To coincide with the publication on Tuesday 28 February 2012 of John Ashton's book 'Megrahi: You are my Jury', various media broadcasts have been scheduled.
Mon 27 Feb - BBC Radio Scotland has a feature at 1.15 pm GMT;
For the first time the man known as ‘the Lockerbie bomber’ tells his story. This long-awaited book argues that, far from being an unrepentant terrorist, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was the innocent victim of dirty politics, a flawed investigation and judicial folly. Based on exclusive interviews with Megrahi himself, and conclusive new evidence, it destroys the prosecution case and puts the Scottish criminal justice system in the dock. Megrahi: You Are My Jury makes a compelling argument that we have to look elsewhere for the murderers of the 270 Lockerbie victims and that Libya was wrongfully accused and punished. Megrahi was denied an appeal in a court of justice by ill-health and his return to Libya. Now he and John Ashton present all the Lockerbie evidence and ask you to be the jury.
The author
John Ashton is a writer, researcher and TV producer. He has studied the Lockerbie case for 18 years and from 2006 to 2009 was a researcher with Megrahi’s legal team. He is the co-author of What Everyone in Britain Should Know about Crime and Punishment (with David Wilson), Blackstone Press 1998, What Everyone in Britain Should Know about the Police (with David Wilson and Douglas Sharp), Blackstone Press 2001, and Cover-up of Convenience: The hidden scandal of Lockerbie (with Ian Ferguson), Mainstream 2001.
At the time, eight years into a 27-year sentence, he was part-way through an appeal granted after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled that his conviction may have been unsafe.
Hugh Andrew, Birlinn’s managing director, yesterday defended his decision to publish the 59-year-old father of five’s memoirs.
He said: “We will make the offer to various charities and I understand perfectly well that some may not wish to receive money, it is entirely their call.
“It would be inappropriate for us to make any profit out of this book and we are not seeking to make any. Megrahi himself will receive no money at all.
“I absolutely defend our right to publish this book. It is not a statement on his innocence or guilt but he has the right to have his case in the public domain.
“A great deal more information has come to light since the trial.”
Brighton-based Mr Ashton co-wrote Cover-up of Convenience: The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie in 2001 and worked on The Maltese Double Cross television documentary, which infamously alleged a CIA drug smuggling connection to the atrocity.
A video found in a house in Jalalabad / Kandahar reprise aka "after we've dropped the bombs and missiles and installed our new puppets, we find all sorts of new "evidence" ... aka Bullshlte on an unimaginable scale ...
Twelve months ago, a few days after the start of the Libyan revolution, I posed the following question on Professor Robert Black’s Lockerbie blog:
‘What’s the betting that, sometime in the next few weeks, the following happens:
1) In the burned out ruins of a Libyan government building, someone finds definitive documentary ‘proof’ that Libya and Megrahi were responsible for Lockerbie;
and/or
2) A Libyan official reveals, ‘we did it’.’
Within a day the second scenario had materialised.
The newly defected justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who was soon to become head of Libya’s National Transitional Council, declared to the Swedish newspaper Expressen ‘I have proof that Gaddafi gave the order on Lockerbie.’[i] More high-profile defectors followed suit, including the ex-interior minister Abdel Fattah Younes (who was later killed by suspicious revolutionaries) and the ex-ambassador to the UN Abdul Rahman al-Shalgham.
Six months on from the fall of the Gadafy regime, not a single piece of evidence has emerged to back up these defectors’ claims. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised: if, as I believe, the bombing was not commissioned by Gadafy, then such evidence never existed; and, if Gadafy was involved, then the evidence was probably shredded years ago.
In the absence of evidence, what are we to make of the defectors’ claims? The first thing to note is that all have been remarkably vague. To my knowledge, so far only Jalil has expanded on the allegation. He did so in an interview with the Sunday Times, published on 27 February last year, under the headline ‘Lockerbie bomber ‘blackmailed Gadaffi for release’’. In it he claimed that Abdelbaset had blackmailed Gadafy into securing his release by threatening to expose the Colonel’s role in the bombing, and had ‘vowed to exact ‘revenge’’ unless Gadafy complied.[ii] This was both ludicrous and illogical. Abdelbaset depended upon the government to fund his appeal and look after his family in Tripoli. As his response to the revolution demonstrated, Gadafy didn’t take kindly to those who challenged him. And wasn’t it already accepted that Gadafy was responsible for the bombing? After all, Libya had paid compensation to the victims. How could Abdelbaset expose something that had already been exposed? And, if Abdelbaset only cared about his freedom, why, after returning to Libya, would he bother spending so much of his remaining time on a book? (It should also be noted that Jalil told the Sunday Times that Abdelbaset was not the man who carried out the planning and execution of the bombing, but was involved in facilitating things for those who did. This was, perhaps, a nod to the fact that the evidence against Abdelbaset was very weak – something which, as justice minister, he must have been well aware of.)
When, a few weeks after the article, Jalil was asked on BBC Newsnight about the evidence of Gadafy’s involvement, he ‘revealed’ that Gadafy had supported Abdelbaset and paid for his legal case.[iii] This was not even a revelation, let alone evidence. Was this the best Jalil could offer?
The ex-interior minister, Younes, was less explicit than Jalil, which was surprising, given that he had been close to Gadafy for 47 years and was described by some as the Colonel’s number two. Asked by the BBC’s John Simpson if Gadafy had personally ordered the bombing, he replied, ‘There is no doubt about it, nothing happens without Gadafy’s agreement. I’m certain this was a national governmental decision.’[iv] In an online article Simpson claimed that Younes ‘maintains that Col Gaddafi was personally responsible for the decision to blow up the Pan Am flight’,[v] but in the broadcast section of the interview he appeared to be expressing a firm belief, rather than certain knowledge. Surely, if Gadafy had ordered the bombing, Younes must have known all about it.
Shalgam’s claim of Libyan involvement was still less credible, as he had previously declared that the country was not responsible for the bombing.[vi] No doubt this was why, when questioned by the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat, he gave the vague answer: ‘The Lockerbie bombing was a complex and tangled operation … There was talk at the time of the roles played by states and organisations. Libyan security played a part but I believe it was not a strictly Libyan operation.’[vii]
The most intriguing defector was the ex-foreign minister and former intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa. He too had previously denied Libyan responsibility for Lockerbie,[viii] yet, shortly after his arrival in the UK in March 2011, it was reported that he would be would be willing to tell the British authorities about the country’s involvement in the bombing. The claim was made by a UK-based Libyan acquaintance, Noman Benotman, who reportedly helped to coordinate the defection.[ix] Benotman’s role was itself interesting. A former leader of the anti-Gadafy islamist terrorist organisation the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, he had renounced violent extremism and become a leading figure in the counter-radicalisation think-tank Quilliam.[x] He remained opposed to Gadafy yet was apparently friendly with man described (by Shalgam) as the ‘black box’ of the Gadafy regime,[xi] who had once tried to have him extradited to Libya.
Koussa was eventually interviewed about Lockerbie by the Scottish police,[xii] and shortly afterwards had his assets unfrozen and was allowed to leave the country. He is now living in a luxury hotel in Qatar, whose government was the most supportive of the Libyan rebels among the Arab states, although the new Libyan government continues to regard him with extreme suspicion.[xiii] David Cameron insisted that Koussa had not been offered immunity from prosecution,[xiv] while behind the scenes Whitehall spinners were busy downplaying his role in terrorism. A ‘senior government source’ briefed the Daily Telegraph that Koussa was not in London at the time of the 1984 murder outside the embassy of WPC Yvonne Fletcher (as if that cleared him of responsibility) and added ‘seeing him as the mastermind behind Lockerbie doesn’t make any sense in terms of his career. He might, however, possess some useful information about such cases.’[xv]
The obvious problem here was that for years sources in Whitehall and Washington had been privately briefing the media that Koussa was Libya’s terrorist-in-chief and the probable mastermind of Lockerbie. The day after the defection the CIA’s Vincent Cannistraro, who had previously worked on the US government’s covert campaign to unseat Gadafy, part of which involved spreading disinformation, told CBS news: ‘Moussa Koussa was personally responsible for the actual organization of [Lockerbie].’[xvi] It was, in short, inconceivable that the Libyan government could be guilty of the bombing and Koussa be innocent.
So why wasn’t he arrested? There were two obvious explanations. The first was that, in its desperation to overthrow Gadafy, the UK government was prepared to make a pact with the most notorious devil in his inner circle. The second was that the government was well aware that neither he nor Gadafy had anything to do with Lockerbie and that he had simply called their bluff. A third explanation, which doesn’t preclude the other two, was that Koussa was a long-time MI6 asset. Former foreign secretary Jack Straw confirmed in a BBC Radio 4 interview that Koussa had been ‘a key figure’ in the 2003 negotiations with the Libyan government over weapons of mass destruction. Straw then went further: when put to him that Koussa had had ‘exceedingly close contacts at a very sensitive level with – what shall we call them for the sake of argument? – ‘British officials’ for the best part of a decade’, he answered, ‘Yes, if not more.’[xvii] The Daily Telegraph went further still, stating: ‘As head of Libya external intelligence, Mr Koussa was an MI6 asset for almost two decades.’[xviii] If true, this was not only breathtaking, but might also account for much of the disinformation surrounding the case. Even if it were not true, the affair exposed the ugly reality of the government’s approach to Lockerbie.
The most recent ‘Gadafy did it’ claim, appeared in an ITV Tonight programme, broadcast last month. The documentary followed the admirable Dr Jim Swire to Tripoli as he attempted to uncover information about the bombing. Its denouement was an interview with Ashur Shamis, described as an adviser to the Prime Minister, who told Dr Swire there was no doubt that Gadafy was personally involved in the planning and execution of the bombing. He added: ‘Regardless of what Megrahi did or did not do, that [sic] is a small fish. He is an employee of Libyan security, there is no doubt about it – of external security – and if he was told to do something he would have done it.’ Gadafy, he said, ‘paid all this money to cover up himself … If he had no role, he wouldn’t have paid a penny, he wouldn’t have paid a penny.’[xix] This was, of course, nonsense: the Gadafy regime had paid compensation to the Lockerbie victims, reluctantly, because it was the only way to rid the country of harsh UN sanctions – a point made publicly by Shalgam in 2004. If the programme’s producers had checked Shamis’s background, they would have discovered that he hadn’t lived in Libya since 1973 and therefore had no first hand knowledge of the inner workings of the Gadafy regime. In 1981 he was one of the founders of the CIA-backed National Front for the Salvation of Libya and in 1985, at the height of the US Government’s covert campaign against the Gadafy regime, became chair of its National Congress.[xx]
The programme claimed that Dr Swire ‘is now persuaded that Gadafy was probably behind his daughter’s murder.’ In fact, as he subsequently told the Times, he found Shamis unconvincing. He explained: ‘I found Tripoli percolated with the desire to pin everything imaginable under the sun on the defunct Gaddafi regime, because the people are so delighted to have got rid of him … Mr Shamis certainly believes al-Megrahi was guilty. I tried to make plain that if you look at the evidence that it is not at all likely.’[xxi]
Thankfully, not all the influential voices in the new Libya are as badly informed as Shamis. The first interim justice minister, Mohamed al-Alagi, a former head of Libya’s human rights association who was involved in Abdelbaset’s case, has stated publicly that Abdelbaset is innocent.[xxii]
I still expect that ‘evidence’ will emerge from Libya to support Abdelbaset’s conviction. The case against him is now so damaged, that only such concoctions can save it.
. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Last edited by Mark Gobell on Sun Feb 26, 2012 10:18 am; edited 7 times in total
Next week, 11 years after his conviction, all the important primary evidence concerning the so-called Lockerbie bomber will, for the first time, be made public. My book 'Megrahi: You are my Jury' will reveal crucial new facts, never available to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's trial court, many of which were withheld from his lawyers.
The Crown case was already holed below the waterline; now it should sink without trace. In its absence, those who assert Megrahi's guilt will cling to two lifeboats: the first is that, regardless of the latest revelations, he was a senior agent of the Libyan intelligence service (the JSO), and therefore must have been involved in terrorism; the second is that Libya has admitted that it carried out the bombing. It's time to scuttle these boats too.
The senior intelligence agent claim rests entirely on the testimony of Majid Gaika, an acquaintance of Megrahi's, who was formerly a low level JSO agent and LAA's deputy station chief at Malta's Luqa airport. Giaka also claimed that Colonel Gaddafi was a freemason. He didn't specify the rank – Grand Wizard of the Tripoli lodge perhaps?
At Megrahi's trial it was revealed that Giaka had been a paid CIA informant since four months before Lockerbie and that the agency considered him so unreliable that it had threatened to stop paying him. It was not until three years later, when desperate for asylum in the US, that he finally implicated Megrahi in the bomb plot. In their 80-page opinion, the trial judges described much of his evidence as 'at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue', and noted: 'Information provided by a paid informer is always open to the criticism that it may be invented in order to justify payment, and in our view this is a case where such criticism is more than usually justified'. Yet, perversely, they accepted his unsubstantiated claim that Megrahi was a senior JSO agent.
It cannot, of course, be proven that Megrahi was not an agent, however, in the 20 years since he was first charged with the bombing, no credible evidence has emerged to support the claim. The original indictment alleged that his company, ABH, was one of a number of JSO cutouts used for terrorist procurement, but, at the end of the trial, the Crown amended the indictment, dropping the wider conspiracy claims.
There is ample evidence to substantiate Megrahi's claim that ABH was a legitimate trading company, dealing mainly in aircraft spares for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA). He admits that he sometimes travelled on a false passport, but insists that it was issued to give him cover when he was buying spare parts for the airline's US-made aircraft, in breach of US sanctions (in contrast to his original passport, which gave his occupation as flight dispatcher, the false one gave it simply as 'employee'). Crucially, he kept it for 11 years after the bombing and handed it over to the police before the trial – hardly the actions of an intelligence agent, let alone a terrorist.
Following his return to Libya, the Sunday Times ran two articles which apparently bolstered the intelligence agent claim. The first, on 29 November 2009, claimed: 'The Lockerbie bomber was implicated in the purchase and development of chemical weapons by Libya, according to documents produced by the American government'.
The documents in question were in fact a US state department press release, issued when Megrahi was first indicted 18 years earlier. Had there been any evidence to substantiate the claim, it would have been used at his trial, but, of course, there wasn't. The second article, from 20 December 2009 claimed that, at the time of his conviction, Megrahi had £1.8 million in a Swiss bank account. A great story, but, as the book explains, completely untrue.
