British friend of Megrahi: he deserved better

[This is the headline over an article by George Thomson published today on the LBC 97.3FM website.  It reads as follows:]

Abdelbaset al Megrahi was a good friend of mine.

The last time I saw him was at his house in Tripoli last December. I'm no doctor, but I could see he had only a short time to live.

He lay on his bed in very poor health and, while he was conscious, struggled to speak.

He gave me a ceremonial waistcoat as a gift, a gesture of kindness that was typical of the man.

But the waistcoat wasn't all. Megrahi left me with his dying wish that I help to continue the campaign that consumed him until his final breath - the fight to clear his name.

He asked me to make contact with Dr Jim Swire, the father of a girl who died in the Lockerbie bombing, who believes in Megrahi's innocence.

He wanted us to work together, with like-minded supporters, to try to overturn his conviction. He insisted, as do we, that the whole case against him was based on conjecture and planted evidence.

I gave this innocent man my assurance that I would everything I possibly could to pursue a posthumous pardon.

The Megrahi I saw last December was entirely different from the man I first met in 2003, a couple of years after he'd been convicted and sent to jail in Scotland.

I am a criminal investigator and had joined his defence team as we worked on his appeal.

At that time, Megrahi was barely interested. He was down and, generally, had no hope that he would ever prove his innocence.

That changed, however, as we began to gather the evidence that cast doubt on his conviction. He soon became an interested, demanding client.

He had 24-hour access to a phone in jail, which he'd use to contact the Libyan consulate in Glasgow, that would, in turn, patch him through to any number in the world.

He would call my number on a daily basis, hungry for information. I'm a keen fisherman and soon had to start taking a mobile out on the boat with me to take Megrahi's calls as he became consumed by the effort to clear his name.

The campaign energised him. It gave him a focus behind bars and improved his mood, generally.

Over time, he also began to engage with his surroundings, making the best of the life he had in jail.

One of the conditions of the treaty drawn up before his handover by the Libyans was that he would have access to Arabic TV channels whilst in jail.

That meant that he could watch British football on the television in his cell which, in turn, meant that he was Mr Popular anytime there was a Rangers or Celtic game on TV.

Fellow inmates were able to enjoy live football coverage courtesy of their Libyan neighbour. He was a Rangers supporter, incidentally.

Not that he wasn't tuned into the potential hazards of prison life. He was given a visiting room to himself whenever I, or my colleagues, went to see him.

One day there was the sound of a commotion outside the door. We didn't know what was happening and, quick as a flash, Megrahi jumped out of his seat and stood behind me, for protection.

The panic soon ended, however, when it turned out to be a scuffle between two wardens who had argued over who should close the door to the visiting area.

It was around 2005 that he began to complain of pains in his stomach and of acid. He put it down to a poor prison diet.

Looking back, that was probably the initial symptoms of the prostate cancer that eventually killed him.

The subsequent demise of an old friend saddens me greatly. His conviction and sentence angers me, as it does others who firmly believe in his innocence.

Abdelbaset al Megrahi was a good man who deserved better, much better.

Megrahi was innocent, says Lockerbie victim's father, Martin Cadman

[What follows is taken from a report published today on the EDP24 website:]

For more than 20 years Norfolk man Martin Cadman has fought to uncover the true story behind his son Bill’s death in the Lockerbie disaster. Now Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted bomber, is dead - but in this interview published in the EDP in April, Mr Cadman and the author of a new book explain why they believe he was innocent.

As Martin Cadman prepared to leave a meeting at London’s US Embassy just over a year after his son’s death aboard Pan Am flight 103, a member of the American Presidential Commission drew him to one side. “Keep up the fight,” he said. “Your government and ours know exactly what happened but they are never going to tell.”

Since then he has kept fighting and today, more than 23 years after Bill Cadman and 269 other people were killed, Mr Cadman has a filing cabinet in the study of his Burnham Market home crammed with folders relating to the disaster and the subsequent investigation. Despite this dogged research, exactly what happened remains a mystery to him, though he has his suspicions. But one thing of which he is certain is that it did not involve Libya or Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man who was convicted for the Lockerbie bombing in January 2001 at a trial under Scottish law in the Netherlands, spent eight years in a Scottish prison and was released on compassionate grounds after his diagnosis with terminal prostate cancer.

Now comes the publication of a book, co-authored by Megrahi, that presents new evidence seemingly undermining what many considered an already flimsy case for is prosecution, and this strengthens Mr Cadman’s view that there has been a serious miscarriage of justice.

