Megrahi’s death and the quest for the truth

[This is the headline over an editorial in today’s edition of the Maltese newspaper The Times.  It reads as follows:]

A day after the death, last Sunday, of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the bombing of Pan Am 103 that killed 270 people over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988, The Times of London carried a cartoon showing someone about to cover the words The Truth painted on the nose of the airliner after the explosion. The inference is that, with Mr Megrahi’s death, the truth will not be uncovered now. But this need not be the case, particularly following the revelation, some time ago, that evidence not disclosed to the defence team at the time of the trial could have led to a different outcome.

It would be morally unjust to consider the case closed, not only with regard to Mr Megrahi, who pleaded innocent of the crime until his death, but also to the relatives of all the victims and to Malta too.

However much Malta denies the claim that the luggage containing the bomb started its journey here, the fact is that, often enough, news reports about Lockerbie carry graphics showing precisely that the bomb was loaded, in Malta, on an Air Malta flight bound for Frankfurt. This impression will not be removed until the true facts of the terrorist act become known. It is, therefore, in Malta’s interest too that the investigation into the bombing of the airliner is re-opened.

A relentless campaigner for the truth, Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of the passengers who died in the air tragedy, had this to say after Mr Megrahi’s death was announced: “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.”

Will it? Many, including a cross section of the national press in Britain, think it should.

One newspaper, for example, called for the Scottish government to agree to the holding of a public inquiry, arguing that Mr Megrahi’s death was no reason to stop trying to get to the truth. Another argued that “if ever a crime of this magnitude warranted an independent review it is this”.

At one time, a former Libyan Justice Minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, had told a Swedish tabloid that he had proof that Muammar Gaddafi had personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing. But it seems that the story ended there.

What fuelled the belief that there might have been a miscarriage of justice was a report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which, among other matters, raised the credibility of the evidence given by a Maltese shopkeeper. The commission confirmed that the shopkeeper and his brother had been compensated by the US State Department for their evidence and held that this information should have been disclosed to the defence team.

Dr Swire feels it is a tragedy “that we have failed to overturn the verdict while he (Mr Megrahi) was alive”.

There have been various theories over the release of Mr Megrahi from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2009. For example, many believed that his release was done out of commercial interests.

However, irrespective of the reasons that led to his early release from prison, justice will not be done before the truth is unearthed.

Call for fresh inquiry into Lockerbie bomb conviction

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Times (behind the paywall).  It reads in part:]

Religious leaders, politicians and relatives of some victims of the Lockerbie bombing have called for an independent inquiry into the conviction of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the man found guilty of the attack.

In an open letter, the campaigners claimed the case against al-Megrahi “held water like a sieve” and was compromised by both the “bribing” of a witness and “the very real possibility” that key evidence in his trial had been fabricated.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Terry Waite, formerly the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, and Sir Teddy Taylor, a former Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland, signed the letter, along with the journalists Kate Adie, Ian Hislop and John Pilger, and 35 others.

Al-Megrahi died at the weekend, almost three years after he was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government because he had [prostate] cancer.

The Scottish government denies that it granted his freedom in 2009 only after he decided to drop a second appeal against his conviction. It said that its decision was humane, in accordance with Scottish law.

Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, said that al-Megrahi would answer to “a higher power”.

The campaigners ironically quote Mr MacAskill in their letter, which criticises the Scotttish government. “Fine words are not enough. Action is required,” say the authors.

“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 acts 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.” (…)

Dr Jim Swire and Rev John Mosey, who both lost daughters on the flight, are among the signatories, who criticised the actions of the Crown Office (the equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales).

“The Crown and successive governments have, for years, acted to obstruct any attempts to investigate how the conviction of Mr al-Megrahi came about,” write the authors.

They allege a serious of failings in the prosecution case, including the bribery of Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who was a key Crown witness; the possibility that forensic evidence was fabricated; the retraction of some testimony; and the non-disclosure of other evidence. The letter adds: “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 Scottish government rejected the inquiry and said that the issues being raised related to the conviction and “must be a matter for a court of law”.

A Scottish government spokesman said that Al-Megrahi’s relatives, or the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie atrocity, were all entitled to ask the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer the case to the Appeal Court again on a posthumous basis.

He added: “Ministers would be entirely comfortable with that.”

A spokesman for the Crown Office said that the only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence was the criminal court.

