The appeal by dying former Libyan agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi against his life sentence for the 1988 Lockerbie aircraft bombing, will not be decided until next year.
Lord Hamilton today told the Scottish Appeal Court at the end of a two-day procedural hearing that the final two substantive appeal sessions would run from November 2 to December 11, and January 12 to February 26, 2010.
A total of 270 people were killed when the Pan Am jumbo jet exploded over Lockerbie.
One of the five judges hearing the appeal is recovering from recent heart surgery and Lord Hamilton said this, combined with the pressure of other business on the court, meant it was not practical to hold earlier sessions.
The illness of Lord Wheatley has already meant a deferment in considering appeal arguments heard so far, and Megrahi's lawyer Maggie Scott expressed dismay at the delays.
Yesterday she said: "There is a very serious danger that my client will die before the case is determined."
She added his health "is deteriorating with a relentless onset of symptoms".
Megrahi, 57, has terminal prostate cancer and is currently in Greenock prison.
After a trial in a special Scottish court meeting in The Netherlands in 2001, he was sentenced to 27 years' in prison.
An appeal the following year was rejected, but a review gave the go-ahead in 2007 for a second appeal on the grounds that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
In the first part of the appeal through May, his lawyers questioned whether the trial court had been correct in accepting evidence relating to his identification, the type of fuse in the bomb and how it was consigned to the Pan Am flight.
In the next hearings, legal sources said the appeal lawyers were expected to introduce fresh evidence and question the competence of his previous lawyers.
The Libyan and British governments signed a prisoner transfer agreement this year and Tripoli has sought Megrahi's return.
Scotland's Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill is currently consulting all parties concerned, including the US and Libyan governments and families of the victims of the bombing before deciding whether to accede to Libya's request.
[The above is the text of The Herald's report on the two-day procedural hearing that ended on Wednesday. The Reuters news agency report, as reproduced on the STV website, can be read here.
While the illness of one of the judges would inevitably cause a measure of delay, the Appeal Court's clear failure to take effective steps to minimise that delay is nothing short of disgraceful. Their Lordships should be utterly ashamed of themselves.]
It looks quite obvious the judges are part of a conspiracy to conceal the real murderers. The delay is to force Megrhai to agree to the prisoner exchange, which will result in the appeal being aborted and the evidence pointing to the murderers being hidden forever.
ReplyDeleteWhen Megrahi goes home, there will be cries for an inquiry which will not be heeded and then in time the cries will die down.
Is there no legal address, perhaps in Europe?
ALLAHU AKBAR ! ALLAHU AKBAR !
ReplyDeleteHE is above plots of the aggressors;
And HE is the best HELPER of the oppressed
Scandal-Mission of the "Lockerbie-Affair" against the Crown and the Government Brown can start!
Dishonor for Scotland the world must know the truth:
Deliberately and questionable delay before a decision is taken by the High Court was produced in the case of Abdelbaset al Megrahi's appeal ! The final substantive appeal parts would run from November 2 -11 December, and January 12 to 26 February, 2010!
What wants the Criminal Justice Directorate achieve with these delays ?
MEBO answer:
Now it is obvious, the 'Lockerbie-Tragedy' was used for one Conspiracy against Libya, with criminal participation of Scottish Officials!
It is also obvious that the Scotthis Justice with these tactics wants Mr. Megrahi to withdraw his appeal !
Only by renouncing his appeal the ill Mr. Megrahi has the possibility to return to his family by a prisoner transfer agreement between the United Kingdom and Libya.
On the other side the Scottish Justice, with these nasty and dirty tactics, wants to defend its criminal Scottish Officials from a criminal prosecution!
They are verifiable responsible for the manipulation and falsification of evidence in the Lockerbie-affair and therefore as their backers responsible for the miscarriage of justice against Libya and its Official Megrahi ...
We wish you, Abdelbaset al Megrahi, good health and much strength to hold through. We massive help you and your familie up to the truth. We know that you and Libya hade nothing to do with the Lockerbie Tragedy.
