[Fresh Ink] Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed

[Richard Menec]

http://www.countercurrents.org/pilger060909.htm

Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed

By John Pilger

06 September, 2009         Johnpilger.com

The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much 
about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, 
especially Britain. From Gordon Brown's "repulsion" to Barack Obama's 
"outrage," the theater of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those 
who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than 
three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex 
Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"

Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before 
he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice 
minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed 
al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power." Amen.

The American satirist Larry David once addressed a voluble crony as "a 
babbling brook of bullsh*t." Such eloquence summarizes the circus of Megrahi's 
release.

No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of 
Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 
1988 in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and 
Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a 
condition of his immediate release. 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."

"The endgame came down to damage limitation," said the former CIA officer 
Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, "because the 
evidence amassed by [Megrahi's] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to 
the system of justice." 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.

The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and 
bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside and said to have been 
in Megrahi's suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no 
trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the 
impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was 
"transferred" through two airports undetected to Flight 103.

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.

Megrahi was convicted by three Scottish judges sitting in a courtroom in 
"neutral" Holland. There was no jury. One of the few reporters to sit 
through the long and often farcical proceedings was the late Paul Foot, 
whose landmark investigation in Private Eye exposed it as a cacophony of 
blunders, deceptions and lies: a whitewash. 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." 
(Lockerbie - the Flight from Justice by Paul Foot can be downloaded from the 
Private Eye website for £5).

Foot reported that most of the staff of the US embassy in Moscow who had 
reserved seats on Pan Am flights from Frankfurt canceled their bookings when 
they were alerted by US intelligence that a terrorist attack was planned. He 
named Margaret Thatcher the "architect" of the cover-up after revealing that 
she killed the independent inquiry her transport secretary Cecil Parkinson 
had promised the Lockerbie families; and in a phone call to President George 
Bush Sr. on 11 January 1990, she agreed to "low-key" the disaster after 
their intelligence services had reported "beyond doubt" that the Lockerbie 
bomb had been placed by a Palestinian group contracted by Tehran as a 
reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a US warship in 
Iranian territorial waters. Among the 290 dead were 66 children. In 1990, 
the ship's captain was awarded the Legion of Merit by Bush Sr. "for 
exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service 
as commanding officer."

Perversely, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, Bush needed Iran's 
support as he built a "coalition" to expel his wayward client from an 
American oil colony. The only country that defied Bush and backed Iraq was 
Libya. "Like lazy and overfed fish," wrote Foot, "the British media jumped 
to the bait. In almost unanimous chorus, they engaged in furious 
vilification and op-ed warmongering against Libya." The framing of Libya for 
the Lockerbie crime was inevitable. Since then, a US defense intelligence 
agency report, obtained under Freedom of Information, has confirmed these 
truths and identified the likely bomber; it was to be centerpiece of Megrahi's 
defense.

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, with Kenny MacAskill reassuring the baying mob that the scapegoat 
will soon face justice from that "higher power." What a disgrace.

www.johnpilger.com