Beneficiary of Lockerbie given Nobel by US masters

[Paul Rigby]

For the benefit of those slightly younger than our estimable selves, I hasten to add the following extracts by way of explaining the pliant Finn's earlier service to the US:

Patrick Heseldine*, “Letters to the editor: Missing diplomat links and the Lockerbie tragedy,” The Guardian, 5 August 1991



Patrick Heseldine, “Letters to the editor: Flight Path,” The Guardian, 22 December 1992



*Formerly of the Information Department, Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Patrick Heseldine, “Letters: ANC as fall-guys for Lockerbie bombing,” The Guardian, 22 April 1992:

That double standards were evident in the Rambo-style imposition of sanctions against Libya for its refusal to “hand over” the Lockerbie suspects – compared with an apparently limp response to the refusal three and a half years ago by Belgium and Ireland to “extradite” a suspected terrorist to stand trial in Britain – cannot reasonably be denied (Letters, April 18). The subversion of the UN Security Council as a pawn in the West’s game of geopolitics and the denial of a fair trial to the suspects (having already been convicted by a supine media) still amount to less than half of the emerging political thriller story of Lockerbie.

Readers of the letters page since December 1988 will know my view on where ultimate culpability for the crime of Lockerbie resides: South African state-sponsored terrorism targeted PanAm 103’s most prominent victim, Bernt Carlsson, UN Commissioner for Namibia. Based purely on a hunch and some circumstantial evidence, it is a view that few others share.

In the past week, however, David Beresford’s excellent reporting on the Winnie Mandela scandal in South Africa has prompted a dreadful thought and reminded me of what foreign minister, Pik Botha, said on Radio 4’s Today programme after the December 21, 1988 disaster. Like Carlsson, Mr Botha was flying to New York for the signing ceremony at the UN of the Namibia Independence Agreement. Mr Botha cancelled his booking on PanAm flight 103 and took the earlier PanAm 101. He told Radio 4 that he thought he himself had been the target and that the ANC were the perpetrators of Lockerbie.

According to David Beresford, the Winnie scandal began to unfold in the week after Lockerbie, on December 29, 1988. A key and mysterious player in the scandal was Mrs Xoliswa Falati, Winnie’s co-accused in the Stompie Moeketsi Seipei murder trial, whose legal costs were reportedly met by the Libyan government. If my theory that Winnie Mandela has been and continues to be framed is correct and the ANC are being groomed as the real Lockerbie culprits, the Western media are about to tell us that Libya trained ANC guerrillas and fixed on one of Nelson Mandela’s first overseas itineraries after his release from a 25-year incarceration. The inexorable conclusion is that the Libyans will be shown to have acted as the ANC’s agents by attempting to assassinate Mr Botha and blowing up PanAm 103 instead.

Now that the cat is prematurely out of this particular bag, the politicians concerned should consider their positions. Who will take the rap: Bush or De Klerk, Major or Mitterand?