Disturbing questions

[This is the headline over a review by Neil Berry of Megrahi: You are my Jury in today's edition of the Dubai-based Khaleej Times. It reads as follows:]

Published by the plucky Scottish press Birlinn, John Ashton’s new book Megrahi: You Are My Jury: The Lockerbie Evidence casts grave doubt on the validity of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi’s conviction as the Libyan terrorist responsible for blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 and murdering 259 mostly American people in December 1988. At the same time, it raises deeply disturbing questions about the United States and United Kingdom’s boasted commitment to truth and justice.

It is perhaps no surprise that the mainstream British media are fighting shy of this bulky volume the attention it deserves. For to discuss its contents would mean re-visiting a vastly acrimonious episode that threatened to poison relations between Britain and the US: the early release in August 2009 from his Scottish prison — on grounds that he was dying of cancer — of a Muslim convict who was seen by many as the personification of evil.


A member of Megrahi’s legal team, John Ashton is liable to the charge that his familiarity with the Libyan has clouded his judgment, but his book — which intersperses an exhaustive examination of the evidence that led to his conviction with Megrahi’s own testimony — collates the work of several hands and is a model of forensic rigour. It is indeed hard to believe that any fair-minded person could read it without being persuaded that Megrahi was the victim of a grotesque miscarriage of justice. The powerful impression left by the book is that Megrahi, who had run security for Libyan Arab Air Lines while engaging in clandestine trading, had the ill-luck to be in Malta, the putative point of origin of the Lockerbie bomb, at the wrong time, and that he was framed because the US found it convenient to point the finger of blame at Libya.


What has never been widely recognised is that the blowing up of Pan Am 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie took place six months after the shooting down of an Iranian airbus over the Arabian Gulf in July 1988 by the American battle cruiser, the USS Vincennes, with the deaths of 290 Iranians, most of them pilgrims bound for holy city of Makkah. It was an outrage Iran immediately vowed to avenge, and all the indications were that it was Iran, acting through the shadowy terrorist splinter group, the Palestine Popular Struggle Front, that mandated the Lockerbie operation.


If, in the aftermath of Lockerbie, the US shrank from confrontation with the Islamic Republic, it was because, on top of seeking to negotiate the release of American hostages held by Iranian-backed terrorists, it was concerned to have a free hand in repelling Saddam Hussein’s attempt to annex Kuwait to Iraq. Yet a scapegoat for Lockerbie was imperative and Libya, with an egregious leader, Colonel Gaddafi, whose image in the West was that of a deranged tribal savage, figured as the ideal candidate.  John Ashton’s book underlines how readily the Western public accepted the case for imposing crippling sanctions on Libya as the culprit for Lockerbie. Few demurred when —  even before he was sentenced by three Scottish judges at a special court in the Netherlands in 2001 — US President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright repeatedly described Megrahi not as a suspect but as a mass murderer. All this would be chilling enough — even if the case against Megrahi were a more compelling one.


In truth, his conviction relied on the testimony of a shopkeeper in Malta who had but the sketchiest memory of selling clothes to an Arab customer around the time when a suitcase containing the bomb was supposedly put on a feeder flight to London, there to be loaded onto Pan Am 103. It relied, too, on a circuit board, alleged to have been part of the bomb and to have derived from a batch of Swiss timing devices sold to Libya, though it was to transpire that this item of evidence — found far from the Lockerbie crash site — had nothing to do with the timers in question.


What is particularly shocking is how much material evidence was withheld from Megrahi’s trial — including the striking circumstance that the night before Pan Am 103 flew from London Heathrow, the airport was broken into.


The assumption that the Lockerbie bomb originated in Malta may well have deflected attention from a far more productive line of inquiry. Megrahi endured his eight-year Scottish incarceration in the bitter knowledge that he had been convicted on a basis that came nowhere near to satisfying the principle that guilt should be proved ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.


Following 9/11, however, he felt that his chances of ever clearing his name had all but vanished. Certainly, the belief that he was the ‘Lockerbie bomber’, a malevolent Muslim who had carried out Britain’s worst ever terrorist atrocity, lodged deep in the public mind — so deep that when he was diagnosed as having only months to live and Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, decreed he should be allowed to return to Libya to die, there was widespread outrage, not least in the United States. In Britain and the US, many were of the opinion that that Megrahi was the beneficiary of a squalid oil deal struck with General Gaddafi by Britain’s sometime Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and that British and Scottish politicians were not only colluding with a vile regime but insulting the dead.


