Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Africa North

Libya PM takes risky bet on US goodwill from Lockerbie handover

2022-12-31

[An Nahar] Libya's Tripoli
...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn...
-based leadership is facing a public backlash for handing Washington a suspect in the deadly 1988 Lockerbie attack, but is betting that the resulting U.S. goodwill can strengthen its hand against rivals.

The attack on a Pan Am jet over Scotland killed 270 people, the deadliest-ever terror attack in Britannia, which took place when Libya was under the rule of dictator Moamer Qadaffy.

Earlier this month, alleged former intelligence agent Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir al-Marimi appeared in a U.S. court on accusations he made the bomb used in the attack.

He could face life in prison if convicted of "destruction of an aircraft resulting in death" and two other related charges.

Masud's handover sparked a backlash against the government of Abdulhamid Dbeibah, which controls the west of the conflict-wracked country but is challenged by a rival authority and forces loyal to military strongman Khalifa Haftar

...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy, so it's kind of hard to describe him as a Qadaffy holdover. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all. Actually, he is, but slowly...
in the east.

Dbeibah has faced bitter criticism from political rivals, rights groups and relatives of Libyan detainees who fear being handed over themselves.

Khaled al-Montasser, a professor of international relations at Tripoli University, said Dbeibah "will probably not stop at extraditing one suspect -- others will inevitably follow".

Dbeibah, after admitting that the handover had taken place, said he had acted "with full respect for Libyan illusory sovereignty".

He also denied rumours he was planning to hand over Abdallah Senoussi, who was Qadaffy's intelligence chief at the time of the attack.

"Senoussi will not be handed to the United States, he's in his prison in Tripoli," Dbeibah told Saudi news channel al-Arabiya.

Only one person has been convicted for the bombing, which killed all 259 people on the jumbo jet, including 190 Americans, and 11 people on the ground.

The Libyan state had considered the case closed since 2003, after Qadaffy's regime officially acknowledged its responsibility for the attack, paid $2.7 billion in compensation and handed over two Libyan suspects.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah were charged with the bombing and tried by a Scottish court in the Netherlands.

Megrahi spent seven years in a Scottish prison after his conviction in 2001 while Fhimah was acquitted.

Megrahi died in Libya in 2012, always maintaining his innocence.

But while a 2008 deal put an end to financial claims for compensation, "Washington never closes criminal cases" concerning its citizens, Montasser said.

Link

Africa North

British prosecutors ask Libyas NTC for Lockerbie help

2011-09-27

LONDON: Scottish prosecutors have asked Libyas interim rulers for help in tracking down information which could lead to others, even deposed leader Muammar Qaddafi, being charged over the 1988 bombing of a US-bound airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland.

In particular we have asked the NTC (National Transitional Council) to make available to the Crown any documentary evidence and witnesses which could assist in the ongoing enquiries, a spokeswoman for the Scottish Crown Office said on Monday.

The NTC said it expected to be able to comment, later on Monday.

Once they stop laughing at you...

Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi, a former Libyan agent who was convicted of the bombing which killed 270 people, was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 and returned to Libya because he ~~supposedly~~ was suffering from advanced terminal prostate cancer and ~~supposedly~~ thought to have months to live.

His release and return to a heros welcome in Libya, coupled with his survival long beyond doctors predictions, infuriated many in the United States home to most of the victims.

But the Crown Office noted his trial court had accepted he had not acted alone.

Lockerbie remains an open enquiry concerning the involvement of others with Mr. Megrahi in the murder of 270 people, the spokeswoman said.

Police at the time said they had submitted a list of eight other suspects whom they wanted to interview but that Qaddafi had refused to allow them to be questioned.

In March, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Libyas former justice minister and now its interim leader, said he had evidence of Qaddafis involvement in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Megrahis co-accused at the specially convened Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands in 2000 was Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah who was cleared of mass murder. He told Swedens Expressen newspaper last month that Qaddafi should be tried in court over widespread suspicions he ordered the bombing.

There is a court and he is the one to explain whether he is innocent or not, Fhimah said. He has to.

In Tripoli, asked about the Scottish move, acting NTC justice minister Mohammed Al-Alagi told Reuters he expected to be in a position to comment later on Monday.

Link

Britain

Britain marks 20th anniversary of Lockerbie bombing

2008-12-21

Never forget.

SCOTLAND - Britain was commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing Sunday, recalling the night a US-bound jet carrying 259 passengers and crew was blown up over a Scottish town. Memorial services are scheduled to take place from 1400 GMT in the small, quiet community of some 4,000 people, where 11 people were also killed on the ground as flaming debris from the plane crushed houses.

Relatives of the dead are expected to attend a service at London's Heathrow Airport, where Pan Am Flight 103 took off on the night of December 21, 1988, carrying mostly Americans home for Christmas. Barely 40 minutes into the flight to New York, the Boeing 747 was ripped apart by a bomb in the luggage hold at an altitude of 9,400 metres (31,000 feet), killing everyone on board.

Lockerbie residents recall the explosion turning the sky orange and wreckage, fuel and bodies raining down. The town had unwittingly been caught up in international terror.

The tortuous investigation into the bombing eventually led to the jailing for 27 years of a former Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al-Megrahi. He is serving his sentence in a prison in Scotland--now suffering from cancer, he recently failed in an attempt to be released.

The bombing killed 180 Americans, an unprecedented toll in an age before the attacks of September 11, 2001, and plunged ties between Libya and the West into a chill which has only recently thawed.

