Vital evidence on Lockerbie was withheld

[This is the headline over a report by Lucy Adams that was published in The Herald on this date in 2012. The following are excerpts:]

Evidence which could have undermined the prosecution's case in the Lockerbie trial was withheld by police for a decade, a chief constable has revealed.

Statements about a break-in at Heathrow airport just hours before the December 1988 bombing were kept by Dumfries and Galloway Police until 1999.

A letter from Pat Shearer, the current chief constable of the force, has finally admitted the police delay.

Mr Shearer also reveals the Crown Office knew about the break-in before the trial, but failed to tell the defence team.

Since 1991, police and prosecutors team had maintained the bomb which exploded on board Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie – killing 270 people – was placed on a flight from Malta, rather than at the London airport. This underpinned the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing in 2001.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the atrocity, believes the revelations would have undermined the trial. If the bomb was taken on at Heathrow, and had this information been shared, Dr Swire believes the investigation would have pointed elsewhere. (...)

Dr Swire said: "The evidence of barometric devices from Syria was rejected because they would have to have been put on the flight at Heathrow. We did not know then about the break-in.

"If it had been known about before the trial there would have been no prospect of getting a conviction. It has relevance to the foundations on which Mr Mulholland bases his approach to the interim Government in Libya, since the intention of his investigation still seems to be to link the conviction of Megrahi to the survivors of the Gaddafi regime. What about looking elsewhere?"

Mr Shearer's letter states no "suppression of evidence took place" but points out Dumfries and Galloway investigated the break-in in January 1989 and did not pass statements – including those from Ray Manly, then head of security at Heathrow's operators BAA – to the Crown until 1999.

The letter also reveals the Crown did not share this information until after Mr Manly himself approached the defence team in 2001.

UK Government held entitled to claim public interest immunity

[What follows is the text of a report by Lucy Adams in The Herald on this date in 2008:]

The defence team for the Libyan jailed for the Lockerbie bombing yesterday suffered a set-back in its attempts to get access to a top-secret document.

The document, which originated in an unknown foreign country, is thought to contain vital information about the timer which detonated the bomb that killed 270 people in 1988.

At the previous hearing, the UK Government said the document could not be disclosed for reasons of national security, leading the defence team to accuse it of "interference" in the appeal.

Margaret Scott QC, senior counsel for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan currently serving 27 years in Greenock prison for the bombing, objected to the Advocate General for Scotland - the law officer who represents the UK Government in Scottish affairs - playing a part in the debate.

She accused the government of meddling - an allegation hotly disputed by Lord Davidson, the Advocate General, and by Elish Angiolini QC, the Lord Advocate and head of prosecutions in Scotland.

However, yesterday the appeal judges ruled against her. Their decision opens the way for several days of future debate about whether letting lawyers see the document would have any security implications.

The Libyan's defence team say it needs to see the document in order for Megrahi to have a fair appeal.

Earlier this year, the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh was told that Ms Angiolini would be prepared to disclose the document but that has also been disputed.

The document itself was uncovered during the three-year investigation of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which resulted in the case being referred back to the courts for a new appeal last summer.

The commission concluded the failure during the original trial to disclose this document, which is thought to contain information about the electronic timer used to detonate the bomb, could constitute a miscarriage of justice.

Although the Crown allowed the commission to see the material they have refused to disclose it to the defence.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband claims the document should remain confidential.

Now Lord Davidson will be allowed to put the case for "public interest immunity", on his behalf, at a future hearing - for which no date has yet been set. The hearing of Megrahi's actual appeal is still months away.

Megrahi, who was jailed in 2001, was not in court yesterday - but the appeal judges have been told he would like to attend future appeal hearings.

Media reports of launch of Justice for Megrahi campaign

[What follows is excerpted from an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2008:]

The Scottish "heavy" daily newspapers have good coverage of yesterday's launch of the Justice for Megrahi campaign.

The Scotsman concentrates on the experiences of the parish priest of Lockerbie at the time of the disaster, Father Pat Keegans. The report reads in part:

'Father Patrick Keegan, 62, said he believed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, was innocent and should be freed on compassionate grounds before an appeal against his conviction.

'"I wrote to Mr Megrahi offering him my support, telling him that I was convinced he was innocent, and that I would willingly offer support to him and his family," said Fr Keegan, who was living in Lockerbie at the time of the bombing, just yards from where a wing section of the Pan Am flight crashed in 1988.

