The Libyan convicted of downing Pan Am flight 103 was framed

Picture of Al Megrahi's family.

IT was the gasp that said it all. As Lord Sutherland read out the verdict - one defendant guilty, one innocent - at the end of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, the relatives of the Britons who died in the bombing uttered a collective sound of disbelief.

Al Megrahi's wife Aisha, dressed entirely in black, collapsed in sobs as the ruling was read out. She almost tripped and fell as she ran weeping from the courtroom. She rose from her seat wailing and several relatives jumped up to hold her.

Al-Megrahi glanced in her direction through the bullet-proof glass wall into the public gallery as she was led away. As Cullen dismissed the appeal, al Megrahi himself, dressed in white Arab robes and a red fez, swallowed hard, once looking dazed.

A shout of "Yes" went out from someone in the public gallery and there was the sound of one or two people applauding at the rear of the gallery.

Moments later, in the bright and cold sunshine outside the court, the American families were celebrating Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's guilty verdict - and decrying the not guilty verdict handed down to his co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah.

While the Americans rejoiced, and talked of law suits against Libya, sanctions and criminal charges being brought against the Gaddafi regime, the British were noticeably muted.

Since the verdict the British families have consistently argued that the trial has not answered the questions that lie at the dark heart of the tragedy. They now believe that the only way to answer these questions is a public inquiry and without that they will never be able to move on.

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UN observer, Professor Hans Koechler writes: "This serious problem of due process became evident in the matter of the CIA cables concerning one of the Crown's key witnesses, Mr Giaka. Those cables were initially dismissed by the prosecution as not relevant but proved to be highly relevant when finally (but only partially) released."

The cables eventually showed that Abdul Majid Giaka, a Libyan defector, had been paid by the CIA for information which was regarded as of minimal worth. He had not mentioned any knowledge of Lockerbie until months after the bombing and only after being threatened with having his payments stopped. Then he implicated the accused by claiming to have seen them at Luqa airport in Malta with a suspicious suitcase.

"It has become obvious that the presence of foreign governments in a Scottish courtroom (in any courtroom for that matter) jeopardises the independence and integrity of legal procedures and is not in conformity with the general standards of fairness," Koechler wrote.

"It was a consistent pattern during the whole trial that - as an apparent result of political interests and considerations - efforts were undertaken to withhold substantial information from the court. It may never be fully known to which extent relevant information was hidden from the court. The most serious case... is related to the special defence. The alternative theory of the defence - leading to conclusions contradictory to those of the prosecution - was never seriously investigated... although it was officially declared as being of major importance to the defence. By not having pursued... an alternative theory, the court seems to have accepted that the whole legal process was seriously flawed in regard to the requirements of objectivity and due process. As a result the undersigned (Koechler) has reached the conclusion that foreign governments or governmental agencies may have been allowed, albeit indirectly, to determine to a considerable extent, which evidence was made available to the court."

Koechler says it was "highly arbitrary and irrational" to take witnesses like Giaka and Edwin Bollier, whose electronics firm supplied the fatal timing device, and rely on parts of their evidence when other parts were dismissed as riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions.

"In spite of the reservations explaining the verdict itself, the guilty verdict in the case of Megrahi is particularly incomprehensible in view of the admission by the judges themselves that identification was 'not absolute' and that there was a mass of conflicting evidence," the report says. Furthermore, the Opinion of the Court seems to be inconsistent in a basic respect: while the first accused was found guilty, the second accused was found not guilty. This is totally incomprehensible when one considers that the indictment in its very essence was based on the joint action of the two accused in Malta."

Koechler asserts, "The guilty verdict in regard to the first accused appears to be arbitrary, even irrational. This leads the undersigned to the suspicion that political considerations may have been over-riding a strictly judicial evaluation of the case thus may have adversely affected the outcome of the trial. This may have a profound impact on the evaluation of the professional reputation and integrity of the panel of three Scottish judges. Seen from the final outcome, a certain co-ordination of the strategies of prosecution, of defence, and of the judges' considerations during the later period of the trial is not totally unlikely. This, however, when actually proven, would have a devastating effect on the whole legal process of the Scottish Court in the Netherlands and on the legal quality of its findings.

"In the above context, the undersigned has reached the general conclusion that the outcome of the trial may well have been determined by political considerations and may to a considerable extent have been the result of more or less openly exercised influence from the part of actors outside the judicial framework - facts which are not compatible with the basic principle of the division of powers and with the independence of the judiciary, and which put in jeopardy the very rule of law and the confidence citizens must have in the legitimacy of state power and the functioning of the state's organs - whether on the traditional national level or in the framework of international justice."

