Well following in his father’s illustrious path, Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi has taken the pen to produce an op-ed for the New York Times, so he could, of course, argue that Megrahi is innocent.
Mr. Megrahi was released for the right reasons. The Scottish justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, freed Mr. Megrahi, who is dying of cancer, on compassionate grounds. Mr. MacAskill’s courageous decision demonstrates to the world that both justice and compassion can be achieved by people of good will. Despite the uproar over the release, others agree. A recent survey of Scottish lawyers showed that a majority of those surveyed agreed with the secretary’s decision.
It’s worth pointing out that we Libyans are far from the only ones who believe that Mr. Megrahi is innocent of this terrible crime. In June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission determined that a “miscarriage of justice†may have occurred and referred the case to the High Court. A retired Scottish police officer who worked on the case has signed a statement saying that evidence was fabricated. The credibility of a key witness, a shopkeeper in Malta, has subsequently been disputed by the Scottish judge who presided in the review. Even the spokesman of a family group of Lockerbie victims has said that the group was not satisfied that the verdict in the Megrahi case was correct.
However, Stratfor lays out the case against Megrahi here (h/t Seraphic Secret):
Investigators were also able to trace the clothing inside the suitcase containing the IED to a specific shop, Mary’s House, in Sliema, Malta. While examining one of the pieces of Maltese clothing in May 1989, investigators found a fragment of a circuit board that did not match anything found in the Toshiba radio. It is important to remember that in a bombing, the pieces of the IED do not entirely disappear. They may be shattered and scattered, but they are not usually completely vaporized. Although some pieces may be damaged beyond recognition, others are not, and this often allows investigators to reconstruct the device
In mid-1990, after an exhaustive effort to identify the circuit-board fragment, the FBI laboratory in Washington was able to determine that the circuit board was very similar to one that came from a timer that a special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service had recovered from an arms cache while investigating a Libyan-sponsored coup attempt in Lome, Togo, in 1986. Further investigation determined that the company that produced the timers, the Swiss company MEBO, had sold as many as 20 of the devices to the Libyan government, and that the Libyan government was the company’s primary customer. Interestingly, in 1988, MEBO rented one of its offices in Zurich to a firm called ABH, which was run by two Libyan intelligence officers: Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Badri Hassan.
The MEBO timer, model MST-13, is very different from the ice-cube timer in the PFLP-GC device found in Frankfurt in October 1988. Additionally, the ice-cube timer in the PFLP-GC device was used in conjunction with a barometric pressure switch, and the IED used a different main charge, TNT, instead of the Semtex used in the Pan Am 103 device.
Nor was flight 103 the only flight about which that Libya admitted guilt. The younger Qaddafi doesn’t address that in his op-ed. Furthermore it appears that rumors of Megrahi’s impending death may have been exaggerated. (via Israel Matzav via Seraphic Secret)
Both parties now want the doctor identified in order to determine whether the government allowed itself to get hoodwinked by the Libyans. The alternative theory would be that the government wanted to construct a good cover story for Megrahi’s release for other reasons — for instance, oil deals, as Moammar Gaddafi hinted and his son flat-out claimed.
The government thus far has refused to identify the doctor and says speculation on the length of Megrahi’s life is “tasteless.†But that was the basis of Scotland’s decision to release a mass murderer after serving only 11.57 days for every life he took. The Scottish government made the calculation of Megrahi’s life expectancy into public policy, and it’s completely dishonest to now claim modesty and etiquette when challenged on it.
Of course, we’ll know by January if Megrahi really is that sick. If he’s still breathing when the 21st anniversary of the bombing rolls around on December 21, we’ll have a pretty good sense that the deal to get him released was political with “compassion” the cover for an action that was anything but.
Is the younger Qaddafi sincere? Erratic seems like a good description of the younger Qaddafi’s pronouncements.
Esquire last year listed him as one of the most influential people of the 21st century.
The second-oldest son of “Brother Leader” Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi would appear to be out of his mind. Reared by the military dictator who admitted responsibility for the Pan Am flight 103 bombing, Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi believes democracy can take root in Libya. He once told Al Jazeera, “You have to bring democracy to your countries,” referring to the Arab world, adding, “The Arabs should either change or change will be imposed upon them from the outside.” With him in power, the Western world, and the U. S. in particular, could get what it theoretically wants in Iraq–the conversion of a large, oil-rich extremist Middle Eastern regime to a peaceful democracy–without the in-between step of a war.
But does Saif mean it? When his time comes, will he submit to a vote? Or will he simply inherit the reins of power. I think Esquire’s being too kind here.
The Lede picked this up:
As The Lede noted last week, in 2008 the younger Mr. Qaddafi said in this extraordinary interview with the BBC that Libya had “accepted responsibility” for the actions of Mr. Megrahi and paid compensation for the Lockerbie bombing simply to bring about an end to international sanctions, but “that doesn’t mean we did it.” In the same interview, Mr. Qaddafi called the families of the Lockerbie victims “very greedy” and said, “Instead of wasting their time blackmailing us,” they should now work with the Libyan government “in order to find the real criminal who was behind that attack.”
“[F]ind the real criminal?” Has he been taking lessons from OJ?
Saif Qaddafi seems to want the benefits of dealing with the West, but he still says lots of things that indicate that he’s wedded to the old way of doing business. I think he’s less of voice of change than a voice for preserving his own privileges.
The Lede’s – a blog at the NYT – damaging post about Saif Qaddafi certainly made it seem like the release of Megrahi was part of a deal between Britain and Libya. Now the Times has given Qaddafi the opportunity to respond. Will he ever give his own citizens a similar opportunity?
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
