A final chapter in the PanAm 103 bombing case?

[I am grateful to Lockerbie Truth’s Peter Biddulph for drawing my attention to this September 2009 article by William Blum in the Foreign Policy Journal.  It reads as follows:]

If there’s anyone out there who is not already thoroughly cynical about those on the board of directors of the planet, the latest chapter in the saga of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland might just be enough to push them over the edge.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was “highly objectionable”. His White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added that the welcoming scenes in Libya were “outrageous and disgusting”. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “angry and repulsed”, while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images “deeply upsetting.” Miliband warned: “How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya’s reentry into the civilized community of nations.”[1]

Ah yes, “the civilized community of nations”, that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. And it should be pointed out that the Vincennes captain, plus the officer in command of air warfare, and the crew were all awarded medals or ribbons afterward.[2]No one in the US government or media found this objectionable or outrageous, or disgusting or repulsive. The United States has always insisted that the shooting down of the Iranian plane was an “accident”. Why then give awards to those responsible?

Today’s oh-so-civilized officials have known of Megrahi’s innocence since 1989. The Scottish judges who found Megrahi guilty know he’s innocent. They admit as much in their written final opinion. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigated Megrahi’s trial, knows it. They stated in 2007 that they had uncovered six separate grounds for believing the conviction may have been a miscarriage of justice, clearing the way for him to file a new appeal of his case.[3] The evidence for all this is considerable. And most importantly, there is no evidence that Megrahi was involved in the act of terror.

The first step of the alleged crime, sine qua non — loading the bomb into a suitcase at the Malta airport — for this there was no witness, no video, no document, no fingerprints, nothing to tie Megrahi to the particular brown Samsonite suitcase, no past history of terrorism, no forensic evidence of any kind linking him to such an act.

And the court admitted it: “The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta to Frankfurt] is a major difficulty for the Crown case.”[4]

The scenario implicating Iran, Syria, and the PFLP-GC was the Original Official Version, endorsed by the US, UK, Scotland, even West Germany — guaranteed, sworn to, scout’s honor, case closed — until the buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was needed for the broad Middle East coalition the United States was readying for the ouster of Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Washington was also anxious to achieve the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by groups close to Iran. Thus it was that the scurrying sound of backtracking could be heard in the corridors of the White House. Suddenly, in October 1990, there was a New Official Version: it was Libya — the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq — that was behind the bombing after all, declared Washington.

The two Libyans were formally indicted in the US and Scotland on Nov. 14, 1991. Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages were released in Lebanon along with the most prominent British hostage, Terry Waite.[5]

In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. “If he goes back to Libya,” Swire says, “it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. … I’ve lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.”[6]

And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.

The Sunday Times (London) recently reported: “American intelligence documents [of 1989, from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)] blaming Iran for the Lockerbie bombing would have been produced in court if the Libyan convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist attack had not dropped his appeal.” Added the Times: “The DIA briefing discounted Libya’s involvement in the bombing on the basis that there was ‘no current credible intelligence’ implicating her.”[7]

If the three governments involved really believed that Megrahi was guilty of murdering 270 of their people, it’s highly unlikely that they would have released their grip on him. Or is even that too much civilized behavior to expect.

One final note: Many people are under the impression that Libyan Leader Moammar Qaddafi has admitted on more than one occasion to Libya’s guilt in the PanAm 103 bombing. This is not so. Instead, he has stated that Libya would take “responsibility” for the crime. He has said this purely to get the heavy international sanctions against his country lifted. At various times, both he and his son have explicitly denied any Libyan role in the bombing.

____________________

[1] Washington Post, August 22 and August 26, 2009

[2] Newsweek magazine, July 13, 1992

[3] Sunday Herald (Scotland), August 17, 2009

[4] “Opinion of the Court”, Par. 39, issued following the trial in 2001

[5] Read many further details about the case at http://killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm

[6] The Independent (London daily), April 26, 2009

[7] Sunday Times (London), August 16, 2009

I am not guilty: Megrahi's dying words to his family

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

The son of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has said his family will back a posthumous appeal after revealing his father's dying words were to protest his innocence.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi died on May 20 – almost three years after he was released from prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds.

In August 2009, days before his release, Megrahi dropped his second appeal against his conviction at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh.

Partly because Megrahi has died, his family could now send a new submission to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to ask them to refer the case back for a fresh appeal.

In an interview with The Herald after his release, Megrahi said he had come under no pressure to drop his appeal but simply wanted to improve his chances of returning to Libya to see his family.

