Public Petitions Committee hearing on Megrahi petition

[On Tuesday 9 November, the Scottish Parliament's Public Petitions Committee will hold a hearing on the Justice for Megrahi petition. Dr Jim Swire, Mr Iain McKie, Mr Robert Forrester and I have been invited to attend to make a brief presentation and to respond to MSPs' questions.

The Scottish Sunday Express today runs an article on the forthcoming committee hearing. It reads in part:]

Shocking unseen evidence from the Lockerbie bomber’s abandoned appeal is to be presented to Holyrood this week in a bid to prove his innocence.

Campaigners including Professor Robert Black and Dr Jim Swire will use the documents to try and force a Scottish Government inquiry into Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s conviction.

Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the 270 killed in the 1988 atrocity, will introduce previously unseen diaries which could cast doubt on one of the trial’s key witnesses and show he was offered cash for evidence. [RB: The journalist is in error. This material will not be introduced at the committee hearing, which will be concerned simply with what action, if any, should be taken on the petition, NOT with the merits of Abdelbaset Megrahi's conviction. That would be a matter for any inquiry set up as a result of the petition.]

Written by a Scottish detective they reveal police knew from an early stage that Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, whose identification of the bomber was pivotal in the conviction, had been promised an “unlimited” reward by the US.

Dr Swire, who will deliver a plea to ministers on Tuesday, said: “The diaries kept by Detective Inspector Harry Bell show he knew when he was interviewing Tony Gauci he was getting excited about the possibility of a reward.

“This information alone would ordinarily be enough to overturn the conviction. Both Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and First Minister Alex Salmond have made public statements saying they have full confidence in the verdict against Megrahi.

“That is an extraordinary situation given the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has ruled there may have been a miscarriage of justice.” He added: “How can politicians say they have total faith in the verdict when the one organisation that Scotland possesses to look into these matters says otherwise? It is an untenable position.”

DI Bell was the Dumfries and Galloway detective who traced a scrap of material which had been wrapped around the bomb to Gauci’s clothes shop in Malta. When Megrahi was finally brought to trial, Gauci identified the Libyan in court as the man who had bought the clothing.

It has since emerged that Gauci received $2million and his brother, Paul, received $1million from the US Department of Justice. DI Bell kept a diary during the investigation, although this was not presented to the three judges at the Lockerbie trial in 2001.

On September 28, 1989, he recorded that the FBI had discussed with the Scottish police an offer of unlimited money to Gauci, with $10,000 being available immediately. On March 5, 1990, he recorded a meeting with the FBI and a Maltese detective to discuss “reward money as a last resort”.

And on January 8, 1992, he said Dana Biehl from the US Department of Justice had offered a $2million reward to Libyan double agent Majid Giaka, who also gave evidence against Megrahi. DI Bell wrote: “He was immediately advised of our concern regarding this. I also clarified with him about the Gauci reward and the response was only if he gave evidence.”

It contradicts police sources who have always insisted the rewards were only “engineered” after the trial to help the Gaucis leave Malta. (...)

At Tuesday’s Holyrood hearing, MSPs will consider for the first time a 1,646-signature petition calling for an independent Lockerbie inquiry. Previously, ministers have maintained such a wide-ranging probe could only be called by Westminster or the United Nations. However, Prof Black, Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, said: “The reasons the Scottish Government has given for not holding an inquiry are simply not correct.”

Lockerbie: The 28 year lie.

[This is the headline over an item posted today on Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph’s Lockerbie Truth blog. It reads as follows:]

On this day in 1988, 21st of December, a terrorist bomb destroyed flight Pan Am 103 during its journey from Heathrow Airport in the UK to New York.

Sections of the dismembered plane and 259 passengers [and crew] fell across the Scottish town of Lockerbie and surrounding farms and fields.

In 1991 two Libyan security officers were indicted for the crime. Their trial began in May 2000.

The key prosecution claims were:

1.  Several weeks before the attack, one of the accused, Baset al-Megrahi, purchased a selection of clothes from a Maltese clothing shop.

