British minister admits trade role in Lockerbie talks

[steven johnson]

Source: AFP

Trade deals with Libya played a "very big part" in Britain's decision to include the Lockerbie bomber in a prisoner transfer deal with Tripoli, a government minister acknowledged in an interview Saturday.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw told the Daily Telegraph that trade and an oil exploration deal between BP and Libya were factors in deciding whether to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi eligible for transfer to a prison back home.

Asked if trade and oil were part of the discussions, Straw said: "Yes, a very big part of that. I?m unapologetic about that... Libya was a rogue state. We wanted to bring it back into the fold.

"And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal."


Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g93Z6c0N2AZ4txfX2BYbztFt6LmA

[Wilms]

1. Limited hang-out.

What about the suppression of evidence at trial?

[JohnyCanuck]

2. Amazing how the media whores studiously avoid bringing this up

Well maybe it's not so amazing, after all that's why they're called media whores.

Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed
By John Pilger

The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Britain. From Gordon Brown’s “repulsion” to Barack Obama’s “outrage,” the theater of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those who call themselves journalists. “But what if Megrahi lives longer than three months?” whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. “What will you say to your constituents, then?”

SNIP

No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of “strategic interests.”

SNIP

“The endgame came down to damage limitation,” said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, “because the evidence amassed by appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice.” New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft – he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognize him in the courtroom.

SNIP

Foot reported that most of the staff of the US embassy in Moscow who had reserved seats on Pan Am flights from Frankfurt canceled their bookings when they were alerted by US intelligence that a terrorist attack was planned. He named Margaret Thatcher the “architect” of the cover-up after revealing that she killed the independent inquiry her transport secretary Cecil Parkinson had promised the Lockerbie families; and in a phone call to President George Bush Sr. on 11 January 1990, she agreed to “low-key” the disaster after their intelligence services had reported “beyond doubt” that the Lockerbie bomb had been placed by a Palestinian group contracted by Tehran as a reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a US warship in Iranian territorial waters. Among the 290 dead were 66 children. In 1990, the ship’s captain was awarded the Legion of Merit by Bush Sr. “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer.”

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/lockerbie-megrahi-was-framed-by-john-pilger/

See also this previous post at DU for links to articles in the UK media explaining how it was becoming increasingly apparent Megrahi was framed for a crime he didn't commit:
http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6423763#6423967

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Crown Office "rejoicing" at abandonment of Megrahi case

Ian Ferguson, investigative journalist and author of "Cover Up of Convenience" has said that the Crown Office in Edinburgh were "rejoicing" when Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi dropped his appeal.

He also hinted that the progress of the case had been deliberately slowed down whilst Megrahi's cancer debilitated him.

"From the start there was a determination to try to prevent this appeal being heard," he said.

"It opened but never got off the ground, with stall after stall as each month Megrahi weakened with the cancer that was killing him. There was rejoicing in the Crown Office in Edinburgh when he was released and the appeal abandoned."

Ferguson had visited Megrahi many times and was privy to close quarters insights into how the progress of the case affected him. His revelations support the growing acknowledgement that decisions made at international political level were forced through the Scottish legal system.

http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/1667/Crown_Office_%22rejoicing%22_at_abandonment_of_Megrahi_case.html

[No Elephants]

4. +1

[T_i_B]

3. This saga is dragging on and on and on....

...and neither Labour in Whitehall or the SNP in Holyrood are coming out of this very well.

[No Elephants]

5. Yes but it seems to me that the truth comes out in the UK a lot faster than in the US. Maybe

that is a misimpression on my part, but it is my impression.

[T_i_B]

6. What is actually happening...

is that people in Holyrood and Whitehall are leaking and briefing against each other in a bid to apportion the blame elsewhere.

And then people wonder why so many of us are turned off by UK politics. :eyes:

[funkybutt]

8. "Unapologetic"? Yet adamantly denied it originally

Wasn't Straw the same guy who was denying these reports when they first came out?

[panzerfaust]

9. Shocked!

I am that shocked

[oct2010]

10. No.10 turns on Obama and Clinton for criticising decision to release Lockerbie bomber

Downing Street has hit back at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for attacking the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber.

President Obama and the US Secretary of State fuelled a fierce American backlash against Britain, claiming Abdelbaset Al Megrahi should have been forced to serve out his jail sentence in Scotland – but a senior Whitehall aide said their reaction was ‘disingenuous’


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211495/No-10-turns-Obama-Clinton-criticising-decision-release-Lockerbie-bomber.html#ixzz0QMX5BVPr

[JonQ]

11. So you traded a murderers freedom for oil,

got it thanks.

No doubt you will sleep well tonight without a bit of concern over this.