Real Dictators - Colonel Gaddafi Part 6: The Lockerbie Bombing

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

In 1988, Gaddafi takes his terror to the skies, bringing down a passenger flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. Staffers at the Pentagon team up with Hollywood executives to shore up public opinion against the tyrant. Meanwhile, the Colonel himself looks south - across the Sahara - and prepares to be crowned 'King of Kings'. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Lockerbie. A sleepy market town in the Scottish borders. be. A sleepy market town in the Scottish Borders. It's December the 21st, 1988. Midwinter. The shortest day of the year. Darkness falls early in these parts. There's a chill in the evening air. A glow from the windows. Laughter from the pub. It's just four days to Christmas. There are decorations in the high street. turkeys in the butchers. At three minutes past seven o'clock, night turns to day as the sky is lit up by an enormous fireball. today as the sky is lit up by an enormous fireball. The very earth beneath Lockerbie shakes.

The blast hits 1.6 on the Richter scale. It can be felt several miles away. For a moment there is utter confusion. Houses lay in ruin. There is intense heat, apocalyptic flames. The sky itself seems to be on fire. The nearby A74 road is burning. In Prestwick, 70 miles to the northwest, a panicked air traffic controller looks up from his radar scope. Pan Am Flight 103, en route from Frankfurt to New York via London, has literally disappeared off the grid. A Boeing 747 Jumbo, it had, just moments earlier, been at 31,000 feet, cruising at 360 miles per hour on course to cross the coast into the North Atlantic. It had been in radio contact. Departing Heathrow 38 minutes ago, it had 243 passengers on board, mostly Americans,

returning home for the holidays. There were 16 crew. As the sirens wail and searchlights sweep, crew. As the sirens wail and searchlights sweep, little Lockerbie's destiny has been rewritten. It's a name that will live in infamy. Ground zero to an air disaster of colossal proportions, the biggest in British aviation history. Lockerbie was massively significant. I would say it was the principal terrorist attack in an international sense, at least in the American mindset before 9-11. The Lockerbie attack was synonymous with terrorism. This is part six of the Colonel Gaddafi story. And this is Real Dictators.

In Lockerbie, by first light, the full extent of the devastation is revealed. A section of the plain has gouged through a row of houses on the Sherwood estate. has gouged through a row of houses on the Sherwood estate. The crater is thirty feet deep. Rosebank Crescent has been demolished by a sixty-foot piece of fuselage. The inferno continues to rage, courtesy of a full load of aviation fuel, two hundred thousand pounds of it, that has drenched the town. A trail of debris extends three miles to the east.

In a field at Tundagarth Hill, the nose section lies on its side. It is the macabre image that will be beamed around the world. Those white flecks on the hillsides are not sheep, but human remains, hastily covered with sheets. On the edge of town, ambulances queue, all hospitals on standby for casualties. But the stark reality is that there are no survivors. Added to those on the plane are the eleven who've been killed on the ground. 270 in total.

Lockerbie is now the center of a media frenzy. Reporters doorstep dazed residents. They describe raining fire, scenes of hell, a mushroom cloud. Some thought it was a nuclear attack. In New York, the scale of the human catastrophe unfolds. Of the 35 students from Syracuse University have perished. Of the businessman coming home a day early, switching flights to surprise his wife and three young kids.

Amid the carnage there exists a possibility, though no one will voice it yet, that this might not be an accident. Police investigators, aided by agents from the FBI, locate the two black box flight recorders. The bomb squad is brought in. The saving grace, if there can be such a thing, is that just a few minutes later, the crash would have happened at sea, with no evidence at all. And then, the grim discovery. Panels on the fuselage suggest a detonation of some sort. This is no longer just the worst aviation tragedy in British history. It's the worst terrorist atrocity too.

In the US, a State Department spokesperson faces a hostile media. Rumours have begun to circulate of tip-offs, of ignored warnings. On December 5th, the US Embassy in Helsinki received a call from a man with an Arab accent, warning of just such an attack. The US ambassador in London took a similar call four days later. The Israeli security service Mossad had also flagged up an alert. Officials bluffed out. They get hundreds of threats every day.

They didn't want to cause alarm. The security at Frankfurt is excellent. Within hours, assorted organizations are vying to claim responsibility. Various Palestinian splinter groups and a militant Iranian faction, guardians of the Islamic Revolution. There is always a rush of claimants, usually bogus. That said, the Iranian one does carry weight, for it states that Pan Am 103 was bombed as an act of revenge.