2. Pieces of the clothing were found at the crash site.

3.  Embedded within one of the pieces was a 4mm square fragment - PT35(b) - of an electronic timer board.

4.  The FBI had proved that the fragment came from a batch of 20 such boards delivered in 1985 to Libya by Swiss electronics supplier MEBO.

5.  Two witnesses would identify the suspects and prove the case beyond doubt. The first, a CIA informant Majid Giaka; the second, a Maltese shopkeeper Toni Gauci.

The trial judges decided that Giaka  was untrustworthy, leaving Gauci as the sole identification witness.

On 31st January 2001 al-Megrahi was found guilty. The second accused, Khalifa Fhimah, was freed with "No case to answer". [RB: The court ruled that there was a case to answer, but at the end of the trial returned a verdict of Not Guilty.]

In the years since the verdict it has become clear that the world has been cynically misled by the FBI, the CIA, and British and Scottish governments.

1. In 1989 Britain's prime minister Margaret Thatcher was advised by the Americans not to enquire into the attack.

2.  Even though she and her entourage had walked across the devastated town one day after the attack, she could not - in her 1993 memoir "The Downing Street Years" - recall the existence of Lockerbie. When asked by Father of the House MP Tam Dalyell why, she said: "I know nothing of Lockerbie, and do not write about something I do not know about."

3.  Seven years after the verdict the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) discovered significant new evidence that had been concealed from the trial judges and defence team.

4.  The SCCRC discovered a secret letter written by the King of Jordan to British prime minister John Major indicating that the Libyans were innocent of the crime.

The King's letter claimed that the attack had been Iranian-funded in revenge for the 1988 destruction by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian Airbus carrying 290 pilgrims to Mecca.

5. Unknown to most journalists and public, the King had agreed to place in protective custody Marwan Khreesat, expert bomb-maker for a Palestinian group, the PFLP-GC. Khreesat had made bombs for the group in Germany, to be used to bring down American passenger planes heading for the US.

6.  US and German intelligence knew that Iran had funded the attack. They had assembled a full dossier of intelligence proving that Khreesat and the Palestinian group were guilty.

7.  On the sudden discovery of PT35(b), however, US intelligence reversed direction and accused Libya of the crime.

8. The British government tried on two occasions to prevent the king's letter becoming public. The first, a Public Interest Immunity Certificate signed by Foreign Secretary David Miliband; the second, an unsuccessful attempt by Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt to close down a Scottish newspaper to prevent publication of the story.

9.  The SCCRC re-examined evidence given in the trial and discovered that al-Megrahi was not on the island of Malta on the day that the clothing was purchased.

10.  The SCCRC also discovered that police diaries of chief police investigator Harry Bell contained a record of multi-million dollar offers of payment to the Maltese shopkeeper Gauci "provided" - in the words of a letter to Harry Bell from the US Department of Justice - "he gives evidence."

11.  The SCCRC also re-examined all the evidence given by Gauci. They concluded that his so-called "identification" was founded on numerous viewings of photographs of al-Megrahi in the media and magazines, all linking him to the bombing. Gauci's evidence was therefore not credible, and the trial judges had been mistaken.

****

Was the Lockerbie fragment PT35(b) a fake? During the trial in 2000 there were suspicions about how it had been discovered and reported on by government scientists. The trial judges had discounted these suspicions.

Then in 2009 the al-Megrahi defence team made a startling discovery. In the years since the trial and first appeal they had managed to obtain a huge set of documents from police and Scottish Crown archives. Among the documents was the forensic notebook of scientific witness Allen Feraday.

Feraday had compared PT35(b) with control samples from MST13 timer circuit boards similar to those supplied to Libya in 1985 by MEBO.

He told the trial judges: "the fragment materials and tracking pattern are similar in all respects" to that of the MST13 timer.

But nine years prior to the trial, on 1st August 1991, when examining both the fragment and a MEBO MST13 timer circuit board, he had made two hand-written entries in his notebook which contradicted this.

