Lockerbie : Doesn’t the truth matter ?

SUMMARY

The casual dishonesty or ignorance of FBI Director Robert Mueller and much of the media ignores the evidence in the Lockerbie case shows Megrahi’s trial was a sham. The history behind Lockerbie also shows that sending our military abroad is as likely to put us in danger and cost civilian lives as to protect them, whether the Libyan government, the Iranian government, or both, were those seeking revenge.

Michael Shields, another man wrongly convicted of murder, has just been released on the orders of British home secretary Jack Straw, because he was innocent of the crime he was accused of. If his release doesn’t lead to outrage, why does Megrahi’s?

The Scottish government has so far not gone far enough towards facing the truth that Scottish judges were politically influenced and Scottish courts compromised, though that may be change if they back a public inquiry. The judges' verdict was entirely inconsistent, accepting the testimony of witnesses where it backed the prosecution case, while simultaneously rubbishing the same witnesses as unreliable where their testimony flatly contradicted the prosecution case.

The British and American governments meanwhile present the usual propaganda line about sending the military abroad making us safer. In fact the US government’s decision to arm and fund Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war led to the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian airliner, killing 298 civilians; and to the Iranian government believing this was a deliberate act. The Lockerbie bombing may well have been a revenge attack resulting from this. Far from making us safer our governments’ foreign policies have cost civilians’ lives abroad and caused terrorist revenge attacks. There are also serious questions about how the bomb got on the plane in the first place.

Many commentators, newspapers and TV stations have provided hard-hitting commentary on the Megrahi case. The problem is most of them either don’t know the facts or else have casual contempt for the truth. Gaddafi and Libyan intelligence may or may not have been involved in the Lockerbie bombing, but there is no solid evidence that they were.

One rule for foreigners, another for white, English speaking people?

Yesterday a convicted attempted murderer was released from prison on the orders of a politician. He was found guilty by a court of trying to beat a Bulgarian man to death with a paving slab. The freed man’s name is Michael Shields and he was released, rightly, on the orders of British Home Secretary Jack Straw, because the evidence showed he was innocent. I’m glad he’s been released. There was no outrage, because despite being convicted, he wasn’t guilty. Yet in Megrahi’s case it’s very different. Almost every news report, with no attempt at unbiased coverage, refers to him as “the Lockerbie bomber” or “convicted mass murderer”, ignoring the fact that his trial was a sham (1).

Ignorance at the highest level? : Or Casual Contempt for the Truth

FBI Director Robert Mueller claimed in his letter to Kenny MacAskill that Megrahi had been convicted by a “jury” under “due process” (2). The Observer newspaper meanwhile claimed that “there was enough incriminating testimony by others for a jury to find him guilty” (3).

The slight problem here is that there was no jury at Megrahi’s trial. There were three judges, appointed by the Lord Advocate, a political appointee. Are the Director of the FBI and the Editor of the Observer really so poorly informed and briefed that they hadn’t even checked the most basic facts? Or, in Mueller’s case, is he dishonest?

Are show trials with bribed witnesses and tampered evidence good enough?; Can the same witness be simultaneously reliable and unreliable

British human rights and newspaper columnist lawyer Geoffrey Robertson is one of those claiming that Megrahi was found guilty by a court of judges and so is guilty (4).

Robertson also lambasts the lack of “due process” in Megrahi’s trial, while Dominic Lawson says that “Justice was what the Scottish court honoured when sentencing the Libyan to imprisonment for life”(5).

The core argument is that Megrahi was convicted by a court and so he’s been proven guilty.

Would any of these people think it was fair if they were on trial and there was no jury?

Would they be happy if one of the prosecution witnesses was shown photos and articles identifying them as being guilty – and that witness then identified them – and was subsequently paid $2 million?

That’s exactly what happened in the case of Tony Gauci, one of the key witnesses at Megrahi’s trial, who was paid $2 million by the US government after the trial (6), (7), (8).

The Lockerbie verdict, which is available online, is full of statements by the judges that show that they accepted any evidence from any witness that supported the prosecution’s case, while dismissing testimony from the same witnesses – e.g Edwin Bollier – where it contradicted the prosecution case. It’s obvious from this that the judges were biased towards the prosecution and against the defence – and were not impartial in their judgement. It’s not impossible that witnesses were being threatened and or offered bribes by both sides – the CIA and Libyan intelligence – but to rubbish testimony from witnesses like Tony Gauci and Edwin Bollier as belonging “in the realm of fiction” where it contradicts the prosecution case and then taking it as gospel truth where it supports the prosecution case is not credible (9).

The verdict delivered by the judges at Megrahi’s trial included a self-contradictory reference to Gauci as a witness who tried to give “the false impression” that “his continued association with the American authorities was largely motivated by financial considerations” and that “information provided by a paid informer is always open to the criticism that it may be invented...and in our view this is a case where such criticism is more than usually justified”. (Of course there may well be reason to think Gauci’s boasting about being paid for his testimony wasn’t false) (10).

Hans Koechler, a UN observer at the trial, UN Observer Hans Koechler said the verdict was inconsistent due to British and American government political pressure on the judges (11), (12).

Would Mueller or Lawson be happy if evidence in their own trial was tampered with and expert witnesses’ opinions ignored? Edwin Bollier, who was brought in as a witness on the bomb timer fragment produced by the prosecution, says the fragment was tampered with between him first being shown it – and saying it didn’t match the type his firm sold to Libyan intelligence – and it being presented in court. He also says his views were ignored in court (13).

Scottish Law Professor Robert Black, who helped establish the trial, said that the prosecution case against Megrahi was so weak that “if the evidence had come out in front of a Scottish jury of 15 there is absolutely no way he would have been convicted” (14).

UN Observer Hans Koechler also said that the denial of Megrahi’s appeal for a re-trial in 2002 was “a spectacular miscarriage of justice” (15), (16).

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2007 found that there were many serious problems with the original trial and recommended that Megrahi be granted an appeal. It’s full report has never been published but a press release summarising it has (17).

Yet those who say Megrahi was guilty simply repeat that a court found him guilty (along with the inaccurate claims about juries and “due process”).

Everything else is dismissed. So is any trial, however unfair, justice now? If so then the victim’s of Stalin’s show trials would have been guilty; after all, the judges said they were. If Megrahi’s trial is what passes for justice in Scotland then we should weep for shame. Those shouting most loudly about their “outrage” and “shame” at Megrahi’s release are the ones who should be ashamed of defending a show trial that jailed a man who may well be innocent for a decade while the guilty, whoever they may be, still go free.

I am not defending Gaddafi or his dictatorship. He has had dissidents in his country tortured, murdered and assassinated in exile. His own government has jailed many dissidents for decades without any fair trial. They would like to see their families just as much as Megrahi (18) – (20). (The US and British governments can’t criticise these as they have been complicit in many of them, gaining Libyan co-operation in ‘extra-ordinary rendition’ for torture and in murdering political pawns such as ‘curveball’ , silenced forever by Gaddafi to avoid US embarrassment over torturing nonsense ‘intelligence’ on Iraqi WMDs out of him (21) – (23).)

Gaddafi and Libyan intelligence were certainly involved in many terrorist acts, including, probably, the bombing of a French TWA flights and providing Semtex used by the IRA (24).

I don’t know what kind of a man Abdul Ali Basset Al Megrahi is. He was a member of Libyan intelligence under Megrahi. Libyan intelligence are not saints. They have been involved in torture, murder, assassination and terrorism. There is no evidence though that Megrahi or Gaddafi were involved in the Lockerbie bombing and in a democracy under the rule of law we don’t jail people without evidence they committed a crime. I have nothing against jailing any member of Libyan intelligence involved in terrorist acts. If they were involved they should be tried for those crimes – and Gaddafi too if he ordered those attacks.

I am not accusing the judges in the Lockerbie case of corruption either. They are more likely just to be biased political appointees and too easily influenced by the claims of the British and American governments and their intelligence agencies, which, despite being democratically elected, are no more honest or neutral than Gadaffi’s government.

Conspiracy theories ; and do foreign wars protect civilians from terrorism or get them killed by it?

Dominic Lawson rubbishes “the conspiracy theory” that Iran, not Libya, was behind the Lockerbie bombing, claiming that to believe it we would have to believe the US government wanted to protect the Iranian government, despite the hostility between the two.

He’s wrong, as usual. July 1988 was the last month of the Iran-Iraq war. It was also the month that the USS Vincennes, an American warship, shot down Iranian airliner, Iran Air flight 655, killing all 298 people on board. It wasn’t a coincidence that the war ended soon afterwards. The US government, along with many others, was backing, arming and funding Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq against Ayatollah Khomeini’s in Iran, continuing the funding even after Saddam gassed the Kurdish town of Halabja in the same year. (25) – (31)

While claiming Iraqi attacks on oil tankers were legitimate (Reagan even saying that “we have always recognised that in a time of war the enemy’s commerce and trade is a fair target”) the US decided it would protect oil tankers from Iranian attacks. In 1988 it decided to provide US Navy escorts to oil tankers in the Gulf (with the exception of Iranian ones), allowing them to re-flag as American. The Vincennes was one of the escorts, but entered Iranian waters and began a fight with Iranian navy vessels. During this fight the Vincennes’ crew did not use their identification systems properly, resulting in them shooting down an Iranian passenger plane, Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 298 people aboard (32), (33).

Given American support for Saddam throughout the war the Iranian government did not believe this was an accident. They thought it was a deliberate act and a threat that US forces were joining the war on the Iraqi side. Khomeini sued for peace with Iraq (34) – (36).

The Vincennes’ crew were given routine combat medals at the end of their tour and the US government refused to apologise for the deaths, though it did say it “regretted” them and paid compensation. Khomeini vowed that “the skies will rain blood” and offered a large amount of money to anyone who could bring down a plane full of Americans (37).

The initial investigations of Lockerbie found that the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian terrorist group backed by the Syrian government, was contracted by them on behalf of the Iranian government to place a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 (38) – (43).

The US government had deployed it’s military to defend Saddam. This led to almost 300 civilians being killed on Iran Air Flight 655, which resulted in the revenge attack which killed almost as many on Pam Am 103. This would not reflect well on them if it was reported internationally during a court case.

What’s more in the run up to the 1990 Gulf War the US wanted to isolate Saddam so that he couldn’t pose as defending the Arab world against them. It wanted Syria as part of the Coalition against Saddam and ideally Iranian neutrality and use of Iranian airspace. President Assad of Syria readily agreed (44).

So President Bush (senior) would announce that Syria “took a bum rap” on Lockerbie and Gaddafi and Libyan intelligence were responsible.

So the US government was not protecting the Iranian government, but itself and it’s military. Simultaneously it was showing that those governments who complied with US demands would be rewarded, just as those who refused to would be punished.

This does not mean that Libyan intelligence couldn’t also have been involved. Libyan intelligence co-operated with terrorist groups worldwide and was accused of bombing a disco in Germany in 1986, killing American soldiers. The US retaliation involved airstrikes on Tripoli in which it a military barracks, a school, houses and the French embassy, killing around 100 people, including Gaddafi’s adopted 1 year old daughter. The planes had been allowed to refuel in the UK, so Gaddafi certainly had a motive for revenge on both the American and British governments. No solid evidence of Libyan involvement in Lockerbie has emerged so far though (45), (46).

