Still amazed that al-Megrahi was convicted

[What follows is an item that was originally posted on this blog on this date in 2008:]

Unjust Verdict

As a former student of Professor Robert Black, QC, who arranged for the Lockerbie bomber's trial to be held at Camp Zeist, and having researched the case myself, I am still amazed that al-Megrahi was convicted.

It made a mockery of the Scottish judiciary. What happened at Lockerbie was undoubtedly murder, but the tragedy does not sanction the imprisonment of a potentially innocent man to appease American prosecutors and some of the families of the victims.

G M, by email

[A letter from today's Daily Record. I hasten to add that the Lockerbie case did not feature in my lectures during my tenure as Professor of Scots Law. But I did, I hope, help to turn out students who are capable of recognising a miscarriage of justice when they see one.]

Closing of prosecution case

[What follows is excerpted from a report that appeared on the BBC News website on this date in 2000:]

The Lockerbie trial has been adjourned for a week to allow the defence teams to prepare their cases.

On Monday the prosecution case ended after more than six months of evidence.

When the trial resumes, one of the two accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, is expected to ask the judges to throw out the case against him.

It is expected that the legal argument concerning that matter could take up to three days.

The lawyer for Mr Fhimah will argue at the Scottish court in the Netherlands that insufficient evidence has been presented against his client.

The hearing, which was opened 71 days ago by Scotland's most senior law officer, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, has featured 250 witnesses and several lengthy adjournments.

The Crown is seeking to show that a huge amount of circumstantial evidence, when taken together, proves Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah carried out the bombing, in which 270 people died.

Next week the court will hear a motion that there is no case to answer against Mr Fhimah.

The judges will be asked to decide on the weight of evidence against him, rather than the quality of the Crown case. [RB: This is inaccurate:  a “no case to answer” submission is not about the weight of the evidence led by the prosecution. It is simply about whether corroborated evidence has been led of the essential facts (that the crime charged was committed and that the accused committed it).  The credibility and reliability of that evidence are not considered at this stage.]

There has been no similar move from Megrahi, and there is now speculation he will be the first witness when the defence case begins next week. [RB: Fhimah’s no case to answer submission was rejected by the court. Neither Megrahi nor Fhimah gave evidence.]

Nothing to gain and much to lose yet he chose compassion

[What follows is the text of an article by Lucy Adams that appeared on the website of The Herald on this date in 2009. It reads as follows:]

Officials in Westminster and the Crown Office are still arguing about what information should or should not be shared with the public and politicians are fighting over each other to say I told you so.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is still alive. The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is still sharing in the world’s oxygen supply and there are many who wish he were not. Later this week or this month those politicians are bound to call for the resignation of the minister who released Megrahi exactly three months ago.

Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, released Megrahi on August 20 on compassionate grounds because he is dying. The guidelines suggest that those prisoners with a life expectancy of three months or less should be considered for such a move.

Mr MacAskill had nothing to gain and much to lose yet he chose compassion over retribution. The UK Government had a great deal to gain from the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) signed off between Westminster and Libya earlier this year. When I interviewed Saif Gaddafi in August he made clear that the deal was all about oil and money.

Although Mr MacAskill rejected the PTA, scores of people in the US threatened to boycott Scotland and its exports.

Those with a sense of perspective praised the decision of Scotland in the face of condemnation from the US and a chilling silence from Westminster.

Even they may now question the decision of Mr MacAskill, but where is the consistency in praising compassion for a man with only three months to live, and criticising compassion for a man who lives for three months and two weeks?

Megrahi is desperately ill but he is still alive. Imagine that now he is back with family in Tripoli he may live for four or five months. Should our patience with compassion run out so quickly that we begin to wish him dead?

Would it not be more constructive at this stage to support the living in finding answers to what happened to their loved ones?

Rather than calling for the resignation of the Justice Secretary, should we not focus on the way forward. Without knowing the truth about the past the path forward will always seem uncertain.

We must allow the relatives a public inquiry to deal with the questions from the past and leave the ghoulish spectacle of a man dying in Libya alone to allow him to spend his few remaining days in peace.

