War in Libya:Obama’s secret Libya deal

Laaska News  July 5,2011
Alexei Chernichenko
U.S. President Barack Obama has clinched a secret deal with opposition leaders in Libya regarding the extradition to the United States of the longest-surviving organizer of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, former Libyan secret agent Abdelbaset Al-Migrahi. He was sentenced to life in Britain but was later allowed to return to Libya.

According to the UK media, the essence of the deal is as follows: after the Libyan rebels occupy Tripoli, they are to seize Al-Megrahi and hand him over to the U.S. forces. He will then be deported to a neutral Arab country and from there to the United States to stand trial. During a pre-trial investigation, Al-Megrahi will hopefully uncover proof of Muammar Gaddafi’s personal involvement in the Lockerbie case.

On December 21, 1988 when a Pan American World Airways passenger jet crashed near the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing more than 270 people, mostly U.S. citizens in what was suspected to be Libya’s revenge for U.S. air bombings of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986.

Eleven years later, Libya extradited two former intelligence officers, suspected organizers of the Lockerbie attack, to Britain, Al-Megrahi among them. In 2001, a Scottish court found him guilty and sentenced him to a life imprisonment. Later, he was diagnosed with cancer with the doctors saying that his days were numbered. In August 2009, Al-Megrahi was freed by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds and deported to Libya.

Alexei Podtserob, a senior analyst with the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow and a former Russian ambassador to Libya, takes a look at the prospect of Al-Megrahi’s arrest.

“A man can’t be punished twice for one and the same crime. This is a downright violation of international law. Speaking about the Lockerbie case, it was closed after West European leaders, including the Italian prime minister, the French president and many others, met with Gaddafi. Finally, re-arresting a convict on the same charges to unearth additional proof against Gaddafi is a direct step towards aborting attempts to promote a political settlement in Libya at a time when the first signs of a tentative rapprochement between the Libyan factions began to emerge. And the last point. Al-Megrahi comes from Magarha, one of Libya’s largest tribes. Tribal solidarity is of great importance there. Thus, the move will push the Magaraha tribe to support Gaddafi.”

President Barack Obama has reportedly informed the Libyan rebels that al-Migrahi’s extradition is the main condition for further U.S. support of the Libyan opposition. British media quote senior U.S. intelligence sources as saying that Al-Megrahi did not fall into a cancer-induced coma, as many would have expected him to, but is living in his own house in Tripoli with his wife and four children.

VOR.

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