“So Resolution 731 was adopted. Everyone at the Security Council knew it was wrong. Everyone knew that Libya had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing, and that Libya had once again been made a scapegoat by the United States.”
Francis Boyle — International Law professor
January 21 2021 — On January 21 1992, after recalling UN Resolutions 286 (1970) and 635 (1989) which condemned acts of terrorism, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 731. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
RELATED POST: Lockerbie Third Appeal — Judges uphold guilty verdict [UPDATE : Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum]
Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
QUICK NOTES — To make it easier for the readers to retrieve various chapters of my book, I have created a special page “Lockerbie” where all the links to the chapters will be listed with a brief description. You can access that page directly as it appears at the far right of the top bar of this blog.
Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
“Oliver Cromwell died in 1658. His body was exhumed in 1661 to be hanged in chains. Later, he was decapitated and his head was displayed on a pole outside Westminster Hall until 1685. There is a pole waiting for Megrahi’s head.”
Intel Today – March 16 2020
UPDATE (January 21 2021) — Lord Carloway — The Lord Justice General in the 3rd Lockerbie appeal — delivered the opinion of the Scottish Appeal Court on January 15 2021.
Without surprise to the readers of this blog, the Court has upheld the verdict of the trial court.
Clearly, the Lockerbie saga is now over as far as Justice is concerned. Let me repeat this. It is over. Full stop.
There are three kinds of people. Those who understand events before they happen. Those who only understand events after they have happened. And there are some people who never understand events, even after they have happened.
Obviously, Mr Aamer Anwar and Pr. Robert Black are among those people who never understand…
After miserably losing the third appeal, Mr Anwar said the second ground of appeal — the failure to disclose information to the defence — hinged on a “compatibility issue” arising from a question relating to a breach of human rights.
“This will be the basis for the application to the Supreme Court,” Anwar stated.
Commenting on Anwar’s press release, Pr Black suggested that the case would be brought before the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] next if necessary.
These clowns never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
This is just a pathetic attempt to cover their many mistakes and it is total nonsense as far as the law is concerned.
Of course, it is true that evidence has been withheld from the defence on public interest grounds.
But withholding evidence does not necessarily equate to a breach of human rights.
In any case, the ECHR does not decide whether such a decision was absolutely necessary, as it is a matter for the domestic courts to assess the evidence produced before them.
The ECHR, if the submission is ever accepted, would only check the decision-making procedure to ensure that, as far as possible, the appeal judges complied with the requirements to provide adversarial proceedings and equality of arms to protect the interests of Megrahi. ECHR’s decisions are clear and consistent.
Long before the appeal, I have explained that the two secret documents withheld from the defence on public interest grounds are useless to the defense of Megrahi and potentially harmful to national security.
The judges have carefully studied these documents and they came to the exact same conclusion.
[32] The court also agrees with the Advocate depute that the first document would not, in any event, have been adduced in evidence by the defence at the trial because it would have pointed towards Libya as the source of the timer; a matter which the defence were anxious to deny.
[33] Accordingly, having regard to the nature and content of the two documents, notably the fact that most of it was already known to the defence, and that which was not would neither have been of use to the defence nor would it have been adduced by the defence, and balancing the very limited value of that content with the danger to the public interest as set out in the public interest immunity certificate, the court will refuse to order recovery of the protectively marked documents.
In other words, the appeal judges did more than comply with the requirements to provide adversarial proceedings and equality of arms.
By withholding these documents, they prevented Anwar to hurt his own client!
Case over.
As Pr. Michael P. Scharf wrote long ago, achieving justice was never the main objective.
“U.S. officials saw the indictment itself as a diplomatic tool that would help them persuade members of the Security Council to impose sanctions on Libya, thereby furthering their goal of isolating a rogue regime.”
Indeed, deflecting attention from the truth and obtaining a UN Resolution were the real goals of the ‘Lockerbie Solution’ from the very beginning.
PS — The Lockerbie case is a complete fiasco. Thirteen judges have managed to find a man guilty of a crime that never occurred in the first place!
On November 2 2016, the UK Government [Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS)] decided to withhold all Lockerbie air accident investigation reports [dating from 1990 Jan 01 to 1992 Dec 31] until at least 2026, and possibly indefinitely.
