…signifying nothing but another Spectacle designed to distract attention from the real issue of the Lockerbie bombing, namely the realpolitik behind the stitch-up of Megrahi as a convenient patsy. Whenever you hear loud howls of outrage from politicians ‘across the political spectrum’ (which in UK terms is centre-right to far right) you can be sure that the louder the howls and more fervent the outrage, the more important the issue(s) attention is being diverted from. In the case of the “Lockerbie bomber”, released from jail on compassionate grounds on account of him being due to croak any day now, the howls have become louder and more fervent with every passing hour, with even the Yanks joining in, the Director of the US political police – sorry, ‘FBI’ – declaring that the decision “gave comfort to terrorists” [1] and St Obama saying the decision to release was “a mistake”.
It was quite handy that Gheddafi gave Megrahi a “hero’s welcome” as that gave the various rent-a-rants (sorry, ‘commentators’) and MPs an excellent focus for their outrage. So convenient, indeed, that the mischievously minded might wonder if Gheddafi hadn’t been tipped the unofficial wink to play up the reception for public consumption both in Libya and over here, despite the official line that Brown had written to him asking for a quiet homecoming. The “triumphalism” of the reception gave the rent-a-rants an easy target to rage against safe in the knowledge that whatever they said would have zero practical effect on the fait accompli and so there’d be no comeback [2], which allowed them to puff, preen and posture as they wanted. NuLabor hacks North of the Border also used the release as a convenient stick to beat the Scotnats with, safe in the knowledge that the stick couldn’t be turned against them. A win-win for the ranters and gobshites that represent the “consensus” of the UK, and particularly the English, political class – the Megrahi release was the equivalent of a free ball in snooker, an opportunity which costs nothing and can gain much.
What all the bluster and thunder conveniently distracts attention from is that the conviction of Megrahi was, even if you’re charitable and naive and gullible, pretty damned iffy. All the initial leads pointed towards a Syrian-backed group as the perps in revenge for the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the US warship Vincennes (an event that’s been successfully airbrushed out of public history), but with the US turning against their former puppet Saddam Hussein Syria suddenly became a valuable ‘regional ally’ so there was a sharp switch in the investigation’s focus to another ’state sponsor of terrorism’, Libya. Suddenly a dodgy witness is found in Malta, who after being wined and dined and treated to goodies by investigators, and after being shown photos of Megrahi, identified him many years after the ‘fact’ [3]. As Private Eye, for all its faults one of the few remaining bastions of investigative reporting in the UK, and which has doggedly pursued the “travesty” of Megrahi’s conviction since 2001, wrote in an article in the recent edition:
Megrahi’s trial was a travesty. There were the testimonies of two witnesses who were paid huge sums by the CIA – one a notorious liar and paid informer, Abdul Giaka, who first put Megrahi in the frame; the other the Maltese shopkeeper who identified him as the man who bought clothes said to have been packed round the bomb. He had been shown photographs of Megrahi. [4]
The only material evidence linking Megrahi and Libya to the bombing was a tiny bit of circuit board ‘re-found’ amongst the crash debris some years later. All in all a pretty thin case, and there were strong grounds for believing that Megrahi’s appeal against the conviction would have not only discredited this evidence but would have also brought the realpolitik of US and UK governments into the frame and opened a can of worms which both States were keen to see remain closed and buried. The Eye again:
News last week that Megrahi was to be returned on ‘compassionate grounds’, because he was dying of cancer, briefly raised hopes that his appeal could continue in his absence. But that was never going to be allowed to happen, and Megrahi, who had always said he would never return to Libya until his name was cleared, duly dropped his appeal.
That the appeal won’t go ahead has dismayed many UK relatives of victims of the atrocity, including the courageous and redoubtable Jim Swires, but has undoubtedly led to huge sighs of relief being breathed in the corridors of Whitehall and Westminster. With Megrahi dead and the appeal buried, the chances are that the truth of the bombing, who carried it out and, more importantly, why and on whose orders, will never come out in our lifetimes, unless investigative journalists keep digging (oh for a Seymour Hearsh over here). Which will happily suit the gobshites and rent-a-rants who can continue to foam at the mouth in parliaments and newspapers, and more importantly the senior figures in the UK and US States who know the truth.
