Its been six months and Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi the so called Lockerbie bomber released on compassionate grounds because he was “dying” is alive and well, his family are making plans to celebrate his birthday in six weeks time, which ironically falls on April 1st.
I commented back then that the “dying “ story was a sham http://durdensview.blogspot.com/2009/08/lockerbie.html it was about Libyan oil, the humanitarian angle just lent it some credibility, the families of the 259 killed will be furious at Kenny MacAskill the Scottish justice minister for allowing this travesty.
The damage has been done, it’s not like we can ask for Megrahi back, even if Megrahi had been dying did he need to be shown any compassion after all he did take 259 innocent lives, there is no need to pretend to be that forgiving, there is nothing wrong in wanting him to rot in hell.
I fear your indignation may be misplaced. Your final paragraph is dripping with revenge, rather than justice, which is understandable as clearly you have absolutely no concept of the charges laid, evidence presented, and the concocted trial which deemed Megrahi as 'guilty'.
ReplyDeleteThis in itself would be far more worthy of your anger. The investigation and decision of the Zeist court was a victory for international realpolitik, and was the death of not just those poor 270 souls on 103, but of any truth and justice about this tragedy.
I would ask you to reaquaint yourself with the court judgement, followed by a browse over the SCCRC decision, made in 2007, to send the case back to appeal with the view there had been a 'miscarriage of justice'.
His release was not determined by financial or any oil deals, his release was primarily about the ending of his appeal. There are no if's or but's about the appeal conclusion, had it got there. Only with the appeal dropped would a compassionate release be granted, thus denying everyone, and most sadly those who died in 1988, the truth about the real culprits who have been allowed to evade justice since then.
Thank you for your comment Eddie, but if he was indeed innocent why did Gaddaffi have him under house arrest for 3 years and then hand him over for trial, also if it was a "stitch up" how come his co- accused was found not guilty, why not jail them both , after all he must have had some help.
ReplyDeleteAs for my final comment reeking of revenge, maybe so, but its the least the 259 innocent victims deserve.
Well, his co-accused was found 'not guilty' on a 'technicality'. That 'technicality' being there was absolutely not a shred of evidence whatsoever against 'accomplice' Fhimah. From a judicial view, the whole indictment and thrust of the case was, that the two had acted in consort. That is, one could not have achieved the successful outcome of this cunning plan without the other, yet we were presented with the conclusion that indeed one man had, the super-spook Megrahi, conceived and carried out the bombing of Pan Am 103 all on his own. All from Malta! From an objective and natural viewpoint this is preposterous!
ReplyDeleteHowever, there was, as the good judges saw it, and as presented by the prosecution, the most fragile and tenuous circumstantial links that were alleged to show Megrahi's guilt. The 11 year investigation, involving numerous police forces across many international countries, government security investigators, intelligence agencies and the prosecution themselves, all failed to provide a way in which Megrahi could have actually got the bomb introduced into the system at Luqa airport in Malta. The judges at Zeist themselves stated "we have also said, the absence of an explanation as to how the suitcase was taken into the system at Luqa is a major difficulty for the crown". [Zeist Judgement, para82, p75]
So, at the very first step, we have no evidence of Megrahi came to circumvent Malta airport security (which was meticulous compared to Frankfurt and Heathrow) put this unaccompanied bag, with the ticking bomb inside, on the plane at Malta, waiting to then be unloaded, pass through Frankfurt security, loaded onto the feeder flight 103A, unloaded again at Heathrow, pass their security and re-loaded once again onto the jumbo PanAm 103 to bound for New York. Fanciful does aptly describe this case.
