Megrahi – the Ronnie Biggs connection
Over the summer, the fog of ‘conspiracy’, ‘commercial deals’ and more have clouded around the fundamentals of what we know about the ‘early release’ of the convicted Libyan ‘Lockerbie bomber’.
I’ll be surprised if today’s release by Edinburgh and London of the ‘Lockerbie papers’ dispels the clouds significantly.
The UK government has worked overtime to distance itself from the decision of the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, to free Abdel Basset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, citing the autonomy of the Scottish legal process.
Let’s be clear, though, there’s much muttering among the diplomatic and legal ‘insiders’ in this case, to whom I have spoken over the years, that they are are in absolutely no doubt that the Megrahi release was “driven from the top”.
One of the mysteries about the case was the complete U-turn conducted by UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw over the early release on ‘compassionate grounds’ of train robber Ronnie Biggs.
On July 1st Jack Straw was adamant that Biggs would NOT be released on parole despite the train robber’s evidently failing health. Within just thirty seven short summer days, on August 6th, Biggs was out, in Straws new words, “very ill… his condition has deteriorated… death… likely to occur soon.”
What’s the release of a Great Train Robbery villain got to do with all this? Well, it would have been untenable politically for Biggs, whose release had been so recently rejected and who had killed no one, to stay in prison whilst Megrahi who had allegedly killed 270 people was freed.
Mr Straw has that rare qualification in this matter in that he knows both the legal and diplomatic issues surrounding this case. Oliver Miles, the former UK Ambassador to Libya, is quoted as asking why Megrahi gave up his legal appeal against conviction, an appeal he has always very publicly committed himself to pursuing.
“I’ve got a nasty feeling”, says Miles, “That he [Megrahi] did it because someone tipped him the wink that he was more likely to get a humanitarian release if he gave it up”.
There’s a view – some would call it conspiratorial, others would call it well-informed – that it’s proved much more convenient for the government to suffer the allegation that this was a ‘release for oil’, than that anyone would seriously examine the questionability of the case against Libya and Mr Megrahi.
Legal sources very close to Megrahi’s defence team have told me that a number of lawyers have been convinced from the very beginning that neither Libya nor Megrahi were central to the Lockerbie bombing.
Defence lawyers often resent losing a case, but in this case one very senior and much respected QC in the case has passionately believed all along that at the very least the Lockerbie trial that convicted Megrahi constituted a “profound miscarriage of justice”.
Those of us who have reported on Iran over the years have been much more intrigued by the view that Lockerbie had a strong Iranian involvement in reprisal for the shooting down by a US navy cruiser of an Iranian civilian airliner in the Straits of Hormuz.
Iran Air Flight IR 655 was destroyed with the loss of 290 lives, on 3rd July 1988 by the American warship the USS Vincennes. The Americans maintained that the Vincennes had mistakenly identified Iran Air flight as an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter and fired upon it.
Lockerbie occurred the following December 21st. But whilst Libya was already the subject of sanctions and international pressure, meting out the same treatment against the vastly more powerful and populous nation of Iran would have been a highly dangerous diplomatic manoeuvre.
The isolation of Libya was only broken by the payment by Libya of ‘reparations’ for Lockerbie to the tune of some $2.7 billion. (America on the other hand paid Iran $131.8 million for the shooting down of the Iranian airliner, although US insisted the payment meant it did not accept liability for the shooting.)
Neither America not Britain has ever wanted the Lockerbie case re-opened. Megrahi’s appeal was on course to do just that.
Just as Biggs had to be freed if Megrahi was to come out – if you believe those I’ve talked to – so Megrahi HAD to be freed if the inevitability of a dangerous re-opening of the case was to be avoided.
Is Oliver Miles, the former ambassador right that this is the core of the ‘mystery’? He calls it a ‘political deal’ not a compassionate one.
Is he right? Is a grubby deal about oil the real issue?
Or is it something with very much wider and more serious ramifications?