Justice for Megrahi supporter honoured

[Journalist Kate Adie, a signatory member of the Justice for Megrahi campaign, has been awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University. The following account is from yesterday’s edition of The Edinburgh Reporter:]

Kate Adie was awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition of her contribution to news reporting and our understanding of world events. (...)

The University was delighted to award Kate Adie, one of the UK highest profile journalists, with a Degree of Doctors of Letters at the graduation ceremony held in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.

Dressed in flak jacket, helmet and holding a microphone whilst crouching on front-lines, Kate Adie became an iconic figure associated with breaking news from some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones.  She is particularly well known for her reporting of significant international events including the student uprising in China when she received a gun-shot wound to her elbow whilst reporting events in Tiananmen Square. She has also reported on turbulence and conflicts across the world such as in Northern Ireland, the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, the first Gulf War, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the 1997 uprising in Albania and the civil war in Sierra Leone in 2000.

Kate hung up her flak jacket and helmet in 2003 to become a freelance journalist. Since then she has written five books, been a regular presenter on BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent, and won numerous awards including three Royal Television Society awards, the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1990, the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting, and an OBE in 1993.

A blast from the past

[On this date in 2000 the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist, which had begun on 3 May, was adjourned until 11 July. I posted on The Lockerbie Trial website, edited by Ian Ferguson and me, the following summary of what could be regarded as having been established by the evidence at the time of the adjournment.]

Apart from graphically setting the scene by establishing that Pan Am 103 was destroyed over Lockerbie and that 270 people were killed as a result, how far does the evidence led to date go towards establishing the case set out in the indictment against the two accused persons? 

On the assumption that the witnesses who have so far given evidence which is favourable to the Crown case are accepted by the judges as being credible (ie honest and truthful) and reliable (ie accurate in their observation and recollection of events) -- and in the light of defence challenges in cross-examination regarding eg the accuracy of record keeping, the provenance of certain crucial items of wreckage (where, when and by whom they were found; through whose hands they thereafter passed) and the competence and neutrality of certain expert witnesses, judicial acceptance of the credibility and reliability of witnesses cannot be regarded as a foregone conclusion -- it is possible that the following might be held to have been provisionally established, always subject to any later contrary evidence which may be led by the prosecution or the defence.

1.  That the seat of the explosion was in a particular Samsonite suitcase (which contained clothing manufactured in Malta and sold both there and elsewhere) at or near the bottom of a particular aluminium luggage container (AVE 4041).

2.  That the bomb had been contained in a black Toshiba RT SF 16 cassette recorder.

3.  That a fragment of circuit board from an MST-13 timer manufactured by MeBo AG formed part of the timing mechanism which detonated the bomb.

4.  That MeBo AG supplied MST-13 timers to the Libyan army, as well as to other customers such as the East German Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Stasi).

5.  That the first-named accused, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, was known to the owners of MeBo AG;  that he was involved, in an official capacity (possibly as a member of the Libyan intelligence services), in obtaining for Libya electronic equipment (including timers) from MeBo;  and that a company of which he was a principal for a time had accommodation in the premises occupied by MeBo in Zurich.

6.  That the first-named accused possessed and used Libyan passports in false names.

7.  That the first-named accused, on occasion under the false name of Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad, visited Malta on a number of occasions in 1988, including the night of 20/21 December.

No evidence has as yet been led to attempt to establish (a) that the Samsonite suitcase containing the bomb was launched on its fatal progress from Malta (as distinct from being directly loaded onto Pan Am 103 at Heathrow, or starting its journey at Frankfurt) or (b) that the clothing in the suitcase was purchased in Malta by either of the accused.  It is when the prosecution advances evidence on these two matters that it will be possible to say that evidence which is positively incriminatory of the accused has been led.  That stage has not yet been reached; but it is anticipated that it is with the chapter of evidence relating specifically to these matters that the trial will reconvene on 11 July 2000.

Megrahi petition on Justice Committee agenda for three years

On this date three years ago the following item, headed MSPs call for independent inquiry into Lockerbie was posted on this blog.

[This is the headline over a report just published on the STV News website. It reads as follows:]

Petition will be referred to Justice Committee as MSP demands 'truth must come out'.

MSPs have said further talks should take place on calls to hold an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing conviction.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted ten years ago of the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. The attack resulted in 270 deaths.

