The British and Scottish governments have just released “all relevant” correspondence in relation to the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, to try and stem criticism over his release.
You can read the Scottish documents here, and the British ones here.
Naturally, the press is already poring over every word. The big find for eagle-eyed investigators so far has been minutes of a meeting between British and Libyan officials in which is was “made clear” that Prime Minister Gordon Brown did not “want Mr Megrahi to pass away in prison”.
There’s also the warning from Abdulate Alobidi, Libyan minister for Europe, who told Scottish officials on November 18 last year that the “situation was bad for relations between the UK and Libya, it would be a major problem should Mr Megrahi die in prison and would be viewed as a form of death sentence”. The Times also notes “he made a similar point on January 22”.
New York Times blog, The Lede, focuses on a particularly interesting aspect of the documents — how it was that al-Megrahi came to be released, despite apparent British assurances to the US at the time of the bombing that the man who brought down a Pan Am plane would never leave the UK.
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill — the man forced to make the unpopular decision — sent a letter to Britain’s foreign minister David Miliband upbraiding the British government for not making sure Lockerbie prisoners were an exception to the foreign prisoner transfer agreement it ratified in April:
Despite our request and warning of potential consequences, your Government did not secure an exclusion to prevent anyone convicted of offences related to the Lockerbie Air Disaster from being eligible for transfer.
MacAskill also requested access to any evidence that would prove British promises to the US, so he could take these into consideration, but was rebuffed on the basis that Scotland must still defer to Britain on anything involving foreign affairs. Thus he was unable to confirm this crucial detail.
Have you spotted anything else interesting?
Follow Crikey’s full Lockerbie coverage here.
How wonderful to see Edinburgh and London embracing glasnost!
In the same spirit, I offer this article to Crikey as a ‘world exclusive’ (see below).
It’s an article originally published in The Scotsman newspaper on 20th Jan 2002.
Like various other interesting articles from around that time, it has since been wiped from the Scotsman’s archives.
I’d hate to think the British and Scottish Governments are similarly lax with their own newspaper/web clippings…
Happily, the article is still retrievable via the Web Archive (where would we be without it?) – but I can find no other copy via Google today. Google, of course, doesn’t make available to the public material found only on Wayback.
Oh, and here’a another 2002 article wiped from the web archives of the Sunday Herald: CIA evidence ‘clears Libya’ of Lockerbie (but also still retrievable via the Web Archive). Fortunately, it’s still in Wayback, as of today.
Lockerbie witness loses out on US payment
by Liam McDougall
THE star prosecution witness in the Lockerbie trial has been left penniless by the US intelligence services after they backed out of paying him $5m for vital information, according to intelligence sources.
The witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, will get nothing for the evidence he gave linking the two Libyan defendants to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 because his testimony at the trial was worthless.
Giaka, a Libyan secret service agent who was being paid by the CIA, was in line for the payout after he told agents he saw Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah and Abdulbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi with the Samsonite suitcase of the type used in the blast.
Giaka has since been given a new identity and placed on a witness protection programme in the US. But at the trial in 2000, Giaka’s evidence was savaged by the three Scottish judges who found his testimony to be “at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue”.
A US State Department spokesman in the counter-terrorist branch said no payment had been made to Giaka and refused to confirm or deny whether one would be made. But an informed source said: “The judges involved with the case did not believe a word he said. There are no plans to make any payment in this case.”
He was to have received up to $5m through the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Programme.
The news Giaka will get nothing for his evidence comes days before the start of Megrahi’s appeal against his conviction. Megrahi was jailed for at least 20 years last January. Fhimah was acquitted and returned to a hero’s reception in Tripoli.
Glad to see that the most senior legal officers in the land can use “plain Scottish” in their letters.
Kenny MacAskill (Cabinet Secretary for Justice) to Jack Straw (Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice) on 8th August 2007, 2nd para: “it would appear that option (ii) …in your letter has got just a wee bit twisted”
I guess a lot of thinks have got a “wee bit twisted” with this mess of prisoner exchange agreements aimed to “help Libya re-emerge on the international stage” and to expand its “commercial ties” with the UK.
Libya accepted a trial under Scottish law for the subsequently proven guilty Lockerbie bomber, al-Megrahi but insisted on a neutral location.
They got their wish.
This apparently isn’t good enough for far-left wing space cadets who want to create a strawman of ‘mistaken verdict’ to obfuscate the moral turpitude of Brown and MacAskill.