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This page has nome of the more important news concerning the Lockerbie-incident. Here is a short summary of just what has happened lately in the criminal, technical or political investigations and the concern for UN-sanctions against Libya.
May the 14th - September, the 21st 1997
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21 September 1997: Britain has given up hope of bringing to trial the two Libyans, British government sources said on Saturday. A senior British government source said there was no prospect of the two Libyans being brought to trial. "We have to be realistic. It was so long ago. The time has come to move on,''.
6 September 1997: The two Libyan suspects in the bombing of an American airliner over Lockerbie [pictured] could stand trial in Scotland if it becomes independent, a state-controlled Libyan newspaper said on Friday. "Once Scotland gets its independence .... this will create a situation allowing the two Libyan suspects to stand voluntarily for trial before a Scottish independent judiciary,'' al-Jamahiriya newspaper said.
By Auslan Cramb, Scotland Correspondent
8.July 1997 RELATIVES of the Lockerbie bombing victims called for a Government inquiry yesterday into new evidence that Iran might have been responsible for the attack that killed 270 people.Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow, has consistently claimed that Iran was involved. He plans to ask Tony Blair and Donald Dewar, the Scottish Secretary, to investigate. The information, reported in Der Spiegel, the German magazine, comes from a former Iranian spy. He claims that the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader, ordered the bombing of the Pan Am Jumbo jet in 1988.
Abolghassem Mesbahi, the co-founder of the Iranian intelligence service, is said to have told German investigators that Iran ordered the attack in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an IranAir jet with 290 people on board by an American warship five months earlier. Jim Swire, a spokesman for British victims' families, said the latest report had "the ring of truth". He said two Libyans named as suspects should still be extradited to stand trial, but it was important to establish where the idea originated, and he had always been convinced Iran had the stronger motive for the attack. Mr Dalyell has asked the Foreign Office to approach the German authorities about the claims.
According to Mesbahi, the attack was planned by Ali Akbar Velyati, Iran's Foreign Minister, and Abu Nidal, the Libyan terrorist. However, Mahmoud Mohammadi, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that Mesbahi was "fabricating unfounded and ridiculous allegations against Iran".
8 June 1997: A letter was mailed this week from Libya's United Nations mission in New York to the relatives of the victims of the Pan Am jet which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988. The unsigned letter offers to "guarantee our [Libyans] full and immediate cooperation with the United States and the United Kingdom'' if they accept any of Libya's previous offers to discuss the case. Ramadan Barg, a diplomat of the Libyan mission in the U.N. said the Libyan government was "just trying to get the facts through'' and wanted to inform victims' families of the efforts it has gone through. The letter declares Libya is "ready to enter serious negotiations ... regarding the procedures leading to a trial'' of two Libyan intelligence agents indicted in the United States on charges related to the bombing that killed 259 people on the plane and 11 people on the ground. Relatives of the victims say they're dismissing the letter as a "propaganda ploy'' to get the United Nations to lift various sanctions against Libya.
The National Law Journal (p. A08)
Monday, May 19, 1997
FOUR PRO BONO lawyers from Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal recently found themselves facing an unusual and urgent task: If they did not get legislation passed to correct a statutory glitch before the Supreme Court denied a particular petition for certiorari, their client faced possible dismissal from a suit accusing Libya of sponsoring the bombing of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
The glitch at issue was in a provision of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. By waiving the sovereign immunity of nations that sponsor terrorism, the provision permits victims and their survivors to sue those nations for damages in federal court. Although the law's sponsors say they meant for the waiver to apply if either the victim or a survivor is American, the statute as passed requires United States citizenship of both before either may sue.
For most of the Americans suing Libya for the Lockerbie bombing, the mistake was inconsequential--their deceased relatives were American as well. But for a few--including name plaintiff Bruce Smith, a former Pan Am pilot whose British wife died over Lockerbie--the mistake threatened to prove dispositive.
Filed long before the antiterrorism bill was passed, the Lockerbie suit sought to pierce Libya's immunity on grounds the 2d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last November found wanting. Smith v. Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, 101 F.3d 239. While appealing the 2d Circuit's dismissal of their suit to the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs' lawyers prepared for defeat by getting ready to refile the case under the antiterrorism law's sovereign-immunity waiver. And that is when they realized they needed to act fast.
A line of Supreme Court cases prohibits Congress from passing legislation to revive lawsuits that courts have already disposed of. Mr. Smith's lawyers worried this principle would force a judge in a refiled Lockerbie case to apply the statutory waiver as it read on the day the first Pan Am suit formally ends. That meant that unless the citizenship requirement in the sovereign immunity waiver was loosened before the high court denied cert, Mr. Smith and a few other similarly situated plaintiffs would be barred from the new suit by an error in a law passed in part to ensure the Lockerbie survivors their day in court.
Mr. Smith's lawyers--led by Sonnenschein Nath partner Douglas E. Rosenthal--quickly filed a motion asking the high court to defer consideration of the cert petition pending passage of the corrective bill. But they had no way of knowing whether the court would wait, so they got cracking on the Hill.
A number of lawyers with ties to the Lockerbie case helped contact members of Congress about Mr. Smith's corrective bill. Mr. Rosenthal says all were helpful, but he most enthusiastically lauds the lawyers on the inside. They were Peter G. Jacoby, a special assistant in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, who helped get the Justice Department and National Security Council to send lawmakers prompt analyses about the measure; the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and the two assistant committee counsel who kept the measure moving forward through this notoriously torpid Congress: Michael Kennedy of Mr. Hatch's staff and "the extraordinary" Joseph H. Gibson of Mr. Hyde's staff.
After passing the House April 15, the bill got stalled briefly in the Senate when Arlen Specter exercised the prerogative every senator has to place a "hold" on any bill for any reason at all. A Specter staffer said that the Pennsylvania Republican wants to delete language in the existing immunity waiver that restricts the list of potential defendants to nations the State Department classifies as supporting terrorism. But the senator then decided not to delay this bill for that purpose and lifted his hold; the measure passed the evening of Thursday, April 24.
14 May 1997: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Tuesday United Nations sanctions against Libya had been in effect for too long and risked becoming meaningless. "The embargo has gone on for too long. When an embargo is prolonged it loses meaning,'' Mubarak, whose country borders Libya, said in a television interview.
11 May 1997: Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi on Saturday returned to Tripoli after a defiant flight to Niger and Nigeria despite the United Nations air embargo over the Lockerbie affair. Libyan television showed al-Qadhafi emerging from a Libyan Arab Airlines Boeing at Tripoli airport, back from Niger and Nigeria where he led prayers for the Moslem new year. Hundreds of followers acclaimed al-Qadhafi on the tarmac while he raised arms as a sign of victory for his defiant three-day trip. Al-Qadhafi's trip to West Africa was in apparent defiance of a 1992 UN embargo on flights from Libya. [Reuter]