Here we go again. Call me Dave lands in Washington and promptly puts his foot in it. According to our dear leader, "Megrahi should have died in prison." But that would have meant his appeal being heard with the revelations of just how much political interference there had been in this case. There was a feeling that his conviction would have been overturned. Whoops! By sending him home to die many embarrassing facts stayed buried. Megrahi was the fall guy. But then he goes and spoils it all by not dying.
A lot of heat but little light has been deliberately spread about this awful incident. Anyone wanting to know the extent of the way the enquiry was structured and moulded for political purposes should read the report by Paul Foot. The full (30+pages) are available from the Private Eye website. (lockerbierpt.cfm.pdf)
Six months prior to the Lockerbie explosion the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the Straits of Hormuz. 290 passengers and crew died, including 60 children. Following the explosion of PanAm Flight 103, the British and American governments initially blamed the PFLP-GC a Palestine militant group backed by Syria with assistance from Iran. Logically, they felt this was likely to be a retaliatory action for Iran Air Flight 655. However, in a classic piece of real-politic, the rules in the Middle East changed with the first Iraq war of 1991. Syria became a much needed ally. Time to look for another culprit. Enter Libya, at that time a pariah state. Ideal.
From that point a completely new case was constructed on flimsy forensics, even dodgier eye-witness accounts and much assistance from the CIA. The CIA had crawled all over this case from the moment of the crash. Among the passengers were several CIA operatives with some interesting luggage. Tampering with evidence? Removing items from the crash scene? Pressurising witnesses? You bet. Thatcher maintained the cringe posture adopted by most UK Prime Ministers in the face of US pressure. It was reported in the US press that both Bush (senior) and Thatcher believed the Iranians were behind the bombing, but both accepted they didn't have the means to do anything about it. One of the first acts Cecil Parkinson did when he was re-instated as a cabinet minister, was to meet with the relatives of the Lockerbie victims. He promised them he would do his utmost to get a full public inquiry into the affair. Thatcher turned him down flat.
Following several contortions and an unbelievably awful 'trial' one of the two Libyan suspects was released and the other found guilty. This was an incredible verdict, as the prosecution case had been built on there being two bombers. They were either both guilty or neither were.
The UN Observer Dr Hans Kochler reported after the Kamp Van Zeist fiasco,
"The international observer may draw one general conclusion from the conduct of the trial, which allows to formulate a general maxim applicable to judicial procedures in general: proper judicial procedure is simply impossible if political interests and intelligence services – from whichever side – succeed in interfering in the actual conduct of a court. We should remember the wisdom of Immanuel Kant who – in his treatise on eternal peace (Zum ewigen Frieden), elaborating on the essence of the rule of law – unambiguously stated that secrecy is never compatible with a republican system determined by the rule of law. The purpose of intelligence services – from whichever side – lies in secret action and deception, not in the search for truth. Justice and the rule of law can never be achieved without transparency."
'Call me Dave' needs to bear the above in mind when he considers his decision to launch an inquiry into torture using a compromised Judge. We have had enough of this sort of crap. We need transparency. The relatives of the Lockerbie victims deserve a frank, transparent and rigorous inquiry - as do all the victims of torture and rendition.
A final thought - the US never apologised to Iran for shooting down their airliner - nor were any US service personnel held to account. In fact, they received medals. Odd that.
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