More recently, ITV's 'Tonight' programme broadcast an interview with Libyan official Ashur Shamis, described as an adviser to the country's new interim prime minister, who claimed: '[Megrahi] is an employee of Libyan security, there is no doubt about it – of external security – and if he was told to do something he would have done it'. The programme failed to mention that Shamis hadn't lived in Libya since 1973. Not that he was unfamiliar with intelligence agencies: in 1981 he was one of the founders of the CIA-backed National Front for the Salvation of Libya and in 1985, at the height of the US government's covert campaign against the Grand Wizard (which has been documented by, among others, Watergate journalist Bob Woodward), became chair of its National Congress.
What, then, of the other lifeboat – Libya's 'admission of guilt'? In 2004 the regime formally accepted responsibility for the bombing and agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the victims' relatives. Here too Shamis had something to say: '[Gaddafi] paid all this money to cover up himself...If he had no role, he wouldn't have paid a penny, he wouldn't have paid a penny'. As well as being illogical – how could 'admitting' a crime amount to a cover up? – this was a blatant distortion of the truth. Libya accepted responsibility primarily in order to rid itself of crippling UN sanctions, which had been imposed after Megrahi and his co-accused Lamin Fhimah were first charged 12 years earlier. The corresponding UN security council resolutions allowed the sanctions to be lifted only if the country admitted responsibility and paid compensation.
In February 2004 the Libyan prime minister, Shukri Ghanem, told the BBC that his government continued to protest its innocence, adding 'We feel that we bought peace. After the sanctions and after the problems we faced because of the sanctions, the loss of money, we thought it was easier for us to buy peace and this is why we agreed on compensation'. The Grand Wizard's son Saif al-Islam later said: 'we wrote a letter to the security council saying we are responsible for the acts of our employees...but it doesn't mean that we did it in fact. I admit that we played with words – we had to. What can you do? Without writing that letter we would not be able to get rid of sanctions'.
If only our own leaders had been so open about the grubby politics that have plagued Megrahi's case.
John Ashton is a writer, researcher and TV producer. He has studied the Lockerbie case for 18 years and from 2006 to 2009 was a researcher with Megrahi's legal team. He is the co-author of 'Cover-up of Convenience: The hidden scandal of Lockerbie' (with Ian Ferguson), Mainstream 2001. His new book 'Megrahi: You are my Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence', will be published by Birlinn next week.
Photograph of the author by Toby Amies
. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Last edited by Mark Gobell on Sun Feb 26, 2012 9:57 am; edited 1 time in total
The story of little Dutch boy Hans Brinker has charmed children for many years. Hans saw a tiny leak in the sea defences of his homeland and courageously kept his finger in the dike for many hours until rescued by a passing clergyman. His heroism produced a happy ending by preventing a flood of angry waters.
Gerald Sinclair’s finger is presently stuck firmly into the dike. But there will be no passing hero. The angry waters will, inevitably, claim all those who resist exposure of the findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission using the specious excuses of Data Protection and Human Rights.
Gerald has described it another way, finding it to be a kind of obstacle course through which the SCCRC is forced to seek a safe pathway. Those who have laid, and continue to lay, those obstacles should beware.
John Ashton’s new book Megrahi: You are my Jury is the beginning of the flood.
We wish John every success with his endeavours.
In the coming months, more will follow. Our own book Lockerbie: The Framing of Al-Megrahi follows a radically different road, but we find ourselves upon the summit of the same mountain.
Exposed will be the failures of public duty by senior police officers, FBI agents and officers, and members of the Scottish Crown office. Exposed will be the dissembling of formerly trusted witnesses in the trial of Al-Megrahi. Indeed, an examination by an independent judge may discover past actions more serious than a failure of public duty. Only as the history of Lockerbie continues on its inevitable path will these matters become clear.
Men who try to conceal these truths should study carefully the signatory list of Justice for Al-Megrahi. Those who have volunteered their names are not fools. Even a former US Ambassador to a Middle Eastern nation has offered his support.
Some of the signatories are prominent lawyers and barristers within Scotland and across Britain. And should these matters end up in court, there are more former and current heroes of criminal law and human rights law who have proclaimed their willingness to join our fight for the truth.
Professor Robert Black QC
Mr Robert Forrester
Father Pat Keegans
Dr Morag Kerr
Mr Iain McKie
Dr. Jim Swire
The Signatory Members:
Ms Kate Adie (Former Chief News Correspondent for BBC News).
Mr John Ashton (Co-author of: ‘Cover Up of Convenience’).
Mr David Benson (Actor/author of the play ‘Lockerbie: Unfinished Business’).
Mrs Jean Berkley (Mother of Alistair Berkley: victim of Pan Am 103).
Mr Peter Biddulph (Lockerbie tragedy researcher).
Mr Benedict Birnberg (Retired senior partner of Birnberg Peirce & Partners).
Professor Robert Black QC (‘Architect’ of the Kamp van Zeist Trial).
Mr Paul Bull (Close friend of Bill Cadman: killed on Pan Am 103).
Professor Noam Chomsky (Human rights, social and political commentator).
Mr Tam Dalyell (UK MP: 1962-2005. Father of the House: 2001-2005).
Mr Ian Ferguson (Co-author of: ‘Cover Up of Convenience’).
Dr David Fieldhouse (Police surgeon present at the Pan Am 103 crash site).
Mr Robert Forrester (Justice for Megrahi Committee).
Ms Christine Grahame MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament).
Mr Ian Hamilton QC (Advocate, author and former university rector).
Mr Ian Hislop (Editor of ‘Private Eye’).
Fr Pat Keegans (Lockerbie parish priest on 21st December 1988).
Ms A L Kennedy (Author).
Dr Morag Kerr (Lockerbie commentator).
Mr Andrew Killgore (Former US Ambassador to Qatar).
Mr Adam Larson (Editor and proprietor of ‘The Lockerbie Divide’).
Mr Aonghas MacNeacail (Poet and journalist).
Mr Eddie McDaid (Lockerbie commentator).
Mr Rik McHarg (Communications hub coordinator: Lockerbie crash sites).
Mr Iain McKie (Retired Superintendent of Police).
Mr Marcello Mega (Journalist covering the Lockerbie incident).
Ms Heather Mills (Reporter for ‘Private Eye’).
Rev’d John F Mosey (Father of Helga Mosey: victim of Pan Am 103).
Mr Len Murray (Retired solicitor).
Cardinal Keith O’Brien (Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church).
Mr Denis Phipps (Aviation security expert).
Mr John Pilger (Campaigning human rights journalist).
Mr Steven Raeburn (Editor of ‘The Firm’).
Dr Tessa Ransford OBE (Poetry Practitioner and Adviser).
Mr James Robertson (Author).
Dr Jim Swire (Father of Flora Swire: victim of Pan Am 103).
Sir Teddy Taylor (UK MP: 1964-2005. Former Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland).
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize Winner).
And not a single "tin foil hat" among them ...
. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:14 am Post subject:
Lockerbie: Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi Claims Innocence In New Book You Are My Jury
Posted: 02/27/12 07:02 AM ET | Updated: 02/27/12 07:03 AM ET
New claims that will allegedly "destroy the prosecution case" against the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will be revealed today.
A new book Megrahi: You Are My Jury features exclusive interviews with Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, in which he protests his innocence and insists he was "the innocent victim of dirty politics, a flawed investigation and judicial folly".
The book's author John Ashton is a writer, researcher and TV producer who has studied the Lockerbie case for 18 years, and spent three years as a researcher with Megrahi's legal team.
The book is purported to feature "conclusive new evidence" which "destroys the prosecution case and puts the Scottish criminal justice system in the dock".
The author further claims that the murderers of the 270 Lockerbie victims "were acting on behalf of an entirely different government, rather than Colonel Gaddafi and Libya".
In his endorsement for the book, Mr Megrahi said: "You know me as the Lockerbie bomber. I know that I'm innocent.
"Here, for the first time, is my true story: how I came to be blamed for Britain's worst mass murder, my nightmare decade in prison and the truth about my controversial release. Please read it and decide for yourself. You are now my jury."
The Lockerbie wreckage
The book's publishers say Megrahi "will not receive any financial profit from the publication of this book".
The author insists the new evidence goes beyond the findings of Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which permitted the appeal against Megrahi`s conviction that was subsequently abandoned ahead of Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds.
Mr Ashton will unveil his claims at the MacDonald Holyrood Hotel, in the shadow of the Scottish Parliament, alongside Justice For Megrahi campaigners Dr Jim Swire, Rev John Mosey and Iain McKie who have demanded an independent inquiry into Megrahi's conviction.
The book launch will be followed by two television documentaries which further claim to undermine the case against Megrahi.
At 7.30pm BBC Scotland Investigates will feature "the first and only English interview with the dying Al-Megrahi who claims the full truth about Lockerbie has never been revealed".
The documentary will uncover "new evidence that has never been heard before and cast fresh doubts not only on Al-Megrahi's conviction but on whether Libya was involved at all".
Then at 8pm Al Jazeera English will "reveal the secret contents" of the SCCRC review.
Lockerbie: Case Closed, gained access to the commission's investigations and uncovered "fresh scientific evidence" which it claims is unknown to the commission and "comprehensively undermines" part of the case against the Lockerbie bomber.
Lockerbie: fresh moves to clear Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
Evidence not shown to bomber's defence team includes details of break-in at Heathrow that could have allowed access to Pan Am luggage
Comments ( 8 )
Stephen McPherson and Tracy McVeigh
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 March 2012 20.00 GMT
Article history
Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in hospital in Tripoli. Photograph: Sabri Elmhedwi/EPA
A new appeal is set to be launched in the Scottish courts to attempt to clear the name of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Campaigners, including Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the 1988 Pan Am bombing, say efforts to overturn Megrahi's 2001 conviction for the murder of 270 people will go ahead even after the terminally ill Libyan has died.
A book by a former member of Megrahi's legal team forced the Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, to deny last week claims of a "nod and a wink" understanding, under which Megrahi dropped his appeal in exchange for his compassionate release and return to Libya.
Megrahi was convicted by a special court of three Scots judges who sat without a jury in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, but John Ashton's book, Megrahi, You Are My Jury, quotes the Libyan as saying that he was framed, claiming that evidence seen by prosecutors was never passed to the defence. "There was a huge pressure to convict and it's clear now there was blatant intellectual dishonesty surrounding his trial," said Ashton. "Along with significant new forensic evidence, it's pretty clear this is an unsafe conviction."
Evidence not seen by the defence includes a break-in at Heathrow in the early hours of 21 December 1988, that could have allowed a device to be planted among security-screened Pan Am luggage. Doubts have also been cast over payments made to a key prosecution witness and a circuit board fragment found in the wreckage that prosecutors said was part of bomb timer made for Libyan authorities.
Quote:
Comments
8 comments, displaying first
martin77
3 March 2012 8:20PM
Theres always been a bad smell about this case.
The fact that Mr Swire has battled for all these years
to clear the man convicted of killing his daughter speaks volumes.
Quote:
mikepee
3 March 2012 8:23PM
It looks like the truth was never important in this case, all along it has seemed more important to point the finger and get a conviction regardless of the evidence, or lack of it.
Quote:
shring
3 March 2012 8:24PM
Maybe you could search Lexis for news that the Heathrow break in was ever investigated.
Go on, you know you want to.
Well done for publicising John Ashton's book.
Here's some more Lockerbie resources for those that may be interested:
Professor Robert Black QC
Mr Robert Forrester
Father Pat Keegans
Dr Morag Kerr
Mr Iain McKie
Dr. Jim Swire
The Signatory Members:
Ms Kate Adie (Former Chief News Correspondent for BBC News).
Mr John Ashton (Co-author of: ‘Cover Up of Convenience’).
Mr David Benson (Actor/author of the play ‘Lockerbie: Unfinished Business’).
Mrs Jean Berkley (Mother of Alistair Berkley: victim of Pan Am 103).
Mr Peter Biddulph (Lockerbie tragedy researcher).
Mr Benedict Birnberg (Retired senior partner of Birnberg Peirce & Partners).
Professor Robert Black QC (‘Architect’ of the Kamp van Zeist Trial).
Mr Paul Bull (Close friend of Bill Cadman: killed on Pan Am 103).
Professor Noam Chomsky (Human rights, social and political commentator).
Mr Tam Dalyell (UK MP: 1962-2005. Father of the House: 2001-2005).
Mr Ian Ferguson (Co-author of: ‘Cover Up of Convenience’).
Dr David Fieldhouse (Police surgeon present at the Pan Am 103 crash site).
Mr Robert Forrester (Justice for Megrahi Committee).
Ms Christine Grahame MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament).
Mr Ian Hamilton QC (Advocate, author and former university rector).
Mr Ian Hislop (Editor of ‘Private Eye’).
Fr Pat Keegans (Lockerbie parish priest on 21st December 1988).
Ms A L Kennedy (Author).
Dr Morag Kerr (Lockerbie commentator).
Mr Andrew Killgore (Former US Ambassador to Qatar).
Mr Adam Larson (Editor and proprietor of ‘The Lockerbie Divide’).
Mr Aonghas MacNeacail (Poet and journalist).
Mr Eddie McDaid (Lockerbie commentator).
Mr Rik McHarg (Communications hub coordinator: Lockerbie crash sites).
Mr Iain McKie (Retired Superintendent of Police).
Mr Marcello Mega (Journalist covering the Lockerbie incident).
Ms Heather Mills (Reporter for ‘Private Eye’).
Rev’d John F Mosey (Father of Helga Mosey: victim of Pan Am 103).
Mr Len Murray (Retired solicitor).
Cardinal Keith O’Brien (Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church).
Mr Denis Phipps (Aviation security expert).
Mr John Pilger (Campaigning human rights journalist).
Mr Steven Raeburn (Editor of ‘The Firm’).
Dr Tessa Ransford OBE (Poetry Practitioner and Adviser).
Mr James Robertson (Author).
Dr Jim Swire (Father of Flora Swire: victim of Pan Am 103).
Sir Teddy Taylor (UK MP: 1964-2005. Former Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland).
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize Winner).
Comment editor Becky Gardiner on open journalism: 'We ask our readers what we should be writing about' - video
Opinion at the Guardian changed for ever with the launch of our Comment is free website in 2006, offering readers the chance to write for and respond to guardian.co.uk. Comment editor Becky Gardiner explains how the Guardian's readers are at the heart of a vibrant culture of debate and discussion.
Quote:
shring
3 March 2012 8:59PM
Becky
Perhaps you could try and explain why Britain's "leading Liberal voice" closed comments on this Lockerbie article about John Ashton's new book, just now, after only 8 comments in 47 minutes ?
