Merged Lockerbie bomber alive after 9 months

Rolfe said:
I wonder if it's possible to find out more. It would be correct to say that Megrahi was going nowhere under the PTA unless the appeal was withdrawn, and Kenny would be correct to say that. However if he said or implied that this was the whole story, or that compassionate release would not be considered unless the appeal was withdrawn, that's a different matter. I suspect he may have managed to put that message across.

Why do it this way anyway? Why keep the man hanging on like that? Why not give a decision on the compassionate release, and THEN leave it up to Megrahi to decide if he wants to drop the appeal to go the PTA route? Having them both dangling at once seems unnecessarily ambiguous, not to mention a bit cruel.

And the other oddity is that Megrahi had access to the BBC and the Herald as far as I know. Surely he knew the Scottish government would rather pull its own toenails out one at a time than grant that prisoner transfer? Surely Mr. Kelly knew? The obvious advice would have been to hold tight and wait for the decision on compassionate release, before doing anything irrevocable.

And it was Mr. Kelly who first said, in a statement to the BBC, that Megrahi had been pressurised to drop the appeal. He said that about the time the LAA plane was on the way. So we know he was actually at the meeting too.

Rolfe.
Click to expand...

If he is innocent, then he has spent years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, and seen his appeals delayed and frustrated by a refusal to let the defence see all the evidence the prosecution has. He is also dying.

In those circumstances is it realistic to expect him to cut off any possibility, however small, of seeing his family again?
 
funk de fino said:
Good on MacAskill telling the stupid US senators to stick it where the sun dont shine. You would think that after their debacle with Gorgeous George they would think twice about having another Scottish MP up in front of them. Hopefully Jack Straw will do the same.
Click to expand...

Maybe we could send Gorgeous back in their stead.
 
Rolfe said:
I wonder if it's possible to find out more. It would be correct to say that Megrahi was going nowhere under the PTA unless the appeal was withdrawn, and Kenny would be correct to say that. However if he said or implied that this was the whole story, or that compassionate release would not be considered unless the appeal was withdrawn, that's a different matter. I suspect he may have managed to put that message across.

Why do it this way anyway? Why keep the man hanging on like that? Why not give a decision on the compassionate release, and THEN leave it up to Megrahi to decide if he wants to drop the appeal to go the PTA route? Having them both dangling at once seems unnecessarily ambiguous, not to mention a bit cruel.

And the other oddity is that Megrahi had access to the BBC and the Herald as far as I know. Surely he knew the Scottish government would rather pull its own toenails out one at a time than grant that prisoner transfer?


Rolfe.
Click to expand...

Apart from all the central issues regarding how the PTA had been agreed (Blair, New Labour, BP and an SNP govt now in power...) there was also a far greater problem for Megrahi to consider if, once abandoning his appeal, he made an application on the PTA Liba had submitted.

It would be a far more protracted affair, was subject to judicial review, and the US families had sought to block any attempt at this by Megrahi had he decided to go down this route. It was never really a consideration for Megrahi.

Obviously he opted for the every conceivable possible route (the PTA and CR) once Maggie Smith made the application to abandon his appeal, and had been told he may only have about 12 weeks to live.
 
why is Tony Blair being mentioned in this context? Didn't the release of the alleged Lockerbie bomber occur long after Blair had left office?
 
noch1Narr said:
why is Tony Blair being mentioned in this context? Didn't the release of the alleged Lockerbie bomber occur long after Blair had left office?
Click to expand...


Return to jail, do not pass go, do not collect £200.

And we don't know whether the Lockerbie bomber is in jail or not, because we don't kow who he is.

Rolfe.
 
Jaggy Bunnet said:
If he is innocent, then he has spent years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, and seen his appeals delayed and frustrated by a refusal to let the defence see all the evidence the prosecution has. He is also dying.
Click to expand...


And that is how it is, I believe. I wouldn't really wish that on anyone, not even a former Libyan security official of the 1980s.

Jaggy Bunnet said:
In those circumstances is it realistic to expect him to cut off any possibility, however small, of seeing his family again?
Click to expand...