Vying to be the most outspoken, punitive, secretive or draconian does nothing for Scotland’s international reputation. We need to show that compassion is not just for Christmas and that openness and transparency from those still refusing to share vital information, will not be tolerated.

Path towards neutral venue trial not smooth

[The following are two snippets from the Libya News and Views website on this date in 1998:]

Britain said on Wednesday it would not wait indefinitely for Libya to reply to its proposals for the trial of two men accused of the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing. But Foreign Office minister Tony Lloyd told parliament that Tripoli had not been given a deadline for its response to London's suggestion of a trial in the Netherlands for the pair, accused of planting the bomb that exploded aboard a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Lloyd was speaking in a debate initiated by Conservative Sir Teddy Taylor, who said reports from the United States suggested Washington wanted Libya to respond to the plan by December 21, the 10th anniversary of the bombing. [Reuters]

Libya is still adamant that sentences for two suspects, if convicted in the 1988 mid-air bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, cannot be served in Britain, as London and Washington insist, diplomats said on Wednesday. A team of Libyan lawyers left New York over the weekend after their second round of talks, which began on November 9, and may return again in the next few weeks. They are consulting with senior UN legal officials, who field queries to the United States and Britain. However, the diplomats said no headway had been made in Libya's demand that the two accused, if convicted, be imprisoned in the Netherlands, rather than in the Scottish prison at Barlinnie, a position the United States and Britain say is not negotiable. [Reuters]

Dr Morag Kerr speaking on Lockerbie case in Moffat tonight

A reminder that Dr Morag Kerr will be speaking on the subject Lockerbie, luggage and lies at 7pm today in Moffat Town Hall. What follows is an article that appears in Moffat News.

Hostage release part of deal to switch Lockerbie blame to Libya?

[Could the release of Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland on this date in 1991 by Islamic Jihad have been part of a deal with Iran to switch the blame for the Lockerbie bombing from Iranian surrogates to Libya? This hypothesis is explored in the following excerpt from Dr Davina Miller’s important article Who Knows About This? Western Policy Towards Iran: The Lockerbie Case (citations omitted):]

A deal between the US and Iran that involved the issue of Pan Am 103 is not an unreasonable hypothesis, given previous US behaviour and British and French ‘deals’ with Iran for the release of hostages. For example, on 21 March 1991, the CIA criticized Britain for having deported Mehradad Kokabi, an Iranian charged in connection with a bomb attack. While this would, “help Rafsanjani by using an issue used by hardliners to argue against the release of hostages”, it would also reinforce the view in Tehran that, “Washington, like London, will strike a deal favourable to Iran”. Equally, the CIA complained that the French government had earlier done a deal with Iran for the release of nine hostages between 1986 and 1988.

Even as the US was contemplating in early 1989 that Iran had a hand in the bombing of Pan Am 103, it was still signalling the hope for a deal with Iran on the hostage issue as expressed in President Bush’s inaugural address. As he said, “There are today Americans who are held against their will in foreign lands and Americans who are unaccounted for. Assistance can be shown here and will be long remembered”. (...)

US/UK indictments of the two Libyan suspects were announced on 13 November 1991. On 16 November 1991, Iranian radio declared that the indictments of Fhima and al-Megrahi represented, “the start of a new psychological and propaganda war by Washington against Libya”. A DIA report on 23 November, from intelligence acquired from Fort Meade, (that is, from Foreign Signals Intelligence) noted, however, that the “Iranian President voiced his pleasure in seeing the recent press attribute the blame to Libya for the 1988 Pan Am flight 103 bombing”.

On 18 November 1991, the American, Thomas Sutherland, and the Briton, Terry Waite, were freed by Islamic Jihad in Beirut. Later that month, there was a comprehensive exchange of hostages and human remains on one side and, on the other, prisoners in Israeli jails. On 2 December, the US also paid compensation to Iran some $278,000,000 for weapons confiscated in 1979. On 10 December, a UN report found that Iraq’s invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980, and the occupation of Iranian land that followed, were unjustified and illegal.

