giving evidence. However, the Crown Office yesterday confirmed he does not have immunity.
Great article - included in full for the first time here
....
Hi Tony - implicates Iran and Palastine... yet where's the proof? How does it account for the preknowledge: US officials that missed the flight and the CIA types that were killed...
A very interesting read! _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
She is quiet of voice and slight in stature, but to lawyers everywhere she is Supergirl. With a case history that includes overturning miscarriages such as the Guildfour Four and Birmingham Six, she has turned her attention to Scotland’s shame: The Megrahi case. Steven Raeburn reports.
The conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was almost universally derided from the moment it was confirmed, after an uncertain and unconvincing show trial, transparently controlled by the intelligence services of the nations who, as Nelson Mandela said, should not have been permitted to act as complainer, judge and executioner in their own cause. Since then, the Scottish authorities, with the evident complicity of successive UK governments in Westminster, have collaborated to frustrate, delay, thwart and exhaust the efforts of campaigners as diverse as John Pilger, Kate Adie, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation, our own Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, the families of the deceased, Noam Chomsky, Robbie the Pict, Tam Dalyell, Christine Grahame, and a practical army of journalists who have satisfied themselves and staked their own reputations on their belief that the conviction is unsound. And now their ranks have been joined quietly and without ceremony by a legal heroine to many, the powerfully unassuming, devastatingly effective and always understated mistress of justice, Gareth Peirce.
Her own landmark cases included the exposure of top-down state corruption that convicted the innocent Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, and her involvement in Pan Am 103 was prompted in part by her learning that the same discredited personnel whose flawed evidence was instrumental in driving those innocents to jail under a juggernaut of deceit, were also the providers of the key flawed evidence in the Megrahi case.
Her intervention adds to factors, including the unprecedented fourth hearing at the Holyrood Petitions committee of evidence in the case, that may yet lead to a heavily resisted, inevitably embarrassing, can-of-worms-openingly necessary inquiry into the entire miserable, seedy affair.
“One of the ways out of ever reopening a case that has gone wrong is to find an avenue where someone or something else can bear responsibility,” Peirce told The Firm.
“For instance, in the case of the Birmingham Six or Guildford Four, where for years and years and years, successive courts of appeal and politicians refused to take on responsibility for reopening it, the excuse was always: ‘a jury looked at this - the jury is the arbiter of fact in our jurisdiction’. And of course it would be very wrong to disturb the verdict of the jury, who saw and heard all the evidence. That was a device that was resorted to year after year to excuse not reopening these cases, even when they screamed out for it. So one way is to hide behind that.
“Observing Lockerbie, there is some of the same. We hear that the High Court judges heard the case and the appeal judges reinforced the decision, and therefore that is how it should stand. There is that excuse for suggesting that the tribunal of fact was in the best position to know. Whereas in each of these cases it is very clear that for one reason or another it wasn’t, and didn’t know half the picture.”
The failings in Scots legal culture to have the ability to correct the stain it created shows either the malleability of the rule of law, or the nefarious will of the civil service and rogue elements of the Crown Office to bully a pliant system that has demonstrably inadequate checks and balances. Perhaps a combination of both is at fault, given the ease with which the emergency Cadder legislation contained a prefabricated sting in the tail that seemed designed to frustrate any future judicial consideration of the case against Megrahi. A case which has crumbled when tested against logic & neutral scrutiny of the available evidence.
The Petitions Committee, in its last hearing prior to the Scottish election, proposed to include the call for an inquiry into the in-tray of the post May 5th assembly. Peirce however does not have full confidence that the will to convene an inquiry at Government level is greater than the will to frustrate one.
“There is an extra factor here. Scotland and England both say the other is the responsible jurisdiction, even when it is very clear that you cannot compartmentalise responsibility for what went wrong,” she says.
“Because you have two countries involved, each is passing the parcel to the other. The letter from the Scottish Government to the petitions committee says that in law, under the Inquiries Act, that Scotland cannot have an inquiry unless it is on a devolved issue, and the criminal justice system would be a devolved issue. But the letter adds that there are international implications, and therefore any inquiry should either be joint with England, or in England.
“There is a lot of truth in that, but as we saw with Megrahi’s return to Libya, Westminster claimed it was all the responsibility of Scotland, leaving Kenny MacAskill out on a limb. Yet, there is Blair busy with Gadaffi, desperately imploring Libya to make an application under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement. There are layers and layers of deceit here.”