The first recorded that tracks on fragment PT35(b) were protected by a layer of "Pure tin". The second said that tracks on the circuit of a control sample MST13 board were covered by an alloy of "70% tin and 30% lead".

Feraday and the police were fully aware of the difference. Two police scientific advisers suggested that the heat of the explosion might have evaporated the lead content of the alloy, leaving pure tin.

Another police adviser working for Ferranti International noted that fragment PT35(b) had indications of being "home made".

Neither the scientist's reports nor the Ferranti letter were followed up. All remained hidden in police files. The judges and defence team were unaware of their contents.

In the light of this new information the defence team consulted two prominent independent experts in the field. The experts repeatedly heat tested the evaporation theory with temperatures exceeding that of the bomb explosion. But the alloy of 70/30 tin/lead remained just that.

Thuring, the company which manufactured the circuit boards used in MST13 timers , confirmed in an affidavit that they had always used a 70/30 tin/lead combination.  Fragment PT35(b) did not, therefore, come from one of their circuit boards. How it was made and by whom remains a mystery.

Feraday either perjured himself or was grossly negligent. It was upon his statement and the identification evidence by Gauci that the case against Baset al-Megrahi would turn.

All this information has been put repeatedly to the Scottish and British governments and police. They have totally ignored it. Instead, for almost two years they have claimed to be "pursuing other suspects" in the chaos that is today Libya.

The Lockerbie campaign will continue. We intend to ensure - with the help of prominent friends from around the world - that the Lockerbie verdict will prove to be a disastrous miscarriage of justice.

Serious doubts on credibilty of Gauci

[What follows is the text of a report that was published in the Times of Malta on this date in 2012:]

Sliema shopkeeper Tony Gauci was always going to be the prosecution’s most important asset in pinning guilt for the Lockerbie bombing on Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.

He was the only one to directly link Mr Megrahi to shards of clothing found at the bombing scene by identifying him as “the Libyan man” who went to buy clothes from his shop at around 6.30 p.m. on December 7, 1988.

Lockerbie investigators had concluded that the bomb on Pan-Am flight 103 was placed in a suitcase that contained clothing produced by Yorkie, a clothes manufacturer in Malta, and sold by Mary’s House in Sliema, which belonged to Mr Gauci and his brother Paul.

And Mr Gauci’s testimony proved to be the single most important element at the Lockerbie trial in Camp Zeist, The Netherlands, to help judges deliver a guilty verdict in January 2001.

But a fresh investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, a body which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, has shed serious doubts on the credibility of Mr Gauci’s testimony.

The report, published for the first time in Scotland on the Sunday Herald’s website, provides an in-depth analysis of the evidence produced in Mr Megrahi’s trial and information that was withheld from the defence that could have been used to challenge Mr Gauci’s credibility.

The report also confirms media reports over the years, which were never challenged, that Mr Gauci and his brother Paul were compensated by the US State Department for the evidence that helped bring Mr Megrahi to justice.

It highlights excerpts of entries in a diary by Scottish police inspector Harry Bell, who took charge of the investigations in Malta, noting Mr Gauci’s interest in monetary compensation.

The commission found that none of the diary entries and memorandums Mr Bell authored, in which witness compensation was mentioned, were ever passed on to the defence.

Of particular interest was a memorandum Mr Bell drew up on February 21, 1991 for his superiors, six days after Mr Gauci had, for the first time, positively identified Mr Megrahi from a photo.

“During recent meetings with Tony he has expressed an interest in receiving money. It would appear that he is aware of the US reward monies which have been reported in the press,” Mr Bell wrote.

In a statement to the commission in 2006, Mr Gauci denied ever discussing compensation with the police, although he did admit awareness of the US reward money. He also alleged that former Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi had also offered him a handsome reward, which he refused.

But the compensation issue also cropped up in 1999 in an assessment report by the Scottish police on including Mr Gauci and his brother Paul in a witness protection programme. It speaks of Mr Gauci’s “frustration” and Paul’s pushiness to get some form of compensation for the troubles they endured.