Koechler's ultimate conclusion is that the Lockerbie trial had done a disservice to the cause of international criminal justice. It was neither fair, nor conducted in an objective manner.

Koechler's final message to Kofi Annan is to express the hope that Megrahi's appeal will "correct the deficiencies" of the trial and that will depend on the integrity and independence of the five judges who will hear it.

The appeal against conviction is likely to be heard in September.

* The man behind the report

HANS Koechler has been professor of legal, anthropological and political philosophy in the law faculty at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, since 1982.

http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report-koechler-commentary.htm

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The Guardian: What if they are innocent?
by Russell Warren Howe

A decade after Lockerbie, the West has at last got its men: two Libyans who London and Washington say planted the bomb that killed 270 people. But the case is not that open-and-shut, says Russell Warren Howe. Look at the facts, and you enter a murky world of espionage and double-bluff. Palestinian 'terrorists', the Iranian government and Israeli intelligence each had motives for blowing up Flight PA103. So who had the most to gain?

Suspicion that the two Libyan Air officials in Valletta at the time, Megrahi and F'hima, were responsible was heightened by US intelligence reports that it had intercepted a radio message from Tripoli to a Libyan government office in Berlin on December 22, 1988, that said, in effect, "mission accomplished".

In 1991, armed with the details of this intercept and the results of the long investigation at Lockerbie, the UN Security Council adopted a proposal by the UK and the US that Libya allow either Scotland or the US to extradite the two officials, who had been branded "intelligence agents" by the Western press. When Libya, denying its own and the two men's involvement, declined to hand them over, the Security Council imposed sanctions in 1992, the most important of these being a ban on air links to Libya and on the sale to Libya of arms and certain oil-drilling equipment. Libya claims that the sanctions have cost it some $31 billion over the past seven years.

Why was Libya thought to have gone out on a limb to avenge a non-Arab country, Iran? Was Iran "fingered" simply because it had a motive?

Why was the authenticity of US intelligence's Tripoli-Berlin intercept not challenged by Washington and London, given the fact that a similar intercept had earlier been mistakenly used by the Reagan regime to blame Libya for a bomb which exploded at a Berlin club on April 5, 1986, and to justify the US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi nine days later, which killed Gadafy's infant adopted daughter in a brash attempt to kill the Libyan leader himself? Although Britain had accepted the authenticity of the intercept concerning the bombing of the La Belle disco - in which two American soldiers and a Turkish girl were killed - and allowed the US Air Force to take off on the raid from Lakenheath, France and Germany were unconvinced and concluded that the bomb had been the work of local Iranian militants.

Reagan made a contemptible mistake in sending an air armada to bomb Libya because of an act of violence in Berlin that German intelligence had traced to local Iranian zealots. In spite of that false intercept from the Tripoli transmitter, President Bush, who had been vice-president under Reagan, made a political decision in 1991 to believe the "mission accomplished" message about Lockerbie.

Victor Ostrovsky, a Canadian former intelligence colonel with Israel's Mossad secret service and author of the bestseller By Way Of Deception (the title comes from the Mossad motto), will testify that it was Mossad commandos who set up the transmitter in Tripoli that generated a false signal about the "success" of the Berlin bomb - he has already given a detailed description of this daring operation in his second book, The Other Side Of Deception. Ostrovsky, who will testify by closed-circuit television from somewhere in North America - he fears that, if he comes to Holland, he may be "Vanunu-ed" (ie kidnapped and smuggled back to Israel) for breaking his secrets oath - will state that the Lockerbie intercept so resembles the La Belle intercept as to have probably the same provenance. This is what US lawyers call the "duck" argument: "If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles, the preponderance of evidence is that it is a duck."

Ostrovsky's evidence would then put the onus on the Lord Advocate to prove that the Lockerbie intercept is genuine, not disinformation. Ostrovsky believes that, in both bombings, Israel implicated Libya to shield Iran, thereby encouraging Iran not to persecute its small Jewish community. For the defence, a key element will be: did Iran play any role at all in the crime that "avenged" Iran Air? Or did Mossad delude London, Washington and the Security Council not to divert suspicion from Iran but from their own alleged "active measures" against the airliner?

In his new book on Mossad, Gideon's Spies, Gordon Thomas says that - according to a source at LAP, the psychological warfare wing of Mossad - "within hours of the crash, staff at LAP were working the phones to their media contacts urging them to publicise that here was 'incontrovertible proof' that Libya, through its intelligence service, Jamahirya, was culpable".