While many elements comprised the hostages deal, it could be argued that Pan Am 103 was necessarily part of the comprehensive settlement that involved, inter alia, money, prisoners, and international judgments about the Iran-Iraq War. It was necessary because, as the CIA commented on 1 June 1989, the Iranians “believe that the presence of Western hostages in Lebanon will help deter retaliation” for the bombing of Flight 103. It follows that Iran could not feel safe from US retaliation for Pan Am 103 (whether the retaliation was justified or not) if the hostages were freed without some guarantee. Thus, the eventual indictment of a rival state, it could be argued, provided that guarantee and was thus the necessary condition for the deal that followed.

Even before the final settlement, it is possible to argue that the US and Iran reached a tentative agreement about Pan Am 103. If Mohtashemi were the architect, as US intelligence seemed firmly to believe, using the back channels already established through ‘Irangate’, and relying on the policy of searching for moderates with whom to do business, it is possible that the US sought the isolation of Mohtashemi in exchange for a policy of non-retaliation. (...)

A news reporter at Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article by Alan Dron that was published yesterday on the website of Air and Space Magazine. It reads in part:]

People who lived in Lockerbie, Scotland, said the sound was like a roll of thunder that swelled into a deafening roar. Then a flame-trailing chunk of wreckage from what two minutes earlier had been a Boeing 747-121 smashed into the ground like a meteorite.

Seconds later, the wings, containing almost 200,000 pounds of fuel, crashed vertically into Sherwood Crescent, a row of bungalows, and ignited upon impact. Some residents’ bodies were never found, obliterated by the conflagration. The time was shortly after 7 pm GMT, December 21, 1988.

When Pan Am 103 exploded, I was a reporter in the Glasgow office of The Scotsman. (...)

I was writing about an impending strike in a Clyde shipyard when the Glasgow editor—a 40-year veteran of the news business named Iain Duff—appeared beside my desk.

“We’re getting reports of an explosion in Lockerbie,” he said. “There’s a suggestion an aircraft may have crashed. Can you check it out? Maybe just get in the car and get down there.”

Lockerbie lay some 70 miles south of Glasgow, down a road that was one long accident blackspot. The thought of driving down there in our tiny pool car, in pitch dark and half a gale, did not appeal. My first thought was to call the “crash cell,” a small Royal Air Force contingent based at Prestwick Airport, about 35 miles southwest of Glasgow. Staff there were invariably helpful in providing information about any aviation incident. As usual, someone answered on the first ring.

“Duty officer, please.”

“He’s a bit tied up at the moment, sir. Can you call back later?”

They’d never been too busy to talk to me before. Duff was back at my desk, looking anxious. “Alan, I think you should just go,” he said.

I headed for the pool car. My growing suspicion was that two RAF aircraft had collided over the town. Lockerbie was in a zone for ultra-low military flight training, in which fast jets were allowed to operate at altitudes down to 100 feet. At low altitude and high speed, a tiny miscalculation could spell disaster. And two aircraft colliding could account for the garbled reports of multiple fires in the town now coming into the newsroom.

Driving out of Glasgow, I tuned the car radio to the BBC news. I was getting onto the southbound motorway when a program ended and the announcer broke in: “And now, before our next program, we’re going across to the BBC newsroom.” I swore to myself. Obviously this was serious.

“A Boeing 747 of Pan Am…” was all I heard before I swore again, rather less quietly this time, and floored the accelerator.

Two hours later, after evading police roadblocks and breaking several traffic laws, I pulled to a halt in Lockerbie. What I saw recalled photos from the London Blitz of 1940. The main road was covered in slate that had been blown off the roofs of buildings. Fire hoses snaked down the center of the street. There were strangely few people around. Military helicopters had been scrambled for what quickly became clear was a forlorn search for survivors. The sky was so crowded with Sea Kings that another crash seemed frighteningly plausible.

Almost exactly one hour before the explosion, the aircraft had pushed back at London Heathrow, bound for John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City. Pan Am Flight 103 carried 16 crew and 243 passengers, including 35 students from Syracuse University returning home after a semester abroad.

The 747 had climbed northwest over the United Kingdom, reaching a cruising altitude of 31,000 feet at 6:56 pm. Seven minutes later, an air traffic controller at Shanwick Oceanic Control transmitted PA103’s oceanic clearance. There was no acknowledgment. At the same moment, the radar blip denoting the aircraft split into multiple returns. Pan Am 103, Clipper Maid of the Seas, had disintegrated.

