Lockerbie: It was right to release Megrahi - but Justice has not been served

Last week Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill took what will undoubtedly be the most difficult decision of his career and freed the man accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi has served just eight years of a life sentence having been convicted for the murder of 270 killed in the Pan Am flight 103 disaster. MacAskill, who is on the record as stating that he believes Megrahi to be guilty, said he took his decision on ‘compassionate grounds’ because the 57 year old Libyan is dying from prostate cancer.

Over the weekend a political storm has been brewing. In the US President Obama has said MacAskill’s decision was a mistake and is now calling for Megrahi to be placed under house arrest. The director of the FBI has entered into the debate and criticised the Scottish Government’s decision. Some US commentators have even talked of Scottish goods being boycotted by the US, although this as a scenario is highly unlikely. In Scotland the Scottish Parliament is being reconvened for only the third time in its ten year history, as opportunistic and hypocritical politicians rub their hands in glee at the thought of playing to the tabloid gallery, and doing the SNP some damage. The former Scottish Labour leader Jack McConnell is on record as saying that MacAskill has made a ‘grave error of judgement’. Many commentators on the Scottish left, however, have supported MacAskill’s decision arguing that it is an example of Scotland holding its ground against the US. Moreover, some have argued that MacAskill’s decision to free Megrahi on ‘compassionate grounds’ is evidence that compassion is at the heart of how we do justice in Scotland. Although MacAskill’s decision is to be welcomed relatives of the victims have now been denied their chance of discovering the truth.

Megrahi’s appeal was to be considered before the Scottish courts in the next year. Following a three year investigation, the Scottish Council Cases Review Commission stated that Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice. It has been alleged by some politicians, relatives and experts involved in the case that the Scottish Government has struck a deal with the convicted terrorist: that in return for his repatriation he would abandon an appeal that might have exposed a grave miscarriage of justice. “It’s pretty likely there was a deal,” said Oliver Miles, a former British Ambassador to Libya, who told The Times that the British and Scottish governments had been very anxious to avoid the appeal.

Christine Graham MSP, said at the weekend: ‘there are a number of vested interests who have been deeply opposed to this appeal because they know it would go a considerable way towards exposing the truth behind Lockerbie.” Robert Black, the Edinburgh law professor who was one of the architects of al-Megrahi’s trial before a special Scottish court in the Netherlands, said ‘there would have been strong pressure from civil servants in the justice department and the Crown Office to bring this appeal to an end . . . I’m convinced they have never wanted it to go the full distance”.  Tam Dalyell, the former Labour MP who has long proclaimed al-Megrahi’s innocence, said ‘if he abandons his appeal, it means that Lockerbie will be one of those mysteries like the assassination of President Kennedy that will remain unsolved, possibly forever’, before adding that ‘it would come as a mighty relief to officials at the Crown Office in Edinburgh, to certain officials in the stratosphere of Whitehall, and above all to officials in Washington’. While the put on furore over Megrahi’s release is likely to be a nine day wonder, there is a strong case to make that the Lockerbie case should not be closed.

The Lockerbie Case

Pan Am flight 103 exploded above the town of Lockerbie on the night of December 21^st 1988 killing all 259 passengers on board and 11 people from Lockerbie. It is estimated that 90,000 kg of airline fuel landed on the town causing a human inferno. Debris from the aircraft was spread across an area covering 845 square miles. The impact was recorded as 1.6 on the Richter scale. The plane which was en-route to New York had been flying at 31,000 feet (that’s approximately six miles above Lockerbie when the bomb went off) had only been in the air for half an hour. The Lockerbie disaster remains the biggest terrorist attack carried out on British soil. Within hours of the crash Dumfries and Galloway Police, the smallest police force in Britain, began the biggest criminal investigation in UK history.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster the British and US governments promised that the perpetrators would quickly be brought to justice. Very early on in the investigation it was revealed that the US Embassy in Finland had received a tip off on December 5^th 1988 that a terrorist group were targeting Pan Am flights in Frankfurt. The threat was taken so seriously that up to 80% of US Embassy staff cancelled their reserved seats on the Pan Am flight yet both the UK and US governments decided not to reveal the information to the public.

Pan Am also knew of the threat but chose not to implement its full maximum safety policy which would have meant a 100% check of all the baggage boarding the plane. When it was later revealed that passengers and luggage had not been checked according to due procedure, the airliner was found guilty of ‘wilful misconduct’. According to the journalist Paul Foot one theory why security had been lax at Pan Am was that certain luggage from Frankfurt had been designated as a ‘no-go’ by the CIA which at the time was organising a drugs run to the US to finance the freeing of Iranian hostages. Foot argues that this might explain why the baggage was not properly screened. CIA officers who had been involved in the freeing of US hostages from Beirut were on board Pan Am flight 103. Foot believes that a terrorist group may have swapped one of the suitcases filled with heroin for one with a bomb on board. This may sound incredibly far fetched and the stuff of conspiracy theory. However, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing a farmer who lived near Lockerbie reported that he had discovered a suitcase in a field full of packets of cellophane wrapped white drugs.

