Foreign relations of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi 2009, Canadian visa requests were being denied and Canadian travelers were told they were not welcome in Libya. Specifically, Harper's government was planning to publicly criticize Gaddafi for praising the convicted Lockerbie bomber. The sincerity of the good faith efforts of the Libyan government may be questionable since Moroccan Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri, told a U.S. diplomat in 2009 that the Libyans were willing to host wounded Guinean junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara after a failed assassination attempt in 2009. Libya also still provided bounties for heads of refugees who criticized Gaddafi, including 1 million dollars for Ashur
Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission Brown, reiterating his call for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie case and insisting that UN-appointed legal experts (from countries other than the UK, US and Libya) should be involved in such an inquiry. In the June 2008 edition of the Scottish lawyers' magazine "The Firm", Köchler referred to the 'totalitarian' nature of the second Lockerbie appeal process saying it "bears the hallmarks of an 'intelligence operation'." Köchler's reports as UN-appointed international observer of one of the most controversial criminal trials in British history have led to a global debate on the role of NGO observers in the context of