Exclusive: Megrahi says his Lockerbie role exaggerated

Convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi speaks during an exclusive interview with Reuters TV at his home in Tripoli, October 3, 2011.

Πηγή: Reuters
By Mahmoud al-Ghirbani

Oct 3 2011

(Reuters) - Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, said his role in the attack had been exaggerated and the truth about what really happened would emerge soon.

Al-Megrahi, released from a Scottish prison two years ago because he was suffering from terminal cancer, spoke to Reuters from a bed at his home in Tripoli. Looking frail and his breathing labored, he said he had only a few months, at most, left to live.

"The facts (about the Lockerbie bombing) will become clear one day and hopefully in the near future. In a few months from now, you will see new facts that will be announced," he told Reuters Television over the pinging of medical monitors around his bed.

"The West exaggerated my name. Please leave me alone. I only have a few more days, weeks or months."

Al-Megrahi was found guilty of bombing Pan Am flight 103 while it was en route from London to New York on December 21, 1988. All 259 people aboard the plane were killed and 11 others on the ground in Lockerbie also died from falling wreckage.

Al-Megrahi, who had served as an intelligence agent during the rule of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, denied any role in suspected human rights abuses under Gaddafi's administration.

"All my work was administrative. I never harmed Libyans," he said." I didn't harm anyone. I've never harmed anyone in my life."

He called the trial that led to his conviction a farce. The proceedings were held in a Dutch court under Scottish jurisdiction.

"Camp Zeist Court is the smallest place on earth that contains the largest number of liars. I suffered from the liars at Camp Zeist Court more than you can imagine," he said.

UNSHAVEN

Al-Megrahi lay propped at a slight angle in a hospital-style bed. An oxygen tank stood nearby, but he did not use an oxygen mask during the interview. Members of his family were in the room with him.

Unshaven, he wore a checked shirt and had a white headdress wrapped loosely around his head.

Libya's ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) said last week it would work with the Scottish government over the possible involvement of others in the 1988 bombing, an attack the country's new rulers are eager to distance themselves from.

The NTC had previously called the case closed and said any probe would not involve Megrahi, who had been serving a life sentence in Scotland prior to his release. NTC head Mustafa Abdel Jalil has previously claimed to have evidence of Gaddafi's involvement in the bombing.

A second defendant, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was cleared of murder charges in the proceedings.

In his interview, al-Megrahi said that Jim Swire, the father of one of the victims of the bombing who has disputed the court's findings, maintained contact with him.

"The day before yesterday, Dr. Swire sent me an email to tell me that there is a new medicine. He is trying to help me. He told me how to get this medicine."

He said he had little knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Gaddafi's overthrow and that the armed groups which toppled Gaddafi had invaded his home and mistreated him.

"I don't know anything about February 17th...that's not a question for a sick person," he said, using the term by which many Libyans describe the anti-Gaddafi rebellion. "I hear airplanes overhead every day," he said, referring to NATO planes which have bombed sites in Libya.

"My house has been violated. They smashed the main door and stole my cars."

He said he was being denied medical treatment which he said was stipulated in the deal that saw him returned from Scotland to Libya.

"I was treated badly when I came back. During the latest incidents, especially in the last month, I have a shortage of all my medicines. My doctor tells me to look for medicine like anyone else despite the agreement between us and Britain," he said. "I have four pills left (of one of the medications)."

"I want to die in my house, among my family. I hope to God that I will see my country united, with no fighting or war. I hope the bloodshed will stop in Libya. I wish all the best for my country."

Lockerbie resident Sarah Lawson, 87, who still lives in Sherwood Crescent where debris from the plane demolished houses and killed 11 residents, questioned whether the truth about the bombing would ever emerge.

"I don't think he did it...somebody else did it. Maybe he had a job to do and he had to do it otherwise it would've cost him his life," she told Reuters by telephone after the interview with Megrahi.

Megrahi's release was conditional on his agreement to make himself available to talk by telephone or video link with officials from the criminal justice department of East Renfrewshire, an area of Scotland where Megrahi's family lived while he was imprisoned.

"Our criminal justice service monitor Mr Megrahi based on the license that was issued at the time of his release," a spokesman for East Renfrewshire council said.

"We continue to monitor him regularly and he has not breached any of the conditions imposed on him as part of that license," he said.

The British Foreign Office and Scottish government had no immediate comment.

Editor's Note: See also 'Al-Megrahi: The dying breath of a moribund justice?'

Al-Megrahi: The dying breath of a moribund justice?

Al- Megrahi former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and former director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli was convicted of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government on 20 August 2009 following doctors reporting on 10 August 2009 that he had terminal prostate cancer and was expected to have around three months to live.

The trial

During the trial the UN appointed observer and distinguished Austrian philosopher Koechler dinounced the procedure saying that "there seemed to be considerable political influence on the judges and the verdict." Koechler queried the active involvement of senior US Justice Department officials as part of the Scotch prosecution team "in a supervisory role". 

