By Eddie Barnes
Published on Sunday 3 February 2013 00:00
Detectives travelling to
Tripoli are not only tasked with unearthing the truth about the
Lockerbie atrocity but with removing a dark shadow from Scotland’s legal
system
SUSAN Cohen enjoys the 20th of every month. She has a
double-toast to make. On 20 October 2011, Libyan militia killed Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi. On 20 May the following year, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
died of prostate cancer in his home in Tripoli.
“On the 20th of every month now, I toast the death of both of them. That is my special day.”
Twenty-four
years ago, Cohen, then 51, was among the 189 American families plunged
into mourning. Her 20-year-old daughter, Theodora, an aspiring actress,
had been on board Pan Am Flight 103 on its journey from London to New
York’s John F Kennedy Airport when it exploded over Lockerbie. Last
week, from her home in New Jersey, and now in her seventies, she was
following the latest developments in this unending story.
On an
unannounced visit to Libya, David Cameron revealed that Scottish
police were to launch new inquiries into the atrocity. For the first
time since the death of Gaddafi 15 months ago, officers from Dumfries
and Galloway police would be allowed into the country to look further
into the case.
“I’m glad that they are going,” she says – in fact,
she would also like the FBI to head over as well. “I don’t think a guy
like Gaddafi kept neat little records but I do think it is important
that they go and that they try to learn more.”
She adds: “I’ve
never bought into the nonsense that Libya didn’t do it. I was at the
trial. But the trial was very narrow, it was just about Megrahi. I’m
sure there are other people who know more about this. And it may be that
other countries were involved as well. Not instead of Libya, but there
is a question over Syria and Iran.
“This was not just one guy.
Obviously it all falls to Gaddafi, but they could still find out who
else was involved. Who built the bomb? Are some of these people still
alive? Are they now in Syria?”
For Susan Cohen, and many other
relatives of those that died that night, those are just the start of the
questions. And while the task on the surface facing the police officers
who head to Libya will be to examine the extent of the Gaddafi
regime’s role in the atrocity, there is a bigger factor at play too.
Lockerbie continues to be the focus of a cottage industry of speculation
about what really happened that night. And with campaigners still
disputing Megrahi’s guilt and Libya’s involvement, so the doubts
continue to linger over Scotland’s legal system and whether, in the
biggest case of all, it got it wrong – and then covered it up.
The
Americans themselves are in no doubt: Cohen notes wryly that it is as
if the grassy knoll in Dallas has been moved to Scotland, such is the
proliferation of conspiracy theories now doing the rounds. But, with
Megrahi having dropped his appeal in the week before his release from
prison in 2008, those theories are only growing in number. It means that
the police visiting Tripoli have the job not just of finding evidence,
but of removing a shadow from the country’s legal system. Will there be
anything to find?
Scepticism abounded last week after Cameron
made his announcement on a rushed visit to Tripoli to visit his Libyan
counterpart, Ali Zeidan. Far from it being a new serious line of
inquiry, some claimed it was little more than a “public relations
exercise”. Brian McConnachie, vice-chair of the Criminal Bar
Association, declared: “It is difficult to imagine that sending police
officers to Libya at this stage you are going to be able to find out
much else. You are talking about, for example, a different Libya from a
Libya that existed at that time, and who knows where all the people are
who were making decisions at that time.”
Reverend John Mosey, who
lost his 19- year-old daughter Helga, added: “I would be very sceptical
about what could be found in those blasted and burned-out offices. The
former regime has probably shredded anything it had.” Twenty-four years
on, and nearly two years since the Gaddafi regime began to collapse, any
hope that the secrets of Lockerbie are waiting to be discovered in an
as yet undiscovered file in one of the old regime’s bottom drawers is
fanciful. But what tales can former officials of the regime tell?
The
Dumfries and Galloway police team remained tight-lipped last week about
their lines of inquiry. “We welcome the support of the Libyan
authorities for the ongoing investigation,” a spokesman declared. But
when they do go – it is expected to be in March – it is likely that
they will start by focusing on members of the old Libyan intelligence
service. And, in particular, the man who many believe knows the full
extent of the regime’s history of state terrorism – Gaddafi’s
brother-in-law, Abdullah al-Senussi.
The head of the intelligence
service under Gaddafi, he became a hated figure in his home country
because of the vicious treatment handed out to opponents of the regime.
