THE US reveals it has a new suspect in the Lockerbie bombing case. Aamer Anwar, the Megrahi family’s lawyer, says he finds the timing of the American announcement “suspect”. I wholeheartedly agree, not least because this is the THIRD time in just over five years that Abu Agila Mas’ud has been named as a NEW suspect!
On October 15, 2015, BBC News revealed that Mas’ud was a new suspect in the Lockerbie bombing case and authorities were keen to interview him. On December 20, 2018 – just prior to the 30th anniversary of the bombing and in the wake of two new books by Douglas Boyd and Robert John Simons which both made the case that Megrahi had been the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice – various media sources reported that Mas’ud had emerged as a “new” suspect in the Lockerbie case. Again, the authorities were eager to question him.
READ MORE: Why new US charges take us no closer to truth behind Lockerbie tragedy
It should be noted that Abu Agila Mas’ud was reported to the FBI as a possible Lockerbie suspect by Abdul Majid Giaka in 1991. Giaka was actually a paid CIA informant and gave evidence at the Lockerbie bombing trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. The judges (there was no jury) made it clear they considered him neither credible nor reliable.
The $64 question, though, is why have the US decided to flag up Mas’ud now as a “new” suspect when he is anything but?
Alan Woodcock
Dundee
I SAW in Friday’s National the letter about “Brexit tourist tax”. Well, my partner and I are in this boat!
We are from Germany and have visited Scotland more than 20 times. Not as a family but as a couple, and we don’t require a passport to do so. To renew our passports would cost about €150-240. Normally we visit Scotland in October. We need to think carefully.
READ MORE: Letters, December 19
Also in the past we told many friends and colleagues of our visits to Scotland. I guess about one in five came back asking for advice. Would they if they have to buy a passport? Take the family mentioned, that €500 could pay the fuel to take them way beyond the Arctic Circle in Norway by campervan. The “Brexit tax” won´t stop us from travelling to Scotland, as we did for 20 years, but it may make others to reconsider their holiday plans. To require a passport confused a number of people, who asked me for advice about travelling to Scotland.
Additionally there is a recommendation by health insurers to get a separate health insurance for a holiday in Britain after Brexit. Yet more rising costs for travellers heading to Scotland. Families may consider this progression in costs and decide to spend their holidays somewhere in Europe. Ireland is beautiful as well and could be entered with an identity card.
Stefan Wimmer
Bruckmühl, Germany
I APOLOGISE for prolonging the fraught argument about petrol versus electric vehicles, but there are a couple of points which need to be made against Nick Cole’s defence of the fossil option (Letters, December 22). In a high-speed collision, fire is a significant risk for petrol vehicles, and carrying spare fuel in cans increases that danger.
In the case of drivers trapped in a blizzard, refuelling by tramping for miles through the snow is unlikely to be very safe either.
As to the current relative scarcity of “fast” and “rapid” charging points, which can provide an 80% charge in half an hour, here’s a short example. We stayed at a hotel in Rosslare (the Irish seaport) where the car park had a couple of dozen charging points, available free.
As petrol is phased out, there’s no obstacle to such developments in petrol stations, hotels, supermarkets, etc, while of course there will be money to be made from these services. Technology will continue to make EV use easier. Petrol is on the way out; please accept that inevitability.
Derek Ball
Bearsden
ANYONE else think we should now have direct ferry links for freight to continent from Scotland? Should we not have forecast the current chaos? Is anyone – producers, hauliers, ports, government – looking at this? Do we have a timescale? Ireland has just started a new link; it can be done.
Roddie Macpherson
Avoch
I BUY The National every day and I was late going for it at my local Co-op, expecting none left on the trolley, when before I got there a woman in front of me whipped what looked like the last one out of its space and threw it on top of another pile in an obscure place.
I did challenge her about why she did that and she retorted that she always did it. Needless to say I had to just call her actions pathetic. I have found our paper in different piles before sometimes even hidden, so a wee bit of advice – don’t just walk away from the newsstand if your copy isn’t in its usual place, check to see if The National has been hidden. Cheers and merry Christmas folks.
William Shepherd
via email
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