US intelligence agencies may also have had motives to obscure the truth about Lockerbie. In the 1980s the Iran-Contra scandal included revelations that Colonel Oliver North had been acting on behalf of the US Presidency to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. As congress had passed a law banning any US funding for the contras money had to be found to pay for the arms. The same planes taking arms to the contras from the US brought drugs from central American countries to the US. Drug Enforcement Agency officers were informed by the CIA that they could not search these flights nor investigate them for reasons of national security. North was also in command of a US Defence Intelligence Agency operation relating to drug smuggling between Lebanon and Europe. Suitcases containing drugs were exempted from security checks at airports. If a bomb could be placed in one of the drugs shipments it wouldn’t be checked by airport security. Who placed the bomb remains unknown. Some say the PFLP-GC on behalf of Iran. Others believe that North and his associates had been rumbled by CIA officers who were going to reveal CIA involvement in drug smuggling from Lebanon – and that North had a bomb placed on the plane to silence them forever (47) – (53).

I don’t know which, if any, of these theories, is true.

However as Professor Robert Black wrote “for the judges to return verdicts of guilty they would require (i) to accept every incriminating inference that the Crown invited them to draw from evidence that was on the face of it neutral and capable of supporting quite innocent inferences, (ii) to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, positively identified Megrahi as the person who bought from his shop in Sliema the clothes and umbrella contained in the suitcase that held the bomb and (iii) to accept that the date of purchase of these items was proved to be December 7, 1988 (as distinct from November 23, 1988 when Megrahi was not present on Malta).

I went on rashly to express the opinion that, for the judges to be satisfied of all these matters on the evidence led at the trial, they would require to adopt the posture of the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, when she informed Alice: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." In convicting Megrahi, it is submitted that this is precisely what the trial judges did.” (54)

In other words the prosecution case at Megrahi’s trial was nothing but a conspiracy theory with no real evidence to back it up, requiring bribing witnesses and tampering with evidence to get even a politically appointed court with no jury to accept it.

What is certain is that Megrahi’s trial was unfair and manipulated by the US and British government and intelligence agencies. Whether they did this because they believed Megrahi and Gaddafi were guilty and didn’t have the evidence for a conviction, or because they wanted to avoid any link between Iran Air Flight 655 and Pam Am 103, or because they were covering up for official involvement in drug trafficking which allowed the bombers to get the device on the plane, I don’t know.

What seems certain is that Scottish courts were politically manipulated and the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 has been denied to the families of those who died over Lockerbie – and that military action abroad often kills far more civilians directly – and indirectly by inciting terrorist revenge attacks – than it saves.

That holds whether you believe Iran carried out Lockerbie without Libyan involvement, or that Libya was involved in the Lockerbie bombing. If Libya was involved revenge for the one hundred people, many civilians and children, killed in the US air strikes on Tripoli on 15th April 1986, would have been a motive (55). Revenge is not justice, it just kills innocent people, but there is no doubt that military action abroad routinely kills civilians and creates terrorist revenge attacks that otherwise would not have been carried out. It does not protect us. As in the cases of the July 7th bombings in London (linked to the Iraq war) and the Lockerbie bombing (linked to Iran Air Flight 655 and/or the bombing of Tripoli) it puts us in more danger.

(1) = Guardian 09 September 2009 ‘Released Liverpool fan Michael Shields tells of 'living hell' in jail’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/09/liverpool-fan-michael-shields-pardoned

(2) = Times 23 Aug 2009 ‘Lockerbie bomber: Robert Mueller's letter to Kenny MacAskill’,http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6806873.ece

(3) = Observer 23 Aug 2009 ‘The shameful silence over Lockerbie’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/23/lockerbie-megrahi-gaddafi-pan-am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/23/lockerbie-megrahi-gaddafi-pan-am

(4) = Independent 02 Sep 2009 ‘Geoffrey Robertson: Megrahi should never have been freed’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/geoffrey-robertson-megrahi-should-never-have-been-freed-1780245.html

(5) = Independent 25 Aug 2009 ‘Dominic Lawson: The Prime Minister's silence over Lockerbie is eloquent’, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-the-prime-ministers-silence-over-lockerbie-is-eloquent-1776794.html

(6) = Guardian 03 Oct 2007 ‘Fresh doubts on Lockerbie conviction’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/oct/03/lockerbie.scotland

(7) = guardian.co.uk 28 Jun 2007 ‘Libyan granted new appeal over Lockerbie conviction’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jun/28/lockerbie.world

(8) = Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission 28 Jun 2007 ‘NEWS RELEASE
ABDELBASET ALI MOHMED AL MEGRAHI’, http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293

(9) = Lockerbie Verdict 21 Jan 2002 ‘OPINION OF THE COURT delivered by LORD SUTHERLAND in causa HER MAJESTY’S ADVOCATE v ABDELBASET ALI MOHMED AL MEGRAHI and AL AMIN KHALIFA
FHIMAH,
http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/library/lockerbie/docs/lockerbiejudgement.pdf

(10) = As (9) above, quoted and cited by Geoff Simons (2003) ‘Libya and The West’, Centre for Libyan Studies/I.B. Tauris, Oxford, UK, 2003, Chapter8 , pages 159-160

(11) = BBC News 21 Jan 2002 ‘Lockerbie verdict 'politically influenced'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/scotland/2002/lockerbie_appeal/1773868.stm

(12) = Independent 21 Aug 2009 ‘Hans Köchler: I saw the trial – and the verdict made no sense’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/hans-kchler-i-saw-the-trial-ndash-and-the-verdict-made-no-sense-1775217.html

(13) = Observer 02 Sep 2007 ‘Vital Lockerbie evidence 'was tampered with'’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/sep/02/theairlineindustry.libya

(14) = Herald 21 Aug 2009 ‘This shameful miscarriage has gravely sullied the Scottish criminal justice system’ Professor Robert Black , http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2526665.0.this_shameful_miscarriage_has_gravely_sullied_the_scottish_criminal_justice_system.php ; also reproduced on his blog ‘The Lockerbie Case’ 21 Aug 2009 , http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/08/this-shameful-miscarriage-has-gravely.html

(15) = BBC News 14 Mar 2002 ‘UN monitor decries Lockerbie judgement’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1872996.stm

(16) = The Firm (Scottish lawyers’ magazine) 10 Jun 2008 ‘UN Observer to the Lockerbie Trial says ‘totalitarian’ appeal process bears the hallmarks of an “intelligence operation”’, http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/901/UN_Observer_to_the_Lockerbie_Trial_says_%E2%80%98totalitarian%E2%80%99_appeal_process_bears_the_hallmarks_of_an_%E2%80%9Cintelligence_operation%E2%80%9D_.html

(17) = Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission 28 Jun 2007 ‘NEWS RELEASE
ABDELBASET ALI MOHMED AL MEGRAHI’,
http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293

(18) = Amnesty International World Report 2009 ‘http://report2009.amnesty.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/libya

(19) = Human Rights Watch World Report 2009 ‘http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79302

(20) = Geoff Simon (2003) ‘Libya and the West’, Centre for Libyan Studies/I.B. Tauris, Oxford, UK, 2003,p97-119

(21) = HRW 11 May 2009 ‘Libya/US: Investigate Death of Former CIA Prisoner’, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/11/libyaus-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner

(22) = Washington Post 12 May 2009 ‘Detainee Who Gave False Iraq Data Dies In Prison in Libya’, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103412.html

(23) = Human Rights Watch 07 Jun 2007 ‘Off the Record
U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the “War on Terror”
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/06/07/record

(24) = Geoff Simon (2003) ‘Libya and the West’, Centre for Libyan Studies/I.B. Tauris, Oxford, UK, 2003, Chapter 7

(25) = Newsweek 13 Jul 1992 ‘Sea of Lies : Sea Of Lies : The Inside Story Of How An American Naval Vessel Blundered Into An Attack On Iran Air Flight 655 At The Height Of Tensions During The Iran-Iraq War-And How The Pentagon Tried To Cover Its Tracks After 290 Innocent Civilians Died’, http://www.newsweek.com/id/126358

(26) = Karsh, Efraim (2002) ‘The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988’ Osprey, London, 2002, p20-22,44-45,53-55

(27) = Washington Post 22 Mar 1992, ‘Gonzalez's Iraq Expose: Hill Chairman Details U.S. Prewar Courtship, Washington Post archive article here ; full article also reproduced at the Federation of American Scientists' website here ; This gives an account provided by A US Congressman based on information provided to congressional committees by the CIA.

(28) = Washington Post 5 Aug 1992, ‘GOP Seeks Probe of Gonzalez Over Iraq Data, Washington Post archive article here ; also reproduced in full at the Federation of American Scientists’ website at http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920325wp.htm
Far from disputing the accuracy of Gonzalez's claims the Bush (senior) administration and the CIA instead stopped providing Gonzalez with intelligence briefings and attempted to have him censured by congress for releasing the information to the public

(29) = 'U.S. chemical and biological warfare-related dual use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the health consequences of the Persian Gulf War'/ A report of Donald W. Riegle, Jr. and Alfonse M. D’Amato of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with respect to export administration, United States Senate (1994) - Link to Library of Congress record

(30) = National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, 25 Feb 2003 ‘
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984’,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

(31) = Freedman, Lawrence (2008) ‘A Choice of Enemies : America Confronts the Middle East’, Orion, London, 2008, chapter 8, Pages 152-166 of hardback edition

(32) = Freedman, Lawrence (2008) ‘A Choice of Enemies : America Confronts the Middle East’, Orion, London, 2008, chapter 10, Pages 194-206 of hardback edition

(33) = Newsweek 13 Jul 1992 ‘Sea of Lies : Sea Of Lies : The Inside Story Of How An American Naval Vessel Blundered Into An Attack On Iran Air Flight 655 At The Height Of Tensions During The Iran-Iraq War-And How The Pentagon Tried To Cover Its Tracks After 290 Innocent Civilians Died’, http://www.newsweek.com/id/126358

(34) = Takeyh, Ray (2006), ‘Hidden Iran - Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic, Times Books, New York, 2006 - pages 170-174

(35) = Pollack, Kenneth M.(2004), ‘The Persian Puzzle', Random House, New York, 2005 paperback edition - pages 231-233

(36) = NYT 15 Jul 1988 ‘Iran Falls Short in Drive at U.N. To Condemn U.S. in Airbus Case’,

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/15/world/iran-falls-short-in-drive-at-un-to-condemn-us-in-airbus-case.html

(37) = Guardian 29 Jul 1995, SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND, Page T22
‘INSIDE STORY: BODY OF EVIDENCE’, http://leninology4.blogspot.com/2007/06/paul-foot-john-ashtons-1995.html

(38) = See (37) above

(39) = Guardian 31 March 2004 ‘Lockerbie's dirty secret’, by Paul Foot,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/mar/31/lockerbie.libya

(40) = Paul Foot (1989-2001) ‘The Great Lockerbie Whitewash’ in Pilger, John (ed.) (2005) ‘Tell Me No Lies’, Vintage/Random House, London, 2005, pages 214-254

(41) = Sunday Times 01 Jul 2007 ‘Unpicking the Lockerbie truth’, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2009603.ece

