bobdina
07-16-2010, 12:30 PM
BP helped to free Lockerbie bomber
Friday, July 16, 2010
By John F. Burns, The New York Times
LONDON -- Oil giant BP faced a new furor Thursday as it confirmed that it had lobbied the British government to conclude a prisoner-transfer agreement that the Libyan government wanted to secure the release of the only person convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing over Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
The acknowledgment came after U.S. lawmakers, grappling with the controversy over the company's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, called for an investigation into BP's actions in the case of the freed man, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi.
After an initial demand for an investigation Wednesday by four New York and New Jersey senators, further calls for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee inquiry were made Thursday by Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, both D-Calif.
Mr. Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent, was released and allowed to return to Libya in August, after doctors advised the Scottish government that he was likely to die within three months because of advanced prostate cancer. But nearly a year later, he remains alive and free, though kept out of sight, in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
BP's statement Thursday repeated earlier acknowledgments that it had promoted the transfer agreement to protect a $900 million offshore oil-and-gas exploration deal off Libya's Mediterranean coast. British then-Justice Minister Jack Straw admitted shortly after Mr. Megrahi was repatriated and freed that the BP deal was a consideration in the government's review of his case.
Mr. Megrahi was not released under the prisoner-transfer agreement.
Instead, to the consternation of the Obama administration, and of many of the victims' families, the Scottish government released him under provisions in Scottish law that allow for a prisoner's sentence to be commuted on humanitarian grounds, because of Mr. Megrahi's cancer. That freed him from serving any further prison time in Libya, as he would have had to do under the transfer pact.
U.S. anger over the case -- which has only grown as Mr. Megrahi's life endures -- found a new outlet this week, with demands for an investigation of the issue in the U.S. Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both D-N.Y., together with Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg, both D-N.J., announced Wednesday that they had written a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asking for a State Department inquiry into BP's role in the transfer agreement.
Mr. Schumer told reporters that BP should freeze its operations in Libya because it "should not be allowed to profit on this deal at the expense of the victims of terrorism."
The two California senators followed Thursday with a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., declaring that "commercial interests -- oil or otherwise -- should never be prioritized over justice for victims of terrorist acts and severe punishment for convicted terrorists."
BP's business in Libya include an exploration deal in the Gulf of Sidra, which the company estimates could lead to an eventual BP investment of as much as $20 billion, as well as other deals in Libya's desert. The deals represent BP's return to Libya after decades of exclusion that followed nationalization of the company's interests there in the 1970s.
BP's response to the senators' challenge came in a statement released Thursday, in which the company stuck to its claim that its lobbying was focused on the prisoner-transfer pact, not on Mr. Megrahi himself, and that the company had nothing to do with the decision by Scottish authorities to release him to Libya.
But the company's critics have said such a distinction was largely illusory, since Libya's pressure for the prisoner-transfer pact was primarily motivated, as Libyan officials said at the time, by their desire to bring Mr. Megrahi home.
Long before the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the British government's role in the Megrahi release -- and the involvement of British firms with interests in Libya, including BP -- had caused deep strains between the Obama administration and the former Labour Party government in London, which was ousted in a general election in May and replaced by a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
Although senior figures in the Labour government insisted that the Megrahi decision was made independently by the Scottish government, which has wide-ranging legal powers of its own, an official paper trail showed that London officials had told Scottish officials, in the context of the transfer agreement, that letting Mr. Megrahi go would benefit British commercial interests.
Mr. Megrahi's conviction was the only one achieved in the case, after a Libyan accused of being an accomplice -- who, like Mr. Megrahi, was an agent of Libya's secret service -- was found not guilty and freed.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10197/1073106-82.stm#ixzz0trbPiK8v
Friday, July 16, 2010
By John F. Burns, The New York Times
LONDON -- Oil giant BP faced a new furor Thursday as it confirmed that it had lobbied the British government to conclude a prisoner-transfer agreement that the Libyan government wanted to secure the release of the only person convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing over Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
The acknowledgment came after U.S. lawmakers, grappling with the controversy over the company's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, called for an investigation into BP's actions in the case of the freed man, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi.
After an initial demand for an investigation Wednesday by four New York and New Jersey senators, further calls for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee inquiry were made Thursday by Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, both D-Calif.
Mr. Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent, was released and allowed to return to Libya in August, after doctors advised the Scottish government that he was likely to die within three months because of advanced prostate cancer. But nearly a year later, he remains alive and free, though kept out of sight, in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
BP's statement Thursday repeated earlier acknowledgments that it had promoted the transfer agreement to protect a $900 million offshore oil-and-gas exploration deal off Libya's Mediterranean coast. British then-Justice Minister Jack Straw admitted shortly after Mr. Megrahi was repatriated and freed that the BP deal was a consideration in the government's review of his case.
Mr. Megrahi was not released under the prisoner-transfer agreement.
Instead, to the consternation of the Obama administration, and of many of the victims' families, the Scottish government released him under provisions in Scottish law that allow for a prisoner's sentence to be commuted on humanitarian grounds, because of Mr. Megrahi's cancer. That freed him from serving any further prison time in Libya, as he would have had to do under the transfer pact.
U.S. anger over the case -- which has only grown as Mr. Megrahi's life endures -- found a new outlet this week, with demands for an investigation of the issue in the U.S. Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both D-N.Y., together with Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg, both D-N.J., announced Wednesday that they had written a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asking for a State Department inquiry into BP's role in the transfer agreement.
Mr. Schumer told reporters that BP should freeze its operations in Libya because it "should not be allowed to profit on this deal at the expense of the victims of terrorism."
The two California senators followed Thursday with a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., declaring that "commercial interests -- oil or otherwise -- should never be prioritized over justice for victims of terrorist acts and severe punishment for convicted terrorists."
BP's business in Libya include an exploration deal in the Gulf of Sidra, which the company estimates could lead to an eventual BP investment of as much as $20 billion, as well as other deals in Libya's desert. The deals represent BP's return to Libya after decades of exclusion that followed nationalization of the company's interests there in the 1970s.
BP's response to the senators' challenge came in a statement released Thursday, in which the company stuck to its claim that its lobbying was focused on the prisoner-transfer pact, not on Mr. Megrahi himself, and that the company had nothing to do with the decision by Scottish authorities to release him to Libya.
But the company's critics have said such a distinction was largely illusory, since Libya's pressure for the prisoner-transfer pact was primarily motivated, as Libyan officials said at the time, by their desire to bring Mr. Megrahi home.
Long before the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the British government's role in the Megrahi release -- and the involvement of British firms with interests in Libya, including BP -- had caused deep strains between the Obama administration and the former Labour Party government in London, which was ousted in a general election in May and replaced by a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
Although senior figures in the Labour government insisted that the Megrahi decision was made independently by the Scottish government, which has wide-ranging legal powers of its own, an official paper trail showed that London officials had told Scottish officials, in the context of the transfer agreement, that letting Mr. Megrahi go would benefit British commercial interests.
Mr. Megrahi's conviction was the only one achieved in the case, after a Libyan accused of being an accomplice -- who, like Mr. Megrahi, was an agent of Libya's secret service -- was found not guilty and freed.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10197/1073106-82.stm#ixzz0trbPiK8v