On 27th February
this year a book was launched by Edinburgh publisher Birlinn called Megrahi: You are my Jury.
Earlier that
very morning, just before the actual launch, 10 Downing Street, which could not
have seen the book, issued a statement saying the book was an insult to the [Lockerbie]
relatives. I was in Edinburgh reading the 'insult' for myself. Do read pages
355-362 in particular. Just who was insulted by whom?
No 10's
statement was self evidently made in ignorance of the book's contents.
Among many other issues raised, the book shows for all who will look, that
there is responsible and repeatable scientific evidence that a fragment of
circuit board designated as 'PT35b' at trial and found within a Scottish police
evidence bag could not after all have been a piece of a Libyan owned bomb
timer mechanism as the court believed.
There are of
course many other reasons for doubting the safety of the Scottish verdict
against Megrahi, but of this one tiny fragment even the US FBI's Edward
Marshman, deeply involved, along with the Dumfries and Galloway police in
assembling evidence for the Zeist court has said publicly that he believes
that without this fragment the case could not have been brought to trial.
It is indeed a
thousand days since Mr Megrahi was released from Greenock under a
provision for compassion for sick prisoners which has become available within
our Scottish legal system. I am not a Catholic, but like Cardinal Keith
O'Brien, head of that Church in Scotland I believe we should be proud of that
provision in our law. In a letter to your paper on 9th August 2010, I wrote:
'It is as the
Cardinal says: there is a 'clash of cultures'[between the US and Scotland] and like him I want to live in
a culture capable of compassion. I believe that the Church of Scotland
also supported compassionate release of Mr Megrahi.'
However our
First Minister, as well as Kenny MacAskill have both repeatedly
claimed during the 1000 days since his release that they see no reason to
doubt the Zeist verdict against Mr Megrahi. The Holyrood Parliament heatedly
discussed the release, stalked by an elephant they could not see: on its flank,
the words was he guilty or not?' Perhaps it was the animal's trunk which nearly
brought down the roof of the debating chamber, since it had already been
stalkng them for so many years.
I think we
can no longer tolerate ignorance about this terrible case. Currently we do not
even know, because we have not investigated it, how it was that a piece of
circuit board, so important that even the FBI say the case could not have run
without it came to be found inside a Scottish police evidence bag, the label
for which had also been illegally changed.
Let me say to
you, Mr Cameron, through this gallant newspaper that the book Megrahi: You are my Jury is not an
insult to this British relative of one of the dead, indeed the book should be
read by you, your staff and all your legal advisers. Amongst much else, it
tells us that a fragment of circuit board on which, even according to the
Americans the whole trial depended, could not have originated from a Libyan
timer. Feel free to get the scientific proof of this repeated. Do please go and
ask all your Government Departments to release for public inspection all
documents relevant to this case which have been made subject of 'PII
certificates' over the years. The last time I wrote to you directly, on 29th
February 2012 all I got was a reply from the Foreign Office dated 4th May 2012:
was that perchance an insult to a relative? But you are of course a very busy
and honourable man.
Meanwhile Mr
Salmond please launch an inquiry into how this case came to be compromised by
the spurious belief that we had evidence of the use of a Libyan timer, when in
fact we did not?. Don't you want to know how that fragment got into a Scottish
police evidence bag? Don't you want to know if there is any connection between that
and what Tam Dalyell records in his forward to Ashton's earlier work Cover up of Convenience, (Mainstream
publishing, Edinburgh, 2001)? '....American agents were swarming around the area [of the Lockerbie crash
site]...... the [Scottish] police were doing nothing to stop them.'
To Mr Cameron I
would say remember the disgrace of the IRA wrongful convictions under English
law. Even those who do look at the facts before making judgements sometimes get
things dreadfully wrong. In this case you haven't even looked at the facts,
have you?
To Mr Salmond:
your people of Scotland must be allowed to see whether the Zeist court went
dreadfully wrong or not. The more independent we become, the greater will
become their need to be sure that their justice system is free of all political
interference.
As for some of
us, the relatives of those brutally murdered at Lockerbie, we are tired of
being treated as if we were ignorant children. We are not going away, we have a
right to the truth. My lay advice would be to bite the bullet both of you now,
before it cripples your careers. We have seen enough of party political point
scoring in Holyrood and Westminster. Call in the experts, look at the facts:
all we want is the truth, and to protect us all better in the future.
Meanwhile Mr
Cameron and Mr Salmond consider this please.... if we are correct in
believing that the story of a Libyan bomb launched by Megrahi from Malta is
fiction, then to protect that fiction would be to protect the real culprits who
carried out this terrible action. Is that really what you want to be associated
with in the annals of history? These are indeed a thousand days of shame.
So how about a
deep breath and having a fresh look at all the facts? Ashton's title claims
that we - the public - are now Megrahi's jury. To be an effective jury,
we need first to hear all the facts of the case laid out fair and square before
us: are you afraid to allow that to happen? If so why?
[A letter
submitted by Dr Swire to The Scotsman
and also as yet unpublished reads as follows:]
On Monday David Cameron issued a stinging
attack on Mr Salmond's Government over the compassionate release of Abdel Baset
al Megrahi just 1000 days ago.
