LONG before the Lockerbie bombing, Libya’s relationship with the West was based on conflict. 

Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi’s maverick politics of an “Islamic socialism,” outlined in his Green Book, was meant to steer a third way between the imperialist West and communist East. 

Yet, for most of the ’70s and ’80s, Libya maintained closer relations with the Soviet Union than with Washington or London. 

Gadaffi frequently clashed with fellow Arab states and even became embroiled in short-lived military conflicts with neighbours Egypt and Chad. 

Libya was first bombed by the US in April 1986 after the US blamed it for orchestrating an attack on a Berlin nightclub frequented by US servicemen. 

The US attack claimed around 60 lives and included an attempt to target Gadaffi directly. 

This event followed a deliberate US naval incursion two weeks earlier into the Bay of Sidra, which the Libyans claimed as territorial waters, and which saw at least 35 Libyan sailors killed. 

Gadaffi always publicly maintained that he had not ordered the Lockerbie bombing and the only man convicted of the crime, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, continued to deny his involvement until his death in 2012. 

Initially, it was Iran not Libya that was the main focus of Western blame for the Lockerbie bombing.

The Sunday Times, a newspaper with a reputation as a conduit for well-placed leaks from the British intelligence services, alleged that a faction within Iran’s Islamic Republic had engaged the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a breakaway group hostile to the mainstream PLO, to carry out the bombing in revenge for the US navy’s shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in July 1988, which killed all 290 people on board, including 66 children.

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the repercussions of September 11 2001 and the subsequent Western invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya reached out to the West.

Ironically, it seems one reason was because Gadaffi was concerned that groups targeting the Libyan state, such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), were increasingly aligning themselves with al-Qaida.

Libya began to co-operate with Britain to such an extent that then prime minister Tony Blair famously visited Gadaffi in 2004. 

The rapprochement was also highly profitable for Shell, the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate, which signed a £550 million gas exploration agreement.

However, after initially assisting Gadaffi in his conflict with the LIFG, the British secret services switched their attitude 180 degrees during the violent protests against his government in 2011. 

Nato actively assisted the rebel forces with deadly air strikes. However, the collusion went much deeper.

British security services actively assisted Libyan exiles to return home to take part in the armed overthrow of Gadaffi’s government. 

The website Middle East Eye (MEE) reported that British intelligence services even overruled police anti-terrorism officers in support of the British-based extremists. 

According to Belal Younis, he had been stopped under “Schedule 7” counter-terrorism powers on his return to Britain after a visit to Libya in early 2011. Younis claimed he was asked by an MI5 officer: “‘Are you willing to go into battle?’… he told me the British government have no problem with people fighting against Gadaffi,” according to the MEE report.

Returning to Libya in May 2011, Younis was warned by two counter-terrorism officers at the airport that if he was going to fight he would be committing a crime but, after providing them with the name and phone number of the MI5 officer, he was allowed to leave.

The results were not only increased bloodshed in Libya but the entirely predictable use of these terrorist methods in Britain itself. 

After the arrest of the Manchester Arena concert bomber Salman Abedi, who killed 22 children and adults in May 2017, it emerged that he had returned to Libya in 2011 with his father to fight with factions linked to the LIFG. 

The Manchester case revealed the continuing willingness of Britain’s secret state to aid and manipulate Islamist terrorist groups to support the interests of Western foreign policy.

When justice and the interests of the British state are in conflict, justice rarely wins. There is yet another case of the moral suppleness of the secret services in relation to Libya, namely the continuing mystery over who killed WPC Yvonne Fletcher. 

She was shot during anti-Gadaffi protests outside the Libyan embassy in 1984, an act that led to the closure of the Libyan People’s Bureau and the expulsion of Libyan diplomats.  

It was revealed last year that one of those accused of involvement in the 1984 Libyan embassy shooting of Fletcher during anti-Gadaffi protests had been granted political asylum and was living in Britain virtually immune from arrest.

In May last year, a Metropolitan Police press statement concluded: “We believe our investigation has identified enough material to identify those responsible for WPC Fletcher’s murder if it could be presented to a court. However, the key material has not been made available for use in court in evidential form for reasons of national security.”

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph last May, John Murray, a police officer who was present at the 1984 embassy shooting, suggested that British security services were protecting an asset, a former official in Gadaffi’s government who was present among the ranks of the anti-Gadaffi demonstrators on the day. 

“If he is a liaison between Libya and MI6 that would explain why he has got asylum,” Murray said.

In May this year, it was announced that a new investigation into Megrahi’s conviction is to be carried out by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. 

Given the murky involvement of Britain’s secret state in all sectors of Libyan politics, whether this review will be allowed to shed new light on the Lockerbie bombing remains to be seen.