Without delving into the merits of whether talk of compensation could have influenced Mr Gauci’s testimony, the review commission said the information should have been disclosed to the defence. It concluded that the information could have been used to question Mr Gauci’s credibility and put into serious difficulty the prosecution’s case against Mr Megrahi.

But it is in Mr Gauci’s confusion over Mr Megrahi’s identification where the commission feels “a miscarriage of justice” may have occurred.

Pinpointing December 7, 1988 as the day when the clothes sale happened was crucial for the prosecution because it placed Mr Megrahi in Malta. Any other day before this would have exonerated the Libyan.

Mr Gauci’s testimony in this regard is anything but clear. The only consistent recollection is that on the day he was alone at the shop because his brother Paul was at home watching football.

The only football matches on TV at the time would have been transmitted on RAI, the Italian state television, and would possibly have been linked to European club football matches, putting the day down to a Wednesday.

The prosecution was dilly-dallying between December 7, a Wednesday, and a second day, November 23 – also a Wednesday. But Mr Gauci had also spoken of seeing Christmas decorations “being put up” in the street “a fortnight before Christmas”.

Subsequent research by the defence team, which was never used in the appeal for tactical reasons, revealed that in that year Christmas lights were lit up by then Tourism Minister Michael Refalo on December 6, which means the lights had been “put up” in the preceding weeks.

The court had believed Mr Gauci’s version, even if not solid, as pointing towards December 7 and so incriminating Mr Megrahi.

However, after considering all the evidence before the court on this matter, the review commission concluded there was “no reasonable basis” for the conclusion that the purchase took place on December 7.

The only evidence which favours that date over November 23, the commission said, was Mr Gauci’s account that the purchase must have been about a fortnight before Christmas and his confused description of the Christmas lights going up at the time.

“In light of the difficulties with those two pieces of evidence the commission does not consider that a reasonable court, properly directed, could have placed greater weight upon them than upon evidence of the weather conditions and of Mr Gauci’s statements – in which he said that the purchase had taken place in “November, December 1988”, “November or December 1988” and “at the end of November”. In the commission’s view, those factors taken together point, if anything, to a purchase date of November 23.”

But another question mark hangs over Mr Gauci’s visual identification of the bombing suspect and his early description in police statements of the Libyan as a man, aged “about 50” and of a height that is “about six foot or more”.

In December 1988 Mr Megrahi was 36 years old and measured five feet eight inches, marked discrepancies from Mr Gauci’s man.

But Mr Gauci had consistently, on various occasions in 1989 and 1990, when shown photos of potential suspects by the police, identified two different people: Abo Talb and Mohammed Salem.

It was only in February 1991 that Mr Gauci identified Mr Megrahi as the man who bought clothes from his shop but the prosecution rested heavily on an identification parade held in April 1999, in the months before the trial, when Mr Megrahi was officially indicted.

In the Netherlands, Mr Gauci had pointed to Mr Megrahi and in broken English told investigators: “Not exactly the man I saw in the shop. Ten years ago I saw him, but the man who look a little bit like exactly is the number 5.”

The commission noted that an “extraordinary length of time” had passed between the date of purchase and the parade but of more significance was the fact that prior to the parade Mr Gauci was exposed to Mr Megrahi’s photograph in Focus magazine. This “raises doubts as to the reliability of Mr Gauci’s identification” of Mr Megrahi at that time, the commission said.

It did note though that in February 1991, there was no risk of Mr Gauci being influenced by media exposure of Mr Megrahi since no indictments had been issued yet.

“However, like those other identifications, the identification by photograph in 1991 was one of resemblance only and was qualified and equivocal.”

The commission concluded that in the absence of “a reasonable foundation for the date of purchase” and bearing in mind “the problems with Mr Gauci’s identification” of Mr Megrahi, it was of the view that “no reasonable trial court could have drawn the inference” that the Libyan was the buyer of the clothes.

The significance of this conclusion, the commission said, lay in the fact that such a finding “might be capable of undermining” the weight of other evidence against Mr Megrahi such as that relating to his presence at Luqa airport on the morning of December 21, 1988.

