Lockerbie + 22 - the tangled web

On the 22^nd anniversary of Britain’s worst ever terrorist outrage – the Lockerbie bombing – the only man ever convicted of it, the Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, is said to be in a coma and close to death.

Later today, a US senator is due to unveil the results of his own personal inquiry into Megrahi’s compassionate release last year. What the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic seem desperate to prevent, though, is any inquiry into who really planted the bomb that blew up the Pan-Am jumbo.

Megrahi was released only after he agreed to drop his appeal against conviction, and ten days ago it was revealed that an 800 page dossier compiled by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, examining the flaws in the case against him, is to be kept under lock and key. The commission had identified at least six grounds for thinking Megrahi may have been wrongly convicted. The UK government has also rejected requests for a full public inquiry.

Dr Jim Swire, who daughter was one of the 270 victims of the bombing, believes Megrahi was released in order to prevent an appeal that the authorities might have found ‘very embarrassing’. Now two of the Libyan’s children say they are preparing to sue the powers-that-be in Scotland for wrongfully imprisoning their father. Will that lead to the issues finally being properly examined? Or will the authorities just pay up so they can maintain the silence? Come on Wikileaks!

Labour and the USA - no change

Even the Labour party must by now realise that one reason why it suffered one of its heaviest ever defeats in May’s general election was its nauseating subservience to the United States. But apparently not. Indeed, Labour’s “justice spokesman” in the Scottish Parliament, Richard Baker, seems to be propounding the view that we are nothing more than a province of America.

The Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had refused a summons from American senators to cross the Atlantic and be berated like a naughty schoolboy over his decision to release Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the man convicted – many believe wrongly – of the Lockerbie bombing. (See my blogs of 27 July, 16 and 22 Aug, and 19 Sept, 2009 and 17 July, 2010.)

Mr Baker was incensed. When America hands out an instruction, he thinks we Brits should jump to it. Fortunately, Mr MacAskill seems to have a better understanding of where his duty lies. "I am elected by the Scottish people, I am accountable to the Scottish parliament,” he said. If only Labour politicians could get their heads around this, they might not dragoon us into disastrous American adventures, like Iraq.

How about a counter-invitation to the American senators? Why don’t they go to Afghanistan and stand in for some of the British soldiers currently risking life and limb there to save the US from embarrassment?

Lockerbie - let's have the right inquiry

I worry more and more about the BBC’s supposed flagship 10 o’ clock Television News. Last week it consumed more than half the programme in an extraordinarily repetitive, virtually information-free report on the hunt for Raoul Moat.

Last night it devoted seven minutes to American outrage over the release eleven months ago of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. You will remember that al-Megrahi was freed from his Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.

Two BBC reporters told us how cross the Americans were that al-Megrahi had had the temerity to not die, that the new UK government now considered the release a “mistake”, how the Americans were accusing their favourite villain, BP, of having engineered the release etc, etc. Neither reporter seemed aware that there are very serious doubts about al-Megrahi’s guilt, shared by the families of some of the UK victims. (These doubts appear not to be much thought about in America where questioning the guilt of Arabs is not really part of the culture.)

Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the attack, has condemned the US’s “mass hysteria” and its cynical attempt to use al-Megrahi as another means of taking “revenge” on BP. The Scottish government are standing firm and have coolly pointed out that the prisoner was released under due process of Scots law, after taking into account the testimony of independent medical experts.

The Americans want an inquiry into al-Megrahi’s release, but Scottish MSP Christine Grahame has a better idea. Why doesn’t the US stop blocking a full independent inquiry into who really bombed Flight 103? Then we might finally get the truth. The new British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is in Washington next week. He has promised to be less subservient to the Americans than Labour were. The next few days may reveal whether he will keep his word.
(See also my blogs of 27 July, 16 and 22 Aug, and 19 Sept, 2009)

Lockerbie - fight for the truth

The fight to get to the bottom of what really happened 31,000 feet over Lockerbie on December 21st, 1988(see my blogs of July 27, Aug 16 and 22) has taken a fresh turn. Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in Britain's worst ever terrorist outrage, has joined forces with the UN observer at Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's trial, Hans Koechler, and Professor Robert Black, one of the architects of the trial, to urge the UN General Assembly to hold an inquiry into the bombing.

Prof Black says the normal approach would be to ask the Security Council to instigate such a move, but that the UK and the US would block it. However, they have no power of veto over the General Assembly.

