US Lockerbie bomber investigation

[IAN 2411]

US Lockerbie bomber investigation 'may visit UK'
An influential US Senate committee is ready to send members to the UK to question British witnesses on the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
Senator Robert Menendez revealed the plan after British witnesses including former Justice Secretary Jack Straw, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and First Minister Alex Salmond turned down requests to attend a hearing of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington.
Mr Salmond said he was happy to offer a visiting US senator "the courtesy" of a meeting. But he said there was "no way on Earth" that Scottish ministers would formally give evidence to a committee hearing of a foreign legislature, even if it is held in the UK.
Mr Menendez has been one of the most vocal US politicians calling for an inquiry into the decision to free Megrahi, who returned to a hero's welcome in Libya last year.
Mr Menendez accused the British politicians who failed to attend this week's hearing of lacking "courage" and "stonewalling".
He said: "In addition to making a request for them to come to hearings, we will be... having someone travel to Great Britain and Scotland to interview the individuals and ask questions and get a better understanding of how they came to their decisions."
Mr Menendez said the committee also wanted to talk to outgoing BP chief executive Tony Hayward about what role the company played in lobbying for a prisoner transfer agreement at a time when it was negotiating a multi-million pound oil deal with Libya.
But Mr Salmond told Newsnight: "We are co-operating with the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Its chairman John Kerry has described our response as thoughtful and thorough and we have answered all questions that Senator Menendez has sent to us."

Who the fuck does Senator Robert Menendez think he is, leading a US Senate committee over to UK to interrogate witnesses. This man has visions of grandeur and must really think he is the king of all committees. I would like to ask the question, do the Americans think that they are the law to the world, and they can walk into any country and ask questions and expect answers. Well, let him try it in the UK, and he will go home with an empty briefcase, he has a damn cheek to say the least. He wants to question our politicians on a matter that has fuck all to do with the American Senate or their Government. He is also questioning Scottish law, because it was Scottish law that released Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Meggrahi, and not BP executives lobbying for his release. The man is a complete idiot, he would be better employed trying to get re-elected, “Whoops” maybe this is what it is all about are the elections arriving soon?

Well I don’t know how true this is but the UK is sending the Iraq inquiry to the states. I think it is to interview a cowboy that was born New Haven Connecticut. They have a question or two for him, one being why did it take the British with him when decided his ego was not big enough, and he needed a war to show the world what a rooting tooting kick ass man he was. [Yea right]

I have something to say to the American Congress and Senate, stay in your own country and sort your own messes out before you have the cheek to come to the UK and tell us to sort our laws out

Please, I don’t want to hear any of that normal shit, [This is another dig at the American or its anti USA] because if the American President and now a crack pot Senator were not anti UK then I would not be writing this.

Regards ian 2411

[denuseri]

Its pretty obvious that its not about Brittian vs the USA when one reads that actual news story.

It sounds as if someone has some suspicions that someone else has been paid off in order to pull some political strings to release this known terrorist and got enough juice flowing that a senate committee was formed over here.

Senator Robert Menendez has confirmed that US Senate hearings on the release of the Lockerbie bomber have been postponed.

He criticised key witnesses for declining invitations and 'stonewalling' the US Senate's hearings - which were looking into claims that the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was linked to oil deals with Libya, becuase it is truely very suspicious how BP makes a deal with the Lybian government at one end and then a known terrorist is suddenly released at another end.

The Scotish Government is fully cooperating with the USA within so far as it is able considering how diplomatic channels bwteen our two countries function.

Menendez is part of the seneate comittee looking into BP and its shady dealings which would have most likely remained hidden if its wern't for the oil spill.

Its also pretty obvious that when one watches the broadcast where Menendez speaks that no one is "anti UK" over here.

But I am sure we will have to wait and see what happens...if we see anything else happen.

I predict the whole thing will just disapear in the political two step our respective governments have been doing ever since they became really super close allies during WW2.

[MMI]

Does Menendez believe that Al Meggrahi wouldn't have been sent home to die but for the pleas of BP.

And if so, doesn't that mean BP did good, even if it did get a little something extra on the side?

[denuseri]

Personally I think there is more going on here than meets the eye...like intellegence services are involved on both sides of the pond at the perhaps secret bequest of their governments.

[MMI]

Well, if BP was acting on behalf of MI5 or FBI, what's Menendez complaining about?

[denuseri]

It just seemed fishy to me is all...and then the sudden dropping of the inquiery (ie putting it on hold).

If MI-5 or 6 was involved they may or may not have informed their younger brothers and sisters accross the pond, so I don't know.

