"Bizarre and evidence-free" claim Libya behind Lockerbie

[The following paragraph is taken from an article headed Syria and Bahrain – what’s the difference? published yesterday on Peter Hitchens’s blog on the Mail Online website:]

Syria stayed out of the West’s bad books even after it was pretty clear that Syrian-sponsored terrorists had been involved in the Lockerbie mass murder. That line of inquiry was dropped because Syria was ‘helpful’ to the West during the first war against Saddam Hussein. It is this but of politics that is the origin of the bizarre and evidence-free subsequent claim that Gadaffi’s Libya was behind that bomb. Amazing what people will believe and continue to believe, when it suits them.

[Earlier Lockerbie-related comments from Peter Hitchens can be read here and here.]

‘Outraged’ US has been wooing Libya for years

[This is the heading over a section of Peter Hitchens's column in today's edition of the Mail on Sunday. Since the piece is short, and since it is probably the first time that I have ever agreed with anything written by Mr Hitchens, I quote it in full:]

Can those who fuss about the release of alleged Pan-Am bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi at least mention the fact there is no evidence that he committed this crime?

Also that the US government has been sucking up to Libya for years, in gratitude to Colonel Gaddafi for getting rid of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that he never in fact had.

Anyone who actually knows what is going on in the world must find the current dim, sheep-like credulity of most of the Western media almost unbearable.

[See also this short piece headed "US double talk on Megrahi" on The Spectator website.]

Knox deserved to go free – just like ‘Lockerbie Bomber’

[This is the heading over a section of conservative commentator Peter Hitchens's column in today's edition of the Mail on Sunday. The section reads as follows:]

As it happens, I don’t think the Italian state ever came close to proving beyond reasonable doubt that Amanda Knox was guilty of murder.  So, in a general way, I am pleased that she has been freed.

But compare the frenzy of interest over this rather unimportant case with the strange silence over the equally dubious – but far more important – conviction of the so-called Lockerbie Bomber, the Libyan Abdelbaset Al Megrahi.

One of the key witnesses against him has since admitted to lying in court.

Another, described by a  senior judge as ‘an apple short of a picnic’, shockingly received a $2 million (£1.28 million) reward after giving evidence that many experts regard as highly dubious.

I suspect Megrahi’s release had more to do with the fear of a  final, successful appeal revealing inconvenient facts than it did with ­ British oil interests. If the US had wanted to stop him being freed, they could have. After all, they made us surrender to the IRA.

"No convincing objective evidence" Libya responsible

[I am grateful to a reader of this blog for drawing my attention to an item headed Bravo Blair! published on 31 August in Peter Hitchens’s Blog on the Mail Online website. It reads in part:]

Bravo Anthony Blair. Yes, I’ll repeat that : Bravo Blair! In all fairness, I have to give the ghastly creature the credit for trying to stop David Cameron’s overthrown of Colonel Gaddafi, which has led directly to the great migration disaster and to other horrors yet unknown. I see from The Times this morning that various blowhard Tory MPs want to condemn and investigate Mr Blair for this action. On the contrary, we should all wish that he had succeeded.

This emerges in extracts from Anthony Seldon’s new book about David Cameron (...)

[T]he key extract (it’s mostly told in the present tense, like a historian discussing the distant past on the TV or the radio) is:

‘Tony Blair telephones Number 10 to say he’s been contacted by a key individual close to Gaddafi, and that the Libyan leader wants to cut a deal with the British. Blair is a respected voice in the building and his suggestion is examined seriously. ‘

But Mr Cameron decided that on this occasion his political hero and example, referred to by George Osborne as ‘the Master’ is not to be heeded:

‘Cameron had been repulsed by Blair’s decision to rehabilitate Gaddafi, and as opposition leader had argued strongly in 2009 against the Scottish government’s return of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to Libya on the grounds of illness.

‘Policewoman Yvonne Fletcher was killed by a Libyan outside their embassy in London in 1984, when Cameron was still at Eton. Four years later came the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 killing 270 people. When the bomb was proven to be planted by a Libyan, Cameron became still more angry.

‘Gordon Brown claimed the Scottish government took the decision on al-Megrahi. Cameron did not believe him, and once inside Number 10, ordered a review into the episode. It concluded that the previous government ‘did all it could to facilitate’ the release of al-Megrahi’.

Cameron decides not to follow up Blair’s approach regarding a deal with Gaddafi: he wants to avoid doing anything which might be seen to give the Libyan leader succour. Richards’ complaints do not let up: he feels Cameron and the NSC are interfering with the military operation even down to the most tactical level.’ (...)

Readers of this blog [RB: and of my blog] will know that I do not believe that Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie outrage. There is no convincing objective evidence that this was so,   

Whereas it was (rather more convincingly) believed by intelligence experts at the time of the atrocity that the crime originated in Syria as part of an Iranian-inspired revenge (as the Ayatollahs saw it) for the shooting down of a civilian Iranair Airbus by the American missile cruiser USS Vincennes (an incident with startling parallels to the equally unintentional and equally horrible shooting down by Russian-backed rebels of a Malaysian airliner).  