Investigators had argued that an unaccompanied suitcase carrying the bomb and containing the incriminating clothing was placed on board an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt, where it eventually made it to Heathrow before being loaded on to the fatal Pan-Am flight.

"He has a desire to gain financial benefit..."

[Today’s edition of the Maltese newspaper The Sunday Times contains a long article about the dealings of Lockerbie investigators with Tony Gauci, the shopkeeper who “identified” Abdelbaset Megrahi as the purchaser of the items that were in the Samsonite suitcase along with the bomb. It reads as follows:]

Lockerbie detective: give $3m to Maltese witnesses

Gauci maintains his silence

The lead investigator in the Lockerbie bombing personally lobbied US authorities to pay two Maltese witnesses at least $3 million for their part in securing the conviction of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, documents published today in The Sunday Times of Malta reveal.

The documents are salient to the case not only because they could potentially cast doubt on the motivation of star witness Tony Gauci’s crucial testimony that convicted Mr Megrahi, but also because the information about the payment, and the discussions the police entertained with the Gaucis on the compensation, were withheld from the defence.

The former Libyan secret service agent had lost his appeal against his life sentence for his role in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people in December 1988.

Mr Gauci provided key evidence at the 2001 trial because he identified a number of clothes fragments found at the crash site as having been bought from his shop in Sliema. He later identified Mr Megrahi as the person who bought those clothes.

This evidence tied together the prosecution’s thesis, that the bomb loaded on to the doomed Pan Am flight at Heathrow Airport had first left from Malta before being transferred via Frankfurt. But serious doubts were raised about Mr Gauci’s testimony over the years.

The Sunday Times of Malta is in possession of dozens of documents annexed to a damning 2007 review report which showed there could have been a miscarriage of justice.

‘He is worthy of reward’

In one of the documents, Detective Superintendent Tom McCulloch, from the Scottish Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, wrote to the US Department of Justice on April 19, 2002, making the case for Maltese witness Tony Gauci and his brother Paul to be compensated for their role in the trial from the US Reward for Justice programme.

McCulloch wrote: “At the meeting on 9 April, I proposed that US 2 million dollars should be paid to Anthony Gauci and US 1 million dollars to his brother Paul. However, following further informal discussions I was encouraged to learn that those responsible for making the final decision retain a large degree of flexibility to increase this figure.”

The letter followed on from a meeting with the Justice Department and the FBI and another letter sent a year earlier in which Mr McCulloch first made his plea on behalf of the Gaucis.

In this first letter, he wrote: “There is little doubt that (Tony Gauci’s) evidence was the key to the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed Al Megrahi. I therefore feel that he is a worthy of nominee for the reward...”

Mr McCulloch said he had discussed the reward with the Crown Office (the prosecution) but they would not offer an opinion on whether the Gaucis should be paid as this was deemed “improper”.

“The prosecution in Scotland cannot become involved in such an application,” Mr McCulloch wrote.

The Sunday Times of Malta tried to obtain Mr Gauci’s reaction to this latest development but he refused to comment outright, maintaining the media silence that has characterised his role in the whole affair.

The letters were referred to in a report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) which in 2007 sent the case back to the High Court and cast doubt whether Mr Al Megrahi was the Lockerbie bomber after all.

The commission’s damning conclusion was partly based on the content of these letters but the documents remained secret. The SCCRC report only saw the light of day last year when it was published by the Scottish Herald and investigative journalist John Ashton, who was engaged by Megrahi’s defence team.

Scottish police officers defended their actions before the SCCRC, insisting that the Gaucis were never offered money during the investigation.

Mr Gauci himself gave evidence before the commission and stressed that he had never shown any interest in receiving payment. To sustain his point, he underlined the fact that he had turned down various offers for payment by journalists, who had been hounding him and his brother for an exclusive, over the years.

He had also turned down an offer made by an unidentified Libyan man for compensation from the Libyan regime.