The Scottish Parliament's Public Petitions Committee agreed to refer a petition calling for an inquiry, lodged by pressure group Justice for Megrahi, to Holyrood's Justice Committee for further consideration.

Committee member SNP MSP Bill Walker said it was important that "the truth" surrounding the issue is revealed.

He added: "I am desperate that the truth of this whole matter should come out. The truth must come out and we must do everything in our power to help it come out.

"This should go to the Justice Committee.

"This terrible thing happened a long time ago now and we must get to the truth sooner rather than later."

The petition, which was lodged by the group last year, calls on Holyrood to urge the Scottish Government to open an independent inquiry into the 2001 conviction.

Justice Committee convener Christine Grahame sat on the Public Petitions Committee in the last session.

During previous discussions on this issue, she said: "There are so many conspiracy theories around now that I think it's time that we had a clean, clear look at the role of Scottish justice in this.

"The issue is not whether Libya, or any other country, was guilty. The issue is, was Mr al-Megrahi rightly convicted, and we have not heard the answer to that yet."

The Scottish Government has already refused the petition's call for an inquiry into the conviction.

[A similar report has now appeared on the BBC News website. A report in Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm can be read here.

This is a stunning victory for the Justice for Megrahi campaign and for all of those who have supported its petition, particularly since the committee clerk seemed in his agenda note to be gently hinting that the petition be kicked into touch.]

JFM’s petition remains on the agenda of the Justice Committee, three years after it was referred to it by the Public Petitions Committee, so that the committee can maintain a watching brief over Lockerbie developments.

No visible progress on Lockerbie "live investigation"

What follows is an item published on this blog on this date three years ago.

[The lead story in today's edition of the Maltese newspaper The Independent on Sunday reads as follows:]

Just when Malta thought it may have been seeing the infamy attached to it by way of the Lockerbie disaster subsiding, Scottish prosecutors are looking into the prospect of retrying acquitted Lockerbie bomber Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah.

The prospect, if realised, would reopen an ugly chapter in recent Maltese history as having been alleged to be the place where the bomb, concealed in a suitcase, was first loaded. The bomb was eventually loaded aboard Pan Am Flight 103 which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in Christmas 1988 killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.

But the Scottish authorities appear unwilling to let the matter die a natural death following the acquittal and the subsequent guilty verdict and release of the second accused person, and rightly so seeing that a new legal window has now opened up.

A change in double jeopardy laws now provides the possibility of an accused person to stand trial a second time if compelling new evidence surfaces, and a specialist unit at the Crown Office in Edinburgh is in the process of re-examining the evidence against Mr Fhimah to ascertain the potential strength of such a case.

Mr Fhimah, a former station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta, had been accused of helping Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi place the bomb into the luggage system at Malta International Airport, where it was claimed the bomb’s fateful journey had begun.

Mr Fhimah had been acquitted in the Lockerbie trial at The Hague in 2001 after his defence argued the case against him was nothing more than “inference upon inference upon inference upon inference leading to an inference”.

Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the co-accused, had been convicted and the rest of his story is by now well known. He was granted a compassionate release from a Scottish prison in August 2009 just before he was about to appeal his guilty verdict, on the grounds that he was suffering from prostate cancer and had only a short time left to live. He is still alive.

But more than merely seeking once again to bring Mr Fhimah to justice, the Crown Office believes that the collapse of Libya’s Gaddafi regime could provide evidence for still further Lockerbie prosecutions.

Scottish prosecutors recently interviewed Libyan defector Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s former foreign minister and intelligence chief, when he was on British soil, and it is believed a number of questions about Mr Fhimah had been raised during the interview.

In an interview with The Times of London, the new Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, QC, appealed for Koussa’s fellow high-ranking Libyan defector, former justice minister Mustafa Mohammed Abdul Jalil, to come forward with information on the bombing. Mr Abdul Jalil, who is now the head of the provisional Libyan government in Benghazi, had said in a number of interviews that he had evidence of Gaddafi’s involvement in the 1988 bombing.

In one interview, he had told Swedish newspaper Expressen that Gaddafi had personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing. “I have proof that Gaddafi gave the order about Lockerbie,” he said, but did not describe the proof.

“To hide it, he [Gaddafi] did everything in his power to get al-Megrahi back from Scotland,” Abdel-Jalil was quoted as saying.