On July 3rd, 1988, less than six months earlier, an Iranian Airbus A300, a scheduled flight from Tehran to Dubai, was blown up over the Persian Gulf. It was destroyed by a missile fired from the American cruiser USS Vincennes. During the height of the Iran-Iraq war, with the US Navy on alert, the ship's commander had believed his vessel was under attack. All 290 on board the Airbus are killed, including 66 children. With a death toll higher than Lockerbie,

it will remain the biggest aviation disaster in world history for another 26 years. Not that the Western media pay it much attention. Where one is an outrage, the other is a misfortune, a terrible mistake. Both are equally tragic. Of the prospective perpetrators of the Lockerbie blast, the favourite remains the Abu Nidal organisation. Over 15 years this Palestinian militant group has made air-related terror its specialty. The road to justice will be long and tortuous.

It will take another two years to identify the Lockerbie suspects, another 12 to yield a verdict. It will involve a phenomenal forensic investigation, involving the painstaking reconstruction of Pan Am 103 from scraps of wreckage, the examination of four million pieces of debris reclaimed from over 850 square miles, plus the interviewing of 15,000 witnesses. The 20-inch hole blown in the forward cargo hold, it is determined, came from a bomb placed in a Samsonite suitcase. From a tiny fragment of a circuit board,

it seems the explosive used, Semtex, had been packed inside a Toshiba radio cassette player. It was meant to go off over the sea, but the plane's departure had been delayed by an hour. The suitcase had been padded with children's clothing, coming from a specific shop in Malta, and purchased, according to an exhaustive inquiry, on December the 7th. This evidence points to two men, not Palestinian, not Iranian. They're from Libya. Colonel Gaddafi's Libya. They are Abdel Basit al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer,

head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, and Lameen Khalifa Fima, the airline's station manager at Malta's Luka Airport. In November 1991, Britain demands that Gaddafi hand the two men over to be put on trial, but the colonel is defiant. The evidence against Libya is less than a laughable piece of a fingernail, he scoffs, and for once, briefly, the Arab world stands with him. These two men are our compatriots, he rages. You cannot take them and give them to another country. We are not sheep. But Gaddafi by now is so steeped in terrorism,

it's hard to know where to begin. By the mid-1980s, Gaddafi had been demonized by Ronald Reagan and his administration. He was labeled the mad dog of the Middle East, despite that Libya is situated firmly in North Africa rather than the Middle East proper. The Libyans and Western powers became increasingly in conflict. And so basically, it kind of became a sort of self-perpetuating situation where the further Gaddafi was demonized, the more it kind of pushed him to the edge where terrorism became a tool of Gaddafi's foreign policy.

One man's terrorist, of course, is another man's freedom fighter. But Gaddafi seems indiscriminate. His willingness to be associated with causes is just another opportunity to advance the Gaddafi brand. Indeed, as with the Munich Olympic massacre, he's shown a willingness to attach himself as a patron, even if he had little to do with the actual planning. Mary Fitzgerald is a writer, researcher and consultant specialising in Libyan affairs. writer, researcher and consultant, specializing in Libyan affairs. Gaddafi was accused of supplying weapons, arms and ammunition to the IRA on a number of occasions. The most significant incident was in 1987, when a vessel, which was named the Exand, was intercepted by French authorities.

And 150 tons of arms and ammunition, including Semtex explosives, were found on this ship. And this ship was coming from Libya. What has been interesting for me as somebody from Ireland is, you know, how Gaddafi crafted a narrative in Libya that you still hear from Libyans today, which positioned the IRA within that kind of anti-imperialist framework. I have been struck by the number of times when I have met Libyans and discussed this issue, they have said to me, oh you're Irish. Gaddafi supported your Jay-Shwatani. Now Jay-Shwatani in Arabic translates as National Army, so I've had to clarify that the IRA was not the National Army of Ireland. So there is quite a kind of muddling of history here, but it shows

how Gaddafi managed to weave a particular narrative in terms of how he justified his support for the IRA at that time. In the West, Gaddafi's associations do not deter everyone. He acquires fans in the strangest of places. In America, the Nation of Islam love him. He funds their Chicago headquarters to the tune of millions of dollars. Gaddafi speaks by satellite link at their annual conference, telling leader Louis Farrakhan how he endorses the formation of a separate black state. He'll throw an extra one billion dollars if they'll take up arms. Gaddafi the bogeyman seems everywhere, even in Hollywood. When I talk to Libyans of a certain age, one experience they describe as

formative when they were kids was the fact that Back to the Future, the American movie, came out when they were at school. And in Back to the Future, the American movie, came out when they were at school. And in Back to the Future, the villains are Libyans who are presented in a particular way as dangerous, etc., and threatening. And Libyans have told me about how that shaped them. Libyans were seen as these villainous, dangerous people, that that really affected them and how they viewed their place in the world as well.

