The 1988 Lockerbie bombing that robbed 270 people of their lives has been hurled into the spotlight once more. The only individual ever to be convicted in connection with that tragedy Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi, a Libyan, may only have three months to live due to terminal prostrate cancer. The Libyan government has requested his return to Tripoli on compassionate grounds under a Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) — a request that, according to reports, the Scottish justice minister is in the process of favorably considering.
There is just one snag. Although most families of British victims back Al-Megrahi’s repatriation, the families of US victims are largely vehemently opposed, as is the US State Department. Indeed, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked Scotland to ensure that Al-Megrahi continues to serve out his sentence there.
Under the conditions of the PTA, signed by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, before he can return home, Al-Megrahi must first drop his appeal in a Scottish High Court, which he has now instructed his legal team to do. This step has come as a surprise to his supporters, who say he has always sworn to clear his name before going back to his home country.
Some of those close to him, who believe in his innocence, including the Scottish Member of Parliament Christine Grahame, say he has been pressured to abort the appeals process. A former Lockerbie parish priest Canon Patrick Keegans suggests a more sinister slant. He suspects the British authorities are eager to “get Mr. Megrahi out of the country and to have the appeal halted at all costs, for fear of what might be revealed.”
He may have a point as Ms. Grahame reveals there are 600 pages of evidence from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that bolster Al-Megrahi’s case. She is disappointed that with the abandonment of the appeals process this evidence may never see the light of day, and calls for a full public inquiry.
Former British Member of Parliament and Father of the House of Commons Tam Dalyell has been even more outspoken on the subject. Writing in The Times last year, he professed to a deep conviction that neither Al-Magrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103 and claims that Al-Megrahi has been “the victim of one of the most spectacular and expensive miscarriages of justice in history.” He maintains that Libya was framed due to political expediency, a view that his detractors have filed in a drawer marked “conspiracy theories.”
But Dalyell is far from being the only student of the case who is convinced that all is not as it appears on the surface. Private investigator Carl A. Davies has written a book on Lockerbie titled “Plane Truth”. On his webpage he writes, “I have been working on the Pan Am 103 investigation since 1995 and I, and many other investigators, reporters and a few politicians, am still not satisfied with the criminal investigation into Lockerbie and we are convinced there has been a miscarriage of justice.”
Dr. Jim Swire, who lost his 23-year-old daughter Flora in the bombing, is also convinced of Al-Megrahi’s innocence. On the website he shares with Lockerbie researcher Peter Biddulph, he says a serious miscarriage of justice is in danger of being ignored by history and the world. “Now more than ever it is imperative that an independent inquiry take place to examine events before and after the night of the bombing.”
Others in agreement with Dalyell and Swire include former CIA Middle East specialist and author Robert Baer and former BBC war correspondent Kate Adie, who have both implicated another country.
Scotland’s former Chief Law Officer Lord Peter Fraser admitted to journalists in 2005 that Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who identified Al-Megrahi, was unreliable. “Gauci was not quite the full shilling,” he said. “He was quite a tricky guy,” he said.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who was instrumental in persuading President Qaddafi to release the Libyan suspects for trial, has indicated several times that he is uncomfortable with the Lockerbie investigation and trial.
If Al-Megrahi’s conviction is unsafe as numerous parliamentarians, justice officials, investigators and victims’ families believe, then you may wonder why Libya agreed to hand over its nationals for trial and to pay $1.5 billion in compensation.
The former Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem has said that in spite of Libya’s letter to the United Nations admitting responsibility “for the actions of its officials” his country was not, in fact, responsible.
“After the sanctions and after all the problems we thought that it was easier for us to buy peace, and this is why we agreed compensation. We said, let us buy peace, let us put the whole thing behind us, and let us move forward,” he said. Subsequent to Al-Megrahi’s trial, President Qaddafi insisted that the world had been deceived. Most Libyans look upon their convicted countryman as a patriot who willingly relinquished his freedom in order to bring his country out of international isolation. Whatever transpires there will be some who will never be convinced of Al-Megrahi’s non-culpability. US national Susan Cohen, who lost her 20-year-old daughter Theodora as a result of the downing of Pan Am 103, told the BBC that releasing Al-Megrahi would be a disgrace. “It makes me sick,” she said, “and if there is a compassionate release then I think that is vile.”
Ms. Cohen’s emotion is understandable. But if there is a chance that this dying man didn’t commit the crime, then forcing him to spend his last days in a foreign jail away from his wife and five children is equally vile. The Scottish justice minister has yet to take his decision. I hope he doesn’t bow to demands from across the Atlantic.
Al-Megrahi has already spent almost ten years behind bars and is consumed by cancer. Keeping him in Scotland until his dying breath serves no purpose other than to appease those out to exact maximum revenge — a revenge that could boomerang if the day ever comes when Al-Megrah’s name is finally cleared.
