Victim of one of the most spectacular miscarriages of justice in history

[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died in Tripoli on this date five years ago. What follows is an obituary written by Tam Dalyell that was published in The Independent:]

Acres of newsprint have appeared in recent years, covering various rather separate theories about the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber.

If I thought for one moment that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty as charged in the mass murder of 270 innocent people in the crash of the Pan Am airliner "Maid of the Seas" at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, I would not have agreed to pen an obituary – let alone an affectionate one.

My settled conviction, as a "Professor of Lockerbie Studies" over a 22-year period, is that neither Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103. The Libyans were cynically scapegoated in 1990, two years after the crash, by a US government which had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of the terrible deed.

Libya and its "operatives", Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, only came into the frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, Megrahi has been the victim of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in history. The assertion of innocence is confirmed in the 497 pages of John Ashton's scholarly and remarkable book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, published by Birlinn.

This is an opinion shared by the senior and experienced solicitor Eddie McKechnie, who successfully represented Fhimah at Zeist in Holland, where a Scottish court was assembled to try the two accused under rules conducted by the jurisdiction of the laws of Scotland, and who took on Megrahi's case following his conviction; by Tony Kelly, the immensely thorough solicitor who has represented him for the past six years; by the bereaved relatives Dr Jim Swire and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost daughters and attended the entire Zeist trial; by Professor Robert Black, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, and Lockerbie-born; and by many others in legal Edinburgh.

Furthermore, the Scottish Criminal Review Commission, in the course of its 800-page report, says (paragraph 24, page 708): "The Crown deprived the defence of the opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary – so the defence's case was damaged." It concluded: "The commission's view is that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred."

Megrahi was not in Malta on the date the clothing, so crucial in the whole Lockerbie saga, was bought from the shopkeeper Tony Gauci. The proprietor of Mary's House identified a number of different people, including Abu Talb, who appeared at the trial to deny his part in the bombing.

Talb was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command and is now serving a life sentence in Sweden for the 1985 bombings in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. These discrepancies were part of the reason why the Scottish criminal review commission concluded that there could have been a miscarriage of justice; another was the unexplained payment of $10m from Iranian sources into the coffers of the Popular Front.

The testimony of Lesley Atkinson, who knew Megrahi well in Tripoli, is interesting. She is the wife of Neville Atkinson, who, in 1972, left a career as a night-fighter pilot in the Royal Navy to take up a position as personal pilot to the president of Libya, Colonel Gadaffi, until 1982. "Megrahi was polite and friendly and worked for Libyan Arab Airlines," Mrs Atkinson told me. "Of course, lots of people who worked for LAA were connected to the security services and I do not doubt that he was one of them. We knew him both at work and at the Beach Club – he was a normal, nice guy. I cannot imagine that he would ever have dreamt of planting a bomb on an airliner. He just would not have done that to passengers."

Eddie McKechnie described Megrahi as a cultured man doing a job for his country, and certainly not a mass-murderer. Had he not been given extremely bad advice not to appear in the witness box Megrahi would have revealed the truth – that he was a sanctions-buster, travelling the world to find spare parts for the Libyan oil industry and Libyan Arab Airlines. This role was confirmed to me by Colonel Gadaffi, when, as leader of the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to Libya in March 2001, I saw him in his tent outside Sirte. Gaddafi's own knowledge or involvement in Lockerbie is a different matter.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was born in 1952 and educated in Tripoli and in the Engineering Faculty of Benghazi University. He became involved in the Ministry of Trade, and like many other officials, certainly did so in the intelligence services. He served as the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and as director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. A genuine believer in what the young Gaddafi was trying to achieve, and in the Great Jamariyah, Megrahi was happy to put his talents at the service of the state. Where else in Africa is there no hint of personal corruption among the leadership, he asked me! He had good relations with engineers at Brown and Root, I was told by their chairman and managing director, Sir Richard Morris (1980-90). Brown and Root was the contractor for the huge irrigation projects in Cyrenerica, south of Benghazi, the man-made river bringing water to desert areas that had been fertile in Roman times.

