Did anyone actually believe that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrah, was released on compassionate grounds from the Scottish prison where he was serving a minimum of 27 years for murdering 270 people?
Today's release of wikileaks documents show that Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, warned of 'enormous repercussions' and made 'explicit and thuggish threats' to the British Government over Megrahi remaining in jail.
One specific threat was the immediate cessation of all UK commercial activity in Libya and there is the crux of the matter, the loss of the £15 billion oil exploration deal BP had with Libya.
Far from it being a 'decision taken by the Scottish Government', the cables show the then Justice Secretary Jack Straw and Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond had had conversations around Al-Megrah's release and Straw was confident that although 'The Libyans have not yet made a formal application for compassionate release … HMG believes that the Scottish may be inclined to grant the request, when it comes'.
So it wasn't Holyroods decision, Downing Street did apply pressure and it was about protecting British oil exploration. All three things the last Government forcibly deniedt.
The truth is those in power really never cared about the moral rights, it was all about making sure we continued making vast amounts of money from Libyan contracts. Shameful doesn't even begin to cover it.
2 comments:
Whoops! Another bare-faced lie from Tony Blair to add to the list!
But we all need to remember that his 'straight up guy' always did what he thought was right!
(The only problem is that what he thought was 'right' included lying, cheating, and killing people for political gain).
There’s a great article by Johann Hari
in the Independent this morning which, among other things, comprehensively deals with the twin (albeit paradoxical) allegations that WikiLeaks is just telling us things that we already know (e.g. not about Yemen and Honduras and the Lockerbie bomber they’re not), and is also putting lives at risk by indiscriminately publishing ‘raw’ intelligence (they’ve actually only published about 1,000 documents so far, out of 250,000 they hold), with many sensitive names redacted. The whole thing is well worth a read.
Post a Comment