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Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Not moved.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Not moved.
Read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Second Reading what day? No day named.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
I shall take points of order afterwards.
Second Reading deferred till Monday 3 March.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Not moved.
Order for Second Reading read.
Second Reading deferred till Monday 3 March.
Read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Second Reading what day? No day named.
Order for Second Reading read.
Second Reading deferred till Monday 3 March.
Read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Not moved.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Not moved.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Not moved.
Order for Second Reading read.
Second Reading deferred till Monday 3 March.
Read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).
Order for Second Reading read.
Second Reading deferred till Monday 3 March.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Not moved.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Not moved.
Mr. Alfred Morris:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not grossly demeaning of this honourable House that we are open to the accusation of ignoring even as worthy a Bill as the one to help severely handicapped children, by a Government Whip--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. It is not for the Chair to comment.
Mr. Morris:
Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Nothing could be further to that point of order.
Ordered,
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
In 1993, with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway), I visited Iraq; we did so at our own expense. The sanctions were cruel and counter-productive, but, as my hon. Friends the Members for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) and for Woolwich (Mr. Austin-Walker) will discuss Iraq, I shall discuss Libya, not simply because of the grave injuries to the families who lost their loved ones eight long years and two months ago, but on account of the on-going damage to British industry and our relations with the Arab world and Africa.
I do not exaggerate. I quote from Nelson Mandela's letter to the Prime Minister:
I ask the Minister--I warned him that I would do so--what reports the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has received from the United States of the judgment that has been made on Thurman, because he is the man who, on 15 June 1990, claimed identification of the crucial timing device. He is the man who, with Williams, interrogated Narwhan Khreesat, and I am told that, at that crucial interview, the Scottish police were not welcome, and were excluded.
For 34 years, I have dealt with and known Lord Advocates. I have high regard for Crown agents, but I must say to the Crown Office, as the longest serving Scottish Member of Parliament, that I do not believe that they now have the evidence, which they claim to have, to conduct a successful court case. Indeed, I believe that the last thing they want is a trial, either in Edinburgh or in The Hague, because the professor of Scots law at the university of Edinburgh and many others in legal Edinburgh--including Peter Anderson, the lawyer of Simpson Marwick, who has been much involved--believe that any Scottish judge would throw out the case within hours, on the grounds that there was no case to answer.
Nothing better illustrates the weakness of Washington's case against Libya than its cynical misuse of the law to destroy the character and reputation of anyone who dares
to challenge its position on Lockerbie. Juval Aviv, the investigator for Pan Am until his report implicating the CIA was leaked to the press, was immediately subjected to a relentless campaign of harassment and vilification by the FBI. For five years, a squad of agents spent thousands of man hours raking through his affairs for something that might discredit him.
Charged last summer with faking a report to GEC in 1991--much to the surprise of GEC, which had not complained--Aviv was arrested by the FBI in a blaze of publicity designed to show that he was in the habit of producing fraudulent reports. The case against him was so obviously contrived, however, that a federal jury summarily threw it out. Concurring with the verdict, the judge observed that the charges had plainly been brought for another purpose--the inference, in his view, being that they were connected with Aviv's Lockerbie report.
Aviv has written to the Crown Office. I warned the Minister that I would ask whether the Crown Office is minded to apologise to Aviv; otherwise, it will find itself involved in a court case.
Still more scandalous has been Washington's systematic persecution of Lester Coleman III, the former American intelligence agent who publicly linked the Lockerbie disaster with the activities of the Drug Enforcement Agency in the middle east. Facing a similar trumped-up charge and a volley of death threats against himself and his family, Coleman sought asylum in Sweden, where he collaborated on a book, "Trail of the Octopus", with Don Goddard, in which he described what he had seen while stationed in Cyprus and mentioning its relevance to the Lockerbie inquiry.
On the eve of the book's publication, Coleman was indicted in New York on charges of perjury based on a sworn statement that he had made some years earlier in a civil suit by Pan Am against the United States Government. Clearly intended to deter the publishers from bringing out the book, the charges were not only as flimsy as those levelled against Aviv but entirely without precedent in United States' law.
Last October, unwilling to expose his wife and young family any longer to the rigours of life on the run, Coleman decided to return to the United States and clear his name, confident that the indictment would never stand up in court. Today, however, it begins to look as though that the charges against him will never be put to the test.
Although he was clearly subject to some risk, Coleman returned home voluntarily to stand trial. As a perjurer in a civil matter, he is hardly a threat to the community, yet bail was set at such an impossibly high level that he was left literally to rot in a federal detention centre.
In January, Coleman was diagnosed as suffering from cancer and had a malignant lump surgically removed from his left shoulder. He was sent back to prison in shackles and handcuffs with a supply of dressings, which he was left to change for himself. Inevitably, without proper treatment, he would have become grossly infected, and only the most strenuous effort on behalf of his volunteer defence attorney succeeded in getting him transferred to the prison wing of a New York public hospital, thereby almost certainly saving his life.
By returning unexpectedly to face the music, Coleman has placed his accusers in a serious quandary. To prove its case against him, Washington will be obliged to open
its Lockerbie and intelligence files, which it has strenuously resisted doing for the past eight years on the grounds of national security. As it is unlikely to change its mind now, its only alternative in the long run is to drop the charges, although that would be tantamount to admitting that they should never have been brought in the first place.
That, notwithstanding Standing Order No. 14B (Proceedings under an Act or on European Community documents), the Speaker shall--
(1) at the sitting on Monday 3rd March, put the Questions on the Motions in the names of Mr. Secretary Howard relating to the draft Representation of the People (Variation of Limits of Candidates' Election Expenses) Order 1997 and Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew relating to the draft Local Elections (Variations of Limits of Candidates' Election Expenses) (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 not later than one and a half hours after the start of proceedings on the first such Motion; and these Motions may be proceeded with, though opposed, after Ten o'clock;
(2) at the sitting on Tuesday 4th March, put the Questions on the four Motions in the name of Mr. Secretary Forsyth relating to Local Government Finance (Scotland) not later than Seven o'clock; and
(3) at the sitting on Wednesday 5th March--
(i) put the Question on the Motion in the name of Mr. Secretary Howard relating to Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism not later than Seven o'clock; and
(ii) put the Question on the Motion in the name of Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew relating to the draft Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 not later than Ten o'clock.--[Mr. Peter Ainsworth.]2.34 pm
"I understand that Colonel Qhaddafy is prepared to allow the individuals to be tried in Europe or elsewhere and much as I respect the integrity of your courts, I wondered whether you would not give consideration to such an alternative arrangement. In making this approach, I am conscious of the policy of your Government which you previous explained to me, but do so in the interest not only of Libya but of the continent, the Muslim world and international reconciliation."
The Prime Minister wrote to me on 30 May 1995:
"I will of course be replying to your question about my correspondence with Nelson Mandela, but I am afraid I will not be agreeing to place it in the Library".
This is the ninth Adjournment debate that we have had on this subject, but it takes place in very different circumstances from those of all previous debates, because something has happened; that something is thatJames T. Thurman, called often Tom Thurman, who was pivotal to the whole of the Government's case on Lockerbie, has been assigned to other roles for having fabricated forensic evidence.
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