The case was based (a) on the presumption that the bomb timer on the PanAm plane was from a batch sold by a Swiss firm to Libya; (b) that fragments of clothing retrieved from the crash site and identified as having been in the suitcase that contained the bomb had been bought by the accused Megrahi from a shop in Malta; and (c) that a "secret witness," Abdulmajid Gialka, a former colleague of the accused pair in the Libyan Airlines office in Malta, would testify that he had observed them either constructing the bomb or at least seen them loading it onto the plane in Frankfurt. 

Ulrich Lumpert, the Mebo AG engineer who testified to the validity of the first key piece of evidence, namely the bomb timer, lastly admitted in an affidavit to lying in court and stealing the object from his employer after the attack whereupon it was planted. By the time of the trial, Gialka had been living under witness protection in the US. He had received $320,000 from his American hosts and, in the event of conviction of the accused, stood to collect up to $2 million in reward money. He had CIA connections, so the defense lawyers learned, before 1988. 

Tony Gauci, the owner of the shop in Malta from where Megrahi had allegedly bought the clothes not only failed to recognize him in 19 separate statements to the police prior to the trial, but later in Megrahi's second appeal and trial's review (Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) was proved that he could not be at this shop on the alleged Christmas time. Megrahi prior to his release had dropped his second appeal raising questions about pressures he had come under. 

Upon his release suspicions were raised about alleged secret negotiations between the oil giant BP and the British government while others pointed to the pressure of a Libyan investment company, the Dalia Advisory Limited, supposed to be a front company of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) threatening to withdraw her huge investments if Megrahi died in jail. 

The aftermath

Recently, Jalil the chairman of the Transitional National Council (TNC) the Libyan rebel's government during the first days of the rebellion pointed his finger to Gaddafi claiming that he hold evidence that he was the brains behind the bombing which didn't disclose till now, apparently in a gesture to the West powers for support.

After many false rumors by the media claiming that Megrahi was not ill at all but alive and Kicking, finally he was found on his death bead in Tripoli. On Monday, it was discovered a private letter that he wrote  while serving his life sentence in the U.K back in 1988 to the Libya's intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi maintaining his innocence saying: "I am an innocent man".

His son, Khaled al-Megrahi, told CNN: “We just give him oxygen. Nobody gives us any advice. There is no doctor. There is nobody to ask. We don’t have any phone line to call anybody. We just sit next to him … he has stopped eating and sometimes he goes into coma.”

Mohammed al-Alagi, the National Transitional Council’s justice minister, dismissed suggestions that he may be extradited saying:

“We will not give any Libyan citizen to the West,” he said. “Al-Megrahi has already been judged once and he will not be judged again ... We do not hand over Libyan citizens.”

Perhaps Megrahi's death will be very convenient as in a new trial he could probably be found to be innocent...

WikiLeaks cables expose Washington’s close ties to Gaddafi

Πηγή: Global Research
By Bill Van Auken
August 29, 2011

US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday and Thursday expose the close collaboration between the US government, top American politicians and Muammar Gaddafi, who Washington now insists must be hunted down and murdered.

Washington and its NATO allies are now determined to smash the Libyan regime, supposedly in the interests of “liberating” the Libyan people. That Gaddafi was until the beginning of this year viewed as a strategic, if somewhat unreliable, ally is clearly seen as an inconvenient truth.

The cables have been virtually blacked out by the corporate media, which has functioned as an embedded asset of NATO and the so-called rebel forces that it directs. It is hardly coincidental that the WikiLeaks posting of the cables was followed the next day by a combination of a massive denial of service attack and a US judge’s use of the Patriot Act to issue a sweeping “production order” or subpoena against the anti-secrecy organization’s California-based Domain Name Server, Dynadot.

The most damning of these cables memorializes an August 2009 meeting between Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his son and national security adviser, Muatassim, with US Republican Senators John McCain (Arizona), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Susan Collins (Maine) and Connecticut “independent” Joe Lieberman.

McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, has in recent speeches denounced Gaddafi as “one of the most bloodthirsty dictators on Earth” and criticized the Obama administration for failing “to employ the full weight of our airpower” in effecting regime change in Libya.

In the meeting held just two years ago, however, McCain took the lead in currying favor with the Gaddafis. According to the embassy cable, he “assured” them that “the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs for its security” and “pledged to see what he could do to move things forward in Congress.”

The cable continues to relate McCain’s remarks: “He encouraged Muatassim to keep in mind the long-term perspective of bilateral security engagement and to remember that small obstacles will emerge from time to time that can be overcome. He described the bilateral military relationship as strong and pointed to Libyan officer training at U.S. Command, Staff, and War colleges as some of the best programs for Libyan military participation.”