[A similar article appears today in The Scotsman. A report in today’s edition of The Herald contains the following:]

Mr [Tam] Dalyell, a former Father of the House of Commons, told The Herald: "The SNP Government and Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill in particular are burying their heads in the sand on the Lockerbie issue. If they were to admit that Mr Megrahi had nothing to do with the crime of Lockerbie they would then by implication condemn the very institution which shows Scotland to be most separate from England – the justice system.

"The reason to pursue an inquiry after Megrahi's death, is that to not do so would leave an indelible stain on the Scottish justice system. It is about pursuing the truth. I simply do not think party politics should be played on this. If people or parties have to be embarrassed then so be it because they will have brought it on themselves by being less than candid. For the sake of the Scottish justice system we cannot let this go."

[It is sad, but entirely in character, to see the Scottish Government and the Crown Office repeating the tired old mantra that the only proper way to address concerns over the Megrahi conviction is through a court of law. It is indeed true that the only way that the verdict can be overturned is through a further appeal. But we have clear evidence now of flaws -- indeed wrongdoing -- in the Lockerbie investigation and in the conduct of the prosecution. It is quite certainly not the case that only way in which these matters can be ventilated is in an appeal against the verdict. They are matters which have caused, or are capable of causing, public concern; and that is precisely the test that must be satisfied for an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005. It would be outrageous if police and Crown wrongdoing in a case could be exposed only if the accused person chose to exercise his right of appeal. Such wrongdoing is a matter of public concern and it is to address such concerns that the 2005 Act exists.  Moreover, such an inquiry could lead to a royal pardon (indeed royal pardons almost invariably flow from inquiries into cases in which there has been a conviction). A royal pardon does not overturn the verdict, which technically still stands, but it is an official recognition that the conviction was flawed. So there really is no constitutional or legal problem about asking for an inquiry into what went wrong in the investigation and prosecution of the Lockerbie case.]

Megrahi ‘innocent’

[This is the heading over a letter in today’s edition of The Times (behind the paywall) from Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC (Anthony Lester).  It reads as follows:]

Lord Lester of Herne Hill acted for Abdul Baset al-Megrahi in the European Court of Human Rights, and believes him to be innocent

I acted for Abdul Baset al-Megrahi in his unsuccessful application to the European Court of Human Rights complaining of a breach of his right to a fair criminal trial (reports, May 21 and 22). I did not appear in the Scottish proceedings, but, after reviewing all the transcripts and judgments, I came to the conclusion that there had been a serious miscarriage of justice.

When I met al-Megrahi in HMP Barlinnie, I asked him whether he thought the Libyan government would stand by him. He replied, “they ought to do so but I am not sure whether they will”.

He told me what it had been like in Tripoli when sanctions had been imposed to secure his extradition to face trial. He said that in the midst of a huge media campaign his mother had asked him if he had any more bombs in his possession. He said he realised that if even his own mother believed he was guilty it was unlikely that he would have a fair trial.

It is regrettable that, despite the concerns expressed by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, after a three-year examination of the evidence, he was persuaded to abandon his further appeal before being released and returned to die in Libya.

In my view, he was not the perpetrator of the barbaric Lockerbie atrocity.

Wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh

[ Tam Dalyell’s obituary of Abdelbaset Megrahi  in The Independent reads as follows:]

Acres of newsprint have appeared in recent years, covering various rather separate theories about the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber.

If I thought for one moment that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty as charged in the mass murder of 270 innocent people in the crash of the Pan Am airliner "Maid of the Seas" at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, I would not have agreed to pen an obituary – let alone an affectionate one.

My settled conviction, as a "Professor of Lockerbie Studies" over a 22-year period, is that neither Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103. The Libyans were cynically scapegoated in 1990, two years after the crash, by a US government which had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of the terrible deed.

Libya and its "operatives", Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, only came into the frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, Megrahi has been the victim of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in history. The assertion of innocence is confirmed in the 497 pages of John Ashton's scholarly and remarkable book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, published by Birlinn.

This is an opinion shared by the senior and experienced solicitor Eddie McKechnie, who successfully represented Fhimah at Zeist in Holland, where a Scottish court was assembled to try the two accused under rules conducted by the jurisdiction of the laws of Scotland, and who took on Megrahi's case following his conviction; by Tony Kelly, the immensely thorough solicitor who has represented him for the past six years; by the bereaved relatives Dr Jim Swire and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost daughters and attended the entire Zeist trial; by Professor Robert Black, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, and Lockerbie-born; and by many others in legal Edinburgh.

