Oh, come on, it's all over now

[What follows is today’s daily 365-word story, from the pen of James Robertson. It was written a year ago to mark the first anniversary of the death of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and is published for the first time today.]

Lord Cummerbund

‘Lord Cummerbund, as you know there has been considerable public disquiet about the conviction of Henry Ingram. You have come before this inquiry voluntarily but I want you to answer the questions put to you as fully and frankly as possible. Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly clear, but as Ingram has been dead for more than a year I don’t really see the point.’

‘Lord Cummerbund, an innocent man may have been found guilty of a terrible crime. If such an injustice has been done, would you not agree, as the former most senior law officer of the land, that it should be undone?’

‘Oh, quite, quite. Fat lot of good it’ll do him, though.’

‘Now, in your former capacity you drew up the charges against Mr Ingram and it was of those charges that he was eventually found guilty. Were you then, and are you still, satisfied that the court reached the correct verdict?’

‘Absolutely. Not a shred of doubt about it.’

‘And do you agree that this verdict could not have been reached without the evidence of the witness Morgan Curtis.’

‘Oh, yes, that was crucial.’

‘Then why in an interview some years after the trial did you describe Mr Curtis, the prosecution’s key witness, as, I quote, “a soft-boiled egg”? What exactly did you mean by that?’

‘Well, you know. You crack open the shell and it’s all a bit runny inside. Underdone.’

‘You also referred to him as “not the sharpest tool in the box” and “an apple short of a picnic”. Were these rather unoriginal clichés intended to suggest that Mr Curtis was not intelligent?’

‘He was as thick as two short planks. Not all there.’

‘So you continue to disparage the intelligence and reliability of this witness, without whose evidence, as you have admitted, the guilty verdict imposed on Mr Ingram could not have been reached?’

‘Oh, come on, it’s all over now. We all know Ingram did it. Does it really matter if Mr Curtis’s paella was missing a few prawns? Let sleeping dogs lie, that’s what I say. Right, is that it? Let’s go to the pub.’

‘Wait, Lord Cummerbund!’

‘Who’s buying? Mine’s a Scotch – on the rocks.’

Second anniversary of death of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

[Today marks the second anniversary of the death in Tripoli of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. A statement issued by Justice for Megrahi at the time can be read here. Tam Dalyell’s obituary of Megrahi, published two days later in The Independent, reads as follows:]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[It is to be hoped, even if it cannot be confidently expected, that before the third anniversary of Megrahi's death his conviction may again be before the High Court of Justiciary for review.]

Iran Air 655 provided motive for bombing of Pan Am 103 "by people still unknown"

[The theory that MH370 may have been accidentally shot down in US-led military exercises and is now being covered up to prevent a Lockerbie-style retaliation is now being discussed widely in the media. Here is an excerpt from an article by John Chuckman on the OpEdNews website:]

A second mystery around the disappearance of Flight MH370 has largely gone unnoticed: why hasn't the United States been in the forefront of providing information about it? The implications of this question are massive.

America has a fleet of the most sophisticated spy satellites, called "keyhole" satellites, covering the earth's surface daily with imaging systems comparable to those of the Hubble Space Telescope, but instead of data from any of these, we read of data from China and France. One can understand that the CIA does not want others to understand fully the capabilities of its satellites, but surely the lives of more than two hundred people are cause for some information, however indirectly supplied.

Then again, the American military has some of most sophisticated radars on earth, and there is, without a doubt, an installation of the highest capability at the secret base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. How could there not be? But we have read of no data from them, only from others less capable of telling us what happened.

Could it be that the United States shot down Flight MH370, either accidentally or deliberately, and now wants to keep it secret? (...)

There would be nothing unprecedented in such an act: on at least 3 occasions, regrettably, America's military has shot down civilian airliners, only admitting eventually to the one they could not hide. They are also indirectly responsible for a fourth.

