Wednesday, July 14, 2010

PanAm 103 Verdict: Justice or Politics?

By William Blum
July 14, 2010 (Originally published Feb, 5, 2001)

The newspapers were filled with pictures of happy relatives of the victims of the 1988 bombing of PanAm 103.

Read on.
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5 comments:

rosemerry said...

dear Bill Blum, on the ball as usual. The great, democratic, US "justice" system has to find a suitable scapegoat, and at that time Iran did not fit the bill, but Libya did. The fixation on terrorists and vengeance goes on, along with constant violence against other nations. Good old USA!

Thu Jul 15, 04:13:00 PM 2010
Anonymous said...

The PanAm 103 evidence was purely circumstantial and came at a time when the West wanted to implicate Libya at a time when it was politically inconvenient to accuse the real culprits.

when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, Bush needed Iran’s support as he built a "coalition" to expel his wayward client from an American oil colony. The only country that defied Bush and backed Iraq was Libya.

http://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/08/lockerbie-bombing-seen-as-expression-of.html
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But, what happened in reality during this 'trial' which was held in The Netherlands?

"This has been a political court case, where the verdict already was decided upon in advance", a shocked Professor Köchler - UN-observer at the Scottish Lockerbie Court in the Netherlands - stated.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Professor H. Köchler in April 2000, as international UN-observer at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands concerning the Lockerbie Trial. His comments on the Scottish Court's verdict in the case were bitter:

"THIS WAS A CLASSICAL CASE OF A 'SHOW PROCESS' FROM THE TIME OF THE COLD WAR"

"Like they had in the Soviet Union and East Germany before the Iron Curtain fell", Professor Hans Köchler commented in Camp Zeist, after the verdict of the Scottish Court's conclusion in the Lockerbie Trial. "This has been a political court case where the verdict already was decided upon in advance", a shocked Professor Köchler stated.

In a strange way his remarks have hardly been used by the international media, covering the biggest mass murder trial in British legal history which ended when the court upheld the conviction of the Libyan agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed al-Megrahi.

As UN observer Köchler commented: "This was a spectacular miscarriage of justice." - Url.: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4460.htm

The Lockerbie hoax: US & UK defend crime - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/muccep

Thu Jul 15, 05:41:00 PM 2010
Anonymous said...

This link to the well respected legal site "The firm" gives the best informative information on the Lockerbie disaster. It has been said by many in the legal profession to be by far and away the best as to what happened...

http://tinyurl.com/2u2lm6f

This is the full link to the Lockerbie disaster...

http://tinyurl.com/39aq7bw

Thu Jul 15, 06:00:00 PM 2010
Anonymous said...

"UN Observer to the Lockerbie Trial says ‘totalitarian’ appeal process bears the hallmarks of an “intelligence operation”...

http://tinyurl.com/yavjrtb

Thu Jul 15, 07:14:00 PM 2010
big em said...

I am an regular reader of Bill Blum and Ed Herman, both of whom I find to be unflinching commentators from the left that take strong uncompromising positions that -- while not pleasant - - are virtually always right. That being said, when I read both of their virtually identical accounts of this Pan Am 103 incident, I still wasn't 100% sure about it. After all, this was a Scottish trial that took place in the Netherlands, so it seemed somewhat unlikely that they would kow-tow to US pressure politics.

However, the reservations of the Scottish judges were telling and when the convicted 'terrorist' was released on 'compassionate grounds', to me that represented tacit admission by British authorities that he was NOT GUILTY and had been wrongly convicted. Even if BP was trying to influence the early release of Megrahi, what elected politician in his/her right mind would have gone along with the early release IF they really thought that Megrahi was guilty? It would be political suicide (and it DID have a major negative fallout as it was) to allow a terrorist whom had killed a plane load of white/US people (the ONLY ones who really matter) to be turned loose, even if he was dying. That really tipped the scales in my mind...

Fri Jul 16, 09:54:00 PM 2010

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