Furthermore, the Scottish Criminal Review Commission, in the course of its 800-page report, says (paragraph 24, page 708): "The Crown deprived the defence of the opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary – so the defence's case was damaged." It concluded: "The commission's view is that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred."

Megrahi was not in Malta on the date the clothing, so crucial in the whole Lockerbie saga, was bought from the shopkeeper Tony Gauci. The proprietor of Mary's House identified a number of different people, including Abu Talb, who appeared at the trial to deny his part in the bombing.

Talb was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command and is now serving a life sentence in Sweden for the 1985 bombings in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. These discrepancies were part of the reason why the Scottish criminal review commission concluded that there could have been a miscarriage of justice; another was the unexplained payment of $10m from Iranian sources into the coffers of the Popular Front.

The testimony of Lesley Atkinson, who knew Megrahi well in Tripoli, is interesting. She is the wife of Neville Atkinson, who, in 1972, left a career as a night-fighter pilot in the Royal Navy to take up a position as personal pilot to the president of Libya, Colonel Gadaffi, until 1982. "Megrahi was polite and friendly and worked for Libyan Arab Airlines," Mrs Atkinson told me. "Of course, lots of people who worked for LAA were connected to the security services and I do not doubt that he was one of them. We knew him both at work and at the Beach Club – he was a normal, nice guy. I cannot imagine that he would ever have dreamt of planting a bomb on an airliner. He just would not have done that to passengers."

Eddie McKechnie described Megrahi as a cultured man doing a job for his country, and certainly not a mass-murderer. Had he not been given extremely bad advice not to appear in the witness box Megrahi would have revealed the truth – that he was a sanctions-buster, travelling the world to find spare parts for the Libyan oil industry and Libyan Arab Airlines. This role was confirmed to me by Colonel Gadaffi, when, as leader of the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to Libya in March 2001, I saw him in his tent outside Sirte. Gaddafi's own knowledge or involvement in Lockerbie is a different matter.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was born in 1952 and educated in Tripoli and in the Engineering Faculty of Benghazi University. He became involved in the Ministry of Trade, and like many other officials, certainly did so in the intelligence services. He served as the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and as director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. A genuine believer in what the young Gaddafi was trying to achieve, and in the Great Jamariyah, Megrahi was happy to put his talents at the service of the state. Where else in Africa is there no hint of personal corruption among the leadership, he asked me! He had good relations with engineers at Brown and Root, I was told by their chairman and managing director, Sir Richard Morris (1980-90). Brown and Root was the contractor for the huge irrigation projects in Cyrenerica, south of Benghazi, the man-made river bringing water to desert areas that had been fertile in Roman times.

He was understandably proud of the traditional skills associated with his people. On one occasion, when I visited him in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow and told him that I had been to Leptis Magna, he responded: "You know that my Tripolitanian ancestors were the artists in stone, responsible for work throughout the Empire, not least in Rome itself!" Had the judges had the opportunity to get to know Megrahi, as I knew him, they could never have arrived at the verdict of "guilty" – at most, the good Scots legal term "not proven".

After Zeist, Fhimah, represented by the aggressively formidable barrister Richard Keen QC, was cleared and returned to a hero's welcome in Tripoli. Fhimah talked with knowledge and pride, as did Megrahi, about the wonderful sight of Sabbratah and the glories of the Greek colonial city at Cyrene.

Meanwhile, Megrahi was incarcerated in Barlinnie Prison. I was not his only visitor there and in Greenock who came away with a favourable opinion. Dr Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, a medical student at the University of Nottingham, told me: "On meeting Abdelbaset in Greenock prison, I found him charming, rational, not given to anger or bluster. He made it obvious that his first priority was to clear his name before returning to his much-loved family in Tripoli.

"I saw him for the last time just before Christmas 2008, when, he, a devout Muslim, gave me a Christmas card in which he asked me and my family to pray for him and his family. That card is one of my most precious possessions.

"This meeting was before he could have known just how closely death loomed. I cannot criticise his apparently voluntary decision to spend his last months on earth with his family, above the priority of clearing his name."

I know that in some uninformed quarters, Dr Swire's views are regarded as eccentric. But it is the other British relatives who have studied the position in depth, such as Martin Cadman, who lost his son Bill; Pamela Dix, who lost her brother; and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost a daughter, have arrived at precisely the same conclusions about Megrahi's innocence. Unlike some American relatives, they have bothered to make exhaustive studies of the detail.

