[What follows is the text of a press release issued by Aamer Anwar & Co:]
A sitting will be held on Friday 21st August 2020 at 10.00am for the procedural hearing in an appeal against conviction following our successful application to refer the conviction of the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi to the High Court for determination.
On Friday the case will presided over by Scotland’s most senior judge the Lord Justice General, Lord Carloway along with the Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian and Lord Menzies.
My firm of solicitors has instructed Claire Mitchell QC, Gordon Jackson QC, Clare Connelly and our Edinburgh Agent Rosemary Cameron as part of our legal team.
Our team will appear at the hearing together at the Glasgow Training Rooms, The Pentagon Centre, 36 Washington Street, Glasgow, G3 8AZ on Friday. We will arrive at approximately 9.05am and a statement will be issued following the hearing.
What is likely to happen at the hearing?
a. The hearing will take place by means of WEBEX, a video conferencing online application. The Judges will appear on Screen and our legal team will appear from the one facility in Glasgow. To be given access to the live proceedings please contact the head of Judicial Communications. [RB: To obtain permission for audio access to the hearing, email communications@scotcourts.gov.uk. Only bona fide journalists are accorded video access.]
b. We will need to move the Court to allow the case to proceed in the name of the son of the deceased i.e. Ali Al-Megrahi
c. We need to have the grounds of appeal received and allow the court to consider them.
d. We need to move the Court to consider granting us authority to see certain documents over which public interest immunity is asserted. Our argument is that Public Interest Immunity Certificate is not everlasting, it has been 31 years since the bombing and the UK Government represented by the Advocate General should justify why it is still asserting PII and denying full disclosure of this information to our team.
On the 21st December 1988, 270 people from 21 countries were murdered in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the United Kingdom.
Since then the case of Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi the only man ever convicted of the crime has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history. The Appeal was commenced in 2007 but following the diagnosis of terminal cancer it was suddenly abandoned in 2009.
It is widely claimed that the Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran and carried out by a Syrian based terrorist group in retaliation for a US Navy strike on an Iranian Airbus six months earlier, in which 290 people died.
The reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system has suffered badly both at home and internationally because of widespread doubts about the conviction of Mr Al-Megrahi; he was convicted in a Scottish court of law and that is the only appropriate place for his guilt or innocence to be determined.
A reversal of the verdict would have meant that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom stand accused of having lived a monumental lie for 31 years, imprisoning a man they knew to be innocent and punishing the Libyan people for a crime which they did not commit.
In June 2014 I lodged an application with the Commission (SCCRC) seeking to overturn the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for murder. The application was submitted on behalf of the Immediate family members of the late Mr. Al-Megrahi along with Dr Jim Swire, Reverend John F Mosey and 22 other British relatives of passengers who died on board Pan Am Flight 103.
The Appeal Court in a judgment in July 2015, ruled that the relatives of Lockerbie bombing victims would not be allowed to pursue an appeal on behalf of the only man convicted of the crime. The families did not give up and in July 2017 a further application was lodged with the Commission on behalf of the Al-Megrahi family.
There can be never be a time limit on justice, the families who support this appeal have never given up their search for the truth. On March 11th 2020, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided that Mr. Megrahi’s case should be referred to the High Court for the determination.
The Commission believes that there may have been a miscarriage of justice in relation to the conviction, and that it is in the interests of justice to refer the case to the High Court.
The Commission believes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred by reason of an ‘Unreasonable Verdict’ and the ground of ‘Non-Disclosure’. These grounds incorporate many of the issues we had identified in our application.
Unreasonable verdict
S106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act allows an appeal on the basis that a conviction was based upon a verdict that no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned. Despite the fact there was no jury here, that ground of appeal remains open to Mr Al Megrahi.
This ground relates to the Court’s finding that Mr Al Megrahi was the purchaser of items that were located within the suitcase which housed the bomb which destroyed Flight 103. Said items having been bought in a shop in Malta owned by Mr Tony Gauci.
The Commission have agreed with our submission that the Court could not reasonably find that Mr Megrahi was the purchaser of the items on the basis of the evidence which was before them. This finding was central to the Crown case against Mr Al Megrahi, in essence if he could not be linked to the items within the bomb suitcase, there would have been insufficient evidence to allow the Court to convict.
Mr Gauci’s statements and his evidence on identification were inconsistent and made in circumstances hugely prejudicial to Mr Al Megrahi. His evidence regarding the date of the purchase of the items from his store “could – and should – not have been accepted as credible or reliable.”
The Commission have concluded that no reasonable Court could have accepted the evidence that Mr Megrahi was identified as the purchaser of the items from Gauci’s shop. That being the case, no reasonable Court could have convicted him.
Non-Disclosure
We submitted serious allegations of the failure of the Crown to disclose evidence which could have been key to the defence and interfered with the right to a fair trial.
The Crown failed in its duty of disclosure of relevant material to Mr Al Megrahi’s defence team prior to trial. This prejudiced the defence in their preparation and conduct of the trial to such an extent that the Commission have concluded that this may have given rise to a miscarriage of justice.
The Commission conclude that there should have been disclosure to the defence regarding:
* Information contained in the precognition statement provided by Mr Gauci to the Crown.
*A statement given by Sergeant Bussutil and a confidential police report regarding Mr Gauci’s exposure to photographs in a magazine prior to attending an identification parade.
*Reward monies paid to Mr Gauci and his brother. Documents have claimed that Scottish police officers and FBI agents had discussed as early as September 1989 ‘an offer of unlimited money to the Maltese shop keeper Tony Gauci.
Various reports have claimed that Tony Gauci received more than $2m in reward-money.
The Commission concluded that, when applying the Article 6 test regarding a fair trial under the ECHR, the failure by the Crown to disclose information regarding the photographs which had been viewed by Mr Gauci and the information on reward monies paid to the Gaucis, that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.
Consent to disclose Information:
We are disappointed that the Scottish Government, the UK Government, the United States and other foreign governments have refused consent to disclose matters which at this time remain redacted in papers disclosed to us.
We have requested that the Lord Advocate abide by his duty to make full disclosure, but also insist that the UK Government do not retain a Public Interest Immunity Certificate thus concealing important information from the appellant’s legal team some 31 years after the actual bombing.
For the Megrahi family and many of the British families of the victims supporting the appeal, there is finally hope on what has been a long journey for truth and justice.
For further background please refer to:-
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-51816857 (Lockerbie Appeal Bid Allowed)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-43987079 (Lockerbie bomber's conviction to be reviewed)
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/lockerbie-bombing-appeal-against-abdelbaset-22133295 (Lockerbie bombing: Appeal against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction lodged at High Court)
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/ghosts-lockerbie-stirred-prospect-posthumous-appeal-200316165937575.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-11/lockerbie-bomber-s-conviction-can-be-appealed-again-panel-finds
https://www.news24.com/news24/world/news/scottish-review-body-refers-lockerbie-bomber-case-for-appeal-20200311
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/lockerbie-exclusive-we-publish-the-report-that-could-have-cleared-megrahi.2012036248
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/today-sunday-herald-publishes-behind.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10688067/Lockerbie-bombing-was-work-of-Iran-not-Libya-says-former-spy.html
Showing posts sorted by date for query Aljazeera "if not Megrahi then who?". Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Aljazeera "if not Megrahi then who?". Sort by relevance Show all posts
Thursday, 20 August 2020
Friday, 14 August 2015
The verdict cannot possibly stand as a representation of historical fact
[The item that follows has been contributed by Dr Kevin Bannon:]
It appears that the vast majority of parliamentarians, jurists, academics and news editors in the UK - and their US equivalents - have very little idea of the extent of the affront to justice in the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people died on 21 December 1988.
Just to recount the basics, the crime-scene was the largest in law enforcement history and police investigations took about three years. By international arrangement, Al-Megrahi’s special trial under Scottish jurisdiction and his appeal were held at Kamp Zeist, Holland in 2000-2001. He served 10 years until his release because of his terminal cancer and following his agreement to drop his planned second appeal. Al-Megrahi died in May 2012.
Here is a summary of matters largely omitted from the general narrative about the Lockerbie atrocity:
Investigation and Evidence
It appears that the vast majority of parliamentarians, jurists, academics and news editors in the UK - and their US equivalents - have very little idea of the extent of the affront to justice in the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people died on 21 December 1988.
Just to recount the basics, the crime-scene was the largest in law enforcement history and police investigations took about three years. By international arrangement, Al-Megrahi’s special trial under Scottish jurisdiction and his appeal were held at Kamp Zeist, Holland in 2000-2001. He served 10 years until his release because of his terminal cancer and following his agreement to drop his planned second appeal. Al-Megrahi died in May 2012.
Here is a summary of matters largely omitted from the general narrative about the Lockerbie atrocity:
Investigation and Evidence
The most important item of hard evidence in the investigation was a centimetre square fragment of circuit-board, found, remarkably, within a debris field of hundreds of square miles. Just as fortunately, this was matched by its appearance to a commercially marketed circuit board from a timing device supplied to Libya. Despite that the fragment remains the only part of the explosive device found, no test for explosives residues was carried out on it – which one investigator described as “inconceivable” and “irrational”. In fact neither were such tests carried out on the fragments of the radio/cassette player housing the bomb, or the pieces of suitcase which had contained it – a series of evasions simply too outrageous to describe as an oversight.
Despite a supposedly meticulous investigation, both the date of the fragment’s discovery and the identity of its discoverer remain contradictory and matters of dispute. Most suspiciously of all, the police evidence label pertaining to this item had been manifestly falsified, crucially altering its apparent provenance.
It was never discovered how a bomb was introduced at Malta’s Luqa airport, nor how it transited unaccompanied through Frankfurt and Heathrow - supposedly impossible under security protocols. Instead of solving such outstanding issues, the largest criminal investigation in history has left us with only uncertainties and discrepancies.
