Mick Hartley

Oh dear. Michael Howard thinks he’s on to a winner by attacking Tony Blair for his proposed visit to Libya:

Tory leader Michael Howard claimed the meeting would cause “considerable distress” to the families of the 270 people killed at Lockerbie in 1988. Mr Howard questioned the timing of the meeting so soon after Mr Blair today attended a memorial service for the victims of the Madrid bombings. Mr Howard said: “It is quite odd timing to go from a service which commemorates the victims of the biggest terrorist attack on Europe since Lockerbie, to go straight from there to Libya.”

But the families of the Lockerbie victims failed to express the necessary outrage:

He was promptly contradicted, however, by the spokesman for the Flight 103 families, Jim Swire, who declared his wholehearted support for the talks and praised Mr Blair for striving to turn a former sponsor of terrorism towards peace.

Jim Swire, in fact, is not at all persuaded that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie. Here he talks of the Scottish trial:

“Our group and myself fought like fury for that trial to happen,” says Swire. But when the Scottish government presented its case in court—a case investigators had portrayed for years as iron clad—it looked more like papier maché. A star witness was not even vaguely credible. “By the end of the trial my doubts had been reinforced, not relieved,” says Swire. The defense bungled badly, too. Finally, one of the suspects was convicted in 2001: Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, who’s serving a life sentence in Glasgow. “I don’t think that man should be in prison,” says Swire. “Our search was always for truth and justice. What’s going on now is a purely political process.” Swire believes the bomb was the kind found with Jibril’s group. He believes “the Iranians had the strongest and freshest motive.” He wants to see those avenues of inquiry opened up again.

See here for some background.