He was understandably proud of the traditional skills associated with his people. On one occasion, when I visited him in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow and told him that I had been to Leptis Magna, he responded: "You know that my Tripolitanian ancestors were the artists in stone, responsible for work throughout the Empire, not least in Rome itself!" Had the judges had the opportunity to get to know Megrahi, as I knew him, they could never have arrived at the verdict of "guilty" – at most, the good Scots legal term "not proven".

After Zeist, Fhimah, represented by the aggressively formidable barrister Richard Keen QC, was cleared and returned to a hero's welcome in Tripoli. Fhimah talked with knowledge and pride, as did Megrahi, about the wonderful sight of Sabbratah and the glories of the Greek colonial city at Cyrene.

Meanwhile, Megrahi was incarcerated in Barlinnie Prison. I was not his only visitor there and in Greenock who came away with a favourable opinion. Dr Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, a medical student at the University of Nottingham, told me: "On meeting Abdelbaset in Greenock prison, I found him charming, rational, not given to anger or bluster. He made it obvious that his first priority was to clear his name before returning to his much-loved family in Tripoli.

"I saw him for the last time just before Christmas 2008, when, he, a devout Muslim, gave me a Christmas card in which he asked me and my family to pray for him and his family. That card is one of my most precious possessions.

"This meeting was before he could have known just how closely death loomed. I cannot criticise his apparently voluntary decision to spend his last months on earth with his family, above the priority of clearing his name."

I know that in some uninformed quarters, Dr Swire's views are regarded as eccentric. But it is the other British relatives who have studied the position in depth, such as Martin Cadman, who lost his son Bill; Pamela Dix, who lost her brother; and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost a daughter, have arrived at precisely the same conclusions about Megrahi's innocence. Unlike some American relatives, they have bothered to make exhaustive studies of the detail.

In my opinion, whatever Gordon Brown, Kenny MacAskill, Alec Salmond and Jack Straw – all fundamentally decent human beings – may feel they have to say in public due to pressure, and wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh, which, above all, did not want their misdeeds exposed by the truth, they all knew that they were acquiescing in the release of an innocent man. I am not quite so sure that Fhimah did not have an inkling about potentially explosive material on its way to the Bekaa valley.

Even in his final hours, controversy never deserted Megrahi. The Libyan authorities were absolutely justified in declining to extradite him, both for reasons of international law and more importantly, that he was not guilty as charged of the Lockerbie crime – also the considered opinion of Dr Hans Koechler, who attended Megrahi's trial as an official UN observer and has examined his appeal process in Scotland.

As James Cusick, who has followed the twists and turns of the Lockerbie saga for many years as a highly informed journalist, wrote in The Independent on Tuesday 30 August, "The truth behind the Lockerbie bombing remains enmeshed in diplomatic gains."

My last sight of Abdelbaset was on TV on 3 October, attended by Mrs Megrahi, with tubes galore, thanking Dr Swire in gentle tones for trying to furnish necessary drugs and hissing out that there were many liars at Zeist. So there were.

“We cannot and must not rush to judgment”

[On this date in 2009 the first stage of Abdelbaset Megrahi’s second appeal was concluded. Here is what the Lord Justice General (Lord Hamilton) said at the conclusion of the proceedings:]

The court is much obliged to counsel on either hand for the careful and comprehensive submissions which have been made at this stage of the appeal. We will now, of course, require to give these submissions detailed and careful consideration. A question will arise as to whether it is appropriate to decide grounds 1 and 2 at this stage or, alternatively, to defer that decision until we have heard argument on other grounds, which are or may be closely related to them.

We appreciate that having regard to, among other things, the appellant's state of health there will be concern that we deal with these matters as expeditiously as possible. But having regard to their importance to all concerned, we cannot and must not rush to judgment.

Time has been set aside towards the end of this term for a procedural hearing in relation to further grounds of appeal. And in terms of the interlocutor of 18 March of this year, days were set aside in the week commencing 29 June for that purpose. For reasons which it is not necessary to go into, we intend to change that date or dates to dates in the week following that, that is the week commencing 6 July. We expect that by that time we will have reached a decision as to whether or not we should decide grounds 1 and 2 at this stage and to be able to intimate which course of action, either deciding them at this stage or deferring them, we have decided upon.

But by this time, we shall simply continue the appeal to the first of the dates which are now substituted for the procedural matters which we have referred to, that is to Tuesday 7 July of this year.

