Merged Lockerbie bomber alive after 9 months

Rolfe said:
I don't know what you mean by a "patsy". He was Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli, who was passing through Luqa airport on the morning on 21st December 1988 on some undisclosed (possibly nefarious) business. He had no opportunity to smuggle a bomb into the luggage of the Frankfurt-bound flight, and in any case there was no unaccounted-for bag on that flight.

The bomb that blew up Maid of the Seas didn't go on at Luqa - it probably went on at Heathrow. Which means Megrahi didn't do it. He was basically fitted up. Is that what you mean by a "patsy"?

Rolfe.
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Rolfe - Sorry, I was trying to be trans-continental. I thought patsy was a US term for a fall guy. I may have my terminology completely wrong.

Bill Aitken is hard to take seriously. It isn't really any wonder they came fourth in the election.
 
What I'm not sure about as regards either the "patsy" or "fall guy" terminology is what exactly is meant. Sometimes it seems to be meaning a low-level operative who was involved in the crime and was left to take all the blame. I don't think that's the case here.

If it just means someone wrongfully convicted on a mistaken interpretation of the evidence, then I think it's an appropriate description.

If it means someone who was deliberately framed, well, that's a whole other can of worms.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
What I'm not sure about as regards either the "patsy" or "fall guy" terminology is what exactly is meant. Sometimes it seems to be meaning a low-level operative who was involved in the crime and was left to take all the blame. I don't think that's the case here.

If it just means someone wrongfully convicted on a mistaken interpretation of the evidence, then I think it's an appropriate description.

If it means someone who was deliberately framed, well, that's a whole other can of worms.

Rolfe.
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In relation to Megrahi I take it to mean that any involvement he had as a Libyan official is likely to have been small and that he didn't plan the operation, build the bomb or, as seems likely, plant it. In convicting Megrahi others were no longer required to give an account of themselves. Whether he was deliberately framed or not I don't know. He may have been asked to buy clothes and a suitcase and pass them on to a third party. Such activity would not be unusual for an agent of any country. Maybe he didn't have any involvement at all.

In taking the rap and the subsequent lack of effort to identify anyone else would suggest that he acted as the fall guy...perhaps for Libya, perhaps for Western security, perhaps for Iran, perhaps simply due to incompetence.
 
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Well, there's no real evidence Libya had anything to do with this. The details of that are probably better discussed elsewhere.

Megrahi was the Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. Not the sort of person you ask to go and buy some clothes for you. And the main thrust of the appeal was evidence that he didn't buy the clothes.

He didn't buy the clothes. He never had a suitcase of the right description, or indeed of any description on the day in question. And he didn't plant the bomb.

Once that's understood, that's almost all the possible involvement of Libya in the affair up in smoke. Other than a fragment of electronics from a batch sold to Libya two years previously, and Libya wasn't exactly backwards about supplying armaments to terrorists, notably the IRA.

It may be that there is a popular idea around that Megrahi was a low-level operative who was left to take the flak for the big fish, but it actually doesn't fly. If he didn't do what he was said to have done, and it appears he didn't, then they actually got the wrong bunch of terrorists.

Rolfe.
 
Incidentally, I've suggested elsewhere that this be moved to the Non-US section, for rather obvious reasons.
 
As I've said elsewhere, I'm pretty convinced he wasn't guilty anyway. The evidence against him stinks - in particular the bribery of two witnesses to testify against him. Reading the both the original court judgement and the judgement of the first appeal, it's extremely difficult to see how a guilty verdict could be defended on the evidence available, except on the grounds that it wasn't politically expedient not to have someone convicted for that atrocity.

If he had a few extra months back in his homeland with his family, I for one don't feel especially outraged.

Rolfe.
 
I moved this to the non-USA forum, as it is a Scottish subject. Or a middle Eastern subject. But not a USA subject.
Posted By: LibraryLady
 
I suspect Frank Duggan would disagree, but you're right of course and thanks.

Rolfe.
 
LibraryLady said:
I moved this to the non-USA forum, as it is a Scottish subject. Or a middle Eastern subject. But not a USA subject.
Posted By: LibraryLady
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eh????
the target of the bomb was a US plane.....is it a scottish subject because the wreckage landed in scotland??
 