The blockbuster Top Gun 2, part financed by the Pentagon, draws heavily on the recent skirmishes between F-14s and Gaddafi's MiGs over the Mediterranean. It elevates US Navy pilots to near godlike status. Recruiting goes up 500%. In October 1981, esteemed American journalist Jack Anderson reports that Gaddafi, like a latter-day Blofeld,

has organized a six-man hit squad to take out President Reagan. The raid is to be fronted by a notorious terrorist, Carlos the Jackal. In what could be a movie pitch of its own, Newsweek adds that Gaddafi has equipped them with SAM-7 missiles to bring down Air Force One. The State Department even issues photo fits of the assassins. Anderson later admits that he was duped by his sources in the Reagan administration. Their leak was entirely fabricated,

all part of what they call perception management. But it is a perception that manages to stick. Gaddafi just seems to enjoy the notoriety even more. Oh, I'm quite sure he did. He demonstrated Libyan power, its refusal to kowtow

to Western powers, to accept the United States. The coup that brought Gaddafi to power back in 1969 had been predicated on the fact that King Idris, whom he overthrew, had squandered the nation's oil wealth. But is the brother leader any different?

Ordinary Libyans are beginning to ask just that question. Gaddafi's extravagance on the world stage seems incompatible with empty shelves in the state supermarkets or the nation's infrastructure that's falling apart. While Gaddafi goes on TV boasting of the acquisition of ballistic missiles, officially, as he puts it, something to do with the investigation of space, his impoverished army officers in the evenings

go door to door selling vegetables. Gaddafi's refusal to hand over his Lockerbie suspects results in the UN slapping him with Resolution 748, a fresh and punitive round of economic sanctions. It comes into play in March 1992. Libya's finances take a $900 million hit. Until now, voicing opposition to Gaddafi's rule has been a virtual death sentence.

But when people are starving, they have nothing to lose. Voicing opposition to Gaddafi's rule has been a virtual death sentence. But when people are starving, they have nothing to lose. The sense of unrest is palpable. There are incidents. In 1987, a revolutionary ally of Gaddafi's, Ahmed Vefeli, is murdered. In April 1988, a senior army officer, Colonel Hafter, one of his main men during the Chad War, defects to the rebel National Front for the Salvation of Libya. In October 1993, there's an abortive army coup in Misrata. In September 1995, there's an Islamist uprising in Benghazi.

In July 1996, at a football stadium in Tripoli, during a match, an anti-Qadhafi riot breaks out. Such things have always been met in the usual fashion, with violence, executions. There were a lot of televised confessions that were going on. So people would be picked up by the revolutionary committees, interrogated, tortured, and then they would have to confess live on TV. And I remember seeing footage of an imam, Imam Shaker al-Bishti, who'd been arrested. He was a famous imam in Tripoli, and he was interrogated and went through the same process. And at some point they set fire to his beard as they were interrogating him.

And it seems like that really incredibly cruel and vicious. There were plenty of really horrific events like that. In May 1987, Gaddafi declares not another revolution, but yes, a revolution within a revolution. But he's lapsing into self-parody. The revolutionary does not practice repression, he declares, at the same time as he tightens the reins of power. Paranoid and vain, he becomes jealous of celebrity,

of anyone who can rival his fame. He encourages popular takeovers of local TV stations. They are now to be run by the people. It's something of a running joke for the long-suffering Libyans that the evening news is now read, quite literally, by someone dragged in off the street. In Libya's soccer league, players have their names stripped from their shirts.

Commentators are instructed to refer to them only by their numbers or position, lest anyone get too big for their boots. There are press stunts. Gaddafi the Merciful personally bulldozes a Tripoli jail, allowing the convicts to escape. He launches a green charter of human rights. That's correct, a charter of human rights.

