07 September 2009

Was the Lockerbie bomber framed?

The publicly-announced reason for Scotland's release of the Lockerbie bomber was that he is terminally ill and the release was a compassionate gesture. I have heard some accusations that his release was conditional upon Libya's granting of trade or oil concessions to Britain. I have not researched this topic at all, but when I saw the striking statements in this column at Antiwar.com, I thought it was worth abstracting for the blog...
Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests..."

New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft – he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognize him in the courtroom...

A "key secret witness" at the original trial, who claimed to have seen Megrahi and his co-accused al-Alim Khalifa Fahimah (who was acquitted) loading the bomb on to the plane at Frankfurt, was bribed by the US authorities holding him as a "protected witness." The defense exposed him as a CIA informer who stood to collect, on the Libyans’ conviction, up to $4m as a reward...

The Scottish judges, while admitting a "mass of conflicting evidence" and rejecting the fantasies of the CIA informer, found Megrahi guilty on hearsay and unproven circumstance. Their 90-page "opinion," wrote Foot, "is a remarkable document that claims an honored place in the history of British miscarriages of justice."

In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi’s case for appeal. "The commission is of the view," said its chairman, Dr. Graham Forbes, "that based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice."

The words "miscarriage of justice" are missing entirely from the current furor...
TYWKIWDBI is not taking a stand on this matter, but we find "conspiracy theory" stories inherently interesting.

6 comments:

  1. Also puts a different light on the welcome he received when he returned to Libya. His fans weren't applauding the bombing, as so many assumed; rather, they didn't believe he'd done it in the first place.

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  2. It would truly be a great day if "His fans weren't applauding the bombing"
    Unfortunately too many in that part of the world accept terrorism as an ends justifying the means.
    Don't kid yourself.

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  3. Personally, I think an innocent man was allowed to go home to die.

    It's a great shame that he abandoned his appeal.

    That would have revealed a huge amount. CIA involvement, etc.

    There's an interesting article here ...

    http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=547

    In the article there's a link to a Private Eye download, that's available for £5. But it's free for subscribers, of which I am one.

    So Stan, if you're interested email me.

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  4. "... we find 'conspiracy theory' stories inherently interesting ..."

    When a citizen claims something is a "conspiracy theory" the term is a thought-terminating cliché ... when a government claims a "conspiracy theory" people go to serve long prison terms.

    Funny how that works.

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  5. @gbradley
    "Unfortunately too many in that part of the world accept terrorism as an ends justifying the means."
    Something about this statement bothers me. Perhaps its the jingoistic nature of it as I'm sure even more people "in that part of the world" feel similarly about "this part of the world"

    ReplyDelete
  6. Go to this link -

    http://www.freewebs.com/fbiblog/

    'FBI CHIEF TERRORIST'

    Read paragraph 2).

    ReplyDelete