I had the privilege of petitioning Mr
Kenny MacAskill before his release decision claiming that Mr Megrahi should be
released at once.
I had two reasons for doing that.
First, as a doctor I knew that he was
dying and had an incurable and extremely painful future before him and, guilty
or innocent, compassion alone dictated that he should now live out his
remaining time with his loving wife and family. I believe that his survival for
almost exactly 1000 days after MacAskill's decision is due basically to the
love and care of his family replacing his isolation from them in Greenock
prison, however humane his care was there. In addition advanced chemotherapy,
including Abiraterone available in Libya, though not Scotland, may have bought
him some extra months. All of us male potential victims of this cancer in the
future should rejoice, not moan at his prolonged survival, who knows for whom
the bell may toll next?
Second, I believed that the verdict against
him was unsafe. Yet I had attended the debate at Holyrood following MacAskill's
decision, where the blowtorches of the party political infighters had been
turned upon Kenny for his decision, not to mention those of Westminster and the
United States. Only one MSP (Christine Grahame, SNP) really tried then to point
to the uncertainty over the verdict against this man.
On 29th February this year immediately
prior to the launch of John Ashton's book Megrahi:
You are my Jury 10 Downing street issued a statement claiming the book to
be 'an insult to the [Lockerbie] relatives, they had not yet seen it. Now
Cameron, speaking of Megrahi's survival till almost 1000 days after his
release claimed on Monday:-
"One thousand days on, this is yet
another reminder that Alex Salmond's Government's decision to free (sic)
the biggest mass murderer in British history was wrong and an
insult to the families of the 270 people who were murdered". Make
that 269 and counting rapidly down, Mr Cameron.
The Ashton book shows among many
other serious weaknesses in the prosecution case that a item of evidence, (the
circuit board fragment known as PT35b) could not have come from a Libyan owned
timer circuit board after all, as the court believed that it did; this was the
last secure bastion of the fable (now surely myth) of Megrahi having started
the bomb from Malta: Even the leader of the FBI Lockerbie
investigators Edward Marshman had said publicly that the trial could not
have proceeded without it.
In the 1000 days since Kenny made his
move, the Salmond administration has maintained the position that it has no
reason to doubt the Megrahi verdict. They too appear to choose to be ignorant
of the accumulating evidence indicating the urgent need for a
re-assessment of the facts in this case.
Time perhaps for Mr Salmond to take the
cue from Willie Rennie MSP a voice I hear above the party political babel North
of the border who has said inter alia "...... we
should be investigating whether crucial information was withheld from the
trial". We have already wasted 1000 days.
We should also be investigating just how
the fragment PT35b came to be found within an official Scottish police
evidence bag. The firm allegation from the Ashton book, supported by impeccable
science (partly of Scottish origin) shows that the fragment presented to court
could not have come from one of the Libyan timers. There was no evidence led of
any other source for it among the wreckage. So just how did it appear in that
bag apparently recovered from the debris field? There it was in that bag,
wrapped in a shirt collar however did it get there if it had no real origin
among the debris? Someone must know. and it's our responsibility Mr
Salmond to discover how it emerged within the supposedly secure Scottish police
evidence chain, is it not?
It would also be useful to know where the
fragment PT35b really did come from, would it not?
That is if, as I'm sure is really the case
Mr Salmond, you wish,like us relatives, to know the truth. This was the
last bastion of the fable of Megrahi having started the bomb from Malta:
Marshman is right: no fragment, no trial.
As Cardinal Keith O'Brien has said he is
glad that our Scottish justice system embodies a moiety of compassion.. We
should also be proud of that even if Cameron is not. But people of this
country need and deserve transparency in their justice systems. We are not at
present moving towards that. It is too late now for Megrahi. It is not too late
for the Scottish people nor for Megrahi's family. We must have objective
reassessment of this case. Mr Cameron already has the examples of the gross
miscarriages of justice under English law in IRA bomb cases, he might benefit
from reviewing those findings.It is possible to be well intentioned, but wrong.
For 1000 days we may already have been
screening the real perpetrators from justice through our inactivity.
If a week is a long time in politics then 1,000 days is the equivalent of
a political aeon. This week saw the 1,000th day since the Lockerbie bomber was
controversially released by Kenny MacAskill.
That “milestone” led to a bit of
discussion in the Holyrood canteen – not so much on the remarkable longevity of
a man who supposedly only had three months to live. It was more that the
brouhaha and wall-to-wall coverage associated with Megrahi’s journey to Tripoli
seemed to belong to a different age.
Since his release in August 2009, we
have seen a general election, a Scottish election and local government
elections. Political leaders have departed (Gordon Brown, Iain Gray, Annabel
Goldie, Tavish Scott). Fortunes and reputations of others have risen and fallen
(David Cameron, Nick Clegg).
Alex Salmond’s stock soared at the
Scottish election but was checked slightly at the local elections. But the
point was that it had been 1,000 days since Megrahi’s release and, as someone
cleverly noted, there is a certain symmetry in that there are another 1,000
days to go before Salmond holds his independence referendum.
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