Gaddafi: Libya is InnocentLibyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has condemned the verdict in the Lockerbie bombing trial as an "injustice", and insisted "Libya was innocent of Lockerbie".Colonel Gaddafi made the comments during his first detailed reaction to the verdict, in which a Libyan man, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, was found guilty of the 1988 bombing which left 270 people dead. In a speech that lasted nearly three hours on Monday, the Libyan leader said the United States and Britain had blamed his country for political reasons and that the investigation before the trial had not been neutral. Colonel Gaddafi's promises to provide new evidence which would clear Al Megrahi of the bombing did not materialise. He made only one specific, new charge against the British police who investigated the bombing. He said that the investigators had planted clothes in the wreckage of the plane that were later crucial in linking Al Megrahi to the crime. He also delivered a scathing attack on the United States and its policy on Libya. Colonel Gaddafi highlighted questions raised by various legal experts about the verdict, in some cases quoting them. He went to great lengths to try to disparage the Lockerbie ruling, often quoting from the 80-page document. In the statement, delivered in the form of a long and rambling lecture, full of rhetorical flourishes, Colonel Gaddafi characterised the Lockerbie case as a chapter in the struggle between good and evil. A BBC correspondent in Tripoli, Frank Gardner, says that while Colonel Gaddafi's speech was long on anti-Western rhetoric it is unlikely to unsettle the British or US Governments. But it does appear to show that Libya is determined to fight the Lockerbie verdict. |
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