The Fool said:
eh????
the target of the bomb was a US plane.....is it a scottish subject because the wreckage landed in scotland??
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I would say it's an international issue. A US plane, allegedly blown up by Libyans, killing a variety of nationalities, having taking off from Germany (I think) and returned to earth in Scotland. Classing it as a solely US issue would be a little bit odd.
 
And specifically the complaint is that a Scottish court granted compassionate release because of advanced terminal cancer, yet he's still alive and living in the Middle East.
 
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Rat said:
I would say it's an international issue. A US plane, allegedly blown up by Libyans, killing a variety of nationalities, having taking off from Germany (I think) and returned to earth in Scotland. Classing it as a solely US issue would be a little bit odd.
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In which case "Non-USA politics", if the proper place, is poorly named.


As far as this subject goes, I am disturbed to hear the case isn't as solid as one is lead to believe. Though I will quickly point out the equally disturbing feeling of some, when the thread was new, that there was Something Noble in letting the "guilty" guy go home, assuming true guilt.
 
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Brainster said:
And the Telegraph nails down the other end of his projected lifespan:
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Well, the Telegraph has it's own subtle axe to grind vis-a-vis Scotland (together with its successive Labour and SNP administrations) so it wouldn't be my first choice of source. Going to one I think plays it more straight down the middle, today's Herald has some interesting comments from Jim Swires.
 
Yes, but the Yanks got fed up with us "sticking our nose" in on issues such as healthcare.

:duck:
 
Beerina said:
As far as this subject goes, I am disturbed to hear the case isn't as solid as one is lead to believe.
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You're a bit slow on the uptake, aren't you? From the start of this discussion, even before Megrahi was released, sundry posters have been pointing out that he probably didn't do it. The main thrust of the argument as I recall it was mindless baying for him to die in prison, preferably in as much pain as possible, and please don't confuse the issue by pointing out that he's probably innocent.

The relevant court judgements are available online, and I'd seriously like to hear from anyone who has read these documents and who still believes this case was proved beyond reasonable doubt - or even on the balance of probabilities. In fact the case is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese (called Edwin Bollier).

http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/library/lockerbie/docs/lockerbiejudgement.pdf
http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/library/lockerbie/docs/lockerbieappealjudgement.pdf

There was a second appeal ongoing at the time of the release, and this was pretty certain to have resulted in the conviction being quashed. The evidence of the US authorities having bribed a key witness was damning. (Of course that wasn't the only witness they bribed, but the bribery of the first witness was uncovered during the original trial - why the trial continued after that revelation, nobody really knows.)

If you search online for advocates promoting the view that this case was a serious miscarriage of justice, you'll find people like Hans Kochler (official UN observer to the trial), Robert Black (emeritus professor of law who was instrumental in arranging the trial), Jim Swire (father of one of the passengers on the plane) and even Robert Baer (CIA official who worked on the case). If on the other hand you look for people asserting Megrahi's guilt, you'll find only one Frank Duggan, spokesman for the US families of Pan Am 103 (not himself a relative, but a US government appointee, who never presents a case but merely jumps into discussions asserting that "the evidence was overwhelming"), Richard Marquise (FBI official who worked on the case, who again never presents a case but simply asserts guilt in occasional blog comments posts), and assorted twoofer web sites who seem to be basing their assessment on - wait for it - David Shayler.

I find it odd that following on from the Sunday Post article Architect noted, saying that Megrahi is essentially on his deathbed, we have pretty much simultaneously reports like this one.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/swire-defends-megrahi-doctors-1.1039211

[....] leading oncologist Karol Sikora, who advised Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, admitted he was embarrassed that al Megrahi had outlived his three-month prognosis after he had assessed him. [....]

Sikora, Dean of the School of Medicine at Buckingham University, had advised authorities to put a three-month estimate on al Megrahi’s life. However, yesterday he said his lifespan could be far longer than originally predicted.

He said: “There was always a chance he could live for 10 years, 20 years … But it’s very unusual.”
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Seems to me Sikora aquiesced to the Libyan government's desire for support for the compassionate release, and now he's embarrassed, and pretty much saying who knows how long such a patient could live - in rare cases it has been a very long time.

Whether the Sunday Post's article is based on actually knowing about the man's clinical condition, or more speculation - well, who knows?

Rolfe.
 
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