“I don’t think that Megrahi or Libya had anything to do with it,” he said. “He has been made a scapegoat.” The bulk of Megrahi: You are my Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence is written by John Ashton, a Brighton-based author who has studied the case for 18 years and worked as part of Megrahi’s defence team between 2006 and 2009. Italicised passages written by Megrahi in the first person are interspersed through Ashton’s detailed analysis of the bombing and its aftermath. The book draws from a long-suppressed 800-page report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which was compiled in 2007 and would have featured in Megrahi’s second appeal against his conviction – but as is well known, he dropped his appeal and accepted a quicker release on compassionate grounds while remaining tainted with guilt as the convicted bomber.

Three major points emerge from the report and Mr Ashton’s own research. First, the most significant new evidence concerns the Toshiba cassette player that is believed to have been converted into an explosive device and stowed within a brown Samsonite suitcase in the luggage hold. This device featured a timer supposedly identical to those known to have been purchased by Libya from a company called Mebo, which purchased its circuit boards from a German firm called Thuring.

Mr Ashton said: “This is something that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission miss, and it relates to the forensics. The crucial forensic item in the case that really ties Megrahi and Libya in was this fragment of circuit board. We can demonstrate forensically that the prosecution claim that this originated from a timing device that was supplied to Libya is not true, because in the circuit boards in those timing devices, the copper circuitry was coated with an alloy of tin and lead. The Lockerbie one was coated with pure tin, which requires a completely different manufacturing process, and one that was not used by Thuring, the company that supplied those circuit boards.”

The second point concerns the Crown’s most important witness, a Maltese shopkeeper named Tony Gauci who, two months before the bombing, sold a man some clothes that were later used to wrap the tape-recorder bomb within the suitcase. In Mr Ashton’s words, Gauci’s initial “descriptions of the clothes purchaser all suggested the man was around 50 years old, 6ft tall and with dark skin, whereas Megrahi was 36, is 5ft 8in and has light skin”.

But in 1991, Gauci identified Megrahi as the man who entered his shop, selecting him from a line-up of photographs, and in 1999, he picked Megrahi out again, this time in person. “Before picking him out of the identity parade it turns out he’d had a magazine that featured Megrahi’s photo for months, so he would have been familiar with him. He’d had other newspaper and magazine articles as well, it turned out.”

The SCCRC report also established that he only gave evidence after asking for a $2m reward, and that the Scottish police persuaded the US Department of Justice to pay this sum, along with $1m for his brother, Paul. This fact was not disclosed to the defence during the trial, and would have been of great value as they sought to cast aspersions on the quality of Gauci’s evidence.

So if Mr Cadman, Mr Ashton and Megrahi are correct, who really was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing? Herein lies the third major aspect of the book’s case.

In July 1988, an American warship, the USS Vincennes, shot down Iran Air flight 655 from Bandar Abbas to Dubai as it flew over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 passengers.

“This Iranian airbus was taking people to the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca,” said Mr Cadman, aged 87. “We never got an answer from the Americans as to why they shot down an innocent airbus.”

Instead of issuing an explanation or apology for the loss of innocent lives, the Ronald Reagan administration gave the USS Vincennes crew the Combat Action Ribbon. Five months after this attack, on December 21, 1988, came the Lockerbie bombing.

“It was a revenge thing, probably – Iran saying ‘we’re going to have the same number of yours as you killed of ours’,” said Mr Cadman. The investigators’ initial suspicion was indeed directed at Iran – specifically an Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). This group had splintered from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and had already massacred civilians in Israel and Europe. In particular, the focus was on one man, Mohammed Abu Talb, who was given a life sentence in 1989 for attacks on Jewish targets. He is believed to have been freed from prison in 2009, shortly after Megrahi.

Mr Ashton said: “The key things about this group are: one, they built bombs into Toshiba radio cassette players; two, they built bombs that were designed to blow up aircraft; and three, the cell was based in West Germany, which is where the flight began its journey. There was a feeder flight called Pan Am 103A, and the flight that exploded was Pan Am flight 103.

“Although some of the group were rounded up two months before Lockerbie, some of their bombs went missing and some of the personnel were not rounded up. There was a warning issued in December 1988... The State Department circulated a warning which said that a group of Palestinian militants were heading to Europe and were planning to target Pan Am.” Mr Ashton said that that warning’s existence was not revealed until seven years after the Lockerbie disaster. He added: “So those things combine to make me think they did it – and Iran, of course, had the motive.”

