Former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who resigned last week and is currently in an undisclosed location inside Libya, has reportedly told the Swedish tabloid Expressen that Muammar al-Qaddafi personally ordered the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270:

Expressen on Wednesday quoted Mustafa Abdel-Jalil as telling their correspondent in Libya that "I have proof that Gadhafi gave the order about Lockerbie." He didn't describe the proof.[…]

He told Expressen Gadhafi gave the order to Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.

"To hide it, he (Gadhafi) did everything in his power to get al-Megrahi back from Scotland," Abdel-Jalil was quoted as saying.

Megrahi was given a hero's welcome on his return from Scotland in 2009 after he was released due to his -- supposedly -- terminal cancer. He is still alive. Qaddafi has paid compensation to the victims of the attack, but has never admitted to personally authorizing it.

Lockerbie is still what Qaddafi is probably best known for in the United States. It was hardly the only terrorist attack Libya sponsored, but without Lockerbie, it's not hard to imagine a scenario under which Washington and Tripoli could have normalized relations years earlier.

As a measure of how bad violence has gotten inside Libya, look to the borders, where tens of thousands have already fled -- and a further 300,000 might be on their way. "It is a biblical exodus," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told Reuters today. Speaking on BBC News World Service this morning, a representative from the International Red Cross said that his organization was preparing capacity along the border with Tunisia for as many as 10,000 new refugee arrivals today.

This isn't just Libyan nationals; the country is home to 1.5 million immigrants, the International Organization for Migration estimates, many from sub-Saharan Africa. Libya even played host to some 8,000 refugees from places such as Somalia, Eritrea, and Chad. Now, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, says it has "no access" to that population. And those populations may indeed be in danger; tweets this morning from Libya indicate that African immigrants in Libya are afraid to leave their homes, for fear of being mistaken for mercenaries.

Aside from the immediate-term humanitarian challenge this presents, the refugee situation matters because it is a sign of structural upheaval within a society. It takes innumerable courage to go to the streets and protest against one's government wherever repression is strong. But it takes equally incredible levels of fear -- and distrust of the future -- to pick up everything and leave.

It takes years, not weeks or months, to resolve refugee crises. So if there was any doubt of the magnitude of events unfolding, this should give us a final clue: No matter what happens to Qaddafi, there will be no quick fixes for the country he has ruled.

This amazing memo from Donald Rumsfeld to former Under Secretary of Defense Doug Feith, first spotted by the Atlantic, has been making the rounds today.  

Apparently too impatient to wait for Julian Assange to dig up his memos, Rumsfeld has self-WikiLeaked a number of them to coincide with the release of his new book. 

Spoiler alert: The Pakistan problem didn't get solved. 

A missile-armed Iranian frigate and a supply ship passed through the Suez Canal today in what Israeli leaders have described as a "provocation" and an effort by Tehran to exploit recent instability in the Middle East "in order to expand its influence." The ships, which will travel along the Israeli coast on their way to a training exercise with Syrian forces, are the first Iranian naval vessels to cross the waterway since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

There's been some speculation over whether former President Hosni Mubarak would have allowed the ships through or whether the United States would put pressure on the new Egyptian government to deny the Iranians' passage, but the truth is that the Egyptians didn't have all that much choice in the matter. Use of the canal is still governed by the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which clearly states that it "shall always be free and open, in time of war as in time of peace, to every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag." As long as the Iranian navy ponied up the $290,000 entry fee, it has as much right to the canal as any other country.

Iranian operations in the Mediterranean have been limited in the past, not by Egypt's control of the canal but by Iran's own minimal offshore naval capabilities. I spoke with Commander James Kraska, chair of operational law at the U.S. Naval War College, about the strategic implications -- such as they are -- of Iran's move: 

This is one warship and a supply vessel. Quite frankly, it won't change the strategic picture a whole lot. It's certainly one more thing to keep track of. Iran has meddled in Lebanon in the past, and I can see where it's a concern. But I just don't see where [Israel] coming out ahead and publicly trying to make the international community focus on this and putting pressure on Egypt to deny them passage was really effective.

Iran is mostly limited by its capability. It's very hard to do out-of-area operations. This is analogous to China sending ships to do anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden or Russian warships in Venezuela. It's a show-the-flag sort of thing. It's not as though Iranian ships can now operate routinely or comfortably away from their home base.

As was widely reported today, it has been revealed that Raymond Davis, the American detained in Lahore for shooting two Pakistanis, worked as a contractor for the CIA. As I discussed in last week's Explainer, the U.S. has been arguing that Davis enjoys diplomatic immunity as "administrative and technical staff" of the U.S. Consulate. In a briefing for reporters, a senior U.S. administration official said that Davis's work with the CIA doesn't change that:

QUESTION: If these reports [that] are emerging from the New York Times and Washington Post are true that he was a member of the CIA. Does diplomatic immunity become void then?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The only relevant question is: Was he notified as a member of the administrative and technical staff upon entry to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? And the answer to that question was yes. At that point, he acquired privileges and immunities.

When someone enters our country, if that person is notified as a member of the administrative and technical staff of a diplomatic mission that's the end of the story on that side. Our options then become to either declare the person not acceptable and facilitate their departure or to work with them in their capacity as administrative and technical staff.

This certainly isn't the first time an accused spy has taken advantage of diplomatic immunity. In 2007, for instance, a U.N. legal panel ruled that a Russian diplomat who had allegedly received secret information about German military helicopters from an Austrian source still enjoyed diplomatic immunity as a participant in a U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Russia declined to waive immunity for "Vladimir V," who German and Austrian investigators believed was working for the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service. 

But while the U.S. may still technically have international law on its side, the increasingly uncomfortable revelations surrounding the Davis case certainly won't make life any easier for actual U.S. diplomats serving in Pakistan. 

Speaking on television outside one of his residences, which was bombed by the U.S. in the 1980s and features a large statue of a fist crushing an American warplane, Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi just delivered a rambling, defiant speech in which he bizarrely claimed not to have ordered attacks on protesters, despite well-documented reports to the contrary, but promised deadly consequences when he does. Al Jazeera reports:

"I am a fighter, a revolutionary from tents … I will die as a martyr at the end," he said.

"I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired … when I do, everything will burn."

He called on supporters to take to the streets to attack protesters. "You men and women who love Gaddafi …get out of your homes and fill the streets," he said. "Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs … Starting tomorrow the cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them."

"From tonight to tomorrow, all the young men should form local committees for popular security," he said, telling them to wear a green armband to identify themselves. "The Libyan people and the popular revolution will control Libya."[…]

Shouting in the rambling speech, Gaddafi declared himself "a warrior" and proclaimed: "Libya wants glory, Libya wants to be at the pinnacle, at the pinnacle of the world".

This kind of speech is Qaddafi's trademark, but it's hard to see the point of it in this context. While he made a few promises for reform -- saying that Libyans could have any kind of judicial system they wanted -- even he must know that's not going to satisfy the crowds in Green Square. One lesson that other Middle Eastern autocrats do now seem to have learned from Ben Ali or Mubarak: Unless you plan to resign, you're better off keeping your mouth shut.