Recently I was given a copy of a report written by Paul Foot and published in Private Eye.
As I read through this article I was once again struck by how powerless oridinary people are when faced with international politics and the determination of those in power to protect themselves and their intelligence services, whose deceptions are incompatible with the search for justice.
The report highlights just how much time and effort those in power are prepared to spend to manipluate our understanding of events and justify their own actions. It also shows that we cannot as individuals trust the governments that we often look to for the truth, for our governments have others who they answer to.
It is interesting that Malta plays a pivotal part in the Lockerbie inquiry and even if one overlooks the glaring inconsistencies in the verdicts, it is obvious that Malta has been a melting pot for the many faces of international terrorism for many decades now.
I was particularly struck by a paragraph near the end of the article,
"In February 1990, a group of British relatives went to the American embassy in London for a meeting with the seven members of the President’s commission on aviation security and terrorism. Martin Cadman (whose son Jim was on the flight) remembers: “After we’d had our say, the meeting broke up and we moved towards the door. As we got there, I found myself talking to two members of the Commission – I think they were senators. One of them said:
'Your government and our government know exactly what happened at Lockerbie. But they are not going to tell you.’ ”
Eleven years later, after a prolific waste of many millions of pounds and words, that is still the position.
On a number of occassions similar statements have been made to the families of the men who were lost on flight 9H-ABU.