Bill Cadman and his girlfriend were among 259 people to have died in the aeroplane on December 21, 1988, along with 11 more at the crash site in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. Bill was 32 and building a successful career as a sound engineer responsible for the audio quality at West End musicals such as Les Miserables. He and his girlfriend were en route to America for Christmas. “They shouldn’t have been on the flight,” said Mr Cadman. “I think my son was trying to buy the tickets last minute, and he hadn’t got the money, but his girlfriend produced the money, otherwise they wouldn’t have been on the flight.”

Over the years he and his wife Rita, who now lives in a care home in Fakenham, had the support of a number of politicians such as Henry Bellingham, the Conservative MP for North-West Norfolk, and Tam Dalyell, the former Labour member for Linlithgow.

Both politicians had great respect for Mr Cadman – as does Mr Ashton. “I’ve dealt with Martin, he’s a very good man,” he said. “He’s been very dogged over the years. He deserves better than he’s got, all the relatives do. It’s only with the help of people like him that we keep all this on the agenda.”

Mr Ashton’s hope is that this book will result in a public inquiry in Scotland. “I think the chances of getting the people who really did it are very slight. The best we can hope for is a full inquiry. At the very least it needs to look into why all this evidence was withheld, but what we really need is the full inquiry which will answer the questions of Martin and others, which are: why were the warnings ignored, and what happened within the investigation that led to the PFLP-GC and Iran being dropped as suspects. And, on top of that, we need to get Megrahi’s case back to the appeal court. There is a mechanism for doing that – an application could be made to the SCCRC, and his family are being encouraged to do that.”

However, he is sure that Megrahi will not live to see this happen. When Megrahi returned home to Libya to die, his arrival prompted scenes of joy that disgusted many Britons and Americans, not least the many victims’ relatives who believe that he is a murderer.

Megrahi’s heroic status in his home country, however, owed nothing to the idea that he had struck a murderous blow against an American airliner; instead he is seen as an innocent man who sacrificed his liberty for the sake of the nation’s economy. In 2003, Muammar Gadaffi accepted Libyan responsibility for the atrocity and paid compensation to the victims’ families in order to have crippling sanctions lifted – and at the same time let it be known that he was doing so as an economic tactic rather than a true acceptance of guilt.

Megrahi describes his release from prison in the book: “The decision provoked a carnival of political pointscoring, which kept the issue at the top of the news agenda for over a fortnight. The controversy was entirely founded on the assumption that I was the Lockerbie bomber. Very little of the media and political comment acknowledged that I had had an appeal pending and that the SCCRC considered the original verdict was ‘at least arguably one which no reasonable court, properly directed, could have returned’.”

Mr Cadman does not know whether he will see someone else convicted for his son’s murder. He is sure of one thing, however, after that conversation at the embassy.

“I remember that he said ‘There are some things that you will hear about that are right, but you won’t hear all of it. And no one here is going to tell you everything.’ And that is rather frightening. There are these few people who are in the know, and the rest of us who are not.”

Megrahi: You are my Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, by John Ashton, is published by Birlinn at £14.99.

... the Scottish Government should agree to a public inquiry

[An editorial in today's edition of The Independent reads as follows:]

The death of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in Tripoli yesterday is a closure of sorts, but only of the diplomatic fracas that accompanied his release from prison in Scotland in 2009. It brings us no closer to solving the mystery of who was responsible for the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988. Nor does it offer any resolution to the families of the 270 people who died.

Megrahi was released, after serving eight-and-a-half years of his 27-year sentence, because he had terminal prostate cancer and was judged to have only three months to live. But when he received a hero's welcome from Colonel Gaddafi on his arrival in Libya – and then proceeded to long outlive his Scottish doctors' pessimistic prognoses – his release provoked a major diplomatic incident.

The response in Scotland was mixed, less on the question of whether to be merciful to a dying man than because of doubts as to the validity of the conviction in the first place. In the US, however, there was widespread hostility and the release was widely denounced, not least by President Obama. As the stand-off continued, the allegations grew ever murkier, including claims that Westminster pressed for the deal to protect Britain's trading relationship with Libya. And there were also hints that the release was linked to Megrahi's last-minute decision to drop his appeal.

With his death, the diplomatic embarrassment, at least, is over. 

But there is unfinished business still. Megrahi's abandoned appeal followed a three-year Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission investigation that set out six different grounds upon which there might have been a miscarriage of justice, as he had always claimed. Several of the families of Lockerbie victims also believe in his innocence, and the representative of the families of some of the British victims described him yesterday as "the 271st victim". With so many loose ends remaining and so many questions about the original trial unresolved, the Scottish Government should agree to a public inquiry into the tragedy. Mr Megrahi's death is no reason to stop trying to get to the truth.

