A Maltese perspective

[The Malta Independent on Sunday carries an article and an editorial on what should happen now that Abdelbaset Megrahi has returned to Libya after abandoning his appeal (in which one of the issues would have been whether the trial court was entitled to conclude that the suitcase containing the bomb was ingested at Luqa Airport in Malta). The article reads as follows:]

Lockerbie case expert Professor Robert Black has added his name to a growing school of thought that prescribes Malta should demand a separate enquiry into the Lockerbie bombing so as to clear its name as the bomb’s point of departure.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person to have been found guilty of the 1988 terrorist attack that brought down a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland – killing 270 people in the process – was freed from a Scottish prison on Thursday on compassionate grounds, a move allowed under Scottish law for terminally ill prisoners.

But before his release and his subsequent return to Libya was approved, Mr al-Megrahi had dropped an upcoming appeal against his conviction – an appeal that he himself as well as many observers felt he would have won, had it been heard.

But now that the appeal has been dropped, it appears increasingly likely that the victims’ families will never know the truth behind the attack, nor could Malta expect to have its name cleared as the bomb’s staging post.

Contacted by The Malta Independent on Sunday, Professor Black, a former Scottish judge and the architect of the original Lockerbie trial, stressed his conviction that Malta should be demanding a separate enquiry into the bombing so as to remove the blemish on the country and its airport security. Such an enquiry, he suggests, could be carried out by the European Union at Malta’s behest.

“I think the Maltese government should be pressing very hard within the EU for an enquiry into Lockerbie,” Professor Black comments.

“The evidence that the bomb started out its fatal progress from Luqa Airport was some of the weakest in the Zeist trial but it was swallowed by the judges – it had to be, if they were going to convict Megrahi.

“The evidence established that security and baggage reconciliation systems at the airport were of a high international standard – much higher than those then operative at Heathrow. Yet the judges, on the flimsiest of evidence – a dubious interpretation of a computer print-out from Frankfurt Airport – held that Malta was the point of ingestion.

“This unwarranted slur on Maltese airport security should not be allowed to remain. I would strongly encourage the Government of Malta to take such steps as membership of the EU accords it to have this stigma removed.”

Mr al-Megrahi’s appeal had been granted after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found the reliability of Maltese evidence used to convict the former Libyan intelligence agent of carrying out as highly questionable and recommended he be granted an appeal.

Professor Black, himself from Lockerbie, had drawn up the framework for al-Megrahi’s trial, held in the Netherlands under Scottish law, which led to his conviction in 2001. Since then, Professor Black has continually criticised the court’s verdict, contending that al-Megrahi was innocent and that Malta was not the bomb’s point of departure.

[The editorial headed "The appeal that should have been heard" reads in part:]

Now that the appeal lodged by the convicted Lockerbie bomber has been dropped once and for all, the families of the 270 victims of what was the worst terrorist attack in history on British soil stand a very good chance of never knowing how, why and by whom their loved ones were taken from them so tragically just four days before Christmas in 1988.

Nor will Malta’s name ever be cleared by a court of law over its apparent role, as the bomb’s point of departure, in the tragedy. The country has been dogged over the last 21 years by the Lockerbie prosecution’s contention that the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland on 21 December 1988 began its deadly journey on an Air Malta flight out of Luqa Airport.

Indeed, the only hope of answers for the families on both sides of the Atlantic, which incidentally hold very different views on the guilt of the convicted bomber, of learning the truth lies in the possibility of a separate enquiry into the case.

Malta would also have much to gain from such an enquiry – having been branded as the place where the bomb began its travels, and with both underlying and outright implications of lax airport security and the country’s association, however distant, with such a heinous act of terrorism.

As one of the Lockerbie case’s leading authorities points out in today’s issue, the evidence presented during the trial that the bomb had originated at Luqa Airport was some of the weakest of the entire proceedings, and Malta has a good case to bring to the European Union for such an enquiry.

Malta also deserves some concrete answers about its role in the tragedy, and it should be lobbying at all levels for an investigation that would, albeit outside a court of law, at least hear out the new evidence and arguments that were to have been presented by the defence team at the appeal, which mainly dealt with the weaknesses in the Maltese testimony that led to the conviction.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a former employee with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta and the only person to have been found guilty of the terrorist attack, was convicted largely on the basis of evidence supplied by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci – of the now infamous Mary’s House on Tower Road, Sliema.

In his evidence, Mr Gauci identified Mr al-Megrahi as the purchaser of articles of clothing and an umbrella found in the suitcase containing the bomb – placed on an Air Malta flight and transferred to the ill-fated Pan Am flight in Frankfurt.

But in reviewing the request for an appeal, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988” – the very argument that had sealed the indictment against Mr al-Megrahi.

In recommending that the appeal be heard, the Commission found that although it had been proven that Mr al-Megrahi had been in Malta on several occasions during the month in question, it was determined through the new evidence submitted that 7 December 1988 was the only date on which he would have had the opportunity to make the purchases from Mary’s House.

The evidence that was not heard at the trial concerned the date on which Christmas lights had been illuminated in Sliema near Mary’s House which, taken together with Mr Gauci’s evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, indicates the purchase of the incriminating items had taken place before 6 December 1988 – when no evidence had been presented at trial to the effect that Mr al-Megrahi was in Malta before 6 December. (...)

Mr al-Megrahi’s lawyers have also claimed that Mr Gauci had given contradictory evidence, including differing dates of purchase and his account of the sale itself, and that, on one occasion, he had even identified Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Talb as the purchaser.

And then there are the other allegation made by Mr al-Megrahi’s defence team that Scottish detectives had coached Mr Gauci on at least 23 occasions, sometimes over alleged fishing trips on the Scottish lochs, and that he also received up to US$2 million in return for his testimony.

A delegation from the Scottish Crown was also due to travel to Malta to seek consent for the disclosure of sensitive documents related to the case, specifically statements given to the police in September 1989 by a friend of Mr Gauci attesting the former’s concern that Mr Gauci had identified the wrong man – evidence the defence team had argued could have exonerated their client but which had never been presented in court or handed over to the defence team.

Mr Gauci’s friend had apparently raised concerns over the fact that he made a transaction at the shop that bore a remarkable resemblance to the sale to the two men Mr Gauci described in his testimony.

There are so many questions about the case that are still lingering or, rather, festering, that one questions whether the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing will ever be known.

Perhaps it is up to Malta, which has found itself right in the middle of the controversy for over two decades now and through no fault of its own, to find a way to force that truth to come out.

[The Sunday Times of Malta publishes an article headed "Malta had 'no connection' with Lockerbie bomb - government". It contains the following:]

Malta had "no connection" with the bomb that exploded aboard an aircraft over Lockerbie in 1988, Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg told The Sunday Times yesterday.

"The position of the government has never changed on this matter - Malta was not involved in this incident. The bomb never left from Malta," Dr Borg said in the first government reaction since the controversial release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi. (...)

But Dr Borg said that the withdrawal by Mr Al-Megrahi of the second appeal before the Scottish courts meant that no new light could now be shed on the incident.

Asked if he believed Mr Al-Megrahi was innocent, the Foreign Minister said: "The Scottish [Criminal Cases] Review [Commission] said there were sufficient grounds which could have led to the reopening of the case. Unfortunately this hasn't happened."