An explosive device containing an estimated 12 ounces of Semtex hidden inside a Toshiba radio–cassette player had detonated in the forward cargo hold. The report released by the Air Accident Investigation Branch of the British government calculated that the explosion took less then three seconds to separate the forward fuselage from the rest of the airplane. Debris trails stretched almost 70 miles.

About two hours after I arrived in Lockerbie, Duff and photographer Donald MacLeod joined me. They were among the first to discover the 747’s cockpit section, which had come to rest close to a tiny church outside the town. The cockpit, lying on its side, became the iconic image of the tragedy.

Only in the light of day did the full scale of the devastation become apparent. One end of Sherwood Crescent was scarred by a huge, smoldering, wing-shaped pit. The houses that had not simply disappeared were gutted by fire, their roofs missing. Elsewhere, a 60-foot section of fuselage lay atop the flattened remains of houses. Remarkably, only 11 people on the ground had been killed.

I spent the next two days reporting on the grim recovery. Everyone in the aircraft had died. Bodies had fallen on the town, mainly on farmland and the golf course. Christmas Day at the town’s Dryfesdale Parish Church brought a hushed, intensely moving religious service. In the sky over the town, an RAF Canberra reconnaissance aircraft carrying infrared line scan equipment could be seen slowly wheeling, searching for wreckage.

Meanwhile, the townspeople opened their doors to the next of kin who had already begun to arrive from the United States and elsewhere. Those bereaved family members provided my most lasting memory of PA103—more than a year later, at the consecration of a memorial in Dryfesdale Cemetery, outside the town. It was a foul January day, gray cloud merging seamlessly with fog and drizzle. The visitors had spent the day thanking the locals for their succor, and by the time they reached the memorial in mid-afternoon the ceremony was behind schedule.

In Scotland at that time of year, dusk begins shortly after 3 pm. The light was fading as the relatives placed flowers or quietly touched the newly carved names on the gray granite triptych. One man who had lost his daughter walked away from the group, head down, hands thrust into pockets, ignoring the rain and looking neither left nor right as he walked toward the cemetery gate. My mental image of Lockerbie is of that man slowly being swallowed by the gloom and swirling mist.

Why does the appeal have to wait so long?

[What follows is an item first posted on this blog on this date in 2008:]

A dilemma more moral than legal

Keeping a dying man in jail pending appeal is unnecessary on the part of the Scottish court of criminal appeal

The refusal of the Scottish court of criminal appeal to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on bail while he awaits his appeal against his conviction as the Lockerbie bomber, has added unease to unease. It was not edifying to see lawyers quibble about when Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, is expected to die, then have the judge base his bail decision on that prediction.

At the Scottish court of criminal appeal, Lord Hamilton concluded that he might have a few more years left and therefore should not be released pending appeal. By way of consolation, he ruled that should his condition deteriorate more rapidly than expected, he could renew his application. What concerns me is that his appeal is unlikely to be heard before the summer. Why?

There has, for years, been a feeling among lawyers and others who have studied the case that Megrahi was not responsible for the bombing. Even Dr Jim Swire, the most prominent campaigner on behalf of Lockerbie victims, whose daughter died in the bombing, does not believe in his guilt; nor do the relatives of many other victims.

It has been alleged that because of the desire to have sanctions lifted against Libya, Muammar Gadafy delivered him to the Scottish authorities rather than the principal perpetrator. [RB: I am not aware of anyone having suggested that Megrahi was handed over in substitution for some other Libyan perpetrator.] The evidence against Megrahi has always seemed slightly deficient although, of course, the jury had convicted him [sic; he was in fact convicted by a court of three judges], and an appeal court in 2002 had turned down his first appeal.

Last year, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission studied new evidence and decided it was enough to justify Megrahi being granted another appeal. That does not mean the commission necessarily believes he is innocent, nor that the appeal court will necessarily overturn his conviction. But it does mean that he has a strong case.

Here's the dilemma - more moral than legal. If he is innocent, keeping a dying man in jail pending his appeal is a particularly cruel injustice to add to that of his years in prison. So why does the appeal have to wait so long? There can be no logistical reason.