[The same newspaper contains an article by Robert Fisk which reads in part:]

Identification – based on a photo of the "guilty" man which the court was not told about – was always a pretty dodgy piece of evidence upon which to convict Megrahi, even without the later revelation that the CIA were paying out cash and contaminating the integrity of a witness.

No, Megrahi's lawyers were preparing a file that delved into piles of German interrogations of young men who may really have planted the bomb on a flight from Frankfurt to connect with Pan Am 103 at Heathrow.

The Germans had gone a long way to establishing that a Lebanese killed in the airliner was driven to Frankfurt by unknown Lebanese militants, and that the bag containing the bomb was actually put on the baggage carousel for checking in by the passenger's Lebanese handler – who had been looking after him in Germany.

I've gone through these files and I long ago concluded that they were devastating. There was a Lebanese connection – probably a Palestinian one, too. And there was a press conference in Beirut held by Ahmed Jibril, head of the pro-Syrian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command in which Jibril (born Palestine 1938), suddenly blurted out – without ever having been accused of the atrocity – the imperishable words: "I'm not responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. They are trying to get me with a kangaroo court." Of course, there was no court, not then, just a bunch of pseudo-diplomats and journalists with too many "intelligence connections", who were fingering Syria for the Lockerbie crime.

Eventually, of course, all sides did well when the Scots decided that poor old Megrahi was going to kick the bucket within six months and might as well go home. To the mystification of his lawyers, Megrahi had forgone a judicial inquiry into his case in order to go back to Tripoli – and, as we now know, our Government was all too happy to see him off.

Wikileaks disclosed that British oil companies were more than keen to see the dying man shipped back to Tripoli to save their newly-acquired interests in Libya. The Americans were enraged – but not as enraged as they might have been if Megrahi's lawyers had been given the chance to tear the whole Lockerbie trial to bits.

[On the website of The Spectator is an article by Alex Massie headlined The Lockerbie affair is not over. It contains the following:]

Megrahi's cancer proved unusually convenient. I don't know if there was some kind of "understanding" that his prospects for release on compassionate grounds would be boosted if he dropped his appeal against his conviction. I do suspect that it was useful for all parties that his appeal was dropped. 

Despite what the Prime Minister says, Megrahi's guilt is not certain. As Ian Smart suggests there is little consensus even amongst those best informed about the case. This was not a "slam-dunk" case. Far from it. The evidence for guilt or innocence is a close-run thing whichever side of the argument you choose to take. Moreoever, it is possible to be convinced the Libyans were responsible for Lockerbie while also suspecting that the evidence against them was only barely strong enough to secure a conviction. Indeed the layman might reasonably conclude that if ever a case made an argument for the Not Proven verdict, Lockerbie is that case. 

Even so, one should not assume that the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission's report would have led to Megrahi's conviction being overturned. This too makes Megrahi's cancer as unfortunate as it may have been darkly convenient. Though Lockerbie is still, as the First Minister pointed out yesterday, a live case the prospects of getting a fully persuasive resolution to the bombing of Pan-Am 103 seem pretty bleak.

For truth’s sake, we fight on to clear al-Megrahi’s name

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire that appears today on the website of The Times (behind the paywall).  It reads as follows:] 

Even on the brink of death, al-Megrahi tried to help me discover who really killed my daughter

I first saw Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi on the morning of May 1, 2000. He was below us in the well of the specially convened court at Kamp Zeist, Holland. Close to us, to one side of the public gallery, sat his wife Aisha and his family.

Through the bulletproof glass Baset seemed timid in the dock, never venturing to speak out for himself. Later we learnt that his defence team had told him to let them do the talking.

We were totally unprepared for the comment from another observer in the gallery: “How could you sit so near to the filth?” he said. This profound presumption of guilt was unencumbered by the inconvenience of having to prove it. Hatred has festered for some, and contributed to the blinding of many ever since.

Separation from his family was the cruellest consequence of Baset’s conviction. He loved them dearly, as they did him. Aisha was almost always present whenever I met her husband once he was out of prison and on licence in Tripoli, though unlike him, she had no English. Her demeanour revealed her love for him and her trust towards me, an outsider, who had seen through the miscarriage of justice. Only near the very end did she leave us alone together, holding hands, for speech was difficult.