Perhaps you could also explain why posting a comment about nefarious, documented plans to blow up passenger jets is off topic for a thread who's topic is "blowing up a passenger jet"
Thank you
Evidence:
From this:
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shring
3 March 2012 8:43PM
And if you still don't believe that covert forces would plan to blow up passenger jets, then perhaps you might like to read all about:
[This is the headline over a long interview with Megrahi: You are my Jury author John Ashton in today’s edition of the Sunday Herald. It reads in part:]
Ashton says he is in no doubt that Scotland got the wrong man when Megrahi was convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988 which instantly killed the 259 passengers and crew aboard the plane and another 11 in the town of Lockerbie below.
Ashton also believes that those responsible for the bombing may never be brought to justice and calls the trial and conviction the "biggest scandal of Scotland's post-devolution era" and an act that "disgraces Scotland's criminal justice system".
He says the evidence still held by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which investigated the conviction as a possible miscarriage of justice, should be made public.
The SCCRC found six grounds on which Megrahi's conviction was potentially unsafe. Both Megrahi and the Scottish Government want publication of the 800-page report in the interests of transparency, but this is subject to data-protection law which is reserved to Westminster.
That means approval has to be given by the key players in the case, including Megrahi, the Crown Office, Dumfries and Galloway Police, and witnesses including the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci whose evidence linking Meghrai to the bombing has been questioned.
QUESTION: Is Megrahi blocking the publication of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission report which recommended that his case be returned to the Appeal Court in 2007? If not, who is?
Answer: No. His position is that everything must be published and he says he will allow everything over which he has a say to be published. He is happy for the evidence that doesn't stand in his favour to come out as well. His line is everyone should put out all the evidence. His beef is that 20 years after he was indicted, they are still withholding stuff.
Q. Has Megrahi ever said who was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, or who he thinks did it?
A. No. And he won't. Because it was nothing to do with Libya. There was a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing towards a Palestinian cell in Germany. But he's very clear on this. He said he has been wrongly accused and it could be they have been as well. His line is we have to concentrate on disproving the evidence against him not on proving it against others. It is for the police to find the people who really did it, not for him and his legal team.
Q. Did he have any – even tangential – involvement or foreknowledge of the bombing?
A. No. That's my belief and that's what he says.
Q. So if he is to be believed, we have mass murderers on the loose that ave not been dealt with in over 20 years. Has Megrahi ever raised any questions over seeking the real culprits?
A. He has sympathy for the bereaved and thinks they have been cheated. But he is very reluctant to point fingers, purely because of his own experience of being wrongly fingered.
Q. What about Megrahi's longevity despite being given a few months to live because of his prostate-cancer diagnosis?
A. The medical evidence was that the three months [to live] was a realistic prognosis. But clearly there was pressure on here. The Scottish Government as well as the UK Government, as well as the Libyans – everyone – was desperate for confirmation that he might only have a few months to live. It was a political fix, wasn't it? But that's not to say there was any dishonesty on the part of the doctors.
Q. What proof is there that during a meeting between Libyan diplomat Abdulati al-Obeidi and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill on August 10, 2009, a suggestion was made that it would be easier to gain compassionate release if Megrahi dropped his appeal? In what circumstances did MacAskill have this conversation?
A. The story is that Obeidi who led the Libyan delegation went for meetings with MacAskill and officials, and after that they went to the prison to see Megrahi. Obeidi later said to Megrahi that, during the meeting or at the end of the meeting, MacAskill had taken him to one side and said: look it would be easier to grant compassionate release if Megrahi dropped his appeal.
Q. So it is hearsay?
A. MacAskill has since fallen back on the fact there was a minute of the meeting and it reflects what went on. It's a load of waffle. If you look at it, it is one page long and a third of that page is a list of attendees. It's five bullet points, it is incredible. In any case, the whole point of taking someone aside is that it is not minuted.
Q. What do you make of MacAskill's denial that he said it would be easier to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds if he dropped his appeal.
A. It boils down to Obeidi's word against MacAskill and Obeidi's a Gaddafi regime relic and under house arrest. People will say Obeidi shouldn't be believed.
You have to look at motive. What was Obeidi's motive for lying to Megrahi. There was huge pressure to get him home and Obeidi maybe felt he could help persuade him. But beyond that, it is a bit opaque. Gaddafi wanted the conviction overturned, he wanted to get back into the international community and put the issue behind him. Then you look at MacAskill's motive and that [would be] to save the criminal justice system in Scotland a massive embarrassment.
They would be forced to account for why all the evidence the SCCRC turned up that had not been disclosed to the defence had been withheld. This would have been catastrophic for them, I think. Also, the real killers have gone free.
One of the real scandals in this is what resulted from the indictment that was issued against Megrahi and [his co-accused] Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah 20 years ago. It should not be [MacAskill] that is on the hot seat, it should be the then Lord Advocate. Because he should have to answer to why there was non-disclosure of all the evidence.
But unfortunately what happens is that we get Kenny McAskill having to yet again make comments on the release of Megrahi. Until the government distances itself from the Crown Office on this and says, yes, we need to get to the bottom of it and order an inquiry - this is a scandal that will undermine the government. And MacAskill in that respect is in the firing line.
Q. Why does Megrahi not restart his appeal against conviction if he is innocent?
A. He's dying. He can't do those sort of things. Getting through a day is difficult enough. He's had 10 years away from his family. He would feel, yes, great if [he could clear his] name in future but he has too much on his plate. He could have started it before but the climate wasn't right for it. Nobody wanted an appeal before but now I think for the Scottish Government, an appeal might be the least worse option. Now, I know it is not within their gift to give it, but everyone is so up against the wall now, I think, that it will be more damaging to refuse any application made to appeal than to grant it.
I think his family may want to [orchestrate an appeal], but they are managing his death. They have the rest of their lives to do it. It is quite clear he won't be cleared while he's alive. His daughter is a lawyer and if they don't Jim Swire will. [Swire, a supporter of Megrahi, is the father of 23-year-old Flora who died in the atrocity]. It would require an application to the SCCRC and that has to pass two tests.
One, is there a potential miscarriage of justice, the answer to that is clearly yes because they have already said that. Secondly, which is trickier, is whether it is in the interests of justice. Then the circumstances of the abandonment of his appeal is important, because you have to demonstrate that by doing that he was not admitting guilt. Clearly he wasn't, but I think that's a hurdle he has to get over.
Q. So Megrahi wants a posthumous appeal?
A. He definitely wants to clear his name. We have not discussed the mechanism for a posthumous appeal but you can take it as read that he would want it.
Q. What does Megrahi think of Jim Swire's leading role in campaigning for him?
A. He's very touched and has massive respect for him.
Q. Has Megrahi provided information for any future appeal?
A. He's given it to the SCCRC already. They have interviewed him at length, they have access to all his precognition statements, they have everything they could need.
Q. How did Megrahi feel when Gadaffi paid compensation for Lockerbie, effectively admitting Libyan guilt?
A. He wasn't happy. The Libyan Government position was clear. They had to accept legal responsibility because otherwise they couldn't get rid of the sanctions in place at the time.
Q. So he would say Libya weren't responsible.
A. Oh yeah.
Q. When First Minister Alex Salmond says he is irritated and frustrated by the book's claims, how do you react?
A. I share the frustration that the attention has been on the issue of Megrahi's release, when it should be on the Crown Office's failure to disclose evidence. Hopefully, the government are coming round to being genuinely welcoming of the possibility of publication (of the SCCRC report). If that's the case then they must know a lot of the flak will come the way of the Crown Office.
Q. What do you want to see happen now?
A. First, a full inquiry which will cover why all the evidence was withheld from the trial. But I would also echo the relatives' call for a broader inquiry into Lockerbie, including the warnings that were given of an attack on Pan Am and why those weren't heeded. Secondly, the case should go back to the court of appeal. The case is still open and the police are going to Libya.
Q. If Megrahi is innocent, how did he get caught up in the biggest murder trial in history?
A. That's a very good question. You enter into the realms of speculation. It looks like it was a frame up, to put the blame on Libya. Not by the police. The police reasonably honestly followed the leads that were put their way.
Q. How did he feel in Tripoli airport when the Saltire was flown by Libyans – knowing as he must that this would injure the government which freed him?
A. It was presented as a Government-orchestrated carnival. But if you read Wikileaks, a confidential cable from the US embassy undermined the US and UK government's claim that Megrahi's reception when he returned home was a grossly orchestrated pageant. It acknowledged that the crowd assembled at the airport numbered only around 100 and that only one Libyan TV channel broadcast the event.
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MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2012 (doc. nr.7100.rtf):
"In Albdelbaset Al Megrahi’s biography, "You are my Jury"-psychologically evaluated - Megrahi say the Truth and nothing but the Truth, also In the following excerpt:
On 10 August (2009), MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Foreign minister Abdelati Al-Obeidi. By this time I was desperate.
After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Minister OBEIDI SAID that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal.
*He (MacAskill) said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice".
*This statement clearly shows the honesty words from Megrahi; otherwise Megrahi would also argue that MacAskill has forced him to withdraw immediately its appeal against his release...
When former Foreign Minister Abdelati Al-Obeidi from (NTC) get released from prison, he can confirm the IMMORAL STATEMENT of Minister MacAskill !
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch
. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
On 5 March 2012, 'The Scotsman' newspaper published the following letter from Dr Jim Swire (pictured):
DECEPTION AT HEART OF MEGRAHI CASE
"Maybe I am just getting too old to relish the challenge, but recent noises from the No 10 direction could hardly be more hostile, with David Cameron claiming that John Ashton’s book 'Megrahi: You are my Jury' is an insult to 'the relatives' of the Lockerbie bomb victims – and that before he could possibly have read it: is he Prime Minister of the UK or the US?
"The inquiry route, as that proposed by the 'Justice For Megrahi' campaign group, remains before the Holyrood justice committee. How else can we support JFM? My personal view is that there are sufficient material and powers within Scotland to unseat the Scottish verdict and that until that is done Whitehall, let alone the international arena, will remain obdurate.
"But pending the day when the verdict does crash, it is a great idea to have made our underlying needs abundantly clear to Whitehall now.
"We must not emulate Bonnie Prince Charlie, in turning back at Derby, even as the English king was panicking and putting his valuables aboard ship in the Thames – particularly now we have been given a fresh supply of ammunition to fight with.
The relatives seek answers to the question of who did carry out the atrocity and why were they not prevented from doing so, rather than the simpler question of 'was Megrahi guilty or not?'
"But the verdict is the obstruction that bars our progress, and the heavy lifting gear to get rid of that obstruction is within Scotland. The two entities needing to be in the cross-hairs are the Crown Office and the Dumfries and Galloway Police. Ashton’s book puts both of them on the back foot.
"Once the court proceedings at Zeist, in the Netherlands, are shown to have been corrupted – no matter by whom – it should be for Scotland to set aside her verdict.
There is a scientifically verifiable divide between the fragment PT35b and the Mebo timers.
Let us not waste time on wondering where the fragment came from and who made it. It appears the differences between the two types of circuit boards are scientifically irreconcilable. If that’s so and can be made to stand up in court, there is no other evidence of a timer used to enable the long journey from Malta to the skies over Lockerbie.
"With full analysis of the proven genuine fragment, the prosecution case collapses. Once that happens, Whitehall and the Americans ought to have to answer for their roles in all this, but that probably won’t happen in my lifetime.
"Besides, it is wrong that an innocent man, Megrahi, and his family should remain under such overwhelming and unjustified blame a day longer. That also is evil and it has been done in the name of Scottish justice. Addressing the far greater evil of the murders themselves must follow the destruction of the verdict, surely?
"We shall all be guilty of failing to fight both those evils if we do not rise up in Scotland to overturn the verdict now.
"We can lighten feelings of guilt by realising that the false fragment’s origin clearly was not within Scotland. The book shows that it was the English forensic guys who first pointed out to the Dumfries and Galloway Police in 1999 that the fragment could not have come from a Mebo board. That makes it unlikely that the origin of the fragment lay within the UK either.
"All we in Scotland have to answer for is why that information lay hidden within police/Crown Office files from 1999 to 2009, and was never shared with the defence or the Zeist court. Even our careful Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission missed it. Responsibility for that crucial omission lies squarely within Scotland.
"Public opinion may be our strongest sword. Though our case as relatives is in some ways less poignant than that of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi as he lies dying, this great deception has meant that all those of us relatives who care to seek the truth have all died a little too, we also carry a life sentence of grief, and it is hard not to be bitter over the way we have been deceived.
"Sometimes it is hard also to resist the temptation to seek revenge against those who have misused the trust we placed in them to solve this case, but revenge was the fuel for Lockerbie, and to succumb to it would be to hand a further victory to those who murdered and those who have deceived. That cannot ever be right."
*
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Note the method of the psycopaths:
Cameron: John Ashton's book is an insult to 'the relatives' of the Lockerbie bomb victims.
Examing the overlooked or concealed evidence is an insult whereas not examing the evidence is not an insult.
. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Lockerbie witness Edwin Bollier to sue Crown Office and Scottish Police
(http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3198239389108)
Edwin Bollier, who is pictured in the attachment examining an MST-13 timer, was a key witness at the Lockerbie trial and has revealed he plans to sue the Crown Office and Scottish Police for £33.75 million after new revelations about critical evidence in the case.
Edwin Bollier, the former head of Swiss company MEBO, which the Crown Office claimed made the timer for the Lockerbie bomb, has consulted lawyers in Switzerland and is looking for UK legal representation to take the case.
The move, which comes as Libya reveals it may stop UK police from entering the country to further investigate the bombing, follows new evidence about a tiny piece of electrical circuit board found at the Lockerbie crash site.
During the trial at Camp Zeist, it was agreed the fragment came from an MST-13 timer manufactured by MEBO.
The firm revealed it had sold 20 such timers to the Libyans in 1985, and this became a hugely significant part of the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the atrocity that killed 270 people.
After the trial MEBO was forced into bankruptcy after facing a lawsuit from Pan Am, which itself went bankrupt in 1991. MEBO had also lost major clients, such as the German federal police to which it supplied communications equipment.
Mr Bollier claims he lost millions as a result.
However, Megrahi's official biography by John Ashton (Megrahi: You are my Jury) claims new evidence shows the fragment of circuit board found at Lockerbie was 100% covered in tin and did not match those in the timers sent to Libya. The book also alleges the Crown's forensic expert at trial, Alan Feraday, was aware of the disparity but failed to disclose it.
Documents from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment, disclosed by the Crown just before Megrahi's appeal was dropped, revealed contradictory notes from Mr Feraday saying the coating was pure tin and then "70/30 SN/Pb" (70% tin and 30% lead).
Mr Bollier said: "It is now absolutely clear this fragment was not from a timer we delivered to Libya. We told the police in 1999 this was the case but they would not believe us. We lost our company and had to pay a big damages claim. I have instructed lawyers in Switzerland and I am looking for a lawyer in the UK. The counter claim we would have against the Crown and Scottish police is for $53m. This is for the money lost plus interest."
