[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads as follows:]
The Scottish government has come under renewed pressure to hold an independent inquiry into the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
It follows an Al Jazeera broadcast which claimed that a key witness in the trial was paid for his testimony.
The architect of the Lockerbie trial, Prof Robert Black, said an inquiry was vital for the reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system.
He was writing in the legal affairs magazine The Firm.
Editor Steven Raeburn said that the Scottish government had the power to order an inquiry.
"The government initially said they had no such power," he said.
"There was a game of diplomatic tennis between the Scottish government and the Westminster government each claiming the other was the best forum and had the necessary powers and so on.
"The Scottish government maintained that position for about 18 months until it was demonstrated that they had the power all along under the Inquiries Act 2005 - the power is there."
Last year, Scotland's leading Roman Catholic, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, backed calls for an independent inquiry into the conviction.
Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing, has also supported that move.
Megrahi, the only man convicted of the 1988 atrocity in which 270 people died, was released from prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds.
Al Jazeera's "Lockerbie: The Pan Am Bomber" can now be viewed on YouTube here.
ReplyDeleteMISSION LOCKERBIE, 2011, doc. nr.2000.rtf. (google translation, german/english):
ReplyDeletePlease, rermember that the authorities, the news-media and many other sources have continously referred to the PanAm-103-/ Lockerbie tragedy as the, "Biggest Criminal Incident of this Century".
It looks very much today as if everybody from the prosecution-side was eagerly interested to firmly defend the contents from a deliberate "concoct script", for the construction the indictment of November 13/14, 1991, against Libya and the officials Fhimah and Al Megrahi !.
Why i.e. were Edwin Bollier from the MEBO company not allowed, for more than eight years long, to view and examine the real MST-13-timer fragment (PT/35), that had allegedly been discovered in a T-shirt collar ?
More than 10 years after the tragic PanAm 103 -crash, the very nervous activties that have been developed by the Lord Advocate's and the Crown's office after the surrender of Megrahi and Fhimah, demonstrate that nobody had actually expected the two suspects to be surrendered by Libya, for trial in Scotland...
A large numbers of official police-record-pads and cargo-documents of PanAm with notes, covering the actual research reports following the "PanAm 103-crash", have also been very conveniently destroyed...
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch
@PH
ReplyDeleteThank you for that link., absolutely worth seeing.