When I first met Baset in Greenock Prison, he was calm but determined to clear his name. He must have known that we had campaigned for years to have him tried under Scots law. Yet there was not a word of complaint, though his cancer, already giving him pain on sitting, was then in evidence. A devout Muslim, he had a Christmas card from the prison shop ready for me. On it he had written “Dr Swire and family, please pray for me and my family”. I treasure it still.

At least before he died we learnt what he already knew: that the story that a Libyan bomb using a long-running timer had started its journey from Malta was a myth. The famed fragment “PT35b” could never have been part of one of the timers allegedly used. There is now no valid evidence left from the court that either Malta, its flag carrier airline or Baset’s own country were involved. Baset has a valid alibi and he died knowing that in the end the truth will emerge.

On release from prison, his valedictory letter made clear that he attached no blame to the Scottish people for what had happened to him. This, from a man wrongly segregated from his family for years, and in the grip of a terrible disease, tells us much about the nature of Baset al-Megrahi. No one can be sure how much the stress of his terrible predicament affected his immune system and contributed to the spread of his fatal disease.

Later, when I met him in Tripoli, he was concerned that I as a victim’s father should get access, on his death, to all the information that had been amassed to fight his abandoned appeal. He knew that I still grieved for my daughter and sought the truth as to who had really murdered her. On the brink of his own death, he found the spirit to empathise with me. That was a measure of this man.

It is a tragedy that we have failed to overturn the verdict while he was alive. But we must clear his name posthumously for the sake of truth and for the future peace of his family. If we do nothing then a great evil will have triumphed.

There are people in Britain and America who, blinding themselves to the profound failure of the evidence against Baset, have tried deliberately to suppress the truth, and even to deny that Baset was mortally sick. Some of them have clearly done so knowing what they were doing. One can only pray for them.

Others, understandably consumed by hatred against a man they genuinely believed had murdered their relatives, advocated the withholding of treatment, even of painkillers so that he might die as quickly as possible and in the utmost agony. Such personal reactions are profoundly destructive to those who hold them. Unwittingly they have allowed themselves to become victims of the very terrorism which they rightly loathe; as such they will need help when the truth does come out. Therein will lie a number of individual further tragedies.

[There is extensive coverage today in the UK media of the death of Abdelbaset Megrahi and its implications.  The Scotsman publishes a number of articles, including one headlined Megrahi death: 23 years of legal twists and turns but questions remain. The Herald’s coverage includes an article headlined Megrahi dead but questions live on and another headlined What's next: a new push for justice for Megrahi?  The Times carries (behind the paywall) a report headed Fresh calls to uncover full truth on Lockerbie. The Guardian’s main article is headlined New Lockerbie inquiry rejected by PM as Abdelbaset al-Megrahi dies and includes a few paragraphs on the Justice for Megrahi statement. Another article in The Guardian is headlined Mystery of Lockerbie plane bombing may never be solved and continues with two subheadings: 1. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had always protested his innocence; 2. Claims of flaws in conviction for Lockerbie plane bombing]

A statement by Justice for Megrahi on the death of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has now died without having been able to clear his name of the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 on the 21st of December 1988 during his lifetime. Now all those politicians and Megrahi-guilt apologists who regard compassion as being a weakling's alternative to vengeance, who boast of their skills at remote medical diagnosis, and who persistently refuse to address the uncomfortable facts of the case, will doubtless fall silent. Finally, the ‘evil terrorist’ has been called to account for himself before a “Higher Power”.

The prosecution case against him held water like a sieve. We are expected to believe the fantastic tale of the Luqa-Frankfurt-Heathrow transfer of an invisible, unaccompanied suitcase which miraculously found itself situated in the perfect position in the hold of 103 to create maximum destructive effect having eluded no fewer than three separate security regimes. There is no evidence for any such luggage ever having left the ground in either Malta or Germany, it is mere surmise. Not only that but we have accusations of the key Crown witness having been bribed for testimony; a multitude of serious question marks over material evidence, including the very real possibility of the crucial fragment of PCB having been fabricated; discredited forensic scientists testifying for the prosecution; Crown witness testimony being retracted after the trial and, most worryingly, allegations of the Crown’s non-disclosure of evidence which could have been key to the defence. Added to which, evidence supporting the alternative and infinitely more logical ingestion of the bomb directly at Heathrow was either dismissed at the trial or withheld from the court until after the verdict of guilty had been returned.