'Describing the Libyan and his family as "victims" of the bombing, Fr Keegan said he believed there had been a mellowing of opinion, even among those previously convinced of his guilt.'

The comments from members of the public that follow the story are also well worth reading.

Lucy Adams in The Herald has an article headed "Priest claims police interference in aftermath of Lockerbie bomb". It reads in part:

'As the Justice For Megrahi campaign was launched yesterday, Father Patrick Keegan, the priest in Lockerbie at the time, revealed that he had been visited by police during the inquiry and asked to keep to the official line - that Libya was responsible. (...)

'"I really became convinced of his innocence when the whole thrust of the case shifted from Syria and Iran to Libya alone. Interference in my own life by the investigation team convinced me.

'"A police officer asked to come along and speak to me. I listened to him for quite a while and then I said: Have you come here to ask me to be silent? He said that the point was that when you speak people listen and we would appreciate it if you could follow our line of Libya alone.

'"I complained to the Lord Advocate about it at the time and got a very bland response. The very fact that they interfered and took the trouble to come to talk to me made up my mind that I was on the right track. Other people had similar experiences."' (...)

The Press and Journal has a good account by Joe Quinn. The BBC News website's report of the launch can be read here.

[RB: Eight years later, the Justice for Megrahi campaign is still alive and kicking.]

Nothing to gain and much to lose yet he chose compassion

[What follows is the text of an article by Lucy Adams that appeared on the website of The Herald on this date in 2009. It reads as follows:]

Officials in Westminster and the Crown Office are still arguing about what information should or should not be shared with the public and politicians are fighting over each other to say I told you so.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is still alive. The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is still sharing in the world’s oxygen supply and there are many who wish he were not. Later this week or this month those politicians are bound to call for the resignation of the minister who released Megrahi exactly three months ago.

Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, released Megrahi on August 20 on compassionate grounds because he is dying. The guidelines suggest that those prisoners with a life expectancy of three months or less should be considered for such a move.

Mr MacAskill had nothing to gain and much to lose yet he chose compassion over retribution. The UK Government had a great deal to gain from the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) signed off between Westminster and Libya earlier this year. When I interviewed Saif Gaddafi in August he made clear that the deal was all about oil and money.

Although Mr MacAskill rejected the PTA, scores of people in the US threatened to boycott Scotland and its exports.

Those with a sense of perspective praised the decision of Scotland in the face of condemnation from the US and a chilling silence from Westminster.

Even they may now question the decision of Mr MacAskill, but where is the consistency in praising compassion for a man with only three months to live, and criticising compassion for a man who lives for three months and two weeks?

Megrahi is desperately ill but he is still alive. Imagine that now he is back with family in Tripoli he may live for four or five months. Should our patience with compassion run out so quickly that we begin to wish him dead?

Would it not be more constructive at this stage to support the living in finding answers to what happened to their loved ones?

Rather than calling for the resignation of the Justice Secretary, should we not focus on the way forward. Without knowing the truth about the past the path forward will always seem uncertain.

We must allow the relatives a public inquiry to deal with the questions from the past and leave the ghoulish spectacle of a man dying in Libya alone to allow him to spend his few remaining days in peace.

Vying to be the most outspoken, punitive, secretive or draconian does nothing for Scotland’s international reputation. We need to show that compassion is not just for Christmas and that openness and transparency from those still refusing to share vital information, will not be tolerated.

Why Megrahi dropped the appeal

[This is the heading over a section of an article by Lucy Adams that was published in The Herald on the occasion of the publication of John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury. It reads as follows:]

CONTEXT: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi had two possible routes out of Greenock jail in August 2009: a prisoner transfer application for which he first had to drop his appeal, or compassionate release because of his prostate cancer. The latter route did not demand that he drop his appeal, in contrast to the former. In the event, he ended his appeal, yet the PTA was turned down, and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill instead granted compassionate release. The chain of actions has always been a mystery, leaving those who believe in Megrahi’s guilt to see his decision as confirmation of their views. Why would an innocent man not pursue an appeal against conviction that he had waited years to begin? Now, for the first time, Megrahi claims that he was pressured to drop the appeal by Mr MacAskill personally through diplomatic channels.