(42) = Guardian 07 Apr 1999 ‘Lockerbie conspiracies: from A to Z ;
Based on a 1995 Guardian investigation by Paul Foot and John Ashton’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/apr/07/lockerbie.patrickbarkham

(43) = Time magazine 24 Jun 2001 ‘Pan Am 103 Why Did They Die?’, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159523,00.html

(44) = See (37) to (43) above

(45) = Geoff Simon (2003) ‘Libya and the West’, Centre for Libyan Studies/I.B. Tauris, Oxford, UK, 2003, Chapter 7, page 132 of hardback edition Ch7

(46) = Bovard, James (2003) ‘Terrorism and Tyranny’, Palgrave-MacMillan, NY,2003, Chapter 2, pages 24-26

(47) = Coleman, Lester K & Goddard, Donald (1993) ‘Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie - Inside the DIA’

(48) = Levine , Michael (2000) Deep Cover uPublish.com , 2000 (Levine is a former US Drug Enforcement Agency agent)

(49) = Scott , Peter Dale & Marshall , Jonathan(1998) Cocaine Politics University of California Press , LA & London ,1998

(50) = McCoy , Alfred (1991) The Politics of Heroin - CIA complicity in the global drug trade Lawrence Hill , New York ,1991

(51) = Cockburn , Alexander & St.Clair , Jeffrey (1998) Whiteout - The CIA , Drugs & The Press Verso , London & New York , 1998

(52) = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North#Involvement_with_drug_trafficking
(this is a wikipedia entry but provides reliable sources - including the Kerry report - a congressional inquiry into links between drug traffickers, the contras and the CIA - and FBI investigations)

(53) = John Ashton & Ian Ferguson (2001) ‘Cover-Up of Convenience: The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie’, Mainstream Publishing, 2001

(54) = Herald 21 Aug 2009 ‘This shameful miscarriage has gravely sullied the Scottish criminal justice system’ Professor Robert Black , http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2526665.0.this_shameful_miscarriage_has_gravely_sullied_the_scottish_criminal_justice_system.php

(55) = Geoff Simon (2003) ‘Libya and the West’, Centre for Libyan Studies/I.B. Tauris, Oxford, UK, 2003, Chapter 7, page 132 of hardback edition

Yes I’m ashamed and angry...that an innocent man was jailed until months before his death

It’s an outrage, according to some, that Abdelbasset Al Megrahi, “the Lockerbie bomber”, “a convicted mass murderer” has been released to die at home with his family, showing him a compassion “he never showed his victims”.

If Megrahi had been proven guilty of these crimes in a fair trial very few people could manage to avoid agreeing. However many of those who saw all the evidence presented at his trial – and much that wasn’t – including law professors, UN Observers and some relatives of the victims of the atrocity say the trial was a sham and that neither Megrahi nor the Libyan government were involved in any way.

Some say we should be ashamed that a man who murdered so many innocent Americans or people has been freed for political reasons which may include oil deals between Gaddafi’s government and British and American oil firms. Some mention only American lives lost, despite many of the dead having been Scottish or English or other nationalities. The 290 Iranians killed by the USS Vinciennes (more details later) don’t seem to be mentioned as of equal importance much either.

The trouble is that Megrahi was only tried for political and economic reasons, was framed in a managed show trial for the same reasons and was innocent of any involvement in that mass murder.

Those who say Megrahi is innocent are accused of being “conspiracy theorists” by the same people who have been persuaded to adopt the actual conspiracy theory, the very weak one presented by the prosecution at Megrahi’s fixed trial.

As a former member of Libyan intelligence under Gaddafi’s dictatorship Megrahi may or may not be guilty of many other crimes, since Gaddafi’s dictatorship is no less brutal towards dissidents among its own people than most. However speculating on that can’t justify punishing him for a terrible crime he most definitely did not commit – and Libyan intelligence is no more brutal or ruthless, no less involved in torture and murder, than some members of British and American intelligence, acting on the orders of their governments, have been over the decades.

It could possibly be the case, as FBI Agent Richard Marquise alleges in his book ‘Scotbom’ , that Libyan intelligence co-operated with others in carrying out the bombing. Certainly Gaddafi had motives to want revenge on the US and British governments. He had been in conflict with both over the US navy entering what he claimed as Libyan territorial waters and US ships had shot down Libyan aircraft which targeted them in those waters. In 1986 President Reagan attempted to assassinate Gaddafi by airstrike as retaliation for a bombing which killed American soldiers in Germany and which Reagan accused Gaddafi of being behind. The airstrikes ended up killing civilians including children. One was Gaddafi’s 6 year old adopted daughter. Others were in a nearby school hit by mistake. However the case against Megrahi amounts to little more than conspiracy theory backed up with bribed witnesses and tampered evidence – and Marquise was one of the FBI agents who built the case against Megrahi.

The Reality of Megrahi’s “conviction for mass murder”: no jury; bribed witnesses; evidence tampered with; a prosecution case that amounted to a conspiracy theory in place of evidence

There was no jury at Megrahi’s trial – only three judges appointed by the Lord Advocate, who at the time was a political appointee of the British government (1), (2). Professor Robert Black, who was involved in negotiating the terms of Megrahi’s original trial, has written of how appalled he was by the trial itself and by it’s verdict.

“for the judges to return verdicts of guilty they would require (i) to accept every incriminating inference that the Crown invited them to draw from evidence that was on the face of it neutral and capable of supporting quite innocent inferences...

for the judges to be satisfied of all these matters on the evidence led at the trial, they would require to adopt the posture of the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, when she informed Alice: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." In convicting Megrahi, it is submitted that this is precisely what the trial judges did.

I am absolutely convinced that if the evidence had come out in front of a Scottish jury of 15 there is absolutely no way he would have been convicted.” (3), (4).

So the conspiracy theory on Lockerbie was actually the case made by the prosecution in Megrahi’s trial – and the conspiracy theorists include the investigators, prosecutors and the three judges involved.

Dr Hans Koechler wrote that:

“In my time as the UN's observer at Megrahi's trial, I watched a case unfold that was based on circumstantial evidence. The indictment against him and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah went to great lengths to explain how they supposedly planted a bomb on Flight 103, and yet Fhimah was acquitted of all the charges against him. It made no sense that Megrahi was guilty when Fhimah was acquitted.” (5)

So the conspiracy theory used to convict Megrahi doesn’t even make sense.

Much of the evidence presented in court came from the CIA. Tony Gauci, the key witness in the case, saw a photo of Megrahi in a magazine in a piece suggesting Megrahi was the Lockerbie bomber days before he identified him from a line-up. He was offered $2 million by the US government to identify Megrahi as the guilty man – and took it with him to Australia after the trial. (5), (6)

The other key prosecution witness, Edwin Bollier, whose company sold timers to the Libyan military, says the timer shown to him as the one used in the bomb was not of the type he sold to the Libyans – and that when he was shown it again in court it had been tampered with.

Bollier said “I was a defence witness, but the trial was so skewed to prove Libyan involvement that the details of what I had to say was ignored. A photograph of the fragments was produced in court and I asked to see the pieces again. When they were brought to me, they were practically carbonised. They had been tampered with since I had seen them in Dumfries.” (7)

Would those who argue Megrahi is convicted and so guilty be happy if their own trial of that of one of their relatives had no jury and involved bribing the key witness against them and tampering with evidence? If not perhaps they should question whether “convicted” in this case really means “guilty”. To claim that “there is no question of his guilt”, as some have, suggests their claims aren’t based on the evidence.

After attending Megrahi’s 2002 Appeal Hearing, in which his appeal was rejected, Koechler wrote that the proceedings were “a spectacular miscarriage of justice”, and more like an intelligence operation than a legal hearing (8), (9), (10).

A review of the case by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2007 reported many serious problems with the evidence presented by the prosecution and recommended the Appeal Court look at whether there should be a re-trial. The timing – a month after Gaddafi gave BP an oil contract - could certainly be seen as political. The criticisms of the trial were legitimate though. However by the time this was possible Megrahi faced the choice of dying alone in prison in the hope the appeal would clear his name or giving up the chance of clearing his name in order to return home to see his family and friends before he died. (11).

Relatives of those murdered in the Lockerbie bombing, including Dr. Jim Swire and Martin Cadman, were also present at the trial and also reviewed all the available information on Lockerbie. They also came to the conclusion that Megrahi is not guilty. Others, such as Pamela Dix, are uncertain whether Megrahi was involved or not. Many American relatives, such as Susan Cohen, Stephanie Bernstein, Kathleen Flynn and Bob Monetti, remain convinced of Megrahi’s guilt. However Swire’s and Cadman’s conclusions are the same as those of independent observers like Black and Koechler (11), (12), (13).

One day Iran-Syria-PFLP-GC were responsible; the next Libya; and why

The British and American governments initially identified the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command as those behind the bombing, contracted by the Syrian government on behalf of the Iranian government. In July 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war, in which the US was backing Saddam, the USS Vinciennes shot down an Iranian passenger plane – Iranian Air Flight 655 – killing all 290 people on board. The crew had entered Iranian waters, started an avoidable fight with Iranian gunboats and made serious errors with their target identification system. After the Vinciennes’ crew were awarded combat medals Ayatollah Khomeini offered a large cash reward for anyone who could bring down an American passenger jet, following the sadly common theory that killing one lot of innocent people makes up for killing another lot (14) – (20).

However after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 the Bush (senior) administration wanted to make sure Saddam was isolated from Muslim and Arab countries before war on Iraq began. They wanted Syria as an Arab member of the Coalition and Iranian neutrality and ideally use of its airspace. Suddenly the PFLP-GC were no longer responsible for Lockerbie – now Libya and Gaddafi were behind it. Much of the media went along with this sudden change of story without batting an eye-lid, though there some honourable exceptions, like the late Paul Foot, writing for the Daily Mirror (16) – (20).

How did the bomb get through airport security?

There was also embarrassment over the details of how the bomb got on to Pan Am Flight 103. Why wasn’t it found by airport security? Possibly airport security was simply too lax.
However former US Defence Intelligence Agency operative Lester Coleman reported that certain CIA and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) agents’ bags were routinely allowed to pass through Frankfurt and London Heathrow airports unchecked in order to allow CIA drug trafficking paralleling that in Latin America discovered in congressional investigations of Iran-Contra. The PFLP-GC may well have discovered this and managed to include a bomb hidden inside one of the drugs shipments, or the bomb may have been intended to target the drug smugglers, with the other passengers and crew being “collateral damage”. (21) – (25).

John Ashton and Paul Foot’s investigation found that Jim Wilson, a farmer, of Tundergarth Mains Farm near Lockerbie, found a suit-case containing bags of white powder which he suspected were drugs among the debris on his land. He was not called to give evidence at the trial, at which the prosecution claimed cannabis had been the only drug on board. The name on the case was not on the passenger list for the flight. On the night of the bombing two bus loads of FBI agents arrived the same night at the site. Residents reported that they had a coffin on one of the buses. Scottish doctors and police had tagged 59 bodies. Only 58 were ever mentioned by the FBI and the prosecution. (26).