Thomas and others believe the tagging and smuggling aboard of the lethal suitcase can most easily be ascribed to a sayan or mabuah working for Mossad, which had a motive for eliminating certain passengers. (A sayan is a Jew who puts loyalty to Israel above loyalty to his own country and does services, usually unpaid, for Mossad; according to Thomas, the most famous sayan working in the UK was Robert Maxwell. A mabuah is a Gentile who fulfils the same role.)

It might seem barely credible that Mossad would carry out such an attack; however, both Gordon Thomas and Richard Curtiss, the former US diplomat who now edits the Washington Report On Middle East Affairs, point out that Mossad knew of the Islamic fundamentalists' plan to bomb the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, but had withheld the information in the correct belief that the bombing would drive the US military out of Lebanon, which it saw as Israel's bailiwick - 241 marines were killed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Lockerbie/3_Col_Story/0,2763,206619,00.html

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Dr Jim Swire whose daughter was killed in the accident meets Gaddafi

I had to see Colonel Gaddafi. Leaving sealed letters with a solicitor, in case I could not return, I found myself finally making the nerve-racking trip down the concrete path to the colonel's tent in Tripoli.

I shall never forget that dark cold December night. Fear sharpens the senses.

Unfortunately, his aides did not allow me to bring in my briefcase which contained one or two small presents for him, so my opening gambit was, that while I was very grateful to him for agreeing to see me, I thought he must be almost as scared of me as I was of him.

After that the briefcase was brought and the ice was broken.

The Arabs have a rich tradition of courtesy to travellers, which was honoured that night. The colonel was determined that I should hear that he believed that his citizens were innocent and that he did not know how the disaster had been caused.

His adopted daughter had been killed in the 1986 bombing of Tripoli by the US, and he agreed that in the preserved ruined bedroom, where she had been mortally wounded, a photograph of her and of Flora should be put up side by side, with the message beneath in Arabic and English: "The consequence of the use of violence is the death of innocent people."

So far as I know it is still there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/scotland/2000/lockerbie_trial/715658.stm

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Washington Report On Middle East Affairs
Did Libya Really Destroy Pan Am 103? Or Is There a Cover-Up?
Andrew I. Killgore

What exactly is the Libya connection? The answer to that question may lead to the real beginning of the Lockerbie disaster.

In February 1986, according to former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky in his book The Other Side of Deception—one of two revealing books he has written since leaving Mossad—Israel planted a communications device called “the Trojan” in the top floor of an apartment house in Tripoli, Libya. The device could receive messages broadcast by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, on one frequency and automatically relay them on a different frequency used by the Libyan government.

Evidence during the first years after the crash had not pointed to Libya at all.

The Trojan soon seemed to be broadcasting a series of terrorist orders to various Libyan embassies. Spanish and French intelligence picked up the broadcasts and concluded they were fake. The United States, encouraged by its “ally,” Israel— which knew the broadcasts were Mossad disinformation—concluded that they were genuine.

Only a few weeks after the Trojan broadcasts began, the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin was bombed, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman. Assuming that Libya had bombed La Belle, a club frequented by U.S. soldiers, President Ronald Reagan sent planes from England and from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean to bomb the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. More than 100 Libyans were killed, including Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi’s adopted young daughter.

In describing the Israeli deception that eventually led to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, Ostrovsky is careful not to point to Israel as the real perpetrator of the La Belle bombing. But his sequence of events—the planting of Trojan in Tripoli, its fake “Libyan” terrorist broadcasts, followed by the bombing of the La Belle nightclub known to be frequented by American soldiers—means that one cannot dismiss the possibility that Israeli agents may have bombed La Belle. Israel’s always fixed motive of making bad blood between the U.S. and the Arab and Muslim worlds—and its history of setting up Libya, going back to the nonexistent “hit squads”—certainly would have been well served.

A notable aspect of the Lockerbie trial itself was the paucity of press coverage about it, at least in the American media. In contrast, in the lead up to the trial much was made of “key witness” Abdul Majid Giaka, a defector from the Libyan intelligence service. Pre-trial American news accounts left the impression that Giaka would nail down the “Libya-did-it” theory: that the bomb was put aboard as unaccompanied air baggage in Valletta, Malta, flown to Frankfurt, Germany, offloaded onto yet another plane to London and then put aboard the ill-fated Pan Am flight.