EXTRACT: "On 10 August [2009] MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Minister [Abdel Ati] Al-Obeidi. By this time I was desperate. The 90-day time limit for considering the prisoner transfer application had passed and, although I had some vocal public supporters, MacAskill was coming under considerable pressure to reject both applications. After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obeidi said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He [MacAskill] said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT:  Mr MacAskill, who was not contacted in advance of today's book publication, has always said he could not interfere in the judicial process. If Megrahi's version of events is true, it will prove very damaging to the minister, who has repeatedly distanced himself from any appeal which, if it had gone ahead, could have been a massive embarrassment to the Scottish legal system. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had already found six grounds on which Megrahi’s conviction was potentially unsafe.

Megrahi applies for compassionate release

[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009:]

Megrahi requests release from jail on compassionate grounds

[This is the headline over Lucy Adams's coverage in The Herald of the story that was broken yesterday on this blog. Her article can be read here. The following are extracts:]

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has applied to Scottish ministers for release on compassionate grounds, a move which if granted would allow him to return to Libya without dropping his appeal.

Ministers received the application yesterday from Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer last year.

As with the case of prisoner transfer, the decision rests with Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary. Unlike prisoner transfer, compassionate release does not require the prisoner to abandon any ongoing legal proceedings.

The Justice Secretary is thought to have released three terminally ill patients on compassionate grounds last year. Traditionally, only applications from those with three months to live are granted.

In May the Libyan government applied for prisoner transfer of Megrahi, the 57-year-old serving 27 years in Greenock prison for the bombing which killed 270 people in December 1988. (...)

Mr MacAskill is expected to make a decision on the transfer in the first week in August, but there has been some confusion about how the prisoner transfer agreement works. One legal expert said that ministers must give Megrahi a decision "in principle" before he drops proceedings, but officials say that is not the case.

It is thought that some of the US relatives of the victims of the tragedy would push for a judicial review if Mr MacAskill agrees to Megrahi's transfer back to Libya. Many of them are angry that the transfer is even being considered.

The families have taken legal advice in both London and Scotland. Judicial review could significantly delay Megrahi's return to Libya, but compassionate release is not subject to judicial review.

Professor Robert Black, one of the architects of Megrahi's trial in the Netherlands, said: "Compassionate release seems to achieve the humanitarian objective of allowing Megrahi to die in his homeland among his extended family, along with the public interest and criminal justice objectives of allowing a court to rule upon the validity of an appeal in the case of a conviction that has been increasingly called into question."

[The Scotsman also covers the story. Its article reads in part:]

An e-mail sent yesterday from the Crown Office to relatives of those who died said: "It has been confirmed that the Scottish Government has today received an application for compassionate release on behalf of Megrahi.

"We understand that this application will now be considered by the Scottish Government in tandem with the previous application for Prisoner Transfer."

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "We can confirm an application for compassionate release has been made by Mr al-Megrahi, and forwarded by the Libyan government to the Scottish ministers.

"Scottish ministers will not comment on the content of the application and will now seek advice on the application."

[The BBC News website has now picked up the story, which can be read here.]

Libya ratifies agreement with UK that could send Megrahi home

[This is the headline over a report by Lucy Adams that was published in The Herald on this date in 2009. It reads as follows:]

Libya has signed and ratified the prisoner transfer agreement with the UK that could see the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing returning to Tripoli.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan serving 27 years in HMP Greenock for the bombing that killed 270 people in December 1988, can now make an application to return home.

In order to apply for a transfer he would have to drop his appeal against conviction, which entered its second day yesterday.

In a tacit acknowledgement that Megrahi is likely to be allowed to return home, the Crown Office wrote to all relatives of the victims two weeks ago explaining the transfer process.

Earlier this year, The Herald revealed that Libyan officials had been encouraged by senior civil servants from both sides of the border, including Robert Gordon, the head of the Justice Department in Scotland, to apply for Megrahi to be transferred as soon as the agreement was ratified.

Megrahi, whose case was referred back for a fresh appeal in June 2007 because it "may be a miscarriage of justice", is suffering from terminal prostate cancer and relatives and campaigners are concerned that he will not survive the appeal, which is expected to last at least 12 months - partly because the court will be sitting for only four days a week on alternate months.

