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LONDON, Aug 21: The United States and Britain condemned celebrations in Tripoli to mark the return of the Lockerbie bomber, with London scrambling on Friday to stem fallout from the decision to free him on humanitarian grounds.
Former Libyan agent Abdelbaset Mohmet al-Megrahi was serving a life sentence as the only person convicted of bombing Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie which killed 270 people – 189 of them American.
Hundreds of young Libyans gathered at an airport in Tripoli to welcome Megrahi home on Thursday and cheered and waved national flags as his car sped away.
Large public gatherings are rare and are usually tightly controlled in Libya.
"It is disturbing to see images suggesting that Megrahi was accorded a hero's welcome instead of being treated as a convicted murderer," White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
The United States government and relatives of victims of the bombing had condemned the decision by Scotland's regional administration to release Megrahi, who is suffering from cancer.
Some Scottish families of victims had supported the release and some have questioned whether Megrahi was ever involved in the bombing.
British government ministers, wary of upsetting one of its strongest international allies, came out in force on Friday to criticise the way Libya had handled Megrahi's return.
"How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya's re-entry into the civilised community of nations," Foreign Minister David Miliband said.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown had written to Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi on Thursday to ask for the homecoming to be handled with sensitivity.
The BBC reported that a visit planned for next month to bolster trade led by Prince Andrew, a son of Queen Elizabeth, had been put on hold.
Mr Miliband dismissed claims the British government had wanted Megrahi to be freed to bolster diplomatic and commercial ties with Libya, which has the biggest oil reserves in Africa.
"That is a slur both on myself and the government," he said, adding that no pressure had been put on the Scottish government.
State media had made no mention of Megrahi's possible return but a newspaper close to Mr Qadhafi's reformist son, Saif al-Islam, was following his progress.
Mr Islam, who accompanied Megrahi back to Libya, promised last year to work for Megrahi's release and praised the British and Scottish authorities in words likely to add to their discomfort.
"I also personally thank our friends in the British government as they have had an important role in reaching this happy conclusion," he said in a statement.
"I affirm that the Libyan people will not forget this brave stance from the governments of Britain and Scotland and that friendship between us will be enhanced forever. The page of the past has been turned and is now behind us," he added. —Reuters
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Saturday, 22 Aug, 2009 | 04:02 AM PST WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Friday slammed the hero's welcome in Libya for Megrahi as "highly objectionable."
"I thought it was highly objectionable," the US president said in response to a reporter's shouted question as he left the White House for a week-long vacation.
Earlier, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs had denounced as "outrageous and disgusting" the televised images of flag-waving well-wishers welcoming Megrahi in Tripoli. —AFP
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Al-Megrahi was cheered by hundreds of Libyans upon his arrival in Tripoli on Thursday [EPA]
Al-Megrahi 'to prove his innocence'
The man convicted of the 1988 bombing of an aircraft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie has said he would present new evidence to prove his innocence before he dies, UK's The Times newspaper has reported.
In an article out Saturday, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, interviewed in his family home in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, said he had suffered a "miscarriage of justice".
"If there is justice in the UK I would be acquitted or the verdict would be quashed because it was unsafe. There was a miscarriage of justice," al-Megrahi was quoted as saying.
The Times said 57-year-old al-Megrahi, released on compassionate grounds, promised that before he died, he would present new evidence through his Scottish lawyers that would exonerate him.
"My message to the British and Scottish communities is that I will put out the evidence and ask them to be the jury," he said, refusing to elaborate.
Asked who carried out the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which killed 270 people, he replied: "It is a very good question but I am not the right person to ask."
Meets Gaddafi
The former intelligence agent, who is suffering from advanced prostate cancer, was released from prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds.
He returned to his native country on Thursday, greeted by hundreds of cheering Libyans.
He also met with Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, who praised the Scottish authorities for their "courage" to release him from prison
"At this moment I would like to send a message to our friends in Scotland, the Scottish Nationalist Party, the Scottish prime minister ... and I congratulate them on their courage and for having proved their independence despite the unacceptable and unreasonable pressures they faced," Libya's official news agency Jana quoted Gaddafi as as saying.
Britain described celebrations in Libya upon al-Megrahi's return as being "deeply distressing" and Barack Obama, the US president, called the warm welcome "highly objectionable".
Senior US officials said that al-Megrahi's early release could disrupt diplomatic relations between Washington and Tripoli.
Many families of the victims in the bombing have expressed anger that he was released after serving only eight years of a minimum 27-year sentence.