Political Fixes? All about Money and Power? Yes – right from the start

In light of all this the outcries about a ‘political fix’ to release Megrahi miss the point that Megrahi was only convicted and jailed for political reasons in the first place. In any case the Scottish devolved government and Home Affairs minister Kenny MacAskill are not from the same government or even the same political party that negotiated a deal to transfer Megrahi to a Libyan prison in return for Gadaffi having granted BP oil contracts in Libya. Those negotiations were carried out by the US government’s favourite British politician Tony Blair – and repudiated and rejected by the Scottish government, which is why Megrahi’s initial request for transfer to a Libyan prison was rejected.( However the British government’s deal with Libya did make it decide not to try to interfere with a devolved decision.) Those who believe Scottish legal processes can’t be politically influenced must explain not only the sham at Zeist but also why the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission recommended the appeal court should review Megrahi’s case one month after BP was given an oil contract in Libya for the first time in decades and Blair signed a prisoner transfer memorandum with Gaddafi (27) – (31)

What’s more oil and arms deals with dictatorships are a routine matter for the British and American governments, whether it’s the unelected, torturing, murdering Saudi monarchy or the election rigging, torturing, murdering President Mubarak of Egypt. When British citizens were tortured into giving false confessions to being behind bombing attacks on other Britons in Saudi Arabia the British government and most of the media did not come out with the kind of outrage about ‘political fixes’ to secure oil contracts that they have over Megrahi. While some American commentators talk of boycotting British oil companies or Scottish exports they ignore the fact that American oil companies were back in Libya in 2005 – two years before BP; and that US oil firms have been lobbying members of congress against US anti-terrorism laws targeting Libya (32) – (34)

Just as with Iraq and Saddam (who was funded and supported by the US and UK all through the 1980s) the real issue was not human rights or WMD but oil contracts. After 9-11 when the Bush administration began making threats Gaddafi rapidly agreed to scrap all ‘WMD projects’ while also dealing with the real issue by offering oil contracts to US firms while Saddam continued to give contracts only to the French, Russians and Chinese, believing the US and UK had double crossed him over Kuwait in 1990 and again in Desert Storm in 1998 (35) – (37).

President Obama’s suggestion that Megrahi should be placed under house arrest in Libya was particularly surreal, since, if the official US government line were true, he would be being held under house arrest by the same government that ordered him to carry out the Lockerbie bombing (38).

The oil companies may yet change from lobbying on behalf of Gaddafi to lobbying against him though, if he continues threats of nationalisation of Libya’s oil industry if they don’t give a greater share of oil contract profits to his government (39), (40).

The Real Outrages

The real outrages are that the Scottish justice system has been corrupted by the political and economic aims of the British and American governments; that large numbers of people have willingly subscribed to supporting a conspiracy and its supporting conspiracy theories because they preferred it the unpleasant truth the evidence suggested; that the guilty have been allowed to go unpunished; that the relatives of the dead have been denied the truth ;and most of all that a man was punished for a crime he never committed and kept from spending his time at home with his family and friends until he only had a few months to live.

There is considerably more evidence linking President George H.W. Bush to the killing of all the passengers of Iranian Air Flight 655, or Blair or Brown to deaths under torture in Iraq, or Obama and Bush to airstrikes killing thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, than there is that Abdelbasset Al Megrahi, or even Gaddafi, had anything to do with bombing Pan Am Flight 103.

If renewed oil deals with Libya threaten anyone’s rights it’s not relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing, but ordinary Libyans who are now living under a dictatorship which is not only as brutal as it’s always been, but like so many others, is now backed by the US government and its allies in the EU. One Libyan who died in one of Gaddafi’s prisons shortly after Human Rights Watch questioned him was the man code-named “curveball”, who had been tortured into telling US intelligence what they wanted to hear – that Saddam had WMDs – and was used as a source by Colin Powell in his presentations to the UN. Shortly after they visited him HRW were informed that he had committed suicide (41) – (42).

(1) = New Statesman 17 Jan 2000 ‘Let's peeble the judges again’,
http://www.newstatesman.com/200001170028 (quotes Law Professor Robert Black of Edinburgh University)

(2) = BBC 19 Nov 1999 ‘Lockerbie trial judges named’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/526405.stm (see 5th and 6th paragraphs)

(3) = Herald 21 Aug 2009 ‘This shameful miscarriage has gravely sullied the Scottish criminal justice system’ Professor Robert Black , http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2526665.0.this_shameful_miscarriage_has_gravely_sullied_the_scottish_criminal_justice_system.php

(4) = (3) above is also reproduced on his blog ‘The Lockerbie Case’ 21 Aug 2009 , http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/08/this-shameful-miscarriage-has-gravely.html

(5) = Independent 21 Aug 2009 ‘Hans Köchler: I saw the trial – and the verdict made no sense’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/hans-kchler-i-saw-the-trial-ndash-and-the-verdict-made-no-sense-1775217.html

(6) = Paul Foot (1989-2001) ‘The Great Lockerbie Whitewash’ in Pilger, John (ed.) (2005) ‘Tell Me No Lies’, Vintage/Random House, London, 2005, pages 214-254

(7) = Observer 02 Sep 2007 ‘Vital Lockerbie evidence 'was tampered with'’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/sep/02/theairlineindustry.libya

(8) = BBC News 14 Mar 2002 ‘UN monitor decries Lockerbie judgement’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1872996.stm

(9) = The Firm (Scottish lawyers’ magazine) 10 Jun 2008 ‘UN Observer to the Lockerbie Trial says ‘totalitarian’ appeal process bears the hallmarks of an “intelligence operation”’, http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/901/UN_Observer_to_the_Lockerbie_Trial_says_%E2%80%98totalitarian%E2%80%99_appeal_process_bears_the_hallmarks_of_an_%E2%80%9Cintelligence_operation%E2%80%9D_.html

(10) = Report on the appeal proceedings at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands (Lockerbie Court) in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi v. H. M. Advocate by Professor Hans Köchler, international observer of the International Progress Organization nominated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the basis of Security Council resolution 1192 (1998)

(11) = Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission 28 Jun 2007 ‘NEWS RELEASE
ABDELBASET ALI MOHMED AL MEGRAHI’,
http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293

(12) = PA 13 Aug 2009 ‘Lockerbie bomber 'may be released'’,
http://latestnews.virginmedia.com/news/infocus/2009/08/13/lockerbie_bomber_may_be_released?vmsrc=pamread
and
Scotsman 20 Aug 2009 ‘Lockerbie: Al Megrahi release welcomed by victims' relatives’,
http://latestnews.virginmedia.com/news/infocus/2009/08/13/lockerbie_bomber_may_be_released?vmsrc=pamread

(13) = Herald 13 Aug 2009 ‘Lockerbie families divided over possible release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi’, http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/lockerbie-families-divided-over-possible-release-of-abdelbaset-ali-mohmed-al-megrahi-1.822758#

(14) = NYT 15 Jul 1988 ‘Iran Falls Short in Drive at U.N. To Condemn U.S. in Airbus Case’,
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/15/world/iran-falls-short-in-drive-at-un-to-condemn-us-in-airbus-case.html

(15) = Newsweek 13 Jul 1992 ‘Sea of Lies : Sea Of Lies : The Inside Story Of How An American Naval Vessel Blundered Into An Attack On Iran Air Flight 655 At The Height Of Tensions During The Iran-Iraq War-And How The Pentagon Tried To Cover Its Tracks After 290 Innocent Civilians Died’, http://www.newsweek.com/id/126358

(16) = Guardian 31 March 2004 ‘Lockerbie's dirty secret’, by Paul Foot,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/mar/31/lockerbie.libya

(17) = Paul Foot (1989-2001) ‘The Great Lockerbie Whitewash’ in Pilger, John (ed.) (2005) ‘Tell Me No Lies’, Vintage/Random House, London, 2005, pages 214-254

(18) = Sunday Times 01 Jul 2007 ‘Unpicking the Lockerbie truth’, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2009603.ece

(19) = Guardian 07 Apr 1999 ‘Lockerbie conspiracies: from A to Z ;
Based on a 1995 Guardian investigation by Paul Foot and John Ashton’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/apr/07/lockerbie.patrickbarkham

(20) = Guardian 29 Jul 1995, SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND, Page T22
‘INSIDE STORY: BODY OF EVIDENCE’,
http://leninology4.blogspot.com/2007/06/paul-foot-john-ashtons-1995.html

(21) = Coleman, Lester K & Goddard, Donald (1993) ‘Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie - Inside the DIA’

(22) = Levine , Michael (2000) Deep Cover uPublish.com , 2000 (Levine is a former US Drug Enforcement Agency agent)

(23) = Scott , Peter Dale & Marshall , Jonathan(1998) Cocaine Politics University of California Press , LA & London ,1998

(24) = McCoy , Alfred (1991) The Politics of Heroin - CIA complicity in the global drug trade Lawrence Hill , New York ,1991

(25) = Cockburn , Alexander & St.Clair , Jeffrey (1998) Whiteout - The CIA , Drugs & The Press Verso , London & New York , 1998

(26) = Guardian 29 Jul 1995, SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND, Page T22
‘INSIDE STORY: BODY OF EVIDENCE’,
http://leninology4.blogspot.com/2007/06/paul-foot-john-ashtons-1995.html

(27) = BBC News 18 May 2007 ‘BP returns to Libya in $900m deal’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/business/6700255.stm

(28) = BBC 07 Jun 2007 ‘'No deal' over Lockerbie bomber’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6731739.stm

(29) = Herald 25 Jul 2009 ‘Megrahi requests release from jail on compassionate grounds’
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2521983.0.megrahi_requests_release_from_jail_on_compassionate_grounds.php
(refers to May 2007 referendum between Blair and Gadaffi on transfer of ‘Libyan prisoners’ back to Libya)

(30) = Guardian 18 Jun 2007 ‘New doubt over conviction for Lockerbie bombing’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jun/18/libya.lockerbie

(31) = Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission 28 Jun 2007 ‘NEWS RELEASE
ABDELBASET ALI MOHMED AL MEGRAHI’,
http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293

(32) = Guardian 31 Jan 2002 ‘Saudi bomb victim's torture ordeal - and Britain's silence’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jan/31/saudiarabia.politics

(33) = BBC News 13 Jan 2005 ‘US oil companies return to Libya’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4219623.stm

(34) = NYT 22 Apr 2008 ‘U.S. oil firms want Libya exempted from terrorism compensation law’,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/world/africa/22iht-libya.1.12217056.html?_r=1

(35) = Financial Times 16 Sep 2002 ‘Libya denies US allegations over weapons’

(36) = SABC (South African Broadcasting Company) News 22 Dec 2003 ‘Libya wants US oil companies back’

(37) = Washington Post 15 Sep 2002, 'In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue : U.S. Drillers Eye Huge Petroleum Pool', http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A18841-2002Sep14

(38) = Guardian 21 Aug 2009 ‘Barack Obama attacks decision to free Lockerbie bomber’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/20/lockerbie-bomber-release-libya-obama

(39) = AP 03 Mar 2009 ‘Libya Wants Greater Share of Its Oil Revenue’, http://www.cnbc.com/id/29494495

(40) = Forbes Magazine 22 Jan 2009 ‘Is Libya Going To Boot U.S. Oil Companies?’, http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/22/libya-gaddafi-oil-biz-energy-cx_ch_0122libya.html

(41) = HRW 11 May 2009 ‘Libya/US: Investigate Death of Former CIA Prisoner’, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/11/libyaus-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner

(42) =Washington Post 12 May 2009 ‘Detainee Who Gave False Iraq Data Dies In Prison in Libya’, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103412.html

Please Complain about BBC and UCU bias against Craig Murray’s campaign in the Norwich North By-election – Plus contact details for volunteering

Complain about the BBC’s refusal to give Murray’s campaign any coverage

Iain Orr, who is one of the organisers for Craig Murray’s campaign as an independent in the Norwich North By- election has provided some useful information on how to get the BBC to stop refusing to provide Craig’s campaign with any in its coverage of the election.

