Sunday, May 20, 2012
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the convicted killer of 270 people — 259 people aboard Pan Am flight 103 and 11 others, residents of the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, finally died of cancer. He was 60.
In 2001, al-Megrahi was convicted of putting Semtex plastic explosive in a Toshiba Bombeat radio cassette player on the Pan Am Boeing 747-100. The massive jetliner exploded shortly after departing London Heathrow en route to New York Kennedy International Airport.
Among the victims were 189 Americans. The passenger manifest included a large number of high school students from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Scotland freed him in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and thought to have months to live. It turned out he had 48 months to live.
NY Sen. Charles Schumer on Sunday criticized the Scottish government for allowing al-Megrahi to die a free man in what he said “smelled of a deal for oil.”
From the Left 
He should have been injected with Battery acid, on the day he was released, to hasten his trip to hell.
Does anyone know where this rotten son-of-a-bitch will be buried so I can visit his grave and take a piss on it? Probably in Libya where the grave will enjoy a 24/7 security camera. After all, he was a cult hero to the Libyan people.
Arab Spring my ass.
Thach Nguyen,
I would love to join you. However, I plan to defecate on al-Megrahi’s grave.
Al-Megrahi didn’t deserve early release.
He deserved a bullet to the forehead. What he did ranks among the worst mass murderers in human history. What he did was not the act of a human but a monster.
If ever there was a just reason to execute someone, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, was it. There was no reason for this ghoul to plant a bomb on a transatlantic flight other than to terrorize and kill nearly 300 innocent passengers. I’m so happy he’s now dead.
Megrahi did not deserve to be released. He was a mass murderer of Americans and peoples from 22 other countries, all of whom were passengers on Pan Am Flight 103. He should’ve died in prison but an obvious quid pro quo between Scotland and Libya for oil trumped moral justice.
The story goes a Scottish doctor said al-Megrahi would most likely be dead in 4 months but it took nearly 4 years. In those 4 years, al-Megrahi enjoyed his freedom and even attended soccer matches in Tripoli where he was cheered on as a national hero. Scotland, for their judicial malfeasance received a lucrative contract for BP in Libya. Oil for blood, I call it.
I’m not typically a fan of capital punishment but if there was ever a crime worthy of being put to death, bringing down a 747 in a senseless act of evil and cruelty is it. I will never forgive Scotland for cutting a deal with Libya to win the release of Megrahi for oil.
Enjoy hell, asshole.
jm in alaska says i was in the military in holland then on that dec day when it happened! gadafi and his regime wanted to get even. for the bombing of their bases by u.s. they all met their hells end and the leader of the pack who gave them go ahead got video taped while shot and dying for the world to see. death it seems to be in their culture the savage bastards. unfit to live on this earth. good ending but took too long. rest in the fire pits of hell inhumans.
Neither Libya, Abdelbaset Megrahi, nor Gaddafi had anything whatever to do with the terroract on Pan am 103 – this stands today clear. The evidence against this is overwhelming.
Here is a short introduction to the issue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGuzIHwkAf4&sns=em
“To portray Gaddafi as a terrorist and evil dictator was a policy!”
We have to realize that there are reasons for the attempt to connect Libya with terrorism: There exists official US documents that indicate that the policy was to deliberately demonize Gaddafi:
A September 1985 report by the “National Security Centre” (“The Principle of Qaddafi”), stated that if it was not possible to kill Gaddafi, “an operation must be worked out against him with an accuracy never before encountered by Libya since the toppling of the monarchy in September 1969.”
The same year (November 3rd, 1985) an article appeared in “The Washington Post” (by Bob Woodward), stating that President Reagan had “empowered the CIA to implement a secret operation to destroy the Libyan regime headed by Colonel Qaddafi”.
The American magazine “Newsweek” (13th of January, 1988) published an article entitled “Six Strategic Points” that were endorsed by the “National Security Council” of the US. The first strategic point was to “project Qaddafi as a negative personality on the international scene, and slander him so as to create a public opinion within the United States and the world at large that would support any American project hostile to him.”
These policies sanctioned by US-President Reagan led to the attempts to connect Gaddafi with terrorism. In reality the opposite was true, President Reagan committed several terrorist acts – for example the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986.
The 80’s in the Reagan-Thatcher involved economic policies imposed by the IMF and World-Bank. It was policies that deliberatly destroyed about 100(!) or so developing countries. Further, every country refusing to comply with the IMF or World Bank got threatened.