The judges were under immense pressure to bring in a verdict of guilty. Zeist was the most high profile trial that the Scottish High Court of Justiciary had ever presided over. There was massive international interest, and this was compounded by the fact that the judges played the dual roles of judge and jury in a case in which the indictments were brought by the same official body that had appointed them as judges in the first instance, the Lord Advocate. Anyone hoping, therefore, to discover an application of sound, empirical reasoning based on concrete evidence being exercised in the field of jurisprudence would do well to avoid the Zeist judgement. Indeed, the most exceptional of Zeist’s many exceptional features is the judgement. Anyone reading this extraordinary document could be forgiven for thinking that in Scotland there is a presumption of guilt and the burden of proof is on the defence. In the words of Professor Hans Köchler (UN appointed International Observer at the Kamp van Zeist Trial) commenting on the second appeal: “[it] bears the hallmarks of an intelligence operation.”

The Crown and successive governments have, for years, acted to obstruct any attempts to investigate how the conviction of Mr al-Megrahi came about. Some in the legal and political establishments may well be breathing a sigh of relief now that Mr al-Megrahi has died. This would be a mistake. Many unfortunates who fell foul of outrageous miscarriages of justice in the past have had their names cleared posthumously. The great and the good of western civilisation who have clamoured for Mr al-Megrahi’s blood of late may find it a salutary experience to reflect on the case of Derek Bentley: convicted and hanged in 1953, aged nineteen, for a crime for which in 1998 he was acquitted on his posthumous appeal. However long it takes, the campaign seeking to have Mr al-Megrahi’s conviction quashed will continue unabated not only in his name and that of his family, who must still bear the stigma of being related to the ‘Lockerbie Bomber’, but, above all, it will carry on in the name of justice. A justice which is still being sought by and denied to many of the bereaved resultant from the Lockerbie tragedy.

It took almost half a century to resolve the Bentley case. With the Zeist justice campaign now in its twelfth year, one has to ask, when faced with such intransigence, precisely whom the democratically elected, executive arm of state represents. Historically, all the major parties, both in Holyrood and Westminster, must shoulder equal responsibility. However, since first coming to power in 2007, the SNP government has actively taken measures which hinder any progress towards lifting the fog that lies over events, much to the dismay of its own party supporters and activists who take an interest in the case. In 2009, a statutory instrument which was supposed to remove the legislative prohibition on publication of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s statement of reasons for the second appeal (a document that cost tax payers in excess of £1,000,000 to produce) was so drafted as to render publication effectively impossible. In 2010, the government also fired new legislation through parliament (‘Cadder’ Section7) that makes any prospect of opening another appeal in the interests of justice a forlorn hope. Even today, ignoring the fact that, with the support of the Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee, campaigners finally forced the government to admit that it does in law (under the Inquiries Act of 2005) have the power to open an inquiry into the case, the government persists in sending out correspondence claiming that it doesn’t; this, of course, is accompanied by the hackneyed old mantra of their not doubting the safety of the conviction. Furthermore, during the consultation period of the Criminal Cases (Punishment and Review) (Scotland) Bill, campaigners established that the Data Protection Act posed no legal obstacle to the publication of the SCCRC’s statement of reasons for the second appeal, however, the government maintained otherwise with the result that it was ultimately left to the courage and commitment of members of the journalistic community to test the government’s position to destruction. All of the aforementioned, and the regrettable habit of appointing Crown Office insiders to the position of Lord Advocate, are not reassuring signs that this matter is being treated with a sense of balance and objectivity by the authorities. The record has stuck. The longer this goes on, the more the doubts over the government’s true loyalties will increase.

This case has now become emblematic of an issue which affects each and every one of us and poses some profoundly basic questions which we ignore at our peril, namely: what do we perceive justice to be, what role ought it to play in our society and whom should it exist to serve? Our laws and how we apply them to our society are the most fundamental descriptor of how we function as a cohesive and coherent entity. They are effectively a portrait of our identity as a people. If, through complacency, we permit cosy, established authority to dictate the terms and to brush under the carpet concerns over how justice is defined and dispensed for the sake of convenience, expediency and reputation, we will only have ourselves to blame for the consequences.

The Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, says that “Scotland's Criminal Justice system is a cornerstone of our society, and it is paramount that there is total public confidence in it.” Scotland’s independent and professional arbiter in the matter of referrals to the Court of Appeal, the SCCRC, believe that, on no fewer than six grounds, Mr al-Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice at Zeist. Whether or not the courts are the right and proper platform to deal with this case, the conviction has been in the hands of the High Court of Justiciary since 2001 producing no resolution whatsoever and, moreover, how amenable are the courts now likely to be towards sanctioning another appeal given that they have been invested with new powers which allow them to reject applications which question their own judgements? Fine words are not enough. Action is required. After all, the government took executive action to release Mr al-Megrahi following the dropping of his appeal (something he was under no legal obligation to do). 52% of respondents to an opinion poll conducted by a major Scottish national newspaper supported the call for an independent inquiry into the case. Over a two week period, and with minimal publicity, 1,646 individuals put their names to a petition for an inquiry, which still remains open before the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee. If Scotland wishes to see its criminal justice system reinstated to the position of respect that it once held rather than its languishing as the mangled wreck it has become because of this perverse judgement, it is imperative that its government act by endorsing an independent inquiry into this entire affair. As a nation which aspires to independence, Scotland must have the courage to look itself in the mirror.

Signed:

Ms Kate Adie (Former Chief News Correspondent for BBC News).

Mr John Ashton (Author of ‘Megrahi: You are my Jury’ and co-author of ‘Cover Up of Convenience’).

Mr David Benson (Actor/author of the play ‘Lockerbie: Unfinished Business’).

Mrs Jean Berkley (Mother of Alistair Berkley: victim of Pan Am 103).

Mr Peter Biddulph (Lockerbie tragedy researcher).

Mr Benedict Birnberg (Retired senior partner of Birnberg Peirce & Partners).

Professor Robert Black QC (‘Architect’ of the Kamp van Zeist Trial).

Mr Paul Bull (Close friend of Bill Cadman: killed on Pan Am 103).

Professor Noam Chomsky (Human rights, social and political commentator).

Mr Tam Dalyell (UK MP: 1962-2005. Father of the House: 2001-2005).

Mr Ian Ferguson (Co-author of ‘Cover Up of Convenience’).

Dr David Fieldhouse (Police surgeon present at the Pan Am 103 crash site).

Mr Robert Forrester (Secretary of Justice for Megrahi).

Ms Christine Grahame MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament).

Mr Ian Hamilton QC (Advocate, author and former university rector).

Mr Ian Hislop (Editor of ‘Private Eye’).

Fr Pat Keegans (Lockerbie parish priest on 21^st December 1988).

Ms A L Kennedy (Author).

Dr Morag Kerr (Secretary Depute of Justice for Megrahi).

Mr Andrew Killgore (Former US Ambassador to Qatar).

Mr Moses Kungu (Lockerbie councillor on the 21^st of December 1988).

Mr Adam Larson (Editor and proprietor of ‘The Lockerbie Divide’).

Mr Aonghas MacNeacail (Poet and journalist).

Mr Eddie McDaid (Lockerbie commentator).

Mr Rik McHarg (Communications hub coordinator: Lockerbie crash sites).

Mr Iain McKie (Retired Superintendent of Police).

Mr Marcello Mega (Journalist covering the Lockerbie incident).

Ms Heather Mills (Reporter for ‘Private Eye’).

Rev’d John F Mosey (Father of Helga Mosey: victim of Pan Am 103).

Mr Len Murray (Retired solicitor).

Cardinal Keith O’Brien (Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh and Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church).

Mr Denis Phipps (Aviation security expert).

Mr John Pilger (Campaigning human rights journalist).

Mr Steven Raeburn (Editor of ‘The Firm’).

Dr Tessa Ransford OBE  (Poetry Practitioner and Adviser).

Mr James Robertson (Author).

Mr Kenneth Roy (Editor of ‘The Scottish Review’).

Dr David Stevenson (Retired medical specialist and Lockerbie commentator).

Dr Jim Swire (Father of Flora Swire: victim of Pan Am 103).

Sir Teddy Taylor (UK MP: 1964-2005. Former Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland).

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize Winner).

Mr Terry Waite CBE (Former envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury and hostage negotiator).

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi (01/04/1952 - 20/05/2012)

[The BBC News website reports that Abdelbaset Megrahi has died.  The BBC’s obituary can be read here. On the occasion of Megrahi’s repatriation, Eddie MacKechnie, his Scottish solicitor at the time of his application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission issued the following statement:]

I am very pleased that Baset has gone home to his wife, family and friends. I strongly believe both Lamin, my original client, and Baset are entirely innocent and thus victims.

To me Baset is a hero and deserved any hint of a hero's welcome he was allowed. He went with Lamin to Holland over 10 years ago expecting justice and never got it. He took the risk for his country and he was welcomed as a hero of his people not because he was ever a terrorist but because he is a son of Libya who suffered for her.

Of course I am sad he abandoned his Appeal he fought so very hard to obtain but I know he had no choice. Politics long usurped any role justice had to play.

