Sir,
Lockerbie: protecting the victim's rights.
In our democracy, there are two
great protectors of the rights of the individual.
1.) the ability of our elected representatives to bring our
concerns into the Court
of Parliament.
2.) The
Criminal Justice system.
1.) Parliament
It appears that MSPs are even now being told that they cannot ask questions
about the appalling allegations of concealment and indeed deceit by the Crown
Office, past and present.
I quote from a recent comment to
an MSP re the position at Holyrood re 'Rule 7.5.1:
"Rule 7.5.1 of Standing Orders states "A member
may not in the proceedings of the Parliament refer to any matter in relation to
which legal proceedings are active except to the extent permitted by the Presiding
Officer" and Rule 7.5.2 states "For the purposes of paragraph 1,
legal proceedings are active in relation to a matter if they are active for the
purposes of section 2 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981".
Under Rule 19B.1 of the Criminal Procedure Rules 1996, a
referral by the Commission to the High Court is treated as an application for
leave to appeal that has been made and granted. The Contempt of Court Act
states in Schedule 1, paragraph 15 that "Appellate proceedings are active
from the time when they are commenced -
(a) by an application for leave to
appeal or apply for review, or by notice of such an application;
(b) by notice of appeal or of application for review;
(c) by other originating process."
Therefore, as legal proceedings are active, under Rule
7.5.1 we are unable to admit questions on the case of Mr
al-Megrahi.
This looks like a gagging of our elected representatives in
Parliament.
2.) Justice
Following Lockerbie, the
This occurred long before the
Professor Koechler (see below),
appointed observer for the UN at Zeist, has
just pointed out that the manufacturer of the timer allegedly used by the
Lockerbie bomber, now claims that he was specifically offered 'up to
$4,000,000' by the CIA if he would say in court that the famous 'timer
fragment' had come from a timer that his firm had sold to the Libyans. At the
very least the manufacturer, long before he gave his first tranche of 'evidence' would have had to be
severely myopic not to be aware that large rewards were on offer.
Good intelligence services serve their country's perceived
interests, not the truth; this combined with the reward offers seems to have
been what crippled
It may be part of our tragedy that the agreement to set up
the Zeist trial came at a time when both Bill
Clinton, and the late Robin cook were promoting the International Criminal
Court, which America has since castrated.
It also came at a time when Nelson Mandela, speaking re
Lockerbie in Edinburgh, said " No one country should be
complainant, prosecutor and judge" It is hardly straining the truth to
claim that at that time, concerning Lockerbie, the UK and US were indeed acting
as 'one country'.
I still have high hopes that
Dr Jim Swire, Leobost,
Dunvegan,
################################
Here is a letter we wrote to
(then) President Clinton, I have highlighted the key phrase, for it was the
evidence led, rather than a fault of the court itself, that was the main
problem. In those days we were more trusting.
President Bill Clinton,
Caspidge House,
The
Whitehouse,
20500
FAX 001 202 456 2461
Dutch mobile 0031 6 288 581 29
Dutch
Ph/FAX 0031 30 699 44 24
Email
drjimswire@aol.com
Thanks: LOCKERBIE:
I am writing to express the thanks of our
group for all that you did in support of our search for the simple truth over
who killed our loved ones, and why they were not protected.
Our countries have the strongest joint
interest in this ghastly matter, for citizens of both formed the great majority
of the casualties, and while no doubt it was primarily intended as an attack
upon the USA, it occurred in our country and our airspace aboard an aircraft
the hold of which had been loaded from empty at our Heathrow airport.
Your decision, with Tony Blair, Robin Cook
and Gordon Brown,
not only to allow, but handsomely to support, the trial
at
Whatever the verdicts may be, we believe
that they will be as fair as human justice can make them, on the evidence available to the
court. We shall also welcome them with open arms
as bringing us a major step nearer to the truth that we seek. The completion of
the court case will open the way to analysis of what else may have contributed
to the disaster and how such an appalling act can best be prevented in future.
May I therefore proffer my warmest thanks
and congratulations on the imaginative move you made, with your British
friends, which can form a significant step in the healing process for all of
us, relatives of those who died. Good luck and best
wishes to you and all your family for the future.