There will be no more shortages, he decrees, obsessing, curiously, with one particular foodstuff. People queuing for macaroni is something which does not belong to socialism. The revolution never says there should be queues for macaroni in Libya. How can one who went to the market say, I have returned without macaroni? Karl Marx once stated that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy, who went to the market say, I have returned without macaroni. Karl Marx once stated that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy,

second time as farce. Well, Gaddafi goes for the hat-trick. In January 1989, there's a third Gulf of Sidra incident, in which, in a tiresome rerun, two more Libyan MiGs are downed by US Navy F-14s. In the aftermath, Top Gun does a roaring trade on video. But the truth is, no one much cares anymore, for the world is being convulsed in seismic events which render Gaddafi's show an irrelevance.

That November, in 1989, the Berlin Wall falls. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union deprives Gaddafi of his chief international sponsor and arms supplier. Plus, in the Arab region, there is a new Dr. Evil shuffling onto center stage, Saddam Hussein.

In 1991, the West's full military might will be brought to bear against him when Iraq invades Kuwait, the first Gulf War. Plenty of Arab nations too will sign up to the coalition. It is not just the West who have spurned Gaddafi. Egypt, once his ideological bedfellow, dumped him long ago. On October 6th, 1981, his old rival President Anwar Sadat, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his rapprochement with Israel, is assassinated by jihadi gunmen while watching a military parade. Only 24 hours earlier, Gaddafi had joked that Sadat's days were numbered

Speculation remains that he put a bounty on the Egyptian leader's head Gaddafi wanted to be a pan-Arab leader And one of his ideas he very much sought after Was to have some kind of formal pan-Arab transnational political union. It absolutely didn't work out. There was too much bickering, too much infighting. And I think that Gaddafi became gradually more and more disillusioned with the two concepts of pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism.

While his pan-Arab dreams were fading, he started turning his attention south into Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa. It is to result in a whole new reinvention for our colonel, a radical rethink for Brand Gaddafi. It's off with the Bedouin robes and on with the leopard skins. For Gaddafi is no longer an Arab, let alone a pan-Arabist. He is now a pan-African. Gaddafi's adventures in sub-Saharan Africa began in 1976, when he pledged support for the brutal Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic.

In 1979, infamously, if you remember, he sent 2,500 troops to Uganda to aid the regime of monstrous dictator Idi Amin against the invading army of Tanzania. 400 Libyan soldiers died, equipped for the desert, not the jungle. Gaddafi later gives safe haven to Amin when he's overthrown. not the jungle.

Gaddafi later gives safe haven to Amin when he's overthrown. I think that Gaddafi's engagement with Africa as a continent was very self-serving and self-serving before it was anything else. Gaddafi saw the continent as a place where, you know, he could find a stage, another stage.

He could project himself. And, you know, he could find a stage, another stage. He could project himself. And, you know, we should acknowledge that Gaddafi did indeed invest in a lot of countries across the continent of Africa, investment that was very much appreciated in terms of infrastructure, et cetera, telecommunications, all of that. But it was self-serving. What's interesting is that discussing that period with Libyans is that they complain that at that time Gaddafi was investing so much in other countries on the continent of Africa while overlooking his own people in his own country. So at a time when infrastructure in Libya was crumbling, when you had unpaved roads in major cities in Libya, etc.,

Gaddafi was pouring money into other countries, and that created a lot of resentment back in Libya. What I was struck by post-2011, during my own reporting assignments and travels in sub-Saharan Africa, discussing Gaddafi, Gaddafi's legacy, 2011, during my own reporting assignments and travels in sub-Saharan Africa, discussing Gaddafi, Gaddafi's legacy, it was clear that Gaddafi was still very much perceived as an African hero, somebody who had done a lot for the continent. But there was very clearly little awareness or knowledge of what had happened in Libya itself under Gaddafi. So there was a disconnect.

Gaddafi has denounced Ronald Reagan as nothing but a third-rate actor. But he's enjoying a little role-playing himself. He styles himself the Falcon of Africa. He grows his hair and dresses in flamboyant costumes. A Nigerian prince, a Zanzibar sultan, a Swahili emperor, and always with a big, silhouetted map of the African continent pinned to his outfit, just in case anyone forgets. Gaddafi's position is paradoxical.

One minute backing a pro-democracy movement, the next fomenting rebellion against one. One minute backing a pro-democracy movement, the next fomenting rebellion against one. Later, Gaddafi talks of a united Africa with a combined army, economy, currency. He supports it with a $5 billion slush fund to build roads, hotels, to establish telecommunications. And, to be fair, the idea gains traction. An African Union comes into being, replacing the old Organization of African Unity. Gaddafi wanted much more than just Libya. Gaddafi wanted the world. He wanted to be a pan-Arab statesman. Later, he wanted to be a pan-African statesman.