However, what the hell is everyone playing at? Is it not in the interests of both justice and openness for the appeal to continue? If there is a reasonable possibility whereby the prisoner can be released without requiring the appeal to be dropped, is it not reasonable to allow that avenue to be explored first, before requiring dropping of the appeal to pursue the other?

I'm afraid I suspect Kenny of wanting the appeal dropped, but at the same time not wanting to go the prisoner transfer route for all the well-rehearsed political reasons. So he deliberately engineered this scenario whereby he could use the prisoner transfer provisions to press for the appeal to be dropped, and then go the compassionate release route after all.

Rolfe.
 
I don't really get this 'taking representations' apparently on the PTA.

Megrahi would've been well aware of the implications of going down this route.

  1. Must Drop the Appeal and essentially admit your guilt.
  2. Was a far more drawn out procedure.
  3. The PTA was subject thereafter to judicial review.
  4. Many of the victims families had threatened to obstruct it in any way possible.
  5. And he would have known that it would be highly unlikely an SNP govt would accede to something which Blair and the Westminster govt had initiated, not to mention the SNP were very publicly outraged at this attempted railroading of the Megrahi case by New Labour by creating the PTA.

Megrahi had never gave the semblance of a hint of making any application through the PTA. And indeed, given everything he'd have known, as above, why would he? So, why even think for one second that you should meet him to take representation on the matter?

There's muted indications in the media that a Compassionate Release is possibly being considered by MacAskill, presumably given the medical report he now had before him, and goes to meet Megrahi to take representations on the PTA??

I'm sorry, perhaps it's just me given what I;ve seen has happened, not only at Zeist and the constant delays put upon the 2nd appeal, but this scenario doesn't sit right at all.
 
It was the Libyan government which made the PTA application. I think that might be the way it's suppsed to happen. In that case, the representations would be essential, so that the prisoner could say, "Please don't send me back to these waterboarding thugs, I'd rather stay here," if that was the way of it.

Jim Swire's idea comes back to mind here. Libya was pressing for the appeal to be dropped.

It's difficult to see how collusion could have taken place, but all the time the PTA deal wasn't being agreed, the appeal was stalled. As the PTA deal was concluded in May/June 2007, leave to appeal was granted. However, the PTA wasn't ratified until May 2009, so nothing could happen about it before then. Meanwhile the appeal was being stalled.

The PTA was ratified in May 2009, and Libya immediately put in an application. That was what was being considered.

There was something on the radio about Megrahi having apparently complained in prison that his doctors weren't giving him a poor enough prognosis for compassionate release. However they obviously were by July, so he applied himself for that.

It almost looks as if he himself was trying to pre-empt the Libyan moves that would have required him to drop the appeal, and get home with the appeal still live. Why was he not allowed to do that? Almost makes you wonder if the NWO and the Illuminati weren't in on it all the time!

Rolfe.

ETA: I found this while I was looking for the date of final ratification of the PTA.

http://www.tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=3101

Tripoli Post said:
The deal, signed in November, would allow Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, to apply to be transferred to Libya, the British Foreign Office said.

But it seems that in order not to expose the Scottish judicial system and its grave misdeed by committing a clear miscarriage of justice in the trial, Al-Megrahi is being pressured to agree to drop the appeal against his conviction before being eligible for transfer.

Scottish government officials along with other stakeholders who have to approve the move are still holding out.

Al-Megrahi has repeatedly vowed to clear his name and he is now facing the choice between dropping the appeal, which the rotten Scottish judicial system could very well tamper with as it did with the case ten years ago, or to take up the opportunity.

Al-Megrahi is reported to be terminally ill with prostate cancer and has only just begun appealing his conviction in the Lockerbie case, a process expected to last a year.

Al-Megrahi case was referred back for a fresh appeal in June 2007 because it "may be a miscarriage of justice", while his relatives and campaigners are concerned that he will not survive the appeal partly because the court will be sitting for only four days a week on alternate months.
Click to expand...


I can't reasonably quote any more, but it's worth a read.
 