Iran Air Flight 655 was stupidly shot down in 1988 by the USS Vincennes in Iranian waters during the Iraq-Iran War, not only killing 290 people including 66 children, but there was a long period afterwards in which the US admitted no wrong-doing, offered no apology, and no compensation to its victims (only 8 years later was a quiet settlement made).

It was a quite vicious set of circumstances and the injustice of it led unquestionably to the motive for bombing Pan Am Flight 103, killing 259 people and 11 on the ground, later the same year by people still unknown.

The credibility of Western justice is now at stake

Today I stumbled upon a Lockerbie website that I had previously known nothing about. It contains links to some interesting material not readily accessible elsewhere. One of the things it brought back to my attention is a long article entitled Libya, Lockerbie & Lies by Susan Bryce dating from 2001, just after the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The final sentence reads, “The credibility of Western justice, that burned at the altar of Camp Zeist, is now at stake – not Libya’s innocence.”

Non-Libyan explanation of Lockerbie increasingly mainstream

[What follows is an excerpt from a review published today on the website of The Sydney Morning Herald of Nigel Cawthorne’s book Flight MH370: The Mystery:]

Seventy-one days after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared, the first book about the disaster will go on sale on Monday with a theory about what might have happened. (...)

Flight MH370: The Mystery, which is made available by NewSouth Books in Sydney, doesn't claim to have any answers but to some extent supports the theory that the aircraft may have been accidentally shot down during a joint Thai-US military exercise in the South China Sea. Searchers were then possibly led in the wrong direction to cover up the mistake, it suggests. (...)

He says this raises the significance that around the time the plane's transponder went off at 01.21, New Zealander Mike McKay, working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Thailand, saw a burning plane. He links that to the joint Thai-US military exercise going on in the South China Sea with personnel from China, Japan, Indonesia and other countries.

''The drill was to involve mock warfare on land, in water and in the air, and would include live-fire exercises,'' he writes.

''Say a participant accidentally shot down Flight MH370. Such things do happen. No one wants another Lockerbie [Pan Am flight 103 by terrorists in 1988 allegedly in retaliation for a US Navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier], so those involved would have every reason to keep quiet about it.''

[RB: It is not clear whether the piece in square brackets in the last paragraph represents the view of the author or of the reviewer about what led to Lockerbie. But in any case it is an indication of just how mainstream the non-Libyan explanation is becoming (except, of course, in Scottish, UK and US official circles).]

Prime Minister visits Lockerbie memorial

David Cameron visited the Lockerbie memorial yesterday during his visit to Scotland. A photograph and a prime ministerial tweet can be seen here.

Fire brigade response to Lockerbie disaster

An interesting timeline of fire brigade activity on 21 and 22 December 1988 during the first hours of the Lockerbie disaster can be found here on the Glasgow Fire Journal website.

Reform that would have helped in review of "deeply dodgy" Megrahi conviction "conveniently parked"

[The current edition of Private Eye (issue 1366) returns to the Lockerbie affair in its In The Back section.  The relevant article reads as follows:]

The Scottish government has quietly shelved for at least a year its controversial Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, which would have abolished the centuries-old principle of corroboration, requiring two independent pieces of evidence to bring a case to trial.

The move neatly heads off an escalating row with the Bill’s growing body of opponents until after September’s independence referendum. But is also rather conveniently parks another reform, which would have made it easier to get the deeply dodgy conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man jailed for the Lockerbie bombing, back before the appeal court – just as relatives of some of the victims were about to launch an unprecedented legal action to do just that.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was one of the 270 who died in the attack, is leading 25 relatives of the Lockerbie victims who are about to make a new a new application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to send Megrahi’s case back to the court of appeal – for a third time. The families believe proving Megrahi’s innocence, may be the only way they will get nearer the truth behind what happened to their loved ones.

The SNP Government has repeatedly refused mounting calls for an inquiry in to the festering scandal, claiming, absurdly, that the appeal court is the only appropriate forum for airing the issues. Yet it has quietly stacked the cards against one.

Eye readers will know that the SSCRC had already found strong grounds for believing there had been a miscarriage of justice, but Megrahi who had terminal cancer abandoned his second appeal five years ago in order to return to Libya to be with his family. Since then there has been fresh scientific evidence relating to the bombing device which points to his innocence. There has also been mounting concern about the amount of material also suggesting he was not the bomber, which had been withheld from Megrahi’s 2001 trial and his first appeal the following year, by Scotland’s prosecuting authority, the Crown Office now headed by the country’s chief prosecutor, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC.

The new application by the families, which will focus on the new evidence added to the six grounds on which the SCCRC based its previous referral in 2007 including non-disclosure of evidence, will be breaking new territory. First they will have to prove they have a ‘legitimate interest’ in pursuing an appeal on behalf of Megrahi – a task made easier by the fact that Megrahi’s family support the move. They will then have to prove the case is the ‘public interest’ – a far more straightforward argument. But thanks to an arcane piece of legislation, the biggest hurdle facing the families is that before deciding whether to hear a case referred to it by the SSCRC, the appeal court must have regard to ‘the need for finality and certainty in the determination of criminal proceedings’.

"Finality and certainty" isn't defined in the legislation, but it means the court has to decide whether the threat of endless appeals and challenges, outweighs SCCRC concern that there may have been an injustice. With one first failed appeal and the second abandoned, the court might simply say ‘enough is enough’ – especially when Megrahi himself is dead.

That ‘finality’ test was to have been abolished in the new Criminal Justice Bill – but unfortunately for the Lockerbie families it now remains the law.

Megrahi infinitely more innocent than those who contrived, supplied and employed evidence that convicted him

[A letter from Neil Sinclair in today’s edition of The Scotsman contains the following:]

Alex Salmond refuses to apologise over his remarks praising Putin. Alex Salmond refused to apologise over the premature release of the Lockerbie bomber despite protests from American relatives. And Mr Salmond refused to apologise over the promotion of Bill Walker as an SNP MSP despite the SNP being forewarned of his propensity. Alex Salmond does not “do apologies”.

[The first online comment following the letter reads as follows:]

What are being listed by Neil Sinclair are allegations of mistakes and chiefly allegations/accusations from those who have shown themselves keener to malign than to explain. Mr Putin is every bit as admirable as Mr Obama and has probably merited his presidency more than his US counterpart. The Ukraine is far from a cut-and-dried issue. Western politicians are all toeing a line that tolerates violence and ignores violence as befits an agenda that has little to do with any kind of admirable code of conduct. The same applies to the release of al-Megrahi who on the evidence that convicted him is infinitely more innocent than those who contrived and supplied and employed said evidence. As for apologies over Bill Walker, if any is due there then probably every party leader would be obliged to make numerous apologies.

JFM's allegations of criminal misconduct: a "progress" report

[The two documents reproduced below are (1) a history of the official response to Justice for Megrahi’s allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial; and (2) an account of a meeting held on 2 April between representatives of Justice for Megrahi and Police Scotland.]

1.  Chronology of events, from 13th September 2012 to 20th February 2014, covering the police investigation of the Justice for Megrahi allegations levelled at Crown, police and forensic officials

1. On 13 September 2012, JFM submitted a private and confidential letter to Cabinet Secretary for Justice Kenny MacAskill in which we lodged 6 outline allegations against Crown, police and forensic officials involved in the Lockerbie investigation and the Zeist trial of Mr al-Megrahi for the downing of Pan Am 103. We added that he give ‘serious thought to the independence of any investigating authority that’ he appoint, and that any such authority should be someone from ‘outwith Scotland who [had] no previous direct or indirect association with Lockerbie or its ramifications’. Furthermore, we stated that a document detailing the evidence to support our allegations would be supplied to whomsoever was appointed as investigator.

2. On 25 September 2012, before any reply had been forthcoming from the Justice Directorate to our private and confidential letter to Mr MacAskill, The Scotsman newspaper published a response from the Crown Office in which we were pilloried for having made “defamatory and entirely unfounded … deliberately false and misleading allegations” and suggested that we had accused “police officers [and] officials [of fabricating] evidence”. At no time have we accused anyone involved in the Lockerbie investigation or any subsequent legal process of fabricating any evidence.

3. On 8 October 2012, Mr Neil Rennick, Deputy Director of the Criminal Law and Licensing Division of the Justice Directorate, responded to our letter on behalf of Mr MacAskill. This response afforded us one choice, namely: to submit our allegations to Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and, by dint of that, to COPFS for investigation. In other words, to two of the bodies that our allegations were being levelled against.

4. On 9 November 2012, we handed over our detailed evidence for the, by then 8, allegations to Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary for the attention of Chief Constable Patrick Shearer, SIO for the case.

5. Accompanying a letter dated 19 March 2013, an updated and expanded addendum to the allegations, which covered luggage positioning in container AVE4041, was received by Mr Shearer.

6. On 21 December 2012, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland gave an interview with Mr Magnus Linklater in The Times (Scotland edition) in which he reiterated the COPFS criticisms of JFM published in The Scotsman (25 September 2012) adding that we had levelled criminal accusations against the Judges and/or the Lord Advocate involved in the Zeist process. It is plain from both our submission to Mr MacAskill and our subsequent detailed evidence that we had done no such thing.

7. It took until 16th April 2013, 5 months later, before we were invited to a preliminary meeting with Mr Shearer (DCC of Police Scotland by then). This meeting went no further than outlining the basic procedures that would be involved in the course of the investigation, ie: reading the evidence presented by JFM, information gathering, interviews etc. DCC Shearer also stated that we would not be privy to any report submitted by him to COPFS. For ourselves, we made it clear that whilst we would cooperate at all times with his investigation, we would be doing so under protest since we did not feel that the Police Scotland could be seen as a disinterested and independent authority in this matter. Moreover, we requested that we be supplied with regular updates on the progress of the investigation.

8. It took a further 4 months, with no intervening updates, before we received a second invitation to attend Cornwall Mount from DCC Shearer. The purpose on this occasion was to interview those of our membership who spoke to the individual allegations. These interviews were conducted on 16 and 19 August 2013. On 16 August, DCC Shearer told us that having identified a possible conflict between our allegations 5, 6 and 7 and the Crown's 'live and on-going' investigation, he had consulted the Crown Office on the matter and received authorisation to drop them from our investigation for the time being. When we asked him what the apparent conflict was, he refused to provide this information. He was then asked who the SIO for the Crown's investigation was: he also refused to provide an answer to this question. JFM provided him with answers to the questions he posed regarding the evidence for our other 5 allegations.

9. In a letter to the Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament, dated 24 September 2013, for a Justice Committee being convened to consider JFM Petition PE1370 held on the same date, DCC Shearer stated that he was “confident that the deferment [of JFM allegations 5, 6 and 7] [would] only be a matter of weeks as [he then understood] that the point of conflict with the live investigation [would] then be resolved”. 

10. In early October 2013, DCC Shearer retired from Police Scotland.

11. On 4 November 2013, DCC Richardson informed the Justice Committee: “I have to advise you that the Senior Investigating Officer has confirmed to me that the conflict between the two investigations still exists and whilst no definite date can be provided when that situation will change, it is assessed as still being in weeks rather than months. The only undertaking that I can provide at this time therefore is to update you accordingly as and when that conflict has been resolved.”

12. From the date of Mr Shearer’s retirement until 14 January 2014, when JFM telephoned Chief Inspector Sturgeon of the Professional Standards Department of Police Scotland to ascertain who had been appointed as Mr Shearer’s replacement as SIO, we received no updates from Police Scotland. At the time of the phone call, Mr Sturgeon was unable to confirm who had been appointed and that a meeting was due to take place the following day, 15 January, to discuss such an appointment.

13. On 31 January, Chief Inspector Sturgeon received a ninth allegation and an addendum for allegation 8.

14. On 17 February 2014, JFM received notification from Detective Superintendent Stuart Johnstone that he had been appointed SIO of the JFM allegations. This he also submitted to the Justice Committee for the consideration of PE1370 to be held the following day, 18 January 2014. In his communication, he stated: “With regards to your [JFM’s] question as to whether there has been any change in relation to allegations 5, 6 and 7, I can advise that recent developments in the live investigation have resulted in the conflict previously highlighted by former Deputy Chief Constable Shearer remaining unresolved for longer than expected. It is currently anticipated the conflict will be resolved before the end of March.” Detective Superintendent Johnstone was also unable to supply any information regarding how many officers were currently working on the case or what stage the investigation was at. Nor was he confident of being able to provide us with definitive updates on these questions in the near future since these matters were under review.

15. In a letter to the Justice Committee from Chief Constable of Police Scotland Sir Stephen House dated 20 February 2014, Sir Stephen stressed that the current estimate for a resolution of the conflict between allegations 5, 6 and 7 and the live investigation was “still an estimate based on current information and may be impacted on depending on what further developments emerge in the case.” He also stated that, in relation to how many officers [had] been working on the allegations since Mr Shearer retired “the reality is that no further investigation could take place because of the conflict with the live investigation.”

2.  Tulliallan meeting between JFM representatives and Police Scotland.

In September 2012 JFM made eight criminal allegations to Dumfries and Galloway Police and on 1 April 2013 Police Scotland took over responsibility for their investigation. In January 2014 they were in receipt of a ninth allegation.

At various times over the 18 month period since the original report JFM has expressed dissatisfaction at the apparent lack of progress by the police in carrying out the investigation and the lack of feedback from them.

Police explanation for the delay indicated that certain of the allegations were in ‘conflict’ with an ongoing Crown Office/Police enquiry seeking evidence against Abdelbaset al Megrahi and possible others in relation to the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. Unfulfilled promises that these difficulties would shortly be resolved were made at various times to JFM and the Justice Committee at the Scottish Parliament in relation to their ongoing consideration of a JFM petition for a public Lockerbie inquiry.

A meeting to examine JFM’s concerns and facilitate better liaison was held at Tulliallan Police College on 2 April 2014 between a JFM Liaison Group consisting of Len Murray, James Robertson and Iain McKie and Police Scotland Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone and Detective Superintendent Stuart Johnstone.

In a full and frank discussion JFM expressed concern at the lack of progress of the investigation into their allegations and stated that they had no faith in the Crown Office to ensure an open and effective investigation. If mutual confidence was to be restored and maintained then there should be the opportunity for regular liaison. JFM undertook to be available as required to assist the ongoing investigation.

Police Scotland underlined the Chief Constable’s commitment to the investigation. Although there had been a hiatus in the enquiry they had taken the decision to establish major incident procedures with immediate effect. An enquiry team of selected officers is being appointed under Detective Superintendent Johnstone, whose full-time remit and responsibility is now the investigation into the allegations. Procedures, independent of the police, are in place to monitor, advise and validate procedures as the investigation proceeds. Close liaison would be maintained with the ongoing Crown Office/Police murder enquiry in relation to the downing of Pan Am 103 and it was anticipated that this co-ordination would increase. While the police would ultimately report to them, the Crown Office was neither party to nor being kept informed about the progress of the investigations which would be conducted robustly, in good faith and in an open and accountable way.

The JFM Liaison Group agreed to a Police Scotland proposal for a series of regular meetings where there would be an opportunity to meet and review. While offering their full co-operation JFM made it clear that as an organisation with a specific aim (ie ‘justice for Megrahi’) it reserved the right to challenge the police if it deemed this ongoing liaison to be obstructive rather than constructive, and that given the length of time that had already passed further unexplained or unreasonable delays in the investigation would not be acceptable.

The Liaison Group will provide updates for members as and when available.