He wanted to be influential in Europe. Gaddafi had relationships with leaders all over Africa. In fact, his relations with African leaders were far better than his relations with Arab leaders, I think, on measure. He would build massive mosques and basically try to buy support and patronage. But he would preside over these vast conversion to Islam ceremonies. And he had locals in various African countries at his feet, and he would preside over their conversion to Islam. He was in his element. That he has an impact in parts of the continent is beyond question.

In Kampala, Uganda, stands the lavish Gaddafi Mosque, the biggest in East Africa. In 2008, Gaddafi flies in 200 bemused Kenyan tribal leaders to Tripoli, most of them quite elderly. They're ferried around on a sightseeing tour before being put up in a five-star hotel at brother leaders' expense. Later they're taken to Gaddafi's tent, where he sits on a cheap plastic chair,

while the Kenyan elders place an ill-fitting mocked-up crown on his head. They pronounce him King of Africa, King of Kings. The Takishirad can be indulged because Gaddafi knows there is one man who will always have his corner, someone revered globally. In return for his support for the African National Congress in its struggle against apartheid, Nelson Mandela will back Gaddafi to the very end, his loyalty unwavering. One of the movements that Gaddafi supported during his time in power was the ANC in South Africa. This was the reason then that Nelson Mandela

was always very supportive of Gaddafi or at least failed to criticize him for what people believed were legitimate grounds for criticism, including Gaddafi's human rights record. One of the first foreign trips that Mandela made after he was released from prison was to Libya as Gaddafi's guest. And during that visit, he praised Gaddafi's regime, what Gaddafi had done for Libya, what Gaddafi had done for Africa as a continent. And this disappointed a lot of Libyans who considered Mandela to be a hero and believed that Gaddafi was actually

Mandela's blind spot, in that because of the support that Gaddafi had given the ANC at a very critical time for the ANC, that Mandela felt that really he and the ANC owed Gaddafi something. And that support and that closeness, that close personal relationship lasted right until the very end. It is Gaddafi who bankrolls Mandela's election campaign after his release from prison. When Mandela becomes South African president in 1994, he rejects pressure from Western leaders, including President Bill Clinton, to sever ties. He tells an American TV audience, one of the mistakes which some political analysts make is to think that their enemies should be our enemies. He even names a grandson, Gaddafi.

Both Nelson Mandela and Gaddafi were sort of outliers in their own way. And I think there was kind of a revolutionary kinship in that sense between the two figures. Although one man was someone who worked tirelessly and was imprisoned for 27 years to liberate indigenous people of South Africa, whereas Gaddafi is viewed as a brutal demagogic figure who was outsized by sort of his own self-character.

Back to Pan Am 103 and the Lockerbie disaster, and there is a new smoking gun. On the 19th of September 1989, ten months after Lockerbie, a French passenger jet disappears over the Sahara Desert in southern Niger. The plane is brought down in near identical circumstances, a bomb in a Samsonite suitcase triggered by a circuit board.

One of the perpetrators confesses to links to the Libyan regime. There is strong suggestion of the involvement of Abdullah Sanousi, deputy head of Libyan intelligence, Gaddafi's brother-in-law. In Paris, six Libyans are convicted in absentia, though Gaddafi, as head of state, declares his own immunity from prosecution. The Lockerbie attack killed 11 people on the ground in Scotland, whereas the UTA flight occurred in the middle of the desert, about 400 miles from the nearest human settlement. The remains of the UTA flight actually had to be retrieved and reconstructed by French Hara troopers who were dropped into the Sahara to look for the wreckage of UTA.

This was basically Qaddafi's way of punishing the French because the French had helped push Gaddafi and his troops out of Chad. It was a way for him to humiliate a former administrative power that operated in Libya before its independence. That incident and the crippling economic sanctions forced Gaddafi's hand. They will only be lifted if he plays ball over Lockerbie. It is Nelson Mandela who brokers a way out. Washington and London make an offer. The Libyan Lockerbie suspects can be tried in the neutral territory of the Netherlands. Gaddafi agrees. A complicated legal procedure sees a Scottish court reconstituted at Camp Zeist,

a disused air base near Utrecht. In April 1999, the two men are handed over. The trial begins the following May. The criminal proceedings last 36 weeks. On January 31, 2001, al-Megrahi is convicted of 270 counts of murder, though FEMA,

his alleged accomplice, is acquitted due to insufficient evidence. The sentence against al-Megrahi is greeted with outrage in Libya. Gaddafi is furious. He feels he's been tricked. He announces that he will produce evidence to acquit al-Megrahi within days.