[From an article by Marcel Berlins in The Guardian.]

Dr Jim Swire’s first meeting with Megrahi

[On this date in 2005, Dr Jim Swire had his first meeting with Abdelbaset Megrahi in Greenock Prison. A report in The Scotsman two days later reads as follows:]

A leading figure in the group representing British victims of the Lockerbie bombing has met the man convicted of the bombing for the first time.

Dr Jim Swire, 69, who lost his 24-year-old daughter Flora in the 1988 bombing, met Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi at Greenock Prison on Wednesday.

The Gloucestershire-based leader of the campaign group UK Families Flight 103 (UKF103) does not believe the Libyan is responsible for the attack.

Last night Dr Swire said the purpose of the meeting was to ask Megrahi whether he would still press for the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to continue its review of his case if rumours of his repatriation proved to be correct.

"Megrahi was happy for me to make it known that he is determined to pursue a review of the case, no matter what might evolve concerning his future detention.

"It is very important to the members of UKF103 campaign group that there be a full review of the entire Lockerbie scenario through an appropriately empowered and independent inquiry, but absence of a further review of the court case would also damage our search for truth and justice."

Dr Swire said that even if Megrahi did not continue with his appeal bid, the campaign group would press the SCCRC to review the case as interested parties.

Thurman and the circuit board fragment

[On this date in 1991, Tom Thurman of the FBI appeared on television claiming to have been the person who identified the fragment of circuit board that linked Libya to the bombing of Pan Am 103. What follows is excerpted from Gareth Peirce’s article The framing of al-Megrahi:]

The key features needed to prosecute al-Megrahi successfully were the scientific identification of the circuit-board fragment, which would in turn establish its origin, and the identification of the purchaser of the clothes in Malta. The timers, the indictment stated, were made by a firm in Switzerland; their circuit board matched the fragment retrieved from Lockerbie, and they sold the timers exclusively to Libya. Everything, essentially, hinged on those links.

Who found the fragment? And who understood its relevance? Thomas Hayes of the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) claimed the find (with his colleague Alan Feraday) and Thomas Thurman of the FBI claimed the analytical victory. All were swiftly hailed (or hailed themselves) as heroes. Thurman appeared on television on 15 November 1991, the day after indictments were issued against the two Libyans, boasting that he had identified the piece of circuit board as part of a timing device that might have been sold to Libyan Airlines staff. ‘I made the identification and I knew at that point what it meant. And because, if you will, I am an investigator as well as a forensic examiner, I knew where that would go. At that point we had no conclusive proof of the type of timing mechanism that was used in the bombing of 103. When that identification was made of the timer I knew that we had it.’ This was the claim – the hard evidence – that linked Libyans to the crime. If the claim was false the bereaved Lockerbie families have been deceived for 20 years.

On 13 September 1995 the FBI’s forensic department was the subject of a programme broadcast in the US by ABC. At its centre was a memorandum from the former head of explosive science at the FBI, Dr Frederic Whitehurst. It was a devastating indictment of a former colleague. The colleague was Thomas Thurman and the accusations related to his investigation of a terrorist attack in which a judge was killed by pipe bombs. Two years later, as a result of a review by the US inspector general, Michael Bromwich, into a large number of criminal investigations, Thomas Thurman was barred from FBI labs and from being called as an expert witness. Bromwich had discovered that he had no formal scientific qualifications and that, according to a former colleague, he had been ‘circumventing procedures and protocols, testifying to areas of expertise that he had no qualifications in ... therefore fabricating evidence’.

[Also on this date in 1991, Libya delivered to the United Nations Security Council a letter “categorically denying that Libya had any association” with the Lockerbie bombing.]

Sturgeon faces uphill battle with Donald Trump over his Lockerbie bomber fury

This is the headline over an article by Siobhan McFadyen published in today’s edition of the Daily Express. It reads in part:]

It was revealed that Ms Sturgeon plans to pen a letter to the billionaire and has not received a phone call despite the fact the Scottish Government was once on amiable terms.

The SNP leader and her predecessor, who called on Mr Trump to be banned from the UK, were once so close he was lobbied over plans to release the Lockerbie bomber.