[RB: In the light of the stately pace which this statement demonstrates that the court thought appropriate in an appeal brought by a man with a terminal illness, I take leave to reproduce a comment that I had made on this blog on 26 October 2008:]

[T]he delay in bringing Mr Megrahi’s current appeal to the hearing stage has been appalling. Had a measure of urgency been shown, it is entirely conceivable that the appeal could have been over before now and the appellant back with his wife and children in his own country, a free man. The SCCRC had his case under consideration for more than three years before referring it back to the High Court. The submission made to them was, admittedly, a long and detailed one. But the issue of the trial court’s unreasonable findings ... is a very simple and straightforward one and required virtually no investigation other that a perusal of the relevant portions of the transcript of evidence. If the SCCRC decided early in its deliberations that the case was going to have to be referred back on this ground – and it is difficult to believe that it did not – then delaying taking that step for three years is hard to justify.

Then there is the delay that has occurred after the SCCRC referred the case to the High Court in June 2007.

More than sixteen months have passed since then. More than thirteen months have passed since the first procedural hearing in the new appeal was held. More than ten months have passed since the appellant’s full written grounds of appeal were lodged with the court. Why has no date yet been fixed for the hearing of the appeal? Why does it now seem impossible that the appeal can be heard and a judgement delivered by the twentieth anniversary of the disaster on 21 December 2008?

The answer is simple: because the Crown, in the person of the Lord Advocate, and the United Kingdom Government, in the person of the Advocate General for Scotland, have been resorting to every delaying tactic in the book (and where a particular obstructionist wheeze is not in the book, have been asking the court to rewrite the book to insert it). These tactics include, to name but a few, raising difficulties about allowing the appellant access to productions used at the original trial; seeking to overturn previous appeal court decisions on the scope of the appeal in SCCRC references; and claiming public interest immunity on “national security” grounds in respect of documents which have been in the hands of the Crown for more than twelve years and which have been seen by the SCCRC. The judges on a number of occasions have expressed disquiet at the Crown’s dilatoriness; but have so far done little, if anything, meaningful to curb it.

Special counsel Robert Mueller and Lockerbie

[What follows is excerpted from a report published late yesterday on the website of The New York Times:]

The Justice Department appointed Robert S Mueller III, a former FBI director, as special counsel on Wednesday to oversee the investigation into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials, dramatically raising the legal and political stakes in an affair that has threatened to engulf Mr. Trump’s four-month-old presidency.

The decision by the deputy attorney general, Rod J Rosenstein, came after a cascade of damaging developments for Mr. Trump in recent days, including his abrupt dismissal of the FBI director, James B Comey, and the subsequent disclosure that Mr Trump asked Mr Comey to drop the investigation of his former national security adviser, Michael T Flynn. (...)

While Mr Mueller remains answerable to Mr Rosenstein — and by extension, the president — he will have greater autonomy to run an investigation than other federal prosecutors.

As a special counsel, Mr Mueller can choose whether to consult with or inform the Justice Department about his investigation. He is authorized to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” according to Mr Rosenstein’s order naming him to the post, as well as other matters that “may arise directly from the investigation.” (...)

Mr Rosenstein, who until recently was United States attorney in Maryland, took control of the investigation because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself after acknowledging he had failed to disclose meetings he had with the Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey I Kislyak, when Mr Sessions was an adviser to the Trump campaign. (...)

Mr Mueller’s appointment was hailed by Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, who view him as one of the most credible law enforcement officials in the country. (...)

Mr. Mueller served both Democratic and Republican presidents. President Barack Obama asked him to stay two years beyond the 10-year term until he appointed Mr Comey in 2013, the only time a modern-day FBI director’s tenure has been extended.

[RB: Mr Mueller has featured regularly on this blog. Perhaps the most egregious of his ill-advised interventions in the Lockerbie case was the remarkable letter sent to Kenny MacAskill after the release of Megrahi in August 2009. The late and much lamented Ian Bell wrote a blistering article in the Sunday Herald about this letter headlined What do US cops know about justice?]

