[THS] Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23425.htm

September 04, 2009

Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed

By John Pilger

September 04, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- 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