New probe into Lockerbie needed

[This is the heading over a letter from Tom Minogue in yesterday's edition of The Courier, a daily newspaper with a large circulation in Dundee and Fife. It reads as follows:]

Dr Jim Swire is right to petition the Scottish Parliament (...) with a view to initiating an independent investigation into the 2001 conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988.

My Lockerbie concerns began within hours of the crash on hearing reports of US officials on the scene gathering evidence.

Later, the testing in the US of the timer fragment was in my view wrong. The investigation should have been a matter for Scottish police. The involvement of a foreign government politicised the investigation.

Reinforcing my concerns were the reports of the UN-appointed trial observer, Professor Hans Koechler who reported that for the entire period of the trial in The Hague, two state prosecutors from the US Department of Justice sat next to the Crown Office prosecution team who they passed documents to, and talked to, as if they were supervising them. None of these US officials were listed or mentioned in any of the official trial documents.

I don't claim to know if Megrahi is guilty or not but I do know for certain that he didn't get a fair trial .