Four years after al-Megrahi's conviction in 2001, Libya admitted responsibility and paid about $2.7bn in compensation to the families of those killed.
The move prompted the lifting of international sanctions against Libya and led to a restoration in diplomatic ties between Tripoli and the West.
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Lockerbie bombing:Megrahi: 'A convenient scapegoat?'
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi has left Scotland to return to Libya.
With his departure, a lengthy chapter in Scots legal history has closed.
But many questions remain - and they will not disappear along with the flight to Tripoli.
BBC Scotland's Home Affairs Correspondent Reevel Alderson has been looking at the mystery which still surrounds the 1988 bombing.
The collection of evidence from Britain's worst act of terrorism began immediately - and within a week detectives announced it had been caused by a bomb in a radio cassette player.
Throughout the subsequent weeks whole sections of the jumbo jet were recovered to help investigators literally piece together the cause.
Although they knew it was a bomb they needed to find out who had placed it, why they had done so, and how?
Early suspicion fell on Ahmed Jibril, leader of Palestinian terror group the PFLP-GC, who intelligence sources suggested may have been working for Iran.
Dick Marquise believes there was no evidence to implicate Ahmed Jibril
West German police mounted Operation Autumn Leaves, raiding flats near Frankfurt where the group was preparing bombs in radio cassette players.
They were similar to that used to blow up Pan Am flight 103.
But Dick Marquise, chief of the FBI "Scotbom Task Force" from 1988-1992, said investigators could find nothing later to link this plot with Lockerbie.
"We never found any evidence," he told the BBC. "There's a lot of information, there's a lot of intelligence that people have said there were meetings, there were discussions.
"But not one shred of evidence that a prosecutor could take into court to convict either an official in Iran or Ahmed Jibril for blowing up Pan Am flight 103."
There were also suggestions that Jibril's group put the bomb onto a Pan Am feeder flight from Frankfurt Airport to Heathrow, switching the suitcase for one containing drugs being run by another Palestinian group.
But another airport has also come under suspicion - Heathrow in London, from where the doomed jumbo jet took off.
Pan Am Flight 103 was ripped apart by the bombing
Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was one of the victims of the atrocity, said a break-in the night before near the Pan Am secure baggage area was not fully investigated by police, who he claims concealed the evidence.
"I wrote recently to the Crown Office (which handles Scottish prosecutions) asking why that had been concealed for 12 years, and if they knew about it all along," he said.
He said they would not answer his question, which he said meant there must now be a thorough inquiry into the incident.
During Megrahi's first appeal, held at Kamp van Zeist in the Netherlands, his counsel raised the matter, saying it cast doubt on claims that the fatal bomb must have been loaded in Malta.
But the five appeal judges rejected the suggestion.
Malta had become crucial once police found a fragment of the bomb timer wrapped in a piece of clothing in a Dumfriesshire forest.
The clothes had Maltese labels - but question marks remain about how this discovery was made several months after the disaster, and also over how the material was handled.
The original trial heard labels on police evidence bags containing the fragment had been changed: the evidence of the officer who had done this was heavily criticised by the trial judges.
Worldwide terrorism
There were question marks too over Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who was the only man to identify Megrahi.
His evidence was that the Libyan, who he picked out at an identity parade, had bought the clothes at his shop.
But his police statements are inconsistent, and prosecutors failed to tell the defence that shortly before he attended an identity parade, Mr Gauci had seen a magazine article showing a picture of Megrahi, and speculating he might have been involved.
Mr Gauci now lives in Australia, and according to defence claims is believed to have been paid several million dollars by the Americans for his evidence.
It may be that we will never know exactly what happened in December 1988.
Secret documents before the Appeal Court - which even the defence has not seen - might have provided new information.
They will now remain undisclosed, after the foreign secretary issued a Public Information Immunity certificate stating that to publish them would be to the detriment of UK national security.
Megrahi was charged as a member of the Libyan Intelligence Services - acting with others.
If he was involved, the Libyan government, once a sponsor of worldwide terrorism, including support for the IRA, must have been involved too.
But with Britain and America doing big business with Libya now, perhaps it is in no-one's political interests to have the truth emerge.
Megrahi is now dying, but he may have been a convenient scapegoat for a much bigger conspiracy.
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Was Freed Lockerbie Bomber a Patsy?
August 20, 2009
By Robert Schlesinger
Scotland today released terminally ill Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of blowing up Pan Am 103 on December 21, 1988. The decision was made on the grounds of compassion—let him see his homeland one more time before he shuffles off this mortal coil. And not surprisingly the move has spurred howls of outrage (why should he get more compassion than the 270 people killed in that terrorist attack?).
