Paper delivered by Hugh Stephens, Coordinator of the International Commission of Inquiry on Economic Sanctions, to the International Conference on The Hunger Weapon called by the organisation "Un Ponte Per Baghdad" and sponsored by the International Commission of Inquiry on Economic Sanctions and other organisations, Rome, May 10 to 11, 1996. The conference was attended by ICIES Co-Presidents Margarita Papandreou and Father Miguel D'Escoto, with the participation of jurists, humanitarian organisations, human rights activists as well as representatives of peace associations and international solidarity groups, political parties and labour unions from Italy, France, Spain, Britain, Germany, Greece, the United States, Nicaragua, Cuba, Libya, Tunisia, Ireland, Algeria and Iraq.
Text of paper:-
The organisationis one of the small but valiant groups of people in a number of countries who are campaigning to stop the use and threatened use of the weapon of hunger and blockade, a weapon which is being used to inflict the most open, flagrant and deliberate act of genocide by the big powers in today's world. It is consequently a great privilege for me to have been invited to participate in this important conference, in the presence of Father D'Escoto of the formerly-blockaded country of Nicaragua, Dr Abdel Razzaq and his delegation from Iraq, as well as our Libyan and Cuban friends with us here today, representing as they do the courage and determination of the blockaded peoples themselves upon which the destiny of their countries depends. Today I have been asked to speak specifically on Libya, the Lockerbie case and the sanctions issue, and I believe that this is something that can make a useful contribution to the main work of this conference, since each specific solidarity campaign, whether with Iraq, Libya, Cuba, or anywhere else, has its own lessons and experience and it is precisely such an exchange that our Commission of Inquiry seeks to further.
On 21st December 1998, the Lockerbie tragedy occurred, as a result of which 270 people died. The US and British governments immediately began to make a long series of wildly unstable and ever-changing allegations from which, it seems, few countries in the Middle East escaped unscathed. Eventually, in November 1991, three years after the event, it was decided to focus the accusations on Libya, and the British government, in full-throated old-fashioned 19th century colonialist style, issued a demand that Libya surrender the two individuals at whom its accusations were now targeted, demanded the payment of compensation, and proceeded, together with the US authorities, to make public statements implying that they would otherwise attack Libya militarily, presumably along the lines of the April 1986 air raids on Tripoli and Benghazi.
The fact that threats to use force by the US and Britain have, in recent years, once again become a matter of course should not allow us to let them pass and be forgotten. Our Commission accordingly retains on record depositions regarding the exact dates and occasions on which US President Bush, US Vice-President Dan Quayle, US Secretary for Defence Dick Cheney, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, and British Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Douglas Hogg made such threats between November 1991 and January 1992. (1)
It should be noted that these threats were made before the UN Security Council had passed its Resolutions 731 and 748 of January and March 1992, so that in this instance no appeal may be made to that body's deliberations with a view to giving a veneer of spurious legality to such unilateral threats by the US and British governments.
These threats, in short, are further proof, if indeed further proof were needed, that the US and British governments have no respect for international legality and international norms of behaviour when it comes to their dealings with Libya. This unworthy approach was also demonstrated by the following:
Such is the blatant manner in which both the US and British governments have demonstrated that their attitude to orderly legal procedure in this matter is not to the slightest degree serious. What is serious, however, is that they are clearly liable actually to carry out their threats, as they demonstrated in Libya ten years ago, as well as subsequently elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond.
- Right from the very start of the British government's 'investigations', flagrant deviations from normal legal practice occurred. There even remains a body 'missing' from among those recovered from the wreckage, and the British authorities refuse to account for this. (2)
- It is a principle as old as international law itself that there can be no extradition in the absence of an extradition treaty.(3) It is a principle which remains clearly-enunciated in all current international legal textbooks. (4)
- The demands for compensation to be paid by Libya were made in an ignorant and nonsensical manner without any reference to the basic and general legal principle that the question of compensation cannot arise before liability has been established, to say nothing of the particularities of this case in which the US and Britain did not even accompany their demands with any proposals for the setting up of a mechanism whereby liability could be determined. (5)
- Through selective 'leaks' to the press, and to certain favoured journalists, a hysterical atmosphere of 'trial by media' was created, targeting not only the two named individuals but also the authorities, country and people of Libya, thereby nullifying any prospect of a fair trial in a British court, according to a fashion prevalent in numerous cases of the miscarriage of justice over recent years, particularly those involving political opponents of the British state and members of the ethnic minorities.
- There has been a consistent failure to investigate, or even consider, other plausible explanations for the Lockerbie tragedy, some of which may implicate agencies of the US government and other parts of the Western establishment.
As for the Libyan authorities, they, in complete contrast, have stuck rigidly to the relevant international legislation, which contains a clear and detailed procedure for such cases, namely the 1971 Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civilian Aviation, a convention to which Libya, Britain and the USA are all signatories: (6)
Please would any lawyer or anyone else say what else the Libyan authorities could reasonably be expected to do? The fact is that they have throughout stuck to the spirit and the letter of the relevant international legislation.
- Under Article 5 Paragraph 2 of this Convention, the Libyan authorities assumed their responsibility for submitting the two accused to the processes of Libyan criminal law;
- Under Article 6 Paragraph 1 of the Convention, the Libyan authorities took steps to ensure the presence of the two for the purpose of such legal procedures;
- Under Article 7, the Libyan authorities carried out a preliminary inquiry into the case;
- Under Article 11 Paragraph 1, the Libyan authorities sought relevant judicial assistance from the US and Britain to take the process further.
