Blair's desert deal with Libya broke UN resolution on Lockerbie bomber

Published on Wednesday 16 February 2011 15:50

A FORMER British ambassador has accused the previous Labour government of "flagrantly contravening" United Nations resolutions over its decision to allow the Lockerbie bomber to apply for release back to Libya.

Sir Brian Barder, who served as British High Commissioner to Australia, writes in The Scotsman today that the so-called "deal in the desert" between the then prime minister, Tony Blair, and Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi in 1997 was a clear breach of a UN resolution which stipulated the bomber should see out his sentence in the UK.

At the meeting, Mr Blair agreed to a Libyan request to sign a Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) for Libyan prisoners in the UK. At the time, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity, was the only Libyan in a UK jail.

But Sir Brian points out that this decision was "in obvious breach" of UN resolution 1192, signed in 1998, which had endorsed a UK-United States initiative to keep anyone convicted of the bombing in the UK.

Sir Brian suggests that the UK government signed the deal first and only then gave lawyers instructions on how to devise a justification for the breach.

He describes those justifications, released in letters over the past two years, as "feeble".

The diplomat, who also led the UK's diplomatic mission in Ethiopia, Poland and Nigeria in a 30-year career in the Foreign Office, said the Scottish Government's decision to release Mr Megrahi was "fully consistent" with the UN resolution, because it had been taken on compassionate grounds.

In his article, he states: "The feeble grounds devised by the UK for its argument that there was no inconsistency, and that the UK could have legitimately gone ahead unilaterally in obvious breach of a mandatory UN resolution suggest that the UK decision to have a PTA was taken first, and the lawyers were only later instructed to devise a justification for its obvious conflict with the UN resolution."

• Sir Brian Barder profile: 30 years a diplomat, from Ethiopia to Australia

Sir Brian says it is "understandable" that Mr Blair would have wanted to satisfy Libyan demands in order to facilitate major oil contracts. But it obviously contradicted what the UN had already approved in relation to Megrahi's imprisonment.

His article will put the spotlight back on the actions of UK ministers at the time. Last week, an official review found that the Labour government had done "all it could" to help release the Lockerbie bomber.

The review, by Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, found it had done so to secure a BP oil deal and strengthen its political ties with Libya.

Megrahi, who suffers from terminal prostate cancer, is still alive back in Libya 18 months after being released by Scottish ministers.A spokesperson for justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said last night: "Sir Brian is absolutely correct. It was clear that both the US government and the American families objected to prisoner transfer, and did so on the basis of formal agreements entered into by the UK Labour government in 1998 regarding the place of imprisonment of anyone convicted of the atrocity.

"That, indeed, is why the justice secretary rejected the prisoner transfer application."

He added: "The justice secretary rejected prisoner transfer and granted compassionate release - an entirely different process involving different criteria - according to the due process and practice of Scots Law."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The UK government believes it was the wrong decision to release Mr Megrahi."