He declares that the judges have three options. To admit the truth, resign, or commit suicide. Though the Lockerbie trial is deemed to bring closure for many involved, there is no real sense of completion for others. Certainly not for Dr Jim Swire, a leading campaigner for justice, whose 23-year-old daughter, Flora, died in the crash. Professor George Joffe was part of the investigation. And many people were not satisfied

by the way in which the inquiry went. There were all sorts of allegations at the time of interference with the information. It was quite clear that it served political purposes too, not just in Libya, but also in the United States and even in Britain. It's worth bearing in mind that the father of one of the victims on the lock of the explosion,

James Swire, he never believed that the bomb had been planted by Libya. He always believed there was another explanation. And he had very cogent arguments as to why that should be the case. Al-Megrahi, terminally ill from advanced prostate cancer,

will be released from Greenock Prison on compassionate grounds and allowed back to Libya in 2009. He will die three years later, maintaining his innocence to the end. The Scottish Court upholds its decision. It maintains that it delivered the only possible verdict given the evidence before it. But questions remain to this day about the safety of the conviction. A three-year investigation by Al Jazeera Television, broadcast in 2012, alleges Pan Am 103 was downed over Lockerbie by an Iranian operation,

enacted through the Syria-backed group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A simple case of tit-for-tat. The problem was that shortly before that, there had been an incident in the Gulf, carried out by the United States warship, the USS Vincennes, which had shot down by accident an Iranian airliner involving 270 deaths.

The United States eventually admitted responsibility, but never paid compensation. So the first assumption about Lockheed was that it was carried out by the Iranians in revenge. Then later, it began to look as if it was not carried out by Iran, but by Libya instead. And eventually in 1992, the United States directly accused Libya of being responsible. They're not alone in their suspicions. Files also lay open on other possibilities. Though Libyan involvement at some level cannot be discounted. The matter will come back. The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission looked at the case on several occasions and was itself not satisfied with the nature of the initial judgment. So I'm quite sure the matter will come back for further discussion.

Now, my involvement in this was simply that I carried out investigations to try to establish whether or not the accusation of the Palestinian groups being involved was genuine or not. Whether it really was a question of Anne McGrath as a Libyan security official working inside Libyan Arab Airlines who had been responsible for the bomb. It was never possible to actually establish that. And it seems to me that the matter is still unresolved.

Professor Joffe is among others who feared that the truth will never come out. Small things, such as the case in which the bomb was placed, were surrounded and full of clodding. The clods were being purchased in Malta, and even the shop where they were purchased was identified. The problem was the witnesses that then came forward confused the day between a day on which the sun had been shining and a day on which there had been rain. That was an issue that was never resolved. And that period of a week between the two possible dates

would have been crucial in deciding the guilt or innocence of those allegedly involved. So you can see the kinds of complications that occur. And there's no way now, with the passage of time, that those are going to be clarified. The Lockerbie trial that concludes in early 2001 now seems from a different age. For something is about to happen. from a different age. For something is about to happen for Arabs, for the West, for the world,

and for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi that will stand the existing order on its head. This just in, you were looking at, obviously, a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

In the next episode of Real Dictators, after 9-11, life in the West is transformed in an instant. Amidst the fallout from the atrocity, Gaddafi spots an opportunity. To the surprise of many, he will make it his mission to rejoin the international fold. The colonel will begin a new phase of surreal diplomacy, as he pitches his Bedouin tent on the front lawns of palaces and parliaments around the world.

Meanwhile, his children will emerge as figures in their own right, racking up hotel bills all over the planet as they enjoy the jet-setter lifestyle at the expense of their country folk. As the Libyan leader appears on primetime talk shows and in magazine fashion columns, pursuing global sports franchises one minute, addressing the United Nations the next, Muammar Gaddafi will transform once again into the West's most eccentric ally. That's next time on Real Dictators. We'll be right back. Produced by Joel Dudell Editing and music by Oliver Baines and Dory McCauley

Sound design, mix and mastering by Tom Pink Editing and additional effects by George Tapp Follow Noiser Podcasts on Twitter for news about upcoming series. If you haven't already, follow us wherever you listen to your favourite shows or check us out at wheeleddictators.com Tune in on Wednesdays for new episodes.