The blaming of Libya for Lockerbie was a consequence of the first Gulf War, in which Syria was (comically as it now seems ) viewed as an ally by the ‘West’.

Later, in this strange game of ‘good guy ‘and ‘bad guy’ in the Middle East, Libya’s supposed abandonment in December 2003 of (probably non-existent) weapons of mass destruction was cited by American neo-conservatives as a success for their Iraq policy. Gaddafi had also condemned the September 11 atrocity, and suppressed Saudi-type Islamism at home.  After this,  Gaddafi also made his peace with the EU, accepting a huge payment for halting migration across the Mediterranean. In the light of this fact it’s amazing that Britain and (more especially) France were so keen to overthrow him a  few years later. Did it not even occur to them that the current crisis might follow?

Mr Blair went twice (once in 2003 and once in 2007) to meet the Colonel in the Libyan desert. In May 2007 he declared:’The relationship between Britain and Libya has been completely transformed in these last few years. We now have very strong cooperation on counter terrorism and defence.’

To this day I’m still not sure how we moved in months from this position of cynical but self-interested collaboration with an unpleasant but co-operative and stable regime,  into support for rebels we barely knew, who were then unable to control this crucial country.

However strong Mr Cameron’s Famous Five type enthusiasm for doing good, his government continued the Blair policy when it came to office. As I wrote on September 10th 2011, almost exactly four years ago:

‘Somehow we’re being sold the idea that the Blair-Brown regime sucked up to Colonel Gaddafi, but our current Government kept their distance.

‘This is false. Archives reveal that the  ‘Minister for Africa’, Henry Bellingham slurped up to the Colonel (referring to him as ‘Brother Leader’) at an EU-Africa Summit in Tripoli on November 30, 2010. A few weeks before, another Minister, Alastair Burt, told the Libyan British Business Council that Libya had ‘turned a corner’ which ‘has paved the way for us to begin working together again’.

Maybe Mr Cameron didn’t know or understand what his own appointed ministers were doing, almost exactly six months before we overthrew Gaddafi.  In which case, he should have checked. The Seldon book suggests that Mr Cameron fell victim to what was  little more than an emotional spasm, not the sort of thing we expect Prime Ministers to suffer from.

It was the single gravest mistake of his time in office and will haunt Europe for decades to come. I sometimes wonder how profound the effect of all this mass migration is going to be on those parts of this country which have, hitherto, remained more or less undisturbed by the vast changes which are overtaking Europe. On this occasion, we would all be much better off if they had listened to Mr Blair. I did not think I would ever find myself saying that.

Lockerbie, Guilt & Gaddafi

[This is the heading over a post published yesterday on Ian Bell's blog. It reads in part:]

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil is quick on his feet, if nothing else. From senior functionary in a despised and brutish regime to freedom-loving “head of the provisional government” in under a fortnight is smart work indeed.

It is reassuring, too, that Gaddafi’s former justice minister has been “chosen”, in the Scotsman’s words, “to head new regime”. Alternatively – the Sky News version – Abdel-Jalil has been “elected... president of Libya’s newly-formed National Council”.

As it turns out, the born-again democrat appears to have done all the electing and choosing himself, backed by the overwhelming support of persons named Abdel-Jalil. (...)

He calculates, no doubt, that his access to the world’s media will bolster his status in a post-Gaddafi Libya. Name recognition, they call it. But to pull off that trick, Abdel-Jalil must first tell the western press what the western press wants to hear, and bet – a safe enough bet – that reporters will not think beyond the headlines. Over the weekend, he made excellent use of his brief spell as Mr President.

So here’s Murdoch’s Sunday Times, a paper to which the phrase “once great” attaches itself like a faded obituary. “Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing” was done and dusted by the weekend. A new line was required. Any ideas?

The Lockerbie bomber blackmailed Colonel Gaddafi into securing his re­lease from a Scottish prison by threatening to expose the dictator’s role in Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity, a former senior Libyan official [guess who] has claimed.

Now, let’s keep this simple. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was handed over to Scot­tish police on April 5, 1999, and released on compassionate grounds on August 20, 2009. Clearly, this was the most patient blackmailer the world has seen. If we believe a word, the man nursed his threat to exact “revenge” for over a decade, until terminal cancer intervened. As you do.

According to Abdel-Jalil and the Sunday Times, nevertheless, “Megrahi’s ploy led to a £50,000-a-month slush fund being set up to spend on legal fees and lobbying to bring him back to Tripoli”. Since the entire Libyan exchequer was Gaddafi’s per­sonal slush fund, the sum seems niggardly. If vastly more was not spent on the case, I’d be astonished. And why wouldn’t it be spent? Wasn't Megrahi threatening to “spill the beans”?

