@BumbleBeeBoogie,
I'm not surprised at all that British prime minister Lloyd George was up to no good while thousands of his soldiers were dieing in the trenches during WW1.
It has been revealed this month that the British Brown government did everything it could to get release of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi who bombed the plane that fell on Lockerbie, killing all passengers and those on the ground. Why? To get a good oil agreement from Lybia, that's why!
Brown accused of hypocrisy over Megrahi release
Herald Scotland, by Michael Settle
8 Feb 2011
The government of Gordon Brown stood accused last night of hypocrisy after official documents revealed that it did “all it could” to facilitate the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
A trawl of more than 150 declassified Whitehall documents showed how officials had spoken privately of a “gameplan” and “discreetly” working behind the scenes to help the Libyans secure the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi while ministers professed publicly that the decision on his future was the Scottish Government’s alone.
Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary who reviewed the papers, concluded a policy was progressively developed to facilitate the Libyan Government in its appeal to the Scottish Government, yet he found no evidence the then UK government “pressured or lobbied” Holyrood for Megrahi’s release.
Furthermore, the files showed that at all times the UK government had been clear that any decision to release Megrahi or transfer him to Libya was a matter solely for the Scottish Government.
However, in the Commons, David Cameron, who described Megrahi’s release as “profoundly wrong”, insisted the previous Labour administration had “not given a complete picture”.
“We were told by the last government what they did not want – the death of Megrahi in a Scottish prison – but we weren’t told by the last government what they did want – which was
the facilitation of his release,” he added, to Tory cries of “shame” and “disgusting”.
The strongest attack came from Tory grandee Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Scottish Secretary at the time of the tragedy in December 1988 when 270 people were killed, who suggested the files showed how the previous government was “up to its neck in this shoddy business” and was “desperate” to see the Libyan released.
He told MPs: “It must, therefore, share responsibility with the Scottish Government for one of the most foolish and shameful decisions in years.”
Later, a source close to the Prime Minister said the previous Labour government had been guilty of misleading people, while a senior Conservative source told The Herald: “Saying one thing in public but doing another thing in private shows Labour’s hypocrisy on Lockerbie.”
Tory HQ released quotations from former Labour ministers, which it claimed showed “Labour’s lack of honesty” about Megrahi’s release.
One from Ed Balls, in September 2009, had him saying: “None of us wanted to see the release of al Megrahi.”
However, Jack Straw, former justice secretary, insisted the Brown government had “acted properly at all times”.
He accused Mr Cameron of putting a gloss on Sir Gus’s report, stressing how the Cabinet Secretary had concluded “nothing in the material” contradicted what either Mr Brown or David Miliband, the then foreign secretary, had said.
Last night, the former PM issued a statement, saying he recognised that any decision on Megrahi’s release was for Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, alone.
Mr Brown said: “When the issue came to me, I took the view – as the report confirms – that the British government should not pressure or attempt to use influence on this quasi-judicial decision of the Scottish minister. At no point did I talk to, write to or contact the First Minister or anyone else.”
In America, families of the victims condemned the previous UK government for telling “a pack of lies” while Senator Robert Menendez, from New Jersey, said: “The UK didn’t just turn a blind eye to Megrahi’s release, they cut deals that set the terrorist free.”
The severest political attack came from Alex Salmond who said that, while Mr Brown was silent on Megrahi’s release, in Scotland his party sharply criticised the SNP Government.
“It seems to me the greatest example of organised political hypocrisy that I’ve ever seen in my time in politics,” he said.
Meantime, in a day of claim and counter-claim, Labour pointed to some of the released papers, saying they showed how the Scottish Government had attempted a “dodgy deal” with Whitehall over the Prisoner Transfer Agreement to avoid paying significant amounts in compensation to prisoners who had to “slop out” and over devolving powers on air gun legislation.
A source close to Mr Salmond denied the allegation, saying references in the documents were down to a “misunderstanding”.
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