Its also possible that someone else in the political strata was involved and none of the intellegence services became aware of the deal until it was done.

[IAN 2411]

26% of BP has Uk investors
47% of BP is American
the rest is world owned that is stats 5 years ago
Are you telling me that All those Americans at BP would secretly vote for BP to seek his freedom knowing the fall out would be great, somehow i dont think so. Or is it that i am so nieve as to think it was Scotish Law that released him on compssionate grounds, and there was no outside influence. I think that if that inquirey was stopped because of MI5 6 or FBI said so there would be a lot of roumers flying about, because there is always someone with a big mouth.

Regards ian 2411

[denuseri]

I doubt the FBI would be involved so much as the CIA.

The fact that BP is a multi-national corperation is perhaps something that eludes most people.

[MMI]

The fact that BP is a multi-national corperation is perhaps something that eludes most people.

I doubt that. It is an oil company, after all, and how many of those are not multi-national?

[denuseri]

Over here at least it seems that way MMI and the media does nothing to promote otherwise.

[MMI]

Anyway, despite being a British registered multi-national, if ian 2411 is to be believed, it has more American shareholders than British ones, and, as ian also suggests, BP is more likely to want to pursue American interests rather than British ones.

[DuncanONeil]

Anyway, despite being a British registered multi-national, if ian 2411 is to be believed, it has more American shareholders than British ones, and, as ian also suggests, BP is more likely to want to pursue American interests rather than British ones.

Actually appears as if the numbers are equal!

Ownership statistics


Beneficial owners as at 31 December 2009a b
Percentage of shares in issue
Range of holdings Institutions Individuals Total
By principal area
UK 33 7 40
US 25 14 39
Rest of Europe 10 - 10
Rest of World 7 - 7
Miscellaneousc 4 - 4
79 21 100

[IAN 2411]

The Stats i had were four years older but i believe that when the Sky News quoted the percentages a few weeks ago they quoted Americans between 40 and 47% still, but i think it irrelivent because i doubt that you will hear the truth about the why anyway.

Regards ian 2411

[DuncanONeil]

So then the data is irrelevant. Thus permitting you to believe as you will.

The Stats i had were four years older but i believe that when the Sky News quoted the percentages a few weeks ago they quoted Americans between 40 and 47% still, but i think it irrelivent because i doubt that you will hear the truth about the why anyway.

Regards ian 2411

[TantricSoul]

Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is a proactive suggestion to take things a bit less personally.

It's my birthday tomorrow, and I'm really not in the mood to do the whole "grumpy moderator" thing

Everyone has a unique perception that forms their reality and their "truth." Trying to convince another that they are "wrong" is usually an exercise in futility.
Besides isn't it easier to post your facts and conclusions without the pot shots at one another?
It does equate to much less typing in the long run.

I hope you all are having a great weekend.

Respectfully,
Tantric

[IAN 2411]

So then the data is irrelevant. Thus permitting you to believe as you will.

Seems that way, at the end of the day it is not going to change anything dramaticly there will always be speculation.

Pot shots? There you go and i thought it was just a dull conversation.

Regards ian 2411

PS Happy Birthday TantricSoul

[TantricSoul]

thanks ian 2411

[MMI]

Hope you had a great day, Grumpy!

[TantricSoul]

thanks MMI, I did indeed have a great day!

[DuncanONeil]

Part of the problem of dealing with reported data. The date of the data collection is always important. Part of the reason I put in the date.
I have taken to trying to include that information more often as it sunk in that some of the data sets used in other places were a bit on the dated side.

In terms of who owns what I believe there is a requirement for companies to report that data for some reason of the regulators. Otherwise we would not be able to find it broken down in such a fashion.

[denuseri]

The latest from the Associated Press is:

A cancer expert who said Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi had only three months to live before his release from prison was quoted Sunday as saying he should have been more cautious about the prisoner's chances of survival.

Al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds from a Scottish prison in August 2009, and allowed to return home to Libya, where he continues to be treated for prostate cancer.

The Libyan is the only person to have been jailed over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, which killed 259 people — mostly Americans — onboard and 11 more on the ground. He was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to serve a minimum of 27 years in a Scottish prison.

Al-Megrahi was freed by Scotland's government following advice from medical experts and a prison doctor. At the time of his release, al-Megrahi was not expected to survive for more than three months.

Three other experts provided an opinion for the Libyan government on al-Megrahi's condition. While those assessments were shared with Scottish authorities, officials insist those opinions were not taken into account when deciding to release the bomber.

