The Real Truth Behind
The Release Of al-Megrahi

Although there are conflicting messages coming from the Scottish, Libyan, British and American governments, there is definite evidence pointing towards al-Megrahi's release being linked to trade deals, but it may also have as much to do with the moral issue. Many people believe that al-Megrahi had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing, and for almost a decade Gaddafi has had pressure from his own population, who have been baying for a more honest re-trial, and for al-Megrahi's release. The Libyan dictator may have felt the burden of the unfair sentence more than most, as he was the person who ultimately handed him over to the original international trial in the Netherlands. But there are also many other reasons for this release popping up over the past week, and many are linked to the US not wanting the real evidence to be shown at an appeal trial, which was conveniently cancelled due to al-Megrahi's emerging medical condition, to the relief of the American administration - even though this is not exactly the impression which they are currently portraying in the media.

August.30.2009 - George Valentine Corr, Blatant News Editor
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THE LOCKERBIE BOMBING
The fatal incident, widely known as the 'Lockerbie Bombing', happened on Wednesday the 21st of December 1988. Pan Am Flight 103 was travelling from London's Heathrow to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport with 243 passengers and 16 crew on board. It's usual flightpath was to fly due north from Heathrow and to then turn left after reaching the Scottish border to begin it's cross-Atlantic journey, but just after it turned towards the Atlantic it exploded over the town of Lockerbie, which is situated just inside the Scottish border. The explosion on the Boeing 747 - named the 'Clipper Maid of the Seas' - caused the plane to scatter debris all over the town of Lockerbie and this resulted in the deaths of 11 people on the ground, bringing the total deathtoll to 270 people. This included 180 American's and 52 British, and according to the flight controllers, there was no sign of any mayday signals or engine problems before the explosion, so straight away the police were pointing towards a terrorist attack.

WHO WERE THE TARGETS OF THE LOCKERBIE BOMBING?
It is still unclear who the intended targets were, but there were atleast a handful of US intelligence officers onboard the flight. This included Matthew Gannon, the CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut, and Major Chuck McKee, an army officer on secondment to the Defense Intelligence Agency in Beirut. They had two Diplomatic Security Service special agents acting as bodyguards, Ronald Lariviere (a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut) and Daniel O'Connor (a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia). All four of those men had travelled together from Cyprus, and there was also a US Department of Justice Special Agent on the flight, Assistant Deputy Director Michael S. Bernstein. One other prominent passenger was the UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, who had just attended the 'New York Accords' signing ceremony which removed Apartheid South Africa's troops from Namibia and gave it independence, whilst at the same time it removed Cuban troops from Angola who were involved in the Civil War there. Many theories relate to this massacre being targeted at the US intelligence officers - by some within the US security services or by foreign security services - and some others believe that it was carried out by Apartheid-supporting South African's in protest against the UN's stance on Namibia, but there are also theories relating to a possible payback from the Iranian's after the American warship USS Vincennes had shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988, killing 290 passengers and crew. According to the US government, the crew thought the plane was an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter, and mistakenly shot it down. Added to all of those theories is a possible British, US or Israeli government involvement to simply create tension towards Middle East 'terrorists', and to create a little bit of added fear at home to help bring in certain laws, and people who point to this kind of reasoning say that Libya was simply set up in this case.