Airline security tested and found wanting

[What follows is excerpted from the Wikipedia article on Dr Jim Swire:]

On 18 May 1990, Swire took a fake bomb on-board a British Airways flight from London's Heathrow airport to New York's JFK[1] and then on a flight from New York JFK to Boston to show that airline security had not improved; his fake bomb consisted of a radio cassette player and the confectionery marzipan, which was used as a substitute for Semtex. Some American family members asked Swire to keep the news of the stunt quiet; it became public six weeks later. Susan and Daniel Cohen, parents of Pan Am Flight 103 victim Theodora Cohen approved of the plan, while some other family members of American victims did not[2].

[1] Fineman, Mark (6 July 1990). "TERRORISM / ONE MAN'S CRUSADE : Fake Bomb Shows Hole in Security : The father of one of the victims of the Pan Am 103 tragedy demonstrates that it could happen again". Los Angeles Times.

[2] Cohen, Susan and Daniel. Chapter 16, Pan Am 103: The Bombing, the Betrayals, and a Bereaved Family's Search for Justice. New American Library. 2000. 225.

Malta could have done more to reject Lockerbie claims

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009.

Malta could have done more to reject Lockerbie claims - UN monitor

[This is the headline over an article by Caroline Muscat in today's edition of The Sunday Times, Malta. It reads as follows:]

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is not guilty as charged and there is no convincing argument for Malta's involvement in the terrorist act, according to the United Nations' appointed monitor of the trial in the Netherlands.

Hans Koechler, who was handpicked by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to monitor proceedings, told The Sunday Times: "I never really understood why the government of Malta did so little to reject these allegations and to defend the integrity of the country's civil aviation system."

Twenty years after the bombing, the government has gone no further than saying that it is monitoring proceedings of the second appeal. Air Malta did not comment.

Malta was implicated in the terrorist act because the prosecution had argued that Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima had placed the bomb on an Air Malta aircraft before it was transferred at Frankfurt airport on board the doomed Pan Am flight 103A.

The flight went to London Heathrow and was bound for New York's JFK airport before exploding over Lockerbie in Scotland an hour into the journey on December 21, 1988. All 259 people on board died as well as 11 locals on the ground.

The trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands had led the Scottish judges to conclude in 2001 that Mr Al-Megrahi was guilty. He was jailed for life while the other defendant was released.

In his report after the verdict, Dr Koechler had concluded that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. Several years on, he stands by his conclusions: "The court did not come up with any convincing argument that Mr Al-Megrahi is the one who bought the clothes at the shop in Malta and that the 'bomb suitcase' was loaded at Luqa Airport."

Dr Koechler expressed doubt that Mr Al-Megrahi's ongoing appeal, which started on April 28, could be fair and impartial because of the "outright interference of the British government trying to withhold certain sensitive evidence from the defence".

He said political expediency had guided the original verdict, saying it reflected the political considerations related to the foreign policy interests of the involved states at that time.

One of Malta's leading lawyers, who had formed part of the legal team in the defence of the two Libyan suspects, also believes Mr Al-Megrahi is innocent.

Emmanuel Mallia told The Sunday Times: "I personally know the accused and have always firmly believed in his innocence."

Mr Al-Megrahi's appeal was ordered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2007, after a four-year investigation came to the conclusion that a "miscarriage of justice" may have occurred.

Dr Mallia would not enter into the merits of the case because it is still sub judice. But he said his personal view was that the verdict was flawed.

"Having examined the judgment of the court at Camp Zeist and being aware of the salient evidence produced in the case by the prosecution, I feel that the evidence could never have amounted to guilt of the accusation according to law," Dr Mallia said.

He said the prosecution lacked reliable evidence that could prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt: "Although there were a lot of issues which could give rise to suspicion, anything argued on the basis of suspicion may lead to conjecture but not proof. Even if considering circumstantial evidence, we know that such evidence can mislead and, in order to rely upon it, it has to lead to one direction."

Some argue that at the early investigation stage Malta was perhaps too compliant.

"The government gave access to the Scottish and American investigators to interview people and take any action deemed necessary. Some have argued that things may have been done differently with the Malta police having more direct control of the investigation".

A former Scottish judge regarded as the architect of the Lockerbie trial, Robert Black, also told The Sunday Times last week that there was never any evidence that the bomb left from Malta.

On his blog this week, Prof Black contested arguments made by the prosecution at the Court of Criminal Appeal in recent days that Mr Al-Megrahi's trip to Malta with a false passport the day the bomb was planted, and his departure the day after, was a link to the commission of the offence.