Nicknamed the “butcher” and known as Gaddafi’s “black box” because of
the secrets he supposedly holds, he was extradited back to Libya late
last year, having fled to Mauritania following the regime’s collapse.
He is now in jail, awaiting trial for numerous human rights abuses,
including the massacre of 1,200 prisoners at the Abu Salim jail in 1996,
which he is said to have personally supervised. It is also claimed that
Senussi knew the identity of the killer of Pc Yvonne Fletcher, shot
dead outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.
Sir Richard
Dalton, who was sent to be Britain’s ambassador to Libya in 1999, when
diplomatic relations were resumed after a 17-year break, and who now
chairs a Libya group at the Chatham House think tank, believes Senussi
will be at the top of the list for Scottish detectives. “I think it
likely that the Libyan authorities will assist Dumfries and Galloway
police to interview some prisoners from those days – including Senussi.”
Others,
also in jail, who may know more include Gaddafi’s prime minister
Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi and external intelligence chief Abuzeid Dorda.
There is also Saif al-Gaddafi, the man who travelled to Scotland to
welcome Megrahi in 2008, still imprisoned in the western city of Sintan
where he has been held since his capture at the end of 2011. The
question is whether hardened men like Senussi will choose to co-operate –
even assuming Scottish police get to interview them. “I have no idea
whether they will find that he and others consider it in their interests
to divulge what they may know,” says Dalton.
What would be in it
for them is, at this point, unclear. Libya has so far resisted a
request from the International Criminal Court to extradite both Gaddafi
and Senussi. The Hague court wants to try them there for crimes
committed against civilians. But it may be that both men will end up
being tried at home, where they would most likely then face the death
penalty. Any evidence about Lockerbie would then disappear with them to
the grave.
Any information the police do get may not result in a
fresh trial anyway, suggests Dalton. “The chances of material arising
that would allow charges to be laid in Scotland is another matter –
maybe they would be low. If the informant is a big fish like Senussi,
who is accused of very serious crimes already, it would be difficult to
get agreement that they should face a Scottish charge of involvement in
the Lockerbie conspiracy, at least until a further delay, during which
courts disposed of Libyan charges against him.” Although, he adds, that
does not mean they should not try anyway. “There are questions about
Libya’s culpability in the eyes of many Scottish lawyers. It is possible
that a fuller account will emerge, though I do not expect it will ever
be complete.”
There have been suggestions, however, that
prosecutors could decide to try and put Lamen Khalifa Fhima back in the
dock, if the evidence can be found. It is understood that more evidence
is stacking up against the man who walked free from the trial in Camp
Zeist. With the ending of the centuries-old double jeopardy law, which
cleared the way for an accused person to stand trial more than once,
that may be possible.
Key to that may be the other obvious person
to talk to. Laying low in Qatar, is the mysterious Moussa Koussa, who
served in the Libyan government as minister of foreign affairs and
temporarily sought refuge in Britain. Regional experts believe he has,
for now, decided to “clam up”. But many identify him as the key man with
the knowledge of what exactly happened, and may be more amenable to
talking. It may be that Dumfries and Galloway police want to take a
plane on from Tripoli to the Middle East. Or they will be heading back
to Malta, the Mediterranean island where, prosecutors said, the bomb was
placed on to the Pan Am plane by Megrahi. There have already been
reports that the Crown Office requested a special closed court hearing
to be held there last autumn to gather more evidence under oath. Maltese
shopkeeper Tony Gauci was the only person to identify Megrahi as the
man who, he said, bought items of clothing which were later found
wrapped around the bomb.
Certainly the pressure will be on to
come up with some concrete proof that it was the Libyans who directed
the plan – for if the police end up drawing a blank, it will only add
weight to the claims that Megrahi was a stooge and that Libya had little
or nothing to do with the affair. And sure to resurface are further
claims that it was Iran that carried out the bombing in revenge for the
downing of an Iranian passenger plane by American missiles six months
earlier, and then persuaded Gaddafi to take the blame for it.
American
relatives like Cohen scoff at the suggestion. There are plenty of
others, however, who believe it. Scotland’s legal establishment will
join the relatives over the coming weeks in hoping that the inquiries
made in Libya result, finally, in some answers over the events of 1988.
But, if the conspiracists are to be believed, they should be careful
what they wish for.
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