-
BP looking bad again
As more behind the scenes business-as-usual is exposed: [link=http://www.aolnews.com/politics/article/bp-confirms-lobbying-british-government-ahead-of-lockerbie-bomber-abdel-baset-al-megrahi-release/19555218?ncid=webmail]http://www.aolnews.com/politics/article/bp-confirms-lobbying-british-government-ahead-of-lockerbie-bomber-abdel-baset-al-megrahi-release/19555218?ncid=webmail[/link]
Amid a new U.S. furor over trading a terrorist for commercial considerations, BP confirmed today that it had lobbied the British government in late 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya prior to the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.
“Evidence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster seems to suggest that BP would put profit ahead of people — its attention to safety was negligible and it routinely underestimated the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf,” [link=https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/20100713ltr_BPLibya.pdf&embedded=true][u][color=#0000ff]read a letter[/color][/u][/link] sent to Clinton by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer of New York, and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. “The question we now have to answer is, was this corporation willing to trade justice in the murder of 270 innocent people for oil profits?”
At the heart of this controversy is a $900 million exploration deal BP provisionally agreed with Libya in May 2007, the same month that Britain and Libya opened talks on a Prisoner Transfer Agreement. During initial negotiations over the transfer pact, Britain’s then-Justice Minister Jack Straw refused to sign on to the deal if it included Megrahi. At the same time, Libya was stalling and refusing to ratify its multimillion-dollar deal with BP.
Then in December 2007, according to [link=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6814939.ece][u][color=#0000ff]The Sunday Times[/color][/u][/link], Straw wrote to Kenny MacAskill — his counterpart in Scotland, who set the Libyan free last August — and said the government was abandoning its attempt to exclude Megrahi from the prisoner agreement, citing the national interest. Within six weeks of this about face, Libya had authorized the BP deal.
It later emerged that Straw had changed his mind following [link=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6820931.ece][u][color=#0000ff]lobbying from the petroleum industry[/color][/u][/link], especially BP. He took two phone calls from Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 agent, then working for BP as a consultant, on Oct. 15 and Nov. 9, 2007.
In an interview with the [link=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6140801/Jack-Straw-admits-Lockerbie-bombers-release-was-linked-to-oil.html][u][color=#0000ff]Daily Telegraph[/color][/u][/link] last September, Straw admitted that trade and BP were key considerations when the government decided to include Megrahi in the prisoner agreement. “Yes, [it was] a very big part of that. I’m unapologetic about that … Libya was a rogue state,” he said. “We wanted to bring it back into the fold. And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal.” -
4 Replies
-
First, BP is one of the worst corporate actors around.
But second….why is this new news? We knew this a year ago. We new the Brits basically made this deal for oil. We also know that the Bush and Obama administrations tacitally went along with it.
Other than proving once again our addiction to oil and the corruption it creates, i am not sure what this story’s re-emergence is all about.
-
Perhaps it has new relevance since the Horizon spill. Perhaps it’s being cultivated anew to prepare the ground for sanctions against BP. Who knows?
I certainly didn’t pay the rapt attention to BP a year ago that I do now… context is everything.-
Yeah, I guess. Frankly, BP deserves every bad news they get…
-
[h1][b]Libyan Operative Charged in 1988 Lockerbie Bombing Is in F.B.I. Custody[/b][/h1]
A Libyan intelligence operative charged in the 1988 bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, was arrested by the F.B.I. and being extradited to the United States to face prosecution for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history, officials said on Sunday.The arrest of the operative, Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, was the culmination of a decades-long effort by the Justice Department to prosecute him. In 2020, Attorney General William P. Barr announced criminal charges against Mr. Masud, [link=https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/redirect-to/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F12%2F21%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Flockerbie-bombing-suspect.html]accusing him of building the explosive device[/link] used in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 passengers, including 190 Americans.
Mr. Masud faces two criminal counts, including destruction of an aircraft resulting in death. He was being held at a Libyan prison for unrelated crimes when the Justice Department unsealed the charges against him two years ago. It is unclear how the U.S. government negotiated the extradition of Mr. Masud.
[link=https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/redirect-to/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2022%2F12%2F11%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fmasud-pan-am-bombing-libya-fbi.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/u…libya-fbi.html[/link]
-
-
-