The Justice Minister was right to release Baset. It was a decent decision. It was to be expected that as Minister he would support the conviction and laud the Judiciary, Prosecution and Police. It was striking he did not mention another Scottish, statutory body. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Had he forgotten their findings in favour of Baset and a new Appeal?

The inconvenient truth of this shocking case is that all is far from well within the Scottish legal system and sick to the core in scheming Whitehall. Pressurising a dying man, so desperate to return home, into dropping his legitimate appeal was beneath contempt but at least consistent. To suggest there was no such pressure is preposterous.


[An article by BBC News's Scotland correspondent James Cook headlined Lockerbie questions remain following Megrahi's death can be read here.  A further article by the same correspondent headlined Megrahi dies protesting Lockerbie bombing innocence can be read here. Reactions to the news from politicians and Lockerbie relatives can be found here on the heraldscotland.com website. Megrahi's biographer, John Ashton, has published an obituary on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website.]

Libyans turn on Lockerbie bomber

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Sunday Express.  It reads in part:]

The Lockerbie bomber has become a "pariah" in Libya as the public and politicians turn against him as an "embarrassing" reminder of the crimes of Colonel Gaddafi.

Author Lindsey Hilsom, who spent decades reporting from the country as a foreign correspondent, said Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is "not very popular" with ordinary Libyans.

Even members of Megrahi's tribe, the one-million strong Megraha, are said to have turned their backs on him and his links with the hated Muammar Gaddafi. 

The dying former secret agent is also coming under increasing pressure from the new authorities to give evidence against more senior figures in the tyrant's regime.

Gaddafi's spy chief and Megrahi's cousin Abdullah al-Senussi, who has been under arrest in Mauritania since March, is the number one target of the new Libyan government. (...) 

Ms Hilsom, whose new book Sandstorm chronicles Gaddafi's brutal rule, said: "There is a fight over Senussi; the ICC want him, the French want him and the Libyans want him for a prison massacre in 1996, so the more evidence they can find the happier they will be. 

"Megrahi is in an extremely difficult position. The interim government would like the Lockerbie issue to be resolved for once and all, so he is under pressure to provide evidence about who higher up than him was involved."

If Megrahi were to give evidence against his relative, who recruited him to Libya's secret service in the 1980s, he would be likely to contradict his own version of events.

He has always maintained he was wrongfully convicted of the murders of 270 people, before being released with terminal prostate cancer in 2009.

Megrahi, who published a book [Megrahi:]You are my Jury earlier this year, says that Iran ordered the bombing in retaliation for the USA shooting down a passenger jet. [RB: the author of the book is John Ashton, not Abdelbaset Megrahi; and Megrahi (who is extensively quoted in it) makes no such claim about Iranian responsibility.]

Ms Hilsom, who spent months covering the uprising last year and visited Megrahi's home in Tripoli, added that he was no longer treated as a "hero" by ordinary people.

She said: "He represents in some ways the crimes of the Gaddafi regime and he wants to stay out of the public eye because he is not very popular. 

"People are very ashamed of what Gaddafi did in the world, including Lockerbie. Libyans feel that Gaddafi was an embarrasment and they see Megrahi and the whole Lockerbie thing as part of that.

"He is seen as a pariah, an embarrasment from the previous regime." 

She added: "Like everybody else in Libya, last year would have been very difficult for him. For months, you couldn't just drive across town to get your medicine, for example.

"Megrahi was an apparatchik of Gaddafi, he was one of Gaddafi's men so after he was toppled his family expressed some fear that they would be treated badly by the new authorities.

"However, I've seen no evidence they have been treated badly. He seems to be able to get the treatment he needs and is still living a reasonable life in Tripoli." 


[The following comment from Peter Biddulph appears beneath the article on the Express website:]


Ben Borland refers to the recent publication of a book "You are my Jury".

What he fails to mention is that the book gives a factual account of laboratory experiments conducted by two top metallurgists, including one at Sheffield's Hallam university, which prove conclusively that a fragment of a timer board said to have been found at Lockerbie could not have come from a batch sold to Libya.

The experiments completely destroy the prosecution case against Al-Megrahi. 

There are indications, too, that the fragment found at Lockerbie was a fake, introduced into an evidence bag so as to turn the investigation away from Iran, to one which would accuse Libya of the bombing. 

The information is there. Ben Borland should study it. Lord David Steel has looked at the evidence and in a TV interview just days ago on Scottish TV said that the verdict against Al-Megrahi was "highly unsatisfactory". 

Ben, you are welcome to contact us and see it for yourself. Google my name and the links will come up.