"As regards the coded - not false - passport, it is of relevance only if the bomb actually started from Malta, which is a finding the defence have strongly challenged in the appeal," Prof Black said.

The hearing continues despite rumours that the 57-year-old former Libyan intelligence officer may choose to drop his appeal and go home because of a recent prisoner transfer agreement between the UK and Libya.

Mr Al-Megrahi is suffering from prostate cancer and can choose to die at home. But dropping his appeal will leave him a condemned man and mean that Malta will remain implicated in one of the worst terrorist acts in aviation history.

According to Dr Koechler, it is "absolutely essential" that the appeal goes ahead: "The Scottish authorities can reconcile the imperatives of the rule of law and of humanity and grant the appellant compassionate release while the appeal goes on... In a situation where there are serious doubts whether he is guilty as charged, and where the public is confronted with an increasing number of shocking revelations about the mishandling of the case by the judiciary, tampering with evidence, and so on, it is appropriate to make such a step."

Dr Koechler believes the British Parliament should mandate an independent public investigation into the Lockerbie case.

"The international public, including the people of Malta, deserve to know the truth - the full and uncensored truth - about the chain of events that led to the explosion of the American jetliner over Lockerbie."

A new era in US-Libya relations

[On this date in 2006, The New York Times reported US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s announcement that Libya was to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and that full diplomatic relations were to be restored. Her statement contained the following:]

We are taking these actions in recognition of Libya's continued commitment to its renunciation of terrorism and the excellent co-operation Libya has provided to the United States and other members of the international community in response to common global threats faced by the civilized world since September 11, 2001.

Today's announcements are tangible results that flow from the historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership in 2003 to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programmes.

As a direct result of those decisions we have witnessed the beginning of that country's re-emergence into the mainstream of the international community.

Today marks the opening of a new era in US-Libya relations that will benefit Americans and Libyans alike. (...)

For Libya, today's announcements open the door to a broader bilateral relationship with the United States that will allow us to better discuss other issues of importance.

Those issues include protection of universal human rights, promotion of freedom of speech and expression, and expansion of economic and political reform consistent with President Bush's freedom agenda.

The last remaining unpleasantness

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009.

The views of the UK's first ambassador to Tripoli after restoration of diplomatic relations

In 1999, Libya delivered the Lockerbie suspects to stand trial before a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands, which acquitted Mr Fhimah but sentenced Megrahi to life in prison with a minimum of 27 years. Meanwhile, Libya began secret talks with the United States and repaired ties with Britain.

“Relations developed quite quickly,” said Sir Richard Dalton, posted to Libya in 1999 as Britain’s first ambassador in 15 years and currently an analyst with Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in London. “The Libyans were acting responsibly and had fulfilled their obligations in the case of the Lockerbie incident.”

Rapprochement has seen Libya pay US$2.7 billion (Dh9.9bn) to the families of victims of the Lockerbie bombing and renounce attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon. UN and US sanctions have been lifted, and a US Embassy reopened in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. (...)

“The Libyans have maintained that Megrahi is innocent, and on humanitarian grounds they’d like to see him restored to his family in Libya,” Sir Richard said.

The move is likely to win applause for their government from ordinary Libyans, said Ronald Bruce St John, a Libya expert and analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, a think tank that is part of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

“There’s considerable support in Libya for the argument that the government was not involved in Lockerbie.”

However, Tripoli’s request leaves Megrahi in a bind. If he goes home, he will have to drop his current attempt to appeal his conviction. If he stays to fight his case, he may die before its conclusion.

The affair has caused a stir in Britain, where Scottish politicians have voiced dismay at the prospect of Megrahi being turned loose. Some families of Lockerbie victims believe he may be innocent, but others want him to stay in Scottish custody.

“We want the appeal to go through because it’s the main means of us getting further information about how our family members died or why they died,” said Barrie Berkley, an Englishman whose son Alistair was killed in the bombing, quoted by the BBC.

A decision by the Scottish authorities to keep Megrahi would not seriously derail Britain’s relations with Libya, said Sir Richard. “But there would be consequences.”

Among them is the possibility that a successful appeal by Megrahi would plunge Britain, the US and Libya once again into the fraught environment of an international investigation to find new Lockerbie suspects, Sir Richard said.

