It's probably time to start buffing a proud apology for involvement in release of Semtex-distributer (and now national hero) Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi back to the people's paradise of Libya ... and even one for inaction regarding the geriatric kleptocrat who's the front man for the regime in Uganda.
Today's Melbourne Age features an attack by Geoffrey Robertson QC on cozying up to Colonel Gaddafi, the dictator lampooned by Patrick Cook a generation ago as Colonel Quackbiskit but since become oh so very respectable, quite salonfahig as they used to say in 1932.
Robertson says that
His victories continue: the Swiss Government has made a grovelling apology for daring to detain one of his sons for brutally assaulting servants. His finest coup, other than that which brought him to power, has been to celebrate the Lockerbie atrocity by welcoming home from a Scottish prison the man who committed it - undoubtedly at Gaddafi's instigation.Robertson speculates that
By what perverse process has the godfather of modern terrorism been allowed such a triumph? At one level, the low parochial level of a Scotland recently ''devolved'' so it can administer its own criminal laws, Gaddafi's triumph may be put down to human error and indeed to human stupidity.
Al-Megrahi was convicted of the murder of 270 innocents on PanAm 103. Eight years into his sentence he began a fresh appeal, and contracted prostate cancer. Some months later, the Scottish Minister of Justice, 'Kenny' MacAskill, an undistinguished lawyer, freed al-Megrahi in the name of "compassion", a virtue he claimed to be specially embedded in Scottish law. ...
Al-Megrahi, as an unrepentant and cold-blooded mass murderer, is unforgivable. The notion he could be pitied, allowed to end his days in Libya as a national hero, was ridiculous. The pardon bestowed by MacAskill was not, in law or in logic, an act of compassion. It showed kindness to nobody and rewarded the wrongdoer.
The Justice Secretary relied upon a promise from Libya that his reception there would be low-key. What sensible minister would believe the promise of an unpredictable terrorist regime? It must have been blindingly obvious that the release of al-Megrahi would coincide with Gaddafi's 40th anniversary celebrations, and hailed a triumph. It must have been equally obvious it would be an act of cruelty to all who have suffered from Libya's terrorist crimes
After a week's silence from the British Government, it emerged Gaddafi and son were assured, during trade talks, that although it was a matter for the Scots, the British Prime Minister did not want al-Megrahi to die in prison. This wink seems to have secured the Libyan nod, and the trade deal went ahead.The attack echoes an Open Democracy profile by Fred Halliday on 'Libya's regime at 40: a state of kleptocracy'.
Anyone who has studied Libyan governance knows that if al-Megrahi is guilty, then Gaddafi gave him the order. There is no way a decision to commit an atrocity of this magnitude would have been taken by his intelligence services (run by his brother-in-law) without his knowledge and approval.
For more than 30 of his 40 years in power, Gaddafi has run a terrorist state, initially sponsoring and training the most violent terrorist groups and supplying the IRA with much of the Semtex it used to bomb British citizens. He ordered the assassination of Libyan opponents of democracy (calling them ''stray dogs'') at home and abroad. Al-Megrahi's colleagues have been convicted, by a French court, in absentia of the bombing of a UTA passenger jet. And Gaddafi has encouraged mayhem throughout Africa.
Halliday notes that
Libya remains controlled by the whimsical leadership around Gaddafi. Arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and disappearance still take place; relatives or close colleagues ... come and go, as do supposedly "modernising" ministers. The junior members of the family, some perhaps well-intentioned, others perhaps self-deluded, play intermittent public roles, and command media and commercial attention abroad; but since there is no constitutional system, and since all information is speculative, no one - not even these younger members themselves - can say what it means. ...Halliday goes on that
Libya has not introduced significant changes to its political system, and especially not with regard to human rights or governance. [It remains] one of the most dictatorial as well as opaque of Arab regimes. Its 6 million people enjoy no significant freedoms: the annual reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Libya offer a glimpse of the real situation, one of continued and systematic abuse of human rights. Those who oppose the ideology of the Gaddafi revolution may, under Law 71, be arrested and even executed. There is not even the flicker of diversity found in such neighbouring dictatorships as Egypt or Sudan.
The improvement in Libya's international profile in recent years reflects the abandonment of the regime's nuclear-weapons programme and its policy of hunting down Libyan dissidents living abroad (including their kidnap and murder). But this regime has shown scant regret, and those who ordered such actions as the shooting dead of the British policewoman Yvonne Fletcher in central London in March 1984, the blowing up of passenger airlines, and the transfer of sophisticated weaponry and material to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) remain in power. The official response to the Lockerbie trial and al-Megrahi release reflects an attitude of mind that rejects real contrition or admission of responsibility. It still attempts to bully governments it has been in disagreement with, such as Switzerland.He concludes
The prominent guests at the celebrations of 1 September 2009 in Tripoli included Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and the International Criminal Court (ICC)-indicted Sudanese president. Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Another honoured invitee was Mohammad Abdi Hasan Hayr, the Somali fisherman believed to be a leader of the pirates operating off Africa's longest coastline. The character of Libya's friends in Europe tells its own tale: among them are Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (a frequent visitor) and the country's former chief political fixer (and mafia collaborator) Giulio Andreotti, who gave the Libyans advance warning of the American air-assault of 1986.
Libya is far from the most brutal regime in the world, or even the region: it has less blood on its hands than (for example) Sudan, Iraq, and Syria. But al-Jamahiriyah remains a grotesque entity. In its way it resembles a protection-racket run by a family group and its associates who wrested control of a state and its people by force and then ruled for forty years with no attempt to secure popular legitimation.
The outside world may be compelled by considerations of security, energy and investment to deal with this state. But there is no reason to indulge the fantasies that are constantly promoted about its political and social character, within the country and abroad. Al-Jamahiriyah is not a "state of the masses": it is a state of robbers, in formal terms a kleptocracy. The Libyan people have for far too long been denied the right to choose their own leaders and political system - and to benefit from their country's wealth via oil-and-gas deals of the kind the west is now so keen to promote. The sooner the form of rule they endure is consigned to the past, the better.