Libya

Wow things are getting crazy in Libya now. BP is now going to be in one tight spot. This all fascinates me as Tony Blair was courting Libya big time. This revolution may be a bigger game changer than Egypt because Libya has the most oil in the Middle East. The USA and the UK are both going to have to abandon all former plans concerning oil from Libya.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8337546/Libya-protests-gather-pace-as-Gaddafis-son-vows-to-fight-to-the-end.html

Lockerbie's dirty secret

The Guardian, Wednesday 31 March 2004 02.05 BST
Article history
As he basks in the success of his controversial visit to Libya, the prime minister has to grapple at once with an awkward letter. It was delivered on Monday by UK Families Flight 103 representing most of the British families bereaved by the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The letter starts by reminding Blair that the families supported his visit to Libya in the expectation that the talks with Colonel Muammar Gadafy would lead to more information about the bombing. Moreover, the letter says, their support for the visit was widely used by ministers to justify the visit to Libya. Yet the visit has not led to any more information about the bombing.

And recent letters to the secretary of the group, Pamela Dix - whose brother died at Lockerbie - from Baroness Symons, minister of state at the Foreign Office, and from the Crown Office in Edinburgh, have argued that any further questions to the Libyans about Lockerbie would not be helpful. In short, ministers took the credit of the families' support without asking a single question about Lockerbie to justify that support. In a sense of deep outrage, the families are asking the prime minister for a meeting to discuss Lockerbie as a matter of urgency.

More people died at Lockerbie than in Madrid, and you would have thought that the government, if only as proof of its horror at terrorism, would be keen to question its new friends in Tripoli about the bombing. Not so, apparently. So the only hard information the families have is that Abdul Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan official, apparently working in intelligence, was convicted in January 2001 of bombing the airliner. How he accomplished this feat is still a mystery. The details of the crime did not emerge at the trial, which was held by Scottish judges sitting without a jury in Holland. It lasted 18 months and cost an estimated £50m.

Megrahi's co-accused was acquitted, so the prosecution's suggestion that the two men conspired to bomb the plane cannot be right. Indeed, the crucial evidence that the bomb was put on a feeder flight at Malta and was transferred twice, at Frankfurt and at Heathrow, was so thin it was derisory.

No one knows whether anyone else took part in this sophisticated crime of terror. One man has been convicted. The Libyan government has forked out many millions in compensation. And that, apparently, is the end of the matter. Many of the bereaved relatives, including Dix, are increasingly disturbed at the behaviour of ministers who talk business and politics to the Gadafy regime, but are not remotely interested in pressing anyone in it to tell the whole story about Lockerbie.

There is, in my opinion (not necessarily shared by the families), an explanation for all this, an explanation so shocking that no one in high places can contemplate it. It is that the Lockerbie bombing was carried out not by Libyans at all but by terrorists based in Syria and hired by Iran to avenge the shooting down in the summer of 1988 of an Iranian civil airliner by a US warship. This was the line followed by both British and US police and intelligence investigators after Lockerbie. Through favoured newspapers like the Sunday Times, the investigators named the suspects - some of whom had been found with home-made bombs similar to the one used at Lockerbie.

This line of inquiry persisted until April 1989, when a phone call from President Bush senior to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned her not to proceed with it. A year later, British and US armed forces prepared for an attack on Saddam Hussein's occupying forces in Kuwait. Their coalition desperately needed troops from an Arab country. These were supplied by Syria, which promptly dropped out of the frame of Lockerbie suspects. Libya, not Syria or Iran, mysteriously became the suspect country, and in 1991 the US drew up an indictment against two Libyan suspects. The indictment was based on the "evidence" of a Libyan "defector", handsomely paid by the CIA. His story was such a fantastic farrago of lies and fantasies that it was thrown out by the Scottish judges.

In Britain, meanwhile, Thatcher, John Major and Blair obstinately turned down the bereaved families' requests for a full public inquiry into the worst mass murder in British history.

It follows from this explanation that Megrahi is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing and his conviction is the last in the long line of British judges' miscarriages of criminal justice. This explanation is also a terrible indictment of the cynicism, hypocrisy and deceit of the British and US governments and their intelligence services. Which is probably why it has been so consistently and haughtily ignored.

comment@guardian.co.uk

Conversion felt like 'coming home'

Cherie drove me to become Catholic, reveals Tony Blair, claiming conversion felt like 'coming home'

By Nick Pisa
Last updated at 11:56 AM on 28th August 2009



Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism was spurred by his wife.

