[Escamsrasiush]

OPINION

AUGUST 26, 2009

Britain and the Lockerbie Bomber

London officials seem to have been involved
in the decision to release Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi

By CON COUGHLIN

When former Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to give up his pursuit of nuclear weapons in late 2003, Britain received world-wide praise for a remarkable diplomatic coup.

The plaudits heaped on the British government then stand in marked contrast to the international opprobrium its latest dealings with the Gadhafi clan are attracting.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government says the shameful decision to return Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi—convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988—to Libya was taken solely on compassionate grounds. His release from prison last week was not, the government says, part of some secret deal between London and Tripoli.

Megrahi's doctors claim he's suffering from terminal prostate cancer and has only a few months to live. Scotland's Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill insists his decision to release Megrahi was based on the requirements of Scottish law, which allows for terminally ill prisoners to be released from custody regardless of the magnitude of their crimes. Although it is part of the United Kingdom, Scotland enjoys its own justice system.

But even if the Scottish government acted solely in accordance with its legal obligations, strong rumors persist that Megrahi's return had more to do with the prospect of Britain enjoying lucrative trade deals with Libya than the state of the convicted murderer's health. Suspicions that there is more to this episode than the British government will admit center on the role Seif al-Islam Gadhafi has played in the affair. Gadhafi's second son, whose name translates as "sword of Islam," is widely regarded as the heir apparent.

Educated at the London School of Economics, Mr. Ghadafi claims to entertain no political ambitions and says his only official role is that of running a Tripoli-based family charitable foundation. But in Libya he is increasingly seen as the power behind the throne. He is also well known to Britain's political and intelligence establishment for the key role he is credited with playing in persuading his father to end Libya's decades-long international isolation by giving up its weapons of mass destruction.

For years, Ghadafi's regime was deemed by Washington to be one of the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism. It also had a nuclear weapons program, though it maintained the pretense to visiting inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency that its nuclear activities were purely peaceful—a fiction with which the agency concurred.

Then came the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, which removed Saddam Hussein from power. This had a profound impact on Col. Ghadafi, who, at his second son's prompting, secretly passed a letter to Downing Street indicating he wanted to come in from the diplomatic cold and end Libya's status as a pariah nation.

The British government reacted swiftly to the Gadhafi clan's overture. There followed a series of lengthy discussions between Seif al-Islam and Mark Allen, then head of counter-terrorism at Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), that were conducted within the elegant confines of London's Travellers Club. The result was Mr. Blair's triumphant announcement in late December 2003 that Col. Ghadhafi had made a "historic" decision to scrap the nuclear-weapons program whose existence he'd always denied.

Fast forward six years, and many of those who were central to the negotiations in 2003 continue to feature prominently in Anglo-Libyan affairs. Sir Mark Allen, to give him his present title, is now a senior executive with the British oil giant BP. BP is keen to develop its oil exploration business in Libya, which is said to be sitting on 44 billion barrels of untapped oil reserves.

Seif al-Islam Ghadafi, meanwhile, owns a $16 million mansion in London's northern suburbs and maintains close links with Britain's leading business figures. Earlier this summer he was a guest at the villa owned by the Rothschild banking family on the Greek island of Corfu. Another guest was Lord Peter Mandelson, Britain's business secretary and a close ally of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Lord Mandelson has confirmed that, during their stay at the villa, Mr. Ghadafi raised the issue of Megrahi's release. He insists he personally had nothing to do with releasing Megrahi. Nevertheless, Seif al-Islam Ghadafi remarked on Libyan television (after Megrahi's release) that, "In all commercial contracts for oil and gas with Britain [Megrahi] was always on the negotiating table."

Other evidence suggesting the British government, rather than its weaker Scottish partner, was the driving force behind Megrahi's release has emerged in the form of a letter Ivor Lewis, a junior minister at the British Foreign Office, wrote to Mr. MacAskill on Aug. 3. In that letter, parts of which have been leaked to the British press, Mr. Lewis tells Mr. MacAskill that there is no legal reason not to accede to Libya's request to transfer Megrahi into its custody under the terms of an agreement reached between Mr. Blair and Gadhafi senior in 2004 to strengthen U.K.-Libyan diplomatic ties. This agreement was negotiated in the wake of the historic nuclear deal.

According to a Scottish government source quoted in the British press over the weekend (who says he's seen the entire letter), Mr. Lewis wrote, "I hope on this basis you will now feel able to consider the Libyan application [for Megrahi's release]."

Certainly the involvement of both Lord Mandelson and Mr. Lewis in this sorry affair seems to undermine Mr. Brown's claim on Tuesday that he "had no role" in the decision to release Megrahi from prison. Mr. Brown's government still has many questions to answer about one of the least edifying episodes in his nation's hitherto impressive history of confronting international terrorism.

Mr. Coughlin is the executive foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph in London and the author of "Khomeini's Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam" (Ecco, 2009).