Vindication For Edward Herman

Just a little footnote in history. But yesterday I read a columnist (can't remember who) saying an former Iranian official has admitted that it was his country that blew up Lockerbie, Pan Am Flight 103, and not Libya. The Libyan guy convicted of the bombing was mysteriously given an early release on the grounds that he had three months to live before his cancer killed him, but he lived another three years. The deal to get him out of prison was dodgy to say the least.

Aha! It was Gwynne Dyer!

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan airline official who was convicted of placing the bomb aboard the plane and sentenced to 27 years in prison by a special international court in 2001, was freed from jail in 2009 and sent home, allegedly dying from cancer and with only three months to live. He eventually did die three years later, but it was a very peculiar thing for the Scottish government to do.
Megrahi was in a Scottish jail because Pan Am Flight 103, en route from London to Detroit, had blown up over the Scottish village of Lockerbie, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 in the village below. But he clearly wasn’t dying when he was freed, and he had served less than a third of his sentence.  
And there was something even more disturbing about the case. As a condition of his release, Megrahi was required to drop an appeal against his conviction that had been granted by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2007.
The SCCRC listed no fewer than six grounds for serious concern about Megrahi’s conviction, including the fact that the U.S. Justice Department made an undisclosed payment of $3 million to two Maltese citizens whose evidence had linked Megrahi with the suitcase that contained the bomb. If the appeal had gone ahead, Megrahi’s conviction would probably have been quashed.

Edward Herman's been saying this for years.

The blowing up of the Iranian airbus passenger jet was, no doubt, an accident. But for the ship that fired the missile to get a heroes' welcome at home, and the whole crew to get medals, and for Bush Sr. to say "I will never apologize to the United States" was all a bit much. I'm sure if the roles had been reversed, Iran would be a radioactive ruin by now.

Anyhow, that's my post for today.