Speaking for the first time about his conversion two years ago, the former prime minister said wife Cherie Blair won the toss when they decided where to go to Mass.

He told a religious conference in Italy: 'Frankly this all began with my wife.

'I began to go to Mass and we went together. We could have gone to the Anglican or Catholic church - guess who won?'


'Where my heart is': Tony Blair and wife Cherie arrive at a service in memory of Pope John Paul II at London's Westminster Cathedral

Mr Blair chose to remain a member of the Church of England after spin doctor Alistair Campbell famously warned him: 'We don't do religion'.

But the former premier, who set up The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, last night told the Communion and Liberation Committee in Rimini, Italy, that switching to Catholicism was like 'coming home' and is now 'where my heart is.'


According to London's Evening Standard, he said: 'As time went on, I had been going to Mass for a long time... it's difficult to find the right words. I felt this was right for me. There was something, not just about the doctrine of the Church, but of the universal nature of the Catholic Church.'

He told the delegates of how he had been to Mass in several countries in the past few weeks and described an incident at the end of a service in Tokyo where he had been asked to stand up and talk about himself.

He said: 'For the first time in a long while I was able to stand up and tell a crowd of Japanese, 'I'm Tony and I'm from London'.'

Mr Blair, who began his speech in Italian, said: 'It is a pleasure always to be in Italy. It is here in this country that I have spent many happy times and where 30 years ago, almost to the day, I proposed to my wife and three decades and four children later, I at least am still pleased to recall the memory.

'Ever since I began preparations to become a Catholic I felt I was coming home and this is now where my heart is, where I know I belong.'

In his speech entitled 'Person, Community and State', he made a brief reference to his own journey from popular Opposition leader to heavilycriticised premier.

'As Prime Minister of the UK for 10 years, but also as leader of the Labour Party for 13, during which time I reformed its constitution precisely around the relationship between the individual and the state, I learnt many things.

'I began hoping to please all of the people all of the time; and ended wondering if I was pleasing any of the people any of the time. But that's another story.

'In my foundation - dedicated to respect and understanding between the religious faiths - I always say clearly I am and remain a Christian, seeking salvation through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Lockerbie and Kafka's Labyrinth

by by Michael Carmichael

In December 1988, I was living in the United Kingdom when the searing news of the Lockerbie bombing exploded into the global consciousness. With 270 victims, Lockerbie was at once the worst act of terrorism on British soil and the most heinous act of terrorism yet perpetrated against Americans. Twelve years later, Lockerbie would produce one of the most expensive trials in world history (75 million pounds sterling, circa $120 million) and what has become a highly contentious verdict.

At the time of the tragedy, an extremist group of Palestinians backed by Iran was selected as the primary suspect, but two years later when Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait the spotlight of suspicion shifted to Libya. Bush, Sr. needed Iranian support for the invasion of Kuwait -- a nation courted assiduously by the Reagan-Bush administration through the notorious Iran-Contra Scandal and beyond.

Under the crushing weight of draconian sanctions, Libya eventually realized the wisdom of producing members of its own intelligence apparatus who could help them engineer the lifting of crippling trade restrictions. In the course of time, two hapless Libyans: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah would be extradited and sent to an obscure US military base called, Camp Zeist, where they would be placed on trial. On the 31st of January 2001 over twelve years after the tragedy shook the civilized world, a panel consisting of three Scottish judges convicted Megrahi and acquited Fhimah. Megrahi received a life sentence intended to compel him to serve at least 27 years in prison.

Over the course of the intervening eight years, lawyers representing Megrahi have argued for a new trial. In 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred the Megrahi case to the Justiciary, the Scottish Appellate Court, a development that could have led to his acquittal. The grounds for the Commission's ruling were stark: exculpatory evidence had been repressed at the original trial. The official announcement from the Commission stated: "The applicant (Megrahi) may have suffered a miscarriage of justice."

These developments were adequately reported in the Scottish, UK and European Media, but sadly and mysteriously, these crucial decisions were sparsely reported in the US media where the Murtagh Building and 9/11 have obscured the finite analysis of all previous terrorist tragedies.

In 2007, Hugh Miles published a masterful analysis of the case in the London Review of Books, but the in-depth coverage has been slight or virtually invisible in Bush Era / Post-9/11 America. The result is a sadly uninformed nation and government.

