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The killing of Daniel Pearl
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WSWS : News
& Analysis : Pan
Am 103 / Lockerbie
Pan Am 103 / Lockerbie verdict politically motivated
By Steve James and Chris Marsden
7 February 2001
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The guilty verdict issued on January 31 by three Scottish judges
at the conclusion of the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie trial is unsound
by all normal legal criteria.
The trial of the two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am flight
103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 began on May 3 last
year. It was held under Scottish law at a specially constructed
court in the Netherlands. With the agreement of the defence and
prosecution, the case was heard without a jury before a bench
of three Scottish judges. On January 31, after 84 days of evidence
and controversy, and many weeks of adjournments, Abdelbaset Ali
Muhammad Al-Megrahi was found guilty of planting a Semtex-packed
cassette player on board the Boeing 747, which destroyed the plane,
killing its 259 passengers and crew, as well as 11 Lockerbie residents.
However, his sole alleged accomplice, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah,
was acquitted on all charges.
The Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing was an indiscriminate terrorist
attack upon innocent air travellers, many of whom were US students
returning home for the Christmas holiday. But the horrific nature
of the crime must not be allowed to obscure the fact that the
prosecution case against the two Libyans was an extremely weak
one, which under normal circumstances would have been thrown out
of court. Robert Black, the Scottish law professor who devised
the format of the Netherlands-based trial, has said he was "absolutely
astounded" that Al Megrahi had been found guilty. Black said
he believed the prosecution had "a very, very weak circumstantial
case" and he was reluctant to believe that Scottish judges
would "convict anyone, even a Libyan" on such evidence.
This view is supported by some of the families of UK victims of
the bombing, who are calling for a public inquiry to find "the
truth of who was responsible and what the motive was".
In their 82-page verdict, the Scottish judgesLords Sutherland,
Coulsfield and Macleanexpose the weakness of the prosecution
case and how they ignored, or simply dismissed, a mass of contradictory
forensic and circumstantial evidence in order to bring a guilty
verdict against Al Megrahi.
Significantly they rejected in its entirety the defence argument
that other individuals and groupsnamely the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)were
responsible for the bomb, on the grounds that the evidence against
them was circumstantial and inconclusive.
This raises the question, why was there such a discrepancy
between the standards applied to the defence's arguments seeking
to implicate others for the bombing and those employed by the
prosecution against Al Megrahi? The case against the two Libyans
was no less circumstantial and flimsy, a fact acknowledged in
part by the acquittal of Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. Under Scottish
law, moreover, it was possible to return a verdict of not
proven that would free but not completely exonerate Al Megrahi
on the basis that the court could not accept his guilt "beyond
reasonable doubt".
An explanation as to why a guilty verdict was delivered must
be sought in the political rather than the judicial arena. The
demonisation of the rogue state Libya has long played
an important part of US policy in the Middle East. Libyan leader
Colonel Gadhaffi's anti-imperialist rhetoric, his regime's support
for the Palestinians and opposition to Israel all drew the ire
of the US, which designated Libya a "terrorist" nation
in 1979. In 1986 the US bombed Tripoli and Benghazi, in an action
launched from British bases that killed Gadhaffi's daughter. The
US imposed unilateral economic sanctions the same year, and led
the calls for UN-approved sanctions to be imposed in 1992.
It is against this political background that the Lockerbie
investigation and eventual trial must be evaluated. Initial police
investigations focused on the claim that it was a reprisal attack
for the unprovoked US shooting down of an Iranian Airbus six months
before the Pan Am bombing, in which all 290 people on board were
killed. This possible reprisal was alleged to have been financed
by the Iranian regime, which had hired the Syrian backed PFLP-GC
to carry out the Pan Am bombing. In 1990, however, the Republican
administration in the US, led by President George Bush, placed
maximum pressure on the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher
in Britain to drop this line of inquiry. According to relatives
of those killed in the disaster, Thatcher refused a public inquiry
at this time, on the grounds that it was against the "national
interest".
Accusations of Libyan responsibility for the Pan Am 103 bombing
first emerged during US preparations for the assault on Iraq in
the 1991 Gulf War. In their efforts to assemble support for military
aggression against Iraq by NATO, US officials shuttled frantically
around the various Arab regimes in the Middle East. Secretary
of State James Baker visited Syria on numerous occasions in 1990
and Bush himself pronounced that Syria had taken a "bum rap"
over the bombing (i.e. that it was not responsible).
