Abdelbasset Ali Mohamed Al-Megrahi is the man who was condemned for the bomb attack on an American plane above Lockerbie in 1988. He was released a couple of weeks ago by Great-Britain and subsequently welcomed celebratory in Libia. Now that’s strange, but much stranger is the fact that the British government reacted much less disapproving to this happening than the United States for example.

Now it seems that this has to be perceived in a geopolitical way: interests on economical level influenced a decision on political (and ethical, think about the surviving relatives) level. Earlier on, the British minister of Justice, Jack Straw, wanted to exclude Al-Megrahi from an agreement between London and Tripoli about the exchange of British and Libian prisoners. But in the end, Straw gave in on this point because Libia refused otherwise to conclude a billion dollar deal with British Petroleum (BP). Shortly after Straw’s deicision, negotiations were restarted on this issue.

So it’s clear this deal was economically important to the UK, but indirectly, it also was on political level (again). Because by importing oil and gas from Libia, the UK would be less dependent from Russia, which creates a better negotiation position with this country on other issues and so on…

If you think spies only act in Ian Fleming’s novels or are tapping telephones from innocent civilians in (former) communist countries, you’re wrong (again). A trial was started recently against the French energy company EDF, which is being charged for spying on Greenpeace.

EDF (Electricité de France) is one of the biggest exploiters of nuclear power plants in the world, as it is also the owner of British Energy. During the hearings of some witnesses in the case, it already became clear that EDF, which is a government undertaking, paid private detectives to infiltrate in environment movements all over Europe. An IT expert from the detective agency has admitted hacking computer systems of Greenpeace. The head of the firm nevertheless, who has also been charged and happens to be a former agent of the French secret service, denies he commanded the entire hacking operation and declares that the computer expert was acting on his own initiative. As such, EDF declares to be victim of the detective agency and registers a civil plaintiff.

As the director of Greenpeace France already stated, the fact that his organisation is being treated like terrorists because they dare to question nuclear energy shows just how frightened the nuclear industry is of transparency and a democratic debate. To be continued.