Layers and layers of deceit...
It is that last, self evident truth that many Scottish citizens find quite difficult to come to terms with; the effort required to maintain the fiction of the Crown case, and the active will of the participants to sustain a fragile and fantastic deception. What she and those who have inquired with any rigour into this affair can see clearly, is that the effort and consensual coordination between the Governments of Washington, London, Tripoli and Edinburgh, and their functionaries at successive levels of responsibility from ministerial to Police level, have been engaged with some vigour in precisely that. And it is nothing new, being a reality she first encountered in the 1970s.
“In the most notorious cases, everyone played their part, absolutely everybody,” she says.
“The lawyers who represented the defenders were disastrously inadequate, or worse. Defence experts failed them, police were fabricating evidence as well as extracting false confessions from brutality. Forensic scientists were cooking the books, and judges from start to finish were either turning a very blind eye or actively assisting the prosecution to get convictions and sustain the convictions year after year.
“A big part of the blame lies within those who form the criminal justice system. It looks as if in the prosecution of the Lockerbie case, the defendants met the same fate, even to the extent of the same personnel featuring, in the person of the forensic scientists.”
It must indeed have taken some particular effort to ensure that the principal forensic analyst, Thomas Hayes, employed by the Crown to testify against Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was the very same discredited analyst who was proven to have fabricated his evidence in the manufactured case against the Guildford Four. It was he and Alan Feraday who testified that the key forensic evidence, a fragment of circuit board, not only survived the explosion of Pan Am 103 (which global scientific opinion, including the EU explosives consultant John Wyatt concluded was impossible) but left handy traces of clothing connected to a shop in Malta, the owners of which provided the most tenuous and hedged identification that could be conceived, and were later paid in millions of dollars by the US government for their assistance. Or perhaps connivance.
“That was the most shocking revelation to me,” Peirce says.
“Exactly the same forensic scientists who produced the wrongful conviction of Guiseppe Conlon, the Maguire family and of Danny McNamee, and had been stood down for the role they played. Yet here they were.
“Without them, there wouldn’t have been a prosecution, far less a conviction in Lockerbie.
“If you don’t expose it, it will go on and on. What shocked me most was that I thought that all that had been gone through on Guildford and Birmingham, the one thing that had been achieved was that nobody would be convicted again on bad science. But yet in the Lockerbie case, it isn’t just the same bad science, it is the same bad scientists.”
Shame on the Crown to have fooled us once. Shame on us, that we let it happen again, as the saying goes.
In another transparent effort at information management, the Crown Office, in its media promulgations, persists in reiterating that Al Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity to have taken place on British soil, yet ignores the subsequent referral of the case back to court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, on the basis that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. The subsequent manoeuvrings between Westminster, Tripoli, British oil companies and Holyrood have demonstrated that Al Megrahi’s return to Libya, whilst ostensibly a compassionate matter, had far more to do with realpolitik and expediency than anyone concerned is prepared to admit.
Peirce has accumulated an extraordinary reputation for upending convictions that resulted in a miscarriage of justice. The real sting in the tale is that the obvious injustice of holding an innocent man in jail has been effectively neutered & replaced with politically convenient ire about his stubborn good health and the manner of his welcome in Libya. However, far from neutralising seekers of the truth in this case, the very evident display of the realities of the geopolitics of convenience has galvanised campaigners, family members and indeed Peirce herself into working to see the ever more flaccid case against Megrahi is overturned.
“It sounds that the conviction has reached that point. The SCCRC referred the case to the Court of Appeal, and would not have done that lightly,” she says.
“The reference to the court was made because a miscarriage of justice may have taken place. It would not have done that in a million years of it did not have a significant basis to do so.
“What is really, really regrettable here is that that opportunity, unless it is put into reverse, is just going to sit there. If the families who lost relatives have been cheated of knowing precisely how, why and who, then that is not good for anything or anyone. Al Megrahi went, and the appeal finished, so there is not that momentum to carry it through in the way there would have been if there were someone wrongly convicted and imprisoned, who had the opportunity to air out all the facts.”