His request for interim bail was last year turned down by three appeal court judges.

The e-mail from the Crown coincided with the publication of a critical report on the transfer agreement by the Joint Committee on Human Rights at Westminster.

Mr Straw wrote to the committee in March to say he would delay ratification only until the Easter recess because "a delay beyond early April is likely to lead to serious questions on the part of Libya in regards to our willingness to conclude this and three other judicial co-operation agreements".

The decision on Megrahi's transfer would ultimately rest with the Scottish Government and there have been indications in recent months that governments on both sides of the border are preparing for the transfer.

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: "The prisoner transfer agreement between the UK and Libya was laid before Parliament on January 27. The Instruments of Ratification have been exchanged and the agreement is now in force.

"In the case of prisoners in Scottish jails, including Megrahi, and respecting the devolution settlement, any decision to transfer under this agreement would be for Scottish ministers and Scottish ministers alone."

The transfer deal was one of four co-operation agreements signed by the director of legal affairs at the Libyan Foreign Ministry and the British ambassador to Tripoli.

"These agreements open the way for ... judicial authorities in both countries to co-operate in the field of exchange of wanted suspects, transfer of prisoners, and carrying out judicial decisions," said the official.

Lockerbie Revealed: The secret report that damns Scottish justice

[This is the headline over an article by Lucy Adams that was published in The Herald on this date in 2012. It reads as follows:]

A damning secret report has revealed the flawed handling of the Lockerbie case by Scottish prosecutors and the key documents not disclosed to the defence team which could have cleared the Libyan convicted of the atrocity.

The full 821-page Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) dossier, which has been seen by The Herald, uncovers serious discrepancies in the Crown Office's reasons for not disclosing vital information.

The Herald can reveal the commission – whose job it is to review cases post-appeal and investigate whether a miscarriage of justice may have occurred – even wrote to the Crown warning it would take legal action if the prosecution did not hand over important documents and speed up information sharing.

The SCCRC rejected many of the defence team's submissions but upheld six different grounds which could have constituted a miscarriage of justice.

The Crown failed to disclose seven key items of evidence that led to the Lockerbie case being referred back for a fresh appeal.

The SCCRC made clear that, had such information been shared with the defence, the result of the trial could have been different.

Its full report details why the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was referred for a second appeal.

The Scottish Government says it wants to release the document in the interests of transparency but cannot do so because it is covered by data protection law, which is reserved to Westminster.

The report reveals failings on the part of the Crown and shows it delayed the SCCRC by responding very slowly to requests for documents. In several cases the SCCRC was told items had gone missing or there was no record of them.

Three of the undisclosed documents related to payments of around $3 million (£1.9m) made by the US Justice Department to Paul and Tony Gauci – key witnesses in the Crown's case.

Tony Gauci claimed Megrahi bought clothes in his Malta shop, which were later found to be in the suitcase that contained the bomb which killed 270 in December 1988. His identification of Megrahi was critical to the prosecution case.

However, the defence did not know he had been offered and paid reward money after Megrahi's appeal failed in 2002. If Megrahi's legal team had been made aware of the payments they could have challenged the credibility of the prosecution case. In its report the SCCRC says: "Such a challenge may well have been justified, and in the commission's view was capable of affecting the course of the evidence and the eventual outcome of the trial."

The Crown was unable to adequately explain why a memorandum by Scottish police officer Harry Bell referring to reward money was not disclosed. The Crown claimed a 1998 High Court case, which set a precedent for disclosing important information to a defence, barred disclosure.

This has since been challenged at the UK Supreme Court and even greater disclosure is now required.

The commission also found Mr Gauci had a magazine with a photograph of Megrahi stating he was the Lockerbie bomber three days before he identified him at an identification parade in Holland.

In 2001 the Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands convicted Megrahi of murder. A second accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was acquitted.

Robert Black, QC, one of the architects of the Camp Zeist trial, said: "I don't think there could possibly have been a guilty verdict if the Crown had disclosed to the defence all the material they had in their possession and they were obliged to disclose, even as the law on disclosure stood in 2000/01.

"Why didn't the Crown disclose? Was it because they convinced themselves getting a guilty verdict was more important than obeying 'technical' rules – after all, this was a terrorism case?