In my opinion, whatever Gordon Brown, Kenny MacAskill, Alec Salmond and Jack Straw – all fundamentally decent human beings – may feel they have to say in public due to pressure, and wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh, which, above all, did not want their misdeeds exposed by the truth, they all knew that they were acquiescing in the release of an innocent man. I am not quite so sure that Fhimah did not have an inkling about potentially explosive material on its way to the Bekaa valley.

Even in his final hours, controversy never deserted Megrahi. The Libyan authorities were absolutely justified in declining to extradite him, both for reasons of international law and more importantly, that he was not guilty as charged of the Lockerbie crime – also the considered opinion of Dr Hans Koechler, who attended Megrahi's trial as an official UN observer and has examined his appeal process in Scotland.

As James Cusick, who has followed the twists and turns of the Lockerbie saga for many years as a highly informed journalist, wrote in The Independent on Tuesday 30 August, "The truth behind the Lockerbie bombing remains enmeshed in diplomatic gains."

My last sight of Abdelbaset was on TV on 3 October, attended by Mrs Megrahi, with tubes galore, thanking Dr Swire in gentle tones for trying to furnish necessary drugs and hissing out that there were many liars at Zeist. So there were.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, intelligence officer: born Tripoli, Libya 1 April 1952; married Aisha (four sons, one daughter); died 20 May 2012

CNN: Did someone else bomb Pan Am 103?

Here are links to five of today’s more interesting internet contributions arising out of the death of Abdelbaset Megrahi:

On the CNN website Lockerbie: Did someone else bomb PanAm103?
On the BBC News website Public figures demand inquiry into conviction

On the website of the Maltese paper The Times Family defend bomber at burial

On the same website Search for Lockerbie truth must continue
On Labour MP Michael Meacher’s website What is Cameron hiding over Megrahi?

The coverage of his death has been crass and repugnant

[This is the headline over an article in the current edition of the Scottish Review by the editor, Kenneth Roy.  It reads as follows:]

Two of posh boy's closest chums, Charlie and Rebekah, along with a number of retainers, will be planking their expensively clad bottoms on the hard dock of Westminster magistrates' court three weeks tomorrow to face charges which, if proved, would normally lead to a significant stretch alongside ordinary Sun readers, heaven forbid, if not the life imprisonment to which these serious charges would make them theoretically liable; meanwhile, criminal proceedings against his former right-hand man, Mr Coulson, are still widely expected. I have just written an extremely long sentence. Purest coincidence.

Yet the prime minister, lol, still feels he's something of an authority on justice in this country. Mr High Moral Tone says the dying Megrahi should never have been released. John Junor's faithful assistant, Alice, invariably had a sick bag handy for passing to her master at the first sign of the latest hypocrisy. Alice, who was the busiest girl in British journalism, is badly missed. I could have used her at the weekend as I listened to David Cameron and again yesterday at the physically revolting media coverage of Megrahi's death. 

Was there anyone more crass than the prime minister lol? Almost unbelievably, there was. Her name is Johann Lamont and she appears to be the leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

This is what she said: Let me, on behalf of the people of Scotland, apologise to the families of all the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, for his [Megrahi's] early release. 

It is not necessary to accuse Ms Lamont of political opportunism; that goes with the territory. The truly remarkable thing about this statement – indeed the only remarkable thing – is its assumption that Johann Lamont is entitled to speak for the people of Scotland. I am one of the people of Scotland and she doesn't speak for me. My colleagues here are among the people of Scotland and she doesn't speak for them. In fact, there are many people of Scotland for whom Johann Lamont doesn't speak. How dare she?

I know for whom she speaks. There are 13,135 of them – the members of the Labour Party in Scotland. It's not a lot. It leaves 5,208,965 other people of Scotland whose opinions on the early release of Megrahi are unknown. Yet, on our behalf, Ms Lamont has just apologised to the families of the victims. She has presumed to apologise on my behalf, and your behalf, and everyone else's behalf. She has even had the audacity to apologise on behalf of the father of one of the victims, Dr Jim Swire, who has a home in Scotland, who could therefore be considered as one of the people of Scotland, and who supported Megrahi's early release and counted Megrahi as a friend.

If Ms Lamont's appointment as leader of the Scottish Labour Party had been endorsed by the Scottish public as a whole with her triumphant elevation to the office of first minister, her statement would have carried some authority. But it seems nothing much happened at the weekend while I was distracted trying to persuade Alice out of retirement. Johann Lamont simply went on being the leader of a party which collapsed dramatically only a year ago this month and is now reduced to 37 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament. A little modesty from Ms Lamont wouldn't go amiss. Oh, and a few ideas.