Last edited:
I thought it was openly discussed prior to the compassionate release that Megrahi would likely be expected to drop the appeal if he was sent home. I seem to recall Jim Swire being a tad disappointed because he knew one couldn't reasonably expect a dying man (Megrahi would have no way of knowing how long he was going to live) to pass up the opportunity to go home and therefore the appeal would fall. To be fair it didn't look like the UK and US were going to release the necessary documents so the appeal could have ended in farce and an acquittal on the basis that the original conviction was unsafe.

I can't think Kenny went to Greenock to discuss anything other than the appeal vs. release to make sure that Megrahi understood what the proposal was and that it was indeed serious. I am surprised there was a transcript though - why would they need one? Why transcribe anything? Why give it to Magnus?

Is what Magnus has genuine? How would he know?
 
Yet another very peculiar set of events to add to the abundance of them that surround this whole case.

I'm aware that it was Libya who had made the PTA application. As you'd only expect though? Their man sitting in a Scottish jail, wrongly incarcerated on some ridiculous pieces of evidence, and it's only to be expected that they'd at least allow him the option of going that route if he so wished. Not that he had given any indication of doing this. He was always absolutely adamant he would see the appeal through, despite being obviously quite ill. But, Libya would have been oblidged to at least have this door available to him if, understandably, he'd simply had enough of pursuing a never-ending and consistently delayed appeal, finally deciding to ditch the whole appeal.

Salmond and the SNP were vociferous in their criticism of the whole issue of PTA. They had made it quite clear that they themselves would oppose any possibility of the implementation of a PTA on Megrahi, making the very reasonable point that legal matters in Scotland are the responsibility of the Holyrood parliament through devolved powers, and would not be dictated to by a Westminster govt who had not even made an attempt to discuss the 'deal in the desert' and PTA agreement with them or the Scottsih parliament. Although I don't doubt Jack McConnell would have been aware of the machinations his colleagues in Downing street were developing with Libya.

So neither party has shown the slightest incline, indeed both were vehemently opposed, to the options available through PTA. And if MacAskill would never have even considered using a under-the-table deal done by Balir and New Labour, as seems reasonable given their public criticism of it, and had decided that Compassionate Release was the proper and optimal route, given the medical report available to MacAskill, why take representations on PTA from a terminally ill prisoner?
 
Last edited:
Nogbad said:
I thought it was openly discussed prior to the compassionate release that Megrahi would likely be expected to drop the appeal if he was sent home. I seem to recall Jim Swire being a tad disappointed because he knew one couldn't reasonably expect a dying man (Megrahi would have no way of knowing how long he was going to live) to pass up the opportunity to go home and therefore the appeal would fall.
Click to expand...


No, the only discussion of dropping the appeal was in relation to the PTA. It came up because Salmond said to get stuffed as regards the Deal on the Desert, but Tony included Megrahi anyway.

News at the time said well, it's all academic because Megrahi has an appeal outstanding, and the PTA can't come into operation if an appeal is still on the cards. And he won't drop it, he intends to sit tight and clear his name. That was 2007 of course, a year before he was diagnosed with cancer.

I'm starting to wonder how they would have persuaded him to go along with it if he hadn't developed cancer and might have lived another 30 years?

Every time compassionate release was mentioned, it was clear the appeal could continue. Jim Swire was very up-beat about the situation.

That was the obvious solution to allow justice to be served. To allow the families closure. (To embarrass the hell out of the people who covered it all up in 1989-1991.) Megrahi was manoeuvred out of that option.

Wenn Tugend und Gerechtigkeit
Den grossen Pfad mit Ruhm bestreut,
Dann ist die Erd' ein Himmelreich,
Und Sterbliche den Göttern gleich.
Click to expand...


That will be the day.

Rolfe.
 
Last edited:
Buncrana said:
So neither party has shown the slightest incline, indeed both were vehemently opposed, to the options available through PTA. And if MacAskill would never have even considered using a under-the-table deal done by Balir and New Labour, as seems reasonable given their public criticism of it, and had decided that Compassionate Release was the proper and optimal route, given the medical report available to MacAskill, why take representations on PTA from a terminally ill prisoner?
Click to expand...


Well, to be fair, he was possibly obliged to go through the motions if the application had been made. Nevertheless, actually meeting the prisoner wasn't part of the normal motions, or so everyone seems to agree.