And a drafted statement was even created that said the billionaire had supported the obtuse plan, a move that backfired extraordinarily, leading to an absolute break down in relations.

Millions of people in Scotland and the United States were revolted when former Justice Secretary Kenny MacKaskill allowed Abdel Basset Al Megrahi to go free following the Pan Am 103 bombing.

A total of 270 men, women and children died when the aircraft which was on route to the United States exploded over Scottish airspace.

And as the Scottish saltire flag flew on the tarmac of the airport in Tripoli the decision infuriated Mr Trump who was later stripped of an honorary Scottish business ambassador title. (...)

Mr [Donald] Trump Jnr said: “Once we refused to support the ridiculous notion of letting an international terrorist out of jail, the entire approach of Alex Salmond’s administration and the entire way he has treated us changed drastically for the worse.”

An e-mail which was sent to the billionaire businessman by Geoff Aberdein, Mr Salmond’s senior adviser, who now works for Aberdeen Asset Management, showed just how off the mark the SNP were.

Mr Trump Jnr said: “As New Yorkers, we are not unfamiliar with terrorists. We had planes fly into the World Trade Centre. And for us to support the release of an international terrorist, we would be run out of New York City, if not America.” (...)

In January Mr Trump reiterated his irritation at Salmond whose deputy through-out his tenure was 46-year-old Sturgeon.

He fumed: "Megrahi and others were laughing out loud at what a stupid man Alex Salmond is. Why would a terrorist that blew up an airliner with so many lives lost be released under any circumstances?

"Alex Salmond is an embarrassment to Scotland.”

[RB: President-elect Trump is the man who compared the development of wind farms in Scotland to the Lockerbie disaster. Some of his other interventions on Lockerbie and Megrahi can be read here. As regards Scots being “revolted” by the release of Megrahi, a public opinion poll commissioned by the Express itself two years after his repatriation and before his death showed a majority in favour.]

UK and US accuse Libyans of Lockerbie bombing

[What follows is the text of a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 1991:]

Two Libyan intelligence officers have been accused of masterminding the Lockerbie bombing.

The United States has called on Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi to hand over the two men, Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah.

The men have been indicted in the US on 193 charges, including three which carry the death penalty.

Arrest warrants have also been issued for the two Libyans in Scotland on charges of murder and conspiracy in relation to bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988.

The plane was en route from London to New York when it exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground.

President George Bush is to consult British Prime Minister John Major and other world leaders over the next few days to decide the international response.

Both President Bush and Mr Major have refused to rule out military action if Libya fails to hand over the suspects for trial.

However, Libya's ambassador to France, Saeeb Mujber, has said his country would not comply with the indictments.

Mr Mujber told the BBC that surrendering the two men would be to surrender Libya's sovereignty.

Libya had been implicated as an excuse for a military assault, he added.

"'This is a political thing. This is a lynching to bring Libya to its knees," Mr Mujber said.

But the US acting Attorney General, William Barr, said a fragment from the Toshiba radio-cassette recorder which contained the bomb linked the accused to the crime.

"Scientists determined that it was part of the bomb's timing device and traced it to its manufacturer - a Swiss company that had sold it to a high-level Libyan intelligence official," Mr Barr said.

Hypothesis Libya and Megrahi framed to be taken very seriously

[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date five years ago:]

[The following are excerpts relating to Lockerbie from a long essay entitled "Who said Gaddafi had to go?" by Hugh Roberts in the November 2011 edition of the London Review of Books. The whole essay merits close study:]

As early as 1987 he was experimenting with liberalisation: allowing private trading, reining in the Revolutionary Committees and reducing their powers, allowing Libyans to travel to neighbouring countries, returning confiscated passports, releasing hundreds of political prisoners, inviting exiles to return with assurances that they would not be persecuted, and even meeting opposition leaders to explore the possibility of reconciliation while acknowledging that serious abuses had occurred and that Libya lacked the rule of law. These reforms implied a shift towards constitutional government, the most notable elements being Gaddafi’s proposals for the codification of citizens’ rights and punishable crimes, which were meant to put an end to arbitrary arrests. This line of development was cut short by the imposition of international sanctions in 1992 in the wake of the Lockerbie bombing: a national emergency that reinforced the regime’s conservative wing and ruled out risky reform for more than a decade. It was only in 2003-4, after Tripoli had paid a massive sum in compensation to the bereaved families in 2002 (having already surrendered Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhima for trial in 1999), that sanctions were lifted, at which point a new reforming current headed by Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam emerged within the regime. (...)