Whenever you see the English political class united in ‘outrage’ at something or other, you can lay good odds that there’s something needing covering up. Instead, as the Eye puts it, the “outrage would be better focused on the governments and justice systems that have ensured we have all been denied the full truth about Lockerbie.”
As a ’side-dish’ to this story, it was interesting to compare and contrast the public view North and South of the Border. I was up in the Highlands on holiday these last two weeks, and in the week running up to the release the Herald, and BBC Radio Scotland (I didn’t watch any TV – hey, I was on holiday!), continuously ran stories on the impending release. The Herald carried many letters on the issue, and it was interesting to see from them, and from the radio reports, that the prevailing public opinion was that a) the conviction was dodgy and should be examined, and b) the guy should be released to spend his last days at home even if he was guilty, with politicial commentators declaring that showing mercy was a “strength” of which Scotland should be proud, and which reflected well on the nation. I don’t know what the reactionary English press wrote during this time, but it was clear from the newsstand headlines on the release that compassion was not top of the agenda. Another illustration, to my mind, of the increasingly civilised discourse and culture in Scotland, compared to the reactionary, and often neo-fascist, barbarism to the South. The contrast between civilisation and barbarism becomes, it seems, starker and more glaring each time I venture North. With luck one time I’ll stay up there and not return…
Postscript
A good letter on this topic appeared in the Herald last Saturday which is worth quoting in full in case the link ‘goes off’:
Hypocritical for Americans to voice anger
The USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus on July 3, 1988, killing 290 innocent civilians. When the Vincennes returned to its home port of San Diego, it was given a hero’s welcome. The crew members of the Vincennes were awarded combat action ribbons.
Commander Scott Lustig won the Commendation medal for “heroic achievement” for the ability to “maintain his poise and confidence under fire” that allowed him to “quickly and concisely complete the firing procedure”. To top it all, the citizens of Indiana raised money not for the dead Iranians but to the very ship that destroyed their lives.
Now, as Megrahi is allowed to go home to die in Libya, most Americans as well as our Foreign Secretary David Miliband, express disgust at the scenes of flag-waving. Mr Miliband said: “Obviously the sight of a mass murderer getting a hero’s welcome in Tripoli is deeply upsetting, deeply distressing.” I wonder how the Iranians felt when they heard of the Vincennes arrival back in San Diego.
It is not often we have the opportunity to be proud to be Scottish but I, for one, am deeply relieved that our small nation stood up to the political heavyweights who tried to interfere with the Scottish legal system which chose to show that, even after a heinous crimes had been perpetrated, we are capable of granting a dying man compassion.
Even if Megrahi did commit the terrible act of bombing Pan Am 103, who ordered it? Colonel Gaddafi? The very same Gaddafi who is now treated to private audiences with our own leaders?
Martin Walsh, Paisley.
Another article worth reading is The Framing of Al-Megrahi by the respected human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce which looks at Megrahi’s fit-up in forensic detail, and reveals some quite disturbing facts about US and UK geopolitical and secret service interventions in the case, right from the night of the crash when unidentified US spooks were trawling the crash site.
[1] Megrahi release ‘right decision’. BBC News online, 23/8/09
[2] Unlike, say, the liberal warmonger Aaronovitch whose fervent support for the Iraq war helped shore up support for the war of plunder and thus indirectly made him complicit in the immense death and destruction caused by it, a complicity for which he could, though sadly likely won’t, be held personally accountable
[3] Megrahi: a ‘convenient scapegoat’? BBC News online, 20/8/09
[4] Private Eye, No. 1243, p28. See also the Private Eye website where you can buy copies of the late and much-missed Paul Foot’s investigations into the Megrahi fit-up.
[5] The Herald, Letters page 22/8/09, also on the newspaper website.