There are only just over two weeks of campaigning left and the normal BBC complaints process takes at least ten days, so it’s better if people first phone BBC complaints on 03700100222 and complain about the Newsnight programme on 30th June which made no mention of Craig even in the list of candidates. Newsnight subsequently phoned Craig to inform him he would get no coverage except for the addition of his name to the list of candidates in their reports on the election and their Political Editor Michael Crick told the Independent on Sunday that “We're not obliged to report all the candidates. He'll have to join the queue behind the BNP and Ukip candidates to be interviewed.” So much for un-biased, neutral reporting.

When asked if you want your name included in the complaint say yes and ask for a complaint ID number. (Please don’t get angry with the complaints staff – they’re not responsible for Michael Crick’s decisions)

If you don’t have time to phone then please make an online complaint at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complaints_stage1.shtml

Next phone the BBC Trust on 02072089491 or email them on trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk.

They’ll ask if you’ve already been through the BBC complaints system. Tell them you have. I’ll quote Iain Orr here:

“My line has been that ten working days to reply to a complaint is generally OK, but not when it concerns biased coverage of a by-election campaign only lasting 3 weeks. More generally, the BBC's bias in favour of the main parties amounts to a huge hidden subsidy for which there is no justification. It also shows lamentable political judgement (a skill for which many BBC employees are highly paid) that in the first election after the expenses scandal has revealed huge dissatisfaction with existing politicians, no attention is paid to a candidate articulating forcefully a vision of an alternative politics.”

Complain to the UCU over its refusal to allow Craig to speak in the hustings debate

Second the UCU union is organising the hustings debate on education policy for the by-election, but has informed Craig that he is not invited to the debate.

Matt Waddup of the UCU informed Craig “Lisa tells me you are enquiring about our event this Thursday. I took the decision to invite only those candidates shown by our poll to have a chance of winning the seat.”

The poll Matt refers to was held before Craig had even declared his candidacy and Matt’s argument is the same circular, flawed, politically biased one as Michael Crick’s, that candidates receiving no coverage have no chance of getting elected so should get no coverage. That’s apart from the fact that Ladbrokes gives Craig odds of 25/1 of winning compared to 33/1 for the Lib Dems, 100/1 for UKIP and 200/1 for the BNP.

If you are a UCU member it would be very helpful if you could email MWaddup@UCU.ORG.UK and UCU press officer Alex Rossiter at press@ucu.org.uk as soon as possible and let them know whether you think they’re representing your views as members properly or not.

To find out more about Craig’s campaign, turn up to public meetings or leaflet for him go to his campaign website at http://www.putanhonestman.org/index.php . Accommodation is available for anyone wanting to campaign there who doesn’t live in the area.

To hear news on the campaign also check Craig’s blog at http://www.craigmurray.co.uk

The Death Squads ‘ Coup for Democracy ’ in Honduras : The Facts on Zelaya, the military, the US, ALBA and PPA

The military coup against the elected President of Honduras should be given the same coverage as election rigging and killings of demonstrators in Iran. The Honduran military has already killed two people and wounded dozens by firing on pro-Zelaya demonstrators (1). Opposition supporters are beaten and arrested, just as in Iran (2).

Zelaya’s 'crime' was to attempt to hold a referendum to change the constitution so that elected Presidents could stand for election a second time, as the constitution of Honduras bans Presidents from standing for a second five year term in office and gives congress, not the President, the power to hold constitution -al referenda (3). Zelaya’s defenders point out that he was carrying out an unoffic- ial referendum on whether a new constitutional assembly should be elected to decide whether the same candidate could be President for more than one term and that he would have stepped down at the end of his term anyway, as the assembly’s conclusions would have come long after the next Presidential election. Newspaper editors who asked readers for their opinions on whether there should be a referendum were threat -ened with jail by the Supreme Court (4).

The current 1982 constitution of Honduras, which Zelaya was accused of violating, was written in a period when the ‘democratically elected’ US backed government employed CIA trained military death squads to kill its critics and terrify people into not voting for the opposition.Then US ambassador John Negroponte and the CIA used Honduras as a base to training and arm the contra terrorists who tortured and murdered unarmed Nicaraguan men, women and children to overthrow the elected Sandinista government (5) - (8).

Under Zelaya there were still some killings of trade unionists, environmentalists and journalists critical of his government, but the military may well have been behind many of them as their death squad murders have never entirely ended. Zelaya was overthrown not for being ‘a dictator’ but because his government spent money on helping the poor majority in his country. Trade unionists and the poor majority in Honduras have demonstrated against the coup from the beginning (9) – (13).

However the Zelayas are major land- owners and in the 1970s President Zelaya’s father, then the provincial army command -er, was found by an investigating commission to have been involved in a series of murders of campaigners for land reform including two Fransciscan priests, an American, Father Michael Jerome Cypher, and a Colombian, Ivan Betancourt (14), (15).

There is no hard evidence that President Zelaya himself has been involvement in political murders, though there have been some cases that require further investigation. In 2007 a radio presenter whose station had routinely criticised Zelaya and his government was shot dead. Whether Zelaya was involved or not and whether the killing was political is not certain, though other journalists at the station received death threats by telephone warning “If you carry on pissing us off we will bury you like this.” (16) Journalists involved in exposing corruption in government and politics have also been killed, (17). Again these cases require investigation, but there is no proven link between President Zelaya or his govern -ment and these killings – and such killings did not begin under Zelaya – the military death squads existed long before him and much of the military is hostile to him. Elected as a conservative from the same ‘Liberal Party’ backed by the US and the military in the 1980s, Zelaya became a relatively left wing reformer in office, leading his own party to turn on him, but making him popular with the poor and trade unions, who are also common victims of death squads. He increased the minimum wage, which was popular with the majority of Hondurans, 50% of whom earned less than 2 dollars a day in 2007 and who die of poverty related malnutrition and illnesses as much as from death squad bullets, but not so popular with wealthy landowners and employers (18), (19), (20).

Whether Zelaya has moved to the left out of principle or in order to benefit from an alliance with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who has been generous in aiding allies with Venezuelan oil revenues, is uncertain. Some analysts such as Alvaro Vargas Llosa see Zelaya’s move to the left as opportunism aiming at a Venezuelan funded dictatorship. It’s worth noting though that Mr Losa’s Center for Global Prosperity is extremely fond of free trade and is a part of the ‘Independent Institute’ which is funded partly by large donations from US based multinational companies including Phillip Morris and Exxon. It’s hard to see such an organisation as being capable of unbiased analyses on whether Honduras should have a government which joins a US centred free trade area or not (21) – (25).

A military coup is not likely to benefit the people of Honduras in terms of democratic rights or social and economic ones. Zelaya has brought Honduras into ALBA – the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of the Americas. ALBA is an alternative to the US’s project – the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which the Bush administration hoped would extend NAFTA to cover the whole of the Americas. While the FTAA has largely been dropped under Obama the agenda of a US led political and economic grouping in the Americas has continued through promotion of the Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas group (PPA). ALBA remains an alternative and rival to any US-led grouping and some have questioned whether the Obama administration is as opposed to the coup against Zelaya as it should be. While the Obama administration have said that the coup is illegal and that Zelaya remains the only legitimate President of Honduras there has also been some vagueness. Unlike the ALBA governments the US has not recalled its ambassador from Honduras or refused to recognise the new government. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, when asked at a press conference if the US commitment to a return to democratic and constitutional practices in Honduras meant the restoration of Zelaya to office, gave no clear answer. It’s possible that the Obama administration’s attitude to Zelaya is ambiguous, or alternatively that it’s attempting to avoid handing ammunition to right wingers (including some Democrats) in the US congress who consider Chavez and Zelaya to be ‘dictators’ and enemies of the US or who want to revive the Free Trade Area of the Americas. It may even be, as Hugo Chavez has suggested, that Obama opposed the coup but other elements in the US government, military and intelligence agencies backed it (26) – (30).

However Honduras’ military remains heavily US armed, funded and trained (there are even 300 US troops permanently based in the country) and it seems likely that if the Obama administration really wanted to restore democracy in Honduras it would only need to suspend all military aid and arms sales until Zelaya was restored to power (31). Many of the officers involved in the coup were trained at the notorious US School of the Americas in the 1980s and 1990s, including the main leader of the coup, General Romeo Vásquez Velasquez (32) –(34). Latin American History professor Greg Grandin says that “The Honduran military is effectively a subsidiary of the United States government. Honduras, as a whole, if any Latin American country is fully owned by the United States, it’s Honduras....Its economy is wholly based on trade, foreign aid and remittances. So if the US is opposed to this coup going forward, it won’t go forward. Zelaya will return.” (35)

The new government, placed in power by military coup, which is supposedly defending democracy has as it’s first acts not only having demonstrators beaten and shot dead but also introducing censorship and suspended the basic right not to be jailed without charge and fair trial. In fact more than half a dozen articles of the 1982 constitution have been suspended by a government claiming to be defending that constitution. (36) – (37). Far from ‘representing civil society’ the new government has ordered the arrest of the leaders of the the Popular Bloc Coordinating Committee, Via Campesina and the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) – a native Indian movement. The police have also killed César Ham Peña, a member of the Honduran congress who organised Zelaya’s referendum, claiming that he resisted arrest using a pistol (38).

The coup leaders in the military and congress say that this coup is not like the coups of the past; this time they are defending their democracy against a would be Chavez style dictatorship. Yet it’s exactly like the coups of the past, from Chile to Honduras, in which the coup leaders also claimed to be preventing Communist dictatorship and were also actually overthrowing democratically elected governments. Chavez and Zelaya are elected democrats, just like Allende, who was also accused by Pinochet of being a Communist dictator for having economic policies focused on helping the majority in his own country rather than just the wealthiest and American based multinationals.

