------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- EVIDENCE "VERY WEAK": WASHINGTON USES LOCKERBIE TRIAL TO ATTACK LIBYA By John Catalinotto Even Robert Black, the Scottish law professor who devised the trial, called the evidence "very, very weak." But that didn't stop the court from finding Libyan Abdul Baset al- Miqrahi guilty and sentencing him to life imprisonment on Feb. 1. And it didn't stop the U.S. and British governments from stating that they would continue nine years of sanctions against Libya and demand that Libya pay "compensation" to the families of those who died when Pan Am Flight 103 crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. What Black's statement did, however, was show that the trial held in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands was a political trial. Its aim was to continue pressure on Libya and to show the power of U.S. and British imperialism to punish whatever "enemy" they choose, regardless of evidence. The second accused person in the Lockerbie issue, Elamine Khaleifa Faheima, was found not guilty by the court. He arrived back in Tripoli, Libya, a day later. Libya's leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, denied a Libyan role in the bombing and insisted that Al-Miqrahi was innocent and a hostage of the U.S. and Britain. He asked that the sanctions end, as did the Arab League and the People's Republic of China. International pressure has been growing to end the sanctions against Libya, just as it has for ending the sanctions against Iraq. The strongest evidence that a Libyan had a motive for the Pan Am crash--any Libyan--was the crimes of U.S. imperialism against that north African country. The rest was concocted by U.S. and British government agents and experts who had control of the evidence. To understand how the U.S. government manipulated the propaganda around the trial, it helps to review some of the events leading up to the December 1988 crash. CRIMES OF U.S. IMPERIALISM In 1986, the U.S. launched a sneak bombing attack on the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi from air bases in Britain. The public excuse from the Reagan administration was that Libyan agents allegedly set off a bomb at a Berlin disco frequented by U.S. soldiers in the then-divided city. These charges were later abandoned. The real reason was that the Libyan government was trying to defend its sovereignty against imperialism. A clash had taken place in early 1986 between U.S. warships trying to invade Libyan territorial waters in the Gulf of Sidra and the Libyan coast guard. The Reagan administration was constantly tightening economic restrictions on Libya in that period. It used Libya's alleged connection with the Berlin blast as a pretext to launch the 100-plane bombing raid, which targeted Qaddafi's family home as well as air bases and barracks. One of Qaddafi's young daughters was killed in the raid, along with other Libyans. The French Embassy in Tripoli was also bombed, which the Pentagon claimed was a mistake. France had refused to let U.S. bombers fly over its air space on their way to bomb Libya. This was a state-sponsored terrorist attack on Libya with the aim of assassinating that country's president. The media here presented it differently. But the rulers knew what they were doing, and they knew it was a crime. They knew Libya had every moral right to strike back. But Libya was not alone in this condition. U.S. TERRORISM AGAINST IRAN In the summer of 1988, the USS Vincennes, stationed in Iran's territorial waters in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, shot down an Iranian airliner. Some 290 civilians were killed. The official Pentagon story was that this was an accident. The Pentagon had intervened in the war between Iraq and Iran. U.S. policy, as explained so coldly by Henry Kissinger later, was to goad the Iraqis and Iranians into killing each other to weaken both. By 1988, however, Washington was more interested in weakening Iran, then considered more hostile to U.S. interests. This may seem strange after the last 10 years of open U.S. aggression against Iraq, but it was the situation then. U.S. imperialism, like British colonialism of the 19th Century, has no permanent allies. Washington has only the permanent interests of the bankers and billionaires it represents. Shooting down the civilian airliner was another type of terrorist attack that U.S. forces carried out, not with a hidden bomb but with a sophisticated rocket. By ordering the murder of civilians in Libya and Iran, and later in Iraq, by its aggression not only in the Middle East but worldwide, Washington puts the lives of ordinary U.S. citizens at risk. Then when someone strikes at a U.S. target- -be it a warship off Yemen, an airbase in Saudi Arabia, an airliner or a skyscraper--Washington knows it has lots of enemies to choose from. U.S. POLICE AGENCIES LIE That it has enemies, however, doesn't mean that they carried out a particular action against U.S. imperialism. Nor does it mean that "evidence" is more important to Washington than its immediate political needs. In August 1998, for example, someone bombed U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The Clinton administration claimed it was a team directed by Osama bin Laden, and ordered rocket attacks on an alleged mountain base in Afghanistan and on a medicine factory in Sudan. During the civil war in Afghanistan, Bin Laden was an ally of Washington against the USSR and received weapons from the U.S. The factory in Sudan made medicine, not chemical weapons as the Clinton administration charged, and had nothing to do with Bin Laden. Yet this didn't stop the attack. To consider a domestic example, the FBI and U.S. courts will concoct a case against someone like Leonard Peltier--a political leader of the American Indian Movement at Pine Ridge, S.D.--when it has no real evidence he shot two FBI agents who had invaded the reservation. They will do the same against Libya or Iran or north Korea or Yugoslavia or whatever "enemy" they wish to demonize. It is unfortunate that the honest and heartfelt feelings of grief and anger of the relatives of those who died on Pan Am Flight 103 have been manipulated against Libya. It would be more fitting if they would join with Libyan, Iranian, Iraqi and other victims of U.S. aggression and exploitation and point their fingers at the real terrorists in Washington and the Pentagon, in the CIA and Congress, who assault the people of the world. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
