Lockerbie bomber Megrahi 'visited Malta for sex'

[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website.  It reads in part:]

The Libyan jailed for life following the 1988 Lockerbie bombing told investigators he travelled to Malta regularly to have sex.

Prosecutors said the bomb which destroyed Pan-Am Flight 103 was in a suitcase loaded on the island.

Previously secret documents, seen by BBC Scotland, detail the explanations of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, 59, for his presence on Malta.

They also suggest he could travel there without a passport or identification.

The Mediterranean island was key to the case which saw Megrahi convicted, in January 2001, of murdering 270 people in the bombing. (…)

He has always maintained his innocence, and an investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) found he may have suffered from a miscarriage of justice.

Its 821-page report has never been published, but it has now been seen by BBC Scotland. (…)

A Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, identified Megrahi as the man to whom he sold clothes which were later found in a suitcase which had contained the bomb.

He said Megrahi visited his shop, Mary's House, on December 7, 1988.

Controversy has surrounded that date - and was one of the reasons why the SCCRC sent the case back to the Appeal Court.

But defence lawyers realised if the original trial had known how easily Megrahi could travel undetected to Malta it could have strengthened the prosecution case.

The SCCRC document says: "If the applicant (Megrahi) had spoken to this in evidence it would have removed the need for the Crown to establish the date of purchase of the items from Mary's House as 7 December 1988."

SCCRC investigators who interviewed Megrahi in Greenock Prison discovered he had a mistress in Malta whom he may have visited twice in December, 1988 - including the night before the bombing. (…)

"It was possible therefore that the reason for his visit to Malta on 20 December was to meet a woman for this purpose," the SCCRC report said.

"The woman in question was the same one that he had suggested he might have met during his visit to Malta on 7 December.”

[All of this is of relevance only if the bomb started its fatal journey from Malta; and if Megrahi was the purchaser of the clothes from Tony Gauci's shop.  The evidence for each of these is extremely weak. See Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result:

"Commentary. The trial judges held it proved that the bomb was contained in a piece of unaccompanied baggage which was transported on Air Malta flight KM 180 from Luqa to Frankfurt on 21 December 1988, and was then carried on a feeder flight to Heathrow where Pan Am flight 103 was loaded from empty. The evidence supporting the finding that there was such a piece of unaccompanied baggage was a computer printout which could be interpreted to indicate that a piece of baggage went through the particular luggage coding station at Frankfurt Airport used for baggage from KM 180, and was routed towards the feeder flight to Heathrow, at a time consistent with its having been offloaded from KM 180. Against this, the evidence from Luqa Airport in Malta (whose baggage reconciliation and security systems were proven to be, by international standards, very effective) was to the effect that there was no unaccompanied bag on that flight to Frankfurt. All luggage on that flight was accounted for. The number of bags loaded into the hold matched the number of bags checked in (and subsequently collected) by the passengers on the aircraft. The court nevertheless held it proved that there had been a piece of unaccompanied baggage on flight KM 180. (...)

"Commentary. The most that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, would say (either in his evidence in court or at an identification parade before the trial or in a series of nineteen police statements over the years) was that Megrahi “resembled a lot” the purchaser, a phrase which he equally used with reference to Abu Talb, one of those mentioned in the special defence of incrimination lodged on behalf of Megrahi. Gauci had also described his customer to the police as being six feet [183 cms] tall and over fifty years of age. The evidence at the trial established (i) that Megrahi is five feet eight inches [173 cms] tall and (ii) that in late 1988 he was thirty-six years of age. On this material, the judges found in fact that Megrahi was the purchaser."]