Meanwhile al-Megrahi has posted a huge dossier on the internet as part of his own campaign to establish his innocence. It casts serious doubts on the evidence of the Maltese shopkeeper who was the only witness to link al-Megrahi to the bombing.

Scotland's top prosecutor has protested about the release of the documents, but the Libyan's lawyers may be about to make further revelations. Lockerbie is proving a bigger and bigger test for the Obama regime. Are we really going to get a new US politics based on honesty and openness or the same old deception and cover-up?

Mass murder - a tale of two sentences

So Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, got his release, to cries of outrage from the United States government. It was “absolutely wrong”, said Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

Then in a bizarre coincidence, up popped former US army officer Lt William Calley – not much heard of since the 1970’s when he was convicted of the mass murder of 500 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. Yesterday Lt Calley offered his first public apology for the crime.

Back in 1971, he was sent to gaol for life. And what was the reaction of the US government? The unbending determination that it would be “absolutely wrong” to release a mass murderer before he had served his full sentence? No, actually President Nixon quickly cut his punishment to three years’ house arrest.

And there were no doubts about Calley’s guilt unlike that of Megrahi (see my blogs of July 27 and Aug 16), nor was he dying of cancer. Double standards, anyone?

Lockerbie - no cover-up!

So we may never know the truth about Lockerbie. Last month, it was revealed that the only man ever convicted for Britain’s worst ever terrorist outrage, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, might be freed on compassionate grounds.

Now, what do you know? He has applied to withdraw his appeal against conviction. You can hardly blame al-Megrahi for doing whatever it takes to get home to Libya when he has terminal prostate cancer, but there are serious doubts about whether he really committed the crime (see my blog of July 27). His conviction looked to many like a sordid political stitch-up, and his release seems to be heading the same way.

The Scottish Conservatives’ justice spokesman Bill Aitken says there’s been too much in the way of "secret briefings, hints of special deals and international cloak and dagger." Hear! Hear! All of us have a right to know who really bombed Flight 103. It would be intolerable if al-Megrahi’s release were to be used to silence any further investigation.

Lockerbie - bomber or victim?

The only man convicted of Britain’s worst ever terrorist outrage has asked to be released from prison on compassionate grounds. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was jailed for 27 years for the Lockerbie bombing in 2001. His co-defendant was acquitted.

Al-Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal cancer, was alleged to have got the bomb onto PanAm Flight 103 in December 1988 via a connecting flight from Malta, though many people, including families of some of the 270 victims of the attack, are not convinced of his guilt, and believe he was the fall guy in a sordid stitch-up designed to end Libya’s diplomatic isolation.

In particular, sceptics have pointed to the fact that it was never mentioned at his trial that there had been a break-in at a Heathrow baggage store just 18 hours before flight 103 departed, and that someone could have smuggled a bag on board by getting it into this area.

Al-Megrahi is appealing against the verdict, and in June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said it feared he may have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. If his conviction were to be overturned it would, of course, raise some very inconvenient questions.

Ground casualties in air crashes

Investigations are continuing into the crash of the Dash 8 aircraft in New York State on Thursday. All 49 people on board were killed plus one man on the ground. It could have been much worse, though. The local emergency co-ordinator commented: "It's remarkable that it only took one house, as devastating as that was. It could have easily wiped out that entire neighbourhood.”

We do not know yet how far the skill of the pilot was a factor in averting an even greater disaster, but it certainly has been in a number of other cases. When two aircraft collided over the Indian town of Charkhi Dadri in 1996 in the worst mid-air crash in history, eye-witnesses praised the crew of a Saudi Arabian aircraft for managing to steer the jet in its dying moments away from people’s homes so that it came down in a field, where it dug a trench 60 yards long. Everyone on board was killed, but there were no casualties on the ground.

Mercifully, the world’s five worst air crashes in terms of the number killed on board caused no deaths on the ground. One of the worst accidents for ground casualties came in August 1944 when a USAF Liberator bomber crashed on the village of Freckleton in Lancashire. 58 people were killed in the village, including 38 children in the local school.

Of course on 9/11, when four aircraft were hi-jacked with the deliberate aim of crashing them, the death toll was much higher – more than 2,700 on the ground, as well as over 250 on the airliners, while the Pan-Am jumbo blown up above Lockerbie killed 11 people on the ground.