The article of the above name, in a recent edition of the London Review of Books that I have just caught up with, presents a devastating forensic argument for its case. It makes the official howls of anger from Washington, and embarrassed foot-shuffling in London, about the release back to Libya of the man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, look very hollow
The LRB has made the article available in full here (much of its content is usually for subscribers only), presumably because of the importance it attributes to it.
I was slightly wary when I first read it, because of an apparent lack of sources apart from Dr. Jim Swire, a leader of the PanAm103 Families group, and a UN report into the trial of al-Megrahi. The extracts from the UN report are savage criticisms of the whole trial process, but not having seen them in context, I still had doubts.
The case was well argued, I thought, and echoed some things I had heard from sources of my own some years ago. Indeed, the basic thesis had been published before in the general press. But the sources ?
Then the name of the author clicked at last. Gareth Pierce – a woman lawyer despite the name she legally adopted to replace her Christian name of Jean – is one of Britain’s leading civil rights advocates. She has taken on the establishment and repeatedly won reversals of wrongful convictions.
In my rough precis, the argument is that for the first two years after the bombing, all the investigations focused on an Iranian reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vicennes, sub-contracted to the extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), headed by Ahmed Jibril. “For the first two years there was no mention at all of Libya,” Ms Pierce says.
“Then, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, thereby putting at risk almost 10 percent of US oil supplies, and the stability of the Saudi and Gulf sheikhdoms on which the West depended to preserve the status quo in the region. A sudden shift of alliances was necessary: if Iraq had to be confronted, then Iran had to be gtreated differently and the Syrian regime [the PFLP-GC was headquartered in Damascus] needed to be brought on board,” she says.
Ms. Pierce details planted evidence, evidence ignored, witness stories changed, forensic evidence from discredited scientists, and it goes on.
I do not generally side with the “it’s all for the oil” school of thinking in geopolitics, but this story is utterly convincing. And as I said, my sources – who were involved in secret negotiations with Libya in recent years – told me years ago that the initial thesis was correct and the Libyans were absolutely not involved.
I urge you to read the whole story and reach your own conclusions.
When the whole al-Megrahi repatriation thing broke in the news (disclaimer: I don’t have a television. I seldom read newspapers. I occasionally listen to BBC WorldService Radio or Radio 4) we were all aghast here, because we DO read Private Eye (even though my mother-in-law sends it on a few weeks late) and we were of the opinion that “everyone” already “knew” al-Megrahi couldn’t have been guilty. As far as I can recall them, for many of the reasons detailed here. It was shocking to see how little of the PE journalism had reached people who might have been assumed to be interested.
I don’t often read PE (I should), but I did know about it anyway.
But I wonder how much this influenced the Scottish Justice Minister in his decision to release al-Megrahi.