The unfolding turmoil in Libya again provided further examples of global realpolitik, as Libya’s emergent leader apparent Abdel Jalil told an enthusiastic world media something they almost universally repeated without any conditionality or qualification; that Colonel Gadaffi was behind the Pan Am 103 atrocity. At the time of publication, neither he nor fellow regime confidante, former intelligence chief Moussa Koussa, have elaborated on those sweeping statements, nor offered the vaguest indication of what sort of evidence or testimony might support such a claim. Scotland’s own Crown Office emerged from a highly choreographed meeting with Koussa and have yet to emit a peep about what was discussed, and are evidently none the richer in terms of useful information. And Koussa left the country not in handcuffs, but aboard an executive jet from an RAF airbase, just as he arrived. If any of this manoeuvring strikes you as suspicious, it may be worth considering the scale and horror of the secret the four governments are taking quite considerable collective effort to avoid revisiting in either a judicial or public forum.
“It may be that because of what happened recently in Libya it may be worth looking at everything in the round,” Peirce says.
“We need an inquiry into how our government was encouraging all these accommodations and alliances with Libya. What was going on? This is much bigger than Lockerbie. What makes our foreign policy tick? Let’s look at the chronology, let’s look at how, for better or worse, the prosecution of he Lockerbie case might fit into that or not.
“Looking at the whole construct, there is going to be a lot of data to be found, that may not be comfortable to find, but we ought to know.”
There are further parallels that align this case with Peirce’s experience in miscarriage cases connected with the modern Irish troubles. The notorious Widgery report into the events of “bloody Sunday” shored up a flawed and fictitious version of events that was sustained and reinforced by successive Governments for a generation and beyond. It was only during 2010 that a lengthier, more honest appraisal resulted in a climbdown, admission of deceit and apology, which ultimately brought credit and respect to David Cameron, the political clock having moved on so far. Events surrounding the Pan Am 103 case are still too current and the deceit still too recent for such a reversal to bring credit upon anyone. Earlier this year for example, the Justice for Megrahi campaign, including noted academic Professor Robert Black QC concluded that then Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini had given flawed legal advice to the Scottish Government. It is hardly surprising that none in the Scottish civil service establishment are rushing to participate in exposure of their own culpability. However the Chilcott Inquiry, following the drip feed of revelations about the illegality of the Iraq invasion is precedent for the possibility that effort can be made to secure the truth in a shorter timeframe.
“The recent history in Westminster; all of the advice about the Iraq war, the advice about what constitutes torture, what is complicity in torture, advice about Geneva conventions, Guantanamo detentions - it has all served political expediency and has all been bad. Bad legally bad morally, bad factually," she says.
“We have lost our way, and to some extent deliberately gone the wrong way. There comes a time when you should stop and say ‘This is all wrong and we have to put it right’. The Lockerbie case is screaming out for that. Perhaps the point comes when the embarrassment is greater to do nothing than it is to do something.”
The matter has recently been before the United Nations, and given the lack of resolution in the Megrahi appeal, the European Union may still have an interest and role to play. The UN observer Hans Kochler, who said the manipulated conduct of the trial itself amounted to a criminal offence, could still have a locus to move for an EU level inquiry.
“It is an attractive thought, but I am not sure that wouldn’t lead to further evasion of responsibility,“ Peirce says.
“The will to actually achieve it would be even more blunted from outside. Because of the clear, disastrous mess the Libyan connection has been, it demands self analysis. If there were at both [Scottish and English]ends sufficient initiative to say at least let us set up the beginnings of a joint inquiry, in the hands of one completely trusted, completely neutral external examiner, just to look at the nuts and bolts that are there to see, to see if a full scale inquiry should be recommended; if there should, then both countries should able to do that.
“I am quite sure that if anyone had the will to say that Lockerbie and the relationship with Gadaffi has been spectacularly disastrous, perhaps the most disastrous relationship that the UK has had with anyone, for a very, very, very long time, and within its recent history we can see so much has gone awry that has distorted our foreign policy, domestic policy and our judicial integrity, then that is too much and we want to learn something from it, so that it doesn’t repeat itself.”
In the period since the Megrahi conviction was referred back to the High Court, not only have the campaigners - galvanised behind the spearhead of Dr Jim Swire, but comprising many others from across the world - persistently sustained their efforts, but a second generation of the children of those affected by the case have publicly engaged with the efforts to expose the realities of this case, including Al Megrahi’s daughter, Aisha, in whose name her father’s case could theoretically proceed in the event of his death.
