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New Forensic Evidence Reveals that Megrahi Not Guilty After All
Posted on February 27, 2012 by Marivel Guzman
Convicted Lockerbie Bomber Probably Not Guilty—So Who Is the Real Criminal?
US and UK pushed the courts to release Megrahi on humanitarian grounds, rather that allow him to present his evidence in his appeal. At the Lockerbie trial so-called “key witness” Abdulmajid Gauci would identify Megrahi as the purchaser of certain items of clothing found at the crash site that Gauci claimed were purchased at his shop in Valetta, Malta. But on the witness stand Gauci proved to be a flop at identification. An FBI officer, Harold Hendershot, called to the witness stand to bolster Gauci’s testimony, also appeared to lack credibility.
Megrahi was released and received hero welcome in Libya by Col Muamar Gadhafee.
Gadhafee denied that he was pressure to give up his claim that Libya did not have anything to do with the Pam 103. The economical sanctions were lifted right after Gadhafee allowed the extradition of the two suspects. One of them was found innocent, only Megrahi was found guilty.
Lockerbie bombing: Forensic evidence ‘casts fresh doubt on Megrahi guilt’
The wreckage of Pan Am 103. Picture: AP
By TIM CORNWELL
Published on Monday 27 February 2012 00:00
NEW forensic evidence claiming to destroy key pillars of the case against the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will be revealed today.
Forensic examination of a small fragment of circuit board, cited as critical evidence linking Libya to the atrocity that claimed 270 lives on 21 December, 1988, does not originate from the source identified by prosecutors, it is claimed.
The new evidence is detailed in two documentaries on the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, 59, screened today on BBC Scotland and the Al Jazeera network. They coincide with the launch of a book telling the story of Megrahi and featuring extensive interviews with him, released by the Scottish company Birlinn.
The book, too, is said to probe deeply into the forensic evidence in the case.
In the BBC Scotland documentary, Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, says he “forgives” Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who identified him as purchasing clothes which were found packed around the bomb, on a day Megrahi admitted he was in Malta.
“Forgiving him, I am facing my God very soon,” Megrahi says. “I swear I have never been in his shop or buy any clothing from his shop. I swear with my God, which is my God and his God as well, I swear I have never been in his shop or buy any clothing from his shop.
“He has to believe this, because when we meet together before the God, I want him to know that before I die. This is the truth.”
The circuit board, found at the crash site, was linked to the bombing because the fragment, labelled PT35b by investigators, was identified as coming from an MST-13 timer made by the Swiss firm Mebo. Megrahi had regular dealings with the firm. The Crown also claimed the timers had only ever been supplied to Libya. Megrahi was described at his trial as a member of the Libyan intelligence services who worked in Malta at the Libyan Arab Airlines office. He was accused of helping to place the bomb on an Air Malta flight, from which it was transferred to the doomed Pan Am 103.
Megrahi’s defence team was not able to secure access to the fragment to conduct its own expert analysis before the trial, or his first unsuccessful appeal, the documentary is said to claim.
But in preparation for the second appeal, which Megrahi abandoned when he was released on compassionate grounds after a cancer diagnosis, his defence team was able to examine the fragment and other key pieces of evidence.
Their experts claimed it contained no trace of explosive residue. But, more importantly, defence experts also claimed it was made of a different combination of materials to the MST-13s, meaning it did not originate with the Mebo device.
The BBC confirmed yesterday that their documentary explored forensic evidence.
The two programmes feature an interview Megrahi gave in December to his friend George Thomson, a former police officer and criminal defence specialist who was part of his legal team for four years.
Today also sees the publication of John Ashton’s book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, published by Birlinn. Mr Ashton, an investigative journalist, was also in Megrahi’s defence team and worked closely with him to produce the book.
BBC Scotland insisted last night that, while the interview in the documentary was conducted by Thomson, the programme itself “was produced in accordance with our guidelines on impartiality”.
The Rev John Mosey, a British parent who lost his daughter in the bombing, said he expected both the book and the documentaries to launch a major re-examination of the Lockerbie case.
For those sceptical of the trial and conviction, it “promises evidence of things that we have been saying for many years”, he added.
He had closely followed the circuit-board evidence at Megrahi’s lengthy trial, he said. “It was extremely, extremely dodgy. It was very, very suspicious.
“The way it suddenly appeared, embedded in a shirt collar, with the information on the page overwritten and changed, all police procedures were thrown out of the window.”
But Susan Cohen, an American whose daughter also died in the bombing, said: “None of this sounds any different from what I’ve heard before. With these documentaries, is there going to be a panel afterwards, someone who is representing someone who is not the voice for Megrahi propaganda?