Since February, it has been relentlessly asserted that the Libyan government was responsible both for the bombing of a Berlin disco on 5 April 1986 and the Lockerbie bombing on 21 December 1988. News of Gaddafi’s violent end was greeted with satisfaction by the families of the American victims of Lockerbie, understandably full of bitterness towards the man they have been assured by the US government and the press ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103. But many informed observers have long wondered about these two stories, especially Lockerbie. Jim Swire, the spokesman of UK Families Flight 103, whose daughter was killed in the bombing, has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the official version. Hans Köchler, an Austrian jurist appointed by the UN as an independent observer at the trial, expressed concern about the way it was conducted (notably about the role of two US Justice Department officials who sat next to the Scottish prosecuting counsel throughout and appeared to be giving them instructions). Köchler described al-Megrahi’s conviction as ‘a spectacular miscarriage of justice’. Swire, who also sat through the trial, subsequently launched the Justice for Megrahi campaign. In a resumé of Gaddafi’s career shown on BBC World Service Television on the night of 20 October, John Simpson stopped well short of endorsing either charge, noting of the Berlin bombing that ‘it may or may not have been Colonel Gaddafi’s work,’ an honest formula that acknowledged the room for doubt. Of Lockerbie he remarked cautiously that Libya subsequently ‘got the full blame’, a statement that is quite true.

It is often claimed by British and American government personnel and the Western press that Libya admitted responsibility for Lockerbie in 2003-4. This is untrue. As part of the deal with Washington and London, which included Libya paying $2.7 billion to the 270 victims’ families, the Libyan government in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council stated that Libya ‘has facilitated the bringing to justice of the two suspects charged with the bombing of Pan Am 103, and accepts responsibility for the actions of its officials’. That this formula was agreed in negotiations between the Libyan and British (if not also American) governments was made clear when it was echoed word for word by Jack Straw in the House of Commons. The formula allowed the government to give the public the impression that Libya was indeed guilty, while also allowing Tripoli to say that it had admitted nothing of the kind. The statement does not even mention al-Megrahi by name, much less acknowledge his guilt or that of the Libyan government, and any self-respecting government would sign up to the general principle that it is responsible for the actions of its officials. Tripoli’s position was spelled out by the prime minister, Shukri Ghanem, on 24 February 2004 on the Today programme: he made it clear that the payment of compensation did not imply an admission of guilt and explained that the Libyan government had ‘bought peace’.

The standards of proof underpinning Western judgments of Gaddafi’s Libya have not been high. The doubt over the Lockerbie trial verdict has encouraged rival theories about who really ordered the bombing, which have predictably been dubbed ‘conspiracy theories’. But the prosecution case in the Lockerbie trial was itself a conspiracy theory. And the meagre evidence adduced would have warranted acquittal on grounds of reasonable doubt, or, at most, the ‘not proven’ verdict that Scottish law allows for, rather than the unequivocally ‘guilty’ verdict brought in, oddly, on one defendant but not the other. I do not claim to know the truth of the Lockerbie affair, but the British are slow to forgive the authors of atrocities committed against them and their friends. So I find it hard to believe that a British government would have fallen over itself as it did in 2003-5 to welcome Libya back into the fold had it really held Gaddafi responsible. And in view of the number of Scottish victims of the bombing, it is equally hard to believe that SNP politicians would have countenanced al-Megrahi’s release if they believed the guilty verdict had been sound. The hypothesis that Libya and Gaddafi and al-Megrahi were framed is to be taken very seriously indeed. And if it were the case, it would follow that the greatly diminished prospect of reform from 1989 onwards as the regime battened down the hatches to weather international sanctions, the material suffering of the Libyan people during this period, and the aggravation of internal conflict (notably the Islamist terrorist campaign waged by the LIFG between 1995 and 1998) can all in some measure be laid at the West’s door.