However, since then, he claimed in his official biography that Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had – through a Libyan diplomat – encouraged him to drop the appeal. Mr MacAskill has strongly denied that allegation.

Khaled al Megrahi, 27, told The Herald: "I am a believer that my father was not guilty and very soon new evidence will come out. Me and my brothers will not be silent.

"Before he died, my father's last words were he is not guilty.

"I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has supported us. We know one day the truth will come out."

Scottish ministers have said publicly they would be comfortable with a new appeal being launched by Megrahi's family.

Campaigners and relatives of victims have also called for a full public inquiry. The UK Government and Alex Salmond have so far rejected such calls. In a statement last month, a Scottish Government spokesman said: "It remains open for relatives of Mr Megrahi or the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie atrocity to ask the SCCRC to refer the case to the Appeal Court again on a posthumous basis, which ministers would be entirely comfortable with." (…)

After protracted international pressure, Megrahi was put on trial under Scots law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

He was found guilty in 2001 of mass murder and ordered to serve a minimum of 27 years behind bars.

Despite claims he could not have worked alone, and the lingering suspicion by many that he was innocent, Megrahi was the only man ever convicted over the terrorist attack.

He was freed from prison after serving nearly eight years of his sentence after he dropped his appeal.

When interviewed at their former home in Newton Mearns by The Herald in December 2008, Khaled said that, as eldest son, he had to bear the burden of paternal responsibility.

"I was in primary school when my father had to leave," he said. "It was the first time I had seen my father cry. My brothers were too young to really understand what was going on.

"My mother became father and mother and she asked me to help to advise my brothers. I became like the man of the house.

"My dad always supports me. He says I have to be the good example for my other brothers.

"I don't feel angry about what has happened, just sad. I only have one wish and that is that he comes home.

"We forget how it was when he lived with us."  


[If an application were made by (or with the support of) Megrahi's family, I'm pretty confident that the SCCRC would refer the case back to the Appeal Court, both on the original six grounds and on grounds that have emerged since (eg the metallurgical evidence that destroys the link between the timer fragment and the MEBO timers supplied to Libya). But I'm not at all confident that, under its new powers, the Appeal Court would accept the reference. However, what would the Scottish Government's response then be to continued pressure for an independent inquiry? At present they stonewall by saying that a further SCCRC application and appeal is the way to go. If that route is blocked (by section 7 of their very own Cadder emergency legislation) what will their next excuse for inaction be?]

For those who may still doubt

[This is the heading over an item posted today on the Lockerbie Truth website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph. It reads in part:]

Surely by now, among those who have examined all the evidence regarding the supposed guilt of Baset Al-Megrahi, can there be any lingering doubt?  

And for the benefit of any remaining doubters, we invite them to consider the two main planks on which the prosecution's case was founded.

1.  A Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, identified Al-Megrahi as the stranger who had, shortly before the December 1988 bombing, bought clothes in his shop.  

2.  A fragment of an electronic timer board found at Lockerbie came from a batch of twenty sold to Libya in 1985 by Swiss electronics company MEBO.

1.  The Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci. 

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, during their own three-year investigation of the case, found six grounds for concluding that  "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred".

One of the SCCRC's grounds was their discovery of a series of entries in the police diary of chief Dumfries and Galloway police investigator Harry Bell.  

Bell recorded from the first days of his investigation that huge offers of reward were available from the United States to principal identification witness Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci. 

In a letter sent by Dana Biehl of the US Department of Justice, it was explained that Gauci would receive "unlimited monies, with $10,000 available immediately" if Al-Megrahi was convicted.

Bell's police diary, and all knowledge of this offer and negotiations concerning the offer, were concealed from the trial and first appeal.  The judges who convicted Al-Megrahi were unaware of these matters when they concluded that Gauci was a totally reliable witness.

Gauci's final and conclusive identification of Al-Megrahi took place during a police identity parade. In the words of a respected Scottish legal expert, "so widespread had been the publicity [regarding Al-Megrahi's guilt] most people following the case could have probably picked the accused out without ever having met him".

Yet Gauci had the advantage over such people, since he had had in his possession for several weeks a copy of a magazine with a colour photo of Al-Megrahi, in which the Libyan was described as "the bomber".

2. The fragment of electronic timer board

It was upon this item that the entire case against Al-Megrahi would turn. In the minds of the judges it proved the Libyan connection, since the evidence appeared to show that it came from a batch sold to Libya in 1985. 

It had - according to the available evidence - been manufactured by Swiss company Thuring, on behalf of electronics supplier MEBO. It seemed to be a "golden thread" linking Al-Megrahi to the bomb.

