The assault on Libya: Response to the Lockerbie incident (1998–2001)

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Families, Security Council Argue Lockerbie Case
By Farhan Haq, IPS, 20 March 1998. Libyan pleas for a neutral trial and for the easing of some aspects of the sanctions are gaining wider support. The debate, the first public review of Council sanctions imposed on Libya in 1992, was marked both by efforts to find a compromise solution for the trial, and resistance from the U.S. to anything less than a trial in Britain or the US.
Subverted justice questioned?
Editorial by Parveez Syed, Shanti News, Monday 3 August 1998. In February 1998 the ICJ at the Hague ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear Libya’s complaints against Britain in connection with the bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie. Then in March 1998 ICJ ruled against US and British objections to the court’s involvement. Can the accused expect a fair trial; would the verdict be acceptable to the US-UK politicians, and what about appeal court?
Lockerbie Judgement Looms—or does it?
Analysis by Farhan Haq, IPS, 1 March 1999. After more than six months of haggling, the UN and the US impatient with Libya’s sluggish response to a proposed trial of two Libyan bombing suspects. Despite threats of tougher sanctions, Libya, Tripoli still unwilling to extradite the two to stand trial in the Netherlands for the 1988 bombing of Pan American flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Lawyers say new evidence will rock Lockerbie trial
By Gerard Seenan, The Guardian (London), Wednesday 25 October 2000, Crucial new evidence released to defence lawyers in the Lockerbie trial will have “the greatest conceivable effect” on the proceedings, the court in the Netherlands heard yesterday.
Report on the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands
By Hans Koechler, 3 Feburary 2001. Report on and evaluation of the Lockerbie Trial conducted by the special Scottish Court in the Netherlands at Kamp van Zeist by Dr. Hans Kvchler, University Professor, international observer of the International Progress Organization nominated by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the basis of Security Council resolution 1192 (1998).
GPC Welcomes French Court’s Decision
Panafrican News Agency (Dakar), 23 March 2001. Libya’s General People’s Congress has commended the Paris Court of Cessation for “resisting pressure” from what it described as “Zionist circles and forces at the service of injustice”. It had decided on 13 March, decided to close a case whose sole target was the leader of the Libyan Revolution, Col. Muammar Kadhafi.
’Unfair, incomprehensible, irrational and arbitrary’
By William Paul, Scotland on Sunday, 8 April 2001. Despite disquiet, a consensus arose that due process had been followed and evidence had been heard in open court. Now, however, the devastating criticism by a world-renowned expert is a monumental embarrassment to the judges, the Crown, and to the UN, which brokered the understanding that allowed the trial to go ahead after so many years of the British and American governments’ refusing to compromise.
UN claims Lockerbie trial rigged; Court was politically influenced by US
Sunday Herald (Scotland), 8 April 2001. The United Nations has savaged the Crown Office’s handling of the Lockerbie trial, claiming the outcome was rigged through the unfair suppression of evidence; it was politically influenced by the USA; and the court had no grounds to return a guilty verdict.
Lockerbie trial damned by UN report
By William Paul, Scotland on Sunday, 8 April 2001. A UN observer at the Lockerbie trial branded the verdicts in the case “unfair, irrational and politically motivated”, saying they should be overturned on appeal. Professor Hans Koechler, a world-renowned expert in international law, claims there was no basis in evidence for the guilty verdict against one of the accused.