US/LIBYA: US Welcomes Lockerbie Verdict, Calls for Compensation

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 1 2001 (IPS) - The administration of President George W. Bush Wednesday welcomed the guilty verdict rendered by a Scottish court in the Netherlands against a Libyan intelligence official for the 1988 mid-air bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.

In a brief statement, Bush himself said he “appreciate(d) so very much” the decision and added that Washington will continue to press Tripoli “to accept responsibility for the (bombing) and to compensate the families” of the US victims.

Whether Libya will do so remains unclear, however. Its ambassador to the United Nations, Abuzed Omar Dorda, repeated Tripoli’s 12-year insistence that it was not involved in the bombing or in terrorism more generally.

Even before the verdict was announced, Secretary of State Colin Powell had assured reporters that the United States would not drop its own unilateral sanctions against Libya which were first imposed in the early years of the administration of Ronald Reagan, almost 20 years ago.

“There are sanctions that predate the UN sanctions and that would not be affected by the outcome of the trial,” Powell said, referring to sanctions imposed against Libya by the UN Security Council in 1992 and 1993 to pressure Tripoli into handing over two suspects in the bombing.

The UN sanctions, which included an air and arms embargo, were suspended in April, 1999, after Libya surrendered the two men, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, to stand trial by a Scottish court brought specially to the Netherlands, the home of the International Court of Justice.

At the time it imposed sanctions, the Security Council had also called on Tripoli to admit its involvement in the affair and to compensate the victims’ families, conditions which, according to a White House statement issued Wednesday, it has not yet fulfilled.

The three-judge court, which began hearing the case last May, actually reached a split decision. It convicted Megrahi of the charges against him, insisting that the evidence of his personal involvement, including the use of a false passport to enter Malta where the bomb was believed to have been planted, was sufficient to establish his guilt and so was his membership in the Jamahariya Security Organisation (JSO), Libya’s main intelligence agency.

It sentenced Megrahi to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 20 years. But he is expected to appeal to a higher court in Scotland, while remaining in detention in the Netherlands.

At the same time, it acquitted Fhimah, who was immediately set free and returned to Libya on an afternoon flight.

In its 82-page decision, the court also noted that a star witness produced by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who connected Fhimah to Megrahi was not credible.

The witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, was originally billed by the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a high-ranking JSO official. He was kept for three years on the CIA payroll and nine more in the FBI’s witness protection programme, the latter to help protect him against Libyan efforts to capture or kill him.

But cross-examination by the defendants’ British attorneys demolished his credibility either as a high-ranking JSO official or as someone who was intimately acquainted with the bombing plan. His performance, as well as that of an FBI investigator, proved deeply embarrassing to the US intelligence community during the trial.

The bombing took place against Pan Am Flight 103, which was flying, after earlier stops in Malta and Frankfurt, from London to New York on Dec. 21, 1988. All 259 people aboard the aircraft, including dozens of US college students flying home for Christmas vacation, and 11 people on the ground were killed.

US and British investigators quickly concluded that the bombing was an act of terrorism and cast their suspicions on Syria, radical Palestinian groups, and Iran, as well as Libya. All were listed on the State Department’s terrorism list, and the incident took place less than six months after an Iranian commercial airliner carrying 290 people was mistakenly identified and shot down by a US warship in the Gulf, killing all aboard.

In late 1991, however, both the US and Britain accused the two defendants of involvement in the bombing and, by April 1992, had persuaded the Security Council to impose an air and arms embargo against Libya to compel it to turn the suspects.

As Libya’s isolation increased and oil prices plunged over the following years, its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, made a series of efforts to work out an agreement to turn over the two men to various courts in various jurisdictions. He also hired prominent US attorneys to discreetly approach the government and the families about a possible settlement and compensation.

Most of the victims’ families, however, opposed any compromise. Backed by powerful voices on both the left and the right in Congress, they were able to squelch any effort to explore a possible settlement by the administration of President Bill Clinton or by US oil companies eager to return to lucrative fields they were forced to leave behind as a result of Reagan’s sanctions.

The families also received a big lift from Congress when it passed a law five years ago that denies sovereign immunity to governments accused of terrorist acts in lawsuits files in US federal court. The families are asking for billions of dollars in damages against Libya, the JSO, and the defendants in several lawsuits that are now pending before a New York federal court.

Lawyers for the families Wednesday hailed the verdict and predicted that it will likely strengthen and speed up their own cases against Tripoli. “It’s great,” said Jim Kreindler, a lawyer who represents more than 100 of the victims’ families. He said they will now be free to use evidence used in the criminal trial before the Scottish court.

While Powell and the White House indicated they oppose lifting existing sanctions against Libya, the government may now be more inclined to discreetly support efforts to negotiate a settlement with the families.

Top Bush officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell himself, have spoken out strongly against the use of unilateral sanctions generally, especially when there is little support for them among US allies. Since Libya turned over the defendants, Western European countries, including Britain, have normalised ties with Tripoli which, with the upsurge in world oil prices, has once again emerged as an attractive business destination.

Senior US officials also noted in testimony before Congress last year that Libya appears to have ceased its own alleged terrorist activities, severed its ties with terrorist groups, notably Abu Nidal, and even moderated its opposition to Arab-Israeli peace efforts. Meanwhile, US oil companies with existing interests in Libya, are eager to return, lest those interests are sold off to European or other competitors.