But there are some who believe that al-Megrahi should never have been convicted in the first place, that he was, to use the Lee Harvey Oswald-ism, a patsy. Journalist Nathan Thrall laid out the case here in January, a few days after the 20th anniversary of the bombing. He wrote:
An official Scottish review body has declared that a "miscarriage of justice may have occurred" in the conviction of the Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The reviewers examined a secret document, provided to the United Kingdom by a foreign government and seen during Megrahi's trial by only the prosecution, that they said cast serious doubts on Megrahi's guilt. A new appeal of Megrahi's conviction is scheduled for this coming spring. The U.N. special observer appointed by Kofi Annan to Megrahi's trial, Hans Koechler, has declared that Megrahi was wrongfully convicted, as have the legal architect of his special trial, Prof. Robert Black, and a spokesperson for the families of the British victims, Jim Swire.
He lists other problems with the prosecutions' case and notes that high ranking Libyans have pooh-poohed the admission of guilt, saying that they were buying peace and that was the cost. Thrall suggests Iran might truly have been behind the bombing. Who's right? In all likelihood, questions about the Lockerbie bombing will take their place in the ranks of numerous other American conspiracy theories.
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LONDON, July 25: The man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing, who has advance stage prostate cancer, has appealed to the Scottish government to free him on compassionate grounds, it said on Saturday.
Former Libyan agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al Megrahi is serving life with a minimum term of 27 years in a Scottish prison.
"We can confirm an application for compassionate release has been filed by Mr Al Megrahi," a spokeswoman for the devolved Scottish government said.—AFP
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Appeal in Lockerbie bombing case begins
An appeal into the conviction of a Libyan man jailed for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie got under way in a packed courtroom Tuesday.
Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, who is terminally ill with prostate cancer, has spent 10 years behind bars for the terrorist attack that killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
The appeal is being heard by five judges at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were prosecuted in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2001 for the Dec. 21, 1988 bombing, which killed all 259 people aboard the London to New York flight and 11 people on the ground. Fhimah was acquitted.
Margaret Scott, Al-Megrahi's lawyer, said the case against her client was flawed. "No jury -properly directed - could have convicted him beyond all reasonable doubt."
Al-Megrahi, a former Libyan secret service agent, has maintained his innocence. While he lost an appeal in 2002, he was granted another one two years ago following a major legal review.
The hearing is initially set for the next four weeks, but is expected to last up to a year.
Al-Megrahi is following the proceedings by a closed circuit television link between the court and Greenock Prison, near Glasgow. Scott said he was undergoing a new course of treatment for his cancer.
Relatives of the victims of Pan Am 103 are divided over al-Megrahi's conviction. Some British families have said they think he is innocent, but relatives of U.S. victims have said he is guilty and should remain in jail.
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New witness casts doubt on Lockerbie bomb conviction
Rachel Shields
Appeal will hear challenge to guilt of the only man jailed for the 1988 outrage on Pan Am Flight 103
A new witness is expected this week to undermine thoroughly the case against the only person to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. New testimony will call into question evidence linking the Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, his lawyers claim.
Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, is serving 27 years in Greenock prison for the bombing.
Appeal hearings are due to begin on Tuesday, and Megrahi's lawyers insisted this weekend they will go ahead as planned, despite speculation that he may be returned to Libya under the terms of a controversial prisoner transfer agreement, due to be ratified tomorrow.
"We are turning up next week," said Tony Kelly, his solicitor. "We are seeking that the court upholds his appeal, admit that there has been a miscarriage of justice, and grant him his liberty. Whatever remedies come after that is for after the appeal."
Appeal documents seen by The Independent on Sunday reveal that testimony from a new witness is expected to undermine the evidence of a key prosecution witness, Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper. His testimony was vital in connecting Megrahi to the bombing at the trial in 2001.
Mr Gauci identified Megrahi as the person who bought the tweed suit, baby sleepsuit and umbrella found among the remnants of the suitcase that contained the bomb on board.
The new witness, not named in the documents, will provide an account the defence claims is "startling in its consistency with Mr Gauci's account of the purchase, but adds considerable doubt to the date the key items were purchased and identification of Megrahi as the purchaser".
All of this may be academic, as 56-year-old Megrahi, who was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in October 2008, has been reported as having less than a year to live and the appeal could take two years.
Increasingly, however, it seems likely that the Lockerbie suspect will spend his last days in Libya. This month, officials wrote to the families of victims of the bombing explaining the prisoner transfer programme, interpreted as a tacit agreement that Megrahi may be returned to Libya. Under the terms of the deal, if Megrahi participates in the transfer scheme, he will forfeit his right to appeal.