Outrage about the commutation of his sentence grew as Megrahi confounded Scottish medical expectations regarding his survival prospects, living on in Tripoli until May of this year. And though he remained desperately ill, there were to be vindictive demands, following the toppling of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011, that he be made to face justice in the United States. Yet on the evidence of John Ashton’s book it is not his truncated sentence that ought to be on British and American consciences. It is the fact that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was ever convicted at all.

US channel broadcasts Aljazeera Lockerbie film

Aljazeera's 2011 documentary Lockerbie: The Pan Am Bomber? is being broadcast this week by Cambridge, Massachusetts, television station Cambridge Community Television (channel 8). The next showing is on Tuesday 10 July at 1pm EDT (5 hours behind BST).  Please note that this is not the latest February 2012 Aljazeera documentary Lockerbie: Case Closed.

The unsoundness of Megrahi's conviction

[There have been few, if any, developments in the Lockerbie case over the past ten days. To fill this gap, I am re-publishing an article written by me that first appeared on this blog almost exactly five years ago, just after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission reported that it had found six reasons for concluding that Mr Megrahi's conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice.]

On 28 June 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi’s conviction of the Lockerbie bombing back to the High Court of Justiciary for a further appeal. The case had been under consideration by the SCCRC since September 2003 and its statement of reasons (available only to Megrahi, to the Crown and to the High Court) extends to over 800 pages, accompanied by thirteen volumes of appendices. The Commission, in the published summary of its findings, rejected submissions on behalf of Megrahi to the effect that evidence led at the trial had been fabricated and that he had been inadequately represented by his then legal team, but went on to indicate that there were six grounds upon which it had concluded that a miscarriage of justice might have occurred. Strangely enough, however, only four of these grounds are enumerated in the summary. They are as follows:

“A number of the submissions made on behalf of the applicant challenged the reasonableness of the trial court's verdict, based on the legal test contained in section 106(3)(b) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. The Commission rejected the vast majority of those submissions. However, in examining one of the grounds, the Commission formed the view that there is no reasonable basis in the trial court's judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary's House, took place on 7 December 1988. Although it was proved that the applicant was in Malta on several occasions in December 1988, in terms of the evidence 7 December was the only date on which he would have had the opportunity to purchase the items. The finding as to the date of purchase was therefore important to the trial court's conclusion that the applicant was the purchaser. Likewise, the trial court's conclusion that the applicant was the purchaser was important to the verdict against him. Because of these factors the Commission has reached the view that the requirements of the legal test may be satisfied in the applicant's case.

“New evidence not heard at the trial concerned the date on which the Christmas lights were illuminated in thearea of Sliema in which Mary's House is situated. In the Commission's view,taken together with Mr Gauci's evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, this additional evidence indicates that the purchase of the items took place prior to 6 December 1988. In other words, it indicates that the purchase took place at a time when there was no evidence at trial that the applicant was in Malta.

“Additional evidence, not made available to the defence, which indicates that four days prior to the identification parade at which Mr Gauci picked out the applicant, he saw a photograph of the applicant in a magazine article linking him to the bombing. In the Commission's view evidence of Mr Gauci's exposure to this photograph in such close proximity to the parade undermines the reliability of his identification of the applicant at that time and at the trial itself.

“Other evidence, not made available to the defence, which the Commission believes may further undermine Mr Gauci's identification of the applicant as the purchaser and the trial court's finding as to the date of purchase.”

The implications for the verdict of guilty

The reasons given by the Commission for finding that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in this case are not limited to the effect of new evidence which has become available since the date of the original trial and the non-disclosure by the police and prosecution of evidence helpful to the defence. The prima facie miscarriage of justice identified by the Commission includes the trial court’s finding in fact on the evidence heard at the trial that the clothes which surrounded the bomb were purchased in Malta on 7 December 1988 and that Megrahi was the purchaser. This was the very cornerstone of the Crown’s case against him. If, as suggested by the Commission, that finding in fact had no reasonable basis in the evidence, then there is no legal justification whatsoever for his conviction by the trial court.

The implications for the Scottish criminal justice system

The present writer has always contended that no reasonable tribunal could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence led at the trial. Here is just one example of the trial court’s idiosyncratic approach to the evidence. Many more could be provided.

A vitally important issue was the date on which the goods that surrounded the bomb were purchased in a shop in Malta. There were only two live possibilities: 7 December 1988, a date when Megrahi was proved to be on Malta and 23 November 1988 when he was not. In an attempt to establish just which of these dates was the correct one, the weather conditions in Sliema on these two days were explored. The shopkeeper’s evidence was that when the purchaser left his shop it was raining so heavily that his customer thought it advisable to buy an umbrella to protect himself while he went in search of a taxi. The unchallenged meteorological evidence led by the defence established that while it had rained on 23 November at the relevant time, it was unlikely that it had rained at all on 7 December; and if there had been any rain, it would have been at most a few drops, insufficient to wet the ground. On this material, the judges found in fact that the clothes were purchased on 7 December.