"If I could go back in time, I would have probably been more vague and tried to emphasize the statistical chances and not hard fact," Prof. Karol Sikora, one of the experts who provided an assessment for Libya, was quoted as telling Britain's Observer newspaper on Sunday.

Last week, four U.S. Democratic senators — Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer of New York and Bob Menendez and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey — sent a letter to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond asking that al-Megrahi's full medical records be disclosed.

"Independent examination of Mr. al-Megrahi's complete medical record is necessary in order to understand the circumstances surrounding his compassionate release," the senators wrote. "A more complete medical record may help us understand exactly what Mr. al-Megrahi's treatment options were and thereby help clarify questions about his prognosis."

Annabel Goldie, a Conservative Party lawmaker in Scotland's Parliament, said she agrees that the medical advice which prompted al-Megrahi's release should be disclosed in full.

"We've never seen that medical evidence. We now know from the prison doctor that the cancer experts were not absolute in their view that al-Megrahi only had three months to live, so there is a lot of confusion here," she said.

Currently, the only publicly available document is a report by the Scottish Prison Service's medical chief, Andrew Fraser, which summarizes the notes of four specialists. The report described the three-month prognosis for al-Megrahi as "reasonable," but confirmed that none of those consulted was willing to rule out that al-Megrahi might live for longer.

"It's not like in the films when the oncologist says, 'I'm sorry you have three months to live.' There's a huge spectrum for every clinical situation. When I was asked, 'Is he likely to die in three months?', my opinion was that he was," Sikora told the newspaper. "If you look at the survival curve, there's about a 60 percent chance of someone being dead in three months, but that doesn't mean he will die in three months."

Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and Fraser both previously declined a request to attend a planned U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on the case.

Sikora insisted that medical experts gave an honest assessment of al-Megrahi's chances of survival, and were not pressured to reach certain conclusions. MacAskill has strongly denied allegations that oil giant BP pressured Scotland to free al-Megrahi — so it could win access to Libyan oil reserves.

Former chief executive of BP John Browne, who stepped down in 2007, said Saturday he held two meetings with Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi but had never discussed issues around the release of prisoners.

BP has acknowledged that it lobbied the U.K. government as Britain and Libya were negotiating a prisoner transfer agreement — known as a PTA — in autumn 2007, but said it had not raised the case of al-Megrahi.

"The PTA happened after I left the company. I went to see Col. Gadhafi twice and I think I moved things forward, but there was no discussion about the PTA and no agreement for exploration made at that time," Browne said, speaking Saturday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Browne said one of the victims of the bombing was a friend, and claimed he could have boarded the plane himself. "Flight 103 means a lot to me because I nearly got on that plane and I lost a good friend and colleague Michael Pescatore who was a passenger on the plane," he said.

Sikora said he believed a panel of four or five independent experts should have reviewed al-Megrahi's condition, rather than the work be handled by Scotland's government.

He also responded to accusations that doctors should bear some blame for mistakenly assessing that al-Megrahi would likely die soon after his release. "What I find difficult is the idea I took the key and let him out. I provided an opinion, others provided an opinion, and someone else let him out. That decision of compassionate release is nothing to do with me," Sikora was quoted as saying.

[MMI]

What are they quoting a Tory SMP for? They are the least relevant "serious" party in Scotland.

I'm tempted to suggest that al-Megrahi's survival for such a long time is testimony to the efficiency of the Libyan health service. He probably wouldn't have lasted so long in Greenock Prison.

Our Health Service is little better than our Legal System, which is supposed to convict only when guilt is proved beyond reasonable doubt, yet in this case, where we have the Lord Advocate saying that the main witness was not quite the "full shilling", and whose testimony was suspect in that his identification of al Megrahi as the man he had sold clothes to 11 1/2 years earlier was simply that Megrahi "resembled" the customer ...

Worry first that /megrahi was not the victim of a miscarriage of justice, rather than making sure that someone ... anyone ... can pay the penalty for killing Americans

[IAN 2411]

I have to agree with MMI on this one as I was waiting for someone to bring up his trial. There were a lot of doubts cast as to some of the evidence and the only thing that committed him to jail was the one MMI mentioned. I forget the main events in the trial and I remember the speculation by the press about the clothes issue. I believed when he was sentenced and I do believe now that the wrong man was jailed, there were too many things didn’t add up at the time. Although when he was committed to jail, the press all changed their tune as nine times out of ten they always will. I believe strongly that there is a person out there that is guilty of a massacre and is still walking about free and he’s not in Libya. I don’t think it is the medical records of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Meggrahi the Americans should be asking for, they should be asking for the papers belonging to the investigation and the court case itself. You cannot even blame the Scottish court for any miscarriage of justice if there was one, they can only decide by the mitigating evidence that they are supplied with. One other thing you might like to think about, is that maybe the Scottish court found out later that it was a stitch up and that was why he was released. The English government might be involved as well.