I forced myself to buy seven newspapers yesterday. Johann Lamont would have been proud of the Labour-supporting Daily Record with its front-page splash DO NOT MOURN THIS MONSTER. The Sun's NO PITY was almost subdued by comparison, but the paper recovered its form on page 2: HE FINALLY DIES...2 YEARS 6 MONTHS LATE. The Daily Mail had DEATH OF BOMBER AND THE SHAMING OF JUSTICE, the shaming in question being the release of Megrahi rather than the extreme doubts over the safety of his conviction. The Express was at least prepared to admit a doubt of its own, avoiding dogmatic certainty with its NOW TELL US THE TRUTH ABOUT LOCKERBIE.

THE BOMBER IS DEAD screamed The Scotsman across the full length of the front page – this from a paper with a proud sceptical tradition, the paper of Alastair Dunnett, Magnus Magnusson and Eric Mackay, a paper once regarded as Scotland's national quality daily.

Of the seven, only The Herald and The Guardian afforded the dead man the dignity of a name in its main headline. Both also studiously avoided calling him 'the Lockerbie bomber', a policy which The Herald adopted at an early stage; instead it more accurately described him as the only person convicted of involvement. Pedantic, of course; but honourably and essentially so. If you wanted balanced reporting yesterday, these were the places to look. It was, however, best to avoid BBC Scotland which still had 'the Lockerbie bomber' plastered all over its coverage, even in reference to the funeral. It is, as ever, interesting that the Scottish controller is unable or unwilling to impose journalistic standards on his own staff.

Among the political class, not everyone was as crudely populist as Johann Lamont. The Tory MP for Lockerbie, David Mundell, bravely inserted in his statement a note of condolence for the dead man's family. Willie Rennie, leader of the Liberal Democrat rump in the parliament, rose in my estimation for his demand that the facts must now be established, 'including whether crucial forensic evidence was withheld from the trial'. Mr Mundell's humanity and Mr Rennie's political leadership stood in stark contrast to the sheer awfulness of Cameron and Lamont.

For Kenny MacAskill, Scotland's justice secretary, the long ordeal is over. This magazine supported his decision at the time; we go on supporting it. God or the skill of the medical profession decrees when a terminally sick person will die – although personal determination may also be a factor. For any human being to commit to paper the words '2 years 6 months late' is repugnant. 

Despite the hysterical delusions of the media, I do not believe for a moment that the Scottish Government was party to any 'deal'. A decent politician released Megrahi on compassionate grounds and on these grounds alone. What do the Americans, who go on executing their citizens, have to teach us about compassion? I am grateful, indeed proud, to live in a country which embodies this principle in its penal code.

I can prove the 'Lockerbie bomber' was innocent

[This is the headline over a long article by John Ashton on the Mail Online website. It provides a very useful summary of the contents of his book Megrahi: You are my Jury.  The article should be read in full by anyone with a genuine interest in the Lockerbie case.  The last few paragraphs are as follows:]

In his report on the trial, the official United Nations observer, Professor Hans Koechler described the finding of only Megrahi being guilty as ‘incomprehensible’.

As Megrahi’s legal team prepared to attempt to overturn the verdict for a second time, one last, crucial piece of evidence was finally  unearthed — evidence that would almost certainly have caused the case against him to collapse had it been known at the time of the  original trial.

This evidence was never heard, because Megrahi was released in August 2009 on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer before it was due to be presented in court.

For years, a cornerstone of the evidence of Libya’s involvement in the Lockerbie outrage — and, therefore, of Megrahi’s — was that tiny fragment of printed circuit board which had been found in one of the items of clothing bought from the Gaucis. The Americans had matched it to a small consignment of timers that had been sold to Libyan intelligence.

But exhaustive forensic tests carried out on behalf of Megrahi’s defence team proved in 2009 that although the fragment of circuit board apparently came from the bomb’s timer, it did not actually match any of the timers which had been sold to Libyan intelligence.

The Libyans had been supplied with timers whose copper circuitry was covered in an alloy of lead and tin. But the circuitry on the fragment from the Lockerbie bomb was covered only in tin.

It is a tiny difference, but a  crucial one. There was now no evidence that the Lockerbie bomb had a Libyan timer. 

In the event, at the original trial the judges recommended that a man they had sentenced to life imprisonment, a mass murderer who had killed 270 people, serve a minimum sentence of just 20 years. Ever since, the Megrahi team has spent years trying — successfully, I believe — to prove the Libyan was never guilty.