A Crown Office spokesman said: "Prior to the original trial the defence instructed its own independent analysis of the timer fragment, which necessitated a review of the examinations carried out by those consulted and instructed by the Crown. In respect of the timer fragment the defence experts were satisfied it had suffered damage consistent with it having been closely associated with an explosion and that it had come from an MST-13 timer."
The potential lawsuit comes as Libyan Interior Minister Fawzi Abdel A'al warned there is no agreement in place to allow British police access to the country.
He said: "There is no treaty between Britain and Libya to allow such a thing."
He added that any future agreement might depend on whether Britain answers questions on its past relationship with Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
"Didn't the former British prime minister Tony Blair visit Libya more than one time?" he asked.
REFERENCES:
1. Lockerbie witness to sue
(http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/crime-courts/lockerbie-witness-to- sue.16951705)
2. The Iron Lady's Revenge?
(http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2947003108358&l=e5e7c3d6f5)
3. Alleged 'co-conspirator' is 'very busy with this dirty Lockerbie case'
(http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1652361903137&l=7c76b402f5)
_________________ '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.”
Sam Carrington | 04.03.2012 16:36 | Analysis | Indymedia | Repression | Birmingham | World
This documentary film investigates the case against Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, and finds new evidence to suggest that he and Libya may have fallen victim to a huge miscarriage of justice.
1.Why Megrahi dropped the appeal CONTEXT: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi had two possible routes out of Greenock jail in August 2009: a prisoner transfer application for which he first had to drop his appeal, or compassionate release because of his prostate cancer. The latter route did not demand that he drop his appeal, in contrast to the former. In the event, he ended his appeal, yet the PTA was turned down, and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill instead granted compassionate release. The chain of actions has always been a mystery, leaving those who believe in Megrahi’s guilt to see his decision as confirmation of their views. Why would an innocent man not pursue an appeal against conviction that he had waited years to begin? Now, for the first time, Megrahi claims that he was pressured to drop the appeal by Mr MacAskill personally through diplomatic channels. EXTRACT: “On 10 August MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Minister [Abdel Ali] Al-Obeidi. By this time I was desperate. The 90-day time limit for considering the prisoner transfer application had passed and, although I had some vocal public supporters, MacAskill was coming under considerable pressure to reject both applications. After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obeidi said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He [MacAskill] said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice.” LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: Mr MacAskill, who was not contacted in advance of today’s book publication, has always said he could not interfere in the judicial process. If Megrahi’s version of events is true, it will prove very damaging to the minister, who has repeatedly distanced himself from any appeal which, if it had gone ahead, could have been a massive embarrassment to the Scottish legal system. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had already found six grounds on which Megrahi’s conviction was potentially unsafe.
2. The timer fragmentCONTEXT: At Megrahi’s trial at Camp Zeist, it was agreed that the fragment of electrical circuit board found at the Lockerbie crash site [and referred to as PT/35b] came from an MST-13 board manufactured by the Swiss company Mebo and Thuring, its supplier. Mebo revealed that it had sold 20 such timers to the Libyans, and this became a hugely significant part of the case against Megrahi. However, the book claims that new evidence shows the fragment of circuit board found at Lockerbie, which was 100% covered in tin, did not match those in the timers sent to Libya and alleges that the Crown’s forensic expert at trial, Allen Feraday, was aware of the disparity but failed to disclose it. EXTRACT: “On 23 October 2008, at just after 7pm, a member of [Tony] Kelly’s [defence] team finally put the crucial question to Bonfadelli [Urs Bonfadelli was responsible for the manufacture of Mebo’s MST-13 boards]: was the circuitry of the MST-13 boards coated with pure tin or a tin/lead alloy? His answer was clear and devastating: all were coated with an alloy of 70% tin and 30% lead. There could be no mistaking this, he said. It was imminently apparent what this meant: if PT/35b’s coating had not been changed by the explosion, then it could not have been made by Thuring and therefore could not have been one of the 20 timers supplied to Libya.”
Mr Kelly subsequently instructed two independent experts to see if the heat of the explosion could have turned the fragment’s tin/lead alloy to tin – Dr Chris McArdle, who had 25 years experience in the electronics industry, and Dr Jess Cawley, a metallurgist with over 35 years experience. The book adds: “..McArdle pointed out there was no way that it would have been hot enough for the lead to have evaporated away… Cawley agreed, pointing out that, although plastic explosives of the type used in the Lockerbie bomb produce a flash of intense heat, lead, like most metals, requires a far longer exposure to high temperatures before it would melt, let alone evaporate.”
Documents from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment, disclosed by the Crown just before Megrahi’s appeal was dropped, revealed contradictory notes from Mr Feraday saying the coating was pure tin and then “70/30 SN/Pb” (70% tin and 30% lead). The book states: “Had these documents been disclosed to the defence team, they would have provided the basis for a vigorous cross-examination of Feraday.”
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: This was one of the most important components of the prosecution case against Megrahi. As the book admits, this was the “golden thread”. However, shortly before Megrahi dropped his appeal, his defence team found proof that the timer was not one of those supplied by Mebo to the Libyans. If anything author John Ashton suggests – based on expert opinion – that the circuit board was likely to have been “DIY” rather than commercially manufactured. With this information, the golden thread falls.
3. The Iranian connection CONTEXT: In the book’s preface, Megrahi says he does not want to “point the finger of blame at anyone else”, but much of the material drawn together will lead readers to believe that Iran funded the PFLP-GC [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command] to carry out the bombing, in retaliation for the American warship the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian passenger jet and killing all 300 people on board in 1988. The US apparently mistook it for an F-14 fighter. EXTRACT: “The most difficult witness [for the defence team] to get to was the PFLP-GC bomb-maker and double agent Marwen Khreesat. Asked about the aim of his October 1988 mission to West Germany, Khreesat was unambiguous: ‘It was made very clear to us by Ahmed Jibril [leader of the PFLPC-GC] that he wanted to blow up an aeroplane. This was the whole purpose of being there. Dalkamoni and I travelled to Frankfurt in order to go to the offices of Pan Am to get information about their flight schedules. We did this. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Jibril wanted a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt blown up.’ Although Khreesat remained adamant that his bombs were not of the twin-speaker type used for the Lockerbie bomb, he revealed that Dalkamoni had at least one other radio cassette bomb. If Khreesat was right, here at last was confirmation that the PFLP-GC had at least one twin speaker device in West Germany.” LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: The initial investigation into Lockerbie in 1989 all pointed towards the culpability of a German cell of the PFLP-GC. There is much within the book, including the above statement by bomb-maker Marwen Khreesat which appears to confirm this view. There are also notes showing that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher blocked a public inquiry in the bombing and an explanation that politically it was not expedient to fall out with Iran – whose oil was relied upon – in the run-up to the Gulf War against Iraq. A great deal of the evidence incriminating the PFLPC-GC was not disclosed at the original trial or appeal. The heavily referenced allegations in the book make it seem more likely that they were behind the Lockerbie bombing than Libya. To have dismissed the evidence against them at the time raises questions about the role and potential bias of some of the security agencies involved, and the murkiness of the international politics which has always shrouded the Lockerbie case.
4. Reward money and the reliability of witnesses CONTEXT: In the UK witnesses cannot be paid for their information. However, the book describes in detail how both Tony and Paul Gauci were offered reward money by the American Justice Department. And, we learn for the first time, that this was discussed even before Tony Gauci’s first statement. The book also reveals that Edwin Bollier, who ran Mebo and testified against Megrahi, was very interested in “the reward money”. EXTRACT: “The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) concluded ‘In referring the case on this ground the Commission is conscious of the potential impact of its decision on Mr Gauci who may well have given entirely credible evidence notwithstanding an alleged interest in financial payment. On the other hand there are sound reasons to believe that the information in question would have been used by the defence as a means of challenging its credibility. Such a challenge may well have been justified, and in the Commission’s view was capable of affecting the course of the evidence and the eventual outcome of the trial.’” The book also reveals that several other witnesses had the possibility of reward money dangled before them: “Lamin [Fhimah's – Megrahi's co-accused, cleared at Camp Zeist] former business partner Vincent Vassalo whom Abdelbaset and Lamin had visited the evening before the bombing. He confirmed that it was his first meeting with Abdelbaset, who had introduced himself by his real name, rather than the one on his coded passport. He described Lamin’s shock on learning of the police investigation and his willingness to allow them to search the Medtours office and take his diary. Once the search was finished he said DCI [Harry] Bell [who was in charge of the police investigation in Malta] reminded him that a ‘big reward’ was on offer for any helpful information he could provide.” LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: The fact that Tony Gauci, the Crown’s key witness who testified that he saw Megrahi buy specific clothes in his shop which were later identified as having been near the bomb, was even offered a reward raised the concerns of the SCCRC. It undermines his witness statements, which we now know were far more inconsistent and numerous than previously disclosed. The revelation that Bollier and others were offered the possibility of reward money also goes some way towards discrediting the integrity of the investigation itself.
5.Undisclosed evidence CONTEXT: The SCCRC unearthed numerous statements, police reports and other documents which had never been shared with the defence team. Part of the reason the case was referred back for a fresh appeal was the non-disclosure of evidence. A fascinating part of the book talks about the James Bond-like tales of attempted coups, spying and double agents going on across the world. In particular, it makes reference to an attempted coup in Togo in which timers matching those thought to have been used in the Lockerbie bombing were discovered, and hints at subterfuge and espionage by the American security services and others and details the confusion caused. The prosecution had claimed that there were only 20 Mebo MST-13 timers and that they were sold only to the Libyans. EXTRACT: “The Commission unearthed potentially significant information about the MST-13 timers found in West Africa. Two timers were recovered from Togo in 1986. Among the documents disclosed to the Commission was a previously confidential memo, produced by [Senior Investigating Officer] Stuart Henderson the month after the interview of Jean Baptiste Collin [the official in charge in Togo], which provided a lengthy overview of the investigation. As the following passage made clear, the West Africa investigations were causing considerable concern. [SIO Henderson wrote]: ‘After the recent interview of Collin, it is now more clear than ever that the circumstances surrounding the recovery of the ‘boxed MST-13 timer’ in Senegal must be clarified beyond doubt. The whole essence of the ‘MST-13 timers’ is the sole manufacture by the Mebo company in world terms and the explicit distribution to the Libyan ESO. Unless we can consolidate the precise number of MST-13 timers circuit boards manufactured to fit the ‘boxed timers’ and confirm the fact they were distributed, solely to the Libyans, then we have serious problems with our direct evidence. [Collin] inferred that the Americans knew the whole story… Crucially the notes [by DI William Williamson] went on to record that Collin said the timer had been given to an ‘intelligence agency’.” To date, at least two documents not disclosed to the defence still remain a secret because the UK Government claims publicising them would be a threat to national security. The book states: “The last of the Commission’s Statement of Reasons… was certainly the strangest of the six. It concerned two secret documents, supplied by another country, which members of the Commission’s team had been allowed to view at Dumfries police station in September 2006. They were forbidden from copying them. On 27 April 2007, the Crown Office confirmed to the Commission that they had carefully considered whether or not the documents required to be disclosed to the defence and had concluded they did not. The Statement of Reasons gave only two clues to the documents’ contents. The first was an extract from the Crown’s 27 April 2007 letter which read ‘it has never been the Crown’s position in this case that the MST-13 timers were not supplied by the Libyan intelligence services to any other party or that only Libyan intelligence services were in possession of the timers’. The second came in paragraph 25.6 of the Statement which read ‘In the Commission’s view the Crown’s decision not to disclose one of the documents to the defence indicates that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.’” LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: Since the trial at Zeist, Scots law has been challenged at the Supreme Court and the policy of non-disclosure has had to be changed. A number of appeals have been won on the grounds that important evidence was not shared with defence lawyers. We now know that numerous documents were not disclosed to the Lockerbie defence team. Some were sent to them after the second appeal was dropped. Others may never be shared. Advocates in the past have described the unfairness of partial disclosure as “playing with a stacked deck”. This alone could have seen Megrahi acquitted if his appeal had proceeded.
6. Forensics anomaliesCONTEXT The forensics case against Megrahi was critical. The book reveals anomalies, contradictions, and arguments between police, the forensics team, the CIA, and the FBI. It also claims that information was withheld by the CIA and says anomalies later found in the forensic evidence from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment “cast doubt on the overall reliability” of some of the forensic reports. EXTRACT: “Six years after [Dr Thomas] Hayes [of RARDE] testified, a previously secret police memo came to light that contradicted his evidence and stated that a residue test had, in fact, been conducted…Most of the contradictory accounts about how PT/35b was linked to the MST-13 timer were only revealed seven years later, when the Crown’s precognition statements of Feraday, Williamson, Thurman and Orkin were released by the SCCRC. Had the defence known about them at trial, they would have provided the basis for vigorous cross-examinations of the relevant witnesses…
“Viewed in isolation, the individual anomalies surrounding the fragment may have appeared trivial, but together they formed a shroud of suspicion that could not be dislodged. Had they concerned a less important item, they could, perhaps, have been overlooked, but the fragment was easily the most crucial physical evidence in the entire case – the golden thread that linked Abdelbaset to the bomb.”
Other items were not contained within the forensic reports – including a small piece of circuit board from the radio cassette bomb found in Dalkamoni’s [of the Palestinian PFLPC-GC] car in Germany – something the defence team only learned about years later. The book states: “Whatever lay behind the multiple anomalies, inconsistencies, and omissions, their cumulative effect was to erode the façade of forensic certainty that surrounded the Crown case.”
There were other pieces of forensic information not disclosed by the Crown which pointed – again – at the potential involvement of the PFLPC-GC. “Further important forensic information was contained in a Crown precognition statement by Hayes’s RARDE colleague Allen Feraday. He revealed that he had been unable to rule out one of the debris items, PI/1588, as being part of a barometric trigger. Given that the PFLP-GC bombs found in Neuss [in the German raid on the PFLPC-GC] were barometric, this was potentially significant.”
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT This is one of the densest and most complex sections of the book. The details of different dates, reports, and contradictions is confusing but the overall impression is that the scientists and forensics experts involved were working under enormous pressure in very difficult circumstances. There is a sense that the American security services often failed to disclose or delayed disclosure of information to the Scottish police investigating. The overall picture is that non-disclosure of certain forensic information at the trial and the inconsistencies in the forensic reports subsequently seen by the defence team, raise serious questions about aspects of the prosecution’s forensic case.