If the military is allowed to get off with installing a new government at gunpoint Honduras will be governed by death squad again.

copyright©Duncan McFarlane 2009

Sources

(1) = Guardian 06 Jul 2009 ‘Honduras coup leaders block ousted president's return’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/06/honduras-blocks-president-return

(2) = Human Rights Watch 02 Jul 2009 ‘Honduras: OAS Should Press for Rights Protections’,
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/02/honduras-oas-should-press-rights-protections

(3) = Guardian 29 Jun 2009 ‘Protesters demand return of ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/29/manuel-zelaya-honduras-coup-protests

(4) = IFEX 30 Jun 2009 ‘Court threatens to fine and imprison editor’,
http://www.ifex.org/honduras/2009/06/30/court_threatens_editor/

(5) = New York Times 19 Jan 1988 ‘In Human Rights Court, Honduras Is First to Face Death Squad Trial’,
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/19/world/in-human-rights-court-honduras-is-first-to-face-death-squad-trial.html?scp=1&sq=In%20Human%20Rights%20Court,%20Honduras%20Is%20First%20to%20Face%20Death%20Squad%20Trial%20&st=cse and http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/library/wf-141.htm (reports that some Honduran military death squad units CIA trained and on death squad murders of civilians

(6) = Times 10 Jan 2005 ‘El Salvador-style 'death squads' to be deployed by US against Iraq militants’,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article410491.ece (covers John Negroponte being US ambassador to Honduras in 1980s, use of death squads by US backed govts in Americas in 1980s, training of Contras in Honduras)

(7) = Amnesty International World Report 2009 – Honduras, http://report2009.amnesty.org/en/regions/americas/honduras

(8) = Schroeder, Michael J. ‘ “To Induce a sense of terror” : Caudillo Politics and Political Violence’ in Campbell, Bruce B. & Brenner, Arthur D.(eds) (2000) ‘Death Squads in Global Perspective : Murder with Deniability’, Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2002, Chapter 2

(9) = IFEX 19 Oct 2007 ‘Journalist murdered following threats, government harassment of critical radio station’,
http://www.ifex.org/honduras/2007/10/19/journalist_murdered_following_threats/

(10) = Amnesty International 25 Sep 2008 ‘Honduras: Open letter to the President of Honduras about human rights defenders’,
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR37/004/2008/en/8021425c-9484-11dd-8a66-2b277e06f5bd/amr370042008en.html

(11) = IFEX 02 Apr 2009 ‘Journalist Rafael Munguía Ortiz murdered in San Pedro Sula’,
http://www.ifex.org/honduras/2009/04/02/journalist_rafael_mungu_a_ortiz/

(12) = See (1) and Guardian 29 Jun 2009 ‘Protesters demand return of ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/29/manuel-zelaya-honduras-coup-protests

(13) = See (7) above

(14) = Time Magazine 18 Aug 1975 ‘Blood and Land’,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917730,00.html?promoid=googlep

(15) = Jennifer Harbury (2006) ‘Truth, Torture and the American Way’, Beacon Press, 2006, page 48

(16) = See (9) above

(17) = See (11) above

(18) = Counterpunch 29 Jun 2009 ‘Obama's Real Message to Latin America? :
The Coup in Honduras’, http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff06292009.html

(19) = UNDP Human Development Report 2007/2008 – Country Report Honduras,
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/data_sheets/cty_ds_HND.html

(20) = Guardian 29 Jun 2009 ‘Protesters demand return of ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/29/manuel-zelaya-honduras-coup-protests

(21) = Washington Post 01 Jul 2009 ‘Honduras's Coup Is President Zelaya's Fault’, by Alvaro Vargos Llosa,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/01/AR2009070103210.html

(22) = The Independent Institute ‘Alvaro Vargas Llosa , Senior Fellow , Center for Global Prosperity’, http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=494

(23) = Wikipedia, ‘Independent Institute – Funding’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Institute#Funding

(24) = The Independent Institute ‘Center on Global Prosperity’, http://www.independent.org/research/cogp/

(25) = Exxon Secrets.org , ‘Fact Sheet- Independent Institute’,
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=46

(26) = Counterpunch 29 Jun 2009 ‘Obama's Real Message to Latin America? :
The Coup in Honduras’, http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff06292009.html

(27) = BBC News 29 Jun 2009 ‘Obama says Honduras coup illegal’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8125292.stm

(28) = US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton & Miami Herald 01 Jun 2009 ‘New Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas’,
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/06/124173.htm

(29) = America.gov 05 Jun 2009 ‘This Week from Washington June 5 :Podcast on Obama’s speech in Cairo, Clinton’s remarks on Western Hemisphere’,
http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2009/June/20090608122417wltsruh0.8168146.html

(30) = AP 07 Jul 2009 ‘Zelaya supporters escalate their fight in Honduras’,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lt_honduras_coup

(31) = Huffington Post ‘Coup! U.S. Military Support for Honduras’, by Frida Berrigan, senior program associate at the Arms and Security Project of the New America Foundation and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frida-berrigan/coup-us-military-support_b_222655.html , (contains links to many sources including Reuters and the Federation of American Scientists on US military aid and arms sales to Honduras)

(32) = National Catholic Reporter 29 Jun 2009 ‘Honduran coup leader a two-time SOA graduate’,
http://ncronline.org/news/global/honduran-coup-leader-two-time-soa-graduate?nocache=1#comment-46132

(33) = Washington Post 21 Sep 1996 ‘U.S. Instructed Latins On Executions, Torture; Manuals Used 1982-91, Pentagon Reveals’, Washington post archive link and reproduced in full at http://www.soaw.org/newswire_detail.php?id=851

(34) = School of the Americas Watch, http://www.soaw.org/index.php

(35) = Democracy Now 29 Jun 2009 ‘Coup in Honduras: Military Ousts President Manuel Zelaya, Supporters Defy Curfew and Take to the Streets’,
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/29/coup_in_honduras_military_ousts_president

(36) = IFEX 29 Jun 2009 ‘Journalists and media attacked, threatened in wake of coup d'état’,
http://www.ifex.org/honduras/2009/06/30/coup_press_attacked/

(37) = Guardian 02 Jul 2009 ‘Honduran coup leaders curb civil liberties to tamp down Zelaya support’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/02/honduras-coup-manuel-zelaya

(38) = Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York 01 Jul 2009 , ‘Weekly News Update on the Americas : WNU #995 supplement: Resistance Grows in Honduras’,
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/

copyright©Duncan McFarlane 2009

The BBC and Newsnight - Why do they give so much coverage to the BNP - and why are they refusing any to Craig Murray in the Norwich-North By-Election

The BBC and Newsnight say they only have to give coverage to candidates and parties with a large share of the vote or poll ratings - but that's not unbiased coverage, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy - and it doesn't explain the coverage they've given the BNP either

Why has the BBC recently provided so much coverage to the BNP while giving no equivalent coverage to other small parties and independent candidates? During the European election campaign, before the BNP had a single MEP, the BBC seemed to go out of their way to mention the BNP at every opportunity and News 24 showed Nick Griffin’s ludicrous Spitfire press conference live. Other small parties and independent candidates were barely mentioned.

Newsnight’s coverage of the Norwich North by-election recently completely omitted any mention of independent candidate and former ambassador Craig Murray, who was forced out of his job for opposing the British government’s backing for torturing dictatorships and its approval of using ‘intelligence’ extracted by torture. The Independent on Sundayquoted Newsnight political editor Michael Crick as saying “We're not obliged to report all the candidates. He'll have to join the queue behind the BNP and Ukip candidates to be interviewed.” (1)

Someone from Newsnight also telephoned Craig to inform him that he was “not a significant candidate” in the view of the programme’s editors and that while his name would be included in the list of candidates in future reports he would get no other interviews or coverage in Newsnight reports on the by-election.

Crick and the BBC seem to be arguing that they only need to give any coverage to parties or candidates who got a high share of the vote or high poll rating. This argument ignores the fact that candidates’ and parties’ poll ratings and votes are affected by the amount of media coverage they gets, so unequal coverage amounts to political bias – the creation of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I wonder if the majority of voters, disenchanted with both the Labour and Conservative parties, will take kindly to the BBC only providing coverage to those two parties (oh and some racists).

It also fails to explain the additional coverage given to the BNP. The BNP got a lower percentage of the vote than the Green party in the European elections, it’s share of the vote increased by only got 1.4% compared to 2.4% for the Green party and it only got the same number of seats. Yet it got considerably more coverage from the BBC both during the election campaign and after it.

By constantly mentioning the BNP as the only party for protest voters surely the BBC and Newsnight must be aware they have in effect been campaigning for a racist party?

So why is the BBC going out of its way to help the BNP and avoid covering other small parties and independent candidates like Craig Murray, who, unlike the BNP, do not stand on a platform of a racism, but of opposition to torture, dishonest and corruption?

If you’d like to comment on Newsnight click here or to comment on BBC News political coverage click here

To post on Newsnight political editor Michael Crick’s blog go here and click on comments.

Or you can email him on michael.crick@bbc.co.uk

(1) = Independent On Sunday 05 July 2009 ‘Matthew Bell: The IoS Diary’, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-bell-the-iiosi-diary-1731991.html

The Shades of Grey in Iran

SUMMARY: There is no justification for killing unarmed demonstrators, vote rigging, torture or jailing people without trial – and many Iranians justifiably want greater democracy and an end to political abuse of the law by Khameini and Ahmadinejad’s government. However it’s impossible to be certain that Ahmadinejad couldn’t have won without the rigging, though he would have been unlikely to win by so much or in the first round. Iranians may be as divided in their views as Americans were in 2004. Ahmadinejad certainly has much support among the poor, especially the rural poor, but it’s not clear that Ahmadinejad and Khameini are less free market in their policies or more likely to protect the interests of the poor than Mousavi. The current government's claims that they are financially clean while their opponents are not are dubious given the government's close links with wealthy ‘bazaari’ merchants and persecution of those who tax them. While the divisions in Iran make another 1979 style revolution less likely they may yet lead to progress towards democracy and a reduction in political killings and torture. They may also show that Muslim countries and democracy are not necessarily incompatible, as senior dissident Ayatollahs such as Montazeri have said; and that peaceful reform from within may be far superior to ‘regime change’ by force with hundreds of thousands of deaths and continuing civil war, as found in Iraq.

It's pretty obvious that Ahmadinejad does have a lot of support in poor rural areas, among the working class and the unemployed and among hard-line nationalists and fundamentalists. Ahmadinejad is popular among these groups because he has campaigned on a theme of economic and social justice and a fair distribution of wealth, as well as food and money subsidies for the poorest. The economy may not grow as much under such policies, but the poorest will be guaranteed enough to live on, while under a less regulated, more free market, system the economy might grow and benefit many people while the poor get worse off. It’s also pointed out that many of Mousavi’s supporters are from the wealthiest tier of Iranian society, who would benefit more from a more free trade economic policy. One pre-election poll found the only groups Mousavi had as much or more support in than Ahmadinejad in were “university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians” with Ahmadinejad having a two to one lead among others (1), (2).

However Mousavi himself has often clashed with Khameini in the past because he is for more regulation of the economy and a larger public sector than Khameini – actually being to the left of Khameini’s (and previously) Khomeini’s relatively free market policies (which benefit the bazaar merchants – more on them later). In fact Khomeini sacked Mousavi and abolished the post of Prime Minister over a dispute with Mousavi’s more left-wing economic policy. Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who is now backing Mousavi, has actually been closer to Khameini on economic policy in the past. (3)

However in more recent statements during the election campaign Mousavi has suggested a greater role for the private sector and controlling inflation partly through monetary policies and making subsidies “targeted” (a euphemism for scrapping many of them?) (4), (5). This could suggest he has become a free marketer, but his past record makes it possible he would have a balanced economic policy with a regulated private sector and public services and some nationalised industries.

Another of Ahmadinejad’s challengers, former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai, campaigned on a platform of privatising Iran’s nationalised oil industry (6).

Even if Ahmadinejad’s policies were better for the poor it certainly couldn’t justify manipulating election results or killing unarmed demonstrators, or torture, or killing dissidents - but the large section of Iranians backing Ahmadinejad makes a 1979 style revolution much less likely.