However, extracts from a diary kept by Dumfries and Galloway Inspector Harry Bell give a different picture. In a note dated September 29, 1989, early into the investigation, Mr Bell noted that FBI Agent Chris Murray had told him he had “the authority to arrange unlimited money for Tony Gauci” and that he could arrange for “$10,000 immediately”.

Moreover, there are also various entries in the classified documents in which Scottish police describe Paul Gauci as being very forceful about seeking some sort of financial gain and also that he influenced his brother greatly.

“It is apparent from speaking to him for any length of time that he has a desire to gain financial benefit from the position he and his brother are in relative to the case. As a consequence he exaggerates his own importance as a witness and clearly inflates the fears that he and his brother have...”

In another document, it was also pointed out that Paul Gauci leveraged on a perceived loss of takings at the shop Mary’s House.

Paul Gauci’s testimony, which was relevant mostly because it corroborated Tony Gauci’s evidence, was never used at the trial.

It is not clear, therefore, why he was eligible for the reward programme, which awards money in exchange for information on major terrorism cases of interest to the US.

However, as Mr McCulloch pointed out in one of his letters: “...it should never be overlooked that his major contribution has been maintaining the resolve of his brother”.

In 2010, Mr Al Megrahi accused the Maltese witness of “betraying a fellow human being for money”.

‘Shocking document’

Robert Black, an emeritus professor of Scots law, who is widely credited as having been the architect of the non-jury trial at the neutral location of Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, said he found one of the documents shocking.

In this document, dated January 12, 2001, the officer, whose name was redacted, writes: “(the Gauci brothers) will maintain their current position and not seek to make adverse comment regarding any perceived lack of recognition of their position. Nor is it anticipated would they ever seek to highlight any remuneration perceived”.

Reacting to this passage, Prof Black said: “It is no part of an investigator’s or prosecutor’s function to seek to secure that a witness maintains his current position.

“To try to influence a witness, or secure benefits for him, to achieve this result is grossly improper. The passage also recognises that it is important that the remuneration arrangement should not be ‘highlighted’. This manifests a clear, and correct, understanding that the arrangement is not one that would meet with legal or public approbation.”

The act itself of paying out money to a witness is no longer illegal under Scottish law, although it once was. However, Prof. Black insisted, it is something that should always be disclosed to the defence.

“In this case, the authorities did everything in their power to conceal it, including ‘mislaying’ Harry Bell’s diary until it was eventually unearthed by the SCCRC in the course of their investigation of the Megrahi conviction.”

Journalist Joe Mifsud, who covered the Camp Zeist trials said yesterday the documents were interesting because they provided further proof a payment had been made.

“There had been several reports over the years about whether there had been a payment but it was never really confirmed,” said Dr Mifsud, who wrote a book about the Lockerbie bombing.

“However, I never found Gauci’s testimony convincing irrespective of this information. I always felt that a number of things he had stated in the trial would have collapsed had they been tested properly with an onsite inquiry.

“Some of the things he said would come apart if only the judges placed his [statements] in their physical context in Malta – but they never did,” Dr Mifsud said.

Silence for the dead of Lockerbie

[This is the heading over an article posted recently on the Lockerbie Truth website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph.  It reads as follows:]

It is now almost six months since the revelation in John Ashton's book (Megrahi: You are my Jury: The Lockerbie Evidence) that the key evidence on which Baset Al-Megrahi was convicted can no longer be scientifically sustained.

And yet there remains a deafening silence on the part of the judges and Crown Office officials responsible for the investigation and conviction of Al-Megrahi.

The two main planks on which the prosecution's case was founded are:

1. A Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, identified Al-Megrahi as the stranger who had, shortly before the December 1988 bombing, bought clothes in his shop.

2. A fragment of an electronic timer board found at Lockerbie came from a batch of twenty sold to Libya in 1985 by Swiss electronics company MEBO.

1. The Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, during their own three-year investigation of the case, found six grounds for concluding that "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred".

One of the SCCRC's grounds was their discovery of a series of entries in the police diary of chief Dumfries and Galloway police investigator Harry Bell.

