After
eight and a half years in captivity, Libyan intelligence agent
Abdel
Basset al-Megrahi is greeted to the plane the will take him
home
by the son of Libyan despot Colonol
Mouammar Qadaffi, Seif
al-Islam Qadaffi, on August
20.
Le Figaro, France
Persuasive
Leads in Favor of Lockerbie Convict Were Overlooked
"After
the accidental destruction of an Iranian Airbus by a U.S. warship five months
before Lockerbie, the Ayatollah Khomeini promised America 'a rain of blood.' But
during the 1991 Gulf War against Saddam
Hussein, the West needed Iranian neutrality and the active support of Syria."
A huge crowd welcomes Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bombing convict, who was freed from a Scottish prison on 'compassionate grounds.' Standing beside him is the son of Libyan despot Mouammar Qadaffi, Seif al-Islam Qadaffi. The release highlights some key differences between European and American justice.
Based on medical compassion, the
return to Libya of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the
Libyan intelligence agent condemned to life in prison for the Lockerbie bombing,
has provoked the ire of many of the victims’ families. “I have a lump in my
throat. I want to vomit,” said Norma Malowski, who lost her daughter in the
explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. But other relatives of the victims found
no fault. Dr.
Jim Swire, a Briton who also lost a daughter in the explosion, repeated for
the hundredth time his personal conviction: “I don’t believe for a second that
this man was involved in what he is accused of.”
The U.N. representative at
the first trial, Hans
Köchler, is equally confident that investigators and judges in 2001 voluntarily
abandoned the most promising path of evidence, which led to Syria and Iran. The
motive: after the accidental destruction of an Iranian Airbus by an American
warship [Iran Air
Flight 655] five months before Lockerbie, the Ayatollah Khomeini promised
America “a rain of blood.” The investigation first led to a dissident
Palestinian group with offices in Syria, the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine - General Command. Two months before the attack, a
cell of the PFLP-GC had been dismantled in Germany. During the operation, police
seized a vacuum detonator of the type that is triggered when an aircraft
reaches cruising altitude - a design that corresponds to the explosion of Pan
Am Flight 103 Boeing. But according to supporters of Libya’s innocence, the
West needed Iranian neutrality and the active support of Syria during the first
Gulf War against Saddam
Hussein [Aug. 1990-Feb. 1991].
And then, eighteen months later,
the investigation changed course. A passer-by 50 miles from the point of impact
found the shred of a T-shirt wrapped around a fragment of a detonator timer. It
was this piece of evidence that led investigators to Megrahi. The timer was a
model [MST-13] sold in Libya by Swiss
firm Mebo. The police believe that Megrahi, officially employed by the Malta airport
used by Libyan Airlines, set the timer and placed the bomb in a suitcase that had
been registered for every stop of the journey from Malta to New York: Malta-Frankfurt
on Libyan Airlines, and then Frankfurt-London and London-New York on Pan Am.
Megrahi has been tied to this
complex journey by the testimony of a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, who recognized
him as the man who purchased the clothing, the fragments of which were wrapped
around the detonator timer's remains. But over the years the case has unraveled.
Gauci's testimony, on rereading, is vague. The dates didn’t match up. And it
was learned later that the CIA had paid him [$2 million] to testify within the
framework of its “witness protection program.”
SUDDEN TURN OF EVENTS
In August 2007 there was a
dramatic new turn of events. The man who designed the Mebo MST-13detonation timer, engineer Ulrich Lumpert,
spontaneously appeared before a notary, swearing an affidavit that he stole a
prototype of the timer in 1989 and handed it over to, "a person officially
investigating the Lockerbie case." Lumpert failed to mention this episode
during the 2001 trial at which he was a witness [he lied]. He now claims that
he wants to “clear his conscience.”
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
[Editor's Note: One of the
owners of Mebo, Ed Bollier, was for years not permitted to examine the alleged
MST-13 detonator timer fragments. Finally in late fall 1999, he was invited by
Scottish Police to look at the evidence. To his surprise he found that the
fragment was never equipped with a molded relay. He also found that the
fragment in his hands had been switched during examination. To prove his point
he published the Scottish Police interview transcripts
online].
This plot out of a spy novel would
leave anyone skeptical - and Scottish justice only added to it. Just before
Lumpert’s about-face, the Edinburgh Board of Review authorized Megrahi to an
appeal on the grounds of possible “judicial error.” The evidence then requested
by Megrahi's defense team [CIA documents relating to the timer] were withheld “because
of an agreement with a foreign government.” They were never obtained by Megrahi's
legal team.
In 2007, Prime Minister Tony
Blair signed a memorandum for a prisoner exchange with Colonel Muammar al-Qhaddafi.
In the end it was the quickest way, medical compassion, which was chosen. Just
after that, Megrahi abandoned his appeal. The truth about Lockerbie will probably
never be known. It certainly won't come from Libya. Greeted by hundreds of flag-wavers
in the absence of Libyan television cameras, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was
promptly taken to an unknown destination. Barack Obama has been content to
demand his “house arrest.”