“This is simply allowing this conspiracy theory to flourish. In all these years nothing has ever, ever come out that really shows any significance.”
Megrahi, the only man convicted in the Lockerbie bombing, was said to be three months from death when he was released from a Scottish prison in August 2009 following a decision by justice secretary Kenny MacAskill. He remains alive in Libya, but in the December interview clearly considers himself close to death.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which investigated Megrahi’s 2001 conviction, found six reasons why it may have been a miscarriage of justice and sent the case back to the Appeal Court. The appeal ended when he was released.
Among the SCCRC’s reasons were inconsistencies in Mr Gauci’s statements and controversy surrounding an identification parade in Kamp van Zeist at which he identified Megrahi. It is understood the documentary makers gained access to the SCCRC’s investigations into the case.
Megrahi was interviewed in his bed in his home in Tripoli. Looking frail and straining to make his words audible, Megrahi laments that he will die while still branded “the Lockerbie bomber”.
Asked by Mr Thomson what he would say to Mr Gauci if he were in the room, he says: “I’d say he dealt with me very wrongly. I have never seen him in my life before he came to the court. But I do forgive him.”
• Many believe convicted killer Mohammed Abu Talb is the real Lockerbie bomber.
Talb was freed from prison in Sweden in 2010. He was serving a life sentence for terrorist attacks in Copenhagen and Amsterdam using explosive devices.
He was the original suspect for the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 until 1990, when attention switched to Libya.
At the time of the Lockerbie trial, Talb admitted he and members of his family were involved in the fight to liberate Palestine. But he denied he was “a murderer and a liar”, and claimed he had given up the military struggle before the Lockerbie bombing.
The trial in Kamp van Zeist heard Talb had used many aliases as a member of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, including one that translated as “he who takes revenge”.
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Lockerbie bombing: New book claims Megrahi was ‘innocent victim of dirty politics and judicial folly’
Scottish publisher Birlinn launches into the Lockerbie controversy today with the publication of a book that promises the fullest account yet of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s story in his own words.
The Truth About Libya, The Monarchy of Idris behind the Opposition
Posted on August 29, 2011, by Marivel Guzman
On September 1, 1969 the pro-western regime that had ruled in Libya was overthrown by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his officers. At the time, Libya was home to the largest US Air Base (Wheelus Air Base) in North Africa. Agreements between the USA and Libya signed in 1951 and 1954 granted the USAF the use of Wheelus Air Base and its El Watia gunnery range for gunnery and bombing training and for transport and bombing stopovers until 1971. During the Cold War the base was pivotal to expanding US military power under the Strategic Air Command, and an essential base for fighter and reconnaissance missions. The Pentagon also used the base — and the remote Libyan desert — for missile launch testing: the launch area was located 15 miles (ca. 24 km) east of Tripoli. Considered a ‘little America on the shores of the Mediterranean’, the base housed some 4600 US military personnel until its evacuation in 1970.
With the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, a very poor desert country became a very rich little western protectorate. US and European companies had huge stakes in the extremely lucrative petroleum and banking sectors, but these were soon nationalized by Gaddafi. Thus, Libya overnight joined the list of US ‘enemy’ or ‘rogue’ states that sought autonomy and self-determination outside the expanding sphere of western Empire. Further, cementing western hatred of the new regime, Libya played a leading role of the 1973 oil embargo against the US and maintained cooperative relations with the Soviet Union. Gaddafi also reportedly channeled early oil wealth into national free health care and education.
1. Libya is Africa’s largest exporter of oil, 1.7 million tons a day, which quickly was reduced to 300-400,000 ton due to US-NATO bombing. Libya exports 80% of its oil: 80% of that to several EU lands (32% Italy, 14% Germany, 10% France); 10% China; 5% USA.
2. Gaddafi has been preparing to launch a gold dinar for oil trade with all of Africa’s 200 million people and other countries interested. He has been working with this since 2002 together with Malaysia. As of recently, only South Africa and the head of the League of African States were opposed. Before the invasion of Iraq, Hussein was in agreement as was Sudan, Burney, then Indonesia and United Arab Emirates, also Iran. French President Nickola Sarkozi called this, “a threat for financial security of mankind”. Much of France’s wealth—more than any other colonial-imperialist power—comes from exploiting Africa.
(See: “The Libyan War, American Power and the Decline of the Petrodollar System” by Peter Dale Scott; “Bombing of Libya – punishment for Gaddafi for his attempt to refuse US dollar” as cited by Ellen Brown in “Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking.” For this and other points see also: “Euro-US War on Libya: Official Lies and Misconceptions of Critics” by James Petras and see other articles on the subject.)
