[A-List] Paul Foot on Lockerbie verdict

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Listen to Mandela

Paul Foot
Wednesday June 26, 2002
The Guardian

Why did Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, take so much
time and trouble to visit Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in Barlinnie prison,
Glasgow? Why would he announce after the visit that he was impressed
with Mr Megrahi and unimpressed by his solitary confinement? Why did he
go on to argue that Mr Megrahi deserves further hearings at the European
court of human rights?

After all, Mr Megrahi stands convicted by a Scottish court of the
biggest mass murder in British history. According to three Scottish
judges at his trial, and another five on appeal, he planted a bomb in a
suitcase on a plane in Malta which ended up exploding on a Pan Am
airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 270 people. Hundreds of
friends and relatives are still grieving over their loss.

Nelson Mandela is a compassionate man. So why should he compound all
that grief by visiting the mass murderer in his cell, and pleading on
his behalf for better conditions and yet another appeal? The only
conceivable answer is that Mr Mandela believes that Mr Megrahi did not
put the bomb on the plane, that he is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing
and that the Scottish judges who convicted him made a terrible mistake.

Such a shocking conclusion can be justified quite quickly. The case
against Mr Megrahi rested on the theory that the Lockerbie bomb was
placed on a flight from Malta - a theory for which, as the judges
noticed, there was not a vestige of proof. On the contrary. The evidence
was that all the suitcases on the Maltese flight were accounted for when
it got to Frankfurt.

The only evidence connecting Megrahi to the bomb suitcase was his
identification by a Maltese shopkeeper as the man who bought clothes
that ended up in the same suitcase as the bomb. This identification was
not made until 11 years after the event. The shopkeeper had originally
described a man much bigger and older than Megrahi. And there was also
substantial evidence to suggest that Mr Megrahi was not even in Malta on
the day the clothes were bought.

The case against Megrahi was also tainted by the fact that his
co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah, originally charged with conspiracy
to murder, was acquitted after a "star" witness provided by the CIA
turned out to be a fantasist and a liar, solely motivated by a desire to
live the rest of his life at the expense of the American taxpayer.

With the honourable exception of the redoubtable Labour MP for
Linlithgow, Tam Dalyell, the Scottish people have been slow to respond
to this monstrous injustice in their midst. Perhaps more of them will be
alerted to it by the bold initiative of Mr Mandela, who knows a thing or
two about long prison sentences after wrongful imprisonment.