Birmingham Six campaigner questions guilt of Lockerbie bomber

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Sunday Mail. It reads in part:]

A politician who helped secure the release of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four says he fears the Lockerbie bomber's conviction is unsafe.

Ex-MP Chris Mullin also says he believes Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's sentence could have been quashed if he had appealed.

Mullin revealed in his newly released volume of diaries that he was asked by Labour colleague Tam Dalyell to get involved in a campaign to clear cancerstricken Megrahi's name. (...)

Mullin told the Sunday Mail: "I have no detailed knowledge of the case, although I am aware his conviction hangs by a thread and that much of the evidence points elsewhere.

"Alas, the proposition will never be tested since he abandoned his appeal in favour of early release."

Mullin's critically-acclaimed diaries, which cover his life as a Labour backbench MP between 2005 and 2010, reveal the approach from Dalyell six years ago.

In 2009, as the row over Megrahi's release rumbled on, Mullin wrote: "The latest instalment of a foolish game that's been going on since the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, on the grounds that he is dying of cancer.

"The more interesting issue, upon which almost no one has touched, is whether or not Megrahi had anything to do with Lockerbie.

"The case against him was wafer-thin and he had an appeal pending which might have resulted in his conviction being quashed." (...)

[Mullin] was a central figure in the campaign to free the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four following their wrongful convictions in the 70s.