A day or two after the Lockerbie bombing, a relatively intact suitcase was removed from the debris field by US officials and taken by helicopter to an unknown destination where its contents were ‘handled’. The suitcase had belonged to a US intelligence official on the passenger list. Four days after the bombing, two Americans believed to be from the CIA, returned the suitcase to the exact position from where it had been removed – a manoeuvre not logged in police records.
In September 1989 a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, described to police the visit of a Libyan to his shop in late November 1988 to purchase several clothing items which matched pieces later found near Lockerbie; these items had apparently been adjacent to the bomb in ‘the primary suitcase’ aboard PA 103. Gauci appeared to have a magnificent memory, and in his first police interviews – nine months after the purchase – he recalled most of the items bought by the customer, the total bill and the weather at the time. Unfortunately, he described in detail someone entirely unlike al-Megrahi both facially and in stature. In any event, al-Megrahi was not in Malta in late November 1988. However, Gauci changed all of his initial evidence in subsequent interviews – changes which were more consistently harmonious with police suspicions and later with the Crown prosecution case. The purchaser’s visit was now revised to December 7 – the only day in the timeframe consistent with al-Megrahi’s movements.
In a ‘photo-session’ al-Megrahi’s picture had been shown to Gauci amongst 11 other photographs of individuals, some of which had been blatantly ‘doctored’ - supposedly to make them more similar to the suspect; even under these circumstances a senior investigating detective gave a plainly illegitimate prompt to Gauci who then chose al-Megrahi’s picture – already known as the ‘correct’ choice to police officers observing the procedure in the same room. This became the clinching identification of al-Megrahi and the basis of his eventual indictment. An identification line-up observed by Gauci was held only years later after al-Megrahi’s picture had been widely publicised, but in any event, the procedure was again improperly set-up in the Crown’s favour.
Two months before the Lockerbie bombing, an apparent Frankfurt-based plot to bomb an airliner had been uncovered by German police. Marwan Khreesat (possibly an alias) arrested as the supposed mastermind, was a Jordanian (i.e. pro-western) intelligence agent and was allowed to return home, despite being caught red-handed making bombs. One of these later exploded killing a German police investigator, but no reports of an investigation or a prosecution transpired; Khreesat has not been seen or heard in public since.
Just two weeks before the PA 103 attack, a telephone warning was received in Helsinki about a plan to bomb a Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt. Despite this being recognised as entirely spurious by investigators, US and airline security officials took it seriously. The caller’s identity remains oddly obscure to this day and he was not prosecuted for his ‘hoax’.
Both the German and UK investigators concluded that neither the Frankfurt set-up nor the Helsinki hoax had any link to the Lockerbie bombing but the obvious artificiality and official suppression of facts surrounding these incidents remains profoundly suspicious.
The Trial
Despite a supposedly meticulous investigation, both the date of the fragment’s discovery and the identity of its discoverer remain contradictory and matters of dispute. Most suspiciously of all, the police evidence label pertaining to this item had been manifestly falsified, crucially altering its apparent provenance.
It was never discovered how a bomb was introduced at Malta’s Luqa airport, nor how it transited unaccompanied through Frankfurt and Heathrow - supposedly impossible under security protocols. Instead of solving such outstanding issues, the largest criminal investigation in history has left us with only uncertainties and discrepancies.
A day or two after the Lockerbie bombing, a relatively intact suitcase was removed from the debris field by US officials and taken by helicopter to an unknown destination where its contents were ‘handled’. The suitcase had belonged to a US intelligence official on the passenger list. Four days after the bombing, two Americans believed to be from the CIA, returned the suitcase to the exact position from where it had been removed – a manoeuvre not logged in police records.
In September 1989 a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, described to police the visit of a Libyan to his shop in late November 1988 to purchase several clothing items which matched pieces later found near Lockerbie; these items had apparently been adjacent to the bomb in ‘the primary suitcase’ aboard PA 103. Gauci appeared to have a magnificent memory, and in his first police interviews – nine months after the purchase – he recalled most of the items bought by the customer, the total bill and the weather at the time. Unfortunately, he described in detail someone entirely unlike al-Megrahi both facially and in stature. In any event, al-Megrahi was not in Malta in late November 1988. However, Gauci changed all of his initial evidence in subsequent interviews – changes which were more consistently harmonious with police suspicions and later with the Crown prosecution case. The purchaser’s visit was now revised to December 7 – the only day in the timeframe consistent with al-Megrahi’s movements.
In a ‘photo-session’ al-Megrahi’s picture had been shown to Gauci amongst 11 other photographs of individuals, some of which had been blatantly ‘doctored’ - supposedly to make them more similar to the suspect; even under these circumstances a senior investigating detective gave a plainly illegitimate prompt to Gauci who then chose al-Megrahi’s picture – already known as the ‘correct’ choice to police officers observing the procedure in the same room. This became the clinching identification of al-Megrahi and the basis of his eventual indictment. An identification line-up observed by Gauci was held only years later after al-Megrahi’s picture had been widely publicised, but in any event, the procedure was again improperly set-up in the Crown’s favour.
Two months before the Lockerbie bombing, an apparent Frankfurt-based plot to bomb an airliner had been uncovered by German police. Marwan Khreesat (possibly an alias) arrested as the supposed mastermind, was a Jordanian (i.e. pro-western) intelligence agent and was allowed to return home, despite being caught red-handed making bombs. One of these later exploded killing a German police investigator, but no reports of an investigation or a prosecution transpired; Khreesat has not been seen or heard in public since.
Just two weeks before the PA 103 attack, a telephone warning was received in Helsinki about a plan to bomb a Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt. Despite this being recognised as entirely spurious by investigators, US and airline security officials took it seriously. The caller’s identity remains oddly obscure to this day and he was not prosecuted for his ‘hoax’.
Both the German and UK investigators concluded that neither the Frankfurt set-up nor the Helsinki hoax had any link to the Lockerbie bombing but the obvious artificiality and official suppression of facts surrounding these incidents remains profoundly suspicious.
The Trial
The Helsinki and Frankfurt incidents were referred to frequently in cross-examinations at Kamp Zeist, helping create a backdrop concerning Middle Eastern bomb threats in Europe, and reminding the court that such terrorists were devious and repeatedly escaped justice. Additional to this undercurrent were a cohort of invisible Crown witnesses: three CIA agents and three more from the former East German STASI - gave evidence concealed behind screens, under pseudonyms and with their voices disguised – all for unexplained reasons. Three more CIA agents, similarly pseudo-named, did not attend court but supplied written statements. Several other Crown witnesses were so vaguely identified in court as to remain obscure.
Four Crown witnesses were described as liars in open court without objection – because it was transparently obvious. A director of the company which supplied the Lockerbie bomb timer had been shown to have conspired to falsely implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing during the investigation. In another incident the same witness claimed to have contacted the CIA with another false story implicating Gaddafi and his security chief Abdullah Senoussi in the Lockerbie attack. These clumsy acts of espionage were justly treated as laughable by the Defence. For all practical purposes, witnesses at Kamp Zeist were free from risk of perjury charges which would normally be applicable in Criminal trials in Scotland.
One major Crown witness, Abu Talb, was serving a life sentence for a terrorist murder and two more (a Mr. ‘Wenzel’ and one Mansour El Saber) had each been party to preparing explosive devices for terrorist purposes – so it was claimed. Her Majesty’s prosecutors had never before been propped-up by such a motley collection of crooks and spooks.
The bomb’s introduction at Malta’s international airport was never established but the judges, like the police before them, decided that this is what must have happened because of al-Megrahi’s ‘identification’ by Tony Gauci. This highly improbable arrangement diverted the investigation away from straightforward, circumstantial evidence that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow – the most logical scenario, but of course entailing an entirely different conspiracy.
Despite facing 227 Crown witnesses, al-Megrahi, mild-mannered and of previous good character, was advised to say nothing in his defence – a suicidal defence strategy designed for jury trials of gangsters or otherwise ‘open and shut’ cases. Of only three witnesses who testified on behalf of the Defence, two were FBI men, whose organisation was backing the prosecution.
The trial and appeal, among the most extensive in the UK’s legal history, were made considerably more lengthy and costly by the attendance of irrelevant Crown witnesses and vast tracts of waffle on points of law and case citations emanating from al-Megrahi’s advocate, without any perceptible contribution to al-Megrahi’s defence. Stupendous weaknesses in the Crown case went unchallenged, in particular Gauci’s contradictory police statements, details of which were almost entirely evaded in cross-examination.
Al-Megrahi’s appeal was prepared in such a way that it was doomed to fail – as even the judges themselves emphasised in their verdict.
After the trial and appeal, Gauci was paid ‘in excess of $2 million’ by the US department of Justice for helping the investigation - his brother received $1 million despite not appearing in court - such payments are not legitimate under Scottish law and if a witness has been promised, or has formed expectations about receiving such payment it should be disclosed to the defence, having significant relevance to the witness’s credibility. Other witnesses received substantial benefits for their information or testimony, whether in the form of money from the US or fishing trips and fancy hotel stays in Scotland, laid on by the police.
The CIA’s witness
Four Crown witnesses were described as liars in open court without objection – because it was transparently obvious. A director of the company which supplied the Lockerbie bomb timer had been shown to have conspired to falsely implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing during the investigation. In another incident the same witness claimed to have contacted the CIA with another false story implicating Gaddafi and his security chief Abdullah Senoussi in the Lockerbie attack. These clumsy acts of espionage were justly treated as laughable by the Defence. For all practical purposes, witnesses at Kamp Zeist were free from risk of perjury charges which would normally be applicable in Criminal trials in Scotland.
One major Crown witness, Abu Talb, was serving a life sentence for a terrorist murder and two more (a Mr. ‘Wenzel’ and one Mansour El Saber) had each been party to preparing explosive devices for terrorist purposes – so it was claimed. Her Majesty’s prosecutors had never before been propped-up by such a motley collection of crooks and spooks.
The bomb’s introduction at Malta’s international airport was never established but the judges, like the police before them, decided that this is what must have happened because of al-Megrahi’s ‘identification’ by Tony Gauci. This highly improbable arrangement diverted the investigation away from straightforward, circumstantial evidence that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow – the most logical scenario, but of course entailing an entirely different conspiracy.
Despite facing 227 Crown witnesses, al-Megrahi, mild-mannered and of previous good character, was advised to say nothing in his defence – a suicidal defence strategy designed for jury trials of gangsters or otherwise ‘open and shut’ cases. Of only three witnesses who testified on behalf of the Defence, two were FBI men, whose organisation was backing the prosecution.
The trial and appeal, among the most extensive in the UK’s legal history, were made considerably more lengthy and costly by the attendance of irrelevant Crown witnesses and vast tracts of waffle on points of law and case citations emanating from al-Megrahi’s advocate, without any perceptible contribution to al-Megrahi’s defence. Stupendous weaknesses in the Crown case went unchallenged, in particular Gauci’s contradictory police statements, details of which were almost entirely evaded in cross-examination.
Al-Megrahi’s appeal was prepared in such a way that it was doomed to fail – as even the judges themselves emphasised in their verdict.
After the trial and appeal, Gauci was paid ‘in excess of $2 million’ by the US department of Justice for helping the investigation - his brother received $1 million despite not appearing in court - such payments are not legitimate under Scottish law and if a witness has been promised, or has formed expectations about receiving such payment it should be disclosed to the defence, having significant relevance to the witness’s credibility. Other witnesses received substantial benefits for their information or testimony, whether in the form of money from the US or fishing trips and fancy hotel stays in Scotland, laid on by the police.
The CIA’s witness
Crown witness Majid Giaka worked for the JSO (the Libyan external security organisation) and was on secondment with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta around the time of the bombing. He was also a CIA mole and as a former colleague of the accused he was regarded as a principal Crown witness at trial. Giaka’s evidence included his sight of a box of TNT in the office drawer of the second accused; the Libyan Consul in Malta seen handling the same explosives; Libyan senior security officials speaking of surreptitiously placing a bag on an ‘English’ aircraft, and the two accused couriering a Samsonite suitcase – the same as the suspect suitcase - into Malta’s Luca airport from Libya. This might have been damning evidence were it to have been credible.
In preparing their case, the Defence, acquired copies of 25 redacted CIA reports or ‘cables’ understanding that these represented all relevant material on Giaka, and believing that the redactions were mere security formalities. However, Defence advocates accidentally got wind of the fact that the Crown had been shown greatly extended versions of the CIA cables at a ‘secret’ meeting at the US embassy. This was against the rule of ‘equality of arms’ - fundamental to the principles of fairness in an adversarial trial. The failure to notify the defence and arrange for the exposed cables to be shared was a duplicitous and illegitimate act in any event. The chief prosecutor Lord Advocate Colin Boyd was then obliged to make a statement admitting his responsibility for the issue but he belittled the significance of the redactions – telling the court that “While they may have been of significance to the Central Intelligence Agency, they had no significance whatsoever to the case”.
This statement from the chief prosecutor, Scotland’s Lord Advocate, proved to be an outstanding misrepresentation. The court was left in the humiliating position of having to petition the CIA to reveal the redactions for the benefit of the Defence. After only a brief scan of the exposed passages Richard Keen QC for the second accused, was scathing about what had become ‘abundantly clear’:
‘…what is now disclosed is, in many instances, highly relevant to the Defence, and I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise…Some of the material, which is now disclosed, goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability but beyond...’
The revelations showed that the CIA themselves had considerable doubts about Majid Giaka, believing he was a smuggler, was milking them for thousands of dollars and supplying little useful information, but plenty which was implausible. It was revealed that a further 11 cables featuring Giaka’s behaviour had been withheld from the Defence. The judge’s conclusions describe the man who had been posited as second principal Crown witness in the trial of the century. Majid Giaka attempted to give a ‘false impression of his importance within the JSO’. He had told the CIA that he had been in the JSO ‘secret files section’ when in fact he was in ‘vehicle maintenance’. He falsely claimed to be on familiar terms with senior JSO officials – and to be related to Libya’s former King Idris – which he was not. Giaka’s claims were ‘at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue’ the judges noted, and he was ‘largely motivated by financial considerations’.
Inviting the CIA to assist with the Lockerbie investigation was an extraordinary error of judgement by the Scottish authorities. If the Kamp Zeist bench imagined the CIA to be a bona fide intelligence agency gathering information about security threats, they were mistaken. The US defence department has considerably greater, genuine intelligence resources to inform its defence department and government of such threats. The CIA is in fact a civilian institution, specialising in clandestine operations serving the interests, including the political interests, of the White House. The CIA’s ambit includes disinformation and propaganda and it has been infamous for manipulating events solely in the interests of the USA. Its methods have involved bribery, intimidation and murder and various other criminal means. Historically the CIA has assisted in the overthrow of benign governments – even those of democratic states and NATO members – and to have helped replace them with ruthless military juntas or corrupt and murderous oligarchs.
The CIA’s contribution to the indictment of al-Megrahi was quite remarkable: the CIA came up with the commercial timing device brand which was matched to the circuit board fragment found near Lockerbie. The CIA also unearthed the photograph of al-Megrahi which led to his identification by the eyewitness. The CIA would also have supplied the court with the Crown’s principal witness but were exposed withholding the fact that Giaka was a liar.
The CIA, whose personnel had tampered with the crime scene itself, have no place whatsoever in either assisting police investigations or in the gathering of information for use as evidence in criminal trials, most especially those in foreign jurisdictions, and with political implications.
Expert views
In preparing their case, the Defence, acquired copies of 25 redacted CIA reports or ‘cables’ understanding that these represented all relevant material on Giaka, and believing that the redactions were mere security formalities. However, Defence advocates accidentally got wind of the fact that the Crown had been shown greatly extended versions of the CIA cables at a ‘secret’ meeting at the US embassy. This was against the rule of ‘equality of arms’ - fundamental to the principles of fairness in an adversarial trial. The failure to notify the defence and arrange for the exposed cables to be shared was a duplicitous and illegitimate act in any event. The chief prosecutor Lord Advocate Colin Boyd was then obliged to make a statement admitting his responsibility for the issue but he belittled the significance of the redactions – telling the court that “While they may have been of significance to the Central Intelligence Agency, they had no significance whatsoever to the case”.
This statement from the chief prosecutor, Scotland’s Lord Advocate, proved to be an outstanding misrepresentation. The court was left in the humiliating position of having to petition the CIA to reveal the redactions for the benefit of the Defence. After only a brief scan of the exposed passages Richard Keen QC for the second accused, was scathing about what had become ‘abundantly clear’:
‘…what is now disclosed is, in many instances, highly relevant to the Defence, and I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise…Some of the material, which is now disclosed, goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability but beyond...’
The revelations showed that the CIA themselves had considerable doubts about Majid Giaka, believing he was a smuggler, was milking them for thousands of dollars and supplying little useful information, but plenty which was implausible. It was revealed that a further 11 cables featuring Giaka’s behaviour had been withheld from the Defence. The judge’s conclusions describe the man who had been posited as second principal Crown witness in the trial of the century. Majid Giaka attempted to give a ‘false impression of his importance within the JSO’. He had told the CIA that he had been in the JSO ‘secret files section’ when in fact he was in ‘vehicle maintenance’. He falsely claimed to be on familiar terms with senior JSO officials – and to be related to Libya’s former King Idris – which he was not. Giaka’s claims were ‘at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue’ the judges noted, and he was ‘largely motivated by financial considerations’.
Inviting the CIA to assist with the Lockerbie investigation was an extraordinary error of judgement by the Scottish authorities. If the Kamp Zeist bench imagined the CIA to be a bona fide intelligence agency gathering information about security threats, they were mistaken. The US defence department has considerably greater, genuine intelligence resources to inform its defence department and government of such threats. The CIA is in fact a civilian institution, specialising in clandestine operations serving the interests, including the political interests, of the White House. The CIA’s ambit includes disinformation and propaganda and it has been infamous for manipulating events solely in the interests of the USA. Its methods have involved bribery, intimidation and murder and various other criminal means. Historically the CIA has assisted in the overthrow of benign governments – even those of democratic states and NATO members – and to have helped replace them with ruthless military juntas or corrupt and murderous oligarchs.
The CIA’s contribution to the indictment of al-Megrahi was quite remarkable: the CIA came up with the commercial timing device brand which was matched to the circuit board fragment found near Lockerbie. The CIA also unearthed the photograph of al-Megrahi which led to his identification by the eyewitness. The CIA would also have supplied the court with the Crown’s principal witness but were exposed withholding the fact that Giaka was a liar.
The CIA, whose personnel had tampered with the crime scene itself, have no place whatsoever in either assisting police investigations or in the gathering of information for use as evidence in criminal trials, most especially those in foreign jurisdictions, and with political implications.
Expert views
Most citizens understand that a criminal trial is supposed to include a transparent examination and exposition of facts. Whence a conviction is reached, there should not be lingering doubts about the verdict. Every jurist, lawyer, academic investigator or researcher who has examined or analysed al-Megrahi’s conviction has reasoned that it represent an outstandingly blatant and audacious miscarriage of justice. These include:
- Robert Black QC, Professor Emeritus of Scottish Law at Edinburgh University, former General Editor of The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia and frequently referred to as ‘the architect of the Lockerbie trial’ - has described its verdict as ‘a disgrace and an outrage’.
- Britain’s most celebrated defence lawyer Gareth Peirce, whose advocacy led to the overturn some of Britain’s most infamous miscarriages of justice, called the Lockerbie trial outcome ‘the death of justice’. As well as describing certain aspects of the forensic investigations as ‘disgraceful’ she refers to political interference, believing that al-Megrahi was returned to his home in Libya because it suited Britain: She wrote: ‘The political furore has been very obviously contrived, since both the British and American governments know perfectly well the history of how and for what reasons he came to be prosecuted’
- American media analyst and economist, Emeritus Prof. Edward S. Herman addressed the CIA’s attempt to withhold from the court, evidence about Giaka’s character: ‘Only under considerable court pressure did they produce a limited number of documents which showed Giaka to have been an incorrigible liar and the CIA, The United States and prosecuting attorneys, to be dishonest’.
- Former US international lawyer and jurist Professor Michael P. Scharf, who had worked with the State Department on preparations for the indictment of the Lockerbie suspects, later formed the opinion that these were not based so much on evidence ‘...but rather on representations from the CIA and FBI and the Department of Justice about what the case would prove, and did prove.’ About Majid Giaka he declared: “It wasn’t until the trial that I learned this guy was a nut-job and that the CIA had absolutely no confidence in him and that they knew he was a liar.”
- Dr. Hans Köchler is one of Europe’s most eminent authorities on international law, in which he has made major contributions to the development of legal infrastructure. Reporting on his observations of the entire Camp Zeist proceedings on behalf of the UN, he wrote: ‘…foreign governments or (secret) governmental agencies may have been allowed, albeit indirectly, to determine, to a considerable extent, which evidence was made available to the Court.’ Dr Köchler described the verdict as ‘totally incomprehensible…a spectacular case of a miscarriage of justice.’
- Len Murray, now retired as one of Scotland’s most distinguished and experienced lawyers, found it inexplicable that the Court could ‘have drawn so many adverse inferences against the accused when there were other explanations that were just as likely...’. Mr. Murray believed that the court’s finding of the crucial date - on which the eyewitness controversially identified al-Megrahi - was established by a means which ‘bordered on the perverse’.
- Eddie MacKechnie, solicitor to al-Megrahi’s acquitted co-accused said: ‘This case was intelligence driven and the conduct of the CIA and other clandestine bodies had a very significant impact…the supposed evidence….was wholly inadequate and contrived’.
- Ian Hamilton QC. Former rector of Aberdeen University wrote: ‘‘I don’t think there’s a lawyer in Scotland who now believes that Mr. Megrahi was justly convicted’.
These eminent people are experts in their fields and mostly involved either directly with the Lockerbie case itself or with special knowledge of Scottish law, international law or terrorist trials.
Undeniably, other jurists, terrorism experts or commentators have made public statements in support of al-Megrahi’s conviction, but these have avoided factual analyses, offering instead their confidence in due process of law:
- Anthony Aust was legal adviser to the UK’s UN Mission and later to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office department. Writing in a law journal he applauded the ‘ingenious use of international law’ in bringing the accused to justice - in fact the Kamp Zeist court was specifically an application of Scotland’s municipal law to an international case. Mr. Aust describes the trial as ‘This example of what can be achieved in the cause of justice...’
- Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, Scotland’s chief prosecutor in the Lockerbie trial, took a very similar view: “…these proceedings have demonstrated what the judicial process can achieve when the international community acts together…I hope that this can be the enduring legacy of the Lockerbie trial. It is one that cannot and must not be forgotten”.
- Stephen Emerson, a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and author is Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism which focuses on ‘Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups’. While describing the Lockerbie forensic investigation as ‘meticulous’ Emerson frankly outlined his analytical priorities: ‘Rather than detail the actual components of the investigation, it is helpful to step back and consider the Pan Am 103 investigation and trial from a cost-benefit analysis perspective to determine whether U.S. interests were ultimately served’.
More recently Prime Minister David Cameron referred to Stephen Emerson as ‘a complete idiot’ for describing Birmingham, UK as “...totally Muslim where non-Muslims just don’t go in” on a US News broadcast.
Those who knew al-Megrahi personally have testified as to his good character. Investigative journalist John Ashton researched for a TV documentary about the Lockerbie bombing in the 90s and co-authored two seminal books about the affair and did research for Al-Megrahi’s legal team in preparation for his second appeal. He attested to the decency and integrity of al-Megrahi in August 2011:
‘I am as certain as I can be that al-Megrahi is innocent. His good manners and cooperative behavior won him respect from prison officers and inmates alike and he strongly desires to clear his name.’
Former Scottish Police Detective George Thomson researched for and interviewed contributors to the Al Jazzera film documentary Lockerbie: Case closed, including al-Megrahi himself. Thompson’s emotional, affectionate portrayal of al-Megrahi in the opening and closing minutes of the film fully substantiates the magnanimous, forgiving statements of al-Megrahi himself from his deathbed. I strongly recommend anyone to see Lockerbie Case closed and judge for themselves the sincerity of al-Megrahi’s comments.
Those who knew al-Megrahi personally have testified as to his good character. Investigative journalist John Ashton researched for a TV documentary about the Lockerbie bombing in the 90s and co-authored two seminal books about the affair and did research for Al-Megrahi’s legal team in preparation for his second appeal. He attested to the decency and integrity of al-Megrahi in August 2011:
‘I am as certain as I can be that al-Megrahi is innocent. His good manners and cooperative behavior won him respect from prison officers and inmates alike and he strongly desires to clear his name.’
Former Scottish Police Detective George Thomson researched for and interviewed contributors to the Al Jazzera film documentary Lockerbie: Case closed, including al-Megrahi himself. Thompson’s emotional, affectionate portrayal of al-Megrahi in the opening and closing minutes of the film fully substantiates the magnanimous, forgiving statements of al-Megrahi himself from his deathbed. I strongly recommend anyone to see Lockerbie Case closed and judge for themselves the sincerity of al-Megrahi’s comments.
See: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/2012/02/20122286572242641.html
Al-Megrahi’s conviction was not merely based on weak circumstantial evidence but on a collection of stark falsehoods and transparent absurdities. Once the imaginary ‘identification’ evidence against al-Megrahi had been authorised, the remaining case was constructed around it - in particular the evidence pertaining to the fragment of the bomb itself, which is contradictory in every aspect of its appearance throughout the investigation.
In the context of the conspicuous improprieties in both investigation and trial - the falsification of evidence and documents, the gaps in the forensic evidence, the contradictory testimony, the unknown witnesses, and the extent of circumstantial and hearsay evidence - the verdict cannot possibly stand as a representation of historical fact.
Unlike most criminal trials, the outcome of the Lockerbie trial has had profound connotations for the development of foreign and security policies of the UK and the USA. It has strongly influenced popular and governmental attitudes to Middle Eastern terrorism, Islam, and the Arabic-speaking peoples in general. Based on the obvious discrepancies pervading the Lockerbie case, then even history itself appears to have been bent and continues on a perilously misguided course.
I invite any jurist or expert to be the first to defend the conviction of al-Megrahi on a factual, analytical basis. I also invite members of the SCCRC or the Scottish Judiciary to respond informally or otherwise, to matters raised here, which are based entirely on either reputable, published sources or from notes made from the Kamp Zeist trial transcript or extracts from it.
Hopefully, in the name of justice and humanity - and common sense - the Scottish or UK authorities will soon make a courageous decision leading to a root-and-branch review of this case. Taking no action is the most perilous option.
Al-Megrahi’s conviction was not merely based on weak circumstantial evidence but on a collection of stark falsehoods and transparent absurdities. Once the imaginary ‘identification’ evidence against al-Megrahi had been authorised, the remaining case was constructed around it - in particular the evidence pertaining to the fragment of the bomb itself, which is contradictory in every aspect of its appearance throughout the investigation.
In the context of the conspicuous improprieties in both investigation and trial - the falsification of evidence and documents, the gaps in the forensic evidence, the contradictory testimony, the unknown witnesses, and the extent of circumstantial and hearsay evidence - the verdict cannot possibly stand as a representation of historical fact.
Unlike most criminal trials, the outcome of the Lockerbie trial has had profound connotations for the development of foreign and security policies of the UK and the USA. It has strongly influenced popular and governmental attitudes to Middle Eastern terrorism, Islam, and the Arabic-speaking peoples in general. Based on the obvious discrepancies pervading the Lockerbie case, then even history itself appears to have been bent and continues on a perilously misguided course.
I invite any jurist or expert to be the first to defend the conviction of al-Megrahi on a factual, analytical basis. I also invite members of the SCCRC or the Scottish Judiciary to respond informally or otherwise, to matters raised here, which are based entirely on either reputable, published sources or from notes made from the Kamp Zeist trial transcript or extracts from it.
Hopefully, in the name of justice and humanity - and common sense - the Scottish or UK authorities will soon make a courageous decision leading to a root-and-branch review of this case. Taking no action is the most perilous option.
Thursday, 10 April 2014
John Ashton responds to Richard Marquise’s Scottish Review article
[John Ashton has today published on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website a response to the article by retired FBI agent Richard Marquise which appeared yesterday in the Scottish Review. Mr Ashton’s article reads as follows:]
The current issue of the Scottish Review carries an article by the head of the FBI’s Lockerbie investigation, Richard Marquise, which critiques the three recently broadcast Aljazeera programmes on Lockerbie. The second of the programmes was originally broadcast on the day Megrahi: you are my Jury was published. It presented evidence that, contrary to the Crown’s claims, the circuit board fragment PT/35b could not have originated from one of the 20 MST-13 timers supplied by Mebo to Libya. Mr Marquise writes as follows. My comments are in regular font:
[Programme] two was primarily dedicated to proving that a fragment of a timer (hereinafter called Pt-35 for the Scottish evidence designation) was not part of the timer that was provided to the LIS. The investigation had determined that PT-35 had been blasted into a piece of cloth which had been contained in the bomb suitcase. The British forensic examiner was criticised for not testing this fragment for explosive residue. It should be noted that PT-35 was found within a fragment of cloth which did have explosive residue on it.
No evidence was presented to the court that the cloth fragment PI995 was tested for residues and nothing in the forensic material disclosed by the Crown suggests that it was.
Once MEBO was identified as the manufacturer of the timer from which PT-35 had come, principals of that company verified this fragment had come from one of 20 timers they had manufactured for the LIS in 1985 and 1986.
In fact Mebo’s Bollier and Lumpert said that the fragment appeared to come from one of the timers. They never claimed to have proof that it did. (Bollier later claimed that it was from a prototype circuit board and not from one of the boards used in the Libyan timers, but this unlikely because the prototypes were grey/brown. Whereas the fragment was green.)
All of them were delivered to Libyan officials, in East Germany and Tripoli. No other timers of this sort were ever made or given to anyone but the LIS. The MEBO technician who had actually made these timers said that he first had to create, by hand soldering, a template for the timers. Once he created the solder lines he was then able to stamp out the 20 copies. Once these were made no other copies were ever made of this type timer.
Al Jazeera showed an interview of a forensic scientist who had allegedly (I do not know what specimens he actually compared) determined that the metallic composition of PT-35 did not match that found on the MEBO timers provided to Libya. He also claimed to have replicated in the laboratory the same or greater temperatures than the fragment would have been exposed to during an explosion to make this determination.
The expert, Dr Jess Cawley, compared PT/35b with DP/347a, which was a control sample one of the boards used in the Libyan timers. His work showed that PT/35b’s circuitry was coated with pure tin, whereas DP/347a’s was coated with a tin-lead alloy. The boards used in the Libyan timers were all made for Mebo by Thuring. During the preparations for Abdelbaset’s second appeal we established that Thuring only ever used tin-lead alloy and had never used pure tin.
It is difficult to exactly replicate the explosion in a laboratory setting. I am not a metallurgist and the FBI was not allowed to examine the composition of the fragment. However, the identification of the fragment was through comparison of the tracking (solder) lines which determined the MEBO timer was an exact match to it. Clearly, if the scientist interviewed for the programme had the requisite technical skills, there would be a disagreement among experts.
It might be difficult to replicate an explosion, but it is not difficult to create the same or even greater heat energy than is created by an explosion. This is what Dr Cawley did and his results showed that the heat of an explosion could not account for the metallurgical difference between the fragment and the Libyan timer boards. The tracking lines of the fragment were indeed virtually identical in pattern to the of the boards used in the Libyan timers, but Crown expert Allan Feraday went further, saying that, not only the tracking pattern, but also the material of the fragment was ‘similar in all respects’ to the Libyan timer boards. ‘Similar in all respects’ was a phrase used throughout his forensic report when describing items that were clearly of common origin.
There was no disagreement among scientists: Dr Cawley’s results merely replicated the results of tests overseen by Mr Feraday in 1991 (which the Crown failed to disclosed) and those done by scientists instructed by the police in 1992.
Many trials result in ‘dueling experts’. However, this is a matter for the court. Every day, in courtrooms around the world, ‘experts’ looking at the same evidence arrive at totally opposite conclusions. The prosecution, to counter, would offer ‘evidence’ that the solder tracking lines are microscopically identical to the other MEBO timers given to Libya and therefore the PT-35 fragment is identical to the other MEBO timers provided to Libya. That is the nature of expert testimony. It would have then been up to the judge or jury to reach a conclusion. Presenting one ‘expert’ opinion was a disservice to the viewers.
Again, there were no duelling experts. All the scientists’ work demonstrates conclusively that there was an irreconcilable metallurgical difference the fragment and the boards used in the Libyan timers. Crucially, the Crown fail to disclose Mr Feraday’s 1991 tests results, which directly contradicted his claim that the fragment and the control sample Thuring board were ‘similar in all respects’.
Mr Marquise does not mention the fact that the Scottish police knew from as early as March 1990, well before the fragment was linked to Mebo, that its pure tin coating was very unusual. In 1992 they commissioned tests that proved that the control sample Thuring board had a tin-lead coating, which begs the question: why did the Crown persist in running a case that was predicated on the claim that PT/35b originated from one of the 20 Libyan timers?
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
No one ever told us what to find or not find about Lockerbie
[This is the headline over an article by retired FBI special agent Richard Marquise published in the current issue of the Scottish Review, prompted by the recent Aljazeera documentary Lockerbie: What Really Happened?. It reads in part:]
The third segment of this programme was the most problematic. I found at least four issues with which I take exception. First of all, the producers of the film as well as several of those in it kept talking about 'evidence' they had uncovered which would have exonerated Libya and Megrahi. Unfortunately none of them, despite their backgrounds, seem to have been able to distinguish between evidence and intelligence.
Let me address each concern separately. A former Manhattan district attorney prepared a report based on interviews she had conducted with some 'unnamed sources'. These sources are (according to the report) very sensitive and they are unable to be identified. They reported on several meetings of terrorist countries and groups which took place in Malta in 1988 prior to the Lockerbie bombing.
The only documentation, or evidence, which was introduced was an alleged document written by one of the unnamed sources which memorialised the meeting(s). She intimated that the sources were reliable and unable to be named which means they could or would never testify and thus their information falls in the realm of intelligence, not evidence. This is a distinction that an experienced prosecutor should understand.
I have no idea what was contained in the report but assume the most 'damning' parts to the prosecution case were aired by Al Jazeera. This report is very similar to one prepared for Pan Am in 1989 which, among other things, said the US government was responsible for the attack and the bomb was brought on board in Frankfurt by a young Lebanese-American man.
This former prosecutor's report, 'Operation Bird', covered a series of meetings in Malta about terrorism and seemed to lay the blame for the Lockerbie bombing on an Egyptian living in Sweden. However, other than by inference, they had no evidence linking anyone at these meetings to the Pan Am attack. In fact, there was no evidence which would be admissible in court shown in the entire segment. They provided no documentary evidence that the man they blamed was even in Malta when the first of these meetings took place. His later travel to Malta in October 1988 has been well-documented in several books about Lockerbie. There is no evidence this man was in Malta in December 1988.
The so-called Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents that some have described as the 'smoking gun', were anything but. The documents which DIA released, presumably under the US Freedom of Information Act, although heavily redacted, had a lot of information about Lockerbie, Libya, Iran and other terrorist groups operating around the time of the bombing. Almost every page has a statement on it which says: 'This is an information report, not finally evaluated intelligence'. In other words, none of it was or ever could be evidence. Most of the reporting in the DIA release was rumour, newspaper articles or analysis of information written by DIA analysts. Not one bit of it was provable and able to be introduced into court. No smoking gun here.
An alleged former senior Iranian official was interviewed and he stated that Iran committed the Lockerbie bombing yet he provided no proof of his statement. In 2000, a young Iranian refugee in Turkey made similar claims. Although he alleged that Iran carried out this attack and that he had documents to prove it, he had no documents and he was unable to provide any information on the attack. Although the government of Iran's hands are not clean as it relates to terrorism around the world, there is no evidence which can be used against anyone in that country to charge with the Lockerbie attack.
The final issue in this segment was an interview with a retired CIA agent. He has often been described as having been involved in the Lockerbie investigation. Using his logic, any FBI agent who interviewed a family member one time could say that he too was involved in the investigation. This agent worked in Paris and at best saw some of the cable traffic about the case but he had no day to day knowledge of the evidence and the investigation. He said the FBI and CIA diverged and never came together on the investigation. After some initial operational issues, the FBI, CIA, British security service and Scottish police worked as a team and at the time of the indictments in 1991 were in total agreement with the results.
This man also claimed that there was an executive decision to put the blame on Libya rather than any other country. In September 2009 this former agent claimed on national television in the United States that in 1992 President Clinton ordered the FBI to find evidence against Libya and charge them for the Lockerbie bombing. Clinton was not president in 1992 and the indictment against Megrahi and Libya was returned in 1991. If he had so much information about the so called 'executive decision', one would think he would have got the date and the name of the president correct.
Others have reported to me that after Gaddafi was killed, this same former agent who now claims that Iran was responsible for the bombing and stated this was the opinion of the CIA 'to a man', commented on a national news programme that Gaddafi was responsible for the Pan Am 103 bombing. This agent too only talked about intelligence which is never to be confused with evidence, that which can be used in court.
This former CIA agent and others have said that high-level officials either in Washington or London told investigators not to link Syria or Iran to the Lockerbie bombing. This is categorically false. No one ever told any of us to find or not find something.
We followed the evidence, not speculation, rumour and the other things that often make up intelligence.
I saw nothing on any of these three programmes to cause me or any of my colleagues to doubt the evidence against Megrahi and Libya. The US indictment which was returned in 1991 indicted Megrahi, his co-accused Lamen Fhimah and 'others unknown to the grand jury'. I cannot and have never said that Iran may not have had a role in the attacks but there is absolutely no evidence to support that claim.
The forensic evidence and investigation conducted by non-political and dedicated police officers/agents as well as intelligence agents indicated that this was a Libyan operation and that Megrahi not only bought the clothes but facilitated the bomb getting into the baggage system. Megrahi, using his false passport, departed Malta on the morning of 21 December 1988, 30 minutes after the bomb bag had left for Frankfurt and then on to London. Megrahi took a LAA flight to Tripoli and was accompanied by a Libyan bomb technician who we believe armed the bomb.
Any 'investigative report', especially on a topic so sensitive and raw, should include interviews of all sides of the issue. A one-sided commentary on rumours, innuendo, previously litigated testimony and intelligence is bound to end in failure. Al Jazeera set the bar pretty low as this special did not answer the question 'Lockerbie: What really happened?'
Any prosecutor will tell you that the wild speculation and rumour contained in this report would never be acceptable in a courtroom. Intelligence is that information used by law enforcement agencies to help them gather evidence which can be used in a court of law. There is a big difference between intelligence which cannot be proven and evidence which can. The evidence convicted Megrahi – the information provided in the Al Jazeera report will convict no one.
[RB: “The evidence convicted Megrahi.” But as I have written (and as the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has confirmed) it clearly ought not to have done.]
The third segment of this programme was the most problematic. I found at least four issues with which I take exception. First of all, the producers of the film as well as several of those in it kept talking about 'evidence' they had uncovered which would have exonerated Libya and Megrahi. Unfortunately none of them, despite their backgrounds, seem to have been able to distinguish between evidence and intelligence.
Let me address each concern separately. A former Manhattan district attorney prepared a report based on interviews she had conducted with some 'unnamed sources'. These sources are (according to the report) very sensitive and they are unable to be identified. They reported on several meetings of terrorist countries and groups which took place in Malta in 1988 prior to the Lockerbie bombing.
The only documentation, or evidence, which was introduced was an alleged document written by one of the unnamed sources which memorialised the meeting(s). She intimated that the sources were reliable and unable to be named which means they could or would never testify and thus their information falls in the realm of intelligence, not evidence. This is a distinction that an experienced prosecutor should understand.
I have no idea what was contained in the report but assume the most 'damning' parts to the prosecution case were aired by Al Jazeera. This report is very similar to one prepared for Pan Am in 1989 which, among other things, said the US government was responsible for the attack and the bomb was brought on board in Frankfurt by a young Lebanese-American man.
This former prosecutor's report, 'Operation Bird', covered a series of meetings in Malta about terrorism and seemed to lay the blame for the Lockerbie bombing on an Egyptian living in Sweden. However, other than by inference, they had no evidence linking anyone at these meetings to the Pan Am attack. In fact, there was no evidence which would be admissible in court shown in the entire segment. They provided no documentary evidence that the man they blamed was even in Malta when the first of these meetings took place. His later travel to Malta in October 1988 has been well-documented in several books about Lockerbie. There is no evidence this man was in Malta in December 1988.
The so-called Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents that some have described as the 'smoking gun', were anything but. The documents which DIA released, presumably under the US Freedom of Information Act, although heavily redacted, had a lot of information about Lockerbie, Libya, Iran and other terrorist groups operating around the time of the bombing. Almost every page has a statement on it which says: 'This is an information report, not finally evaluated intelligence'. In other words, none of it was or ever could be evidence. Most of the reporting in the DIA release was rumour, newspaper articles or analysis of information written by DIA analysts. Not one bit of it was provable and able to be introduced into court. No smoking gun here.
An alleged former senior Iranian official was interviewed and he stated that Iran committed the Lockerbie bombing yet he provided no proof of his statement. In 2000, a young Iranian refugee in Turkey made similar claims. Although he alleged that Iran carried out this attack and that he had documents to prove it, he had no documents and he was unable to provide any information on the attack. Although the government of Iran's hands are not clean as it relates to terrorism around the world, there is no evidence which can be used against anyone in that country to charge with the Lockerbie attack.
The final issue in this segment was an interview with a retired CIA agent. He has often been described as having been involved in the Lockerbie investigation. Using his logic, any FBI agent who interviewed a family member one time could say that he too was involved in the investigation. This agent worked in Paris and at best saw some of the cable traffic about the case but he had no day to day knowledge of the evidence and the investigation. He said the FBI and CIA diverged and never came together on the investigation. After some initial operational issues, the FBI, CIA, British security service and Scottish police worked as a team and at the time of the indictments in 1991 were in total agreement with the results.
This man also claimed that there was an executive decision to put the blame on Libya rather than any other country. In September 2009 this former agent claimed on national television in the United States that in 1992 President Clinton ordered the FBI to find evidence against Libya and charge them for the Lockerbie bombing. Clinton was not president in 1992 and the indictment against Megrahi and Libya was returned in 1991. If he had so much information about the so called 'executive decision', one would think he would have got the date and the name of the president correct.
Others have reported to me that after Gaddafi was killed, this same former agent who now claims that Iran was responsible for the bombing and stated this was the opinion of the CIA 'to a man', commented on a national news programme that Gaddafi was responsible for the Pan Am 103 bombing. This agent too only talked about intelligence which is never to be confused with evidence, that which can be used in court.
This former CIA agent and others have said that high-level officials either in Washington or London told investigators not to link Syria or Iran to the Lockerbie bombing. This is categorically false. No one ever told any of us to find or not find something.
We followed the evidence, not speculation, rumour and the other things that often make up intelligence.
I saw nothing on any of these three programmes to cause me or any of my colleagues to doubt the evidence against Megrahi and Libya. The US indictment which was returned in 1991 indicted Megrahi, his co-accused Lamen Fhimah and 'others unknown to the grand jury'. I cannot and have never said that Iran may not have had a role in the attacks but there is absolutely no evidence to support that claim.
The forensic evidence and investigation conducted by non-political and dedicated police officers/agents as well as intelligence agents indicated that this was a Libyan operation and that Megrahi not only bought the clothes but facilitated the bomb getting into the baggage system. Megrahi, using his false passport, departed Malta on the morning of 21 December 1988, 30 minutes after the bomb bag had left for Frankfurt and then on to London. Megrahi took a LAA flight to Tripoli and was accompanied by a Libyan bomb technician who we believe armed the bomb.
Any 'investigative report', especially on a topic so sensitive and raw, should include interviews of all sides of the issue. A one-sided commentary on rumours, innuendo, previously litigated testimony and intelligence is bound to end in failure. Al Jazeera set the bar pretty low as this special did not answer the question 'Lockerbie: What really happened?'
Any prosecutor will tell you that the wild speculation and rumour contained in this report would never be acceptable in a courtroom. Intelligence is that information used by law enforcement agencies to help them gather evidence which can be used in a court of law. There is a big difference between intelligence which cannot be proven and evidence which can. The evidence convicted Megrahi – the information provided in the Al Jazeera report will convict no one.
[RB: “The evidence convicted Megrahi.” But as I have written (and as the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has confirmed) it clearly ought not to have done.]
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
Lockerbie bombing "commissioned by Iran" - bomb loaded at Heathrow not Malta
[Today’s edition of the Daily Telegraph contains a long article headlined Lockerbie bombing: are these the men who really brought down Pan Am 103? based on the material in Aljazeera’s new documentary. It reads as follows:]
Evidence gathered for the aborted appeal against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction points finger at Iran and Syrian-based terrorist group
In the 25 years that have passed since Pan Am 103 blew up in the sky over Lockerbie, one of the only facts that has remained uncontested is that a bomb concealed in a Samsonite suitcase exploded at 7.02pm on December 21, 1988, causing the loss of 270 lives.
From the day Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, the UK’s smallest police force, began investigating the country’s worst terrorist atrocity, the truth about who was responsible has been hidden by a fog of political agendas, conspiracy theories and unreliable evidence.
The 2001 conviction of the Libyan suspect Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, (and the acquittal of his co-defendant Khalifah Fhimah) only served to raise more questions than were answered.
Quite apart from a number of problems with the prosecution’s case was the question of who else took part in the plot. All sides agreed that Megrahi had not acted alone, even if he was guilty.
Yet some of the investigators who sifted through the wreckage of the Boeing 747 and studied intelligence dating from the months before the attack have never wavered in their belief that it was Iran, not Libya, that ordered it, and that a Syrian-based terrorist group executed it.
Now, following a three-year investigation by a team of documentary-makers working for Al Jazeera television, a new and compelling narrative has emerged, in which previously troublesome evidence suddenly fits together like the parts of a Swiss clock.
It begins in Malta nine months before the bombing and winds its way through Beirut, Frankfurt and London leaving a trail of evidence that pointed to Iran, before a phone call from George H W Bush to Margaret Thatcher allegedly switched the focus of the investigation to Libya.
In March 1988, intelligence officers from Iran, Syria and Libya met in the back room of a baker’s shop owned by Abdul Salaam, the head of the Malta cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).
They shared a common cause, and agreed to “join together in a campaign against Israeli and American targets”, according a witness who was at the meeting.
Classified US intelligence cables obtained by Al Jazeera suggest America was aware of the meeting. A Defence Intelligence Agency signal said that “Iran, Libya and Syria have signed a co-operation treaty for future terrorist acts”.
At that stage they did not have a specific target in mind, but three months later, on July 3, 1988, Iran’s hatred of America reached a new high after Iran Air flight 655 was shot down by the USS Vincennes, which was protecting merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.
During a skirmish with Iranian gunboats the American warship mistook the Airbus A300 on its radar for a fighter jet, and fired two radar-guided missiles which downed the aircraft in the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children.
Iran’s leaders were convinced the aircraft had been shot down deliberately, and proclaimed that there would be “a real war against America”.
By the time the Iranian, Syrian and Libyan plotters next met in Malta in October 1988, their target was clear: to blow up an American airliner as payback for Flight 655.
A source who was present at the meetings was tracked down by Jessica de Grazia, a former Manhattan District Attorney who was hired by Megrahi’s defence team to explore alternative theories over the bombing. Her findings would have formed the basis of Megrahi’s appeal hearing, which he abandoned after he was released from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds in 2009.
She said that among those present were “hard core terrorist combatants” trained in explosives, guns and military matters”.
One of those present was Mohammed Abu Talb, who headed the Swedish cell of PFLP-GC, and would later become one of the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing before the focus shifted to Megrahi.
Robert Baer, a CIA agent who investigated the Lockerbie bombing, told Al Jazeera that the PFLP-GC and Iran quickly became the main suspects.
He claims that six days after Flight 655 was downed by the USS Vincennes, at a meeting in Beirut representatives of the Iranian regime turned to Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian officer and head of the PFLP-GC, and tasked him with bringing down five American jets.
Jibril, who enjoyed the protection of the Syrian regime, had masterminded aircraft bombings in the past, and the DIA was aware of his mission.
According to another cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team: “The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmed Jibril…money was given to Jibril upfront in Damascus for initial expenses – the mission was to blow up a Pan Am flight.”
Jibril placed one of his most trusted deputies, a Palestinian PFLP-GC member called Hafez Dalkamoni, in charge of the terrorist cell, and he travelled to Germany to prepare the attack with Marwan Khreesat, an expert bomb-maker.
While Khreesat busied himself making his devices, Dalkamoni flew to Malta for another meeting in the baker’s shop. Also present was Abu Talb. Their presence in October 1988 was reported by a Maltese newspaper, tipped off that members of the PFLP-GC were in town.
According to the witness spoken to by Miss de Grazia, the meeting was convened to discuss how to get a bomb on board a US passenger jet.
Malta would also become key to the prosecution case against Megrahi, after the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb was found to contain clothes bought in a shop in Malta.
One of the key prosecution witnesses at Megrahi’s trial was Tony Gauchi [sic], owner of Mary’s House boutique, who identified Megrahi as buying clothes from him before the bombing. His evidence was later thrown into doubt after it emerged he had seen a picture of Megrahi in a magazine before he picked him out at an ID parade. He was also paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice.
On his deathbed, Megrahi said: “As God is my witness, I was never in that shop. This is the truth.”
Intriguingly, the papers assembled by Megrahi’s defence team for his aborted appeal show that before Megrahi was ever in the frame, Mr Gauchi identified another of his customers from a list of initial suspects. That man was Abu Talb, who bears a clear resemblance to an artist’s impression of a dark-skinned man with an afro hairstyle which was drawn from Mr Gauchi’s initial recollections.
So was Abu Talb, who Tony Gauchi said had bought clothes in his shop, the man who put the bomb on Pan Am 103?
According to the judges who found Megrahi guilty, the bomb was placed on a flight from Luqa airport in Malta to Frankfurt, and then transferred onto a feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow, where it was finally transferred onto Pan Am 103. But there was another problem for the prosecution: they acknowledged that they had no evidence of Megrahi putting the bomb on board the Air Malta flight at Luqa.
John Bedford, a Heathrow baggage handler, told the Megrahi trial that after he took a tea break on the day of the bombing, he recalled seeing a brown hard-shell case on a cargo trolley that had not been there when he left. He saw the case an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed at Heathrow. There had also been a break-in at Heathrow the night before: security guard Ray Manly told Megrahi's appeal that he found a padlock on a baggage store cut.
Cell leader Dalkamoni and bomb-maker Khreesat had been arrested by the time of the bombing, after German police rounded up terrorist suspects in two cities. But Talb was still at large.
When Talb was arrested until the following year over unrelated terrorist offences police who searched his home found clothing bought in Malta, circuitry and other potential bomb-making materials. For now, his exact role, if any, remains a mystery.
Dalkamoni and Khreesat had been kept under surveillance by German police, who were aware of their terrorist connections, and when the police raided 14 apartments in Frankfurt and Neuss in October 1988 the two men were among 17 suspects who were held.
The police discovered an arsenal of guns, grenades and explosives, and in the back of a Ford Cortina driven by Dalkamoni found a bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player.
The bomb was specifically designed to bring down an aircraft, as it had a barometric switch which would set off a timer when the aircraft reached a certain height. Its design had a striking peculiarity: the plastic explosives had been wrapped in silver foil from a Toblerone chocolate bar.
The German police found four bombs in total, but had reason to believe there had been five.
Was the fifth bomb placed on board Pan Am 103? Bomb fragments recovered from the crash site showed that the bomb had been concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette player identical to the one found in Germany.
Even more strikingly, the bomb fragments included tiny pieces of silver foil from a chocolate bar.
A German forensic officer told the Megrahi trial that the timer on the Lockerbie bomb was not switched on until seven minutes into the flight, suggesting a barometric switch had been used to set it off.
Despite so many pointers to Khreesat being the bomb-maker, he has never been charged over Lockerbie because the judges at the Megrahi trial said that there was “no evidence from which we could infer that [PFLP-GC] was involved in this particular act of terrorism”.
The suggestion of a barometric trigger did not fit the prosecution’s version of events, as they said Megrahi, the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, smuggled the bomb on board an Air Malta flight. But if a barometric switch had been used, the bomb would have detonated on take-off from Malta. Instead, the prosecution said the bomb was triggered at 31,000ft by a straightforward timer switch.
The forensic evidence against Megrahi depended on a tiny fragment of the bomb’s timer recovered from the crash site and said to be identical to a batch of 20 timers known to have been purchased by Libya.
But when Megrahi’s defence team obtained the bomb fragment and sent it to a metallurgist to be tested, he showed it was not one of the timers sold to Libya.
On December 5, 1988, a man with an Arab accent called the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, warning that a bomb would be planted on a Pan Am flight in two weeks time. Despite the warning, the bombers managed to smuggle their device on board Pan Am 103.
Another DIA cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team stated that in early 1989 a cheque from the Iranian Central Bank was written out by an Iranian minister and handed to a middle-man who gave it to Ahmed Jibril. The pay-off was $11 million (£6.5m), according to former CIA agent Robert Baer.
When Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary began its investigation into the bombing, it believed the PFLP-GC was involved. A report written in 1989 by Supt Pat Connor identified 15 members of the organisation he wanted arrested and questioned, and the then Transport Minister Paul Channon invited selected journalists to an off-the-record briefing to set out the case against Iran and the PFLP-GC, adding that arrests were imminent.
But by the middle of 1989 the investigation had suddenly changed tack, reportedly following a phone call between President George H W Bush and Baroness Thatcher in March 1989. The two leaders, it is claimed, were anxious not to antagonize the PFLP-GC’s guardian, Syria - a key strategic power in the Middle East - and decided that Libya, which had taken part in the meetings in Malta, should be the focus of the investigation.
The following year Syria joined forces with the US and Britain to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait during the Gulf War.
Mr Baer said the FBI began investigating Libya “in complete disregard to the intelligence” and suggested Libya’s pariah status made it a convenient scapegoat.
Al Jazeera tracked down alleged bomb-maker Khreesat to Amman in Jordan, where he is kept under surveillance by Jordanian intelligence. He refused to discuss the affair on camera but a source close to him later told Al Jazeera that the attack had indeed been commissioned by Iran and that the bomb was put on board at Heathrow.
Abu Talb now lives in Sweden, having been released from prison four years ago following a 20-year sentence for unrelated terrorist acts. His son said he had “nothing to do with Lockerbie”.
For the families of the Lockerbie victims, the wait for the truth goes on.
Lockerbie: What Really Happened? is on Al Jazeera English at 8pm on Tuesday, March 11, Freeview 83, Sky 514.
[An accompanying article in the same newspaper is headlined Lockerbie bombing: profiles of the men who were implicated before Libya took the blame; another is headlined Lockerbie bombing 'was work of Iran not Libya', says former [Iranian] spy.
A Press Association news agency report published on the Sunday Post website reads as follows:]
The Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran in retaliation for a US strike on an Iranian passenger plane, a documentary has claimed.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to be convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in which 270 people were killed more than 25 years ago.
Evidence gathered for the aborted appeal against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction points finger at Iran and Syrian-based terrorist group
In the 25 years that have passed since Pan Am 103 blew up in the sky over Lockerbie, one of the only facts that has remained uncontested is that a bomb concealed in a Samsonite suitcase exploded at 7.02pm on December 21, 1988, causing the loss of 270 lives.
From the day Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, the UK’s smallest police force, began investigating the country’s worst terrorist atrocity, the truth about who was responsible has been hidden by a fog of political agendas, conspiracy theories and unreliable evidence.
The 2001 conviction of the Libyan suspect Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, (and the acquittal of his co-defendant Khalifah Fhimah) only served to raise more questions than were answered.
Quite apart from a number of problems with the prosecution’s case was the question of who else took part in the plot. All sides agreed that Megrahi had not acted alone, even if he was guilty.
Yet some of the investigators who sifted through the wreckage of the Boeing 747 and studied intelligence dating from the months before the attack have never wavered in their belief that it was Iran, not Libya, that ordered it, and that a Syrian-based terrorist group executed it.
Now, following a three-year investigation by a team of documentary-makers working for Al Jazeera television, a new and compelling narrative has emerged, in which previously troublesome evidence suddenly fits together like the parts of a Swiss clock.
It begins in Malta nine months before the bombing and winds its way through Beirut, Frankfurt and London leaving a trail of evidence that pointed to Iran, before a phone call from George H W Bush to Margaret Thatcher allegedly switched the focus of the investigation to Libya.
In March 1988, intelligence officers from Iran, Syria and Libya met in the back room of a baker’s shop owned by Abdul Salaam, the head of the Malta cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).
They shared a common cause, and agreed to “join together in a campaign against Israeli and American targets”, according a witness who was at the meeting.
Classified US intelligence cables obtained by Al Jazeera suggest America was aware of the meeting. A Defence Intelligence Agency signal said that “Iran, Libya and Syria have signed a co-operation treaty for future terrorist acts”.
At that stage they did not have a specific target in mind, but three months later, on July 3, 1988, Iran’s hatred of America reached a new high after Iran Air flight 655 was shot down by the USS Vincennes, which was protecting merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.
During a skirmish with Iranian gunboats the American warship mistook the Airbus A300 on its radar for a fighter jet, and fired two radar-guided missiles which downed the aircraft in the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children.
Iran’s leaders were convinced the aircraft had been shot down deliberately, and proclaimed that there would be “a real war against America”.
By the time the Iranian, Syrian and Libyan plotters next met in Malta in October 1988, their target was clear: to blow up an American airliner as payback for Flight 655.
A source who was present at the meetings was tracked down by Jessica de Grazia, a former Manhattan District Attorney who was hired by Megrahi’s defence team to explore alternative theories over the bombing. Her findings would have formed the basis of Megrahi’s appeal hearing, which he abandoned after he was released from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds in 2009.
She said that among those present were “hard core terrorist combatants” trained in explosives, guns and military matters”.
One of those present was Mohammed Abu Talb, who headed the Swedish cell of PFLP-GC, and would later become one of the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing before the focus shifted to Megrahi.
Robert Baer, a CIA agent who investigated the Lockerbie bombing, told Al Jazeera that the PFLP-GC and Iran quickly became the main suspects.
He claims that six days after Flight 655 was downed by the USS Vincennes, at a meeting in Beirut representatives of the Iranian regime turned to Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian officer and head of the PFLP-GC, and tasked him with bringing down five American jets.
Jibril, who enjoyed the protection of the Syrian regime, had masterminded aircraft bombings in the past, and the DIA was aware of his mission.
According to another cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team: “The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmed Jibril…money was given to Jibril upfront in Damascus for initial expenses – the mission was to blow up a Pan Am flight.”
Jibril placed one of his most trusted deputies, a Palestinian PFLP-GC member called Hafez Dalkamoni, in charge of the terrorist cell, and he travelled to Germany to prepare the attack with Marwan Khreesat, an expert bomb-maker.
While Khreesat busied himself making his devices, Dalkamoni flew to Malta for another meeting in the baker’s shop. Also present was Abu Talb. Their presence in October 1988 was reported by a Maltese newspaper, tipped off that members of the PFLP-GC were in town.
According to the witness spoken to by Miss de Grazia, the meeting was convened to discuss how to get a bomb on board a US passenger jet.
Malta would also become key to the prosecution case against Megrahi, after the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb was found to contain clothes bought in a shop in Malta.
One of the key prosecution witnesses at Megrahi’s trial was Tony Gauchi [sic], owner of Mary’s House boutique, who identified Megrahi as buying clothes from him before the bombing. His evidence was later thrown into doubt after it emerged he had seen a picture of Megrahi in a magazine before he picked him out at an ID parade. He was also paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice.
On his deathbed, Megrahi said: “As God is my witness, I was never in that shop. This is the truth.”
Intriguingly, the papers assembled by Megrahi’s defence team for his aborted appeal show that before Megrahi was ever in the frame, Mr Gauchi identified another of his customers from a list of initial suspects. That man was Abu Talb, who bears a clear resemblance to an artist’s impression of a dark-skinned man with an afro hairstyle which was drawn from Mr Gauchi’s initial recollections.
So was Abu Talb, who Tony Gauchi said had bought clothes in his shop, the man who put the bomb on Pan Am 103?
According to the judges who found Megrahi guilty, the bomb was placed on a flight from Luqa airport in Malta to Frankfurt, and then transferred onto a feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow, where it was finally transferred onto Pan Am 103. But there was another problem for the prosecution: they acknowledged that they had no evidence of Megrahi putting the bomb on board the Air Malta flight at Luqa.
John Bedford, a Heathrow baggage handler, told the Megrahi trial that after he took a tea break on the day of the bombing, he recalled seeing a brown hard-shell case on a cargo trolley that had not been there when he left. He saw the case an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed at Heathrow. There had also been a break-in at Heathrow the night before: security guard Ray Manly told Megrahi's appeal that he found a padlock on a baggage store cut.
Cell leader Dalkamoni and bomb-maker Khreesat had been arrested by the time of the bombing, after German police rounded up terrorist suspects in two cities. But Talb was still at large.
When Talb was arrested until the following year over unrelated terrorist offences police who searched his home found clothing bought in Malta, circuitry and other potential bomb-making materials. For now, his exact role, if any, remains a mystery.
Dalkamoni and Khreesat had been kept under surveillance by German police, who were aware of their terrorist connections, and when the police raided 14 apartments in Frankfurt and Neuss in October 1988 the two men were among 17 suspects who were held.
The police discovered an arsenal of guns, grenades and explosives, and in the back of a Ford Cortina driven by Dalkamoni found a bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player.
The bomb was specifically designed to bring down an aircraft, as it had a barometric switch which would set off a timer when the aircraft reached a certain height. Its design had a striking peculiarity: the plastic explosives had been wrapped in silver foil from a Toblerone chocolate bar.
The German police found four bombs in total, but had reason to believe there had been five.
Was the fifth bomb placed on board Pan Am 103? Bomb fragments recovered from the crash site showed that the bomb had been concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette player identical to the one found in Germany.
Even more strikingly, the bomb fragments included tiny pieces of silver foil from a chocolate bar.
A German forensic officer told the Megrahi trial that the timer on the Lockerbie bomb was not switched on until seven minutes into the flight, suggesting a barometric switch had been used to set it off.
Despite so many pointers to Khreesat being the bomb-maker, he has never been charged over Lockerbie because the judges at the Megrahi trial said that there was “no evidence from which we could infer that [PFLP-GC] was involved in this particular act of terrorism”.
The suggestion of a barometric trigger did not fit the prosecution’s version of events, as they said Megrahi, the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, smuggled the bomb on board an Air Malta flight. But if a barometric switch had been used, the bomb would have detonated on take-off from Malta. Instead, the prosecution said the bomb was triggered at 31,000ft by a straightforward timer switch.
The forensic evidence against Megrahi depended on a tiny fragment of the bomb’s timer recovered from the crash site and said to be identical to a batch of 20 timers known to have been purchased by Libya.
But when Megrahi’s defence team obtained the bomb fragment and sent it to a metallurgist to be tested, he showed it was not one of the timers sold to Libya.
On December 5, 1988, a man with an Arab accent called the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, warning that a bomb would be planted on a Pan Am flight in two weeks time. Despite the warning, the bombers managed to smuggle their device on board Pan Am 103.
Another DIA cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team stated that in early 1989 a cheque from the Iranian Central Bank was written out by an Iranian minister and handed to a middle-man who gave it to Ahmed Jibril. The pay-off was $11 million (£6.5m), according to former CIA agent Robert Baer.
When Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary began its investigation into the bombing, it believed the PFLP-GC was involved. A report written in 1989 by Supt Pat Connor identified 15 members of the organisation he wanted arrested and questioned, and the then Transport Minister Paul Channon invited selected journalists to an off-the-record briefing to set out the case against Iran and the PFLP-GC, adding that arrests were imminent.
But by the middle of 1989 the investigation had suddenly changed tack, reportedly following a phone call between President George H W Bush and Baroness Thatcher in March 1989. The two leaders, it is claimed, were anxious not to antagonize the PFLP-GC’s guardian, Syria - a key strategic power in the Middle East - and decided that Libya, which had taken part in the meetings in Malta, should be the focus of the investigation.
The following year Syria joined forces with the US and Britain to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait during the Gulf War.
Mr Baer said the FBI began investigating Libya “in complete disregard to the intelligence” and suggested Libya’s pariah status made it a convenient scapegoat.
Al Jazeera tracked down alleged bomb-maker Khreesat to Amman in Jordan, where he is kept under surveillance by Jordanian intelligence. He refused to discuss the affair on camera but a source close to him later told Al Jazeera that the attack had indeed been commissioned by Iran and that the bomb was put on board at Heathrow.
Abu Talb now lives in Sweden, having been released from prison four years ago following a 20-year sentence for unrelated terrorist acts. His son said he had “nothing to do with Lockerbie”.
For the families of the Lockerbie victims, the wait for the truth goes on.
Lockerbie: What Really Happened? is on Al Jazeera English at 8pm on Tuesday, March 11, Freeview 83, Sky 514.
[An accompanying article in the same newspaper is headlined Lockerbie bombing: profiles of the men who were implicated before Libya took the blame; another is headlined Lockerbie bombing 'was work of Iran not Libya', says former [Iranian] spy.
A Press Association news agency report published on the Sunday Post website reads as follows:]
The Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran in retaliation for a US strike on an Iranian passenger plane, a documentary has claimed.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to be convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in which 270 people were killed more than 25 years ago.
Megrahi, who was released from jail by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, died in 2012 protesting his innocence and h is family plan to appeal against his conviction.
But former Iranian intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi has told an Al Jazeera documentary that the bombing was ordered by Tehran and carried out by the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) in retaliation for a US navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier, in which 290 people died.
The US ship apparently mistook the plane for an F-14 fighter jet.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mr Mesbahi said: "Iran decided to retaliate as soon as possible. The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini.
"The target of the Iranian decision makers was to copy exactly what's happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly same, minimum 290 people dead. This was the target of the Iranian decision makers."
US Defence Intelligence Agency cables at the time reported that the leader of the PFLP-GC had been paid to plan the bombing, the broadcaster said.
The Crown Office has previously said the alleged involvement of the PFLP-GC was addressed at the original Lockerbie trial.
A successful application from Megrahi's family to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission could start the third appeal into the conviction.
Megrahi lost his first appeal in 2002, one year after he was found guilty of mass murder and jailed for life.
The SCCRC recommended in 2007 that Megrahi should be granted a second appeal against his conviction. He dropped his appeal two days before being released from prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds.
In December, the Libyan attorney general announced he had appointed two prosecutors to work on the case. For the first time they met Scottish and US investigators who are trying to establish whether there are other individuals in Libya who could be brought to trial for involvement in the attack.
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