“If any case is ever reopened, it is usually down to the absolute dogged stamina of one or two people who wont take no for an answer,” Peirce says.
“And there are people in this case who won’t let go of it, and interestingly, they are the people who are the most well informed, who went through the whole trial at Kamp Zeist and know the detail. They formed their views on data and information, not second hand knowledge. If anything achieves the reopening, it will be that.
“In the past it hasn‘t needed any more people than that to lever an opening into something that seemed shut tight forever. All of this is screaming out for an inquiry. The ingredients that make up the prosecution’s case are really so rotten. They can’t and they shouldn’t sustain the weight of a presumed safe finding. You can see that they are utterly contaminated. They have no integrity.
“The forensic findings lack all the ingredients that should make them safe. The continuity of exhibits is all over the place. The only other pillar on which it is held up is this non-identification. It is just a catastrophe. The whole edifice is rotten, and it is astonishing it was ever stood up in the first place.”
Peirce has pledged to continue to assist the families of the bereaved affected by the Pan Am 103 event and its Orwellian aftermath. Ever modest of her own contribution, not only to this case but the others to which she is associated, it is her own humility that is the overriding emotion that she attaches to her interest in this long lasting stain of shame on the nation.
“I see a terrifying reproduction of other really awful circumstances. It is a pretty exact repetition of injustices that have gone before. I suppose because I can see that, I can see the way the replication is exact down to the same detail, it is my responsibility to at least explain that much,“ she says.
“If the families can use that perspective, then of course that is there for them. I perhaps feel ashamed that I have not done more. I feel very, very badly that I have not contributed more, and want to contribute more from any perspective I have that is constructive and useful.”
And it is her belief, shared by the UK families affected by these events, that it better to know the awful truth, than a palatable falsehood.
“Even in the most terrible cases, there is often always the reaction that you shouldn’t be storing up this terrible thing for the victims or families of those who lost relatives. That happened with the Guildford bombs. However, when the truth finally came out, there wasn’t an outcry from the families at all to say that they would have preferred the miscarriage hadn’t been uncovered.”
Almost twenty three years have passed since the event that charred Lockerbie, with each of them marked by ongoing deceit and sustained resistance from those whose reputations are at risk of foundering once their actions and inactions are exposed. Some have already sought refuge in secure retirement, whilst others have risen to positions of considerable power in the Crown, civil service and Government establishments. Ever steadily, the weight of damaging information increases. The edifice of the conviction secured by malfeasance has long since crumbled, although its remains are still clung on to with desperation by an ever diminishing few. The official vacuum left by the present interregnum cannot be sustained whilst Peirce and others work to get closer to the truth.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 8:08 pm Post subject:
Village People: Tam Dalyell is never one to run with the herd
By Andy McSmith - Saturday, 22 October 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/village-people-tam-dalye ll-is-never-one-to-run-with-the-herd-2374279.html
News that Colonel Gaddafi was dead had only just hit the airwaves when that relentless old campaigner Sir Tam Dalyell was on the phone.
The former Labour MP for West Lothian is of the same mind as Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the Lockerbie bombing. Neither believes the Libyans committed the atrocity, though both suspect Gaddafi may have known who did. Dalyell thinks it was a Palestinian terrorist group hired by Iran. He did not share the optimism that the new Libyan government will be an improvement. "I'm in a minority of minorities here," he said. "I met Col Gaddafi in 2001 and got the impression that he wanted to do his best for his people. I was against the Nato intervention because they were unclear who they were backing. In five years, there may be a lot of people saying 'Bring back Gaddafi'. Who knows?" Dalyell had strong opinions and could be wrong but he was never one to run with the herd.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2011 9:39 pm Post subject:
TonyGosling wrote:
Village People: Tam Dalyell is never one to run with the herd
By Andy McSmith - Saturday, 22 October 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/village-people-tam-dalye ll-is-never-one-to-run-with-the-herd-2374279.html
News that Colonel Gaddafi was dead had only just hit the airwaves when that relentless old campaigner Sir Tam Dalyell was on the phone.