Libya, which stood out in opposition to the US attack on Iraq,
became the focus of political and media blame for the Lockerbie
bombing. In 1992 a UN resolution imposed economic sanctions against
Libya after it refused to hand over Al Megrahi and Fhimah for
trial in Britain or America, and demanded compensation payment
be made, should the Libyans be found guilty.
Washington and London never expected Libya to hand over its
own citizens, including at least one of its intelligence officers,
Al Megrahi. But this became possible through the efforts of Gadhaffi's
regime to initiate a rapprochement with the West, and the major
European powers in particular. From 1994 onwards, Tripoli repeatedly
offered its citizens up for trial, provided only this was on "neutral"
territory.
Over the next few years, Gadhaffi sought to cultivate the support
of the European powers. He acted as mediator in conflicts such
as the Eritrean-Ethiopian war, the war in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, the Sudanese civil war and the war in Sierra Leonewhile
signing numerous oil and other commercial deals with Italian and
French companies.
Resolving the outstanding issue of Lockerbie became essential
for the US and Britain if they were not to be left out of the
rich pickings now being made available in Libya, a country whose
oil reserves are equivalent to those of the US. Negotiations commenced
in earnest in 1999, culminating in the suspension of UN sanctions
against Libya on April 5, after the US, Britain and Libya agreed
on the hand-over and conditions for the trial of the two men in
the Netherlands.
The US continued to take a harder stance against Libya than
Europe. It did not agree to the lifting of UN sanctions, and opposed
the efforts of Britain and others to restore diplomatic relationsdemanding
that Libya "end and renounce all forms of terrorism"
and "acknowledge responsibility for the actions of Libyan
officials" with regards to the Pan Am bombing. But it nevertheless
did offer the prospect of a normalisation of relations in future.
In a 1999 speech to the Middle East Institute, a US foreign
policy think-tank, for example, Ronald Neumann proclaimed that
"Libya's surrender of the Pan Am 103 suspects for trial and
the ensuing suspension of international sanctions have changed
the political landscape of the last ten years... Libya is not
Iraq. We do not seek to maintain sanctions until there is a change
of regime in Tripoli. We have seen definite changes in Libya's
behavior, specifically declining support for terrorism and increasing
support for peace processes in the Middle East and Africa."
A rapprochement with Libya had to take place on US terms, however.
This meant accepting the validity of US assertions of Libya's
guilt for the bombing, even seeking to solicit a public acknowledgement
of this from Gadhaffi. In order to justify more than a decade
of US-led hostilities against Libya, therefore, it was essential
that at least one of the defendants was found guilty, despite
the threadbare character of the case against them.
It is impossible, on the basis of the evidence presented in
the Netherlands, to ascertain who was truly responsible for the
Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing. Al Megrahi's guilt was not proven
beyond reasonable doubt, but nor was his innocence. Nothing presented
definitively ruled out Libyan involvement in the bombing, but
nor did the trial exclude the possible involvement of Syria, Iran
or several Palestinian groups. Of all the possible scenarios,
the one, which received least scrutiny, was the possibility raised
by some interested parties that the bombing was the inadvertent
product of a CIA operation that badly backfired. But the purpose
of the trial was never the search to expose the truth about this
terrible attack. Instead the verdict provides the US with the
necessary propaganda vehicle through which it can continue to
exert maximum pressure on Libya to accede to its demands, and
thereby strengthen America's grip on the entire Middle East region.
Gadhaffi has so far refused to accept American calls to acknowledge
Libya's guilt regarding Pan Am 103 and has even promised to release
new information proving Al Megrahi's innocence. But he has not
done so yet, however. Given that it was Gadhaffi who agreed to
hand over the two accused in 1999, his outrage seems largely designed
for domestic consumption. It is also directed against what he
no doubt sees as the failure of the US and Britain to honour their
tacit agreement to limit the matter to a criminal trial of the
two individuals accused, and not to use it to continue attacking
his government. Given the bellicose stance of the newly installed
Bush administration regarding Middle East policy, such fears appear
well founded.
See Also:
The Pan Am 103 / Lockerbie verdict: What
the judges said
[7 February 2001]
Lockerbie-Pan Am 103:
Prosecution case evaporates
[17 October 2000]
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