In 2008 the Al-Megrahi defence team discovered an extraordinary anomaly, one which had escaped the attention of the prosecution team, the Scottish Crown Office, and the Scottish police. It concerned the silver-like protective coating on the fragment, which covered the copper circuitry in order to prevent oxidisation.  

A hand-written note by the government's chief forensic scientist Alan Feraday had recorded the protective coating as "100% tin". 

Feraday's records also showed that he was aware of the difference between the Lockerbie fragment and the coating upon a control sample supplied to the police as part of their investigation. The control sample - manufactured by Swiss company Thuring - contained a 70/30% alloy of tin and lead. 

The prosecution and police mistake was to speculate that the heat of the Lockerbie explosion had entirely evaporated the lead content. But no follow-up investigations or tests were carried out.

During the trial, the judges and defence team were unaware of the anomaly and accepted the provenance of the fragment from the metallurgical point of view. 

When in 2008 the defence team checked with Thuring, it emerged that all timer boards made by that company were coated with an alloy mixture of 70% tin and 30% lead. 

In 2008 the Thuring production manager swore an affidavit to this effect and was scheduled to repeat his  evidence in Al-Megrahi's second appeal, abandoned in 2009. 

Having discovered the anomaly, the defence team commissioned two highly experienced and reputable scientists to investigate the matter.  In a series of experiments carried out at separate laboratories, the scientists tested the theory of evaporation of lead content by high temperatures. 

In all cases, the lead did not evaporate. Thus they established beyond all reasonable doubt that the fragment found at Lockerbie could not have come from any of the timers sold to Libya by MEBO.

This evidence too was scheduled to be presented in Al-Megrahi's second appeal, abandoned in 2009.

The protocols and data resulting from the defence-commissioned experiments would no doubt be  freely available, should the prosecuting authorities request to examine it.

All such information would be presented in court should the relatives or other persons representing Mr Al-Megrahi persuade the Criminal Cases Review Commission to ask for a recommencement of a second appeal.

The new scientific data regarding the fragment suggests strongly that to repeatedly send police and Crown Office investigators to Libya has become an irrelevance. 

Boyd makes the Bench despite Pan Am 103 stain

[This is the headline over a report published on Friday on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  It reads in part:]

Former Lord Advocate has, as predicted earlier this year, been appointed as a Senator of the College of Justice and will become a High Court Judge.

The appointment comes despite ongoing concern over his role in the Pan Am 103 debacle, where further questions surrounding the actings of the Crown Office in relation to disclosure of material evidence continue to challenge the conviction. New revelations have come to light only this morning.

"That the Judicial Appointments Board should recommend to the First Minister that Lord Colin Boyd be appointed as a judge to the highest court in the land set new standards for being out of touch," campaigner Iain McKie said at the time his appointment was leaked.

Former MP Tam Dalyell said the appointment "should not inoculate Lord Boyd from the obligation to answer questions on Lockerbie over the period that he headed the Crown Office.

"The Crown Office, and I would have thought Lord Boyd in his position in the Crown Office, have an obligation to address powerful criticisms of non-disclosure."

The appointment comes on the day Lord Gill [currently Lord Justice Clerk, number two in the Scottish judicial hierarchy] was confirmed as the new Lord President. [RB: Many, many years ago I spent some of the happiest months of my life devilling to Brian Gill, then a junior counsel and an Advocate Depute, before I entered practice at the Scottish Bar.]

A testimony about Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article by Emad El Din Abeeb published today on the English language website of the Arabic daily newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.  It reads as follows:]

In 1995 I met with Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fahima in Tripoli, the two suspects accused of bombing a US passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. In 1991, allegations were made against the Muammar Gaddafi regime, charging it with masterminding, funding and carrying out the bombing.

As I entered Libya over land from Djerba, Tunisia - as a result of the no-fly zone imposed on Libyan territories because the regime had refused to hand over al-Megrahi and Fahima - I kept asking myself the same question: Was Gaddafi really crazy enough to bomb a US airplane? Or was the accusation part of an international campaign to demonize the former Libyan leader?

I had been granted the opportunity to conduct a televised interview with Gaddafi, which lasted for six hours over the space of two days. During the penultimate commercial break on the second day of filming, I whispered in Gaddafi's ear "I have a special request for you, brother Muammar". He stared at me, obviously thinking that I had a personal request or agenda to fulfill. Then he said "What can I do for you?", to which I replied "I want to conduct a live interview tomorrow with al-Megrahi and Fahima."

