The Lockerbie Bombing
The Lockerbie Bombing

Author: Kenny MacAskill

Publisher: Biteback Publishing

Published: 2016-05-26

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1785901060

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On 21 December 1988, Pan Am flight 103 departed London Heathrow for New York. Shortly after take-off, a bomb detonated, killing all aboard and devastating the small Scottish town of Lockerbie below. Only one man has ever been convicted of the crime: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, though few believe that he acted alone. In 2009, a request was made by Libya for al-Megrahi's release from prison on compassionate grounds after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The decision to grant or deny that request fell squarely and exclusively on the shoulders of one man: Kenny MacAskill, Scotland's Justice Secretary from 2007 to 2014. Detailing the build-up to the atrocity and the carnage left in its wake, MacAskill narrates the international investigation that followed and the diplomatic intrigue that saw a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands. He describes the controversial release of al-Megrahi, explains the international dimensions involved and lays bare the commercial and security interests that ran in the background throughout the investigation and trial. Finally, he answers how and why it happened – and who was really responsible for the worst terrorist attack to have occurred on British soil before or since.

Libya and the West
Libya and the West

Author: Geoff L. Simons

Publisher: I.B. Tauris

Published: 2004-01-23

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781860649882

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After his successful coup d'etat in 1969, the young and brash Colonel Muammar Qadhafi broke many of Libya's residual colonial links, but at a huge cost - a new authoritarianism which became increasingly repressive as the country was condemned to pariah status by an America exasperated with Libya's radicalism and apparent links to terrorist groups. The final irony, as Libya now seeks to carve a fresh path in the 21st century, is that the most dramatic episode in the country's recent history - the accusation that it masterminded the Lockerbie tragedy - has provided a way for Libya to achieve at least some rehabilitation within the international community, by acceding to the trial of two of its citizens and appearing to tolerate (albeit under protest) the guilty verdict on one. This text describes the principal events which have shaped contemporary Libya. It reviews Libya's independence process, its territorial disputes with neighbours, the many abuses of human rights perpetrated by the Qadhafi regime, state terrorism and the US manipulation of the United Nations in its confrontation with Libya. Published in association with the Centre for Libyan Studies, Oxford.

Megrahi: You are My Jury
Megrahi: You are My Jury

Author: John Ashton

Publisher: Birlinn

Published: 2012-02-29

Total Pages: 664

ISBN-13: 0857902326

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'You know me as the Lockerbie bomber. I know that I'm innocent. Here, for the first time, is my true story: how I came to be blamed for Britain's worst mass murder, my nightmare decade in prison and the truth about my controversial release. Please read it and decide for yourself. You are now my jury'. (Abdelbaset al-Megrahi). For the first time the man known as 'the Lockerbie bomber' tells his story. This long-awaited book argues that, far from being an unrepentant terrorist, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was the innocent victim of dirty politics, a flawed investigation and judicial folly. Based on exclusive interviews with Megrahi himself, and conclusive new evidence, it destroys the prosecution case and puts the Scottish criminal justice system in the dock. Megrahi: You Are My Jury makes a compelling argument that the murderers of the 270 Lockerbie victims were acting on behalf of an entirely different government, rather than Colonel Gadafy and Libya.

The Lockerbie Bombing
The Lockerbie Bombing

Author: Jim Swire

Publisher: Birlinn

Published: 2021-07-06

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1788853059

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A father details his loss, grief, and fight for the truth following his daughter’s death in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 was the largest attack on Britain since World War II. 259 passengers and 11 townsfolk of Lockerbie were murdered. Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the crime. He maintained his innocence until his death in 2012. Among the passengers was Flora, beloved daughter of Dr Jim Swire. Jim accepted American claims that Libya was responsible, but during the Lockerbie Trial he began to distrust key witnesses and supposed firm evidence. Since then, it has been revealed that the United States paid millions of dollars to two central identification witnesses, and the only forensic evidence central to the prosecution has been discredited. The book takes us along Dr. Swire’s journey as his initial grief and loss becomes a campaign to uncover the truth behind not only a personal tragedy but one of the modern world’s most shocking events. Praise for The Lockerbie Bombing “It is hard to read this book without concluding that Dr Swire is right, and that for reasons that are both understandable and shameful, successive British governments repeated obstructed the investigation and they did so at the instigation of our American allies. . . . This book recounts Swire’s long and painful search for the truth about Lockerbie and his version is persuasive. It is disturbing too because, if he has it right, the Scottish judges who have now three times rejected appeals against the original verdict, have made it hard to have confidence in the integrity of our law.” —The Scotsman “Fascinating, compelling—a book about international intrigue, personal feelings, and ethics. Right at its heart is the search for truth.” —Kate Adie “Lockerbie's heartrending epitaph. . . . A shattering tale of grief and love.” —Daily Mail