Ahmadinejad’s opponents also claim that his hand-outs to the poor are mere token charity and election bribes that don’t really reduce poverty, while inflation and unemployment are both high an rising, neither one benefitting the poor.

Ahmadinejad is far from the only person to accuse Ayatollah Rafsanjani and some of the other ‘moderate’ clerics of financial corruption. Rafsanjani’s wealth and the rumours of his means of acquiring it through his political connections are notorious in Iran. Rafsanjani is also very influential though, so his support for Mousavi is both a benefit and a potential vote loser for him.

The polls taken before the election don't prove anything either way but suggest Ahmadinejad could, possibly, have been on track to win heavily. Ahmadinejad had twice the percentage Mousavi did in them, but on the other hand more people were either undecided or refused to answer than chose a preference for any candidate (7).

If it's true that turnout exceeded the number of registered voters in a lot of towns, but people like the brave and honest Robert Fisk who suggest that it might have gone to a second round without rigging but Ahmadinejad may well have won anyway even if there hadn’t been election rigging may be right (8). (Fisk, despite his detractors, is scrupulously even-handed in his analysis of all sides and actually reports from the middle of the most dangerous situations, rather than repeating his own governments’ press releases or press briefings. This does not, of course, mean that this is certain or that vote rigging is acceptable or that it should not be challenged)

The fact also remains though that the current system of government in Iran is basically similar to that under the Shah with a different ideology and different economic and social policies. Khameini’s powers and his brutal methods of securing his power are much like Khomeini’s and the Shah’s before him. In that respect he’s little more than a Shah in a turban. (He also lacked even the learning in Islamic texts to become an Ayatollah, having to be given that as an honorary title on succeeding Khomeini).

The major difference is that the ‘Islamic Republic’ provides for the poor of Iran and don’t squander the whole country’s wealth on a vast military as the Shah did. This does not justify a brutality similar to the Shahs against the opposition – and though there was probably greater corruption under the Shah it is not unknown among the Ayatollahs, nor in their favour for the Bazaari market traders – with many families sending one son to the religious schools and another to the bazaar so one can provide political connections for the other (9). When the Mayor of Teheran introduced a tax on rich bazaaris he was arrested and jailed by the Khameini government (10). So perhaps Khameini and his allies are not such great protectors of the poor and social justice as they claim to be.

Some senior Iranian Shia clerics, such as Grand Ayatollah Montazeri and intellectuals appointed to committees by Khomeini – such as Hussein Dabbagh (or Abdel Karim Soroush) have criticised the excessive powers of and even the position of the ‘Leader’ established by Khomeini and Khomeini doctrine of ‘velayat e faqih’ (‘rule of the jurisprudent’), saying it has no precedent and no justification for a single man or even all senior Shia clerics to have absolute power. They say clerics should merely advise other Shia Muslims with every Iranian having an equal say in the government of the country, rather than one or a few clerics ruling with absolute power. Montazeri was initially Khomeini’s favoured successor, but on expressing these views he was replaced by Khameini and later placed under house arrest for over a decade. He has now come out in favour of Mousavi and the demonstrators, saying no person with a “sound mind” could believe the election results were valid (11), (12), (13), (14), (15).

Mousavi, as Prime Minister under Khomeini in the 1980s, was a member of a government with a lot of Iranian dissidents’ blood on it’s hands, just as Khameini and Ahmadinejad are now.

So this is not a simple good versus evil or democrats versus dictators or people power versus theocrats, still less western democracy versus the Ayatollahs . However the fact remains that so far it’s Khameini and Ahmadinejad who have killed protesters using the Basij militia and Iranian Hezbollah (a separate group from Lebanese Hezbollah) to make direct responsibility for the deaths more easily deniable.

What can we do about this? Not a great deal, since any support from the countries which backed the Shah’s dictatorship in the 60s and 70s, armed Saddam as he launched an unprovoked invasion of Iran in the 80s and threatened to invade Iran from 2001 on risks allowing the regime to paint all its opponents as the agents or allies of foreign powers and ‘traitors’ to their country. However we can call on the Iranian government, as our governments and Amnesty International have, not to allow unarmed demonstrators to be attacked, killed, jailed without trial or tortured (see this blog post and sources for it.

While the 1979 revolution may not be recreated in exactly the same form it’s possible that this crisis could still lead to significant progress towards democracy in Iran and show that Islam and democracy are not incompatible; that allowing other countries own people to progress towards democracy by peaceful means may be a better and less bloody way than ‘regime change’ by force (compare the eight dead in Iran so far to the hundreds of thousands in Iraq); and that the attempt to link democratisation and free trade as if it benefits the poor as much as the wealthy (when it clearly doesn’t) may make democratisation less rather than more likely.

We should resist any calls for “regime change” by force which would kill hundreds of thousands and could lead to ongoing civil war as in Iraq. Henry Kissinger suggested in a recent BBC Newsnight interview that “regime change” in Iran “from outside” through unspecified but not “visible” means could become US government policy if Ahmadinejad is not replaced by Mousavi (16). Does Kissinger perhaps mean covert actions by US Special Forces as begun under Bush in Iran, much like those that preceded the US invasion of Vietnam and the Vietnam war? ABC News and Seymour Hersh have reported on Bush administration and Saudi co-operation to aid Sunni extremist groups similar in ideology to Al Qa’ida and oppressed Arab separatists to carry out attacks on Iranian officials and soldiers (17), (18), 19), (20). Kissinger, however, may mean something else and might well not speak for Obama. Obama has reportedly sent Kissinger on low key diplomatic missions before, but has never suggested war on Iran (21) .

copyright©Duncan McFarlane 2009

email me

Sources

(1) = BBC News 16 Jun 2009 ‘Profile: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4107270.stm

(2) = Washington Post 15 Jun 2009 ‘The Iranian People Speak’, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html

(3) = Hiro, Dilip (2005) ‘The Iranian Labyrinth’, Nation Books/Avalon NY, 2005; chapter 6, esp p169

(4) = Financial Times 13 April 2009 ‘FT Interview: Mir-Hossein Moussavi’,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2466224-2824-11de-8dbf-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=36de51b2-4611-11de-803f-00144feabdc0.html

(5) = Reuters 11 Jun 2009 ‘Iran's Mousavi seen as main threat to Ahmadinejad’,
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090611/tpl-uk-iran-election-mousavi-newsmaker-s-19346ad_1.html

(6) = BBC News 03 Jun 2009 ‘Iranian poll rivals clash on live TV’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8080999.stm

(7) Times 18 Jun 2009 ‘The evidence that points to Ahmadinejad stealing Iranian election’,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6523563.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093 ; Also see (2) above

(8) = ABC News ‘Extraordinary scenes: Robert Fisk in Iran’, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/17/2600571.htm

(9) = Hiro, Dilip (2005) ‘The Iranian Labyrinth’, Nation Books/Avalon NY, 2005; chapter 1, pages 1-23

(10) = Wright, Robin (2001) ‘The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran’ (2nd edition) , Vintage Books/Random House, NY, 2001,chapter 3, pages 104-106

(11) = Wright, Robin (2001) ‘The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran’ (2nd edition) , Vintage Books/Random House, NY, 2001, chapters 1-2, pages 35-6 & 49-52

(12) = Hiro, Dilip (2005) ‘The Iranian Labyrinth’, Nation Books/Avalon NY, 2005; chapter 6, pages 160-162

(13) = Guardian 13 Jan 2000 ‘Iran's banned cleric breaks silence’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/jan/13/iran

(14) = Guardian 31 Jan 2003 ‘Freed Iranian cleric refuses to be cowed’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/31/iran

(15) = Guardian news blog 16 Jun 2009 ‘Iran's post-election unrest: live’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jun/16/iran-uprising

(16) = BBC Newsnight 18 Jun 2009 ‘Kissinger: 'Iran at turning point'’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8107256.stm and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6k6FO9gah8

(17) = Young, Marilyn B. (1991) ‘The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990’, Harper Perennial, London & N.Y, 1991

(18) = New Yorker Magazine 5 Mar 2007
, ‘Annals of National Security : The Redirection’, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh

(19) = ABC News 03 Apr 2007
, ‘ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran’, http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html

(20) = Telegraph 17 Jan 2006
, ‘'We will cut them until Iran asks for mercy'
’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/15/wiran15.xml

(21) = Telegraph 05 Feb 2009 ‘Cold warrior Henry Kissinger woos Russia for Barack Obama’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4530042/Cold-warrior-Henry-Kissinger-woos-Russia-for-Barack-Obama.html

copyright©Duncan McFarlane 2009

Those Who Live like the Shah, will go like the Shah

If Iran’s government keeps behaving like the Shah’s dictatorship it will go the way the Shah did – in shame, at the hands of it’s own people

Past wrongs against the Iranian government by past British and American governments must be acknowledged, but can’t justify the current Iranian government killing, torturing and jailing Iranians and putting all real power in the hands of one unelected man, the same way the British and American backed dictatorship of the Shah which Iranians overthrew did.

In 1953 the British and American governments were shamefully involved in the overthrow of the elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq, who attempted to nationalise Iran’s oil industry after the British government and Anglo-Iranian Oil (which later became BP) refused to pay fairer taxes on oil revenues or pay it’s Iranian employees, who lived in shacks without water or electricity, a decent wage. For 26 years the British, American and French governments armed and supported the Shah’s brutal dictatorship as it killed and tortured Iranians and squandered the country’s oil revenues (1) – (3).

After the Shah was overthrown in the 1979 revolution the US, British, French, Chinese and Soviet governments armed and funded Saddam as he launched an unprovoked invasion of Iran and used poison gas on Iranians and Iraqi Kurds , as historians such as Professor Efraim Karsh have recorded (4).

Military action against Iran would kill more people than it would save and threats of it would let Iran’s government paint opponents as agents of foreign powers, so Obama is right to have ended Bush’s constant and counter-productive threats. Making another Iraq war out of Iran would benefit no-one and kill hundreds of thousands at the least, probably millions.

However the past cannot justify the Iranian government treating its people the way the Shah did; torturing them, jailing them without fair trial and allowing Basiij militias to murder them for exercising their rights to freedom of speech and assembly (5) – (7). Many Islamic scholars including former Iranian President Khatami say democracy and Islam are compatible, but since Khomeini’s faction hijacked the 1979 revolution most real power in Iran has been held by the unelected ‘Supreme Leader’ (now Ayatollah Khameini) with elected officials like the President having little real power (8).

Mousavi in his election campaign said that if elected he would transfer control of the police and security forces from the Supreme Leader to the elected President, allow private television stations (currently only the state TV station can broadcast) and disband the brutal religious ‘morality’ police (9).

An unelected ‘Supreme Leader’ holding real power, while holding elections in which only candidates approved by him can stand for offices without real power, echoes the Shah’s rule. Attacks on unarmed and mostly peaceful protesters bring shame upon the Islamic republic. These are the methods of the Shah and if they continue they can only result in Supreme Leader Khameini and his aides being overthrown by their own people the same way the Shah was, or in massacres which will shame the Islamic Republic in the eyes of the Muslims and non-Muslims alike around the world.