In recent months, Megrahi's attorneys have come to an arrangement whereby their client -- who is now suffering terminal cancer and estimated to be within only a few months of his death -- should be released on compassionate humanitarian grounds. This decision will almost surely alleviate any potential lawsuit by Libya over the $2.7 billion she continues to pay to the families of the 270 victims - a settlement of $10 million per family.

This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a public statement opposing Megrahi's release, while the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry; Senator Edward Kennedy; Senator Patrick Leahy and others signed a letter objecting to the release of Megrahi. These epistles may embarrass their writers in the future.

From the accounts of the Senators' letter that have been published, it now appears that none of the US officials were adequately briefed on the judicial developments in the case. None of the American officials have mentioned the SCCRC's judicial review, and none of them recognized the growing public sentiment in Scotland, Britain, Europe and the Middle East that a massive miscarriage of justice was committed in Megrahi's case.

The original case was tried in a Kafkaesque atmosphere. With proceedings convened at the US military installation, Camp Zeist, the two defendants were tried under Scottish law by a three-judge panel. The prosecution alleged a conspiracy that involved planting the bomb on the Pan Am plane at a stop in Malta. The forensic evidence has been described as tenuous. Three days after he had seen a photograph of Megrahi in a newspaper, a Maltese shop owner identified him as the man who had purchased some clothes that had been identified by technicians and traced to his shop in Malta that were detected amidst bomb debris in a painstaking forensic investigation.

To make matters worse, over the years intelligence and police officials have disclosed that they were in control of evidence that proved Megrahi to be innocent and that other perpetrators known to the international intelligence community were guilty of the atrocity. To recount only one bizarre incident, Susan Lindauer, a US Congressional aide, testified that Dr. Richard Fuisz who was employed by the CIA had informed her that he knew for a fact that Megrahi was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing -- and that he could identify the actual perpetrators, "If the government would let me." After making her evidence known, Lindauer was charged with being an Iraqi agent and a federal court promptly gagged the loquacious Dr. Fuisz.

A Scottish jurist and a UN official have criticized the Kafkaesque atmosphere that surrounded Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist. Apparently, officials from the US Department of Justice swirled around the improvised courtroom imbuing the proceedings with the unmistakable stench of oppressive political influence.

Lockerbie remains a compelling and inscrutable tragedy. The victims deserve an unbiased investigation -- but at this late date the probability that the perpetrators of Lockerbie will ever be known is diminishing. The current legal posture of the case is untenable.

The Director of Central Intelligence should order his staff to remove the gag from Dr. Fuisz and any other informant with knowledge of the facts in this labyrinthine and Kafkaesque case -- and report the findings to the President and the people as a matter of course.

Michael Carmichael is the founder of Planetary. Carmichael's political commentary is featured on Global Research, International Clearing House, The Huffington Post, The Baltimore Chronicle, Dandelion Salad, Tea Break, Vijayvaana and Scoop.

Hero's welcome for Lockerbie bomber who slaughtered 270 as shabby political deal provokes U.S. outrage

By David Williams and Ian Drury
Last updated at 12:18 AM on 21st August 2009

This was the moment the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing flew home to a hero's welcome.

As thousands cheered, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was escorted down the steps of his plane by Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Earlier this month, Saif Gaddafi met Lord Mandelson in Corfu, raising suspicions that a deal was being made to free 57-year-old Megrahi.


Yesterday Megrahi, who is dying of cancer, was freed on compassionate grounds by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

The decision was bitterly condemned by relatives of many of the 270 victims of the bombing and branded a mistake by President Barack Obama.

Mr Obama said his government had told Libya there must be no celebration for Megrahi.

But thousands of people wore T-shirts bearing Megrahi's picture and waved Libyan and Scottish flags as he arrived at a military airbase in Tripoli.

Thousands of people waving Libyan and Scottish flags, and Megrahi posters converge on the airport in Tripoli to show their support

But in Britain and the U.S., TV coverage of Megrahi's flight brought new anguish to bereaved families.

There was angry contempt for Mr MacAskill, who spent 24 minutes delivering his decision.

He admitted Megrahi had shown no compassion to his victims, but added: 'That alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days.


He said the Libyan has only months to live and 'now faces justice from a higher power ... he is going to die'.

Megrahi was sentenced to life in January 2001, with a minimum term of 27 years, for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 in December 1988. He served just a third of that - two weeks for every victim.