He remained silent for a moment and then realized that the only honorable gift a ruler can give to a journalist is to secure him a major "scoop". He answered "very well", and gave the order to his aides.

This was my first interview with Fahima and al-Megrahi, and I remember that it was a Monday because both of them were fasting, and they broke their fast by eating dates and drinking a glass of milk. I asked to be alone with both of them, without the presence of any Libyan police or intelligence officers, and we talked for two hours before we began filming.

I swear by God that both Fahima and al-Megrahi left a number of positive impressions upon me, which I can summarize as follows:

1- There was a Libyan role in the bombing; this may have centered on the funding, but not the implementation.

2- Both individuals were certainly members of a security apparatus affiliated to Gaddafi, but they were not directly involved in the Lockerbie bombing.

3- They felt extremely guilty because Libyan citizens had lived for years under sanctions, boycotts and an international embargo, a result of the regime's refusal to hand them over for prosecution.

Fahima and al-Megrahi, two figures from Gaddafi’s inner circle, were examples of individuals who had been forced to serve the regime, but not to the extent of bombing a passenger airplane.

This was what I saw, heard and felt during the interview, and this was what came to my mind when I read the news of al-Megrahi's death.

Lockerbie revelations prompt calls for inquiry

[This is the headline over a report by Lucy Adams in today's edition of The Herald outlining reactions to yesterday's revelations in the newspaper.  It reads as follows:]

Revelations in The Herald the UK Government tried to suppress have fuelled calls for a public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing.

Yesterday, we revealed a document the UK Government has blocked for more than 20 years, which has never been aired in public or shared with the courts, originally came from Jordan and indicates a Palestinian terrorist group was involved in the bombing that killed 270 people – which the UK Government has vehemently denied.


The UK Government went to considerable lengths to prevent details of the document – which casts further doubt on the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi – being published by The Herald.


Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the atrocity, said: "No-one has been braver than The Herald in searching for the truth about Lockerbie. For this news to break now goes to the core of features of this case which have worried me for a long time. One is the professed ignorance of the UK Prime Minister and Scottish First Minister when they say they uphold the verdict of the trial and [will] not hold an inquiry.


"During the second appeal in Edinburgh, when the Advocate General spoke he said a Public Interest Immunity [PII] certificate had been granted by the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband. I knew then the establishment of the countries in which I live were opposing my right to know who really murdered my daughter and all those other people, and to know why their precious lives were not protected."


The document incriminates the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) in the bombing. The PFLP-GC were the original suspects in the investigation into the atrocity. However, by 1991 police and prosecutors were entirely focused on Libya.


The UK Government arranged for the document to be covered by Public Interest Immunity on national security grounds.


Willie Rennie MSP, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, said: "This adds further weight to calls for a Scottish public inquiry into the Lockerbie prosecution. Accusations of suppressing evidence and withholding important documents from those at the heart of the investigation cannot be swept under the carpet. The First Minister should order a Scottish public inquiry to ensure the integrity and fairness of the Scottish justice system is put beyond doubt."


It is thought the document could fatally undermine the case against Megrahi, who died of cancer last month. Tony Kelly, Megrahi's solicitor, said the fact the Appeal Court, defence team and Megrahi were never allowed access to it is a "tragedy".


"The publication of details of the document in yesterday's Herald – previously subject to a PII certificate signed by the Foreign Secretary in the course of the appeal proceedings – was the first inkling I had about the content and source of the document," he said. "What a great pity."


John Ashton, the author of Megrahi: You are my Jury, said yesterday: "Mr Megrahi spent 10 years in prison and went to his grave still bearing the weight of his conviction. If this, and all the other important evidence that we now know of, had been disclosed to his lawyers, he should have walked from court a free man and would have spent the last decade with his family. By resisting a public inquiry into the case, the Scottish Government is fuelling the biggest scandal of the country's post-devolution era."


Patrick Harvie MSP, Scottish Green Party co-convener, said: "The Herald's latest twist adds to the long-held doubts about Mr Megrahi's conviction. In its apparent attempt to prevent The Herald talking about this document, the Foreign Office refers to the UK's international relations being harmed. Surely the real risk is to our reputation for justice. A public inquiry would help address this sorry saga."


A Scottish Government spokesman said: "It is the case that the Crown Office wanted to provide this information to Mr Megrahi's legal team during the second appeal and made this clear to the court, but it could not be done because of the UK Government's Public Interest Immunity certificate.


"The issues being raised in relation to the conviction itself must be a matter for a court of law – Mr Megrahi was convicted in a court of law, his conviction was upheld on appeal, and that is the only appropriate place for his guilt or innocence to be determined. It remains open for relatives of Mr Megrahi or the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie atrocity to ask the SCCRC (Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) to refer the case to the Appeal Court again on a posthumous basis."

How UK Government hid secret Lockerbie report

[This is the headline over a report by Lucy Adams in yesterday's edition of The Herald. Apologies for tardiness in posting: a family emergency involving a staff member at Gannaga Lodge necessitated a 200 kilometre dirt-road trip to Ceres, from where the blog is now being updated.  The report reads as follows:]

It has been hidden, blocked and kept secret by the UK Government for more than 20 years, but The Herald can reveal for the first time the contents of the top-secret Lockerbie document that the UK tried to prevent us from publishing.

The highly classified document, which has never even been aired in public or shared with the courts, originally came from Jordan and indicates that a Palestinian terrorist group was involved in the bombing that killed 270 people – something the UK Government has vehemently denied.



The UK Government has gone to considerable lengths to prevent details of the document – which casts further doubt on the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi – being published by The Herald.


It has threatened legal action to stop publication of the newspaper and asked the paper to sign up to a court-approved gagging order.


Our decision to publish details of the document, which was obtained by the Crown Office but never shown to the defence team, will prove highly embarrassing to the Crown, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Office of the Advocate General, whose lawyers have worked tirelessly to prevent it ever being even discussed in public.


The document incriminates the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) in the Lockerbie bombing.


The PFLP-GC were the original suspects in the investigation into the biggest terrorist atrocity ever to have been committed in mainland Britain. However, by 1991 police and prosecutors were entirely focused on Libya. Since then politicians and the investigating authorities have denied the possibility of their involvement, instead blaming the whole atrocity on Libya.


Repeated, high-level attempts to block the report indicate it is vital to unearthing the truth about the Lockerbie bombing. The UK Government arranged for the document to be covered by Public Interest Immunity on national security grounds. This prevented it from being shared with the defence but does not prevent publication by a newspaper.


A source said: "The document itself is historical and regimes have changed so it is hard to believe it presents any risk at all to national security. It originates from Jordan and incriminates the Palestinian terror group the PFLP-GC. The contents are very important but what makes them so much more significant is the lengths the UK Government and others have gone to in order to prevent anyone from seeing the document.


"This is the most remarkable piece of evidence. It does not rule out the Libyans but it does indicate that others were involved.


"It also shows the lengths the UK Government was prepared to go to in order to ensure that any evidence undermining their case against Libya would never see the light of day."


It is thought the document could fatally undermine the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. He died of cancer last month without knowing the contents of this report.


The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) team that investigated Megrahi's conviction discovered the existence of the document during their four-year investigation which concluded in 2007. Their 800-page report explains that their investigative team were allowed to access the document in Dumfries police station but they were prohibited from removing the notes they made on it and the document itself.


The commission was only able to access the document after signing up to a special agreement not to divulge the contents and was told by the Crown that "a conclusion was reached that the documents did not require to be disclosed in terms of the Crown's obligations".


The SCCRC then ruled that the contents were sufficiently disturbing for a court to have believed the conviction could have been a miscarriage of justice. The failure to disclose the document was one of the six grounds on which the case was referred back for a fresh appeal in 2007.


To date, only the Crown, UK Government and SCCRC team know the contents of this closely guarded document.


Megrahi's legal team pushed for disclosure of the document once it was revealed by the SCCRC. The Scottish courts were in the process of appointing special advocates and a special judge who would decide in secret whether the contents of the document could be disclosed when Megrahi dropped an appeal in 2009 in order to speed his return to Libya. He was released on compassionate grounds in August 2009 because he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer.


This new evidence and the fact it points to the guilt of non-Libyans will also prove embarrassing for the prosecution who failed to share the document with the trial court and who have subsequently argued that the investigation should focus on Libya alone.


A spokesman for the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "The UK Government provided all relevant information on the Lockerbie bombing to the Scottish authorities, who considered it as part of the investigation which led to Megrahi's conviction. Any suggestion of 'hiding' documents is simply incorrect.


"The Government entered into a dialogue with The Herald in line with its long-established practice, supported by successive governments, to seek to prevent publication of any material that could cause significant harm to the UK's international relations and national security. We have consistently made clear that we sought to do this through dialogue rather than legal action".


Chapter 25 of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's Statement of Reasons refers to material which the Crown had proactively disclosed to the Commission during its review of Megrahi's conviction. The Crown claim they wanted to provide this information to Megrahi's legal team during the second appeal and made this clear to the court, but this could not be done because of the UK Government's Public Interest Immunity Certificate.


A spokesman for the Crown Office said: "The suggestion that the PFLP-GC was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing was fully considered by the trial court following the incrimination of this terrorist group by Megrahi during his trial and does nothing to undermine the Crown's case that Megrahi acted with others in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103.


"All material which met the Crown's disclosure obligations in relation to the PFLP-GC was properly disclosed to the defence before the trial and this was confirmed by the SCCRC's investigation.


"The court concluded that the conception, planning and execution of the plot which led to the bombing was of Libyan origin. The court was, of course, only dealing with evidence, not matters of opinion or conjecture."

[An accompanying editorial in The Herald reads as follows:]

The Herald today publishes the details of a Lockerbie document the UK Government worked to keep secret for more than two decades.



The document not only implicates a different country and terrorist group but indicates the lengths the UK Government would go to in order to keep key information out of the public domain.


It has not explained why the document could not be published or shared with the defence team of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the bombing, other than to use the catch-all cover of national security.


However, we believe that publishing the information was in the public interest.


The document only came to light in 2007 when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) published its Statement of Reasons for a possible miscarriage of justice and referred the case for a new appeal.


The commission said failure to disclose the document could have constituted such a miscarriage. It was one of the six grounds upon which the case was referred back to court.


However, UK ministers signed a Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate to prevent disclosure.

Yesterday the Crown Office said that, during the second appeal in 2008/9, it wanted to share the contents of the document with the defence team but was unable to do so because of the PII.


Yet the same Crown Office chose not to disclose this document to the defence a decade previously, before the original trial. Its position was that the document "did not require to be disclosed in terms of the Crown's obligations", even though it was not covered by PII at the time.


The Crown had a duty to disclose relevant information, even if it risked undermining the prosecution case.


The UK Government says the document was not "hidden" as it had been shared with investigating authorities. So why did the Crown choose not to share the information with the defence?


The document is a highly significant piece of new evidence which weakens and perhaps undermines the case against Megrahi as it states that agencies other than the Libyan Government were involved.


It may not be in the UK Government's interests to probe this case more deeply but any grounds for an inquiry should be based on new evidence and the wishes of the relatives of the victims.


The Scottish Government claims it does not have the power to order an inquiry but legal experts have made clear that a narrower inquiry could be ordered by ministers at Holyrood. They have emphasised a desire to be open and accountable in this case.


The relatives of those who died have waited 23 years for answers. It is time for ministers to put the wishes of the relatives first and start answering questions in full.


We are not passing judgment on Megrahi's guilt or otherwise, but the failure to disclose this document and its contents provide compelling reasons for a full and independent public inquiry.

Justice short-circuited

[This is the headline over an article in the current issue of Private Eye.  The following text is taken from John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury website:]

The new edition of Private Eye carries the following article under the headline Justice short-circuited. The newly-revealed document to which it refers can be read here.

For 19 years prosecutors and investigators kept secret a detailed report about the most important forensic evidence recovered from the debris of Pan Am 103 at Lockerbie – a fragment of timing device circuit board – which completely undermined their own case against Abdelbasset al-Megrahi.  

That such crucial material, obtained by the Eye,  was never disclosed before the Libyan was convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity on UK soil,  should in itself be sufficient grounds for a public inquiry of itself. Added to the wealth of other evidence concealed from his trial (Eyes passim)  the deeply flawed identification evidence “linking”  Megrahi to the  bombing, the use of a discredited Walter Mitty-type FBI informer as a “star witness”, and the fact that other material in the case still remains secret protected by “public interest immunity”, the stench of cover-up becomes overwhelming.

The 11-page document is a detailed summary of the forensic analysis of the circuit board, which reveals that police and experts were well aware, relatively early in the investigation, that there was something “very unusual” about the board. They had found that tracks on it were coated with pure tin, whereas the vast majority in manufacture have a tin/lead mix. This was a significant lead.

“Without exception it is the view of all experts involved in the PCB [printed circuit board] industry who have assisted with this enquiry that the tin application on the tracks of the circuit was by far the most interesting feature”, said the police report.

Scandalously this was never revealed at Megrahi’s trial and not disclosed to his defence lawyers until 2009 – a month before he was freed from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds to return to Libya, where he recently died.   

The Crown’s case against Megrahi regarding the circuit board was always the opposite: namely, that the fragment was identical to circuit boards used in timers that were supplied to Libya by a Swiss company Mebo.  But these were not remotely “unusual” as they had the common tin/lead mix.

Earlier this year writer and researcher John Ashton in his book,  Megrahi: You are my Jury, revealed how the government scientist, Allen Feraday, who had told the trial that the circuit fragment was “similar in all respects” to the Mebo devices,  had, in fact, overseen tests on the fragment and a control sample circuit board, (revealed in recently disclosed notebooks) which pointed up the differences between the two.

As this new document shows, the significance of such findings was known more widely. This raises questions about why the evidence remained buried for years and who exactly knew the Mebo timers were different.

The piece of board was discovered among parts of a man’s shirt recovered from the crash site. The shirt was in turn traced back to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper, who put Megrahi in the frame three years after the bombing, saying he resembled the man who had bought the clothing. (As Eye readers know Megrahi bore no resemblance to the man first described by Gauci to investigators, and it later emerged that the shopkeeper and his brother were handsomely “rewarded” by the FBI.)

The new material coupled, and the doubts about the veracity of the Gauci evidence, undermine the two main pillars of Megrahi’s conviction. And while the Libyans were not averse to state-sponsored acts of terrorism at the time of the bombing in 1988, it remains the case – as the late Paul Foot pointed out in an Eye special report, Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice, in 2001 -  that the attack bore the hallmarks of a Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist cell which had been caught red-handed with devices equipped to bring down planes.

The excuse for not holding a public inquiry is because the criminal investigation is continuing.  So far investigators only seem to have travelled to Libya – no doubt to see if they can obtain new evidence that might somehow prop up the crumbling conviction. 

Legacy of Lockerbie: part 2

[The following is taken from an article by Kenneth Roy, the editor, published today in the Scottish Review:]

The empty auditorium

On the subject of Lockerbie, we are not short of bar-room philosophers. When someone from the Sun phoned me last week for a quote, he assured me that, down at his local, most people were convinced that Megrahi should never have gone to prison. I told my new friend from the Murdoch empire that I was interested to hear it. I was tempted to add that if only his newspaper had supported the opinion of the boozing classes, the world would be a marginally fairer place. 

But where (I have been asking myself for the last fortnight), were all these bar-room philosophers when the facts of the Lockerbie disaster were first examined? I put this question with the hindsight of one of the strangest experiences of my professional life.

In December 1990, close to the week of the second anniversary, I turned up one morning at a psychiatric hospital in Dumfries. Part of the grounds had been converted into a mini-village, with its own 400-seat auditorium, administrative block, media centre and restaurant. I reported to the media centre and was issued with a badge, a desk and a telephone. 'Where is everybody?', I asked. There was no one in this centre; only rows and rows of empty desks and a long corridor of empty cubicles, each reserved for some famous newspaper or broadcasting organisation. 'Oh, there's never anybody here,' the security man replied casually. 'We haven't bothered to connect most of the phones'. He suggested that I should put my feet up, have a smoke, and listen to an audio feed of the proceedings. It was, he assured me, warmer in here than in the room with the 400-seat auditorium. 

I went to the room anyway. I was frisked at the door, emerging through a metal archway into a large, gloomy hall with a stage and municipal-green curtains, tightly drawn to exclude the little natural light. A third of the floor space had been penned off for bewigged counsel and their assistants – 28 of them. A team of three shorthand writers worked in 15-minute rotas. On the stage sat the impassive sheriff who was hearing the evidence. In the press benches, a handful of reporters. 

But the auditorium was deserted. Not one of the 400 seats in the public benches was occupied. During a break I asked an official if this was unusual. He told me that the highest attendance had been 10, on one of the early days. There had been no one for weeks. 

This was the fatal accident inquiry into Britain's worst peacetime atrocity, a terrorist crime which claimed 270 lives. 

Some accident. 

Only one person in this oppressively dim room was of more than passing interest. She sat incongruously in the pen reserved for the lawyers, but it was clear that she was not one of that lot. She was a woman in early middle age, beautiful, stylishly dressed. I observed that her concentration never wavered and that she never stopped writing; writing; writing. 

I discovered that her name was Marina de Larracoechea, that she was 43 years old, Spanish, an interior designer, that her sister Nieves, four years her junior, had been a flight attendant on Pan Am flight 103, and that she was here to represent her sister, murdered at 39. Legal representation did not interest Marina. She had to be in this unfamiliar town in person, in the depth of winter, resting her head heaven knows where, week after week, listening, writing, head down, writing. 

The airline's head of security – even for him there was no audience – gave evidence. I remember 22 years later that he spoke of 'bouncing off the walls in frustration' at his employer's lack of interest in his plans to improve the inadequate security. We did not know then about the Heathrow possibility. We knew very little. Megrahi was a free man. Tony Gauci was an obscure Maltese shopkeeper. Peter Fraser was just another of those jolly affable chaps at the Scottish bar, no one suspecting that he thought in such sophisticated imagery as a witness being an apple short of a picnic.

It was an inquiry taking place in the dark. Almost literally.

As she listened to the security man's evidence, Marina stepped up the pace of her ferocious note-taking. I didn't appreciate at the time the nature of this phenomenon; it took a while for my slow head to work it out. It was someone bearing witness. I hadn't seen the like of it before and I haven't seen the like of it since. It was a deeply impressive spectacle. 

At every new turn in the Lockerbie saga, I wondered what had happened to Marina. Maybe it was all that bar-room philosophy – to say nothing of all that speaking for Scotland crap – which finally drove me to make inquiries. It seems she is still alive and living in New York. 'I don't care about work any more,' she said some years ago. 'I can't do it any more. Personally I don't think I will ever be able to get back to many things in my life. All the rest is very minor compared to the fact that she is not around any more'.

Marina rejected a £4m payoff offered to each of the families. She said the money meant nothing to her and that all she wanted was the truth.

Marina requested that Nieves' name should be excluded from the Lockerbie memorial because neither truth nor justice had prevailed. I don't know whether this request was respected. 

Marina attended part of the trial in the Netherlands and left it convinced of Megrahi's innocence. She said at the time of his detention in Scotland: 'The fact that he is languishing in a Scottish prison is a source of great sadness to me and to many other relatives I have spoken to. He is nothing more than a scapegoat'.

Marina appealed to the Scottish judges to conduct an independent review of the evidence on the grounds that the full truth behind the bombing had been deliberately withheld. They rejected this request. She applied for permission to intervene and ask questions during the hearing of Megrahi's appeal. They rejected this application.

The most recent reference I have been able to source appeared in a Spanish newspaper at the beginning of last year. It was in the form of a personal statement.

Marina said:  I have worked hard with dedication and sacrifice, especially for truth and justice, in the case of the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 where my sister Nieves was murdered, along with 269 other equally precious and irreplaceable lives. This carnage, politically induced, announced and expected, occurred on 21 December 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Others, mainly government officials, diplomats and big businessmen had precise prior knowledge that helped them to change their flights and save their lives. Silence reigns over this and other important aspects.

In the same statement, Marina pleaded for health to continue fighting with even more determination 'and a little good fortune to help us bear with dignity the enormous burden of these 22 years'.

Her dignity was never in doubt. I experienced it for myself that long-ago December day in the tightly-curtained room. I'm reading it again through the lines I've just quoted. 

For 270 of those 400 vacant seats there was a victim. Yet it seems that the powerful have won. The powerful have kept their secrets. The powerful have always depended on the emptiness of the auditorium.

[Part 1 of Kenneth Roy’s article can be read here.]

Lockerbie questions

[This is the heading over two letters published today in The Daily Telegraph.  They read as follows:]

SIR – The survival of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al–Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, beyond the three months he was given to live does not make his prognosis or release from jail suspect (report, Issue 1,087).

Doctors can only assess prognosis on the basis of population data and instinct. For an individual to survive far beyond the prognosis is not surprising, especially when the patient accesses treatments that are deemed too expensive by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or which are not available in Britain.

I can attest to this because I am still alive five years after being diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma. This cancer, caused by exposure to asbestos, has a median survival of 12 to 14 months.

It may be the drugs or the experimental treatments I have had overseas, or it may be that I am just out on the far right of the survival curve. But the fact that I am alive does not make the initial prognosis wrong.

Dr Andrew D Lawson, Warborough, Oxfordshire

SIR – Huge doubts remain about Megrahi’s conviction. In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found prima facie evidence of a miscarriage of justice. English and Scottish prosecution services have a bad record of keeping essential evidence from the defence; this was an especially reprehensible example.

Cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses was so devastating that Megrahi’s subsequent conviction is beyond comprehension. Much of the forensic scientific evidence and the theory that a suitcase bomb entered the system in Malta and rattled around Europe before exploding over Lockerbie are absurd.

Most of the Scottish judiciary believes the fingerprints of Iran and Syria are all over this episode and that the guilty verdict against Megrahi is manifestly unsafe.

Dr John Cameron, St Andrews, Fife