© Stefan Rousseau/PATony Blair with Muammar Gaddafi in May 2007.
Document emerges from 2008 showing agreement 'ready for signature' as soon as purchase of air defence system concludedAn email has emerged suggesting a connection between the prisoner transfer deal negotiated between Libya and the last Labour government, which ultimately paved the way for the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and a £400m arms deal.
The document, which shows that Sir Vincent Fean, the then British ambassador to Libya, wrote to Tony Blair in June 2008 saying that the prisoner transfer agreement was "ready for signature in London" as soon as Libya went ahead with the purchase of an air defence system, was obtained by the
Sunday Telegraph.
Blair was no longer prime minister at the time, but Fean mentioned the two issues in a 1,300-word briefing for Blair before a visit to Tripoli where he was meeting Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator.
The prisoner transfer agreement was eventually signed in November 2008. It did not directly trigger the release of Megrahi, but it enabled the Scottish government to release him on compassionate grounds in August 2009 because he was suffering from terminal cancer. The arms deal was never concluded.
Comment: Wow, so the Brits exchanged al-Megrahi, in all probability a patsy for the real culprits behind the Lockerbie Bombing -
the CIA - in exchange for an 'air defence system' that cost over half a billion euros... which just three years later obviously failed pretty spectacularly as Libya was carpet-bombed with hardly any capability of defending itself against NATO airpower.
Duplicitous, murderous bastards.
Comment: It's safe to say that the FBI had a file open on Hastings long before the day of his 'crash'. So his email to colleagues and friends shortly before his death suggests that 'the FBI', or whoever it was, was actually hounding him towards his death, not just 'investigating' him.