Evidence for Foot’s extraordinary theory is patchy yet his claim that Iran and Syria and not Libya were linked to the bombing was supported by the original investigation.

Iran was heavily implicated in the bombing which was believed to be their revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the US navy in 1988 in which 290 people mainly tourists had perished. ‘It was a simple case of revenge’ said Tam Dayell MP. According to the original investigation members of Palestinian terrorist group based in Germany had been arrested and found to be in possession of a bomb that was built into a Toshiba cassette player designed to blow up an aircraft. This was almost identical to method used to blow up flight Pan Am 103. The Palestinian group were called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and were closely linked with both Iran and Syria. The Sunday Times ran a special feature on Lockerbie to commemorate the first anniversary of the attack and predicted that a major breakthrough in the case was soon to come and that Palestinian suspects were to be arrested. But nothing happened.

Instead of the perpetrators being brought to justice as promised by the British government, Margaret Thatcher, much to the disappointment of the families of the victims, ruled out any possibility of a public inquiry. Why then did the investigation which had originally focused on an Iranian/Syrian backed Palestinian group shift focus in 1991. One theory was that the US and UK government did not want to upset their diplomatic relations with Iran and Syria who were now regarded as important allies in the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein.

It was at this juncture that Libya entered the picture. Investigators combing the Scottish countryside had allegedly found fragments of a circuit board on a piece of charred material which they identified as a part of an electronic timer similar to that found on a Libyan intelligence agent arrested previously. The manufacturer of the timer also had links to the Libyan military. Investigators also discovered fragments of the suitcase in which the bomb was believed to be in alongside items of clothing which could be traced to Malta.

This is where the investigation focuses on Megrahi because a witness came forward to suggest that Megrahi had purchased the clothing items in late 1988. Megrahi and another Libyan intelligence officer, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah were accused of the bombing and a request was made to extradite them to either the Britain or the US to stand trial. The Libyan government believed that the accused would never receive a fair trial in the US or UK. It was Nelson Mandela who intervened and played a key role in persuading the Libyan government that the men would receive a fair trial if a neutral venue was to be found. And so it was that Megrahi and his co-accused were extradited to the Netherlands to go on trial in an interim Scottish court for the alleged murder of 270 people.

The Lockerbie Trial

The 2004 trial lasted for 84 days and was held before three judges. No jury was allowed. Paul Foot reported that the prosecution struggled to establish the main point of its case, namely that a bomb was placed on a plane in Malta by Megrahi. Establishing that Megrahi had been responsible for buying the clothes found in the suitcase was problematic. According to the prosecution he had been identified by the owner of the shop where the clothes had been purchased who had identified Megrahi in a police line up. Yet this was not as straight forward as the Scottish Police had proclaimed. The owner of the shop had seen recent pictures of Megrahi which may have prejudiced his memory. In addition to this the Prosecutions witness gave statements to the Police which were factually wrong in regards to Megrahi’s appearance. For example, on one occasion he said Megrahi was approximately 6 foot in height (Megrahi is 5 foot 8) and reported that he believed the man who purchased the clothing was aged 50 when in 1988. Megrahi was only 37.

According to the prosecution a bomb was placed on a flight in Malta by Megrahi which then travelled to Frankfurt where it changed plane and then went from Frankfurt to Heathrow where it changed plane again onto Pan Am 103. The prosecution struggled to prove this in court. In fact the three judges admitted this lack of explanation in their summing up. One obvious question to emerge is that if a bomb had travelled from Malta to Frankfurt then why did it not show up under X-Ray at Frankfurt Airport?

What emerged from the original trial was that the case against Megrahi was circumstantial and dependent on a great deal of inference. The case against his co-accused was never proved and at one point his lawyers requested that their client had no case to answer. Doctor Jim Swire who lost his daughter in the tragedy believes Megrahi is innocent and that the verdict against him in 2001 is not credible. The UN special observer at the trial is also on the record stating that the verdict of the three Scottish judges was inconsistent with the evidence he had heard in court.

Following MacAskill’s release of Megrahi a CIA terror expert who worked on the Lockerbie investigation has given in an interview in which he claims that Megrahi would have been freed on appeal, which would have caused serious damage to the British legal system. He goes on to argue that ‘the end game came down to damage limitation because the evidence amassed by his appeal team is explosive and extremely damaging to your system of justice’. According to the agent, Megrahi's appeal papers would have proven beyond doubt the bombing was orchestrated by Iran.