7. The Bedford suitcase CONTEXT: Ascertaining which suitcase contained the bomb was critical in the initial stages of the police investigation and subsequent forensic work. Much of the investigation focused on where the suitcase was “ingested” – whether it was through the airport at Malta, Frankfurt or Heathrow. Who put it on to the plane and how? According to the Crown, forensic analysis of the fuselage indicated the suitcase containing the bomb was in the second layer of suitcases – indicating it had come from a feeder flight, rather than Heathrow. However, the book reveals that Tony Kelly’s review of the evidence focused on a brown hard-sided suitcase seen by baggage loader John Bedford before the Frankfurt feeder flight arrived. At trial, the judges described Bedford as a “clear and impressive witness” but said there were many items of luggage not dealt with in detail in the evidence of the case. EXTRACT: “Kelly’s team uncovered evidence that, had it been heard at trial, might have denied the judges these get-outs. If the Bedford bag were not the primary suitcase then, since he [Bedford] saw it before the arrival of PA103A [from Frankfurt], it must have been legitimate. By checking the surviving bags and descriptions provided by the victims’ relatives, [Detective Constable Derek] Henderson established the colour and type of all the legitimate Heathrow interline bags. None were brown, hard-sided suitcases…which meant it was almost certainly the primary case.” That information from DC Henderson was not in the list of productions for the original trial. The book states: “Abdelbaset’s draft grounds of appeal claimed that the absence of the Henderson schedules from the trial constituted a ‘material irregularity’…’that material evidence supporting the defence was not properly presented and the appellant was denied a fair trial’.” LUCY ADAMS VERDICT Subsequent to the trial and appeal, evidence emerged of a break-in at Heathrow the night before the bombing. Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the tragedy, has consistently drawn attention to this break-in and campaigned for a full inquiry into what happened. The Crown case was, in part, based on the assertion that Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, his co-accused, ensured the primary suitcase containing the bomb was on the feeder flight from Malta. The fact the break-in at Heathrow the night before the tragedy only came to light after the trial seems shocking. The fact that UK Governments have refused since 1988 to hold a full public inquiry into the case, even more so.
8. Why Megrahi used a coded passport when in Malta CONTEXT: At the trial, the original appeal and indeed in a press release last week, the Crown has always made much of Megrahi’s use in Malta of a false passport under the name Abdusamad. EXTRACT: “My numerous absences created difficulties at home. Like most Libyan marriages at the time ours was very traditional… she was understandably unhappy about my frequent foreign trips, and would often become upset on learning that one was imminent. I therefore fell into the habit, on shorter trips, of telling her I was visiting people elsewhere in Libya…The Libyan Government had by then introduced a policy of issuing those involved in the importation of embargoed goods with so-called coded passports which concealed their real names and their connections to state bodies. These passports were in no sense forgeries, but were rather official documents issued by the Secretary of Transport and tightly regulated. A further advantage was that it enabled me to leave my normal passport at home, which made it easier to travel abroad without Aisha knowing.” LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: Chapter 2 of the book, entitled Before the Nightmare, explains Megrahi’s work importing embargoed cars, soap and cigarettes lighters, and aviation parts. Much of the chapter is in the first person, explaining in detail his course in marine engineering at Cardiff, his first job as a flight dispatcher for Libyan Arab Airlines and his subsequent promotion to controller of operations at Tripoli Airport. It provides a fascinating insight into his life before the indictment but I found it difficult to understand some of his justifications for lying to his wife as he suggest above. It might seem easier to believe if he said he had been having an affair. However, it may be difficult to understand because it is hard to relate to what it must have been like to live in a country under such strict trade sanctions as Libya had at the time. These extracts are all taken from Megrahi: You Are My Jury by John Ashton, published by Birlinn.
Over the course of 821 pages, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's statement on the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi exposes the Scottish criminal justice system – and in particular the Crown Office – to one of the greatest challenges it has ever faced.
During a four-year investigation the commission uncovered numerous items of evidence that cast doubt on Megrahi's guilt, which the Crown Office had failed to disclose to the Libyan's lawyers during his trial in 2000-1. The SCCRC said the non-disclosure provided four of six separate grounds for referring the conviction back to the appeal court.
Most of the debate around the case has focused on Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to grant Megrahi's release. Publication by The Herald of extracts from the report will turn the spotlight on the Crown Office.
Relatives of the UK Lockerbie victims want a public inquiry into Megrahi's conviction. These revelations could make the case unarguable.
The case against Megrahi
The Crown case was that on the morning of December 21, 1988, he smuggled an unaccompanied suitcase containing a bomb on to a flight from Malta to Frankfurt. There the case was transferred to a Pan Am feeder flight to Heathrow, where it was loaded on to Pan Am flight 103. The suitcase contained clothes, which he was alleged to have bought from a shop in Malta called Mary's House, when he visited the island on December 7, 1988.
The shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, recalled selling a collection of similar clothes to a Libyan man a few weeks before the bombing.
More than two years later he picked Megrahi from a photo-lineup, telling police he resembled the purchaser. In 1999, after Megrahi had surrendered for trial, Gauci again picked him out, from a live identity parade.
The six grounds of referral:
1. Unreasonable verdict
The trial judges were satisfied the purchase of the clothing in the suitcase containing the bomb was on December 7, 1988, Megrahi's only window of opportunity.
Gauci was clear it was raining as the man was leaving the shop, yet the court heard from Malta's chief meteorologist that no rainfall was recorded that day.
In the SCCRC's view this rendered the judgment unreasonable: "The Commission has reached the view that the trial court's verdict is at least arguably one which no reasonable court, properly directed, could have returned.
"In particular the Commission does not consider there to be any reasonable basis for the trial court's conclusion that the purchase took place on December 7, 1988, and therefore for the inference it drew that the applicant was the purchaser of the items from Mary's House."
2. Undisclosed evidence about the Gauci identification
Days after Megrahi surrendered for trial, Gauci picked him out at an identity parade. One of Gauci's neighbours had earlier shown him a magazine article, which contained a photograph of Megrahi under the heading: Who planted the bomb?
The SCCRC discovered a statement by Maltese officer Sergeant Mario Busuttil, which showed Gauci had only handed it to the police days before the ID parade. It also uncovered a police report which revealed Gauci had seen other articles with Megrahi's photograph a few weeks before the parade.
The report states: "Crown Office confirmed to the Commission that this report was not disclosed to the defence ... Crown Office has no record of the document in its files but ... Jim Brisbane was confident that as a member of the joint police and prosecution investigation team in Malta in early 1999 he would have been made aware of the information it contained... the Commission is of the view that Sergeant Busuttil's police statement and the report of March 20, 1999, should have been disclosed to the defence. Both items were likely to have been of material assistance in the proper preparation or presentation of the applicant's defence and to have been of real importance in undermining of the Crown case."
3. Undisclosed evidence concerning the date of the clothes purchase
At trial Gauci said the clothes were bought about a fortnight before Christmas, around the time Megrahi was on the island. When interviewed by the defence he said he thought the date might be November 29. The SCCRC discovered an undisclosed Crown precognition statement in which he repeated the November 29 claim, but added that he believed this might be the date.
The report states: "By letter dated August 24, 2006, Crown Office confirmed to the Commission that the contents of Mr Gauci's Crown precognition were not disclosed to the defence. According to the letter this was consistent with the Crown's practice at the time - In the Commission's view by withholding this information the Crown deprived the defence of the opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary."
4. Undisclosed evidence about Gauci's interest in rewards
The SCCRC discovered three police documents that indicated that, before first picking out Megrahi from a photo line-up in 1991, Gauci was aware a substantial reward was on offer from the US Government and had "expressed an interest in receiving money".
A June 1999 document described him as being "somewhat frustrated that he will not be compensated in any financial way for his contribution to the case" and said his influential brother Paul "has a clear desire to gain financial benefit".
The report states: "Crown Office confirmed to the Commission that [Detective Chief Inspector Harry] Bell's memorandum of February 21, 1991, was not disclosed to the defence. According to the letter, Crown Office has no record of this document in its files and no one there who dealt with this part of the case has any recollection of having seen it before. Crown Office confirmed that the report by Strathclyde Police dated June 10, 1999, was also not disclosed to the defence ... in a further letter, dated April 27, 2007, Crown Office explained that although a copy of the report could not be found in its files, given its nature the possibility could not be excluded that a copy was made available to them ...
"Inquiries with D&G [Dumfries and Galloway Police] have established that, some time after the conclusion of the applicant's appeal against conviction, Anthony and Paul Gauci were each paid sums of money under the Rewards for Justice programme administered by the US Department of State- the Commission is of the view that Mr Bell's memoranda and the passages from Strathclyde Police report ... ought to have been disclosed to the defence. Taken together, all three items were likely to have been of material assistance to the proper preparation or presentation of the applicant's defence and were likely to have been of real importance in undermining the Crown case. Such a challenge may well have been justified, and in the Commission's view was capable of affecting the course of the evidence and the eventual outcome of the trial."
5. Undisclosed secret intelligence documents
In 2006 the Crown informed the SCCRC of two classified documents in its possession. Commission investigators were permitted to view the items at Dumfries police station and take notes, but the notes were left with police. The SCCRC said non-disclosure of one of the documents indicated a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. It did not have permission to reveal the contents of the documents or take them from the police station. Megrahi and his legal team have still not seen this document or been told what it contains.
The report states: "By letter dated April 27, 2007, Crown Office confirmed that neither of the protectively marked documents was disclosed to the defence. According to Crown Office's letter, 'the conclusion was reached the documents did not require to be disclosed in terms of the Crown's obligations'."
6. New evidence concerning the date of clothes purchase
In his police statements, Tony Gauci was clear the purchase was made around the time the municipal Christmas lights had been put up. Evidence emerged since the trial that calls into question Gauci's account. The key document was the diary of Malta tourism minister Michael Refalo which showed he switched on the lights on December 6.
The report states: "The Commission considers Dr Refalo's account is capable of being considered as credible and reliable by a reasonable court, and is likely to have had a material part to play in the determination by such a court of a critical issue at trial, namely the date on which the items were purchased from Mary's House."
l John Ashton is the author of Megrahi You Are My Jury, Megrahi's official biography.
. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Lockerbie exclusive: we publish the report that could have cleared Megrahi
Exclusive by Lucy Adams and John Ashton
The explosive report on the man convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity ...why we are publishing it after five years of secrecy
The Sunday Herald today publishes the full 800-page report detailing why the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing could have walked free.
The controversial report from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has remained secret for five years because, until now, no-one had permission to publish it.
The Sunday Herald and its sister paper, The Herald, are the only newspapers in the world to have seen the report. We choose to publish it because we have the permission of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, and because we believe it is in the public interest to disseminate the whole document.
The Sunday Herald has chosen to publish the full report online today to allow the public to see for themselves the analysis of the evidence which could have resulted in the acquittal of Megrahi. Under Section 32 of the Data Protection Act, journalists can publish in the public interest. We have made very few redactions to protect the names of confidential sources and private information.
The publication of the report adds weight to calls for a full public inquiry into the atrocity – something for which many of the relatives have been campaigning for more than two decades.
Megrahi has also sent a copy of the full report to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who released him on compassionate grounds in August 2009.
Jonathan Mitchell QC told the Sunday Herald: “From a data-protection point of view, it is questionable whether this report is the ‘personal data’ of anyone other than Megrahi.”
The Data Protection Act was described as “one of the most poorly drafted pieces of legislation on the statute book” by Tom Hickman, a barrister at Blackstone Chambers, on a UK Constitutional Law Group website.
Mitchell believes the Sunday Herald is not constrained from publishing the report. He said: ‘‘Section 32 of the Data Protection Act has the effect – putting it shortly – that processing (which includes publication) of personal data, even sensitive personal data, is exempt from the relevant data-protection principles if it is for the purpose of journalism and the newspaper reasonably believes that, having regard in particular to the special importance of the public interest in freedom of expression, ‘publication would be in the public interest’, and also reasonably believes that compliance with data-protection principles such as non-disclosure would be incompatible with the journalistic function.”
The Herald revealed earlier this month that, according to the report, the Crown failed to disclose seven key items of evidence that led to the Lockerbie case being referred back for a fresh appeal.
The SCCRC rejected many of the defence submissions but upheld six grounds which could have constituted a miscarriage of justice.
The commission made clear that, had such information been shared with the defence, the result of the trial could have been different.
Its full report details why the conviction of Megrahi was referred for a second appeal.
Megrahi has said in his official biography by John Ashton, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, that he believed dropping the second appeal would improve his chances of returning to Tripoli before succumbing to terminal prostate cancer.
The Scottish Government has said it wants to release the document in the interests of transparency but cannot do so because it is covered by data-protection law, reserved to Westminster.
First Minister Alex Salmond said: "It is important that everyone is able to read the SCCRC report in its entirely, rather than the selective and partial accounts of its contents which have made their way into the poubic domain through various media reports."
When the SCCRC referred the case back for a fresh appeal in June 2007, they were only able to publish a summary of their findings. If they had published the full report, it would have constituted a criminal offence under the legislation which established the commission.
But on Friday the Crown Office in Scotland wrote to the SCCRC making it clear it would not prosecute the organisation or any of its members if it published the report.
The Crown office lifted legal restrictions just hours after the Sunday Herald had informed its press office we planned to publish the report ourselves.
In a press release issued on Friday the Crown Office criticised ‘‘selective and misleading reporting’’ of the SCCRC report in the media. ‘Notes to Editors’ attached to the press release said that any decision of the SCCRC to refer a conviction to the Appeal Court did not necessarily mean there had been a miscarriage of justice. Only the Appeal Court could declare there had been a miscarriage of justice and quash a conviction.
It added that the SCCRC was asked to look at more than 40 possible grounds for a referral to the Appeal Court in the Megrahi case. It had rejected the vast majority of these and referred the case to the Appeal Court on six grounds. And it stated the Crown ‘‘had every confidence in successfully defending the conviction in the Appeal Court for a second time.’’ A Crown ofice source was quoted in newspapers yesterday describing Megrahi’s grounds for appeal as having ‘‘more holes than a Swiss cheese’’.
The SCCRC has not so far published the report and is not expected to discuss the Crown Office advice until later this week. It declined to comment at this stage on the Sunday Herald’s decision to publish the report.
In an effort to get the report published, the Scottish Government has passed a statutory instrument – to slightly amend that legislation – which means it will no longer be a criminal act for the SCCRC to publish such reports. This was expected to come into force in May. The commission has written to the individuals mentioned in the report asking for their consent for publication. Consent was not given.
Megrahi said he would be happy to consent providing all other parties consented, but they did not. MacAskill has unsuccessfully written to UK Justice Secretary Ken Clarke several times to ask for an exemption under the Data Protection Act.
Megrahi was convicted of murder by Scottish judges sitting at Camp Zeist in 2001. He unsuccessfully appealed in January 2001. He dropped a second appeal shortly before the decision to release him on compassionate grounds in August 2009. He was expected to die from cancer within three months.
