Wednesday 15 June 2011

Doubts over new Lockerbie trial

[This is the headline over a brief report in today's edition of The Independent. It reads as follows:]

Experts cast doubt on claims yesterday that the Libyan airline employee cleared of the Lockerbie bombing could stand trial under double jeopardy laws.

Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty of assisting his friend and colleague Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in planting the bomb on board Pan AM flight 103 in 1988 that claimed 270 lives.

Families of those who died had said they hoped that a new prosecution could shine fresh light on the case following the original trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.

But Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the legal process which led to the conviction of Megrahi, said it was highly unlikely that a new unit set up to examine unsolved cases under Scottish Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, would go ahead with a prosecution.

[Two interesting blog posts have emerged following the Aljazeera documentary (which can be watched on You Tube here). The first, Al Jazeera on Al Megrahi..., is on bensix's Back towards the locus and the second, Two secondary suitcases?, on Caustic Logic's The Lockerbie divide.

I am delighted to see that my second home, South Africa, has now notched up 1000 unique visitors on Flag Counter. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika!]

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