And while as a member of that team I accept that I may be regarded as party pris, it is surely difficult to avoid the feeling that the evidence against Megrahi was unreliable and that an innocent man had been convicted of committing the worst terrorist atrocity in British history.

Lockerbie families vow to force public inquiry

[This is the headline over a report by Lucy Adams in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads in part:]      

                                                                 

Relatives of the Lockerbie victims have vowed to pursue a public inquiry, even if it means forcing the hand of the UK Government through the courts.

On the day Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, was laid to rest near the Libyan capital of Tripoli, Dr Jim Swire whose daughter Flora died in the atrocity, revealed the families have taken legal advice and are planning to challenge UK ministers with a judicial review.

Prime Minister David Cameron and First Minister Alex Salmond have both rejected calls for an independent inquiry into the bombing in December 1988 that claimed 270 lives.

However, lawyers claim it would be possible to challenge that decision in the courts and Dr Swire said he is determined to pursue an inquiry.

It also emerged yesterday that Tony Kelly, Megrahi's lawyer, will travel to Libya this week to pay his respects to Megrahi's family.

Megrahi was released from prison on compassionate grounds almost three years ago because he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer.

He had been granted a fresh appeal by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which found there could have been a miscarriage of justice on six different grounds. However, he dropped the appeal.

Megrahi's release unleashed an international storm of criticism, but many of the victims' relatives believe the conviction to be unsound, especially in light of new evidence.

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill yesterday said he had made the "right decision for the right reasons". (…)

SNP MP Angus Robertson said the "hypocrisy" of Labour and Conservative MPs was in contrast to Mr MacAskill's "in good faith" decision.

Dr Swire and other relatives are working with leading lawyer Gareth Peirce to compel the UK Government under human rights legislation to allow an inquiry.

Dr Swire told The Herald: "Our lawyers are saying we have an absolute right to know who killed our loved ones and why they were not protected."

He said that had become "increasingly important" since they learned recently that statements about a break-in at Heathrow Airport before the December 1988 bombing were kept by police until 1999.

Dr Swire added: "This might mean pushing for a judicial review of the UK Government's decision not to grant an independent inquiry.

"The alternative right now is for Alex Salmond to get his act together and grant an independent inquiry in Scotland.

"I am not in the mood to forgo the right to know who murdered my daughter and who knew the airport was broken into 16 hours before and decided not to do anything about it.

"I will have to take further advice on whether I could pursue this through the SCCRC. I think the next move lies with the Megrahi family."

Professor Robert Black QC – the architect of Megrahi's trial, said ministers could be persuaded to hold an independent inquiry in Scotland, or a relative of Megrahi may re-apply to the SCCRC and push for a new appeal.

Ministers' continued refusal to hold a public inquiry could be challenged as a breach of article 8, the right to a family life.

Niall McCluskey, an advocate and expert in human rights, said: "The court could declare the Government was in some way in breach of the petitioner's human rights. Judicial review is a mechanism by which they could seek to have the decision of the Government not to hold an inquiry challenged."

John Ashton, a former member of Megrahi's defence team and the author of his official biography, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, said: "He has suffered a very painful death and he has gone to his grave with the conviction hanging over him.

"I am convinced that sooner or later the conviction will be overturned."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "The Scottish Government does not doubt the safety of the conviction of al Megrahi. Nevertheless, there remain concerns to some on the wider issues of the Lockerbie atrocity.

"The questions to be asked and answered in any such inquiry would be beyond the jurisdiction of Scots law and the remit of the Scottish Government, and such an inquiry would therefore need to be initiated by those with the required power and authority to deal with an issue, international in its nature."

Downing Street refused to explain Mr Cameron's reasoning behind his refusal to back a new inquiry.

[It is disappointing to see the Scottish Government trotting out the shopworn old excuse that any such inquiry would be beyond the jurisdiction of Scots law and the remit of the Scottish Government. As has been pointed out on many occasions, what is being called for is an inquiry into the investigation, prosecution and conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. Each and every one of these matters is within the jurisdiction of Scots law and the remit of the Scottish Government:

The event occurred over and on Scottish territory.
The case was investigated by a Scottish police force.
The trial was conducted under Scots Law.
Mr Megrahi was convicted under Scots Law.
Mr Megrahi was imprisoned in a Scottish gaol.
The SCCRC referred the second appeal to the Scottish Court of Appeal.
Mr Megrahi was given compassionate release by the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice.] 

NYT admits Lockerbie case flaws

[This is the headline over an article published today on the Consortiumnews.com website.  It reads in part:]

Even in death, Libyan Ali al-Megrahi is dubbed “the Lockerbie bomber,” a depiction that proved useful last year in rallying public support for “regime change” in Libya. But The New York Times now concedes, belatedly, that the case against him was riddled with errors and false testimony, as Robert Parry reports.

From the Now-They-Tell-Us department comes The New York Times obit of Libyan agent Ali al-Megrahi, who was convicted by a special Scottish court for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. After Megrahi’s death from cancer was announced on Sunday, the Times finally acknowledged that his guilt was in serious doubt.

Last year, when the Times and other major US news outlets were manufacturing public consent for a new war against another Middle East “bad guy,” ie Muammar Gaddafi, Megrahi’s guilt was treated as flat fact. Indeed, citation of the Lockerbie bombing became the debate closer, effectively silencing anyone who raised questions about US involvement in another war for “regime change.”

After all, who would “defend” the monsters involved in blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people, including 189 Americans? Again and again, the US-backed military intervention to oust Gaddafi in 2011 was justified by Gaddafi’s presumed authorship of the Lockerbie terrorist attack.

Only a few non-mainstream news outlets, like Consortiumnews.com, bothered to actually review the dubious evidence against Megrahi and raise questions about the judgment of the Scottish court that convicted Megrahi in 2001.

By contrast to those few skeptical articles, The New York Times stoked last year’s war fever by suppressing or ignoring those doubts. For instance, one March 2011 article out of Washington began by stating: “There once was no American institution more hostile to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s’s pariah government than the Central Intelligence Agency, which had lost its deputy Beirut station chief when Libyan intelligence operatives blew up Pan Am Flight 103 above Scotland in 1988.”

Note the lack of doubt or even attribution. A similar certainty prevailed in virtually all other mainstream news reports and commentaries, ranging from the right-wing media to the liberal MSNBC, whose foreign policy correspondent Andrea Mitchell would seal the deal by recalling that Libya had accepted “responsibility” for the bombing.

Gaddafi’s eventual defeat, capture and grisly murder brought no fresh doubts about the certainty of the guilt of Megrahi, who was simply called the “Lockerbie bomber.” Few eyebrows were raised even when British authorities released Libya’s former intelligence chief Moussa Koussa after asking him some Lockerbie questions.

Scotland Yard also apparently failed to notice the dog not barking when the new pro-Western Libyan government took power and released no confirmation that Gaddafi’s government indeed had sponsored the 1988 attack. After Gaddafi’s overthrow and death, the Lockerbie issue just disappeared from the news.

A Surprising Obit

So, readers of The New York Times’ obituary page might have been surprised Monday if they read deep into Megrahi’s obit and discovered this summary of the case:

“The enigmatic Mr Megrahi had been the central figure of the case for decades, reviled as a terrorist but defended by many Libyans, and even some world leaders, as a victim of injustice whose trial, 12 years after the bombing, had been riddled with political overtones, memory gaps and flawed evidence.”

If you read even further, you would find this more detailed examination of the evidence:

“Investigators, while they had no direct proof, believed that the suitcase with the bomb had been fitted with routing tags for baggage handlers, put on a plane at Malta and flown to Frankfurt, where it was loaded onto a Boeing 727 feeder flight that connected to Flight 103 at London, then transferred to the doomed jetliner.

“After a three-year investigation, Mr Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the Libyan airline station manager in Malta, were indicted on mass murder charges in 1991. Libya refused to extradite them, and the United Nations imposed eight years of sanctions that cost Libya $30 billion.  …

“Negotiations led by former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa produced a compromise in 1999: the suspects’ surrender, and a trial by Scottish judges in the Netherlands.

“The trial lasted 85 days. None of the witnesses connected the suspects directly to the bomb. But one, Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothing that forensic experts had linked to the bomb, identified Mr Megrahi as the buyer, although Mr Gauci seemed doubtful and had picked others in photo displays.

“The bomb’s timer was traced to a Zurich manufacturer, Mebo, whose owner, Edwin Bollier, testified that such devices had been sold to Libya. A fragment from the crash site was identified by a Mebo employee, Ulrich Lumpert.

“Neither defendant testified. But a turncoat Libyan agent testified that plastic explosives had been stored in Mr Fhimah’s desk in Malta, that Mr Megrahi had brought a brown suitcase, and that both men were at the Malta airport on the day the bomb was sent on its way.

“On Jan 31, 2001, the three-judge court found Mr Megrahi guilty but acquitted Mr Fhimah. The court called the case circumstantial, the evidence incomplete and some witnesses unreliable, but concluded that ‘there is nothing in the evidence which leaves us with any reasonable doubt as to the guilt’ of Mr Megrahi.

“Much of the evidence was later challenged. It emerged that Mr Gauci had repeatedly failed to identify Mr Megrahi before the trial and had selected him only after seeing his photograph in a magazine and being shown the same photo in court. The date of the clothing sale was also in doubt.

“Investigators said Mr Bollier, whom even the court called ‘untruthful and unreliable,’ had changed his story repeatedly after taking money from Libya, and might have gone to Tripoli just before the attack to fit a timer and bomb into the cassette recorder. The implication that he was a conspirator was never pursued.

“In 2007, Mr Lumpert admitted that he had lied at the trial, stolen a timer and given it to a Lockerbie investigator. Moreover, the fragment he identified was never tested for residue of explosives, although it was the only evidence of possible Libyan involvement.

“The court’s inference that the bomb had been transferred from the Frankfurt feeder flight was also cast into doubt when a Heathrow security guard revealed that Pan Am’s baggage area had been broken into 17 hours before the bombing, a circumstance never explored.

“Hans Köchler, a United Nations observer, called the trial ‘a spectacular miscarriage of justice,’ words echoed by Mr Mandela. Many legal experts and investigative journalists challenged the evidence, calling Mr Megrahi a scapegoat for a Libyan government long identified with terrorism. While denying involvement, Libya paid $2.7 billion to the victims’ families in 2003 in a bid to end years of diplomatic isolation.”

Prosecutorial Misconduct

In other words, the case against Megrahi looks to have been an example of gross prosecutorial misconduct, relying on testimony from perjurers and failing to pursue promising leads (like the possibility that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, not transferred from plane to plane to plane, an unlikely route for a terrorist attack and made even more dubious by the absence of any evidence of an unaccompanied bag being put on those flights).

Also, objective journalists should have noted that Libya’s much-touted acceptance of “responsibility” was simply an effort to get punishing sanctions lifted and that Libya always continued to assert its innocence.

All of the above facts were known in 2011 when the Times and the rest of the mainstream US press corps presented a dramatically different version to the American people. Last year, all these questions and doubts were suppressed in the name of rallying support for “regime change” in Libya.

There are clear reasons why many believe the Lockerbie trial was a miscarriage of justice

[This is the headline over an article by Kim Sengupta published today on the website of The Independent.  It reads as follows:]

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, his face skeletal, could barely move. He was attached to a drip, his face covered by an oxygen mask, drifting in and out of consciousness. The medicine needed for his treatment had been plundered by looters; the doctors had fled.

That was how I found the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in Tripoli last Autumn, the reminder of the controversy surrounding an atrocity 24 years ago. His brother Abdelnasser asked "Why do they want so much to drag him back to suffer in prison? You are looking at a man who is very close to dying."

The vengeful pursuit of Megrahi, the feeling that he has somehow escaped justice by not actually dying in a cell, is the result of a genuine belief by some that he was guilty, allied to anger that his release was part of the many dodgy deals between the British government and Muammar Gaddafi's regime. Yet there are cogent reasons why so many others, including members of bereaved families such as Dr Jim Swire who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing, have been convinced that Megrahi's conviction was a miscarriage of justice.

Soon after the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 American and British officials were busy laying the blame on the Iran Syria axis. However, after Iran and Syria joined the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War the same officials switched the blame to Libya, at the time very much a pariah state.

The trial of Megrahi and his fellow Libyan defendant Lamin Khalifa Fhimah at a specially constituted Scotttish court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands came under criticism from international jurists. The two men were effectively charged with joint enterprise, yet only Megrahi was found guilty. The prosecution evidence was circumstantial; details of the bomb timer on the plane contradictory and the testimony of a key witness, a Maltese shopkeeper, shaky under cross-examination.

The evidence of a supposedly prime "CIA intelligence asset", codenamed "Puzzle Piece" who turned up in a Shirley Bassey wig, was widely viewed as risible. It emerged later that important evidence had not been passed on to the defence lawyers.

Professor Hans Koechler, a UN appointed legal observer, described the proceedings and a subsequent failed appeal by Megrahi as "inconsistent, arbitrary and a spectacular miscarriage of justice".