Comments
. _________________ The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 12:09 am Post subject:
The real story of who and why this PANAM flight was bombed is further below.
CIA asset Susan Lindauer explained how the Lockerbie bombing was tied to the CIA’s involvement in heroin trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. the Pan am bombing was carried out by the CIA in order to murder the good CIA agents on board who were about to blow the whistle on a massive CIA drug running opposition.
There have been several claims that the bomb was planted on Pan Am 103 by a crack team of US intelligence agents. A Radio Forth journalist reported the claim and, within an hour, was threatened with prosecution or, bizarrely, invited to disclose his source to the Prime Minister.
The Interfor report (see I) also alleged that Major Charles McKee, the head of the US intelligence team, who was travelling on the plane, was shocked by his colleagues’ deal with Syrian drug smugglers and was returning on Pan Am 103 to report them. The inference was obvious – Pan Am 103 was sacrificed by the intelligence community to get rid of Major McKee. ...
"In the 1990s, a CIA agent, the ex-chief of station in Syria, told [Lindauer] that, contrary to what the U.S. government was insisting, Libya had nothing to do with the PanAm 103/Lockerbie bombing. It had been done by some Syrians acting on behalf of some U.S. intelligence agents, who had been caught in criminal actions by an [CIA] oversight team, and sought to kill that team as they were flying back to Washington to report. She communicated that information to various members of the U.S. intelligence community, and wrote some of it in a deposition for the trial of the Libyans who were being framed by the U.S."
Lindauer worked for the CIA.
She writes:
For years I was told the terrorist who placed the bomb on board Pan Am 103, known as the Lockerbie bombing, lives about 8 miles from my house, in Fairfax County, Virginia.
His life-time of privilege and protection, gratis of high flyers in U.S. Intelligence, has been a reward for silence on the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking in Lebanon during the 1980s...
From May 1995 until March 2003, I performed as a back channel to Tripoli and Baghdad, supervised by my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, who claimed from day one to know the origins of the Lockerbie conspiracy and the identity of the terrorists.
He swore that no Libyan participated in the attack.
... Our team engaged in a concerted fight to gain permission for Dr. Fuisz to give a deposition about his primary knowledge of the conspiracy, during the Lockerbie Trial...
The U.S. Federal Judge in Alexandria, Virginia imposed a double seal on a crucial portion of Dr. Fuisz's deposition.
The double seal can only be opened by a Scottish Judge...
Testimony hidden by the double seal maps out the whole Lockerbie conspiracy...
During the Lockerbie talks, Dr. Fuisz's allegations of CIA opium running in Lebanon received unusual corroboration...
An older spook caught up with me in front of the U.S. Supreme Court...
According to him, the CIA infiltrated opium and heroin trafficking in Lebanon...
Where the CIA went far wrong was in pocketing some of those heroin profits for itself along the way.
The dirty little secret is that the CIA continued to take a percentage cut of opium and heroin production out of Lebanon well into the 1990s...
In December 1988, infuriated Defense Intelligence agents issued a formal protest, exposing CIA complicity in Middle East heroin trafficking.
When teams from both agencies got summoned back to Washington to attend an internal hearing, they boarded Pan Am 103...
Abdelbasset Megrahi got convicted (on the most flimsy circumstantial evidence that overlooked endless contradictions).
Libya paid $2.7 billion in damages—amounting to $10 million per family death— to make the U.N. sanctions go away, and expressed a sort of non-apology for the deaths—while never acknowledging its involvement in the conspiracy.
So Libya was innocent the whole time.
<http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=lindauer%20explains%20lockerbi ...> Lockerbie Bomber Was Innocent; New Documents Support the ...
You +1'd this publicly. <http://www.google.com/> Undo
Feb 29, 2012 – The prosecution, using supposed CIA and FBI experts, asserted that the fragment ... the board was likely modified before use, and this explains the difference. ... FBI agents and the Scottish investigators said one of those timers had .... Did he make the bomb which was placed on feeder flight Pan Am 103A ...
The 800 page report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission denoting strong doubts over the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is made public here for the first time by the Sunday Herald:
Alas, it's unlikely that this man will live long enough to see proper justice prevail
============
Also Google ''lockerbie case for BBC Panaroma and other videos
========================
23 years after Lockerbie, a father fights on for justice:
Anyone who examines the events of the trial in the Netherlands will see that the
prosecution case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhima was laughable,
a grotesque parade of paid witnesses, corrupt evidence and dodgy 'experts'.
http://bit.ly/oUI3Rg [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6bab <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=iqnuv6bab&et=1108115733184&s=11694&e=00 ...> &et=1108115733184&s=11694&e=001-qhqeiLOsj11bb4K4MU_0L3S0iv5z4SaXMO2DhW FjA4jFD_uvQiPLvjMGXX9NPA9M8NqJtGoHU6GXlI2vXMV1gr5f6wQu9ryu1iPqJxI7nM=]
9/11 Whistleblower Susan Lindauer On Gadhaffi, CIA Drug Running in Lockerbie, and Israeli Bribes <http://www.activistpost.com/2011/02/911-whistleblower-susan-lindauer- ...>
Alex Thomas with Susan Lindauer
<http://theintelhub.com/2011/02/27/explosive-information-released-by-9 ...> The Intel Hub
<http://mp3.oraclebroadcasting.com/Intel_Hub/Intel_Hub.2011-02-27_16k. mp3> Listen to the interview here.
In another ground breaking interview on The Intel Hub, former CIA Asset and 9/11 whistleblower Susan Lindauer discussed her visits to the Libyan Embassy in Washington this week, and revealed that she started talks for the Lockerbie Trial with Libya’s diplomats at the United Nations.
Lindauer dished on Gadhaffi, Libya’s vendetta culture and how tribalism might have inspired Gadhaffi’s recent desperate gamble for survival.
She also explains how the Lockerbie bombing was tied to the CIA’s involvement in heroin trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon during U.S. operations to rescue Terry Anderson and other hostages in Beirut.
Susan explains how infuriated Defense Intelligence agents became determined to expose CIA complicity in Middle East heroin trafficking, and how terrorists took out both teams to protect their lucrative cartel.
Lindauer also talked candidly about how Israel tried to buy U.S. Intelligence officers and Assets— though she emphatically denies, under any circumstances, ever accepting money from the Israelis herself.
Whether or not other agents within the government did take bribes is unknown at this time.
For the first time on record, she revealed that a known Mossad agent tried to bribe her into handing over Iraq’s collection of banking records on Al Qaeda’s financial pipeline by phoning her home in Maryland while she was traveling in Baghdad, and promising to deliver a suitcase full of cash to any city in the world in exchange for the papers.
Israel’s obvious knowledge of her travel itinerary debunks the CIA’s long-standing denial of knowing about her trip to Baghdad, which figured prominently in her 5 year indictment on the Patriot Act
The full story of Lindauer’s back channel activities with Iraq, Libya and 9/11 are revealed in her new book, Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq <http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Prejudice-Terrifying-Story-Patriot/dp/1 ...>
Subject: MUST READ! "Lockerbie Bomber Was Innocent; New Documents Support the Obvious"
ActivistPost.com
Posted By Keelan Balderson On February 29, 2012
New documents shed further doubt over the evidence used to convict a Libyan man for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, on December 21, 1988.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who was convicted in 2001 and released on bizarre “compassionate grounds” in 2009 amidst rumors of oil deals, was the only person to serve prison time for the crime.

This new evidence and a review of the case makes it almost certain he was innocent.
Among the wreckage of the plane, which was carrying mainly US and UK passengers on route to JFK International, were small fragments of a circuit-board alleged to be part of the bomb’s timer, which were found in a wooded area many miles from the immediate scene.
The prosecution, using supposed CIA and FBI experts, asserted that the fragment examined was an exact match of a series of Timer’s sold to the Libyan Government.
However newly released documents have revealed that the fragment was actually quite different. Instead of the tin and lead compound found on the Libyan circuit-boards, the fragment contained “pure tin”. It was not an exact match.
The evidence was discovered by a British Ministry of Defence scientist, but was never passed on to Megrahi’s lawyers, implying that the Libyan had been deliberately set-up.
In response to the new findings an MOD spokesperson told Al Jazeera [1] that the board was likely modified before use, and this explains the difference. However this was never explored in the trial or backed up by any independent analysis.
Evidence of a set-up:
This is not the first claim that the circuit-board evidence was fraudulent. Even the UK Guardian [2] reported in 2007 that the fragment was a probable fake.
This however didn’t stop the mainstream media invoking Lockerbie to win public support for the disastrous campaign against Gaddafi in 2011.
Edwin Bollier the now elderly former owner of the company that created the Timers, told the Guardian:
“Two years before Lockerbie, we sold 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military. FBI agents and the Scottish investigators said one of those timers had been used to detonate the bomb.”
He became a defence witness because of unease about the fragments he was shown. They did not match the circuit-boards his company produced.
“I was shown fragments of a brown circuit board which matched our prototype. But when the MST-13 went into production, the timers contained green boards. I knew that the timers sold to Libya had green boards.”
He further claims during the trial that the evidence had been tampered with.
“…the trial was so skewed to prove Libyan involvement that the details of what I had to say was ignored. A photograph of the fragments was produced in court and I asked to see the pieces again. When they were brought to me, they were practically carbonised. They had been tampered with since I had seen them in Dumfries.”
The Star Witness:
The prosecution’s star witness at the trial was a man named Tony Gauci, a shop owner from Malta. He identified Megrahi as a man who had bought clothing and an umbrella from him on December 7, 1988 – remnants of which were later recovered from debris at the scene.
The 2007 Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) investigation, which has almost been completely ignored by the media, supported an appeal by Megrahi, citing Gauci’s testimony as unreliable. It was established that the only date Megrahi could have purchased the clothes was on December 7, but they determined that there was “no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary’s House, took place” on that day.
The Commission’s statement elaborates: New evidence not heard at the trial concerned the date on which the Christmas lights were illuminated in the area of Sliema in which Mary’s House is situated.
In the Commission’s view, taken together with Mr Gauci’s evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, this additional evidence indicates that the purchase of the items took place prior to 6 December 1988.
In other words, it indicates that the purchase took place at a time when there was no evidence at trial that the applicant was in Malta.
Four days prior to the identification parade at which Mr Gauci picked out [Megrahi], he saw a photograph of [him] in a magazine article linking him to the bombing.
In the Commission’s view evidence of Mr Gauci’s exposure to this photograph in such close proximity to the parade undermines the reliability of his identification of the applicant at that time and at the trial itself.
Gauci and his brother were paid millions for their cooperation [1 [3]], or as some might interpret: were paid off for their false testimony.
Hans Köchler a UN international observer, called the whole case “a spectacular miscarriage of justice” and criticized the SCCRC for being too lenient on those in charge of bringing justice.
“Regrettably, the SCCRC has not disclosed all its grounds of referral and, in its news release of 28 June, has basically concentrated on the dubious role of Maltese witness Tony Gauci – while at the same time engaging in a rather strange exercise of ‘preventive exoneration’ of certain people belonging to the British and/or Scottish police and judicial system whose behaviour, as pointed out in the undersigned’s reports and confirmed, in the meantime, in several affidavits, has been highly questionable and may have detrimentally affected the fairness of the proceedings”[2 [4]].
Megrahi was eventually released, but under dubious circumstances.
“Compassionate Grounds”:
Taking in to account this evidence it came as a big surprise when Megrahi suddenly dropped his appeal.
BBC News [5] reports that a new book by long-time Lockerbie researcher John Ashton claims the Government struck a deal with Megrahi to drop his appeal in exchange for being released on compassionate grounds due to suffering from terminal cancer.
This would allow the Government to continue to save face on the wrongful conviction, but allow Megrahi to have his freedom.
He was released back to Libya in August 2009.
Oil company BP admitted that it had pushed for a Prisoner Transfer agreement prior to the compassionate release, because of “negative consequences”: delaying a deal with Libya would have had on commercial interests [3 [6]].
Nevertheless the Libyans learned a cold hard lesson not to cooperate with lying imperialists.
They were soon stabbed in the back when NATO obliterated the country in an unjust bombing campaign, and David Cameron told the Al-Qaeda linked rebels to lock Megrahi back up if they found him [4 [7]].
The whereabouts of Megrahi are no longer known, but it was last reported that he was in a coma prior to the NATO campaign [5 [8]].
So Who Did lockerbie?
According to victim family member Martin Cadman, during a President’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) review, one of President Bush Sr’s staff told him: “Your government and ours know exactly what happened but they are never going to tell.”[6 [9]]
There have been several claims that the bomb was planted on Pan Am 103 by a crack team of US intelligence agents. A Radio Forth journalist reported the claim and, within an hour, was threatened with prosecution or, bizarrely, invited to disclose his source to the Prime Minister.
The Interfor report (see I) also alleged that Major Charles McKee, the head of the US intelligence team, who was travelling on the plane, was shocked by his colleagues’ deal with Syrian drug smugglers and was returning on Pan Am 103 to report them. The inference was obvious – Pan Am 103 was sacrificed by the intelligence community to get rid of Major McKee. ...
Activist Post: 9/11 Whistleblower Susan Lindauer On Gadhaffi, CIA <http://www.activistpost.com/2011/02/911-whistleblower-susan-lindauer- ...> ...
She also explains how the Lockerbie bombing was tied to the CIA's involvement in heroin trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon during U.S. operations to rescue Terry Anderson and other hostages in Beirut.
Activist Post: <http://www.activistpost.com/2011/03/lockerbie-diary-gadhaffi-fall-guy ...> Lockerbie Diary: Gadhaffi, Fall Guy For CIA Drug ...
From May 1995 until March 2003, I performed as a back channel to Tripoli and Baghdad, supervised by my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, who claimed from day one to know the origins of the Lockerbie conspiracy and the ...
clipped from Google - 3/2012 <http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/faq.html>
Activist Post: White House backed release of <http://www.activistpost.com/2010/07/white-house-backed-release-of-loc ...> Lockerbie bomber ...
The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds ...
clipped from Google - 3/2012 <http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/faq.html>
Activist Post: Libya's Blood For Oil: The Vampire War <http://www.activistpost.com/2011/03/libyas-blood-for-oil-vampire-war. ...>
As the U.S. Asset who started negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial with Libyan diplomats, I had close ties to Libya's U.N. Mission from 1995 to 2003. Given my long involvement in the Lockerbie saga, I have continued to enjoy ...
clipped from Google - 3/2012 <http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/faq.html>
World news
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
US paid reward to Lockerbie witness, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi papers claimScottish detectives discussed secret payments of up to $3m made to witness and his brother, documents claim
Share148 reddit this Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 October 2009 17.00 BST Article history
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's documents would have formed part of an appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
Two key figures in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber were secretly given rewards of up to $3m (£1.9m) in a deal discussed by Scottish detectives and the US government, according to legal papers released today.