The trial of Megrahi in 2001 did not serve the cause of justice and many people including the UK families are sceptical of the official version of events. Libya is now on diplomatic terms with the West and is on record as having accepted responsibility for the disaster and has reportedly paid £1.7 billion to the families. However many relatives believe that this deal was brokered to allow Libya to re-open its oil markets to the West. Some relatives have refused to accept what they see as ‘blood money’. Senior officials in the Libyan government, including Gaddafi’s son who widely tipped to be his father successor, are on record as saying that Libya only accepted responsibility over Lockerbie in order to get UN trade sanctions lifted. Gaddafi has said this weekend that the release of Megrahi will improve relations between the UK and Libya. The release may have been planned months ago. Earlier this year the BBC reported that British Government had speeded through parliament a ratification of the prisoner transfer agreement between the UK and Libya.

Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa putting Gaddafi in a powerful position to negotiate Megrahi’s release with the British authorities what the BBC calls ‘oil diplomacy’. In the USA President Obama has issued a series of statements which are nothing but crude posturing. The hypocrisy of his administration is breathtaking. On the one hand Obama tells the public that Megrahi must die in jail whilst at the same time his government is on friendly terms with the very people they say gave Megrahi the orders to bomb Flight 103.

In April it was reported in the Washington Post that Hilary Clinton welcomed a Libyan National Security Adviser, to Washington and said “we deeply value the relationship between the United States and Libya. We have many opportunities to deepen and broaden our cooperation. And I’m very much looking forward to building on this relationship’. Jonathon Mitchell a prominent Scottish QC and strong supporter of the group UK Families-Flight 103 says that there is something deeply wrong with the US’s claims that the foot-soldier should die in prison, because his crimes are so serious, while his commanders should be forgiven, because their identical crimes have no continuing importance.

The investigations into the Lockerbie bombing have continued to come up against the brick wall of ‘national security’. The fact that Megrahi’s appeal will not be heard is a travesty of justice. At the very least a public enquiry should now take place. All socialists and progressives should support the UK victim’s families call for a full and open public enquiry where all evidence, including the evidence in Megrahi’s aborted second appeal can be heard. The people who died in the Lockerbie disaster experienced unimaginable horror. I end this article with a description of their deaths written immediately after the tragedy by Matt Cox and Tom Foster, staff writers at the time with The Post-Standard. Upon reading this piece I am reminded as to why we cannot give up the search for justice:

"In the dark winter sky six miles above the Scottish countryside, a Boeing 747 had just broken into pieces. The explosion plunged the cabin into darkness. Shrapnel from the blast may have killed some passengers who were seated directly above the bomb.

Heart attacks may have killed some passengers instantly, while drink carts and other objects flying through the cabin struck others.

When the plane broke up, the air pressure inside the cabin plummeted to equal that of the atmosphere outside. Suddenly subjected to air pressure only one-quarter as great as comfortable sea-level pressure, gases inside passengers' bodies expanded to four times their normal volume. This could have ruptured the tiny air sacs in passengers' lungs and sent gas bubbles through the pulmonary vein and into the heart -- a fatal condition known as aeroembolism.

Heavy cigarette smokers were most susceptible to this, but anyone caught in the act of swallowing could have died, too, because swallowing would have closed off the glottis, the opening in the upper part of the larynx between the vocal cords. With the glottis closed, expanding gases were trapped in the lungs.

Tornado-force gusts tore through the opening left by the cockpit, subjecting passengers to frostbite in air 50 degrees below zero. The velocity of the wind made it feel immeasurably colder.

The wind that tore down the aisles was powerful enough to rip clothing off bodies and lift unseated passengers and throw them to the rear of the plane. Some may have been tossed out into the night. Those thrown out of the plane joined luggage and pieces of the shattered aircraft to form a ghostly caravan that swept through the pitch-black troposphere at 360 mph.

The ruptured fuselage pitched and rolled violently. Passengers still belted to their seats flopped about, suffering broken bones, joint dislocations and other "flail"' injuries.

The wind and the rending of the fuselage created a tremendous roar.

Those who survived the first moments of the disaster had to fight for breath. Expanding gases caused their lungs to swell and then collapse, expelling air through the nose and mouth. Wind slamming against their chests made it difficult to draw in air.

Some passengers may have felt the effects of oxygen deprivation within 10 or 20 seconds. Unable to breathe, they lost consciousness ... Others may have remained conscious longer. Anyone able to breathe the thin air at 31,000 feet could have remained conscious for up to 45 seconds. And some passengers who blacked out may have regained consciousness as they fell into the oxygen-rich atmosphere closer to earth.

The fall lasted about two minutes. At first, the plane and its passengers fell both forward and down, tracing an arc through the sky. By the time they neared the earth, they were falling virtually straight down."