A spokesman for the US Embassy in London said Washington wanted Megrahi to remain in Scottish hands, while Britain’s foreign office declined to comment on the affair. (...)

His case is currently being examined by the Scottish authorities, said Fiona Wilson, a spokeswoman for Scotland’s devolved government.

“You have to look at Lockerbie as the last remaining unpleasantness between Britain and Libya,” Dr St John said. “They’d like to get it off the table.”

[From an article by John Thorne, foreign correspondent of The National newspaper, Abu Dhabi.]

UN observer Hans Köchler at Camp Zeist

[What follows is the rext of a press release issued on this date in 2000 by the International Progress Organisation:]

14 May 2000/P/K/16818c-is

Professor Dr Hans Koechler, in his capacity as international observer nominated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the basis of Security Council resolution 1192 (1998), attended last week’s sessions of  the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. The High Court of Justiciary consists of three Scottish judges. As result of a compromise reached in the Security Council, the Court was set up to try the two suspects of the Lockerbie bombing disaster in a neutral venue.

Professor Koechler was briefed by the Registrar (the Head of the Scottish Court Service in the Netherlands) on the arrangements and procedures of the Court. He was also briefed by the Site Police Commander and the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Prison. He further met with representatives of the victims’ families. By arrangement of the Scottish prison authorities, Professor Koechler made an inspection tour of HM Prison Zeist and met in private with the two accused Libyan nationals who had given their consent prior to the meeting.

Professor Koechler is one of five international observers nominated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He represents the Vienna-based International Progress Organization, an NGO in consultative status with the United Nations. The other observers are Mr Robert Thabit, also representing the International Progress Organization, Mr M H Baerenboom of the European Commission, Ms Hairat A. Balogun, representing the OAU and the Non-Aligned Movement, and Dr Nabil El-Araby of the Arab League.

The observers of the International Progress Organization will follow the trial in the Netherlands and will report regularly to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Their main focus will be due process of law, fair trial and respect of United Nations resolutions and international legal instruments.

Normalising relations

[What follows is excerpted from an item on the ITN Source website:]

A flag raising ceremony on Wednesday May 13 [2009] has symbolically marked the return of the US to Libya after a 30 year absence.

The ceremony, held before foreign diplomats, officials and media, took place in the new US Embassy compound, still being completed, in Tripoli.

The new US ambassador to Libya, Gene A Cretz, said that he was continuing the daily work of normalising relations with the Libyan government, and creating new ties with the Libyan people. An American visa section opened in Tripoli in April.

The return of the US to Libya and of improving diplomatic relations between Washington and Tripoli comes three decades after ties were severed. In November 1972, the US withdrew its ambassador from Tripoli after it accused Libya of supporting international terrorism. US-Libyan relations have dramatically improved since December 2003 after Tripoli's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction programs.

"I've been here over four months and I have found nothing but courtesy on the part of the Libyan officials with whom I have dealt with. I have found nothing but warmth and welcoming spirit from the Libyans who I have met on the street or visiting or whatever. I think we have come a long way even just since the time I have been here in terms of establishing a working relationship with the Libyan government," Cretz said to waiting media.

He said in the short time he had been in Tripoli, he thought the two countries had made much progress in building a new relationship.

"I would say on an official level we have made progress in several different areas and we look forward to even more progress and I think that today's ceremony in which we raised our flag here is just another building block on the way to what we consider to be a normalisation of relationships with the Libyan government and the Libyan people."

Since relations between the two have improved, the United States has ended its major economic sanctions on Libya and has dropped it from a State Department blacklist for "state sponsors of terrorism".

[RB: Less than two-and-a-half years later the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was saying “We came, we saw, he died” on hearing that Muammar Gaddafi had been brutally killed.]

Discovery of circuit board fragment PT35B

It was (apparently) on this date in 1989 that Dr Thomas Hayes of the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) discovered amongst Lockerbie debris a fragment of circuit board embedded in a shirt collar. This became PT35(b) -- the notorious dodgy timer fragment. The story of the discovery and how it was recorded is narrated an article headed Page 51 and its Environs on Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide. The dialogue between Caustic Logic and Rolfe in the comments following the blogpost is also a mine of information. Another useful source of enlightenment is Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s PT35B website.