Last week I offered cause to be sceptical of Libya’s one-time justice minister’s insistence that Colonel Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombings. My own doubts were not assuaged by these latest revelations…
The Lockerbie bomber blackmailed Colonel Gadaffi into securing his release from a Scottish prison by threatening to expose the dictator’s role in Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity, a former senior Libyan official has claimed.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi vowed to exact’ “revenge” unless he was returned home, said Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, Libya’s former justice minister. In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times, Abdel-Jalil says Megrahi’s ploy led to a €50,000-a-month slush fund being set up to spend on legal fees and lobbying to bring him back to Tripoli.
So, if I’ve understood Megrahi launched a high-risk effort to blackmail his way to freedom at the moment where his conviction was most in doubt. The Libyans proceeded to reward his threats with great big parties and allowed the man who’d challenged them to live in peace. Well, it’s possible – again, I haven’t claimed they weren’t at fault – but it seems fairly implausible.
Abdel-Jalil also claims Megrahi…
…was not the man who carried out the planning and execution of the bombing, but he was “nevertheless involved in facilitating things for those who did”.
So, according to this gent Al Megrahi wasn’t “the Lockerbie bomber” – just one of the many who’d have had to be involved. Why this revelation failed to make its way into the headlines is beyond me. That the self-proclaimed sceptics who clasped his initial charge to their breasts have failed to acknowledge it is odd. Still, I’ll treat it with the scepticism that his other claims deserve. I don’t know who’s guilty. I suspect.
I’m sure Ben Wallace MP doesn’t. He’s reported as asserting that Abdel-Jalil’s comments “proved the conspiracy theorists who maintained Megrahi’s innocence were wrong”. Oh, yes, they’ve cleared up doubts like shoe polish would clean a window pane.
See also Robert Black, Ian Bell, Robert Forrester and Rolfe.
March 2, 2011 at 9:06 am
…was not the man who carried out the planning and execution of the bombing, but he was “nevertheless involved in facilitating things for those who did”.
The statement has a certain sort of mad consistency in it, for Mr Magrahi (sic) certainly facilitated the cover up, and he did not carry out the bombing. But those who did were not in Libya but based in Tehran and the CIA offices in Frankfurt
January 24, 2012 at 12:25 pm
[...] the evidence for these claims has yet to be produced. And it’s eerie how people continually ignore this, even as the facts they’re reporting demonstrate [...]