THE INVESTIGATION
The investigation has revealed that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had issued a security bulletin, as recent as the 5th of December 1988, about a warning which was received by the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland. According to them, a man with an Arabic accent had telephoned and stated that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the United States would be blown up within the next two weeks by someone associated with the Abu Nidal Organization - a violent faction of the Palestinian Fatah movement who were heavily supported by Libya at the time. Here's the curious thing. Flight Pan Am 103 also had a feeder flight - Flight Pan Am 103A - which originated in Frankfurt with 49 of the subsequent fatalities onboard, but we are told that when the warning went out to the world, the one airport security team which did not pick up on it, was Frankfurt's. Their warning was found the day after the Lockerbie bombing under a bunch of paper, and this 'Helsinki Warning', as it is now famously known, has been discounted totally by those investigating who tell us that it was just a hoax and a "chilling coincidence". They tend to point more at the 'evidential based' theory of a Libyan placed bomb within the luggage compartment. The investigators believe that through tests they were able to prove that the explosion came from a bomb which was wrapped in clothes in a suitcase inside the front baggage compartment. They say they have identified the clothes which were wrapped around the bomb and traced them to a Maltese merchant, Tony Gauci, who later became a key prosecution witness, and according to the authorities, the electronic timer which was used on Pan Am 103 was similar to that found on a Libyan intelligence agent who had been arrested just 10 months previously, carrying materials for a similar Semtex bomb. This timer was then traced to a Swiss manufacturer, Mebo, who were known to sell them onto the Libyan military. Mebo's owner, Edwin Bollier, later revealed that in 1991 he had declined an offer from the FBI of $4 million to testify that the timer fragment was part of a Mebo MST-13 timer which his company had previously supplied to Libya, and then in 2007 a Mebo engineer, Ulrich Lumpert, admitted that he had lied at the subsequent trial, and more people began to believe Bollier's story. He says that his company had sold a few timers to Libya, but they had a different colour circuit-board than the one which was shown to him in photos, and in fragment form.

CHARGES AGAINST AL-MEGRAHI & HIS TRANSFER
After the investigators had built up a case against the Libyan's in general, they then tried to pinpoint exactly who was involved, and in Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah they believed they had collared the main protagonists. Al-Megrahi was a Libyan intelligence officer, head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli, and Fhimah was a station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa Airport in Malta. In November 1991 they were both charged with the crimes by the US Attorney General and the Scottish Lord Advocate, but Libya refused to release them for any trial until they were presented with evidence that solidly linked the two men to the crime. Finally in 1999 the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi - aka Colonel al-Gaddafi - agreed to release them to an international court, but up until that point they were kept on house arrest in Libya, whilst al-Megrahi was also apparently working as a teacher. Gaddafi's initial refusal to hand over the two men had angered the American's so they set-up a whole raft of international sanctions against the country, which helped to cripple it's economy, and which helped to eventually convince the Libyan dictator to hand them over. At this point Gaddafi also admitted Libyan responsibility for the Lockerbie Bombing, and agreed to pay out billions in compensation to the victims families, but this deal was also linked to the trade of oil, and by admitting this responsibility, Gaddafi began his countries international rehabilitation, and deals have continued to roll which has seen the country become a much better place to live in, for most of it's inhabitants. Libya has simply not looked back since that deal.

THE LOCKERBIE BOMBING TRIAL
At the trial the authorities set about trying to convict Al-Megrahi as the organiser, and Fhimah as the man who put the bomb on the flight at Luqa Airport. Evidence was presented that seems to show that the bomb was planted in Luqa, but no evidence linking Fhimah was included, and he was proven to have been in Sweden at the time in question. He was cleared unanimously by the panel of three Scottish judges at the specially set-up court at Camp Zeist, Netherlands, but al-Megrahi was not so lucky. He was pinpointed by the Maltese merchant, Tony Gauci, as being "the man with a Libyan appearance", who had bought the clothes off him which were used to wrap the bomb. Employee's of Mebo also spoke about the timers being one of a shipment which was sold by them to the Libyan's - which we now know is untrue - and the three Scottish judges convicted al-Megrahi to a life sentence for the Lockerbie Bombing. Since then there have been various appeals by al-Megrahi's legal team on evidential basis, and also on the basis of statements by officials who have rubbished the investigation in recent years, including those of Hans Köchler. He was the international observer appointed by the Secretary-General of the UN at the Camp Zeist trial, and he later stated that the trial was a "spectacular miscarriage of justice", and in 2003, 2005, and 2007 he issued a series of statements which accused the west of "double standards in criminal justice", whilst asked for an independent international inquiry into the Lockerbie case.