(1) = Pollack, Kenneth M.(2004), ‘The Persian Puzzle', Random House, New York, 2005 paperback edition, pages 27-140

(2) = Curtis, Mark (1995), ‘The Ambiguities of Power : British Foreign Policy since 1945', Zed Books, London & New York, 1995 paperback edition, pages 87-96

(3) = Takeyh, Ray (2006), ‘Hidden Iran', Times Books , New York, 2006, pages 83-96

(4) = Karsh, Efraim (2002) ‘The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988’ Osprey, London, 2002, p20 US & Soviet Union supplying arms and military advisers to Saddam, p42-44 USSR, France and Egypt Saddam’s main arms suppliers, p 44 1984 -1985 Reagan admin doubles financial aid to Saddam ‘for food products and agricultural equipment’ from $345mn to $675mn. 1988 US govt extends $1bn credit to Iraq, largest amount of US annual credit to any country in that year; p44-45 Israel along with N.Korea, Libya and Syria armed Iran. Last three complete armaments, Israel spare parts for jets and tanks (own note – doesn’t count Iran-Contra arms?); p53-55 Gassing of 20 Kurdish villages in 1987 by Saddam to prevent them aiding Iranians; p55 Karsh says “Saddam was the favoured son of the West (and to a lesser extent the Soviet Union), the perceived barrier to the growth of Islamic Fundamentalism. Consequently, apart from occasional feeble remonstrations (notably after Halabja), western governments were consciously willing to turn a blind eye to Iraq’s chemical excesses.”

(5) = Independent 14 Jun 2009 ‘Robert Fisk: Iran erupts as voters back 'the Democrator'’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-iran-erupts-as-voters-back-the-democrator-1704810.html

(6) = AP/Independent 16 Jun 2009 ‘'Seven killed as protesters launched attack'’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/seven-killed-as-protesters-launched-attack-1706207.html

(7) = Independent 16 Jun 2009 ‘Claims of student massacre in Tehran spread’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/claims-of-student-massacre-spread-1706011.html

(8) = Takeyh, Ray (2006), ‘Hidden Iran', Times Books , New York, 2006 ; chapter 2, pages 44-51

(9) = Washington Post 07 Apr 2009 ‘Ahmadinejad Rival Calls For Increased Freedoms’, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603484.html

copyright©Duncan
McFarlane2009

Send a message to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran via Amnesty International

At least eight people have now been killed by Basij militia-men in Iran for demonstrating against election rigging and the arrest of opponents of the government in Iran

Amnesty International UK have a page where you can send a message to the Iranian government asking them not to torture or kill Iranians or jail them without fair trial at http://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions_details.asp?ActionID=615

It includes a sample letter but it's better if you type in your own if you've got time. The best approach I could think of was to express shame that in the past my government helped overthrow the elected government of Mossadeq and backed the Shah, but to then say that the Islamic Republic's government cannot justify using the same methods the Shah used against their own people and that if they continue to they'll lose respect worldwide among Muslims and non-Muslims and go the way the Shah did. I've pasted what i wrote in below, but, again, better to use your own words.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran and its people are respected worldwide and I would like to say that I feel shame for my country's past involvement in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq and its government's support for the Shah's dictatorship.
However it cannot be right or justified for the Islamic Republic's government to treat it's own people the way the Shah did - to torture them, jail them without fair trial, allow Basij militias to murder them for exercising their democratic rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

I know that, as many Islamic scholars point out, democracy and free speech are not in conflict with Islam.

The actions being taken against unarmed and largely peaceful protesters bring shame upon the Islamic republic, as does the manipulation of election results. These are the methods of the Shah's dictatorship and if they continue to be used they can only result in Supreme Leader Khameini and his aides being overthrown by their own people the same way the Shah was, or in massacres which will shame the reputation of the Islamic Republic in the eyes of the Muslims and non-Muslims alike around the world.

Holding a ‘Public’ Inquiry into the Iraq war in private is a bad joke

The Prime Minister’s announcement that the ‘public’ inquiry into the Iraq war will be heard in private is ludicrous double-think; so much for greater openness and accountability (1).

As long as Prime Ministers can choose what issues public inquiries can address, what evidence they can hear and who writes their final reports their conclusions will be worthless propaganda anyway. It’s like letting the accused in criminal courts appoint their friends as judges and decide what charges they’ll face and what evidence can be heard. The verdict will never be in question.( The judges appointed to head this inquiry include Sir John Chilcot and Baroness Usha Prashar, both of whom already owed jobs and titles to the ‘New Labour’ government of Brown and Blair (2), (3))

However the testimony of witnesses at public inquiries often gives the public vital information on what has actually happened and who was responsible for what. Holding hearings in private prevents that.

The reason is fairly obvious ; as Chancellor Gordon Brown voted for the Iraq war and pledged “whatever it takes” in public money for it (4), (5). The Conservatives call for another Franks’ Inquiry with private hearings has similar motives – they were even more eager than Blair and Brown to send British troops to die and kill based on the interests of American and British oil and arms firms, at any cost in British and Iraqi lives.

Brown in his statement also boasted that violence in Iraq was lower than at any time since 2003, which ignores the fact that on any figures, for instance Iraq Body Count’s, far less Iraqis were being killed violently before the March 2003 invasion than at any time since it (6).

(1) = Prime Minister’s Office 15 Jun 2009 ‘Statement on Iraq’, http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page19650

(2) = Review of the Intelligence on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction,
‘Rt Hon Sir John Chilcot GCB’, http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/butlerreview/biography/sirchilcot.asp

(3) = House of Lords Minutes and Order Paper - Minutes of Proceedings26 Jan 1999,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/minutes/990726/ldminute.htm

(4) = House of Commons Library, ‘Commons divisions on Iraq 26 February and 18 March 2003’, page 7, http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/notes/snSG-02109.pdf

(5) = Independent 15 Mar 2003 ‘Brown promises to expand war chest to meet Iraqi threat’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brown-promises-to-expand-war-chest-to-meet-iraqi-threat-599520.html

(6) = Iraq Body Count database,
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

Democratic Revolution in Iran? Why Khameini rigged the Presidential election against Mousavi

Rioting in the streets in Tehran has greeted the unlikely claims by the government that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the first round of voting in the Presidential elections with almost two-thirds of the vote, meaning there’ll be no second round. Presidents in Iran have no power and ‘Supreme Leader’ Khameini, like his predecessor Khomeini, wants to keep it that way.

Ahmadinejad’s main challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former Iranian Prime Minister (before the ‘Supreme Leader’ Khomeini abolished that post to keep power in his own hands too), said in his election campaign that if elected he would have control of Iran’s police and security forces transferred from the unelected Supreme Leader to the elected President. That will be why Khameini decided to rig this election in favour of Ahmadinejad (1).

Just as the Bush clique rigged the 2000 and 2004 US Presidential elections the ‘Supreme Leader’ and his cronies have rigged the 2009 Iranian Presidential election, but unlike in the US in 2000 they didn’t even have the sense to try to rig it in a barely convincing way, going for a massive rigged majority of votes rather than a narrow majority. Mousavi has called the result “a dangerous charade” (2).

As many Iranian Ayatollahs have pointed out the office of ‘Supreme Leader’ has no basis in the Q’uran, Shia Islam (or any other kind) or Persian or Iranian history. It was purely a device invented by Khomeini to hijack the 1979 dictatorship of the Shah, cracking down on liberals, socialists, communists and environmentalists who had taken part in the revolution. It has no place in any country. As Mousavi says freedom and democracy are not in conflict with Islam – only the current regime is – a regime which violates the constitution it approved (3) – (6).

The fact that the regime has arrested over 100 senior members of the opposition, including the brother of former President Khatami, another reformer, shows that it fears revolution – and , if it keeps rigging elections and crushing the resulting dissent by assassinating it’s Iranian critics and killing unarmed demonstrators and students, as it did in 1999, sooner or later it’s going to be overthrown by one. In practice Khameini is no less of a dictator than the Shah was (7), (8).

However western governments are right to say little on the subject and stay neutral. It was a CIA and MI6 backed coup which overthrew Iran’s last democratically elected government , that of Mohammed Mossadeq, in 1953, after he attempted to nationalise Anglo-Iranian Oil (now BP) when it refused to pay a fairer share of its profits in taxes or increase wages for grossly underpaid Iranian employees. It was the US and western governments who were also the closest allies of the brutal corrupt dictatorship of the Shah installed by that coup, which led to the 1979 revolution (9) – (11).

Almost every government in the world also funded and armed Saddam Hussein ‘s regime during the Iran-Iraq war while it invaded Iran and used poison gas on Iranians and Iraqi Kurds.

So any intervention by western governments, even verbally, will allow the regime to paint all its opponents as agents of foreign powers and backfire badly.

Another problem is that most candidates backing democratic reforms also back free trade – which is not in the interests of many poor Iranians. However democratic reforms and and end to political violence, torture, jail without trial and killings by the regime are necessary for any kind of progress and necessary in themselves (12), (13).

Sooner or later though, if Khameini doesn’t allow power to be transferred to the elected President and parliament, the theocrats will face a reckoning like the one the Shah faced – and unlike him they may find it hard to escape into exile in time to avoid the Iranian peoples’ anger if they crush dissent by killings again. They would be best advised to allow a peaceful transition to democracy while they still can instead.

copyright©Duncan McFarlane2009

Sources

(1) = The Nation 14 Jun 2009 ‘Ahmadi bye bye?’, http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/11-Jun-2009/Ahmadi-byebye

(2) = ABC News 14 Jun 2008 ‘'Dangerous charade': Iran sparks international concern’,http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/14/2597534.htm

(3) = Pollack, Kenneth M.(2004),‘The Persian Puzzle’, Random House, New York, 2005 paperback edition – chapter8, pages 144 - 146

(4) =Hiro, Dilip (2005) ‘The Iranian Labyrinth’, Nation Books, NY, 2005, chapter 6, pages159-162; Ayatollah Montazeri , chosen by Iran’s religious scholars to succeed Khomeini, was vetoed as a choice by Khomeini for questioning Khomeini’s velayat e-faqih or ‘rule of the jurisprudent’ ideology and the excessive powers of the office of Supreme Leader. Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari also criticised the powers Khomeini gave himself.

(5) = Takeyh, Ray (2006), ‘Hidden Iran', Times Books , New York, 2006 ; Chapter2, pages 46-50

(6) = Washington Post 07 Apr 2009 ‘Ahmadinejad Rival Calls For Increased Freedoms’, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603484.html

(7) = BBC News 14 Jun 2009 ‘Crowds gather for Ahmadinejad victory rally’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8099501.stm

(8) = Pollack, Kenneth M.(2004), ‘The Persian Puzzle', Random House, New York, 2005 paperback edition , Chapter 12, especially pages 330-336

(9) = Pollack, Kenneth M.(2004),’The Persian Puzzle', Random House, New York, 2005 paperback edition - pages 27-140

(10) = Curtis, Mark (1995), ‘The Ambiguities of Power : British Foreign Policy since 1945', Zed Books, London & New York, 1995 paperback edition; pages 87-96

(11) = Takeyh, Ray (2006), ‘’Hidden Iran', Times Books , New York, 2006 - pages 83-96

(12) = Amnesty International 2009 world report – Iran,
http://thereport.amnesty.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/iran

(13) = Human Rights Watch 2009 world report – Iran,
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79223>http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79223

copyright©Duncan McFarlane2009