Some of the Scottish Officials and known persons of the Scottish Police are the true criminals in the Lockerbie Conspiracy Affair !!!
Photos, documents and falsification evidence material, see on our webpage: http://www.lockerbie.ch
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, Mebo Ltd., Switzerland
09 July, 2009
The following is a necessarily abridged version of Paul Foot's prophetic article in The Guardian of March 31, 2004:
ReplyDelete"LOCKERBIE'S DIRTY SECRET
"As he basks in the success of his controversial visit to Libya, the prime minister has to grapple at once with an awkward letter. It was delivered on Monday by UK Families Flight 103 representing most of the British families bereaved by the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The letter starts by reminding Blair that the families supported his visit to Libya in the expectation that the talks with Colonel Muammar Gadafy would lead to more information about the bombing. Moreover, the letter says, their support for the visit was widely used by ministers to justify the visit to Libya. Yet the visit has not led to any more information about the bombing.
And recent letters to the secretary of the group, Pamela Dix - whose brother died at Lockerbie - from Baroness Symons, minister of state at the Foreign Office, and from the Crown Office in Edinburgh, have argued that any further questions to the Libyans about Lockerbie would not be helpful. In short, ministers took the credit of the families' support without asking a single question about Lockerbie to justify that support. In a sense of deep outrage, the families are asking the prime minister for a meeting to discuss Lockerbie as a matter of urgency.
"More people died at Lockerbie than in Madrid, and you would have thought that the government, if only as proof of its horror at terrorism, would be keen to question its new friends in Tripoli about the bombing. Not so, apparently. So the only hard information the families have is that Abdul Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan official, apparently working in intelligence, was convicted in January 2001 of bombing the airliner. How he accomplished this feat is still a mystery. The details of the crime did not emerge at the trial, which was held by Scottish judges sitting without a jury in Holland. It lasted 18 months and cost an estimated £50m.
"Megrahi's co-accused was acquitted, so the prosecution's suggestion that the two men conspired to bomb the plane cannot be right. Indeed, the crucial evidence that the bomb was put on a feeder flight at Malta and was transferred twice, at Frankfurt and at Heathrow, was so thin it was derisory.
"No one knows whether anyone else took part in this sophisticated crime of terror. One man has been convicted. The Libyan government has forked out many millions in compensation. And that, apparently, is the end of the matter. Many of the bereaved relatives, including Dix, are increasingly disturbed at the behaviour of ministers who talk business and politics to the Gadafy regime, but are not remotely interested in pressing anyone in it to tell the whole story about Lockerbie.
"In Britain, meanwhile, Thatcher, John Major and Blair obstinately turned down the bereaved families' requests for a full public inquiry into the worst mass murder in British history.
"It follows from this explanation that Megrahi is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing and his conviction is the last in the long line of British judges' miscarriages of criminal justice. This explanation is also a terrible indictment of the cynicism, hypocrisy and deceit of the British and US governments and their intelligence services. Which is probably why it has been so consistently and haughtily ignored."
I happen to disagree with Paul Foot: it was actually the South African apartheid regime that sabotaged Pan Am Flight 103 to assassinate UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson - but that is another story!
I do however agree with Ruth (above) and Prof. Black: "While the illness of one of the judges would inevitably cause a measure of delay, the Appeal Court's clear failure to take effective steps to minimise that delay is nothing short of disgraceful. Their Lordships should be utterly ashamed of themselves."
Ruth, puuhleeease. The judges conspiring delay? Heart surgery is a bit of a stretch for conspiracy, don't you think? Oh, that's right... you don't ...think. This perspective of yours (and others) could be twisted the same way, where one might see Megrahi's cancer as a conspiracy to speed up the appeal. But of course you are too daft to recognise the idiocy of both perspectives. Go post on Ebola's site. You two are fromt he same cloth.
ReplyDelete