The idea of international legality and accepted international norms of behaviour has become a popular concept among the people of the newly-independent countries. Libyan public opinion provides a vivid illustration of this. It is a country where democratic opinion is very freely expressed. (Visitors will find that even taxi drivers are fully aware of the provisions of the Montreal Convention!) The country's leadership is clearly acting in accordance with this public opinion in resisting the arbitrary, illegal and ignorant demands of the big powers, which would, as they correctly point out, constitute a clear violation of the human and civil rights of its citizens.
In this context, one should note that, even as the demands were being made to hand over the two accused to the British legal system, the British media were filled with almost monotonous regularity with reports concerning the miscarriages of justice for which that system had been responsible.(7)
Though the British authorities remained largely impervious to this series of scandals that would have shamed almost any other government, the lesson was clear to Libyan public opinion that the two accused, if handed over, would by no means be assured of a fair trial, but would on the contrary risk unjust conviction by a legal system which was clearly dysfunctional with regard to its ability to handle such cases.
Further, the popular support for the idea of adhering to the principles of international legality may also be clearly seen at the international level. The prolonged and determined attempts by Libya to insist on a constructive, practical, reasonable and fair procedure for handling the Lockerbie issue have won the full endorsement and support of the League of Arab States, the Organisation of African Unity, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the Non-Aligned Movement, and other international and regional organisations, as well as governments such as that of the People's Republic of China and those of members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Such organisations and governments together represent the overwhelming majority of humanity.
Like the principles of international law themselves, the above-mentioned international and regional organisations are the fruit of long and hard struggle by the people of the newly-independent countries to build and consolidate their independence. However, the bullying and blockading of independent-minded countries, together with other adverse changes in the international situation, have served, to a degree, to undermine and corrode their effectiveness, particularly in terms of taking concerted and co-ordinated action against international hegemony. Indeed, such bullying and blockades have undermined the standing and effectiveness of the United Nations itself, as well as its affiliated specialist organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), all of whose fundamental charters and principles are blatantly violated by the sanctions policy of the big powers. (8)
Our Commission is only one of a number of bodies and groups, many of them represented here at this conference in Rome, which have advanced and sought to publicise and build support for these legal and other arguments. Indeed, in April 1994, when I was given the privilege of attending the Lawyers' Seminar in Tripoli, organised by Nord Sud 21 and others, a veritable galaxy of legal talent was arrayed on these points. (9)
The task of our Commission of Inquiry, as a popular tribunal, is to gain an audience for all such talent, and thereby to build a conscious and effective lobbying and campaigning movement able to win influence in the circles that matter so as to divert the US and British governments from their unreasonable and belligerent course, which has no basis in law, and indeed has brought the very machinery of international law into disrepute.
The task of working to gain such influence is a task which falls in the first instance upon us, the campaigners and activists. Lawyers can present the legal principles regarding extradition, compensation, and so on, and political scientists can elucidate the damage done to the international system by the persistence of the Lockerbie problem, but it is the task of us campaigners and activists to bring all this home to those in public life who ultimately have to make the relevant decisions. Above all, we must bring home to these decision-makers the full significance of the central decision which they must make, and that is whether they wish to be remembered as the generation of world leaders who were responsible for a new and silent holocaust of world starvation, destitution and debt, and for its most concentrated, deliberate and blatantly criminal manifestation: the genocide taking place in the Middle East which is the subject of our Conference here today. It is our heavy responsibility to gain the strength that will force them to desist from their current course.
Such are the enormous tasks that lie upon our shoulders. Such is the great importance of our efforts, and in the first instance the efforts of those present at this conference and of those like us around the world. Let us remain working together after this conference. Whatever we get right and whatever we get wrong, let us above all not give up and lapse into inactivity. For so long as we continue to work, then we continue to learn. And one of the main things we learn is how to work with each other. Let us reinforce each other's efforts, exchange experience, and do all in our power to fulfil our duty to end the shame and scandal of the US-led blockades for once and for all.
1 See the paper delivered by Dr Omer Yousif Elagab of City University London, to the London International Conference of our Commission of Inquiry, August 19th to 20th 1995.
2 Repeated attempts have been made to extract answers in Parliament to questions addressed to the Ministers concerned about such unexplained aspects of the Lockerbie affair. Particularly active in this respect have been Tam Dalyell MP and Sir Teddy Taylor MP.
3 In a submission to our Commission on November 7th 1993, John Platts Mills QC traced the legal history of this question back to the 2nd century BC, when attempts were made by the Roman Republic to secure the extradition of the Carthaginian general Hannibal from a kingdom in Asia Minor where he had taken refuge following his defeat in the West.
4 This was extensively discussed in the paper delivered to the Seminar called by the Institute for Independence Studies and the International Direct Democracy Research Association on April 4th 1996 in London by Dr Ibrahim Legwell, head of the team of defence lawyers in the Lockerbie case (see the text in the special issue of the Journal of the Institute for Independence Studies, forthcoming). See also Elagab, ibid., for references to current textbooks.
5 Elagab, ibid.
6 Elagab, ibid.
7 Among the most prominent and notorious examples in this regard are those of the Guildford 4 (October 1989), the Birmingham 6 (March 1991), and the Tottenham 3 (December 1991).
8 This process has been documented in submissions to our Commission by Dr Terry Duffy of Magee University, Derry, Ireland.
9 Our association with Nord Sud 21 has continued through the kind participation in our activities of their representatives Professor Robert Charvin of Nice University, France, and Dr Philippe Chansay Wilmotte of Brussels, Belgium, both of whom have contributed by means of discussions, consultations, seminar papers, etc.Reply-To: Hugh Stephens justice@easynet.co.uk
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