"The law about disclosure was clarified after the Zeist trial. But even in 2000/01 the law as it stood would have required the Crown to disclose all the material they withheld. I am delighted The Herald is unveiling this information."

A Crown Office spokesman said last night: "We note the Commission reported delays in obtaining materials from the Crown but also accepted that the Crown's responses to requests were often detailed and helpful in this uniquely large and complex case."

He added: "Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges following trial during which the evidence was rigorously tested and his conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an appeal court presided over by the Lord Justice General."

Why the SCCRC report has not been officially published

When the SCCRC referred the Lockerbie case back for a fresh appeal in June 2007 they were only able to publish a summary of their findings.

At that stage if they had published the full report they could have been prosecuted. Legally their hands were tied.

In an effort to get the report published, the Scottish Government passed a statutory instrument, which meant it would no longer be a criminal act for the SCCRC to publish such reports.

However, the 821-page document was still bound by Freedom of Information and Data Protection legislation.

The commission wrote to the individuals mentioned in the report asking for their consent for publication. Consent was not given.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi said he would agree if the Crown did. Ultimately, however, the Crown did not.

To try to get the report into the public domain, ministers brought forward legislation to ease publication. This should be enacted in May but because of the status of the SCCRC, they are still bound by Data Protection legislation.

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has written to UK Justice Secretary Ken Clarke to ask for an exemption under Data Protection.

The Herald is the first newspaper to have had access to the report. Five years on it is finally closer to being aired.

Megrahi defence team loses bid to access secret document

[This is the headline over an article by Lucy Adams that appeared in The Herald on this date in 2008. It reads as follows:]

The defence team for the Libyan jailed for the Lockerbie bombing yesterday suffered a set-back in its attempts to get access to a top-secret document.

The document, which originated in an unknown foreign country, is thought to contain vital information about the timer which detonated the bomb that killed 270 people in 1988.

At the previous hearing, the UK Government said the document could not be disclosed for reasons of national security, leading the defence team to accuse it of "interference" in the appeal.

Margaret Scott QC, senior counsel for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan currently serving 27 years in Greenock prison for the bombing, objected to the Advocate General for Scotland - the law officer who represents the UK Government in Scottish affairs - playing a part in the debate.

She accused the government of meddling - an allegation hotly disputed by Lord Davidson, the Advocate General, and by Elish Angiolini QC, the Lord Advocate and head of prosecutions in Scotland.

However, yesterday the appeal judges ruled against her. Their decision opens the way for several days of future debate about whether letting lawyers see the document would have any security implications.

The Libyan's defence team say it needs to see the document in order for Megrahi to have a fair appeal.

Earlier this year, the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh was told that Ms Angiolini would be prepared to disclose the document but that has also been disputed.

The document itself was uncovered during the three-year investigation of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which resulted in the case being referred back to the courts for a new appeal last summer.

The commission concluded the failure during the original trial to disclose this document, which is thought to contain information about the electronic timer used to detonate the bomb, could constitute a miscarriage of justice.

Although the Crown allowed the commission to see the material they have refused to disclose it to the defence.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband claims the document should remain confidential.

Now Lord Davidson will be allowed to put the case for "public interest immunity", on his behalf, at a future hearing - for which no date has yet been set. The hearing of Megrahi's actual appeal is still months away.

Megrahi, who was jailed in 2001, was not in court yesterday - but the appeal judges have been told he would like to attend future appeal hearings.

If he wanted to go home, he had no real choice

[What follows is the text of a review by Lucy Adams of John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury that was published in The Herald on this date in 2012:]

For the relatives of the 270 people who died in December 1988 as a result of the bombing of Pan Am 103, this book will make for difficult reading.

For more than 23 years they have had to deal with their grief while wrangling with the stories of politicians, spooks, government agencies and conspiracy theorists. For others, it may well provide compulsive reading.

The only man convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity to have taken place on mainland Britain did not take the stand at his trial and consequently very few have heard his side of the story. There are many who will not want to, many for whom it may be too painful or too difficult to change views strongly held for more than two decades.

Rather than tell the whole story in the first person, the book is split between the formal revelations of the author John Ashton – a former member of Megrahi's defence team – and the italicised first-person views of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, who spent eight years imprisoned in Scotland.