Mr Mulholland meanwhile told The Times of London in the interview, “I cannot send our investigators into an unsafe place but he [Fhimah] could pick up the phone. [RB: Surely the "he" Mulholland is referring to is Abdel-Jalil.] If he has relevant information on Lockerbie we would be delighted to see it.

“If a meeting can be arranged we would be prepared to see him in another country. The interview with Moussa Koussa was easier to arrange because he was in UK jurisdiction so it was quicker.”

[As I have said before on this blog, there will be no re-trial of Lamin Fhimah or any trial of Colonel Gaddafi for the bombing of Pan Am 103. The Crown Office is perfectly well aware that the evidence simply does not exist to make a conviction a realistic prospect; and that the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi on the evidence led at Zeist was a travesty perpetrated by a credulous court which has long since been exposed, by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission amongst many others.]

Three years later there are no signs of any move to re-indict Lamin Fhimah or, indeed, that the Crown Office’s much vaunted “live investigation” is making any progress in uncovering supposed Libyan accomplices who can be charged and tried.

The Lockerbie forensic scientific evidence

[Fourteen years ago, the Crown’s principal forensic scientific witness, Allen Feraday, had just completed his evidence in the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist.  Here is a contemporaneous commentary from the website The Lockerbie Trial which was edited by Ian Ferguson and me:]

As one of the Crown's key witnesses gave his testimony this week in Camp Zeist at the trial of the two Libyans accused of the bombing of Pan Am 103, one man, Hassan Assali watched news reports with interest as Allen Feraday took the witness stand.

Assali, 48, born in Libya but who has lived in the United Kingdom since 1965, was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to nine years. He was charged under the 1883 Explosives Substances Act, namely making electronic timers.

The Crown's case against Assali depended largely on the evidence of one man, Allen Feraday. Feraday concluded that the timers in question had only one purpose, to trigger bombs.

While in Prison Assali, met John Berry, who had also been convicted of selling timers and the man responsible for leading the Crown evidence against Berry was once again, Feraday. Again Feraday contended that the timers sold by Berry could have only one use, terrorist bombs.

With Assali's help Berry successfully appealed his conviction, using the services of a leading forensic expert and former British Army electronic warfare officer, Owen Lewis.

Assali's case is currently before the [English] Criminal Cases Review Commission, the CCRC. It has been there since 1997. Assali believes that his case might be delayed deliberately, as he stated to the Home Secretary, Jack Straw in a fax in February 1999: "I feel that my case is being neglected or put on the back burner for political reasons."

Assali believes that if his case is overturned on appeal during the Lockerbie trial it will be a further huge blow to Feraday's credibility and ultimately the Crown's case against the Libyans.

There is no doubt that a number of highly qualified forensic scientists do not care for the highly "opinionated" type of testimony, which is a hall mark of many of Feraday's cases.

He has been known, especially in cases involving timers to state in one case that the absence of a safety device makes it suitable for terrorists and then in another claim that the presence of a safety device proves the same, granted that the devices were different, but it is the most emphatic way in which he testifies that his opinions are "facts", that worries forensic scientists and defence lawyers.

In his report on Feraday's evidence in the Assali case, Owen Lewis states, "It is my view that Mr. Feraday's firm and unwavering assertion that the timing devices in the Assali case were made for and could have no other purpose than the triggering of IED's is most seriously flawed, to the point that a conviction which relied on such testimony must be open to grave doubt."

A host of other scientists, all with vastly more qualifications than Feraday concurred with Owen Lewis.

A report by Michael Moyes, a highly qualified electronics engineer and former Squadron Leader in the RAF, concluded that "there is no evidence that we are aware that the timers of this type have ever been found to be used for terrorist purposes. Moreover the design is not suited to that application."

Moyes was also struck by the similarity in the Berry and Assali case, in terms of the Feraday evidence.

In setting aside Berry's conviction in the appeal Court, Lord Justice Taylor described Feraday's evidence as "dogmatic".

This week in the Lockerbie trial, Feraday exhibited that same attitude when questioned by Richard Keen QC.

Keen asked Feraday about Lord Justice Taylor's remarks on his evidence, but Feraday, dogmatically, said he stands by his evidence in the Berry case.

He was further challenged over making contemporaneous notes on items of evidence he examined. Asked if he was certain that he had made those notes at the time, he said yes. When shown the official police log book which showed that some of the items Feraday had claimed to have examined had in actual fact been destroyed or returned to their owner before he claimed to examined them, his response, true to his dogmatic evidence was the police logs were wrong.

Under cross-examination though, it did become clear that Feraday completed a report for John Orr who was leading the police Lockerbie investigation and in that report he stated he was,  "Completely satisfied that the Lockerbie bomb had been contained inside a white Toshiba RT 8016 or 8026 radio-cassette player", and not, as he now testifies, "inside a black Toshiba RT SF 16 model."

As recently as May [2000], the leading civil liberties solicitor, Ms Gareth Peirce, told the Irish Times that the Lockerbie trial should be viewed with a questioning eye as lessons learned from other cases showed that scientific conclusions were not always what they seemed.

Speaking in Dublin Castle at an international conference on forensic science, Ms Peirce said she observed with interest the opening of the Lockerbie trial and some of the circumstances which, she said, had in the view of the prosecution dramatically affected the case.

She asked herself questions particularly relating to circuit boards which featured in the Lockerbie case and also in a case that she took on behalf of Mr. Danny McNamee, whose conviction for conspiracy to cause explosions in connection with the Hyde Park bombings (another case in which Feraday testified) was eventually quashed. She asked herself whether the same procedures were involved.

Danny McNamee may be the most recent Feraday case to be overturned, Hassan Assali believes his case will be the next.

[RB: Hassan Assali’s conviction was quashed in July 2005. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, stated that Allen Feraday “should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics”.]

Gerry Conlon, Ann Maguire, Dr Thomas Hayes and Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article published today on the Lockerbie Truth website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph.  It reads as follows:]

It is today reported that Gerard Conlon has died.

In 1974 the alleged IRA bomber Paul Hill, three of his colleagues (Gerard Conlon, Patrick Armstrong, Carole Richardson), plus all seven of the family of Ann Maguire were found guilty of the bombing, or association with the bombing, of an army barracks in Guildford. All served fifteen years imprisonment for their crimes. Gerard Conlon's father Guiseppe died in prison.

The public hue and cry for revenge appeared satisfied. Fortunately for the eleven convicted men and women, several public campaigns conducted before and during the trial to bring back hanging proved unsuccessful.

What Britain had experienced was yet another phase of legal history where public prejudice, legal stupidity or laziness, and sleight of hand by the police and their forensic services merged to a "group think" of public hysteria based on uninformed prejudice.

After serving fifteen years in prison, some in solitary confinement, the remaining ten were released on appeal. At the opening of the appeal, the prosecution lawyers were deeply embarrassed to have to admit that their prosecution case at the trial had been totally without foundation. 

Sadly for all eleven convicted, all was too late; their families had been destroyed and lives ruined by a corrupt and inadequate system of justice. 

In today's BBC report concerning Gerard Conlon, which can be read here, the BBC says blandly "They were convicted and jailed for handling explosives, based on scientific evidence which was later entirely discredited".  

Few people today are aware that that "scientific" evidence was in part provided by Dr Thomas Hayes, a Higher Scientific Officer at the Royal Armaments and Research Defence Establishment (RARDE).

Hayes was never disciplined for his actions. Indeed, he was soon to be promoted to head of department. His career would in time merge into the Lockerbie investigation and trial. Here is part of an account of his appearance at Kamp Zeist, alongside his colleague Allan Feraday:

THE LOCKERBIE TRIAL

Day 15: 5 June 2000

Dr Thomas Hayes was formerly head of the Forensics explosives laboratory at the British Royal Armaments Research and Defence Establishment (RARDE). He would prove a central figure in the prosecution case.

At the time of the trial he was aged fifty-three, having retired from his RARDE post ten years earlier just as the joint Scottish police and FBI investigation into the Lockerbie attack was reaching its climax.

As a bachelor of science honours in chemistry, a master of science in the faculty of forensic science, a doctor of philosophy in the faculty of forensic science, a chartered chemist, and a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, we might expect an outstanding memory. 

And yet he seemed reluctant to tell the court when he'd resigned in order to commence a radically new career as a chiropodist. When did he start work at Fort Halstead? "In July 1974." And when did he leave? “The exact date of my leaving is a little circumspect, but I believe it was in 1990." 

He actually resigned in 1989, a year that for him may have been circumspect, but was, in relation to the Lockerbie trial, most significant. For he possessed an uncomfortable history in relation to another major terrorist event, namely the alleged IRA bombing involving members of the Maguire family - The Maguire Seven. [RB: See Guildford Four and Maguire Seven.] 

In that trial Hayes and two of his colleagues were aware of evidence consistent with the innocence of the accused, decided among themselves that this evidence be not declared, and did not mention it during the trial. 

The first of the three was Douglas Higgs, Principal Scientific Officer and head of department; second was Walter Elliott, a Senior Scientific Officer; and the third was Hayes, at that time a Higher Scientific Officer.

During the trial, results of tests for traces of nitro-glycerine on skin and fingernails of the Maguire family were firmly maintained by the three scientists to be positive and decisive. Unknown to the court, however, the three had performed a second set of tests plus a series of experiments. Both tests and experiments indicated a negative result and an innocent means of contamination, and this information was recorded in their forensic notebooks. 

It was only through a Parliamentary inquiry by a senior judge, Sir John May, beginning in September 1989 and concluding in July 1990 that the matter was exposed.  

Sir John discovered that the notebooks of the three scientists had been deliberately concealed from the court, and cross-examination of witnesses for the prosecution therefore severely hampered. 

His main conclusions include the statement: "...  the whole scientific basis upon which the prosecution [of Ann Maguire and six members of her family] was founded was in truth so vitiated that on this basis alone the Court of Appeal should be invited to set aside the convictions." [1]   

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Rt Hon Sir John May, Interim Report on the Maguire Case, 12 July 1990, and Second Report on the Maguire Case, 3 December 1992. http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc8990/hc05/0556/0556.pdf

[An outline of Justice for Megrahi's allegations of forensic scientific misconduct in the Lockerbie case can be read here (allegations 5, 6 and 7). A further related allegation has since been lodged with Police Scotland.]

Of Mandela, Shamuyarira and the Lockerbie affair

[This is the headline over a report published today on the website of the Zimbabwean newspaper The Herald.  It reads in part:]

Tributes to veteran nationalist, journalist and politician Nathan Shamuyarira who died on June 4 at the age of 85 underlined his diplomatic and political achievements at local, regional and international levels.

As tributes poured in, Shamuyarira was described as a remarkable and admirable politician who contributed immensely to the shaping and development of Zimbabwe’s media and foreign policy. (...)

In April, 1999, Nelson Mandela refused to take full credit for the Lockerbie breakthrough which resulted in Libya handing over two suspects of the PanAm bombing over Lockerbie in 1988 in which 270 people were killed.

Speaking to businessmen in Midrand, the anti-apartheid struggle leader said there were other people who played an important role in the negotiations, singling out former Zimbabwean Foreign Affairs Minister Nathan Shamuyarira.

“He is the person who came to me and said let’s talk and settle this issue,” Mandela was quoted as saying, adding that he then spoke to former American President George Bush and Saudi Arabia’s King Fahed.

“Without these two (Shamuyarira and King Fahed) I don’t think there would have been a breakthrough,” he said.

Mandela was not puffed up by the huge praise he got internationally for his role in the Lockerbie diplomatic effort.

He repeatedly shrugged off the praise.

Shamuyarira too, shrugged off the praise, only demonstrating his distinctive brilliance and unmatched determination to have the Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing tried in a neutral country.

In an interview in April 1999, Shamuyarira said there were a number of inconsistencies in the case that pointed to a political victimisation of Libya and if brought to court, such evidence would exonerate Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al–Amin Khalifa Fahima.

“I have evidence that convinced me and Presidents Mugabe and Nelson Mandela and other world leaders that the Libyans were not involved.

“It was on the basis of these inconsistencies that I asked the two presidents to seek a fair trial for the two men,” Shamuyarira was quoted saying then.

According to a news agency report, one of the factors Shamuyarira felt would work for the Libyans when their trial starts in the Netherlands was that some people scheduled to fly on the Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to New York on December 20 1988 were apparently warned that the flight was doomed and should change.

The plane blew up over Lockerbie in Scotland and killed 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground.

“One of these people is then South African foreign affairs minister Pik Botha who was scheduled to take that flight to New York. He and others were tipped off and changed flights.

“Whoever tipped them had prior knowledge of the bomb and if it were the Libyans, surely, the last person they would tip was Botha given the animosity between Libya and South Africa the,” said Shamuyarira who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1985 and 1995.

This earned Shamuyarira who initiated talks that the Libyan suspects be tried in a neutral country, wide acclaim and made him to become a true giant of Zimbabwean and African foreign policy. (...)