Bell recorded from the first days of his investigation that huge offers of reward were available from the United States to principal identification witness Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci.

In a letter sent by Dana Biehl of the US Department of Justice, it was explained that Gauci would receive "unlimited monies, with $10,000 available immediately" if Al-Megrahi was convicted.

Bell's police diary, and all knowledge of this offer and negotiations concerning the offer, were concealed from the trial and first appeal. The judges who convicted Al-Megrahi were unaware of these matters when they concluded that Gauci was a totally reliable witness.

Gauci's final and conclusive identification of Al-Megrahi took place during a police identity parade.

Yet Gauci could not fail to identify the man, since he had possessed for several weeks a copy of a magazine with a colour photo of Al-Megrahi, in which the Libyan was described as "the bomber".

2. The fragment of electronic timer board

It was upon this item that the entire case against Al-Megrahi would turn. In the minds of the judges it proved the Libyan connection, since the evidence appeared to show that it came from a batch sold to Libya in 1985.

It had - according to the available evidence - been manufactured by Swiss company Thuring, on behalf of electronics supplier MEBO. It seemed to be a "golden thread" linking Al-Megrahi to the bomb.

In 2008 the Al-Megrahi defence team discovered an extraordinary anomaly, one which had escaped the attention of the prosecution team, the Scottish Crown Office, and the Scottish police. It concerned the silver-like protective coating on the fragment, which covered the copper circuitry in order to prevent oxidisation.

A hand-written note by the government's chief forensic scientist Alan Feraday had recorded the protective coating as "100% tin".

Feraday's records also showed that he was aware of the difference between the Lockerbie fragment and the coating upon a control sample supplied to the police as part of their investigation. The control sample - manufactured by Swiss company Thuring - contained a 70/30% alloy of tin and lead.

The prosecution and police mistake was to speculate that the heat of the Lockerbie explosion had entirely evaporated the lead content. But no follow-up investigations in order to test this theory were carried out.

During the trial, the judges and defence team were unaware of the anomaly and accepted the provenance of the fragment from the metallurgical point of view.

When in 2008 the defence team checked with Thuring, it emerged that all timer boards made by that company throughout the 1980's were coated with an alloy mixture of 70% tin and 30% lead. Indeed, Thuring had always made, and continue to make, boards with a 70/30% alloy.

In 2008 the Thuring production manager swore an affidavit to this effect and was scheduled to repeat his evidence in Al-Megrahi's second appeal, abandoned in 2009.

Having discovered the anomaly, the defence team commissioned two highly experienced and reputable scientists to investigate the matter. In a series of experiments carried out at separate laboratories, the scientists tested the theory of evaporation of lead content by high temperatures.

In all cases, the lead did not evaporate. Thus they established beyond all reasonable doubt that the fragment found at Lockerbie could not have come from any of the timers sold to Libya by MEBO.

This evidence too was scheduled to be presented in Al-Megrahi's second appeal, abandoned in 2009.

The protocols and data resulting from the defence-commissioned experiments would no doubt be freely available, should the prosecuting authorities request to examine them.

Do the responsible officers not have a duty of conscience to at least enquire into this new evidence?  

And might we ask of Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland how he would feel if it was his own daughter who had been murdered by unknown persons, while a man remains falsely convicted for that offence?

Will not his silence, and that of his officials and the Scottish judiciary, should it continue, be interpreted by historians as the greatest of betrayals of Scottish society and the law?

A deafening silence

What follows is an item published on this blog on this date two years ago:

Silence for the dead of Lockerbie

[This is the heading over an article posted recently on the Lockerbie Truth website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph.  It reads as follows:]

It is now almost six months since the revelation in John Ashton's book (Megrahi: You are my Jury: The Lockerbie Evidence) that the key evidence on which Baset Al-Megrahi was convicted can no longer be scientifically sustained.

And yet there remains a deafening silence on the part of the judges and Crown Office officials responsible for the investigation and conviction of Al-Megrahi.