Suse Lowenstein, of Montauk, New York, whose 21-year-old son Alexander Lowenstein was killed, spoke for many in the U.S. when she said: 'It is so devastating and so difficult to accept that the one man we had responsible for the murders is going home to die in the arms of his family. It is just beyond comprehension.

'He has the luxury to be at home with his family, which our son did not have.'

Kara Weipz, 36, from New Jersey, who lost her student brother Rick, 20, said : 'I think it is a horrible decision. It's just utterly despicable.

'Why should he be returned to Libya? That's not what we were promised. We were always told he would serve out his full sentence in Scotland.'



Outrage: Barack Obama, pictured on radio yesterday, urged the Libyan government not to give Megrahi a hero's welcome. He's pictured right, covering his face in Glasgow before boarding his flight home, where he was greeted by thousands of cheering fans


More than relaxed: Megrahi would have been feeling ecstatic as he walked up the stairs to waiting jet at Glasgow Airport knowing that he would soon be in the arms of his family

Anger has been compounded by claims that the release was brokered by Tony Blair during a meeting with Gaddafi two years ago - just hours before BP unveiled a £500million oil contract.

The former Prime Minister has been accused of a 'blood money' deal to protect Britain's oil interests.

Relatives of some of the British victims, who believe Megrahi is innocent, had backed his release.

But they are upset that he dropped his second appeal against conviction - an appeal they believed would lead to a public inquiry and the truth finally emerging.



Fury: A police convoy carrying Megrahi leaves Greenock prison near Glasgow as people protest against his release



Bound for freedom: The private plane carrying the dying Megrahi takes off at Glasgow airport after Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill freed him on compassionate grounds

Last night Megrahi issued an extraordinary statement aimed directly at the families. He expressed sympathy for them but maintained his innocence.

He said: 'Many people, including the relatives of those who died in and over Lockerbie, are, I know, upset that my appeal has come to an end; that nothing more can be done about the circumstances surrounding the Lockerbie bombing.

'I share their frustration. I had most to gain and nothing to lose about the whole truth coming out - until my diagnosis of cancer.


Fate sealed: Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill announces his decision to free Megrahi

'To those victims' relatives who can bear to hear me say this, they continue to have my sincere sympathy for the unimaginable loss that they have suffered.'

It went on: 'The remaining days of my life are being lived under the shadow of the wrongness of my conviction. I have been faced with an appalling choice: to risk dying in prison in the hope my name is cleared posthumously or to return home still carrying the weight of the guilty verdict, which will now never be lifted.'

In his explanation of the release, Mr MacAskill strongly condemned Gordon Brown for the government's 'highly regrettable' conduct over the trial and conviction of Megrahi accusing the Prime Minister of shrouding in secrecy crucial details surrounding the case case.

Just an hour after Mr MacAskill's announcement at lunchtime yesterday, Megrahi was driven through the gates of Greenock prison in a white prison van with an escort of police cars.

The Libyan Airbus - one of Colonel Gaddafi's personal planes - was waiting at Glasgow airport.

The prison van pulled up near the foot of the airliner's steps and the door slid open to provide the first glimpse of Megrahi since news of his pending release was leaked last week.

Wearing a white baseball cap and what appeared to be a white tracksuit, he emerged from the van looking stooped and frail.

But he needed only the help of a stick to walk the 29 steps into the plane and freedom, his release papers clutched in his hand.


Atrocity: Police carry a body away from the crash site of the Pan Am Flight 103 in Scotland in 1988. It killed 270, many of them Americans

Blair, 'blood money' and a Lockerbie deal: Talks with Gaddafi hours before BP agreement

THIS HAS COME TO PASS AND MEGRAHI HAS BEEN RECEIVED WITH A HEROS WELCOME IN HIS NATIVE LIBYA!

By Ian Drury
Last updated at 9:41 AM on 20th August 2009


Gaddafi 'to send private jet to pick up bomber' from Glasgow

Obama calls on Megrahi to be made to 'serve out his term'

Megrahi's wife says bomber is 'very happy' to come home

Tony Blair has been accused of agreeing a 'blood money' deal involving the Lockerbie bomber with Colonel Gaddafi just hours before BP unveiled a £500million oil contract.

The then Prime Minister laid the foundations for the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi during a meeting with the Libyan leader in a desert tent two years ago.