Who knows? Maybe, in 2026, we will finally learn that that no bomb was involved in the disintegration of Pan Am Flight 103.
END of UPDATE
“Amer Anwar — the lawyer for Megrahi’s family — is repeating all the old mistakes that brought us this spectacular miscarriage of justice, including a grandiose press release, that is riddled with nonsensical, erroneous, illogical, and counter-productive statements. I expect that the judges will unanimously uphold the guilty verdict. In the end, this appeal will do more harm than good.”
Intel Today — Aug. 26 2020
The Security Council expressed its concern over the results of investigations into the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and UTA Flight 772 over the Ténéré desert, Niger, which implicated officials from the Government of Libya.
This story has been so distorted by the MSM that it is a gargantuan task to correct all the lies!
RELATED POST: Lockerbie 30th Anniversary — Should You Trust The New York Times?
How the US & UK MSM distorted the story
Although all MSM reported that the UNSC 731 requests the extradition of Megrahi and Fimah, the Resolution does not make such demand.
As no extradition Treaty exists between any of these three countries and Libya, it would have been obviously illegal to demand the extradition of Libyan citizens.
What really happened?
On 27 November 1991 the governments of both the USA and the UK issued a joint declaration demanding that Libya surrender for trial those charged with the crime, accept responsibility for the actions of Libyan officials, disclose all it knows of this crime, allow full access to the evidence and pay appropriate compensation.
At this date, the USA and the UK were already working on the preamble for a resolution in the UN Security Council.
On 17 January 1992 Libya addressed the UK and the USA in two letters, reminding them of the Montreal convention, the general rule of jurisdiction in case of claims to extradite nationals, as well as asking for arbitration according to Article 14/1 of the Montreal Convention.
On 21 January 1992 the UN Security Council adopted resolution 731/1992 calling on Libya to cooperate in the implementation of the provisions of that resolution and to commit itself to renounce and condemn terrorism.
The resolution was based on the British and American demands put forward on the 27.11.1991.
However, the resolution did not oblige Libya to extradite the two national suspects.
Libya declared, that it had fully cooperated in the case according to international jurisdictions, thus already having fulfilled the demands of the resolution.
How the US & UK avoided a “bloc vote”
On January 4 1992, the New York Times published an interesting story: U.S. and Allies to Seek U.N. Support Against Libya.
Today the United States, France and Britain sent their United Nations representatives to explain their position to the new United Nations Secretary General, Boutros Ghali, who is said to be worried that a new crisis is developing over the Libyan issue.
The three allies deliberately postponed their campaign against Libya until this month after calculating that changes in the roster of Security Council members effective January 1 [1992] would make the body more sympathetic to their plans.
Cuba and Yemen, which voted against many of the gulf war resolutions affecting Iraq, have left the Council after completing two-year terms, as have the Ivory Coast, Zaire and Romania.
Their places have been taken by Venezuela, Japan, Morocco, Cape Verde and Hungary.
Now that Japan has assumed one of the seats reserved for African and Asian states, the number of Council members belonging to the so-called non-aligned movement has fallen from seven to six.
That means the non-aligned nations can no longer prevent the adoption of resolutions by the 15-member Council by voting as a bloc.
[Intel Today : Only nine votes are needed to adopt a resolution.]
How the US bought the UN votes
Francis Boyle — International Law professor — has written about this case and provided very clear explanations as to how the US bought the key votes.
“The security Council has no authority to demand anyone’s extradition. (…) Nevertheless, Bush senior got the votes.
The key vote was China.
To get the Chinese vote, Bush senior agreed to have his infamous meeting in New York with premier Li Ping, the Butcher of Beijing, the official in charge of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.”
After the passage of Resolution 731, US Ambassador Thomas Pickering declared that countries supporting terrorism will no longer be able to hide behind international law.
Who needs George Orwell?
REFERENCES
United Nations Security Council Resolution 731 — Wikipedia
Professor Francis Boyle — Official webpage
The Lockerbie Legality — What went wrong in international criminal law ? By Safia Aoude
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On This Day — United Nations Security Council Adopts Resolution 731 (January 21 1992)
On This Day — United Nations Security Council Adopts Resolution 731 (January 21 1992) [2020]
On This Day — United Nations Security Council Adopts Resolution 731 (January 21 1992) [2021]
Intel Today 