But here Abdel-Jalil pulls out another of his plums. Again, he provides noth­ing resembling the whiff of proof. Al-Megrahi “was not the man who carried out the planning and execution of the bombing, but he was ‘nevertheless involved in facili­tating things for those who did’”.

So where does that leave us? Megrahi – what with “planning and execution” omitted – didn’t do it. Another sensation. Or is that revelation perhaps designed to solve several tiny issues raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) and others over a miscarriage of justice and sundry associated issues?

Never fear: Gaddafi certainly did do it. That’s “on the record”, placed there by the erstwhile “head of the provisional government”, no less. So what then of “plan­ning and execution”; what of “those who did”? Yet again, Abdel-Jalil doesn’t say. Why not?

Smoke and mirrors is a cliché, God knows. You only wish they would polish the mirrors occasionally, and puff up some properly thick smoke. But why bother? It works. First: make sure that “everyone knows” Gaddafi did it. Secondly, as though inferentially, throw in a few details based on a “fact” established by hearsay and mere assertion. This is how you build a lie.

What happened – what is established by the evidence as having happened – matters less than perception and belief. Gaddafi, with his multifarious actual crimes, is now the handiest scapegoat imaginable. Perhaps he should complain to Tony Blair.

Or perhaps he should get himself to the Hague, and to a proper court. It would do the dictator no good, but it might do wonders, even now, for the reputation of Scottish justice. I put the chances of that at zero.

[Also published yesterday was a Libya piece on Peter Hitchens's blog on the Mail on Sunday website. It reads in part:]

But how ridiculous it all is. Supposedly we are now terribly moral about the wicked Libyan regime, denying diplomatic immunity to its leaders, freezing its assets, refusing to print its banknotes. Tough, eh? This Libyan wickedness does not seem to have troubled the existing British government (or its predecessor) at all until about two weeks ago, or why was a British firm printing those banknotes and why were there so many British personnel in Libya in the first place?

By the way, please don't go on at me about the supposed 'Lockerbie Bomber'. There is absolutely no evidence that the Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi had anything to do with the Lockerbie bombing, almost certainly carried out by terrorists under Syrian control, at the behest of Iran.

The truth is that Colonel Gadaffi's government is being punished not because it is wicked (so is Syria's, for instance, as I keep needing to mention) but because it is weak and tottering. How embarrassing all this will be if the Gadaffi family manage somehow to regain control of the country. Terribly sorry, your colonelship, sir. Hope you understand we were only going through the motions? Can we have our printing contract back? No hard feelings, eh?

Lockerbie: none of the evidence points to Libya

[The following are excerpts from Peter Hitchens’s column in today’s edition of The Mail on Sunday:]

One thing we should have learned in the past 100 years is  that war is hell. We might also have noticed that, once begun, war is hard  to stop and often takes shocking turns.

So those who began the current war in Ukraine – the direct cause of the frightful murder of so many innocents on Flight MH17 on Thursday – really have no excuse.

There is no doubt about who they were. In any war, the aggressor is the one who makes the first move into neutral or disputed territory.

And that aggressor was the European Union, which rivals China as the world’s most expansionist power, swallowing countries the way performing seals swallow fish (16 gulped down since 1995).

Ignoring repeated and increasingly urgent warnings from Moscow, the EU – backed by the USA – sought to bring Ukraine into its orbit. It did so through violence and illegality, an armed mob and the overthrow of an elected president.

I warned then that this would lead to terrible conflict. I wrote in March: ‘Having raised hopes that we cannot fulfil, we have awakened the ancient passions of this cruel part of the world – and who knows where our vainglorious folly will now lead?’

Now we see. (...)

Powerful weapons make it all too easy for people to do stupid, frightful things. Wars make such things hugely more likely to happen. (...)

In July 1988, highly trained US Navy experts aboard the cruiser Vincennes, using  ultra-modern equipment, moronically mistook an Iranian Airbus, Iran Air Flight 655, for an F-14 Tomcat warplane. They shot the airliner out of the sky, killing 290 innocent people, including 66 children.

All kinds of official untruths were told at the time to excuse this. In October 2001, bungling Ukrainian servicemen on exercise were the main suspects for the destruction of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 over the Black Sea. Whoever did it, they killed 78 passengers and crew en route from Israel to Novosibirsk – though Ukraine has never officially admitted guilt.

Complex quarrels about blame for such horrors are often never resolved. I am among many who do not believe that Libya had anything to do with the mass murder of those aboard Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, very likely an Iranian-backed retaliation for the Airbus tragedy. All the evidence points to a terror group operating from Syrian-controlled territory, and none points to Libya.  

But at the time of the prosecution, we were trying to make friends with Syria, which has since gone back near the top of our enemies list but may soon be our ally again, against the fanatics of Isis. Confused? You should be.

So, let us just mourn the dead and comfort the bereaved, and regret human folly and the wickedness of war. Let us not allow this miserable event to be fanned into a new war. That is what we did almost 100 years ago, and it is about time we learned something from that.