The pair thrashed out a controversial prisoner transfer deal just before BP chairman Peter Sutherland announced the firm was investing $900million - about £545million - to search for oil in Libya. If the firm strikes rich, it could be worth £13billion.


The Scottish Government confirmed that its justice secretary Kenny MacAskill would announce Megrahi's fate at 1pm today.

It is widely expected that the terminally-ill 57-year-old, the only person convicted of the December 1988 bombing, will be freed on compassionate grounds.


Dirty deals?: Lockerbie victims' families accuse Tony Blair of making a deal involving the Libyan bomber with Colonel Gaddafi two years ago

The Scottish Executive said in a statement: 'Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has informed families and other interested parties that he has reached his decisions on the applications for prisoner transfer and compassionate release in relation to Mr Megrahi and will announce his decisions on Thursday, August 20, 2009.

'This fulfils the Justice Secretary's pledge to inform families on both sides of the Atlantic, in advance, of the timing of his public announcement.'


If as expected he is released rather than moved to a Libyan jail, he will almost certainly board a private jet at Prestwick Airport, Ayrshire.

The affair has caused a huge transatlantic rift with families of the victims outraged.

Megrahi's wife Aisha told The Times her husband still 'didn't know' when he would be freed from Glasgow's Greenock prison, but was 'very happy' at the prospect of returning to his homeland.

It was also reported that the convicted bomber had called his mother in Libya and told her he hoped to be with her by Ramadan,

Hajja Fatma, 95, told the Tripoli Post in Libya: 'I do not close the house's door at all. I am expecting him to enter at any moment.

'Eleven years I did not spend the holy month of Ramadan with him, I am waiting for that day when he comes back.'

She maintained that her son was innocent of killing 270 people in the Lockerbie bomb, saying 'he would not slaughter a chicken'.

The U.S. government continued to put last-minute pressure on the Scottish Executive yesterday, with a spokesman for Mr Obama insisting Megrahi should 'serve out his term' in Scotland.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also issued a personal plea to keep the bomber behind bars.


Death sentence: Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi is dying from prostate cancer

The former New York Senator said she knew many of the American families who lost relatives in the atrocity and that to release Megrahi would be 'absolutely wrong'.

Mrs Clinton yesterday said Megrahi's release would be 'inappropriate, and very much against the wishes of the family members of the victims who suffered such grievous losses'.

She added: 'I take this very personally because I knew a lot of the family members of those who were lost.

'I just think it is absolutely wrong to release someone who has been imprisoned based on the evidence about his involvement in such a horrendous crime.

'We are still encouraging the Scottish authorities not to do so, and hope they will not.'

Later, Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Mr Obama, added: 'It's the policy of this administration that this individual should serve out his term where he's serving it right now.'

In a thinly-veiled attack on U.S. attempts to influence the decision, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has insisted 'international power politics' will be ignored.

But the SNP can expect a huge transatlantic outcry if, as is likely, Megrahi is granted mercy.

Critics are suspicious that Mr Blair's deal was part of an attempt to develop closer relations with the former pariah state to protect Britain's oil interests.

Susan Cohen, whose only child Theodora, 20, was killed in the bombing, said: 'Tony Blair has behaved absolutely appallingly. Some people would describe it as blood money.


Atrocity: Most of the dead on the Pan Am flight 103 were Americans returning home for Christmas

'He put compassion for the oil industry ahead of any compassion for my daughter, for the families of all those people killed by a convicted mass murderer and terrorist.

'It just shows that the power of oil money counts for more than justice.'

Christine Grahame, an SNP member of the Scottish Parliament who believes Megrahi is innocent, said the politics of the case 'had to be examined'.

'The Libyan government paid the U.S. relatives £803million in compensation,' she said. 'Afterwards what happens? The U.S. and UK governments pay almost exactly the same amount to allow oil exploration in Libya. There are dirty deals here.'



On Tuesday Megrahi, who has been told he could have only days to live, dropped his second appeal, removing any legal bar on his release.

Despite the likelihood of Megrahi's release, there have been no public moves to bring back the Libyan gunman who murdered WPC Yvonne Fletcher in London in 1984.

The 25-year-old was patrolling a protest outside the Libyan Embassy when she was killed by a bullet fired from inside. All those inside were allowed to return to Tripoli under diplomatic immunity.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208001/Heros-welcome-Lockerbie-bomber-Megrahi-slaughtered-270.html