Dr Jim Swire,
Revd John Mosey, ‘
####################
Here is the text of Koechler's latest interview
http://i-p-o.org/IPO-nr-Lockerbie-5Oct07.htm
|
|
|
Lockerbie
trial: an intelligence operation? BBC
interview of Dr. Hans Köchler New
revelation about financial offer to a key witness from Switzerland Vienna/Zurich, P/RE/20653c-is In an exclusive interview
earlier this week with Gordon Brewer of the BCC’s Newsnight
Scotland, Dr. Hans Koechler said that the
withholding of evidence by the investigators and the Prosecution from the Defence at the Lockerbie court is a serious breach of the
fundamental norms of a fair trial. If such action occurs on the basis of a
written commitment given to a foreign intelligence service, as has now been
revealed concerning crucial evidence related to the timer that allegedly
triggered the explosion of PanAm 103 over
Lockerbie, the judicial nature of the entire proceedings is to be put into
question. If a foreign intelligence service is allowed to determine what
evidence may be disclosed in court and what not, judicial proceedings before
a court of law are perverted into a kind of intelligence operation the
purpose of which is not the search for the truth, but the obfuscation of
reality. This evaluation is further
confirmed by the offer of huge amounts of money by US officials to at least three
key witnesses. Dr. Koechler,
a professor of philosophy of law at the University of Innsbruck, Austria,
served in the period May 2000 – March 2002 as international observer,
appointed by the United Nations, at the Lockerbie trial and appeal before the
Scottish Court in the Netherlands. In his trial and appeal reports, issued in
January 2001 and March 2002, he had highlighted the problematic role of
intelligence services in the trial and stated that proper judicial
proceedings cannot be conducted under conditions in which extrajudicial
forces are allowed to intervene. It is noteworthy that now –
more than six years after Dr. Koechler’s first
report – more and more details emerge that confirm the UN observer’s original
doubts: ·
One of the “secret” grounds of referral
of the convicted Libyan national’s case back to the appeal court has been
revealed to be the fact that crucial information in the possession of the CIA
that is related to the timer issue was withheld from the Defence;
·
Another of the “secret” grounds of appeal
has now been revealed to be the offer of a huge payment by the CIA to the
Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, a key witness of the
prosecution, for identifying the Libyan Al-Megrahi
as the one who bought clothes in his shop in Malta; ·
The Libyan-US double agent Abdul Majid Giaka had similarly been
offered a huge amount for his testimony as a prosecution witness; ·
At least two forensic “experts” who were
invited as witnesses by the Prosecution had links to intelligence agencies
and were proven to be totally unreliable; ·
One of the directors of the “Lockerbie
Trial Briefing Unit” at the Furthermore, Mr. Edwin Bollier,
head of the Zurich-based company MEBO, today confirmed vis-à-vis Dr. Koechler that during a visit to the headquarters of the
American FBI in Washington DC at the beginning of 1991 he was offered an
amount of up to USD 4 million plus a new identity (name) in the United States
if he would testify in court that the timer fragment that was allegedly found
on the crash site around Lockerbie stemmed from a MST-13 timer that his
company had delivered to Libya. Mr. Bollier told
Dr. Koechler that he did not make use of the offer
and did not make the requested statement, and that he
reported this incident after his return from the In view of all these
revelations and serious allegations Dr. Koechler
renewed his call for an independent international investigation of the
handling of the Lockerbie case by the Scottish and British authorities. It remains to be seen whether the Scottish judicial and
political system will live up to the challenge and whether the authorities
will allow a full and objective inquiry. It is to be recalled here
what Dr. Koechler had stated in his original report
on the Lockerbie trial of “… proper judicial
procedure is simply impossible if political interests and intelligence
services − from whichever side − succeed in interfering in the
actual conduct of a court. […] The purpose of intelligence services − from
whichever side − lies in secret action and deception, not in the search
for truth. Justice and the rule of law can never be achieved without
transparency.” o
Dr. Hans Koechler's Lockerbie
trial observer mission |
|
International Progress
Organization |
Dr Jim Swire
(jim@swirefamily.net)