The former Labour MP for West Lothian is of the same mind as Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the Lockerbie bombing. Neither believes the Libyans committed the atrocity, though both suspect Gaddafi may have known who did. Dalyell thinks it was a Palestinian terrorist group hired by Iran. He did not share the optimism that the new Libyan government will be an improvement. "I'm in a minority of minorities here," he said. "I met Col Gaddafi in 2001 and got the impression that he wanted to do his best for his people. I was against the Nato intervention because they were unclear who they were backing. In five years, there may be a lot of people saying 'Bring back Gaddafi'. Who knows?" Dalyell had strong opinions and could be wrong but he was never one to run with the herd.
Liam Fox may have shot himself in the tail with his remarks about press coverage in his resignation statement on Wednesday. His friends say he did not mean to sound like he thought the media was responsible for his predicament. His anger was directed specifically at The Sun, for reviving the story about the burglary of his house, revealing he was not the only person at home when it happened, and for the innuendo about his sexuality. Unfortunately, it sounded like he was complaining that he would not have got into trouble for breaking ministerial rules if the media had not inquired into he was up to – which predictably turned the whole pack of political journalists against him. Some are vowing revenge if ever Fox tries to get back into front line politics. "We'll make it harder for him, if not impossible," one feral beast snarled.
Kind of a weak statement from 'Sir' Dalyell? So it would have been Jim Dandy if NATO had indicated who they were backing?
Yet he had just said he was of the opinion that he got the impression that Gaddafi wanted to do the beat for his people.
Has Dalyell heard about Gaddafi's planning to move to an 'African Gold Dinar'? Is he aware of ex-Supreme Allied Commander Europe, 4* General Wesley Clark (retired)'s video testimony of how he was told by a Pentagon insider, well known to him, that the US was going to overturn 7 regimes in 5 years (including Iraq & Syria)?
Wishy washy, I'd say (and that is being charitable). No concern for the thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of Gaddafi supporters, and of Libyans who, supporters of Gaddafi or not, did not support the NATO intervention and wanton slaughter of Libyans.
Before implying that NATO's slaughter would have been acceptible if they had indicated a clear preference for who should control Libya, I suggest the good 'Sir' Dalyell go and visit the country, accompanied by someone like (but there is no one like) Cynthia McKinney, and a group of British notables (just to act as an insurance the pair of them wouldn't be murdered by rogue Gaddafi supporters, or even 'al CIA-dah' lookalikes), and see the mess NATO has left, and speak to the traumatised Libyan population. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Whats the betting Magrahi and the 4 million Lawsuit never survive the war _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on 10 Jun 2011
When the Libyan intelligence operative Abdel Baset al-Megrahi eventually dies of the prostate cancer that so controversially won him his freedom from a Scottish prison, his death will trigger headlines around the world. But few tears will be shed for the only man ever found guilty of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 -- until 9/11, the most lethal terrorist attack ever on American civilians. Certainly not by the American families, who felt shock and revulsion at al-Megrahi's release. Nor by American politicians, infuriated at the long list of British and Scottish officials who have refused to testify before a Senate committee investigating possible backroom deals involving Scottish and British officials, British commercial interests and the Libyan government. Yet by the accounts of those who knew him best, the convicted man himself will go to his grave insisting he was innocent of the murder of the 270 passengers, crew and residents, who perished at Lockerbie in Scotland, that December night. Drawing exclusively on a previously confidential, legal report, The Pan Am Bomber reveals the evidence that would have been presented in al-Megrahi's stillborn appeal against his conviction. Our investigation is backed up by 97 gigabytes of official documents, whistleblower testimony and photographic evidence - all of which will explain why and how al-Megrahi's conviction was fatally flawed. It reveals how the chain of evidence used to convict al-Megrahi was broken and, in at least one crucial instance, tampered with. It also shows why it was in the interest of all of the parties (except the convicted man himself) to make sure that the appeal was never heard.
_________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was interviewed on 15 December 2011 by George Thomson, a former police officer, who is now a criminal defence investigator. In the interview to be broadcast in February 2012, Megrahi insisted new developments will be revealed in a book he's co-written with journalist John Ashton: "I want people to read it and use their brain not hearts and make judgment. I am an innocent man, and the book will clear my name." Megrahi added: "I am about to die and I'd ask now to be left in peace to die with my family, and they be left in peace as well. I will not be giving any more interviews, and no more cameras will be allowed into my home."
_________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
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