A basic reason for the widespread doubt about Megrahi’s guilt is that Giaka was a flop on the witness stand. American FBI agent Harold M. Hendershot, brought to the witness stand to bolster Giaka’s testimony, also lacked credibility. A poignant moment on a BBC television broadcast following Giaka’s unpersuasive testimony, heard by the reporting officer, was a question redolent of doubt by a middle aged American (from his accent), “I wonder who killed our relatives?”

A development that called into question the integrity of the Lockerbie trial only emerged in the media after the trial was over. It was reported that American intelligence agents were in the courtroom when Abdul Majid Giaka was questioned. The Americans conferred with Giaka before he replied, leaving the impression with some trial observers that the witness was being “coached.” Jane Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the Pan Am 103 crash, was quoted in the April 9, 2001 Birmingham (U.K.) Post that the presence of the intelligence agents was “a little disturbing.”

Probably the biggest reason for questioning the “Libya-did-it” scenario is the improbability that terrorists looking to bring down a London-to-New York flight would resort to the complicated Malta-Frankfurt-London-New York sequence, with its requirement that baggage containing a bomb be transferred off one plane and onto two others. Common sense dictates that placing the bomb on the plane in London, where the flight originated, would be much simpler and less risky. The Malta scenario does have the advantage, however, of implicating nearby Libya and its leader Muammar al-Qaddafi.

Despite Megrahi’s conviction, therefore, his guilt is viewed with widespread doubt, linked to the conviction that the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 was put aboard the flight in London. Dr. Robert Black has told the Washington Report that he holds this view, as does Dr. Jim Swire, spokesman for the relatives of British nationals killed in the crash, and the father of Flora. Dr. Swire told this writer that the British nationals for whom he is spokesman share his conviction that the bomb originated in London.

Jim Swire is a remarkable man. An engineer specializing in explosives, he was an officer in the British Army. He then decided to change directions, studied medicine and became a practicing physician. Swire does not accept as credible some of the Lockerbie trial’s technical details about the explosives that brought down Pan Am 103.

Swire’s technical expertise and quiet determination as a father who lost his daughter to pursue the Pan Am 103 tragedy may yet trip up the real criminals who thought they would carry out the perfect crime. Had they succeeded, based on the sequence of events initiated by Mossad/ Trojan, Libya indeed would have seemed the guilty party.

Nearing the End of the Trail?

At last, however, investigators following the trail that may lead to the real criminals who destroyed Pan Am 103—or others on a trail leading nowhere—may be nearing its end. The Financial Times of Oct. 16 reported that the appeal by a woman who lost her sister at Lockerbie for “increased scrutiny of the intelligence agencies’ role in the tragedy,” had been rejected, not by the three-man lower court but by the five-judge appeal court which will begin hearing Megrahi’s appeal on Jan. 23, 2002.

Professor Black told the Washington Report that the court of appeal would not easily overrule its fellow Scots on the lower court. If new evidence not heard by the lower court should be presented, however, the higher court would be less likely automatically to uphold Megrahi’s conviction. The same Financial Times item says that a security guard at Heathrow Airport is ready to testify that Pan Am’s baggage area at Heathrow was broken into hours before the doomed Flight 103 took off. This would be entirely new evidence.

Further evidence, although not entirely new, from the first trial, will question the credibility of a Maltese shopkeeper who identified Megrahi as having purchased certain clothing found in the wreckage on a particular day in Valletta, Malta. British newspaper articles, including one last spring by Professor Black, argue that, if he was describing Megrahi, the shopkeeper was wrong about a critical date and extremely inaccurate in his description of the purchaser. Yet the lower court somehow found, to Professor Black’s astonishment, the shopkeeper’s inaccurate description to be an indictment of the Libyan.

By a strange coincidence of timing, on Oct. 31, as this article was being written, an article appeared in The Washington Times about one Isaac Yeffet, the former chief of security for the Israeli airline, El Al, whose record of tight security precautions at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport is touted as being unequaled. Yeffet was quoted as advising against federalizing 28,000 baggage screeners at American airports.

In an article in the now defunct Life magazine entitled “The Next Bomb,” (date unknown, but obviously not earlier than 1986) Edward Barnes reports, “From 1978 to 1984 Isaac Yeffet, 56, was director of security for El Al…in 1986 Yeffet was part of a team commissioned by Pan Am to survey 25 of their branches around the world….Yeffet now runs a security consulting business in New Jersey.”

Yeffet may have been successful in maintaining perfect security for El Al at Ben-Gurion Airport. But his efforts at Heathrow Airport in London, one of the airports he surveyed for Pan Am, and to which he and his employees had full rein, failed to save Pan Am Flight 103.

http://www.wrmea.com/archives/december01/0112017.html