On evidence as weak as this how was it possible for the trial court to find him guilty? And how was it possible for the Criminal Appeal Court to fail to overturn that conviction? The Criminal Appeal Court dismissed Megrahi’s appeal on the most technical of technical legal grounds: it did not consider the justifiability of the trial court’s factual findings at all (though it is clear from their interventions during the Crown submissions in the appeal that at least some of the judges were only too well aware of how shaky certain crucial findings were and how contrary to the weight of the evidence).

It is submitted that at least part of the answer lies in the history of the Scottish legal and judicial system. For centuries judges have accorded a specially privileged status to the Lord Advocate. It has been unquestioningly accepted that, though a political appointee and the government’s (now the Scottish Executive’s) chief legal adviser, he (now, of course, she) would at all times, in his capacity as head of the prosecution system, act independently and without concern for political considerations and would always place the public interest in a fair trial above the narrow interest of the prosecution in gaining a conviction. 

This judicial vision of the role of the Lord Advocate was reinforced by the fact that, until the Scottish Judicial Appointments Board commenced operations in 2002, all Scottish High Court Judges (and sheriffs) were nominated for appointment to the Bench by the Lord Advocate of the day. This meant that, in all criminal proceedings, the presiding judge owed his position to the person (or one of his predecessors in office) who was ultimately responsible for bringing the case before him, and for its conduct while in his court.

The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism – indeed casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction. To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the United States under a witness protection programme.

Giaka’s evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly unworthy of belief. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been immensely more difficult and perhaps impossible.

Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables.

At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.

Mr Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way. Secondly, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Mr Majid… On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."

One of the judges, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened: "Does that include, Lord Advocate ... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"

The Lord Advocate replied: "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that... there is nothing within the -- -- there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid on these matters."

Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.

Beyond the Lockerbie trial, the failure of the Crown to place the public interest in a fair trial above the interest of the prosecution in obtaining convictions is illustrated by the extent to which the Lord Advocate has recently had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, through the Privy Council in London before making available to the defence material in the prosecution’s possession that no-one could conceivably deny was of relevance and assistance in the accused person’s defence: see Holland v HMA 2005 SCCR 417; Sinclair v HMA 2005 SCCR 446. So much for the fairness of the trial being the Crown’s primary and predominant motivation!

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” I Corinthians xiii.11. It is high time for all involved in the Scottish criminal justice system to put away childish things. All of us, judges included, are surely too old to believe any longer in fairy tales. Fairy tales can be convenient and comforting and can bolster our self esteem. But, as in the case of the belief that the Crown can uniformly be relied upon always to act selflessly in the public interest, they can be dangerous and, if acted upon, work terrible injustice.

It is submitted that the Lockerbie case demonstrates just how necessary it is, if public confidence is to be maintained, for the Scottish Executive to institute a high-powered, independent, investigation into all three aspects -- investigation, prosecution and adjudication -- of the Scottish criminal justice system.

Ex Africa ...

Totsiens, Middelpos.  Totsiens, Gannaga Lodge.  All good things come to an end. And so it is with my six months in the wilds of the Roggeveld. I shall be back in Scotland (and roughly 6000 miles closer to Lockerbie) on 5 July and will re-commence posting then or shortly thereafter.

Further performances of The Lockerbie Bomber play

If you missed Tryst Theatre’s performance of Kenneth N Ross’s play The Lockerbie Bomber in May, you might be interested to know there are four further performances arranged for early September at The MacRobert Playhouse Theatre in Stirling. Tickets are now on sale.

Controversial and heart-rending: the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 killed 270 people and was the worst terrorist atrocity in the UK. Now, for the first time, the horrific tragedy is brought to the stage in this new play which lifts the veil of secrecy thrown over the bombing.

“A few people, high up in the US and UK Governments, know exactly what happened, but they’re never going to tell us.”

"Sooner or later, to protect itself, the Scottish Government will have to cast the Crown Office adrift and abandon the fiction that Megrahi’s conviction is safe."

The cast is Carol Clark, Rhona Law, Jim Allan, Brian Paterson, Craig Murray and Alan Clark.

A review of the May show is at http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/review-by-vronsky-of-lockerbie-bomber.html

The MacRobert Playhouse Theatre, University of Stirling, Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 September at 7.00pm and 9.00pm both nights. Tickets £10 and £9 (concessions) from the MacRobert Box Office on 01786 466666 or at www.macrobert.org

[From an e-mail from Alan Clark.]