The claims about the payments were revealed in a dossier of evidence that was intended to be used in an appeal by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.
Megrahi abandoned his appeal last month after the Libyan and Scottish governments struck a deal to free him on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. Now in hospital in Tripoli, Megrahi said he wanted the public to see the evidence which he claims would have cleared him.
"I continue to protest my innocence – how could I fail to do so?," he said. "I have no desire to add to the upset of many people I know are profoundly affected by what happened in Lockerbie. My intention is only for the truth to be made known."
The documents published online by Megrahi's lawyers today show that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was asked to pay $2m to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who gave crucial evidence at the trial suggesting that Megrahi had bought clothes later used in the suitcase that allegedly held the Lockerbie bomb.
The DoJ was also asked to pay a further $1m to his brother, Paul Gauci, who did not give evidence but played a major role in identifying the clothing and in "maintaining the resolve of his brother". The DoJ said their rewards could be increased and that the brothers were also eligible for the US witness protection programme, according to the documents.
The previously secret payments were uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which returned Megrahi's conviction to the court of appeal in 2007 as a suspected miscarriage of justice. Many references were in private diaries kept by the detectives involved, Megrahi's lawyers said, but not their official notebooks.
The SCCRC was unable to establish exactly how much the brothers received under the DoJ's "reward-for-justice" programme but found it was after Megrahi's trial and his first appeal in 1992 was thrown out.
A memo written by "DI Dalgleish" to "ACC Graham" in 2007 confirms the men received "substantial payments from the American authorities".
The inspector claims the rewards were "engineered" after Megrahi's trial and appeal were over, but said there was "a real danger that if [the] SCCRC's statement of reasons is leaked to the media, Anthony Gauci could be portrayed as having given flawed evidence for financial reward." Instead, he claimed, the reward was intended to ensure the Gaucis could afford to leave Malta and start new lives "to avoid media and other unwanted attention".
However, the documents disclose that in 1989 the FBI told Dumfries and Galloway police that they wanted to offer Gauci "unlimited money" and $10,000 immediately. Gauci began talking of a possible reward in meetings with Dumfries and Galloway detectives in 1991, when a reward application was first made to the DoJ.
The evidence, which was due to be heard by the appeal court next month, also discloses that Gauci was visited 50 times by Scottish detectives before the trial and new testimony contradicting the prosecution's claims that Megrahi bought the clothes on 7 December 1988 – the only day he was in Malta during the critical period.
In 23 police interviews, Gauci gave contradictory evidence about who he believed bought the clothes, the person's age, appearance and the date of purchase. Two identification experts hired by Megrahi's appeal team said the police and prosecution breached the rules on witness interviews, using "suggestive" lines of questioning and allowing "irregular" identification line-ups.
Two new witnesses also disproved the prosecution claim that Megrahi was in Gauci's shop on 7 December, his lawyers said. Gauci said the area's Christmas lights were not on when the clothes were bought. The current Maltese high commissioner to the UK, Michael Rufalo, then the local MP, told the SCCRC the lights were switched on on 6 December, raising further inconsistencies in the prosecution case.
It has also emerged that Scottish police did not tell Megrahi's lawyers that another witness, David Wright, had seen two different Libyan men buying very similar clothes on a different day; evidence that psychologists believe may have confused Gauci and again clouded the prosecution case.
Dumfries and Galloway police said only a court could properly consider this material, and supported previous criticism of Megrahi's decision to release his appeal papers by Elish Angiolini, the lord advocate. "We will not be taking part in any discussion or debate concerning the selective publications made by Mr Megrahi," a statement said.
"We have nothing more to add other than to echo the lord advocate's recent comments pointing out that Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges and his conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an appeal court presided over by the lord justice general, Scotland's most senior judge. Mr Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history."
Or will it emerge that Libya was not to blame, but regarded Megrahi's conviction - along with an admission of responsibility and compensation payments to Lockerbie relatives - as a price worth paying for the lifting of sanctions and the striking of oil deals in the desert?
In short, was Megrahi a pawn, sacrificed to bring his country in from the cold?
Scottish prosecutors vehemently argue that he was not. They continue to insist that the trial was fair and that Megrahi was convicted because a wealth of circumstantial evidence proved his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
But more than two decades after death rained down on a small Scottish town, everyone agrees on one thing: someone, somewhere has escaped justice for the Lockerbie bombing.
"FOR 19 years prosecutors and investigators kept secret a detailed report about the most important forensic evidence from the debris of Pan Am 103 at Lockerbie – a fragment of timing device circuit board – which completely undermined their own case against Abdelbasset al-Megrahi."
"The 11-page report details the forensic analysis of the circuit board. It reveals that police and experts were aware, relatively early in the investigation, that there was something “very unusual” about the board. They had found that tracks on it were coated with pure tin, whereas the vast majority in manufacture have a tin/lead mix
... The Crown’s case against Megrahi regarding the circuit board was always the opposite: namely, that the fragment was identical to circuit boards used in timers that were supplied to Libya by a Swiss company, Mebo. But these were not remotely “unusual” as they had the common tin/lead mix."
It was announced last Friday that Scotland has 3 new ‘top judges’, and a new top ‘top judge’. The only news in either announcement was that there were only 3 new judges appointed, and not 4. It was widely understood that there were to be 4 appointments, and the names of the four recommended candidates had been widely leaked, with the leaked names then circulating on Twitter and in the yellow press. Why then was Maggie Scott QC not appointed by First Minister Alex Salmond? One of the other appointments was Lord Boyd of Duncansby QC. Boyd was Lord Advocate when al-Megrahi was convicted for involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. Scott was counsel for al-Megrahi in his application to Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal. The appeal was substantially based on the finding that the Crown Office (led by Boyd) had withheld documentation from the defence team which might have been used by them as part of al-Megrahi’s defence. Appointing both of them to the senior bench at the same time would have raised eyebrows. Appointing Boyd to the bench certainly has raised eyebrows. Prior to the Lockerbie prosecution Boyd was Solicitor General for Scotland when Shirley McKie was prosecuted for perjury in relation to an allegation that she had left her fingerprint at a murder scene. A report in 2000 concluded that there had bee a cover-up and that criminality had taken place at Scottish Criminal Records Office, and recommended that four fingerprint officers should be prosecuted. However Boyd argued that expert witnesses should always be immune from prosecution – even if they gave false evidence. He decided in September 2001that no action should be taken in response to the Report’s recommendation, and the four SCRO officers were reinstated. If you are going to appoint a person who has been accused of withholding vital documents from the defence, and who defends the right of the state’s experts to be free from the penalties of the law, why not also appoint the person who was the senior member of the defence team that showed that the Crown had withheld important documents and who has tried to force the Crown to uphold the rules? Politics, with a small ‘p’, seems to be the answer.
The second news item was that Lord Gill has been appointed Lord President/Lord Justice General of the Court of Session. Again, not really news since he was seen visiting Alex Salmond not that long ago. Gill only has a couple of years to go until he has to retire, so it might seem strange to appoint someone who will only have the job for a short time before an appointments committee have to start all over again. This does not mean that there were no other capable or qualified candidates. It seems to come down to politics again.
_________________ '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.”
Within days of the death of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in May, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond had refused international appeals for an independent inquiry into the 1988 Lockerbie bombing for which the Libyan had been convicted 11 years earlier. The appeal made by Kate Adie, Desmond Tutu, Terry Waite, Tam Dalyell and the father of one of the Lockerbie victims, Jim Swire, among others, claimed the ‘perverse judgment’ had left the Scottish criminal justice system a ‘mangled wreck’.
Speaking at Holyrood, Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said: ‘This is not a normal case. It’s Scotland’s biggest terrorist atrocity. These are serious questions raised by serious people, and the world is watching.’ _________________ '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.”
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION OF THE TARGETING OF BERNT CARLSSON ON PAN AM FLIGHT 103 - PLEASE TELL US WHY: JOHN ASHTON, PROFESSOR BLACK AND IAN FERGUSON!
Quote:
Patrick Haseldine
THE ASSASSINATION OF BERNT CARLSSON
Of the 270 people murdered at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and U.N. Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, was obviously a target. Yet the Lockerbie investigators (CIA, FBI and the Scottish Police) failed to undertake even the most cursory of investigations into Bernt Carlsson's murder.
Commissioner Carlsson was to have taken charge of Namibia on 22 December 1988 immediately after apartheid South Africa had signed an agreement at U.N. headquarters giving up its illegal occupation of the country. In a 29 September 1987 TV interview, Carlsson had warned that he intended to start proceedings against the countries and firms which had been defying U.N. law over many years by stealing billions of pounds-worth of Namibia's natural resources. Among those facing U.N. compensation claims were: the diamond mining firm De Beers; the apartheid regime of South Africa; Rio Tinto Group, owners of the Rössing uranium mine; and, the government of Iran which today still owns 15% of Rössing and, in 1988-89, received large shipments of uranium from Namibia.
Because Bernt Carlsson died at Lockerbie, none of these prosecutions ever took place. Now, more than 23 years after the Lockerbie disaster, it is probably too late to seek compensation from the offending countries and firms. However, the lapse of time cannot allow the murder of a senior U.N. diplomat to go unpunished. Therefore, the U.N. must investigate the targeting of Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103.
On 20 May 2012, the so-called "Lockerbie bomber" Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who is innocent of the crime, finally succumbed to cancer. The UN must now establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the crime of Lockerbie, and authorise the Commission to refer the case to the International Court of Justice for action to be taken against both the individuals and country or countries involved in the targeting of Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103.
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(Photo shows Bernt Carlsson (circa 1983) when he was Secretary-General of the Socialist International and Germany's Willy Brandt was SI President.)
Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 10:46 pm Post subject: Lockerbie-the Maltese double cross?
Scotland may think that they are independent form the rest of the UK, but it seems like the tentacles of Westminster have reached up as far as Scotland, and in this case around the throat of Alex Salmond. So much for the honesty of the Scots government, it is as bad as if not worse than the rest of the country. At the end of the day this all comes back to the criminality of the US and UK governments, what else have they got tucked up their sleeves awaiting us?
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 4:21 pm Post subject: Re: Lockerbie-the Maltese double cross?
Michaeld wrote:
Scotland may think that they are independent form the rest of the UK, but it seems like the tentacles of Westminster have reached up as far as Scotland, and in this case around the throat of Alex Salmond. So much for the honesty of the Scots government, it is as bad as if not worse than the rest of the country. At the end of the day this all comes back to the criminality of the US and UK governments, what else have they got tucked up their sleeves awaiting us?
Apparently, this is only just surfacing.
France, Italy and the US were all complicit. Witnesses, as in so many cases, were 'suicided', 'accidented' or 'heart-attacked'. _________________ '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.
Apparently, this is only just surfacing.
France, Italy and the US were all complicit. Witnesses, as in so many cases, were 'suicided', 'accidented' or 'heart-attacked'.
This should front page news!
French jets downed airliner - killing 81 - and Mig 23 pilot - plus dozen or so witnesses - probably assassinated!
Physical evidence of the two crashed aircraft, leaked details and now corroborated by Libyan records!
Somebody is doing some research but this Youtube clip is rather frustrating - no narrative at all - but seemingly lots of original documentation captured on video. (And only 232 views...)
When ‘Follow the Yellowcake Road’ was broadcast in the UK by Thames Television on 10 March 1980, the TV documentary was signposting a 12-year journey that started four years earlier at the Rössing Uranium Mine in Namibia. The Yellowcake Road continued through President P W Botha's South Africa and Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, and would finish with the murder of United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, at Lockerbie in Scotland on 21 December 1988.
In 1976, Rössing Uranium Limited began operations by exporting Namibian yellowcake (processed uranium ore). Rössing was jointly owned by British mining conglomerate Rio Tinto Group (RTZ), by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), by the South African parastatal entity known as the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), which also controlled most of the voting shares, and by the French-based Total Compagnie Minière (TCF). Before the mine opened, RTZ had managed to secure large long-term contracts with German and Japanese utilities and with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). Within a very short time, the Rössing mine had become the largest open pit uranium producer in the world.
On some readings of international law, the Rössing mine operation was illegal right from the start since apartheid South Africa was continuing to occupy Namibia in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 435. The UN had formally ended South Africa’s mandate to govern the territory in 1966 by transferring that mandate to the newly created UN Council for Namibia (UNCN) pending the country's independence, and demanded the immediate withdrawal of South African troops. In 1971 the International Court of Justice ruled that these UN measures were binding and in 1973 the UN General Assembly recognised the freedom-fighting South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) as the “sole authentic representative” of the Namibian people.
In 1974 the UNCN issued Decree № 1, which prohibited the extraction and distribution of any natural resource from Namibian territory without the UNCN’s explicit permission, provided for the seizure of any illegally exported material, and warned that violators could be held liable for damages. Projected to be Namibia’s largest mining operation, Rössing thus became the primary target of Decree № 1. However, many Western governments (including the US and Britain) refused to accept Decree № 1 as binding, with lawyers and government officials disputing whether the decree was juridically sound, whether and how it might apply, and which courts might enforce its application. But the bottom line was that Rössing aimed to supply at least 10 percent of the global uranium market which translated into one-third of Britain’s needs, and probably more for Japan. Decree № 1 therefore sparked a lengthy international struggle over the legitimacy of Rössing uranium.
Starting in 1975, the UNCN sent out numerous delegations to convince governments to suspend their dealings with Namibia. They heard many expressions of support for the independence process, but prior to the mid-1980s only Sweden (among the large Western uranium consumers) pledged to boycott Rössing’s product. Activists stepped up the pressure in a wide variety of forums. In the UK and the Netherlands, they joined forces with the anti-nuclear movement, resulting in organisations like the British CANUC (Campaign Against the Namibian Uranium Contracts). The UNCN held a week-long hearing in July 1980, during which experts and activists from Europe, Japan, and the United States gave presentations on Rössing’s operations and contracts, and the TV documentary ‘Follow the Yellowcake Road’ was screened. Testimony focused on the relationship between southern Africa and the Western nuclear industry, arguing that all purchases of Namibian uranium effectively supported the colonial occupation via the taxes paid by Rössing.
In an analysis of global uranium supply and demand, one economist (Stephen Ritterbus) noted that southern African uranium “could account for as much as 50 per cent of the total available for net export.” Reminding his audience that South African (IDC) shares in Rössing gave the apartheid state voting control of the company, Ritterbus suggested that Pretoria thereby had “leverage not only as regards the supply and price of uranium but also as regards the formulation of foreign policy towards South Africa itself and [its] present position in Namibia.”