Source: interview with Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, editor of Global Research and Professer of Economics, Ottawa, Canada http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2012/08/economic-collapse-and-neoliberal-onslaught
However, in the case of Libya and Gaddafi, portraying him as a mad terrorist had more reasons than Libya not accepting the policies of the World bank and IMF:
in U.S. State Department Report No. 110 of the Study and Research Section (June, 1984), “The Libyan Question”, the contrary role played by Libya against American policies and against “American interests in the Arab World and Africa” is emphasized. The report focuses on the role of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in impeding American initiatives for a political settlement in the Middle East, starting with the Camp David Accord in 1979 and ending with the initiative of President Reagan in 1982. The report also addressed the Libyan support of forces hostile to the United States in Central and Latin America, and the danger that such support directly posed to the strategic security of the United States. The report stated that since the evacuation of the American forces from the Wheelus base on the 11th of June, 1970, American control over Libyan political decisions had ceased to exist. The report suggested that measures be taken to restore American influence in order to safeguard the interests of the United States and the interests of its allies in the region and elsewhere in Africa and Latin America.
In the Report by the “National Security Centre” of the US (September, 1985), “The Principle of Qaddafi”, it is explained that Libyan interests ran counter to those of the United States and that Libyan policies “pose a danger to American security and to NATO plans” and even to some Arab countries friendly to the United States.
President Reagan expanded on this with explicitly declaring Gaddafi’s “Green Book” as a threat to US-Allies in the region. These allies are all feudal monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc) and the “Green Book” advocates a participatory (or direct) democracy. Obviously therefore the “Green Book” can be perceived as a threat to these feudal monarchies. It is to be considered cynical that these mentioned feudal monarchies are US-allies in spreading “democracy” in the Middle-East.
There were more reasons to “take out Gaddafi”. These were Gaddafi’s PanAfrican ideas and his financing of African leaders who opposed foreign military bases and occupation, who explicitly opposed AFRICOM, short for African Command – a Pentagon doctrine and military unit, founded in 2006. AFRICOM has since the war on Libya in 2011, set up bases in almost all African countries
In a document with the title “Psychological Operations” (2005) by the US government, army department. http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-30.pdf
it is stated that military operations are enhanced and facilitated if the leadership of the ‘adversary’ country can be portrayed as a dictatorship.
2007 interview with US-4-star General Wesley Clark – “US plans to take out 7 countries in 5 years, amongst others, Libya”
The Reagan administration admits they fabricated and leaked “evidence” already in 1981 to implicate Gaddafi as linked to terrorism. In October 1981, a famous journalist called Jack Anderson wrote a sensational article. It said that Colonel Gaddafi had sent a six-man hit team to the US to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Sources in the administration, he said, had concrete evidence that they were led by the most famous terrorist in the world called Carlos “The Jackal”. Then Newsweek said that Gaddafi had equipped them with “bazookas, grenade launchers and even portable SAM-7 missiles capable of bringing down the President’s plane”. The State department even issued photo fits of the six assassins. But it was all completely untrue. Made up by the Reagan administration. Here are some extracts from a documentary made later in the 1980s in which the same journalist, Jack Anderson, explains how he was fed the story, why he believed it – and how it turned out not to be true. It also includes an interview with one of the administration men who fed the story to the press. He was part of a committee that had been specifically set up to turn Gaddafi into the mad dog of terror. But even he admits that it was based on very little evidence. It’s a fascinating piece because it is the earliest evidence of what would become known later inside the Reagan administration as “Perception Management”. This was the idea that you could use the press and television to tell stories that simplified the world for the American people and turned it into a struggle of good against evil. A cartoon-like picture that justified America’s policies in the world.
On July 3, 1988, more than 5 months prior to the Lockerbie bombing, during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, the USS Vincennes, trespassing on Iranian water, shot down a civilian Iranian airliner IR655, killing 290 civilians, including 66 children, en route to Dubai. The incident sparked controversy and it was later revealed, that the Navy tried to cover-up the incident. The event also came at the end of the Iran – Iraq war, marking a dark chapter in US history in the region.
The US government never published a complete report of the investigation and continued to assert that the crew of the USS Vincennes mistakenly identified the aircraft as a fighter jet and acted in self defense. While it expressed its regrets, the United States failed to condemn what happened and never apologized to the Iranian people. The Iranian government asked several times — rhetorically — how a guided missile cruiser, such as the USS Vincennes, equipped with the latest in electronic technology, was unable to distinguish a slowly ascending Airbus from a much smaller fighter jet. After Iran sued the United States in the International Court of Justice, the Americans agreed to pay $61.8 million in compensation to the victims’ families. However, it did not escape any Iranian that the United States extracted $1.7 billion, a sum 30 times greater, from Libya as compensation for the victims of the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing, which took place the same year.
The reckless behavior of the USS Vincennes commanding officer earned him the Legion of Merits, “a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements.” For many Iranians, this is utterly incomprehensible.