3. Central Bank of Libya is 100% owned by state (since 1956) and is thus outside multinational corporation control (BIS-Banking International Settlement rules for private interests). The state can finance its own projects and do so without interest rates, which reduce the costs by half of private banks. Libya’s central bank (with three branches in the east including Benghazi) has 144 tons of gold in its vaults, which it could use to start the gold dinar. (China, Russia, India, Iran are stocking great sums of gold rather than relying only on dollars.)
4. Gaddafi-Central Bank used $33 billion, without interest rates, to build the Great man-made River of 3,750 kilometers with three parallel pipelines running oil, gas and water supplying 70% of the people (4.5 of its 6 million) with clean drinking and irrigation water. This provides adequate crops for the people and would be a competitive exporter of vegetables with ISRAEL and Egypt…..
What the US-NATO-EU hopes to achieve is to eliminate the half-reliable partner Gaddafi and replace him with a neoliberal oriented government that will do their bidding: sign in on AFRICOM, kick China out, reverse the government central bank to a BIS private enterprise, continue using dollars of course, and have the lackey leaders join in their permanent war age throughout the Middle East and Africa.
(Exiled Libyan monarchy shamelessly admit their role in fomenting Libyan war)
Please search this video on the Internet, and downloaded and posted, it’s been blocked in the US.
‘The Libyan monarchy of Idris, which was based in Benghazi, was installed by the United States and British in the 1950s to oversee their economic and military interests in North Africa. Libya in 1951, under the leadership of King Idris, officially had the lowest standards of Living in the world. The Idris monarchy was overthrown in a bloodless revolution led by Muammar al-Gaddafi in 1969. This led to the American Wheelus Air Base (The largest American base outside US at that time) being dismantled and the American and British armed forces stationed in Libya evacuating. The western oil companies were then nationalized.’
‘The uprising in Libya, which has been portrayed by many in the west as a democratic movement, has been symbolized by the tri-coloured rebel flag. The flag is in fact the flag of the oppressive, undemocratic, monarchy of Idris. At the start of the conflict elements of the rebels in Benghazi held aloft pictures of King Idris. Whilst by no means are all the rebels monarchists, it is however important to highlight the overthrown Libyan monarchy’s history, influence in Benghazi and relationship with the West. It is of no surprise then that the exiled monarchy of Idris has played a hidden hand in this conflict. Closely working with their old allies in NATO in an attempt to regain their lost status in Libya and ‘return to democracy’ as his Royal Highness Prince Idris bizarrely and unashamedly declares in his CNN interview.’
Interview in September 2009 by Aljazeera Channel, Muammar Al-Gaddafi clarify many points of his government, but insist on keeping his promise given to the West, in return for the liberation of Al-Maghari , the only accused in the Lockerbie Trials, got he got his appeal will probably will have been innocent of the charge and with him, Gaddhafi will be exonerated of being “Terrorist”. He also explores the situation of Palestine and One State Solution, instead of 2 State Solution.
The Three Reason, Why the West wants Muammar Gaddafi
International bankers have reportedly wasted billions of dollars invested by Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. The Financial Times says giants like Goldman Sachs were dealing with the dictator’s investments when it needed to plug a hole during the economic crisis. Most of the money has been lost, but with what’s going on in Libya any repayment seems unlikely.
More on Lybia…..
Bombimg of Lybia – punishment for Ghaddafi for his attempt to refuse US dollar
Global Civilians For Peace In Libya
Convicted Lockerbie Bomber Probably Not Guilty—So Who Is the Real Criminal?
Libya: Photographic Evidence of NATO bombing of Nasser University in Tripoli
The Libyan Myth
Posted On July 07, 2011 by Marivel Guzman from Robert Parry Consortiumnews.com
Today’s third deadly myth is Washington’s certainty that Libyan dictator Gaddafi was responsible for the Pan Am 103 attack and thus must be removed from power by force and possibly by assassination.
The alternative option of taking Gaddafi up on his offers of a cease-fire and negotiations toward a political settlement has been rejected out of hand by both the Obama administration and by nearly all the influential pundits in Washington, in part, because of the Pan Am case.
Repeatedly citing Gaddafi’s killing of Americans over Lockerbie, the U.S. debate has centered on the need to ratchet up military pressure on Gaddafi and even chuckle over NATO’s transparent efforts to murder the Libyan leader (and his family members) by bombing his homes and offices.
The Obama administration is sticking with this violent course of action even though Libyan civilians continue to die and the cutoff of Libyan oil from the international markets has exacerbated shortages in supplies, thus contributing to the higher gas prices that are damaging the U.S. economic recovery.
