I am very pleased that Baset has gone home to his wife, family and friends. I strongly believe both Lamin, my original client, and Baset are entirely innocent and thus victims.
To me Baset is a hero and deserved any hint of a hero's welcome he was allowed. He went with Lamin to Holland over 10 years ago expecting justice and never got it. He took the risk for his country and he was welcomed as a hero of his people not because he was ever a terrorist but because he is a son of Libya who suffered for her.
Of course I am sad he abandoned his Appeal he fought so very hard to obtain but I know he had no choice. Politics long usurped any role justice had to play.
The Justice Minister was right to release Baset. It was a decent decision. It was to be expected that as Minister he would support the conviction and laud the Judiciary, Prosecution and Police. It was striking he did not mention another Scottish, statutory body. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Had he forgotten their findings in favour of Baset and a new Appeal?
The inconvenient truth of this shocking case is that all is far from well within the Scottish legal system and sick to the core in scheming Whitehall. Pressurising a dying man, so desperate to return home, into dropping his legitimate appeal was beneath contempt but at least consistent. To suggest there was no such pressure is preposterous.
[Note: Eddie MacKechnie successfully defended Lamin Khalifa Fhimah at the Lockerbie trial in Camp Zeist.
He acted for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi from 2002-2005 and was responsible for the submission to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review commission which was successful.]
A timely and well judged intervention from Eddie MacKechnie. It's surprising how few people are prepared to acknowledge the SCCRC's referral decision of 28 June 2007.
ReplyDeleteAbdelbaset Megrahi's original advocate, William Taylor QC, resigned from the board of the SCCRC on 23 September 2003, the same day as Eddie MacKechnie applied for Megrahi's case to be reviewed.
As reported in The Sunday Times of 23 October 2005 former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, said of the main prosecution witness at the Lockerbie trial, Tony Gauci: "Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say (that he) was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy. I don't think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer."
Fraser added: "I wasn't particularly impressed with his defence: their techniques of muddle and confusion can work for a jury but it doesn't work for three judges."
Asked for his reaction, William Taylor said Fraser should never have presented Gauci as a Crown witness: "A man who has a public office, who is prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland, has got a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable. He was prepared to advance Gauci as a witness of truth in terms of identification and, if he had these misgivings about him, they should have surfaced at the time. The fact that he is coming out many years later after my former client has been in prison for nearly four and a half years is nothing short of disgraceful. Gauci's evidence was absolutely central to the conviction and for Peter Fraser not to realise that is scandalous."
Does Bill Taylor have anything further to add at this particular juncture?