Even as the US Establishment and its spooky corporate media chorus go through the motions of emoting moral outrage like burned-out stage actors, they breathe easy in the greenroom knowing that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s appeal is dead.
Why? Because defaming the humane Scottish justice system as “soft on terrorism” and stoking the grief of the victims’ families is just so much more convenient than exposing a CIA black op/patsy frame-up for all the world to see.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/22/fbi-director-outraged-by_n_266198.html?page=6
Mueller recounted his own emotional experiences leading the investigation – seeing a teenage victim’s single sneaker, a Syracuse University sweatshirt, toys in the suitcase of a businessman heading home to see his wife and children for Christmas.
“Your action,” he wrote MacAskill, “makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988. You could not have spent much time with the families, certainly not as much time as others involved in the investigation and prosecution.”
He ended the Lockerbie letter with a frustrated question: “Where, I ask, is the justice?”
President Barack Obama on Friday called the elaborate homecoming in Libya for the freed bomber “highly objectionable.”
And yet, wandering the forbidden wood, one finds these fragments:
Fresh evidence has cast doubt on the conviction of a Libyan for the Lockerbie bombing 20 years ago that killed 270 people.
New forensic analysis on a fragment of the timing device alleged to have triggered the bomb that brought down Pan Am jet 103 on December 21, 1988, is said to have found no trace of explosive residue.
Lawyers acting for Abdelbasset Al Megrahi, the 56-year-old Libyan jailed for life for the bombing in 2001, will present the evidence at a forthcoming appeal into his conviction.
His legal team says the new information supports claims the timer was planted by investigators in a politically-motivated attempt to incriminate Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.
Sources close to his defence team say the tests should have revealed significant traces of explosive residue caused by the blast.
The fragment was said to have been found by police in a singed shirt 25 miles from the Scottish town where the New York-bound Boeing 747 came down.
Last night, a source close to the investigation said: ‘The only piece of forensic evidence in the chain that pointed to Libyan guilt has never been near the seat of an explosion.’
Megrahi is suffering from prostate cancer. Doctors said in October that he had less than a year to live.
www.cjpf.org/blogweblinks/scotsman083105.htm
A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.
The retired officer – of assistant chief constable rank or higher – has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.
The police chief, whose identity has not yet been revealed, gave the statement to lawyers representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, currently serving a life sentence in Greenock Prison.
The evidence will form a crucial part of Megrahi’s attempt to have a retrial ordered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). The claims pose a potentially devastating threat to the reputation of the entire Scottish legal system.
The officer, who was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, is supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent that his bosses “wrote the script” to incriminate Libya.
Last night, George Esson, who was Chief Constable of Dumfries and Galloway when Megrahi was indicted for mass murder, confirmed he was aware of the development.
But Esson, who retired in 1994, questioned the officer’s motives. He said: “Any police officer who believed they had knowledge of any element of fabrication in any criminal case would have a duty to act on that. Failure to do so would call into question their integrity, and I can’t help but question their motive for raising the matter now.”
Other important questions remain unanswered, such as how the officer learned of the alleged conspiracy and whether he was directly involved in the inquiry. But sources close to Megrahi’s legal team believe they may have finally discovered the evidence that could demolish the case against him.
An insider told Scotland on Sunday that the retired officer approached them after Megrahi’s appeal – before a bench of five Scottish judges – was dismissed in 2002.
The insider said: “He said he believed he had crucial information. A meeting was set up and he gave a statement that supported the long-standing rumours that the key piece of evidence, a fragment of circuit board from a timing device that implicated Libya, had been planted by US agents.
“Asked why he had not come forward before, he admitted he’d been wary of breaking ranks, afraid of being vilified.
“He also said that at the time he became aware of the matter, no one really believed there would ever be a trial. When it did come about, he believed both accused would be acquitted. When Megrahi was convicted, he told himself he’d be cleared at appeal.”
The source added: “When that also failed, he explained he felt he had to come forward.
“He has confirmed that parts of the case were fabricated and that evidence was planted. At first he requested anonymity, but has backed down and will be identified if and when the case returns to the appeal court.”
The vital evidence that linked the bombing of Pan Am 103 to Megrahi was a tiny fragment of circuit board which investigators found in a wooded area many miles from Lockerbie months after the atrocity.
The fragment was later identified by the FBI’s Thomas Thurman as being part of a sophisticated timer device used to detonate explosives, and manufactured by the Swiss firm Mebo, which supplied it only to Libya and the East German Stasi.
At one time, Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was such a regular visitor to Mebo that he had his own office in the firm’s headquarters.