Regards ian 2411

[MMI]

Something I forgot to mention, which could be worth pondering, is why there was no jury at al-Megrahi's trial. Could it be that the authorities realised that any ordinary panel of jurors would look at the evidence proffered and say to themselves, This does not prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt and refuse to convict. Even if the jury returned a verdict of Not Proven al-Megrahi would have had to be released, and that verdict would have caused as much outcry as the eventual release of the man to spend his last days with his loved ones.

The panel of judges had no such scruples.

But if you cannot prove the man is guilty, you should not imprison him - unless, that is, you are conducting a show trial.

This point was utterly lost on the Appeal Judges ... but when you realise that they were the same judges who heard the trial at first instance, it is not entirely surprising. What were the odds of them over-ruling themselves?

It is worth pointing out that many of the British victims' relatives are not protesting against al-Megrahi's release, because they do not believe in his guilt. They prefer the theory that the bomb was planted by Abu Talb, a Palestinian terrorist, and that is where the investigators should be looking ... rather than paying - so it was alleged - a simple-minded shopkeeper a couple of million pounds to testify against one of the suspects identified by British/American investigators (the other of whom turned out to be able to prove he was in Scandinavia at the time). However, his incontestable innocence did not help his co-accused, as someone, preferably a Libyan, so Gadaffi could be made to pay compensation - who would take the fall.

$3 billion. That's how much it costs to buy off the US Army from invading you!

[denuseri]

Or the Brittish?

[IAN 2411]

denuseri; why the hell would the British want to invade Libya, i think it was 68/69 that we handed our sovriegn bases back to Gadaffi. I know that to be true because i was one of the last British soldiers in Al Adem after the RAF left and the last thing we did was blow to pieces the runway and demolish all traces of the British ever being there. Srategicly it was a waste of time we had to many other bases near the Russians in the cold war to worry about it. There would be no value to the British to go to war with them.

Regards ian 2411

[denuseri]

No more so than the americans.

Though it looks like cutting a 3 billion dollar back room deal will keep us both out and oil flowing for now.

[MMI]

Or the Brittish?

That's fair comment, den, but I'm sure Britain would have stayed away for much less! Anyway, I have to defer to ian's better knowledge in this regard.

The fact of the matter is, I think, that Col Gadaffi was scared that the US would (with or without its British lackeys), invade Libya, and, if memory serves me well, this was a fairly widespread belief at the time. For the good of Libya's oil economy, perhaps, and for the sake of Gadaffi's personal well-being, certainly (call me cynical if you like) he was prepared to accept responsibility for the bombing, renounce support for terrorism, and pay $10m wergeld to each family of the Flight 103 victims. It was the price of peace, and the payments were clearly linked to removal of sanctions and blacklisting by the US.

I think it was felt that it would be better to make Libya pay restitution in return for its rehabilitation, than to whistle in the wind for any form of compensation from the probable real bombers, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which neither would nor could pay out such money even if it had been proved responsible. But in order to make Libya look guilty, it was necessary for a show trial and a fall guy. Fortunately, Gadaffi was willing to offer up sacrificial victims to the High Court of Justiciary, and Britain was not at all reluctant to prostitute the Scottish legal system in order to secure a conviction.

So remind me ... what was it that BP did that was so wrong?

[denuseri]

The whole thing with going after Libya over lockerbie imho was becuase they couldnt punnish the PLO directly...so they went to the guy who gave them safe harbor as well as political and economic backing and punnished him instead.

And I don't and perhaps will never know what exact role BP has played in it. The story hasn't seen the light of day since the commission went dark, which tells me the respected governments involved have come to an agreeement, or the aggreement BP worked out has now been ruber stamped by them eaither way.

[MMI]

The whole thing with going after Libya over lockerbie imho was becuase they couldnt punnish the PLO directly...so they went to the guy who gave them safe harbor as well as political and economic backing and punnished him instead.

Agreed ... but that's hardly justice, not even rough justice. At best it's vengeance. You don't need to have five senior judges to take revenge.

And I don't and perhaps will never know what exact role BP has played in it. The story hasn't seen the light of day since the commission went dark, which tells me the respected governments involved have come to an agreeement, or the aggreement BP worked out has now been ruber stamped by them eaither way.

What governments agree between themselves always has less to do with the good of the people affected than the good of the people who effect the agreement. So keeping things quiet is par for the course.