To very quickly answer your point about Megrahi's house arrest and subsequent hand over at the trial. Megrahi was, and indeed was never denied at court, a high ranking member of the JSO (Libyan Intelligence). That however, does not then mean he is a mass murdering bomber. He was clearly involved in some shenanigans, such as sanctions busting for Gaddafi during the 80's, and clearly this would an area that Gaddafi would not want exposed. This would also perhaps explain the fatuous stories recently in the media about a 'stash' of millions Megrahi has apparently sitting his a swiss account. True or not however, none of these make him a mass murdering terrorist. I suspect he was eventually handed over for trial for two significant reasons: It was expected that there was never the evidence on which he could be convicted, and it would help bring to an end sanctions that had been placed on the Libyan people since the indictment had been raised by the Scottish and US authorities in 1991. Handing the suspect over to the court was part of the condition to having these sanctions lifted.
Fabricated evidence, evidence tampered with, missing statements,paid witnesses and the suppression of evidence. This whole case, investigation and trial really is a quagmire, and as been commented by other observers, legal and family members, is a steep learning curve requiring one to be a professor of Lockerbie studies. Thank you for taking the time to reply to my earlier comment and I do apologise if it seemed somewhat terse, but it is only in the hope that more people acquaint themselves with this whole case and understand the realpolitik, rather than justice, that was behind the conviction of Megrahi.
A great counter argument, but all we have in the final analysis is a conviction, and as these are the rules by which our society is governed I will accept that, not to say evidence cannot be produced later on to blow the conviction out of the water. You seem very passionate in Megrahi's defence Eddie, do I detect a personal connection?
ReplyDeleteI have no personal connection to Megrahi or any of the victims of the Lockerbie tragedy. I became interested in the case, almost by chance, and have became increasingly angry and disheartened at our purported democratic and just society.
ReplyDeleteThe Camp Zeist verdict was political, and as far as the actual evidence goes, I wouldn't give anyone a parking ticket on the basis of that lot. And the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission thought there was a miscarriage of justice. The official UN observer to the trial thought it was a farce. And so on…
It would appear that nobody has any real clue how the bomb was introduced into the baggage system at Malta. As I noted above, the judges described this as "a serious difficulty for the prosecution". Nevertheless, they decided that somehow, against all the actual evidence, Megrahi had somehow smuggled it on to KA180 from Luqa at Frankfurt. This despite the fact that the Luqa security authorities had all the baggage records for the flight and could show there was no unaccompanied bag on board.
Extensive enquiries and interviews failed to dent this evidence, and indeed the Maltese authorities and Air Malta prevailed in two separate libel actions against journalists who asserted that the bomb was introduced in that way.
Almost without fail there is a complete dearth in anyone providing informed support for the "Megrahi did it" theory. Drive-by assertions that court verdicts are never wrong, and nothing else. Even based on the evidence presented at Zeist, those apparently convinced of Megrahi's guilt, are never prepared to present a plausible argument.
The injustice of the attack of 103 was only matched by the injustice exhibited at Zeist and it's conviction. There was no evidence Megrahi bought the suitcase that was used to house the bomb. There was no evidence that Megrahi bought semtex inserted in the Toshiba radio. There was no evidence that Megrahi bought a timer to trigger the explosion, and far less he had gathered all these items together and somehow introduced his deadly load onto the Air Malta flight to Frankfurt. There was evidence that Megrahi may have "resembled" the purchaser of the clothes from a Maltese shop. However, the shops owner Tony Gauci gave over 20 different statements over 11 years, contrasting greatly with each other, and the SCCRC discovered he had received 'financial compensation' via the US justice dept (ie. CIA) for his testimony at Zeist. I would contend that the lure and inducement of $4m as 'compensation' to Mr. Gauci does not aid the search for the truth.
But somehow Megrahi did do it, because the court said so, is a good as the argument usually gets. However, as people in the UK know only too well, what the court decides is not necessarily always the truth, and does not always convict the guilty.
At the moment no one can conclusively say who did carry out the atrocity of those poor souls on 103 and the townsfolk of Lockerbie, but I challenge anyone to examine the court judgement and SCCRC decision, and not be absolutely confident that Megrahi did not.
Rather than me clogging up the DurdensView blog any further, may I direct anyone who is interested in examining the investigation, evidence and trial relating to Pan Am 103 and the conviction of Megrahi to -
http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.com/