More from a former student

I watched a documentary on the Lockerbie bombing this evening on you tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnEmsgBzLxw
and found out some more information about the case.

The Libyan man convicted, Abdelbaset Megrahi, is appealing again at the moment, and an MSP, Christine Grahame, is being threatened with legal action for questioning the actions of the Advocate General in securing his imprisonment. This is still a hugely contentious issue even twenty years on from the event, with many in Scotland, including Professor Robert Black, the legal expert who set up the special trial in Holland, feeling that Megrahi's conviction is unsound.

The documentary did not however question his guilt, pointing to CIA evidence which linked a tiny scrap of a bomb timer's motherboard being the same model as that found on some Libyan terrorists caught trying to travel with it through customs somewhere in Africa, years earlier. This, along with the fact that Megrahi had once had contact with the Swiss firm which made the devices, was held against him, seemingly justifiably. In addition was the fact that a Maltese shopkeeper, in whose shop the clothes in the suitacase which contained the bomb wer bought, recalled having sold them to 'a man with a Libyan accent'. It was not however mentioned that this shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, failed to identify Megrahi numerous times before finally doing so. Professor Black, in his scepticism about the conviction, focuses on this as the key weakness in the prosecution case. Absence of any kind of id would make the evidence against Megrahi purely circumstantial: he was stationed in Malta, where the clothes were bought, and worked as an intelligence officer for the country under suspicion. THis does not however mean that he is the man who carried out that horrendous deed of packing the case and putting it on the plane in Frankfurt, bound for New York via Heathrow, on December 21st 1988.

The subsequent compeensation payout of 8 million dollars per victim by Libya to the families seems to be an acknowledgement of guilt. But whose? Does Libya and Colonel Gadaffi implicitly accept responsibility for Megrahi's actions? Or is it simply a grace payment designed to smooth the way for a removal of sanctions. What would happen if, unlikely as it may be, Megrahi wins his appeal? We would be left with the farcical situation of Libya having paid out for a crime none of its agents were ever found responsible for in a court of law. The convenient response would be to say 'end of story': for pragmatic purposes, a country cannot be put on trial, and compensation should be accepted instead. But Saddam Hussein might argue, it's a pity the same rule didn't apply to him.

What if, on the other hand, Libya was not responsible for Lockerbie, but it suited certain international interests to frame them, or rather Megrahi, for the crime? And here we come back to the evidence: the CIA discovery of the match with the timer device previously found in Africa. Can anyone say that this evidence was genuine? Given the CIA's past record, it's hardly implausible that they produced evidence to suit a story they wanted to create. And what about the fact that, 6 months prior to Lockerbie, the US Navy had accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing even more people than died in Pan Am 103. For this, Iran declared that it would get revenge, so isn't it strange that Libya should be the ones to down the jet?

The families, the vast majority anyway, seem opposed to the appeal, or the idea that Megrahi should be allowed back to Libya becuase he is dying of cancer. They want to see him die in a Scottish jail, as the man who perpetrated a horrific mass murder, one of the most callous acts it is possible to imagine. But, it seems to me, it would be to the discredit of the Scottish legal system to keep him there, as we cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt, that he was the man responsible for this atrocity. Surely, if ever there was a need for sanctions threat by the US, it is against Gadaffi again, if he doesn not make public the documents which must still exist relating to Libyan security service operations in 1988. If he cannot produce these documents, serious doubts must arise as to whether his country was responsible at all, and Megrahi would have to go free, at least for the last few years before he dies of cancer.

[The above is a post dated 21 July 2009 on the tinoscandle blog. For an earlier related post from the same blog, click here.]