In 1981, SWAPO helped organise a seminar for West European trade unions as well as presentations on living and working conditions at Rössing and on the mine’s paramilitary security forces, which appealed to the loyalties of the International Socialist movement. The seminar detailed the secret movements of Rössing uranium through European planes, ships, docks, and roads, noting that European transport workers had unknowingly handled barrels of radioactive substances. A 1982 seminar organised by the American Committee on Africa on the role of transnational corporations in Namibia focused heavily on uranium, reprising many of the arguments mounted by European activists. In subsequent years CANUC redoubled its efforts to enlist the British peace movement.
Despite all the bad publicity, Rössing’s customers held firm in their contracts through the mid-1980s. The company helped: it responded to the pressure by papering over the transnational dimensions of its operations. To address “the unwillingness of certain customers to deal direct,” RTZ set up a front company in Switzerland under the name RTZ Mineral Services (Minserve). Customers could thus sign contracts that didn’t mention Rössing, whereupon Minserve would sign corresponding “back-to-back” contracts with the mine. Minserve’s marketing emphasised that RTZ owned uranium mines in three countries: should one mine prove unable to deliver, ore from elsewhere could take its place. Management referred to customers by number rather than name to reinforce discretion. This protected not just Rössing’s customers but also its board of directors, who officially remained ignorant of customer identity and contract prices. Until late 1985 (when the threat of sanctions made such topics impossible to ignore), the “market reports” Minserve delivered at company board meetings in Namibia’s capital Windhoek pointedly avoided discussing how anti-apartheid activism was constraining Rössing’s business. The omission was especially glaring because the reports discussed just about every other international political development affecting the flow of uranium.
Nevertheless, records of Minserve’s London sales meetings show that customers began expressing unease in the early 1980s. Japanese utilities in particular worried that their government might cave to international pressure and began asking Minserve to substitute non-Namibian origin material. In order to secure new contracts, Minserve had to devise increasingly arcane arrangements. In September 1983, for example, one customer who had previously held a direct contract with Rössing made a new inquiry. A sales associate reported: “Politically [they] cannot buy Namibian material but they are willing to discuss taking swapped material in the form of spot deliveries of UF6 [uranium hexafluoride, the feed for enrichment plants]. Any contract should preferably be with a third party, either the converter or the contracting party and not an RTZ Company.”
Minserve’s role as a front was an open secret, and utilities increasingly sought to maximize their distance from RTZ. As international pressure for Namibian independence mounted, Rössing and Minserve began using “flag swaps” to fulfil contracts. Such arrangements could follow several scenarios. In one, the material would be re-labelled by conversion plants. Comurhex (in France) and BNFL (in Britain) proved particularly co-operative: after they converted Rössing’s yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride, they would state its origin as French or British on the customs forms accompanying the material to US enrichment plants. In a second scenario, Minserve would swap contracts with another RTZ customer: the contract originally intended to use Rössing yellowcake would get filled with uranium from another RTZ mine, while the contract signed by that mine would get filled with Rössing uranium. This scenario depended on the willingness of the other RTZ customer to accept Namibian uranium; Swiss utilities usually obliged happily. Yet another scenario involved two conversion plants shuffling titles to uranium oxide and hexafluoride. All told, the quantity of swapped material rose from several hundred tonnes in 1982 to several thousand by 1985–1986.
At first, the pressures that made Rössing uranium increasingly illicit also made it more profitable. Sales contracts were denominated in US$ but most costs were incurred in South African Rand. As opposition to apartheid drove down the value of the Rand, profits mounted: in 1985 Rössing showed the highest profit to date, recorded at over 190 million Rand after taxes. This was especially remarkable given “the continued weakness in the world uranium market.” Still, a favourable exchange rate would not help if Rössing lost all its buyers. Talks on Namibian independence had stalled and South African state violence had intensified. In 1985 even the staunchest allies of the apartheid state began discussing full-scale mandatory sanctions. Rössing didn’t fret too much about interruptions to its supply chain, since it could circumvent restrictions with purchasing agents, offshore accounts, and more front companies. But Minserve did worry about specific prohibitions on the import of Namibian uranium: Rössing’s main customers had “enough of the product and could manage quite well without buying any more. [They] might welcome an excuse to renege on their contract.”
At best, flag swaps and related measures would only give Rössing some breathing space. “We have to accept that in any coordinated imposition of sanctions uranium is the easiest material for the authorities to trace and block. Without the assistance of the converter or the falsification of origin records it is inevitable that the sales of Rössing material will be severely curtailed. Any study on the counter effects of sanctions on Rössing has therefore to be one of damage limitation.”
One form of damage limitation involved working the finer points of anti-apartheid legislation, particularly after the US Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) in October 1986. The CAAA's threat to Rössing were considerable: a significant portion of its yellowcake went to plants in America for conversion to hexafluoride. In addition, much of Rössing’s yellowcake converted elsewhere went to US plants for enrichment. Stopping the flow of Namibian-origin uranium oxide or hexafluoride through US plants could therefore shut down Rössing’s business altogether. To help work around the bill, Minserve hired the consulting firm Wrightmon USA for a monthly retainer of $15,000.
Diane Harmon, the firm’s president, employed a double strategy to maximize the amount of Namibian uranium imported into America. On the one hand, she formed an alliance with US conversion plants which stood to lose a lot of money if Rössing’s business disappeared. On the other hand, she also exploited a loophole in the CAAA that went against the interests of the converters. Rössing yellowcake that entered the US directly clearly counted as Namibian. But if that yellowcake got converted and re-labelled as British UF6, hadn’t its nationality changed? In which case, surely it could enter the US as enrichment feed? If Rössing transferred all its conversion business to European plants, its customers could maintain their U.S. enrichment contracts. Harmon pointed out that US enrichment plants would suffer if they lost southern African feed; combined with other import restrictions, the impact might force one of the plants to close. Job losses would ensue. By the end of 1987, Harmon had obtained a ruling that: South African–origin uranium ore and uranium oxide that is substantially transformed into another form of uranium in a country other than South Africa is not to be treated as South African uranium ore or uranium oxide and is therefore not barred. This became known as the “UF6 loophole.” Pleased with this outcome, Minserve asked Sir Alistair Frame, RTZ’s well-connected chairman, to “have a word” with BNFL and the British Foreign Office to ensure that they continued to re-label converted material as UK-origin.
In May 1985, the UNCN began legal action against URENCO - the joint Dutch/British/West German uranium enrichment company, with plants in Capenhurst (Cheshire, England), Almelo (Netherlands) and Gronau (West Germany). Since URENCO had been importing uranium ore from the Rössing Uranium Mine in Namibia, the company was charged with breaching UNCN Decree. The case was expected to be ready by the end of 1985 but was delayed because URENCO argued that - despite having enriched uranium of Namibian origin since 1980 - it was impossible to tell where specific consignments came from. When the case finally reached court in July 1986, the Dutch government took URENCO's line, claiming not to have known where the uranium had been mined. Upon the adjournment of the URENCO proceedings, SWAPO's UN representative, Helmut Angula, insisted that other companies, such as Shell, De Beers (Consolidated Diamond Mines), Newmont, and Rio Tinto were also likely to face prosecution for breaching the UNCN Decree.
The man responsible for Namibia under international law, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, spoke about these prosecutions in a 'World In Action' TV documentary 'The Case of the Disappearing Diamonds' which was broadcast by Thames Television in September 1987: "The United Nations this year in July started legal action against one such company - the Dutch company URENCO which imports uranium."
When asked if he would be taking action against other companies such as De Beers, the diamond mining conglomerate, Bernt Carlsson replied: "All the companies which are carrying out activities in Namibia which have not been authorised by the United Nations are being studied at present. As far as De Beers is concerned, the corporation has been trying to skim the cream which means they have gone for the large diamonds at the expense of the steady pace. In this way they have really shortened the lifespan of the mines. One would expect from a worldwide corporation like De Beers and Anglo American that they would behave with an element of social and political responsibility. But their behaviour in the specific case of Namibia has been one of profit maximation regardless of its social, economic, political and even legal responsibility."
In 1988, US Congressional Democrats began working to close the UF6 loophole. The State Department’s Office of Nonproliferation and Export Policy did as well, declaring that “it is not possible to avoid the provisions of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act by swapping flags or obligations on natural uranium physically of South African origin before it enters the USA.” Nevertheless, Rössing managed to delay the implementation of restrictions which could have put it out of business. And - in the end - that delay sufficed: apartheid South Africa and other negotiating parties signed an independence accord on 22 December 1988. On his way to the signing of the agreement at UN headquarters in New York, UN Commissioner Bernt Carlsson became the highest profile victim of the Pan Am Flight 103 crash at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.
Following Carlsson's untimely death, the case against URENCO was inexplicably dropped and no further prosecutions took place of the companies and countries that were in breach of the UNCN Decree. Despite this fairly obvious evidence that Bernt Carlsson was the prime target on Pan Am Flight 103, there has never been a murder investigation conducted by the CIA, FBI, Scottish Police or indeed by the United Nations. Instead, fabricated evidence has been used to frame and wrongly convict the Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the crime of Lockerbie.
Four months after Bernt Carlsson was killed at Lockerbie, Margaret Thatcher - then Britain's prime minister - went to visit the Rössing Uranium Mine in March 1989 and commented that the project made her "proud to be British". Mrs Thatcher was accompanied on this visit to the Rössing Uranium Mine by current prime minister David Cameron - then a young researcher from Conservative Central Office.
References:
1. The Power of Nuclear Things (http://etc.technologyandculture.net/2010/01/hecht-power-of-nuclear-th ings/)
2. The Gulliver Rössing Uranium Ltd Dossier (http://www.radiobridge.net/www/nam/rossing.html)
3. URENCO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urenco_Group)
4. De Beers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers)
5. UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernt_Carlsson)
6. 'Bernt Carlsson and the Case of the Disappearing Diamonds' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHIDaGrIsmY)
7. Gordon Brown says Lockerbie victim Bernt Carlsson was the target (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1517249&l=dfb02c6e47&id=1059719 984)
8. Lockerbie: Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2031228&l=78adbc28db&id=1059719 984)
9. 'Lockerbie Conspiracy' by Thatcher and Reagan (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1808501&l=314e4520ce&id=1059719 984)
10. Lockerbie: Cameron's Nuclear Secret (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2071496&l=c14f1ea35c&id=1059719 984)
11. Lockerbie PMQs for David Cameron (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2204201&l=5717a41582&id=1059719 984)
12. 'Follow the Yellowcake Road': Investigates the secret contract and operation arranged by the British-based Rio Tinto Group to import yellowcake into Britain from the Rössing Mine in Namibia, whose major shareholders are the Iranian and South African governments (http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/107762).
- Even if illegal mining interests were a motive to silence Bernt Carlsson I fail to see how this would have prompted even an unscrupulous company or government to murder 269 other people in the process.
Also the Carlsson theory fails to explain what Iran did to avenge the USS Vincennes' mass murder of the 274 passengers and crew of Iran Air 655. I find it inconceivable that Iran in 1988 would've let this US Navy war crime go unavenged. If Iranian agents or proxies were thwarted at a first attempt, I would expect them to have kept trying until they succeeded.
However, you mention that Iran owns 15% of the Rössing mine. Would it be too tenuous to suggest that Iran Air 655 was the main motive for the Lockerbie bombing, but knowledge of Carlsson's travel plans led Iran to target his flight in order to achieve two objectives with the same bomb?
25 April 2011 at 00:57 · Like
- What's Jim Swire's take on all this?
He's the only person who has consistently talked sense and honesty on this issue...the truth has been swamped by vested interest and people's hobby-horses since day one.
25 April 2011 at 08:49 · Like · 1
- Dr Swire has forthrightly maintained the greatest stength and integrity throughout the last 23 years, and borne much unfair denigration from both US and Scottish interests as a result.
US victims' relatives may be excused for letting their government mislead them. However, in 2008 on the 20th anniversary of the bombing, former Lord Advocate Lord Fraser of Carmyllie tried to smear Swire as "suffering from Stockholm Syndrome". This misrepresents Stockholm Syndrome, let alone Dr Swire. Tam Dalyell called for his Lordship to testify under oath about his outburst, but two and a half years later the cowardly peer still hasn't either acceded to Dalyell's proposal or withdrawn his tacky smear.
25 April 2011 at 10:02 · Like
- your suggestion [that Iran was motivated to target Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103] isn't too tenuous at all. In fact, it's fully covered in the above-referenced article ( "Lockerbie: Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime."
Take a look by clicking on the link (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2031228&l=78adbc28db&id=1059719 984)!
29 April 2011 at 14:51 · Like
- LOCKERBIE: PIK 'N' MISS
[Article by Paul Foot in 'Private Eye' magazine, 2 April 1999]
Looming over the prospect of the trial of two Libyan suspects for the Lockerbie bombing are two dreadful questions which haunt the intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic.
1. Why has Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa, shown such a lasting and dedicated interest in Lockerbie? True, he was for some of the time head of the Organisation of African Unity. True, he feels he owes the Libyans a debt for their long opposition to apartheid. But on their own these explanations can't explain the enormous amount of time and travelling Mandela has devoted to talks with the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.
2. Why has Gaddafi conceded, and released [for trial] the suspects in what seems like a climbdown? True, he was irritated by UN sanctions; but these hardly explain his uncharacteristic bowing the knee to the hated Americans.
Could the answer to both questions have anything to do with the most enduring mystery about Lockerbie: the warnings received before the bombing of a likely attack on a US airliner in revenge for the shooting down by the US Navy of an Iranian airliner in the Gulf, with the loss of many lives, a few months before Lockerbie?
The most persistent of all the 'warning' stories comes from South Africa. On 21 December 1988, the day of the bombing, the South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha was in London with a large entourage. The rumour was that they had planned to go to the US on Pan Am 103. But at the last moment had switched to a later flight. Had they been warned off?
Could it be that President Mandela has more information about this last-minute switch and that he has passed on the information to Colonel Gaddafi?
(http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4834524695218&l=1b1097cfec) _________________ '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.”
Exaro breaks dramatic development on Lockerbie:
police in Scotland launch investigation into conduct of case.
http://t.co/kAqHSFQUDN
Scottish police have launched an investigation into the conduct of the original case over the bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie.
Exaro can reveal the development amid allegations that Scotland’s police and prosecuting authorities attempted to pervert the course of justice in the case. It remains Britain’s biggest-ever terrorist attack, but controversy has dogged the investigation into who was responsible.
Jim Swire, whose 24-year-old daughter, Flora, died in the Lockerbie bombing, said: “It is profoundly to be hoped that this will lead to an acknowledgment of error...” _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
@ExaroNews:
Campaigners for a public inquiry into Lockerbie case issue stinging rebuke to Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland.
http://t.co/WMyb9v5iHb _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
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"Lockerbie: Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime."