The Lockerbie bombing - the ultimate qisas barbarism

[What follows is excerpted from an article by barrister David Wolchover headlined The obscene rationale of random retaliation published today on the Jewish News website:]

Last week mainstream lovers of Israel doubtless watched in horror as crazed Israeli police were televised beating Palestinians with batons as they lay on the ground outside the Al Aqsa mosque.  

No “context” of security considerations could conceivably excuse such brutality, which sadly brought to mind similar footage of so-called “police” attacking demonstrators in that host of countries ruled over by oppressive regimes. The inflammatory effect it will have worked on the latest generation of Palestinian Arabs already poisoned by decades of the big naqba lie is not hard to imagine.

Yet as sickening as it was to observe the mishtara in action, it pales into insignificance compared with the random ambushing and murder of Anglo-Israeli sisters Rina and Maia Dee and their mother, who subsequently succumbed to her injuries.

It has been reported that Hamas “praised” the attack (and the Tel Aviv car attack) as “retaliation” for the Al Aqsa raids. If accurately reported it is noteworthy that Hamas did not cite Israel’s air attacks on Gaza as legitimating the Dee killings.

Presumably the air raids were accepted by Hamas as a response to the rockets launched from Gaza and Lebanon. Those followed the Al Aqsa raids and since the vast majority were neutralised by the Iron Dome shield, it may be deduced that the Dee murders and the Tel Aviv incident were deemed sanctionable as replacement retaliation.

Even according to the Islamic fundamentalist interpretation of Lex Talionis – the principle of tit-for-tat – the murders were of course utterly disproportionate. No one knows what might have been in the mind of the killer or killers but what is significant is that Hamas, as the official embodiment of would-be genocide, sought by praising them to draw an equivalence between non-fatal beating and homicide.

The episode demonstrates once again the haphazard and muddled rationale behind Islamic Fundamentalism, rooted as it is in the quasi-theocratic doctrine of qisas, the sacred duty to exact revenge in like measure. (...)

But qisas does not require vengeance to be directed personally at the supposedly deserving criminal. If you can’t kill that individual, any old soft target will do, provided they are loosely associated with the original perpetrator. It could be regimental colleagues, family members or friends, fellow citizens or members of the same community.

It might even stretch to people only tenuously connected. The ultimate barbarism here is the Lockerbie bombing. On July 4, 1988, an IranAir jet carrying 290 passengers and crew was shot down by the Vincennes, an American guided-missile cruiser patrolling in the Gulf of Iran, with the loss of all on board.

The Vincennes was engaged at the time in a skirmish with Iranian fast patrol boats and the relevant crew members incompetently mistook the jetliner for an Iranian F-14A Tomcat heading in to attack the ship. Yet no timely apology or offer of compensation was forthcoming; instead the Reagan administration’s lame attempts to excuse the disaster only added salt to the wound.

Incensed, Iran embarked on qisas by collaborating with a Palestinian terrorist faction in the detonating of a bomb on PanAm 103 over Lockerbie the following December 21 with the not quite equivalent loss of 270 lives on board.

Quite apart from the fact that the victims were presumptively innocent it mattered not to the Iranian government that among the passengers a great many were not even American citizens and the 11 killed by falling debris were Lockerbie residents.

Has President Rouhani acknowledged Iran's responsibility for Lockerbie?

[What follows is excerpted from a report in today's edition of the Daily Express:]

Donald Trump has been warned to expect another Lockerbie by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, as Iran continued to mourn the death of its top military leader Qassem Soleimani.

Mr Rouhani responded to the US President’s threat to strike 52 Iranian sites, by posting a cryptic tweet in which he told America to never threaten Iran and to “remember the number 290”. He wrote: “Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290.#IR655. Never threaten the Iranian nation.”

The figure 290 refers to the total number of passengers on Iranian Airways flight IR655 who died when their plane was accidentally shot down over the Persian Gulf by the US Navy in July 1988.

In December of the same year, Pan Am flight 103 crashed in Lockerbie after a bomb exploded on board, killing all 270 passengers.

Although Colonel Gaddafi and Libya were blamed for the terrorist attack, Western intelligence agencies believed that Iran ordered the bombing in retaliation for the downing of its plane in July.

Mr Rouhani’s post has been interpreted by some Middle East experts as a veiled reference to the Lockerbie tragedy and an implicit acknowledgement of their involvement in the affair.

Fatima Alasrar, a Middle East analyst from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, linked Rouhani's tweet with the Lockerbie disaster.

She wrote: “Rouhani is basically reminding @realDonaldTrump of the #Iranian Air Flight 655 carrying 290 passengers which was downed by a US navy warship the Vincennes in 1988.

“Though it was deemed a human error, Tehran worked covertly to exact its revenge. How? #Lockerbie.”

She added: 'Boeing 747 airline Pan Am exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and was assumed to be an operation conducted by the Libyans when it was #Iran who orchestrated the downing of the plane and paid the Libyans to do it.

“After years of denying, Rouhani just admitted to it!”

[RB: A longer article along the same lines appears today in the Daily Mail. In February 2016 barrister David Wolchover wrote an article setting out the evidence for Iran and Rouhani's responsibility for Lockerbie.]

A completely circular argument

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2011.

Masking justice with “mercy”

[This is the title of an article by barrister David Wolchover in the current issue of Criminal Law & Justice Weekly. Over nine pages it painstakingly dissects the evidence relating to the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The following is just one short section of the article:]

Although the trial court found that the Samsonite bag had been carried from Luqa on KM180 they did not find that al-Megrahi had been instrumental in getting it on board. Nor did they find that he brought bomb components to Malta on December 20, and they rejected the Crown’s contention that he had access to explosives in Malta. But they found that he was involved as some sort of accessory on the basis of a package of assumptions: (i) the MST-13 timer was a type which had been supplied, though apparently not exclusively, to the Libyan military/JSO; (ii) al-Megrahi was a member of the JSO; (iii) he bought the clothes in the suitcase from Mary’s House on July 7; (iv) using a false passport for unexplained purposes he made a flying visit to Malta on December 20, returning to Tripoli next day at virtually the same time as KM180 flew out; (v) although there was no evidence as to how the bag could have been placed on board KM180 at Luqa, the Frankfurt evidence was consistent with the possibility that it was.

Having regard to al-Megrahi’s membership of the JSO and the supply of MST-13 timers to Libya, they were able to find that the bag had been put on board KM180 on December 21 because al-Megrahi (a) was the purchaser of the clothes on December 7, (b) was in Malta on December 21, using a false passport with no explanation and (c) was, as they found, therefore “connected,” in some unspecified way with the planting of the bomb. How could they be sure he was the purchaser of the clothes on the basis of mere resemblance to the purchaser and his brief presence in Sliema on December 7? Oh, because the bomb had been flown out of Luqa on December 21, when he was at the airport (using a false passport) and he was therefore “connected” with planting it. But, wait. How could they be sure it had started on its way from Luqa on the 21st? Ah, because he was found to have bought the clothes.

The argument was completely circular. The trial Judges professed to apply the principle of circumstantial evidence, an exercise which normally involves weaving together a number of disparate strands of evidence, reasonably well established or even undisputed though in themselves capable of proving very little, to wrap the accused in a net so tight as to permit no escape from a judgment of guilt. But the actual principle the court applied was petitio principii: assuming what is to be proved as a component of the would-be proof. Thus, a fundamental corruption of basic logic intellectually bankrupted the whole exercise.

The circle is dependent on the soundness of the finding that al-Megrahi was the purchaser. If that finding is wholly unsustainable the circle is broken and the other components prove nothing. The case against al-Megrahi depends therefore on the question whether there is a substantial case for contending that he was the purchaser. There is not.

Israeli Lockerbie warnings ignored

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in today’s edition of the Sunday Post:]

Israeli spies warned UK security services Britain would be targeted in a terror outrage weeks before the Lockerbie bombing.

David Wolchover, an eminent barrister and author, has made the claim in an updated report on the disaster.

In 2013, he published a 103-page examination of Lockerbie to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the bombing which claimed 270 lives. [RB: See http://www.davidwolchover.co.uk/docs/Culprits%20of%20Lockerbie.doc.]

He claims he’s since been contacted by “highly-placed” Israeli sources with fresh allegations, which he has used to update his work, Culprits of Lockerbie. The new allegations centre on claims the Israeli intelligence service – known as Mossad – warned MI6 that Heathrow Airport in London was being targeted by terror organisations because of lax security.

But the warnings were allegedly ignored by MI6, which dismissed them as an attempt by Israel to ingratiate itself back into the affections of security services here.

Mr Wolchover, a criminal defence barrister in London and author, said: “MI6 spurned the warnings. There was context to this.

“In the summer of 1988, British intelligence discovered Mossad were operating extensively across the UK without the authority of the UK. As punishment they kicked out a number of Israeli diplomats.”

Mr Wolchover said MI6 dismissed the November 1988 warning – a month before Lockerbie – as a “self-serving sham” for Mossad to “worm its way back into MI6’s good books”.

Similar claims were made in a book by an Israeli-American military historian Samuel Katz in a book in 1993.

He claimed Israelis had warned the UK an airliner departing from Europe in the run-up to Christmas would be targeted by a terror organisation. Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the December 1988 atrocity, has hailed the claims.

He said: “It suggests that far from their duty of protecting the British public our authorities missed chances to stop it.”

[RB: This story was covered on this blog on 18 May 2016 in a post headed Why MI6 disastrously spurned Mossad’s Heathrow alert.]

Why MI6 disastrously spurned Mossad’s Heathrow alert

[This is the headline over an article by barrister David Wolchover that was published on the Jewish News website on 16 May 2016. It reads as follows:]

In my recent article on the part played by President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, I stated that Israeli intelligence had warned MI6 that Heathrow was the likely target for planting a bomb on a passenger aircraft but the warning was ignored because of a major rift between British and Israeli intelligence services. A number of readers have expressed curiosity about the episode.

During tensions in the Gulf earlier that year the US Navy had negligently shot down a packed Iranian Airbus. Israel and American intelligence soon learnt that for a multi-million dollar bounty Ahmed Jibril’s Syrian-based “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command” – experts in planting bombs on passenger planes – had been contracted by Iran to destroy an American airliner in revenge. Infiltrated Israeli agents also learnt that Heathrow was the prime target for the planting of a bomb on a US plane and British intelligence was duly alerted.

The significance of that warning was its prescience. Detailed scrutiny of the totality of the Lockerbie evidence proves conclusively that, contrary to the official story, the suitcase containing the bomb was placed by a terrorist in a portable luggage bin in Heathrow’s “interline” shed before the bin was taken out to the doomed Jumbo Jet. But Iran was not merely the paymaster. As reported in my earlier article, an Israeli intelligence source has confirmed that Iran in fact provided key logistical support. The bomb was flown into Heathrow on board an IranAir cargo jet which docked 200 yards from the Interline shed and was taken across to the shed by a PFLP-GC terrorist, named by my source as Jibril’s nephew, Marwad Bushnaq.

To learn why MI6 spurned the warning we must go back to the summer of 1988 when MI5 and Special Branch officers arrested a suspected member of the Palestinian Fatah Force 17 faction. But their captive turned out to be a Mossad double agent and in the light of other intelligence about Mossad’s activities in the UK the British Government concluded that the Israelis had been running an extensive network of operatives throughout the realm, engaging in the infiltration of various Fatah and PFLP cells. Since it was accepted that a number of Palestinian activist groups were cultivating close links with Irish republican terrorist bands it might have been supposed that British intelligence would have relished the chance to pool resources with their Israel counterparts. But other considerations prevailed. Whitehall was bound to show its outrage that Mossad had unilaterally made the UK Israel’s own private intelligence fiefdom.

Older readers may recall the dramatic outcome. On 17 June 1988 Mossad’s London station chief Arieh Regev and four other agents with diplomatic cover were sensationally expelled.

According to the late Samuel Katz’s 1993 book Israel Versus Jibril (Paragon, p205) Mossad alerted MI6 in late November 1988 that a Middle Eastern terrorist gang, probably one of the Syrian-sponsored anti-Arafat groups, would try to sabotage an airliner departing from Europe in the run-up to the Christmas holidays. Katz noted that the British dismissed the warning as no “hot tip” but a purely self-serving sham by which Mossad supposed they could worm their way back into MI6’s good books. He gave no further details of the warning and simply referenced an article by Yisrael Rosenblat in Ma’ariv Sofshavu’a (the Israeli newspaper’s weekend magazine) for November 22, 1991.

In fact my source confirmed that the warning was much more specific than that described in Rosenblat’s report. MI6 were very definitely told that because of the appalling shambles in Heathrow’s security (with airside passes easily obtained under the counter, hundreds having gone missing during the rebuilding of Terminal 3) the airport was Number One target to get a bomb into the hold of a wide-bodied plane operated by one of the premier American carriers.

Whitehall’s hostile attitude was conveyed back to Israel by an exasperated British intermediary and Mossad washed its hands of the whole business. The catastrophic aftermath may explain the desperate efforts to show that the bomb was not infiltrated at Heathrow. Doubtless the response of the joint intelligence chiefs to this revelation will be silence rather than denial but it is enough to hope that these days our security services are more pragmatic and less Israel-averse.

Time to come clean on Rouhani and Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article by barrister David Wolchover published in Jewish News Online on 18 February 2016. It reads as follows:]

Not long after Hassan Rouhani became president of Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu grimly described him as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Islamic Republic’s so-called “moderate” president may have gently smiled his way to a milestone deal over his country’s nuclear development programme and a warm welcome in European capitals, but Israel’s premier was spot on.

Under Rouhani’s administration, a staggering 2,000 people have been executed, mainly by the “traditional” method of slow hanging. For all his cherubic twinkling, Rouhani is as bloodthirsty a customer as the very cruellest of his fellow clerics.

Moreover, his career as a purveyor of death goes way back. In 2013, by simply drawing together biographical details in the public domain, I explained why he was probably implicated in the worst atrocity ever perpetrated in the UK – the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

Now, however, that which was mere supposition has become hard fact, avowed to me by an informant in circumstances lending credence to the individual’s claim to be speaking on behalf of Israeli intelligence. But why do they not come right out with it if they know? Very simply, they are shy of proclaiming officially what they know privately. I’ll come to that.

But first, forget Libya and the two indicted Libyans Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. The case against them was palpable nonsense, cobbled together unconvincingly for reasons of state still only half understood. However, before the US government changed course and blamed Libya, it had already accurately identified the true culprits. Lockerbie was retaliation for Iran Air 655, a packed Airbus negligently shot down by an American warship in the Gulf on 4 July 1988, in the mistaken belief it was a hostile warplane.

Selected journalists were briefed about a trawl of National Security Agency telecom intercepts, which furnished clear proof that Iran’s powerful interior minister, Hojatislam Mohtashami-Pur, had contracted Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command to blow up an American airliner in revenge for IA 655. The PFLP-GC needed the money and had expertise in planting bombs on passenger planes and it is almost certain the device that destroyed Pan Am 103 was the gang’s own barometric pressure type employed by them repeatedly over many years.

Significantly, the NSA intercepts were corroborated and enlarged upon by parallel Israeli intelligence obtained by secreting agents into the heart of terrorist groups. Citing intelligence from such infiltration, my informant asserted the Iranians had not simply been the paymasters but had lent decisive logistical aid. It is certain, contrary to the Crown’s case, that the Lockerbie bomb was planted inside Heathrow’s “interline” shed in the portable luggage receptacle, which in due course was loaded on board the 747.

Records later showed that during the narrow window of opportunity the terrorists had, an IranAir cargo plane was parked not 200 yards from the shed, and departed for Tehran just minutes after the window closed.

In my online treatise Culprits of Lockerbie, I surmised that a terrorist flew in on the cargo jet with the bomb and, masquerading as a baggage handler, placed it in the receptacle. He then immediately flew out on the same plane.

My informant agreed and added that the “porter” was the PFLP-GC’s expert in airport and airline security, Marwad Bushnaq, Ahmed Jibril’s nephew, nom de guerre Abu A’Ali.

Even before Lockerbie, Israel discovered Heathrow was a likely target and warned MI6, but the warning was spurned because of a major row between British and Israeli intelligence services.

Where does Hassan Rouhani fit into this?

Published details about him show three points of particular interest, the first that Rouhani held senior executive positions in intelligence, security and special operations and was on the Supreme Defence Council. In 1989, he was offered the job of minister of intelligence, though he opted instead to become new supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s plenipotentiary on the Supreme National Security Council and its first secretary.

Point two: Mohtashami-Pur was deeply antagonistic to the genuinely more moderate future president, Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani. In June 1988, mounting opposition to the war with Iraq led the original supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to charge Rafsanjani with bringing hostilities to an end. With Rafsanjani eclipsing the extremist Mohtashami, the destruction of the Airbus on 4 July presented the perfect opportunity to spike his opponent’s rising influence.

Three: Rouhani had a very special motive to conspire with Mohtashami in their shared opposition to Rafsanjani. As so often in political intrigue, the key to understanding alliances often lies rooted in personal vendetta. In 1980, Rouhani had joined the Supervisory Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Authority. Rafsanjani was chief executive and Rouhani was deeply critical of the policy of televising foreign – un-Islamic – content. By 1983, Rouhani was council chair and engineered a revolt against Rafsanjani, triumphantly replacing him at the helm. But Rafsanjani had Khomeini reinstate him, and the egg on Rouhani’s face (for once devoid of smiles) doubtless sowed the seeds of deep and lasting enmity.

We know from informal briefings by US and Israeli intelligence after Lockerbie that the Mohtashami/Jibril deal was sealed in the interior minister’s Tehran office in late August 1988. There was much more. Two senior Iranian officials attended the meeting with Mohtashami. One, Mehdi Karroubi, custodian and treasurer of the Martyr’s Fund, would fund the multimillion-dollar bounty. The other didn’t say much but smiled a lot and was obviously more than a neutral observer. He was none other than our cherubic friend, Supreme Defence Council member Hassan Rouhani.

Why has Israel never breathed a word of this publicly? Since 1989, the United States has turned away from accusing Iran, will hardly do so now and has anyway invested too much in the story of Libyan guilt to relent after all this time. Israel for its part dare not break ranks publicly with its benefactor but, the informant asserted, hoped that a leaked but “plausibly deniable” narrative would do enough damage to the prospect of a nuclear accord without jeopardising relations with US intelligence.

Of course, Bibi could well have ordered the whole thing to be invented to condemn Iran, with your writer as his useful idiot. Who knows?

Questioning the probity of the Megrahi verdict

What follows is an item posted on this blog on 28 December 2012:

“I pray we may all with honesty seek and learn the truth”

[What follows is the text of a letter to The Times by Dr Jim Swire.  A week after it was sent, it has not been published and so I am taking the liberty of posting it here:]

I note your article from Mr Linklater concerning the security of the verdict reached against Mr Megrahi, regarding the murder of my daughter Flora and 269 others in the Lockerbie air disaster. [RB: Magnus Linklater is appointed CBE in today’s New Year Honours List.]

A brilliant medical student at Nottingham, Flora, who was only on her way to see her US boyfriend over Christmas, had just been accepted to continue her medical studies at Cambridge.

I have not enjoyed being accused by Mr Mullholland's Crown Office, as a member of the Justice for Megrahi (JFM) group's committee, of deliberate lying over this case.

Nor do I admire the tastelessness of your newspaper in publishing this contentious article on the very day of the 24th anniversary of my innocent daughter Flora's brutal murder. I am far from alone among UK relatives in questioning the probity of the management of this terrible case.

There are at present allegations of criminality lodged by the committee of JFM against members of the Crown Office and the Scottish police force over the conduct of the Lockerbie investigation and trial.

I will not stoop to making allegations now in your pages against the Crown Office, the Lord Advocate, nor indeed Mr Linklater until the allegations have been objectively investigated.

Your readers should remember that Benedict Birnberg, Gareth Peirce, Michael Mansfield QC, David Wolchover, Len Murray, Ian Hamilton QC, Jock Thomson QC, John Scott QC and Emeritus Professor (of Scots law) Robert Black QC are among many other lawyers who question the probity of this verdict.

However, in the spirit of the season, I offer all who contributed to this article a happy 2013, in which I pray we may all with honesty seek and learn the truth. That is actually all that we the relatives are asking for.  

[The article in today’s edition of The Times (behind the paywall) in which Mr Linklater’s honour is reported, contains the following paragraph:]

Mr Linklater remains one of most respected figures in Scottish journalism, with the skill and compassion to report sensitively on the tragedy of Lockerbie — “a story that has stayed with me ever since” — as well as the humour to deliver an agonised column about the iniquities of speed cameras.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

[Two years ago today, I posted on this blog an excerpt from a column headed “I accuse…” that I had written for Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm. It consisted in large part of verbatim extracts (in translation) from Émile Zola’s famous public letter “J’accuse...” on the Dreyfus affair. The article no longer appears on the magazine’s website*, but here is the excerpt:]

With the substitution of Megrahi for Dreyfus, Scotland for France, and the office of First Minister for that of President of the French Republic, every word can with equal justice be addressed to Alex Salmond. The magnitude of the Scottish miscarriage of justice and the flaws in the investigation, prosecution and adjudication that led to it have been exposed in the SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons published by The Herald; in John Ashton’s book Megrahi: You are my Jury; in David Wolchover’s monograph Culprits of Lockerbie; and in Dr M G Kerr’s article An overview of the Lockerbie case.  There is now no shred of justification for continuing to maintain that all is for the best in the best of all criminal justice systems or  -- the coward’s fallback position -- that, while there may have been a few technical, procedural defects in his trial and conviction, Megrahi was clearly guilty anyway, so what does it matter?

Zola’s letter was headed “J’accuse”.  Although the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and conviction occurred under UK Conservative and Labour administrations, it is Mr Salmond and the Scottish Government that today have the power to put right the disgraceful miscarriage of justice that occurred on the watch of two of their political opponents; and it is accordingly the Scottish SNP Government that today stands accused. The only honourable course of action open to that government is to institute an independent inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the performance of the Scottish criminal justice system in the Megrahi case, as a matter which has caused grave public concern. 

[I have today completed a significant Lockerbie-related piece of writing. The details cannot at present be disclosed, but I hope that it may lead to a major development in the quest to rectify the miscarriage of justice suffered by the late Abdelbaset Megrahi.]

*I am grateful to sfm for pointing out that the article does still appear on The Firm's website.

Some pertinent questions for the Scottish Government

[What follows is the text of a letter sent and emailed to the First Minister, Alex Salmond, on 19 November by barrister and author David Wolchover:]

The destruction of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie

You may have been made aware of some of my writings on Lockerbie, earlier correspondence with the Government of Scotland on the topic, and of the fact that last week I posted on my website a new and much expanded revision of my treatise, Culprits of Lockerbie (http://www.davidwolchover.co.uk/docs/Culprits%20of%20Lockerbie.doc).

Re-launch of the treatise was reported in an article by Lucy Adams in The Herald on 13 November, 2013 (“Iranian president accused of insight into Lockerbie attack” – for some reason, as Robert Black QC points out in his Lockerbie blog, the newspaper has not posted the article on line, despite its prominence in the paper edition).

As you are doubtless aware the treatise was considered newsworthy because I included the results of my recent researches and analysis inferentially demonstrating the high probability that the Scots-educated President Hassan Rouhani of Iran was complicit in procuring the atrocity with the then Interior Minister Hojatoislam Ali Akbar Mohtashemi. This was also the theme of a recent feature I contributed to the widely read weekly newspaper Jewish News (“The grim Lockerbie shadow over Iran’s new president,” 31.1013, http://jewishnews.co.uk/ the-grim-lockerbie-shadow-over-irans-new-president/).

I am not writing with any hope of eliciting comment from you on this admittedly thorny topic. Were that to be the case I should not be surprised if the result were any different from Lucy Adams’s attempt to obtain a comment from President Rouhani’s office: ie no response. Rather I am writing for a very specific reason.

Lucy asked the Crown Office to comment and in her piece she reported their spokesman’s response:

“The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and Police Scotland are actively working with US law enforcement in pursuit of lines of inquiry to bring to justice the others involved in the Lockerbie bombing. This is a live investigation and in order to preserve the integrity of the investigation it would not be appropriate to offer further comment.”

The thrust of the response was predictable enough but, unless and until Scotland attains independence, I believe that, as a UK taxpayer, I am entitled to ask of you, as Head of the Government of Scotland, the following questions:

• How many officers of the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary or any other Scottish police force or department are there currently assigned to work on the case and how many are actually working on it?

• Of what rank and speciality are they?

• Whether the officers are working on it full-time or in addition to other duties?

• What budget has been set aside for the investigation?

• What has been the expenditure on foreign travel in connection with their inquiries, or telephone calls over the last 12 months?

• Has there been any material progress in uncovering substantive new evidence?

• If there has been no recent relevant evidence uncovered, why are there officers still assigned to, and more importantly working on, the case?

• What is the current Crown Office budget vis a vis Lockerbie inquiries?

If there has been no progress despite significant expenditure I believe I am entitled to know why British tax payer’s money is being devoted to an investigation which is going nowhere.

That might be a matter of relevance in the current constitutional debate.

A substantive reply to the above questions would be appreciated.

For the convenience of your staff I am enclosing/attaching a copy of The Herald article.