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Scottish panel finds Libyan wrongfully convicted in Lockerbie

Published Jul 6, 2007 11:25 PM

Former Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison for allegedly plotting the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

That’s the conclusion of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. The commission said in its report on June 28 that after a three-year investigation they have found that Al Megrahi, who was convicted in 2001, had “suffered a miscarriage of justice.”

The commission listed six grounds where it believed “a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.”

Al Megrahi has always said he had nothing to do with the bombing of the airplane, which killed all passengers on board as well as several people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, where the wreckage fell to the ground.

The conviction of Al Megrahi came after the U.S. had repeatedly attacked Libya, including the bombing of the presidential residence. The Reagan administration also imposed economic sanctions on Libya, a form of warfare, and the people of Libya suffered greatly.

In 2003, the Libyan government agreed to pay $270 million to families of the Lockerbie victims, under an agreement to have the U.S.-imposed sanctions lifted. Libyan authorities have never admitted any guilt for something that the Scottish commission now apparently agrees they did not do.

Washington finds a new target

Now, with the Scottish authorities seeming to agree that Libya had nothing to do with the airline bombing, the U.S. media has picked up Washington’s new target, Iran, and is reporting that it was really Iran behind the bombing. (AP, June 28)

At the time of the conviction of Al Megrahi, Workers World correspondent John Catalinotto wrote:

“The strongest evidence that a Libyan had a motive for the Pan Am crash—any Libyan—was the crimes of U.S. imperialism against that north African country. The rest was concocted by U.S. and British government agents and experts who had control of the evidence.

“To understand how the U.S. government manipulated the propaganda around the trial, it helps to review some of the events leading up to the December 1988 crash.

“In 1986, the U.S. launched a sneak bombing attack on the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi from air bases in Britain. ...

“The Reagan administration was constantly tightening economic restrictions on Libya in that period. [Reagan launched a] 100-plane bombing raid that targeted Qaddafi’s family home as well as air bases and barracks. One of Qaddafi’s young daughters was killed in the raid, along with other Libyans.

“The French Embassy in Tripoli was also bombed, which the Pentagon claimed was a mistake. France had refused to let U.S. bombers fly over its air space on their way to bomb Libya.

“This was a state-sponsored terrorist attack on Libya with the aim of assassinating that country’s president. The media here presented it differently. But the rulers knew what they were doing, and they knew it was a crime. They knew Libya had every moral right to strike back.

“But Libya was not alone in this condition.”

U.S. terrorism against Iran

“In the summer of 1988, the USS Vincennes, stationed in Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iranian airliner. Some 290 civilians were killed. The official Pentagon story was that this was an accident. ...

“Shooting down the civilian airliner was another type of terrorist attack that U.S. forces carried out, not with a hidden bomb but with a sophisticated rocket. ...

“It is unfortunate that the honest and heartfelt feelings of grief and anger of the relatives of those who died on Pan Am Flight 103 have been manipulated against Libya. It would be more fitting if they would join with Libyan, Iranian, Iraqi and other victims of U.S. aggression and exploitation and point their fingers at the real terrorists in Washington and the Pentagon, in the CIA and Congress, who assault the people of the world.” (Workers World, Feb. 15, 2001)

Catalinotto’s full report can be read at www.workers.org/ww/2001/lockerbie0215.php.