"If he goes back to Libya, it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case," said Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed on Flight 103. Dr Swire is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. "I've lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive."
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Megrahi: my life ruined by the shadow of wrong verdict
LUCY ADAMS, Chief Reporter
August 21 2009
It was the personal plea of a dying man who felt he had surrendered to the "wrongness" of his conviction.
As the cavalcade of police and security vans moved Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi from HMP Greenock to Glasgow airport, he released a most poignant and personal statement about the "shadow" of desolation beneath which he is returning to his home country.
His statement talked of the regret he feels at leaving without experiencing "any meaningful aspect of Scottish life" and the relief at knowing he is finally going home.
"To be incarcerated in a far off land, completely alien to my way of life and culture has been not only a shock but also a most profound dislocation for me personally and for my whole family," he said.
"I had to endure a verdict being issued at the conclusion of that trial which is now characterised by my lawyers, and the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, as unreasonable. To me, and to other right thinking people back at home in Libya, and in the international community, it is nothing short of a disgrace.
"This horrible ordeal is not ended by my return to Libya. It may never end for me until I die. Perhaps the only liberation for me will be death. And I say in the clearest possible terms, which I hope every person in every land will hear: all of this I have had to endure for something that I did not do.
"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 that my name is cleared posthumously or to return home still carrying the weight of the guilty verdict, which will never now be lifted. The choice which I made is a matter of sorrow, disappointment and anger, which I fear I will never overcome."
He thanked prison and nursing staff for their kindness and made clear that he harbours no ill feeling towards Scotland. He said he shares the frustration of those who wished to see the appeal continue and, for those relatives of the victims "who can bear to hear me say this", he sent his most sincere sympathy.
There are many relatives of the victims who will not want to hear such words and for them his return to Tripoli is a travesty but, for his wife and five children and all his relatives and supporters in Libya, the decision to finally release him will be met with relief and happiness.
Last night hundreds of young Libyans gathered at Tripoli's Mitiga Airport where Megrahi's plane landed. Many waved the country's green flag and held banners with messages of support and praise for Libya's government and for Megrahi.
Most of the banners carried the name of Libya's National Youth Association, a staunch supporter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. One read: "You promised and you fulfilled the promise and you returned Abdel Basset al Megrahi to his family".
"Libyan youth are welcoming the return today of political prisoner Abdelbaset al Megrahi," said one young man who identified himself as Sami.
Megrahi is likely to be warmly welcomed by Gaddafi, who has moved closer to the Western mainstream since dropping his nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
"I think the news is being warmly received in Tripoli by everyone and it shows that the confidence Libya had in the Scottish judicial system was well placed," said Youssef Sawani, director of the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation.
One of the first things he is expected to do is visit his mother Hajja Fatma, 85. He has still not told her that he is ill because he feared for her frailty.
Out of all her children, he has said that he was always closest to her and that one of the hardest parts of his incarceration has been their inability to see each other. She is in a frail physical condition, has hypertension and arthritis and the family said she was not strong enough to fly to Scotland.
When asked this week about her feelings that her son may be coming home, she said: "I do not close the house's door at all. I am expecting him to enter at any moment.
"I would run out to the street and hug him so tight."
She said she had always believed in his innocence. "We told them that my son was innocent, that he would not slaughter a chicken at home and that he would not have caused the disaster of Lockerbie," she said.
"Eleven years I did not spend the holy month of Ramadan with him, I am waiting for that day when he comes back."
Megrahi has described himself as a family man and yesterday revealed for the first time the utter "desolation" he has felt during the past 10 years of imprisonment.
In his letter sent to Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, asking for compassionate release, Megrahi made clear that his greatest wish was to be spend the "short time" he has left with his family.
The letter states: "I am a family man: first and foremost I am a son, husband, father, grandfather. I have been separated from my family by what I believe to be an unjust conviction. I have tried to bear that with a degree of equanimity and dignity. I have refrained from recourse to publicity in respect of my plight despite my burning belief about the injustice I have suffered.
"There have been considerable delays in the process to challenge my conviction. Through my legal advisers I have voiced concern about that to the court in a measured way. I have never publicly taken a stance which would seek to impugn your nation or its system of justice."
Megrahi, who was born on April 1 1952 and has said he is fully aware of the irony of such a date, is not expected to live beyond the end of this year. There was concern that he would not survive the fasting of Ramadan while in prison but his family hopes that by being with them he will at least live for another three months.