Some Lockerbie residents continue to be haunted by memories of the night the jet crashed from the skies on to a town decked out in Christmas decorations.

"It was the nearest thing to hell I ever want to see," said retired police inspector George Stobbs, 74, who had just returned home when he saw a TV newsflash. Heading to nearby Sherwood Crescent, where the 11 residents perished, he recalled: "There was this great crater, a great mass of burning. The heat was intense. I saw an iron gate melting as if someone was putting a blow torch on to butter."

Maxwell Kerr, 72, remembers finding poignant reminders of the passengers. "It was families going home at Christmas. We did find lots of Christmas presents lying scattered about. There was men, women, children and babies. It's horrific when you think about it," he said.

The link to Libya was uncovered by investigators who painstakingly traced material from the Samsonite suitcase in which the explosives were planted inside a radio-cassette player. They found that the bomb had probably been placed on board in Frankfurt, from a non-Pan Am flight which connected with the doomed aircraft at Heathrow.

In fact, Flight 103 was late taking off--if it had been on schedule it would have been over the Atlantic when the bomb detonated, sparing the town of Lockerbie and probably leaving the plane's remains at the bottom of the ocean.

Al-Megrahi and co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah were eventually tracked down in an international manhunt by Scottish police and the CIA, although it took years of diplomatic wrangling to put them on trial. An extraordinary court was set up in the Netherlands and Al-Megrahi was tried and convicted by Scottish judges, while Fhimah was acquitted.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Flight 103 families waiting for Libya

2006-05-22

WASHINGTON -- Although the Bush administration is moving to normalize diplomatic relations with Libya, U.S. families who lost loved ones in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland have not been fully compensated by the Libyan government for the terrorist attack planned and executed by Libyan agents.

The families, due a payment of $2 million, are supposed to receive $10 million each as part of a $2.7 billion settlement.

They have been urging members of Congress to consider stalling President Bush's attempt to re-establish formal diplomatic ties with Libyan dictator Muammar al Qadhafi until the last remaining installment arrives.

"I'm writing a letter (to Bush) that asks that the final details of the recognition of Libya not be implemented until the full settlement is paid out," said U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, D-1st Dist., who explained that he has been working with Pan Am 103 families in Cherry Hill and Haddonfield.

"I don't believe that the diplomatic relations should be fully established until Libya has fully met its obligations to the Pan Am 103 families," Andrews stated.

Some family members don't care about the financial settlement, says James Kreindler of New York City, a lawyer who conducted the settlement talks with Libyan officials.

They would prefer to see Libya isolated both economically and financially so long as Qadhafi remains in power, Kreindler said.

But virtually all of the families of the Pan Am 103 victims want to ensure that Libya fulfills its agreement to pay the full $2.7 billion that it agreed to provide, Kreindler said.

Kara M. Weipz of Mount Laurel Township, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, lost her brother Rick Monetti, 20, in the disaster. Weipz in a telephone interview said the State Department should be pushing the Libyans to provide the final installment.

Libya has not yet provided the final installment of roughly $536 million. Qadhafi's government allowed an escrow account to lapse and actually withdrew the $536 million from a Swiss bank, the Bank for International Settlements, in February 2005, according to Kreindler and attorneys working at Quinn, Gillespie and Associates, a Washington lobbying firm.

"It would be a travesty of justice to begin a new relationship with Libya if Libya failed to honor its commitment at the expense of the Pan Am 103 families," Kreindler said.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said, "The government of Libya must honor its commitments to these families."

The State Department last week said President Bush was proposing to remove Libya from a list of terrorist states, rescinding a designation the U.S. government first awarded to Qadhafi's dictatorship in 1979. The Bush administration plans to open an American embassy in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, and to let Qadhafi open an embassy in Washington.

"For a number of years now, Libya has ceased its direct support for acts of terrorism and has taken concrete steps to distance itself from terrorist organizations with which it maintained active ties," C. David Welch, assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, said at a State Department news briefing. Libya also gave up its long-range missile program in 2003.

Qadhafi's government came to be seen by Bush administration officials as a rogue regime that had ceased its support for terrorism and shuttered its program aimed at developing weapons of mass destruction.

Lawmakers have up to 45 days to review the State Department's report on Libya and its former links to terrorism. Members of Congress could pass a resolution to halt or delay the normalization of American diplomatic ties to the oil-rich North African nation.

However, the House International Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have scheduled no action on any legislation that would address U.S. ties to Libya.

Pan Am 103 exploded in mid-air on Dec. 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

The disaster -- caused by a bomb planted in a Toshiba radio and tape deck that was concealed in a suitcase and loaded on the U.S.-bound plane in Frankfurt, Germany -- killed 270 people, including 11 people on the ground. Fully 189 of the victims were Americans, and 29 hailed from New Jersey, according to a passenger manifest posted on a Web site for the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was convicted by a Scottish court in January 2001 of conducting the Pan Am 103 attack. Al-Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison but afforded an opportunity to request parole after 27 years.

Another alleged Libyan agent, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted by the judges, who heard the case in the Netherlands.

Qadhafi, making overtures to settle old grievances with the United States, in May 2002 offered a $2.7 billion settlement to the Pan Am 103 victims' families. The U.S. government was not a party to the talks. The State Department so far is making no effort to ensure that the families receive the outstanding $2 million they are due.

"It's true that they're legally not a part of it," Andrews said. "But morally, they are very much a part of it. And I think for our State Department to give any kind of sanction or aid without Libya meeting its obligations to these American citizens is indefensible."

Link

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