But President Obama apparently sees no choice. After all, the conventional wisdom is that Gaddafi is guilty in the Pan Am 103 case. All the leading U.S. news organizations, such as the New York Times, and prominent politicians, such as Sen. John McCain, say so.
“The blood of Americans is on [Gaddafi’s] hands because he was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103,” declared Sen. McCain, R-Arizona, after an early trip to rebel-held Benghazi.
However, the reality of the Pan Am case is much murkier – and some experts on the mystery believe that Libyans may have had nothing to do with it.
It is true that in 2001, a special Scottish court convicted Libyan agent Ali al-Megrahi for the bombing. But the judgment appears to have been more a political compromise than an act of justice. Another Libyan was found not guilty, and one of the Scottish judges told Dartmouth government professor Dirk Vandewalle about “enormous pressure put on the court to get a conviction.”
Megrahi’s conviction assuaged the understandable human desire to see someone punished for such a heinous crime, albeit a possibly innocent man.
In 2007, after the testimony of a key witness against Megrahi was discredited, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission agreed to reconsider the conviction as a grave miscarriage of justice. However, that review was proceeding slowly in 2009 when Scottish authorities released Megrahi on humanitarian grounds, after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.
Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to gain the early release, but that doesn’t mean he was guilty. He has continued to assert his innocence and an objective press corps would reflect the doubts regarding his curious conviction.
Dubious Witness
The Scottish court’s purported reason for finding Megrahi guilty – while acquitting his co-defendant Lamin Khalifa Fhimah – was the testimony of Toni Gauci, owner of a clothing store in Malta who allegedly sold Megrahi a shirt, the remnants of which were found with the shards of the suitcase that contained the bomb.
The rest of the case rested on a theory that Megrahi put the luggage on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt, where it was transferred to a connecting flight to London, where it was transferred onto Pan Am 103 bound for New York, a decidedly unlikely way to undertake an act of terrorism given all the random variables involved.
Megrahi would have had to assume that three separate airport security systems – at Malta, Frankfort and London – would fail to give any serious scrutiny to an unaccompanied suitcase or to detect the bomb despite security officials being on the lookout for just such a threat.
As historian William Blum recounted in a Consortiumnews.com article after Megrahi’s 2001 conviction, “The case for the suitcase’s hypothetical travels must also deal with the fact that, according to Air Malta, all the documented luggage on KM180 was collected by passengers in Frankfurt and did not continue in transit to London, and that two Pan Am on-duty officials in Frankfurt testified that no unaccompanied luggage was introduced onto Pan Am 103A, the feeder flight to London.”
There also were problems with Gauci’s belated identification of Megrahi as the shirt-buyer a decade after the fact. Gauci had made contradictory IDs and had earlier given a physical description that didn’t match Megrahi. Gauci reportedly received a $2 million reward for his testimony and then moved to Australia, where he went into retirement.
In 2007, the Scottish review panel decided to reconsider Megrahi’s conviction after concluding that Gauci’s testimony was unbelievable. And without Gauci’s testimony, the case against Megrahi was virtually the same as the case against his co-defendant who was acquitted.
However, after Megrahi’s conviction in 2001, more international pressure was put on Libya, which was then regarded as the archetypal “rogue” state. Indeed, it was to get onerous economic sanctions lifted that Libya took “responsibility” for the Pan Am attack and paid reparations to the victims’ families even as Libyan officials continued to deny guilt.
In April, there was some excitement over the possibility that Gaddafi would be fingered personally as the Pan Am 103 mastermind when former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa defected. He was believed to be in charge of Libyan intelligence in 1988 and thus almost certainly in the know.
Moussa Koussa was questioned by Scottish authorities but apparently shed little new light on the case. He was allowed to go free after the interview. Very quickly the press interest over Moussa Koussa faded away, except for the recurring assumption in some Western press articles that he must have implicated Gaddafi.
Despite the doubts about the Pan Am 103 case — and the tragic human and economic toll from the Libyan war – the U.S. news media and politicians continue to treat Libya’s guilt as a flat fact. It appears that no big-time journalist or important official has even bothered to read the Scottish court’s bizarre judgment regarding Megrahi’s 2001 conviction.
Instead, NATO’s bombing campaign against Libyan targets continues, including the recent leveling of tents where Gaddafi greets foreign dignitaries and the destruction of Libyan TV.
Rather than making war policies based on serious factual analysis, the United States and NATO continue to be guided by politically pleasing myths. It is a recipe for an even-greater disaster and unnecessary deaths.
Akashma Online News 