Lockerbie Bomber Release Probe May Prove To Be Uncomfortable And Embarrassing To Obama Regime

From CNS News and Floyd Reports (Impeach Obama Campaign):

Lockerbie Probe May Prove Uncomfortable for Obama Administration


Monday, July 26, 2010

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor









In this photo taken Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, left, arrives in Tripoli, Libya, accompanied by Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam. (AP Photo, File)(Update: The Obama administration on Monday released the text of the LeBaron letter. It says Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds would be “far preferable” than his return to Libya under a prisoner transfer agreement, but also sets two important conditions to this – he would have to remain in Scotland under supervision, and Scotland would have to release “the results of independent and comprehensive medical exams clearly establishing that Megrahi's life expectancy is less than three months.” The full text of the letter is here.)



(CNSNews.com) – The four Democratic U.S. senators probing the early release of the Libyan convicted in the Lockerbie bombing believe there were links to a BP oil deal, but their inquiry may have the unintended consequence of raising questions about just how strongly the Obama administration opposed the Libyan’s release.



Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was the only person convicted of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in which 270 people were killed. Sentenced to life in prison, he was freed and sent home last summer “on compassionate grounds,” after medical experts said he was dying of prostate cancer.



Scottish government ministers, stung by accusations that they released Megrahi to ease a massive oil exploration contract in Libya, are pointing out that it is the U.S. government that is blocking the release of two documents relating to the decision.



One of the documents is a demarche and letter to Scottish First Minister Salmond from deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in London, Richard LeBaron, dated August 12, 2009, eight days before Megrahi was released.



Leaked to London’s Sunday Times this week, the letter reportedly argues that Megrahi should remain in custody – but goes on to say that if Scotland concludes he must be released, then doing so on compassionate grounds would be “far preferable” to his repatriation under a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) which Britain negotiated with Libya in 2007.



LeBaron reportedly wrote that freeing Megrahi from custody – remaining in Scotland, not returning to Libya – would mitigate some strong U.S. concerns.



The text, if corroborated, appears to call into question at least part of President Obama’s assertion last week that “all of us here in the United States were surprised, disappointed, and angry” about Megrahi’s release.



The U.S. Embassy in London issued a statement Sunday saying that the U.S. “strongly and consistently opposed in all its exchanges with Scottish and British officials the release or transfer under any scenario” of Megrahi.



“The August 12, 2009 letter to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond reiterated that unchanged position and underscored in particular our deep opposition to any outcome which permitted Megrahi’s return to Libya,” it said. “To our grave disappointment, the Scottish government’s decision to release Megrahi to Libya disregarded these clearly stated views.”



The second document which Scotland says the U.S. is withholding permission to make public is a note of a telephone conversation between Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill and Attorney General Eric Holder, apparently on June 26, 2009. The contents of that note remain secret.



Edinburgh says the two documents – the LeBaron letter and the MacAskill-Holder note – were both “part of the package of advice” MacAskill had before him when he made the decision to send Megrahi home last August.



At the height of last August’s controversy, Scotland made public its correspondence relating to the matter. On August 26, it asked the U.S. government for permission to include the two documents in those it was releasing – offering to do so in redacted form if necessary.



But in a written reply on Sept. 1, LeBaron declined. “Consistent with its standard and long-standing practice of holding in confidence government-to-government communications, so as to facilitate the ability of the United States to have frank and open communications with other governments, the United States Government is not prepared to authorize the release at this time of the details or contents of its diplomatic exchanges in this matter,” he wrote. “In accordance with this understanding, the United States Government does not grant permission for these documents to be published.”



CNSNews.com last Thursday asked the U.S. Embassy whether, with the administration pressing the British and Scottish authorities to review the Megrahi decision, it would now release the two documents, but received no reply.



CNSNews.com also asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether it would request that the administration make the two documents available for its hearing into the matter, scheduled for Thursday. In response, spokesman Frederick Jones merely said the committee did not have the documents in its possession.



Edinburgh law professor Robert Black, an expert on the Lockerbie case, opined on his blog that if the LeBaron letter effectively accepted Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds as preferable to transfer under the prisoner transfer agreement, “it is unlikely – in a mid-term election year – that the U.S. government would consent to its release or that Democrat senators would seriously try to persuade it to do so.”



The four senators pushing for the Lockerbie inquiry are New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez, and Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. A large number of the Lockerbie victims came from the two states.



Menendez is due to chair Thursday’s hearing.



Scotland’s ruling Scottish National Party called Sunday for the Obama administration to release the documents to the Senate inquiry. “The families of victims on both sides of the Atlantic deserve to know the full position of the U.S. government on this issue,” it said in a statement.



Invitations declined



Foreign Relations Committee spokesman Jones said the witness list for Thursday’s hearing had yet to be announced.



So far the committee has had little success in that area: Scotland has turned down its request to make MacAskill and Scottish Prison Service medical chief Dr. Andrew Fraser available; former British justice secretary Jack Straw has also declined to participate, saying the release had been a decision for Scotland’s devolved government, not the British government.



Salmond has, however, offered to send the committee copies of all correspondence relating to the Megrahi decision, and on Sunday repeated his call for the U.S. government to declassify documents including the LeBaron letter.



Salmond again denied that Scotland had come under any pressure from BP, telling Sky News there had been “absolutely no discussion, whatsoever, with BP.”



BP executives have acknowledged that, in late 2007, the company lobbied the British – not the Scottish – authorities about the PTA that was then being negotiated. It was concerned that delays in finalizing the agreement “might have negative consequences” for its exploration deal, which Libya had yet to ratify.



But Scotland, which opposed the PTA in the first place, says it turned down a Libyan application to transfer Megrahi to a Libyan prison under the terms of the PTA. Its subsequent decision to release him on compassionate grounds was not related to the PTA, it insists.



At the time MacAskill sent Megrahi home “to die,” medical specialists concluded that it was a “a reasonable estimate” that he would be dead within three months. To the government’s embarrassment, he remains alive almost a year later.



His unexpected longevity, and BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, prompted the four senators to launch their campaign.



Potential witnesses not called



Potential witnesses not known to have been called by the committee include:



-- Tony Blair, the former British prime minister whose 2007 visit to Libya included an agreement on a PTA and the signing of “the single largest exploration commitment in BP’s 100-year history.”



-- British Ambassador to the U.S. Nigel Sheinwald, who as a foreign policy advisor to Blair accompanied him on two key visits to Libya.



-- Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader, who played a key role in Tripoli’s political and trade negotiations with Britain. (He has traveled to the U.S. before, and met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Department in late 2008.)



-- Graham Forbes, chairman of the independent Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which after a four-year investigation concluded in 2007 that there “may have been a miscarriage of justice” and recommended that Megrahi be allowed to an appeal.



-- Prof. Robert Black, the law expert who designed the unusual format under which the Lockerbie trial was held in the Netherlands under Scottish law. Black in 2005 called Megrahi’s conviction “the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice in Scotland for 100 years.”



-- Prof. Hans Kochler, an Austrian academic nominated by the U.N. to observe the 84-day trial, who also believes justice was not done.



-- Robert Baer, a retired Middle East CIA operative, who has claimed that Iran was behind the bombing