Desmond Tutu's message and a fitting way to mark Mandela Day

[Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, has released a message to the people of Scotland welcoming plans to mark Mandela Day on 18 July.  The press release issued by the Scottish Government contains the following:]

In his message, which First Minister Alex Salmond highlighted during First Minister’s Questions today, Archbishop Tutu says:

“Scotland and South Africa have a strong historic connection, which was especially evident during the anti-apartheid struggle, when, in 1981, Glasgow was the first city in the world to award Nelson Mandela the freedom of the city.

“I am thus delighted that Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, the Scottish Government and the people of Scotland are marking Mandela Day by working with Action for Southern Africa – the successor organisation of the anti-apartheid movement – and highlighting the work and enduring legacy of Nelson Mandela.

“The overarching objective of Mandela Day is to inspire individuals to take action to help change the world for the better, and in doing so to build a global movement for good. (…)

Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for External Affairs, said:

“We welcome Archbishop Tutu’s warm message of support for the First Minister, the Scottish Government and ACTSA [Action for Southern Africa] Scotland’s plans for Mandela Day, and his call for as many people as possible to mark the day. (…)

“The Scottish Government will mark Mandela Day on 18th July, and I urge all to remember the great leadership of Nelson Mandela, who is an inspiration to people around the world.”

[Given that Archbishop Tutu is a Justice for Megrahi signatory, and given the role that Nelson Mandela played in facilitating a Lockerbie trial (and the interest he took in Abdelbaset Megrahi's fate thereafter) would it not be entirely appropriate and gracious for the Scottish Government to mark Mandela Day by announcing the independent inquiry into the Megrahi prosecution and conviction that the Archbishop, along with the other signatories, has called for?]

The descent

[This is the headline over an article just published on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm by the editor, Steven Raeburn. It reads in part:]

Most coverage of Pan Am 103 deals with the pitiful saga - now in its 24th ignominious year - in increments. The latest Crown Office statement will be reported. The latest US condemnation, repeated. The latest revelation, examined. But that no more gives you an understanding of the issues that require scrutiny than ten minutes of last night’s Eastenders will of the sordid, bloody history of Albert Square. 

Zooming in on the minutiae of the trees obscures the forest we are wandering through, and it must never, ever be forgotten that Pan Am 103 is a story of geopolitics, of US and UK affairs, the implications for the Middle East and oil that resides there. What happens in Scotland is the dance of the puppet, and eyes should be focused on the hands pulling the strings. Anyone who fails to understand this will never grasp the evasive truth of these events. 

UN observer Hans Köchler grasped this essential truth, and criticised the “highly politicised circumstances in which the case was handled" and which he said "drew the attention of the international public to the possible interference of intelligence services from more than one country”. 

He also warned that “the search for truth is abandoned for political expediency and criminal justice…is sacrificed on the altar of political and commercial interests.” 

In short, on a global political level, the Governments involved all have something to hide and have worked strenuously to achieve this. It has become self evident to even the most casual observer that this is the case. (...)

The Government's Pan Am 103 dogma states that the doomed aircraft blew up at high altitude and fell to pieces over Lockerbie. Pretty straightforward stuff. 

Except it isn’t. 

Eyewitness accounts of the Boeing 747‘s final moments suggest the crew were in control of the aircraft at low altitude, a fact that, if established, totally destroys the carefully maintained but bankrupt fiction of the events that support the Crown’s case against Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. 

The issue was probed during the Zeist trial, albeit from a carefully selected group of witnesses for whom this matter was strictly ancillary to the key aspects of their evidence. But testimony nevertheless given by them supports the proposition that the plane may have been intact and under control at low level before being destroyed by the final explosions which broke the aircraft apart. 

For example, during his testimony, witness Roland Stephenson said he saw the Pan Am 103 travelling in a “glide path“, coming in at a “shallow angle". 

“It was showing some form of lights, probably a small flame, no great flame or anything, enough for me to see the dark shape and the passage of the object, which appeared to me to be travelling in what I would call a glide path,” he said. 

“It was coming at a shallow angle. It was travelling from the extreme right of the town to the extreme left of the town. It appeared to be travelling more or less the line of the main road. 

“But it wasn't descending sharply.” 

Cross-examined by counsel if he had any experience of aircraft, Stephenson said he had lived under two airport flight paths, including the famous Kai Tak in Hong Kong where large jets descended amidst the built up central conurbations.

“I used to live in Hounslow West, which is right under the main runway of the approach to London airport. I also lived in Hong Kong on the actual level with the glide path where planes land at Kai-Tak. I was very familiar,” he said. 

And witness Jasmine Bell testified that on the night of the event she saw the plane “just going over my head” at just above roof height, but did not see it hit the ground. 

That again attests to horizontal travel, rather than vertical.

What was the pilot, Captain McQuarrie, doing? There is not enough information to draw a conclusion, but if he had any control at all of his aircraft, enough to coax it into the “glide path” described, it is not unreasonable to hypothesise that he may have been attempting to effect a nighttime landing on the A74, the only possible option to ground the plane in that area of southern Scotland, which would have been lit like a runway beneath him, denoting the only flat ground in the southern uplands. 

That the plane was ultimately destroyed and ended up in pieces around Lockerbie is inarguable, but its journey from cruising comfortably at high altitude down to the ground is not - judging by the available evidence- as clear cut as the dogma would have us believe. It is a journey whose details the Governments of the UK and US are unwilling to revisit. Why, is self evident. It forces a reassessment of the destruction of the plane, something that has been actively obstructed in Scotland where judicial examination is possible. 

The Air Accident Investigation Branch’s report into the fall of Pan Am 103 said that explosives events onboard caused “most of the remaining aircraft to disintegrate while it was descending nearly vertically from 19,000 to 9,000 feet,” after breaking up substantially within seconds of…whatever it was that happened. 

By the time the wreckage fell below 9000 feet it had effectively disintegrated, we are told by the AAIB. Debris in such a state could never be mistaken for an intact aircraft on a horizontal glide path. 

The AAIB description is both completely at odds with the witness statements at Zeist, and some of the related contemporary reporting, as we shall see. (...)

The Scotsman, on 22 December 1988, reported this: 

“Trouble appears to have struck the 747 somewhere over Langholm approximately 13 miles to the east where residents found lumps of aircraft metal and suitcases. 

“The crippled aircraft struggled west at low level, apparently clipping a hill about three miles east of Lockerbie. 

“Mr Jack Glasgow of Mount Florida, Glasgow, said: "We tried to get near the plane but it was completely on fire. There were no bodies about. I don't think there would be any chance of anyone getting out of it. It went up in a fireball." 

“Mr Glasgow said the aircraft hit the road, carried on for about three quarters of a mile and then exploded.” 

Mr Glasgow was not called to give evidence at the Zeist trial, but what he saw speaks more of an intact aircraft covering ground at low level. Not something that disintegrated five miles up in the night sky overhead. 

The New York Times, in its issue datelined 21 December 1988 states the following: 

“The Associated Press quoted authorities as initially saying that the plane may have hit a hillside in the hamlet of Corrie, six miles from Lockerbie, and that debris was strewn across the countryside 

“The spokesman at the rescue and coordination center said that the first impact of the plane was in the southwestern corner of the village, which has a population of about 4,000, and that the aircraft had bounced after hitting the ground, spreading wreckage over six areas over 10 miles” 

Those of us who have been in journalism long enough know the significant value of the first contemporaneous reports of any event, before an established narrative has been set and an accepted shorthand has been arrived at. (...) When a determined political machine has an interest in protecting a false narrative for a generation, as happened with Bloody Sunday, the value of those initial reports - overlooked, dismissed or subsequently discredited as contrary to the preferred narrative - becomes clear after history permits a reassessment. (...)

The AAIB is a branch of the UK Government, and every sinew of that Government has strained to sustain the falsehood that is the case against Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. The fact that its conclusions sit so at odds with these eyewitness accounts is simply typical of the geopolitical duplicity that defines this case, and which is so hard for those concentrating on the puppet rather than the puppeteer to either recognise or comprehend. 

Hans Köchler grasped it, and concluded that government representatives had protected their vested interest by ensuring crucial evidence was withheld from the Zeist court. 

“The presence of de facto governmental representatives of both sides in the courtroom gave the trial a highly political aura that should have been avoided by all means," he reported. 

“It was a consistent pattern during the whole trial that − as an apparent result of political interests and considerations − efforts were undertaken to withhold substantial information from the Court.” 

Similar interventions have of course been well documented, at Lockerbie itself on the evening of 21 December 1988, and from every point onwards, including all the way through Al Megrahi’s application to the SCCRC, his second appeal, transfer to Libya and beyond. It has carried on in recent months, weeks and days as the supposed ongoing investigation does all that it can to deflect or absorb external inquiry whilst producing absolutely nothing. 

What is clear is that the available testimony does not sustain the manufactured case against Megrahi. Hans Köchler thinks that this amounts to criminal conduct. Such a stain of criminal culpability requires purging by examination, resulting in either exoneration or conviction. The Pan Am 103 deceased, and Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, cannot rest peacefully while questions of criminality remain unanswered. Judicial reassessment is required. 


[A postscript containing additional eyewitness accounts has been added to The Firm's article on 2 July.]

Mainstream media’s distorted narrative on the Lockerbie airline bombing

[The following are excerpts from an article by Colin Todhunter published yesterday on the website of the London Progressive Journal:]

Noam Chomsky recalls writing his first article at around age ten. It was about the Spanish Civil War. Since then, he has gone on to change the face of modern linguistics and has been prolific in analysing and documenting the crimes and terror carried out by the US abroad. A colleague of Chomsky recently asked him if looking back on his 82 years of life whether all of his books, articles and presentations, gave him a sense of satisfaction. Without hesitation, Chomsky is said to have replied, “No.” (...)

Someone recently told me that he doesn’t have the time or inclination to go searching the internet to look at ‘alternative’ news sites or voices after a hard day’s work. For him, and many others, it’s much more convenient to sit in front of the TV and watch the mainstream news sources.

And there lies the root of the problem. The mainstream corporate media has been fooling the public for decades. It fails to shine a light on important decisions that are made behind closed doors by unaccountable corporate players, senior politicians and unelected bureaucrats. It therefore fails to expose the close links between these groups that ensure unity of interest and action. The media torch does not focus on the already done-deals that the public never had any knowledge of or insight into. This is democracy – sham democracy. 

Mainstream media news is shaped by selective filtering by or on behalf of media owners who, along with figures in officialdom, lobbyists and a range of other influences, determine the production and reporting of ‘news’. Chomsky has discussed in detail how the media serves to manufacture consent in this way. Whether it’s the one-sided reporting of the Libyan conflict or the gross misrepresentation of the Houla massacre in Syria, the outcome is the same: public discussion is kept within a narrow range of officially sanctioned discourse in order to produce support for state-corporate decisions.

We see this time and time again - the mainstream media’s distorted narrative on the Lockerbie airline bombing that conveniently pinned the blame on Libya despite strong evidence to the contrary, the wholesale swallowing by the media of government lies used to justify the invasion of Iraq and the bogus notion consistently put forward by the media that endless militarism abroad is necessary because it’s all about a war on terror.  


[Dr Morag Kerr’s overview of the Lockerbie case, published as a booklet with the title Lockerbie: Fact and Fiction, can be read online here.]

Megrahi: a spectacular miscarriage of justice?

[This is the title of a keynote session on the opening day of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  The entry in the festival programme reads as follows:]

Saturday 11 August
11:30am - 12:30pm
RBS Main Theatre

£10.00  £8.00

The explosive publication of John Ashton's book, Megrahi: You are my Jury has raised new doubts about Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction for the Pan Am bombing above Lockerbie in 1988. In this keynote discussion Ashton is joined by Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the tragedy, and by Hans Köchler, the UN's official observer at the Lockerbie trial. Chaired by Ruth Wishart.

Anomalies, inconsistencies and previously unheard or ignored facts

[An article by Norman Shanks published on the Aviation Security International website contains the following:]

Few readers can have failed to have heard of the death of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in May this year. Megrahi will no doubt be remembered in history as the ‘Lockerbie Bomber’ or, at least, the only person ever likely to be convicted of the crime. Likewise you may have seen the recent documentary based on the John Ashton book Megrahi: You are my Jury – the Lockerbie evidence, published earlier this year, in which he enables Megrahi’s ‘deathbed’ voice to be heard.


Certainly the Ashton book does raise some reasonable arguments about the ‘guilt’ or otherwise of Megrahi, done in part through statements from Megrahi and by diligent journalistic investigation by Ashton uncovering anomalies, inconsistencies and previously unheard or ignored facts which were not disclosed during the Camp Zeist trial leading up to Megrahi’s conviction. The arguments set out in the book have some substance and seem to have created a division between many of the PA 103 victims’ campaigners; some key outspoken personalities appear to support the claims in the book while others continue to believe in his undisputed guilt. Is Megrahi guilty or, just a whipping boy so that justice can be seen to have been done? According to the media the Scottish police consider the case still open, although few expect that this will result in any change to the outcome.


Was Megrahi guilty or not? Frankly I don’t know; I watched the documentary and read Ashton’s book and there does seem to be a reasonable cause for further investigation into the soundness of the conviction. What I do know is that whoever was responsible for the PA 103 atrocity, in a rather ironic way, has made air travel safer for passengers by forcing the regulators and industry to learn from the gaps that were so easily exploited and implement viable, effective and appropriate measures for closing those gaps.


For nearly a decade the UK stood alone in its commitment to putting in place viable measures to counter future similar attacks. These steps were initiated years prior to the Camp Zeist trial and took into account both obvious and less obvious ‘gaps’, the most dominant of these being screening of all passenger bags carried in the aircraft hold. A gap which, irrespective of how the device was placed on the aircraft, was certainly long overdue and one that took almost a decade for our European neighbours to adopt, during which time the previous security administration for the US (FAA) did its utmost to discredit the measure as not being effective enough. What part of an eightfold increase in bomb detection capability was not effective enough, eludes me to this day. It was not until the tragic events of 9/11 that the US suddenly decided that screening checked bags was a necessary security measure, even though it was not a tool used by the 9/11 suicidal hijackers.


[Earlier Lockerbie-related comments from Professor Shanks can be read here.]

Libyan NTC head on Gaddafi's payments to Megrahi

[The English language website of the Arabic newspaper Al-Arabiya has today published an interview with the head of the Libyan National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil.  It reads in part:]

Abdul Jalil said that Qaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam suggested his name for minister of justice as one of several other officials who were meant to take part in a reform plan.

“This plan was part of another plan to groom Seif al-Islam to inherit the presidency from his father.”

Abdul Jalil said that he had later regretted accepting this position. 

He also talked about the Lockerbie incident and explained that Libya handed the two main suspects Abdul Baset al-Megrahi and al-Amin Fahima to Britain because of the sanctions.

“Qaddafi used to pay Megrahi 150,000 Euros per month while he was in jail in return for his silence.” [RB: I would be interested to know what evidence Mr Abdul Jalil has for the allegation that payments to Abdelbaset Megrahi were for his silence.]

In the first episode of Political Memory, Abdul Jalil said he would resign from his position following the legislative elections scheduled for July 7.

“I plan to quit politics and go back to the judiciary.” 

[Mr Abdul Jalil said in February that he had proof that Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing. No such proof was produced.]

SCCRC disclosure Bill passed by Scottish Parliament

The Criminal Cases (Punishment and Review) (Scotland) Bill completed its final stage in the Scottish Parliament yesterday.  The text of the Bill as passed can be read here. The provisions relating to the publication of SCCRC reports in cases where an appeal has been abandoned are contained in Part 2.  The debate on the Bill can be read here. A commentary by Alan Robertson on the website of Holyrood magazine can be read here.

Stage 3 of Criminal Cases (Punishment and Review) (Scotland) Bill

[The final stage of the Scottish Parliament Bill that allows publication of Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission reports in cases where an appeal has been abandoned is due to be completed today.  The SCCRC Statement of Reasons in the Megrahi case has, of course, already been published on the heraldscotland.com website. A report published late yesterday on the BBC News website reads in part:]

The bill also contains measures to officially permit publication of key information about the case of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The report in question, by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which contained details on Megrahi's grounds for appeal sent to the appeal court, has already been put into the public domain.

The commission's report had been withheld because Megrahi, who died in May, abandoned his second appeal days before he was sent home to Libya on compassionate grounds relating to his terminal cancer.

In March, the Sunday Herald newspaper published the 821-page document, following assurances from the Crown Office that commission members would not be prosecuted for publishing details.

Secret summit between Scots law chief and Libyan PM over Lockerbie bombing

[This is the headline over a report, labeled “exclusive”, published on the Daily Record website on 16 June. It reads in part:]

Scotland’s top law officer has met the Libyan PM in secret to speed up the Lockerbie bombing probe.

Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland held talks in London with Abdurahim el-Keib last month.

It followed another summit between the two and FBI chief Robert Mueller in Tripoli in April.

The recent London meeting was not publicised at the time for security reasons.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted for the bombing, died at his home in Libya on May 20.

Last night, a Crown Office spokesman said: “The investigation into the involvement of others with Megrahi in the Lockerbie bombing remains open and the Crown is working with Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and US authorities to pursue available lines of inquiry.

“In April, at a meeting in Tripoli, the Lord Advocate expressed his desire to the Libyan prime minister that there will be a positive response to his request for co-operation and inter-national letter of request.

“At a further meeting with the Lord Advocate in London in May, the Libyan prime minister asked for clarification on issues relating to the conduct of the proposed investigation in Libya. The Lord Advocate has undertaken to provide this.” (…)

The spokesman added: “The prime minister made it clear that he recognised the seriousness of this crime and following the clarification he would take this forward as a priority.

“As the investigation remains live, and in order to preserve its integrity, it would not be appropriate to offer further comment.”

Megrahi was freed from Greenock jail in August 2009 on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The intelligence officer always denied any responsibility for the bombing, the deadliest terror incident on UK soil.

[This story appeared in The Herald and on this blog on 25 May. So much for Daily Record exclusives!]

Lockerbie after 24 years: back to square one

[This is the headline over an article published on 14 June on the Middle East Online website.  It reads as follows:]

Now that Mr. Al-Meghrahi died and Colonel Gathafi gone before him does the world know the truth about that fatal night of December 1988? Unfortunately not, writes Mustafa Fetouri.

On May 20th Abdel Baset Al-Meghrahi the only Lockerbie convict died at his Damascus district home, south of the Libyan capital Tripoli. Nearly three years ago he was released from Scottish jail for humanitarian reasons and “allowed to return to Libya to die” as the Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill put it. The man was already diagnosed with prostate cancer in terminal stage. His doctors gave him weeks or months to live but he lived for nearly three years. Dr Jim Swire whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy believed neither Libya nor Mr Al-Megrahi had anything to do with the Lockerbie tragedy. He has been very critical of the court that handed down the verdict against Mr Al-Meghrahi. I happen to share the same belief with Dr Swire whom I met and even shared spot on a TV talk show in 2009 In his search for the truth Dr Swire visited Libya couple of times, met the late Colonel Gathafi, and became close to Mr Al-Meghrahi regularly visiting him in jail in Scotland. Last December the two men met for the last time in Tripoli. Reporting on the meeting Dr Swire wrote that Mr Al-Megrahi “ was concerned that I as a victim’s father should get access, on his death, to all the information that had been amassed to fight his abandoned appeal.“ In my own search of the truth immediately after the 2001 trial ended I communicated briefly with Dr Hans Köchler the UN appointed observer to the court. Dr Köchler was very certain about the unreliability of the prosecutor’s star witness; a Maltese shop owner named Toni Gauci. Mr Gauci’s evidence was crucial to convict Abdelbast as it was the only “strong” evidence that directly linked the convict to the cloths in which the bomb was wrapped. Yet when cross examined Mr Gauci failed to recall the same details twice nevertheless his evidence was taken into account by the court sitting in Camp Zeist, The Netherlands. Ever since his appearance at the court Mr Gauci disappeared without trace. He could not be found in Malta not anywhere else. That is until a year ago when a private detective, working for a TV documentary, spotted him back in his little home in Valetta, Malta. Of course he could not be approached for interview. Until the last minute of his life Mr Al-Meghrahi loudly protested his innocence expressing his determination to clear his name. He told me the same thing when I met him in 2010. Our meeting was arranged in his house with the hope that I will write a TV documentary telling his side of the story which never told. Inching towards his death I was impressed by his sharp memory and determination to clear his name. Despite the fact that he appeared weak and frail at the time he was welcoming and aware of political events particularly following the Tunisian revolt. I later found out that a London based publisher was helping Mr Al-Meghrahi write his memories. One of Saif al-Islam Gathafi’s assistants who arranged my meeting with him later confirmed the news to me in a phone conversation. I would urge who ever behind the project to publish the book as soon as possible as it’s sure to reveal previously unknown details. [RB: The book is John Ashton's Megrahi: You are my Jury, published in Edinburgh by Birlinn.] It is now emerged that Mr Gauci was offered USD 2 million by the CIA in order to testify against Mr. Al-Meghrahi in 2001 after which Mr Gauci disappeared from Malta altogether. This important information was never shared with the defense lawyers at the time of the trial. Now that Mr Al-Meghrahi died and Colonel Gathafi gone before him does the world know the truth about hat fatal night of December 1988? Unfortunately not. We are back to square one despite the fall of the Gathafi regime and the availability of the entire archives of the Libyan state to anyone who wanted to read particularly after the total collapse of the government last September. I’m certain that most of the Libyan State archives are not in the hands of Western intelligence services since “revolutionary brigades” had little interest in reading. It’s horrific how the government building with important documents where looted in Tripoli and other cities! The only persons alive today who could shed some light on the case are Saif al-Isalam Gathafi who is jailed in Libya and Abdallah Sanusi the former head of the Libyan intelligence jailed in Mauritania. Another person who should know something is Mr Abuzed Dorda the former head of the Libyan espionage organization known as Aljamahyria’s External Security Establishment Mr Dorda’s trial opened last week in Libya. It is now appropriate to try to find out who destroyed the Pan Am Flight 103 24 years ago killing 270 innocent people. It is important not only for the victims’ families to find out the truth but also to the reconciliation process in Libya if a new stable and democratic country is to emerge. If the United Sates and the UK governments in particular seek justices it’s time to open the case again to try to find out what really happened over Lockerbie. Mustafa Fetouri is an independent Libyan academic and journalist. He won the EU’s Samir Kassir award for the best opinion article in 2010.