Destroying Libya and World Order
Destroying Libya and World Order

Author: Francis A. Boyle

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2013-04-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 098603620X

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It took three decades for the United States government-spanning and working assiduously over five different presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II , and Obama)-to terminate the 1969 Qaddafi Revolution, seize control over Libya’s oil fields, and dismantle its Jamahiriya system. This book tells the story of what happened, why it happened, and what was both wrong and illegal with that from the perspective of an international law professor and lawyer who tried for over three decades to stop it. Francis Boyle provides a comprehensive history and critique of American foreign policy toward Libya from when the Reagan administration came to power in January of 1981 up to the 2011 NA TO war on Libya that ultimately achieved the US goal of regime change, and beyond. He sets the record straight on the series of military conflicts and crises between the United States and Libya over the Gulf of Sidra, exposing the Reagan administration’s fraudulent claims of Libyan instigation of international terrorism put forward over his eight years in office. Boyle reveals the inside story behind the Lockerbie bombing cases against the United States and the United Kingdom that he filed at the World Court for Colonel Qaddafi acting upon his advice-and the unjust resolution of those disputes. Deploying standard criteria of international law, Boyle analyzes and debunks the UN R2P “responsibility to protect” doctrine and its immediate predecessor, “humanitarian intervention”. He addresses how R2P served as the basis for the NATO assault on Libya in 2011, overriding the UN Charter commitment to state sovereignty and prevention of aggression. The purported NATO protection in actuality led to 50,000 Libyan casualties, and the complete breakdown of law and order. And this is just the beginning. Boyle lays out the ramifications: the destabilization of the Maghreb and Sahel, and the French intervention in Mali-with the USA/NATO/Europe starting a new imperial scramble for the natural resources of Africa. This book is not only a classic case study of the conduct of US foreign policy as it relates to international law, but a damning indictment of the newly-contrived R2P doctrine as legal cover for Western intervention into third world countries.

The Forgotten Flight
The Forgotten Flight

Author: Stuart H. Newberger

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-05-25

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1786070936

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On 19 September 1989, 170 people were killed when French Airlines UTA Flight 772 was destroyed by a suitcase bomb while en route from Chad to Paris. Despite being one of the deadliest acts of terrorism in history, it remained overshadowed by the Lockerbie tragedy that had taken place ten months earlier. Both attacks were carried out at the instruction of Libyan dictator Qaddafi, but while “Lockerbie” became synonymous with international terrorism, UTA 772 became the “forgotten flight”. As a lawyer, Stuart H. Newberger represented the families of the seven Americans killed in the UTA 772 attack. Now he brings all the pieces together to tell its story for the first time, revealing in riveting prose how French investigators cracked the case and taking us inside the courtroom to witness the litigation against the Libyan state that followed. In the age of globalization, The Forgotten Flight provides a fascinating insight into the pursuit of justice across international borders.

The Price of Terror
The Price of Terror

Author: Allan Gerson

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 0061750336

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President Bill Clinton called it "an attack against America," but after Libyan agents planted a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103, killing 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground, America did not strike back. Instead, the grieving relatives of the victims did the unthinkable—as mere civilians-and tried to force Libya to pay for its crime. Lawyers told the families that they could never sue Libya in American courts, and they were right. This would require changing a bedrock principle of international law—a change that every government in the world feared and fought, including the United States itself. Working virtually alone at first, Allan Gerson, a former diplomat and prosecutor of Nazi war criminals, took on the case and spent the next eight years on the families’ quest for justice. In this high-stakes game of international power politics and legal maneuvering, there were friendships, jobs, and reputations lost, but a precious principle—that of accountability under the law—was strengthened and preserved. Now Gerson and his co-author, Newsweek writer Jerry Adler, follow the threads of this extraordinary tale back to that deadly night over Lockerbie, Scotland—and forward into a new era of international justice, when terrorists will learn to fear the righteous retribution of their own victims.

Libya
Libya

Author: Alison Pargeter

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-07-31

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0300139322

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Offers an in-depth analysis of Muammar Qaddafi's complete reign in Libya, from his bloodless coup in 1969 to his institution of policies that mirrored his personal vision to his downfall during the 2011 revolt.

Libya
Libya

Author: Ronald Bruce St. John

Publisher: ONEWorld Publications

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781851685981

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Early History -- Ottoman Occupation, 1551-1911 -- Second Ottoman occupation (1835-1911) -- Italian Colonial Era, 1911-43 -- Struggle for independence, 1943-51 -- United Kingdom of Libya, 1951-69 -- One September Revolution, 1969-73 -- Revolution on the move, 1973-86 -- Consolidation and reform, 1986-98 -- Libya resurgent -- Libya: from colony to independence