For someone like me, who has covered Lockerbie for more than a decade, and met Megrahi and his family, to hear the details of his life, to be able to fill some of the gaps and answer questions that even his greatest supporters found uncomfortable makes this book compelling. For others the fact he is still alive, two and a half years after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and released on compassionate grounds, and has been allowed to express his views, may prove sickening.

In Megrahi's preface he explains that the decision to abandon his appeal was a "terrible choice" to have had to make. He writes: "From the moment I made that decision, I was determined that, if I could not be judged in a court of law, then I should be judged in the court of public opinion." He says the relatives of the victims have his "utmost sympathy" and asks that they judge him with their heads as well as their hearts.

Much later in the book he reveals that he felt compelled to drop his appeal as he gained the impression from Scottish ministers that if he wanted to go home, he had no real choice. Legally, to be released on compassionate grounds, there was no requirement to drop the appeal. However, he describes the former Libyan ambassador and foreign minister Abdul Ati al-Obeidi being taken aside by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

He writes: "Obeidi said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so."

Such interference was vehemently denied by the Scottish Government then and is denied now.

In the opening chapters Megrahi reveals less than flattering details – how he lied to his wife, for example, because he was travelling abroad a great deal to import different embargoed goods – illegal under the US trade sanctions at the time. And why he was in Malta on a false passport – a fact used against him in the trial to impugn his innocence. He says that, for those involved in importing embargoed goods, it was commonplace at that time to use a coded passport. He points out too that, if he were a terrorist, he was a very bad one. He held on to this coded passport for 10 years and willingly handed it over to the trial at Camp Zeist, such was his belief that he was and would be found innocent. The coded passport has repeatedly been used by the Crown as evidence of his guilt and his role as a security agent – something the book denies.

As the surface is peeled back from each of the key tenets of the case – witnesses and forensics – Megrahi gives his own version of events. Through his words the reader is given an insight into what he was doing when he heard about the indictment against him and then, towards the end of the book, what happened when he dropped his appeal and was granted compassionate release.

One of the weaknesses of the book is that we never really get to see inside his mind or his feelings. When he learns he is going home he writes: "The enormity of the relief that I experienced is impossible to describe. For 18 years I had been the victim of politics. Now, finally, I was its beneficiary." There are moments of greater poignancy, as when he sees his parents for the first time. "It was so incredible to see them all again," he writes, "that I had to ask one of the children to slap my face to ensure I wasn't dreaming." But, on the whole, the book lacks any illumination of his inner thoughts and emotional state.

Ashton presents layer upon layer of a circumstantial case which points towards the guilt of Iran and the Palestinian terror group, the PFLP-GC. Every point is carefully referenced back to police statements, precognition statements, security documents and critical information unearthed by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). It was, critically, the SCCRC which referred the case back for a fresh appeal in June 2007 on six different grounds. A summary of these was presented at the time but the details of the 800-page report have never been published despite efforts by campaigners and the Scottish Government.

Ashton had access to the full report and draws upon it throughout each chapter, referring to new statements and documents unearthed by the SCCRC, which point to major inconsistencies in the evidence of key witnesses such as Tony Gauci – the shopkeeper who claimed to have sold Megrahi the clothes found in the suitcase thought to have housed the bomb – plus holes in the forensics arguments.

Gradually Ashton pulls together a palimpsest of the Lockerbie story, scraping away at the original prosecution case, revealing how key witnesses were compromised by reward money and their roles as security or double agents, and how the Scots police were often undermined by the American security services.

The book states: "Being in the dark was, by then, a familiar experience for the Scottish police. It was not until September 1990 that they finally learned of the existence of Mebo [the Swiss company the prosecution claimed sold the timers to the Libyans], having once again been spoonfed information by the intelligence services - the day before the [Scots police] visit, CIA officers met with the Swiss police and intelligence services."

It is the author's encyclopedic unpackaging of all the key elements of the prosecution case, new evidence, previously undisclosed documents and the grounds of the SCCRC that make this the definitive Lockerbie account. Undoubtedly there is much that will be contested by the Crown, and there are many who will not want to read of the possibility that the only man convicted of this terrible atrocity may not in fact have been responsible. Certainly, the book indicates that, had the second appeal taken place, Megrahi would have been acquitted. Whether he is guilty or not is up to the reader to decide.

Megrahi – You Are My Jury: The Lockerbie Evidence  John Ashton, Birlinn, £14.99