Jim Sillars: A mockery of justice

Published on Saturday 22 August 2009 20:28

ALEX Salmond said "we" don't do geopolitics. You know the saying: if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck.

If there are obvious geopolitical reasons for engineering the abandonment of the Megrahi appeal, and low and behold it happens, then geopolitics was at work.

The final Megrahi episode wasn't about his health, or doubt of guilt. It was about avoiding the damage his appeal could do to states' interests, of immense global importance. If the defence sought and got, and revealed in court, intelligence-related documents not available to their client in the original trial, today's foreign policy initiatives by the USA and others would unravel, to devastating effect. The appeal might answer the question never been satisfactorily resolved – which state or states were complicit in Lockerbie?

The number of states with an interest in avoiding the answer is what brought geopolitics to Alex Salmond's government. Assessments by the American Defence Intelligence Agency, at the time of Lockerbie, are a case in point. Based upon its interceptions, they point to Iran as the originator of the atrocity. The DIA was specific: naming the terrorist group based in and supported by Syria; the fee $1m; naming the former Iranian interior minister as giving the order, and detailing how the then Iranian ambassador to Syria paid $100,000 to cover initial expenses.

There was an awful logic associated with the DIA finding. Just months previous to Pan Am 103 being blasted from the sky, the US destroyer Vincennes, on 3 July, 1988, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people, including 66 children.

It was the daily shuttle between Iran and Dubai, on its usual course. It could not be mistaken for the "fighter jet" the captain of Vincennes claimed he thought was attacking his ship. The size of an A300 airbus, and its speed, is very different from an Iranian F14-Tom Cat fighter. To make matters worse, although the USA paid $61.8m in compensation, President Reagan refused to apologise to Iran, and later awarded the captain of the Vincennes the Legion of Merit.

That Iran would take revenge against such an act by the Great Satan seems certain. That it would do so through a proxy, a proven competent terrorist group, seems logical. Why, with the DIA evidence pointing to Iranian involvement, did the prosecution settle on Libya and its intelligence agent as the culprit? We shall never know now. Anyway, Libya had form.

In 1986 it was responsible for bombing a disco in Berlin, killing US troops. President Reagan retaliated by bombing 'mad dog' Gaddafi, missing him but killing 100 people. In 1989, while the Lockerbie investigation was under way, Libya was blamed for blowing up a French civilian aircraft over Chad.

But all that was then. This is now, and the geopolitical situation has changed dramatically. Gaddafi is an ally against Islamic extremists. He hangs them. He has oil. He wants investment in Libya, and US and UK companies smack their lips at the opportunities. Few seemed to notice that, while aMegrahi's future was under consideration in Edinburgh, Senator John McCain met Gaddafi to drum up business. Then we have the Obama administration trying to bring Syria into negotiations with Israel, a basic condition for any final peace settlement; not to mention the desire to create a new relationship with Iran.

How wonderfully convenient for the USA, UK, Libya, Syria and Iran that no documents will be revealed in the Appeal Court – no fingers pointed anywhere. Hillary Clinton made her protest, but there were no threats of disruption to US-UK relations. The seven senators' letter to Kenny MacAskill arrived, conveniently, after the appeal was dropped. These protests meet the domestic need to be in tune with outraged US citizenry. I suspect, however, inside the State Department the feeling is relief, allowing present policy on Syria and Iran to proceed.

In balancing revealing the truth of Lockerbie (with Syria and Iran brought back into suspicion of complicity), against the inevitable consequence of fatal rupture to present attempts to involve the former in the peace process, and any hope of persuading the latter against joining the nuclear club, truth was always bound to lose.

Kenny MacAskill's visit to Greenock prison set a foolish precedent in our justice system. His justification – Jack Straw assured the Human Rights Committee that under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement a prisoner could make representations, that Megrahi chose to do so in person, thus leaving Kenny with "the duty" to meet him – is a false syllogism. Straw was referring to a prisoner opposing transfer to Gaddafi's embrace. Not applicable to Megrahi. The PTA gives no right to a personal meeting with a minister.

In any event, the meeting could not have been about the PTA, as it was inoperable due to the Lord Advocate's appeal against sentence.

The visit, followed by Megrahi's appeal withdrawal, smacks of a political deal between the Justice Secretary and a man he says is a mass murderer.

The painful fact facing the Lockerbie families is that the crucial global issues at stake – Middle East peace and preventing Iran going nuclear – required silence in court, and the price was Megrahi's release.

Compassion used as cover for these amoral geopolitical interests is a fig leaf. It will start slipping once others now in jail, who don't have 270 deaths on their hands, come calling for release, and render our justice system a mockery.