THE CANCER OF AL-MEGRAHI
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi has always protested his innocence, and he continued to fight for an appeal throughout the past eight years. At times information and evidence emerged which appeared to show his innocence, and most recently the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has uncovered evidence that "a miscarriage of justice could have occurred", and they granted al-Megrahi the right to a second appeal on those grounds in 2007. Ultimately he did not need that appeal because he was released on compassionate grounds, on the 20th of August 2009, because it is claimed that he has just three months to live due to terminal prostate cancer. This medical diagnosis is hard to confirm and many are saying that the release is down to international trade conditions instead. In an interview with Scotland's Herald newspaper, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saif Gaddafi, said that the "deal in the desert", signed by Tony Blair and the Libyan government, was set up to target the release of al-Megrahi, whilst offering British oil companies a large slice of Libya's huge oil resources... "For the last seven to eight years we have been trying very hard to transfer Mr Megrahi to Libya to serve his sentence here, and we have tried many times in the past to sign the PTA (prisoner transfer agreement)... It was part of the bargaining deal with the UK. When Tony Blair came here we signed the agreement. It is not a secret. But I want to be very clear to your readers that we didn't mention Mr Megrahi. People should not get angry because we were talking about commerce or oil. We [just] signed an oil deal at the same time".

THE RELEASE OF AL-MEGRAHI
On the 4th of August 2009 the Scottish Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, visited al-Megrahi in Greenock Prison to hear his representations regarding a transfer request to Libya on the grounds of ill health, and in line with the PTA (prisoner transfer agreement) which was part of the 'deal in the desert', signed by Tony Blair and the Libyan government in 2007. Media reports then began to circulate that he would be released, which were followed by denials by the Scottish Cabinet, but on the 19th of this month stronger signals were being felt that his release would be imminent. The following day MacAskill granted his release on compassionate grounds, stating that al-Megrahi was in the final stages of terminal prostate cancer and was expected to pass away within three months, adding that he was "bound by Scottish values to release him". Al-Megrahi was immediately taken from his cell and brought to Glasgow's airport to be flown back to a rapturous reception in Libya. Both the US and UK governments have tried to argue that they had nothing to do with the release, and that they disagree with it, but most reasonable people will feel that there is no way such an event could take place - with so much forewarning and build-up - without both of them being fully involved. It's clear that the build-up was probably down to getting the public ready for the release, and that it was orchestrated by Westminster, with Washington's full support. While both Brown and Obama have condemned it publicly, the Libyan government say that they were fully aware of the progress, and more irregularities are emerging from this story as the days pass by.

WE ARE CLOSER TO THE TRUTH THAN WE THINK
Adam Ingram, the UK's armed forces minister up until 2007, has received up to £25,000 a year from Argus Libya UK Limited, a company which looks for commercial opportunities Libya, and other prominent British political and security officials who have dealt with Libya, are also economically tied to the country. As are many of Britain's leading corporations, including British Petroleum (BP) who have just signed a billion dollar deal to exploit the oil fields of Libya, and it is this agreement which people are generally citing as the deal-maker in this prisoner release deal. But it may not be just economics at play here, it may be down to politics and morals too. Most Libyan's believe that al-Megrahi has been innocent all along, and this has put pressure on Gaddafi to keep trying to gain his release. Gaddafi may also be aware that al-Megrahi is innocent, and may feel some guilt from having handed him over for what may have been just a 'show trial'. While on the other side of the fence sits the UK & US administrations who may not want any further appeal trials to take place, for fear of real evidence being uncovered, which may ultimately show that they were involved. This seems the most likely scenario to me because if they were 100% focussed on securing a Libyan conviction they must have been 100% aware that nobody else was involved. And with the process of elimination, we can summise that it just leaves them themselves.

EXPECT MORE BULL - BUT DON'T LOOSE SIGHT OF THE FEW FACTS WHICH WE ARE SURE OF!
Now we can expect to hear many more confusing voices on the subject, just to give that hazy view which will turn the general public off this particular subject. One interesting recent Sunday Mail interview featured an ex-CIA analyst called Robert Baer who claimed that the CIA had known throughout that the bombing of Flight 103 had been orchestrated by Iran, and that this evidence was to be presented at al-Megrahi's second appeal trial, hence the reason to set him free on medical grounds, because the US did not want the public to hear the real evidence. No matter who may have carried out the Lockerbie Bombing, it seems likely that it was not al-Megrahi afterall, and I do hope that he has not got that cancer either. It seems that the release, and possibly the original bombing itself, has only ever revolved around international politics and economics, and this man may have become involved unwittingly. What we do know is that the US & co. contrived to guide his conviction by tampering with evidence and witnesses, and that we do not have any clear evidence pointing towards anybody else, mostly because the evidence has never been presented in a clear, honest and open way. Yesterday Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi gave The Herald an interesting interview which tells a lot about this man, and about his unsafe conviction too.

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