The two main planks on which the prosecution's case was founded are:

1. A Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, identified Al-Megrahi as the stranger who had, shortly before the December 1988 bombing, bought clothes in his shop.

2. A fragment of an electronic timer board found at Lockerbie came from a batch of twenty sold to Libya in 1985 by Swiss electronics company MEBO.

1. The Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, during their own three-year investigation of the case, found six grounds for concluding that "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred".

One of the SCCRC's grounds was their discovery of a series of entries in the police diary of chief Dumfries and Galloway police investigator Harry Bell.

Bell recorded from the first days of his investigation that huge offers of reward were available from the United States to principal identification witness Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci.

In a letter sent by Dana Biehl of the US Department of Justice, it was explained that Gauci would receive "unlimited monies, with $10,000 available immediately" if Al-Megrahi was convicted.

Bell's police diary, and all knowledge of this offer and negotiations concerning the offer, were concealed from the trial and first appeal. The judges who convicted Al-Megrahi were unaware of these matters when they concluded that Gauci was a totally reliable witness.

Gauci's final and conclusive identification of Al-Megrahi took place during a police identity parade.

Yet Gauci could not fail to identify the man, since he had possessed for several weeks a copy of a magazine with a colour photo of Al-Megrahi, in which the Libyan was described as "the bomber".

2. The fragment of electronic timer board

It was upon this item that the entire case against Al-Megrahi would turn. In the minds of the judges it proved the Libyan connection, since the evidence appeared to show that it came from a batch sold to Libya in 1985.

It had - according to the available evidence - been manufactured by Swiss company Thüring, on behalf of electronics supplier MEBO. It seemed to be a "golden thread" linking Al-Megrahi to the bomb.

In 2008 the Al-Megrahi defence team discovered an extraordinary anomaly, one which had escaped the attention of the prosecution team, the Scottish Crown Office, and the Scottish police. It concerned the silver-like protective coating on the fragment, which covered the copper circuitry in order to prevent oxidisation.

A hand-written note by the government's chief forensic scientist Alan Feraday had recorded the protective coating as "100% tin".

Feraday's records also showed that he was aware of the difference between the Lockerbie fragment and the coating upon a control sample supplied to the police as part of their investigation. The control sample - manufactured by Swiss company Thüring - contained a 70/30% alloy of tin and lead.

The prosecution and police mistake was to speculate that the heat of the Lockerbie explosion had entirely evaporated the lead content. But no follow-up investigations in order to test this theory were carried out.

During the trial, the judges and defence team were unaware of the anomaly and accepted the provenance of the fragment from the metallurgical point of view.

When in 2008 the defence team checked with Thüring, it emerged that all timer boards made by that company throughout the 1980's were coated with an alloy mixture of 70% tin and 30% lead. Indeed, Thüring had always made, and continue to make, boards with a 70/30% alloy.

In 2008 the Thüring production manager swore an affidavit to this effect and was scheduled to repeat his evidence in Al-Megrahi's second appeal, abandoned in 2009.

Having discovered the anomaly, the defence team commissioned two highly experienced and reputable scientists to investigate the matter. In a series of experiments carried out at separate laboratories, the scientists tested the theory of evaporation of lead content by high temperatures.

In all cases, the lead did not evaporate. Thus they established beyond all reasonable doubt that the fragment found at Lockerbie could not have come from any of the timers sold to Libya by MEBO.

This evidence too was scheduled to be presented in Al-Megrahi's second appeal, abandoned in 2009.

The protocols and data resulting from the defence-commissioned experiments would no doubt be freely available, should the prosecuting authorities request to examine them.

Do the responsible officers not have a duty of conscience to at least enquire into this new evidence?  

And might we ask of Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland how he would feel if it was his own daughter who had been murdered by unknown persons, while a man remains falsely convicted for that offence?

Will not his silence, and that of his officials and the Scottish judiciary, should it continue, be interpreted by historians as the greatest of betrayals of Scottish society and the law?

[RB: Today, two years and six months after the revelation in John Ashton’s book, the deafening silence continues.]