However, if you have no intention of going the PTA route, and you know it would be quite prolonged anyway, why not give out some signal that you're minded to grant the compassionate release, so the appeal need not be withdrawn? Even merely by suggesting to the prisoner that he need not make the decision on dropping the appeal until the decision on compassionate release has been announced.

I can see no reason at all why Megrahi couldn't simply have said, look, I have a compassionate release application in progress, which is the route I much prefer, and I would prefer to wait for the outcome of that application before making any irrevocable decision on the appeal. If the compassionate release decision is adverse, then I will consider withdrawing the appeal.

There was no need at all to give him any ultimatum about the PTA. That route would not have been closed off if he had waited another week or two before deciding about the appeal. But it seems he has been pressurised the other way.

I'll just bet nobody wanted the judicial process of the PTA either - judicial review, relatives arguing for him to stay in jail, an international hoopla beyond a shadow of a doubt. Would Megrahi even have lived long enoughh for it all to happen? And then they'd be screwed, because the appeal could have continued. Compassionate release and an immediate taxi to Abbotsinch was the way to do it.

It would have been so easy to say, you are entitled to reserve your decision on the appeal until the outcome of the compassionate release application is announced. So why didn't Kenny say that?

My head is spinning and I am going to bed.

Rolfe.
 
That was the obvious solution to allow justice to be served. To allow the families closure. (To embarrass the hell out of the people who covered it all up in 1989-1991.) Megrahi was manoeuvred out of that option.

To be honest I doubt they would have got that close. I think the most likely outcome would have been an understanding that the conviction was unsafe and that he would have been freed. The actual culprits and the level of perverting the course of justice would have remained obscured. In some ways that seems to be the message from some of the victims' families. Without Megrahi we have nothing - even if it is obvious those who sanctioned, funded and planned the atrocity are free - or possibly even dead if it were some of the old Iranian mullahs.
 
Well, actually, I thought much the same. Rule that Gauci's evidence was a crock, so there was nothing to tie Megrahi to the incident, and send him home. Not a word about the controversial bits, and not a word needed really.

But then what? 22 years isn't too cold a case when it's 270 murders you're talking about. Calls to re-open the case, new investigation, go after the PFLP-GC. This seems to be a remarkably unpopular line of enquiry in certain circles.

Rolfe.
 
Last edited:
Rolfe said:
I'll just bet nobody wanted the judicial process of the PTA either - judicial review, relatives arguing for him to stay in jail, an international hoopla beyond a shadow of a doubt. Would Megrahi even have lived long enoughh for it all to happen? And then they'd be screwed, because the appeal could have continued. Compassionate release and an immediate taxi to Abbotsinch was the way to do it.

It would have been so easy to say, you are entitled to reserve your decision on the appeal until the outcome of the compassionate release application is announced. So why didn't Kenny say that?

My head is spinning and I am going to bed.

Rolfe.
Click to expand...

It's so frustrating.

In the end, the prospect of a Pandora's Box being thrown open by allowing the appeal to continue was simply too much to contemplate - perhaps for every single one of them!

I need a lie down now!
 
Darat said:
Why should they invite Tony Blair? He had nothing to do with the release, according to the Scottish minister anyway, also you seem a tad confused about the highlighted part, Obama has nothing to do with the invites.
Click to expand...

Because what they want, according to New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg, is "to help shed light on claims that BP had influenced the release."

So surely it is more relevant to speak to the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister of the government which BP are acknowledged to have lobbied in relation to Libyan prisoners (eg from the article below "UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has acknowledged that BP did lobby the previous Labour government in favour of a prisoner transfer agreement between Britain and Libya."), rather than the Justice Secretary and First Minister of the government which has unequivocally stated they have "no information to provide" on any BP deal and that they had no contact from them in relation to the release.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10748665

Exactly what value could be added?

Senator - What lobbying, contact or representations did BP make to you or your government in relation to attempting to influence the release of Megrahi?

MacAskill - None.

Senator - Are you sure?

MacAskill - Yes.

NB - this does not mean I think that Blair or Straw are under any obligation to attend (nor do I think they should attend), but it does show that, based on the stated intention of the meeting it makes far more sense to ask Blair/Straw to attend than anyone from the Scottish government.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom