Thursday 4 August 2011

Secret report on Lockerbie bomber to be made public

[This is the headline over a report just published on the website of the Dumfries & Galloway Standard, one of the local newspapers covering the Lockerbie area, several days after other media featured the story. The report reads in part:]

A confidential report which raises questions over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber could be made public.

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond said legislation will be brought forward to allow the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to publish its statement of reasons for referring Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi’s case back to the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh. (...)

Speaking this week, First Minister Mr Salmond said: “I intend to publish in full the findings of the SCCRC.

“It hasn’t been done to date because under the current law you have to have an agreement from all parties before you can publish the full statement. It hasn’t been possible to secure the agreement from all parties and therefore the statement is in limbo.

“However, we believe we can change the law so that the matter can be published under the full discretion of the SCCRC, and that is what we intend to do.”

[This article, like all of the others, fails to mention that it was the Scottish Government that chose to impose the consent requirement in the 2009 Statutory Instrument that first allowed publication. It also fails to mention that the consent requirement could, and should, be removed by Statutory Instrument without requiring primary legislation to be piloted through the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government has signally failed to address the question why it is choosing to remove the restrictive requirement in this cumbersome and wholly unnecessary way.]

7 comments:

  1. I say define "brought forward".

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  2. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2011:

    Tomorrow....Tomorrow, only not today, or least until all Criminal Officials are retired after the "Lockerbie-Affair"... or from the state enterprises are dismiss...
    We look forward to the day of opening the files SCCRC...good luck...

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch

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  3. I doubt there will be much of interest in the SCRRC report. I believe they spent a lot of time refuting the claims of a number of the charlatans, fabricators, dimwits and nutters who made submissions, for example refuting the claims that Khalid Jafaar was something more than a victim.

    However I believe the SCCRC had one precondition or assumption for their deliberations - that everybody involved in the case, politicians, spooks, investigators, prosecutors and the Judiciary all acted in complete good faith; that while this may have been a so-called "miscarriage of justice" there was not a criminal conspiracy.

    As one of the trial Judges cheerfully predicted "they will just pick us up on some minor point."

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  4. Actually, I think you're right, to a certain extent. If you look at the rubbish Edwin says he presented to them, God help them. (Kudos to Edwin for making some of the primary evidence available online though.) Nevertheless I think there would be a lot of invaluable new material released.

    I wouldn't mind if only a review led to the conviction being quashed sufficiently definitely to make them rewind far enough to start looking for who really did it.

    My fear is that a half-baked job could leave these bastards still declaring that they're still looking for Megrahi's accomplices!

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. I think most of us agree with you, Rolfe, but the SCCRC report being made public is still the best (only?) hope of things moving forward.
    If Megraghi is never cleared then we will always be where we are now because the majority will simply say "case closed" no matter what evidence is posted on line pointing to his innocence.
    I feel that our biggest weakness is that we have no agreed alternative scenario that we all, or at least most of us, agree on.
    So Scot's Law, somehow, has to clear Megraghi. Even if that happens we might not move forward but without it we are going nowhere.

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  7. I certainly wasn't describing Edwin Bollier as a "nutter" but I suspect the SCCRC were more interested in knocking down straw men than addressing the real issues. I do note that some proponents of the "Khalid Jafaar drug conspiracy theory" were very closely related to Mr megrahi's the last and previous defence teams.

    Some contributors seem to think there was some deep conspiracy behind Mr Megrahi dropping his second appeal. Perhaps he and/or his advisors had concluded that the SCRCC report held out little prospect of vindication.

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