Marcus Halaby<\/i><\/p>\n
Marcus Hallaby looks at the controversy surrounding the Abdelbaset Ali al-Mergahi case<\/p>\n
The decision of the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to release Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi on \u201ccompassionate grounds\u201d has provoked a scandal in Britain and the United States, where President Obama has condemned the decision and relatives of the American victims of the bombing have called for a boycott of Britain.<\/p>\n
In the UK (at least outside of Scotland), the decision has brought the predictable outrage at the release of a \u201cterrorist\u201d allegedly responsible for the deaths of 270 people. However, much of the media points out that the release was connected to a \u00a3546 million oil and gas deal signed by BP in 2007 following a visit to Libya by Tony Blair.<\/p>\n
Gordon Brown, who apparently told the Libyans he did not want Megrahi to die in jail, has denied placing any pressure on the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration in Edinburgh to release Megrahi, while SNP First Minister Alex Salmond has defended the release as being \u201cthe right decision\u201d for \u201cthe right reasons\u201d. The Tories\u2019 attempt to make political capital out of this has been limited by the revelation that a senior Tory peer and former minister, Lord Trefgarne, had lobbied MacAskill for Megrahi\u2019s release.<\/p>\n
Guilty or innocent?<\/p>\n
The one issue that the media furore has avoided has been whether or not Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of planting the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988, was actually guilty in the first place.<\/p>\n
Megrahi, who has been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, and who has always previously maintained his innocence, dropped the second of two appeals against his conviction two weeks prior to his release, following a private meeting with MacAskill in Greenock prison.<\/p>\n
Whatever deal may have taken place between the British government or the Scottish Executive with the Libyans over oil, the fact is that another deal quite plainly did place \u2013 one allowing Megrahi to go home in return for not making revelations that might expose his conviction as a frame-up \u2013 which the outraged journalists and politicians seem much less interested in.<\/p>\n
Western hypocrisy<\/p>\n
He was, after all, convicted in a trial in which his co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was acquitted and a key witness was paid a \u00a32 million bribe. In addition, the US Defence Intelligence Agency originally believed Libya was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing.<\/p>\n
US terrorists<\/p>\n
The initial suspects for the bombing were two Syrian-based Palestinian factions, allegedly acting on behalf of Iran, in revenge for the shooting down of the Iran Air Flight 655 by a US warship in 1988, with 290 deaths. Where are the demands that the culprits of this terrorist outrage are brought to justice?<\/p>\n
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission even conducted a four-year investigation, referring Megrahi\u2019s case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in June 2007 with the statement that there was \u201cno reasonable basis\u201d for the original trial court\u2019s conclusion. Without this evidence, the murky role of the US and British intelligence agencies and the motivation behind their decision to blame Libya for the bombing instead, will go unexamined.<\/p>\n
The real outrage here is the cover-up of this investigation. The families of the Lockerbie victims and all those interested in justice should demand the immediate publication of all documents relating to Megrahi\u2019s case.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marcus Halaby Marcus Hallaby looks at the controversy surrounding the Abdelbaset Ali al-Mergahi case The decision of the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to release Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi on \u201ccompassionate grounds\u201d has provoked a scandal in Britain and the United States, where President Obama has condemned the decision and relatives of the American victims of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-2965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}