The fragment of circuit board therefore enabled Libya – and Megrahi – to be placed at the heart of the investigation. However, Thurman was later unmasked as a fraud who had given false evidence in American murder trials, and it emerged that he had little in the way of scientific qualifications.
Then, in 2003, a retired CIA officer gave a statement to Megrahi’s lawyers in which he alleged evidence had been planted.
The decision of a former Scottish police chief to back this claim could add enormous weight to what has previously been dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory. It has long been rumoured the fragment was planted to implicate Libya for political reasons.
The first suspects in the case were the Syrian-led Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), a terror group backed by Iranian cash. But the first Gulf War altered diplomatic relations with Middle East nations, and Libya became the pariah state.
Following the trial, legal observers from around the world, including senior United Nations officials, expressed disquiet about the verdict and the conduct of the proceedings at Camp Zeist, Holland. Those doubts were first fuelled when internal documents emerged from the offices of the US Defence Intelligence Agency. Dated 1994, more than two years after the Libyans were identified to the world as the bombers, they still described the PFLP-GC as the Lockerbie bombers.
A source close to Megrahi’s defence said: “Britain and the US were telling the world it was Libya, but in their private communications they acknowledged that they knew it was the PFLP-GC.
“The case is starting to unravel largely because when they wrote the script, they never expected to have to act it out. Nobody expected agreement for a trial to be reached, but it was, and in preparing a manufactured case, mistakes were made.”
Dr Jim Swire, who has publicly expressed his belief in Megrahi’s innocence, said it was quite right that all relevant information now be put to the SCCRC.
Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the atrocity, said last night: “I am aware that there have been doubts about how some of the evidence in the case came to be presented in court.
“It is in all our interests that areas of doubt are thoroughly examined.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0408-01.htm
THE United Nations has savaged the Crown Office’s handling of the Lockerbie trial claiming the outcome was rigged through the unfair suppression of evidence; it was politically influenced by the USA; and the court had no grounds to return a guilty verdict.
Dr Hans Kochler, who was handpicked by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to act as the international observer during the trial in Holland, hinted that the trial was rigged, claimed the guilty verdict handed down in February to Abdelbasset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi was “arbitrary” and “irrational” and gave his tacit support for an acquittal at the planned appeal. Megrahi’s co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was found not guilty.
And all the while:
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Oil major BP PLC /quotes/comstock/13*!bp/quotes/nls/bp (BP 51.92, +0.04, +0.08%) could spend as much as $25 billion developing oil and gas fields in Libya, The Middle East Economic Digest, a financial magazine, reports.
BP signed a seven-year exploration and production agreement with Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corporation. The deal includes an option for extension, calls for a minimum exploration commitment of $900 million, covering 17 exploration wells, and the acquisition of 30,000 square kilometers of 3-D seismic and 5,500 kilometers of 2-D seismic exploration.
“Our intention is to spend well over the minimum commitment,” MEED reports, citing an unnamed BP executive. “We are planning a further 20 appraisal wells,” he told MEED.
“If the project is as successful as we hope, we are looking at multiple LNG [liquefied natural gas] trains to supply clean energy to Europe,” the executive said. “Based on present train sizes, we would be looking at about four trains,” he added.
Options include a single LNG terminal at Marsa el-Brega or Ras Lanuf in the Northeast, or a terminal at Melitah in the Northwest, to process gas from Ghadames, and a second terminal for the liquefaction of Sirte gas, MEED reports.
www.enquirerherald.com/366/story/814519.html
TRIPOLI, Libya A delegation of U.S. senators led by John McCain met with Libya’s leader Friday to discuss the possible delivery of non-lethal defense equipment.
The visit and Washington’s offer of military equipment was another sign of the improving ties between the former longtime adversaries.
“We discussed the possibility of moving ahead with the provision of non-lethal defense equipment to the government of Libya,” McCain said at a news conference. He gave no details on the kind of military equipment Washington is offering.
A halting, five-year rapprochement between the two countries began in 2003 when Moammar Gadhafi renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Earlier this year, Washington posted an ambassador to Libya for the first time in 36 years.
Senator McCain, however, said the U.S. remained concerned about Libya’s record on human rights and political reform.
“As we move ahead with the many ways in which the United States and Libya can work together as partners, there remain areas where real work needs to be done,” McCain said. “The status of human rights and political reform in Libya will remain a chief element of concern.”
The U.S. State Department’s 2008 human rights report on Libya says problems include reported disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests and the detention of political prisoners. The report also cites a lack of civil liberties, restrictions on freedom of religion and discrimination against women and ethnic minorities.
Still, McCain said, “ties between the United States and Libya have taken a remarkable and positive turn in recent years.”
The American delegation also included Senators Joseph Lieberman, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.