The cable quote Lieberman as saying, “We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi.” It states that the Connecticut senator went on to describe Libya as “an important ally in the war on terrorism, noting that common enemies sometimes make better friends.”

The “common enemies” referred to by Lieberman were precisely the Islamist forces concentrated in eastern Libya that the US then backed Gaddafi in repressing, but has now organized, armed and led in the operation to overthrow him.

The US embassy summarized: “McCain’s meetings with Muammar and Muatassim al-Qadhafi were positive, highlighting the progress that has been made in the bilateral relationship. The meetings also reiterated Libya’s desire for enhanced security cooperation, increased assistance in the procurement of defense equipment, and resolution to the C130s issue” (a contract that went unfulfilled because of previous sanctions).

Another cable issued on the same meeting deals with McCain’s advice to the Gaddafis about the upcoming release from a Scottish prison of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who had been convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. McCain, who now fulminates about Gaddafi having “American blood on his hands,” counseled the Libyan leader that the release was a “very sensitive issue” in the US and that he should handle it discreetly, “in a way that would strengthen the growing relationship between our two countries, rather than hinder its progress.” Ultimately Gaddafi and other leading Libyan officials gave a hero’s welcome to Megrahi, who has proclaimed his innocence and had been set to have his appeal heard when the Scottish government released him.

Other cables highlight the increasingly close US-Libyan military and security cooperation. One, sent in February 2009, provides a “security environment profile” for Libya. It notes that US personnel were “scheduled to provide 5 training courses to host government law enforcement and security” the next month. In answer to whether the Libyan government had been able to “score any major anti-terrorism successes,” the embassy praised the Gaddafi regime for having “dismantled a network in eastern Libya that was sending volunteer fighters to Algeria and Iraq and was plotting attacks against Libyan security targets using stockpiled explosives. The operation resulted in the arrest of over 100 individuals.” Elements of this same “network” make up an important component of the “rebels” now armed and led by NATO.

Asked by the State Department if there existed any “indigenous anti-American terrorist groups” in the country, the embassy replied “yes”, pointing to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which it noted had recently announced its merger with Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Again, elements of the LIFG are active in the leadership of the so-called rebels.

An April 2009 cable preparing Muatassim Gaddafi’s trip to Washington that month stresses plans for anti-terrorist training for Libyan military officers and potential arms deals. In its conclusion the embassy states: “The visit offers an opportunity to meet a power player and potential future leader of Libya. We should also view the visit as an opportunity to draw out Muatassim on how the Libyans view ‘normalized relations’ with the U.S. and, in turn, to convey how we view the future of the relationship as well. Given his role overseeing Libya’s national security apparatus, we also want his support on key security and military engagement that serves our interests.”

A May 2009 cable details a cordial hour-long meeting between Gaddafi and the then-head of the US Africa Command, General William Ward.

An August 2008 cable, a “scene setter” for the “historic visit” of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Tripoli, declares that “Libya has been a strong partner in the war against terrorism and cooperation in liaison channels is excellent … Counter-terrorism cooperation is a key pillar of the U.S.-Libya bilateral relationship and a shared strategic interest.”

Many of the cables deal with opportunities for US energy and construction firms to reap “bonanzas” in the North African country and note with approval privatization efforts and the setting up of a Tripoli stock exchange.

Others, however, express concern, not about the Gaddafi regime’s repressive measures, but rather foreign policy and oil policy moves that could prejudice US interests. Thus, an October 2008 cable, cynically headlined “AL-QADHAFI: TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE?” expresses US concern about the Gaddafi regime’s approach to Russia for lucrative arms purchases and a visit to Tripoli harbor by a flotilla of Russian warships. One month later, during a visit to Moscow, Gaddafi discussed with the Putin regime the prospect of the Russian navy establishing a Mediterranean port in the city of Benghazi, setting off alarm bells at the Pentagon.

Cables from 2008 and 2009 raise concerns about US corporations not getting in on “billions of dollars in opportunities” for infrastructure contracts and fears that the Gaddafi regime could make good on the Libyan leader’s threat to nationalize the oil sector or utilize the threat to extract more favorable contracts from the foreign energy corporations.

The cables underscore the hypocrisy of the US and its allies in Britain, France and Italy, who have championed “regime change” in the name of protecting Libyan civilians and promoting “democracy.”

Those like Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron and Berlusconi who have branded Gaddafi a criminal to be hunted down and murdered were all his accomplices. All of them collaborated with, armed and supported the Gaddafi regime, as US and European corporations reaped vast profits from Libya’s oil wealth.

In the end, they seized upon the upheavals in the region and the anti-Gaddafi protests in Libya as the opportunity to launch a war to establish outright semi-colonial control over the energy-rich country and rid themselves of an ally who was never seen as fully reliable or predictable and upset his patrons with demands
for better deals with big oil, closer ties with Russia and China and the threat of replacing the euro and dollar with a “gold dinar.”