Late veteran politician Dr Stan Mudenge who was Foreign Affairs Minister in 1999 described the breakthough as an African Union triumph over western bullying.

“When you look back at the whole issue, one can rightly say Africa as a whole won a major battle over western bullying. Each one of us as Africans did their bit and we won,” Dr Mudenge said back then.

With the Lockerbie case, Shamuyarira showed that he was a formidable force of Pan African  diplomacy – an indefatigable champion in the cause of peace, who worked tirelessly for a better world through peaceful conflict resolution mechanism.

His energies devoted to finding a peaceful way forward for the Libyan case led to the suspension of the embargoes that had been put in place to force Tripoli to surrender the two men charged with blowing up Pan Am Flight 103.

Shamuyarira, who has been credited as the first person to initiate talks on the possibility of having the Libyans tried in a neutral country.

To some great measure, Shamuyarira’s pre-eminent role in the Lockerbie affair, forced Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed leader of Libya, who died on 20 October 2011, to ‘demote’ Pan Arabism as a plank of Libya’s foreign policy.

[I reproduce this because it pays tribute to an African politician who played a not insignificant part in resolving the Lockerbie impasse that existed in the late 1990s, not because it is in all respects accurate about the factual and political background, which it clearly is not. For example, the story about Pik Botha being warned off Pan Am 103 has been discredited. And the all-too common assumption that Gaddafi had the power to compel the two accused to surrender for trial whether they wanted to or not, is just simply false.  I was involved at the time in Lockerbie dealings with both the Libyan Government and the Libyan defence team headed by Dr Ibrahim Legwell. If the Libyan Government had had the power to deliver Megrahi and Fhimah to Zeist against their will, the pair would have been there long before April 1999. The Gaddafi regime had the power to prevent the suspects from voluntarily surrendering themselves for trial (eg by preventing them from leaving Libya). But that was as far as the regime’s power went. It had no power to compel them to stand trial at Zeist if they chose not to.  What impeded a resolution of the Lockerbie standoff for years was not the Libyan Government nor the Libyan defence team, but the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States. It was on these governments that Mandela, Shamuyarira and others had to exert diplomatic and moral pressure to accept the solution that had long before been accepted by the Libyan authorities and the Libyan defence team. All this is explained here, for those interested in the true position.]

Mandela and Gaddafi

[What follows is an excerpt from an interview published on the Telegraph website with Zelda la Grange, for many years personal assistant to Nelson Mandela, on the occasion of the publication of her book Good Morning, Mr Mandela:]

"Madiba always inherently looked for the good in people, I always expected the worst," she said. "Now I accept all people have got good and bad. I'm not so cynical any more, I trust people more easily." She defended her former employer's friendships with controversial characters including Colonel Gaddafi, Libya's late leader (...).

"With Gaddafi, he would never condone something like the killing of innocent civilians, we all know he had very strong morals," she said.

"But he negotiated with him to deliver the Lockerbie bombing suspects and Gaddafi delivered on that promise.

"He was considerate towards him, he was never impatient with him or disrespectful. Gaddafi did terrible things but you have to respect the man for keeping his promise."

[This blog’s perspective on the part played by Nelson Mandela in the Lockerbie saga can be found here.]

Lockerbie lawyer dies

The death has been announced of Lord Macaulay of Bragar QC. 

After charges were brought in November 1991 against Abdelbaset Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah their Libyan lawyer, Dr Ibrahim Legwell, formed a team of lawyers from countries with an interest in the Lockerbie case, including Scotland and the United States, to advise and assist him. One of the Scottish lawyers on that team was Donald Macaulay QC. At a meeting held in Tripoli in October 1993 (referred to in the media as a "legal summit") this legal team advised Megrahi and Fhimah not to surrender themselves for trial in Scotland. It was in response to this decision (which came as a considerable shock to the Libyan Government) that I formulated a scheme for a non-jury Scottish court to sit in the Netherlands. The story is told in more detail here. 

I remain of the view that the advice given by the international legal team to Megrahi and Fhimah was unfortunate.  I am convinced that if the pair had been tried by an ordinary Scottish jury conscientiously following the standard instructions that juries are given about how to approach their decision-making and the assessment of the evidence led before them (including burden and standard of proof), both accused would have been acquitted.

Donald Macaulay was not a brilliant lawyer, but he was a quite magnificent jury advocate. Had I ever been charged with a serious crime, I would have wanted him to defend me. Head and shoulders above all of today's High Court "stars".