Criminal acts and the Lockerbie evidence

What follows is the text of an item posted on this blog four years ago on this date:

Angiolini tells Parliament “no evidence of any criminal act” in Pan Am 103 evidence chain

[This is the headline over a news item just published on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It relates to the written answers given by the Lord Advocate to questions submitted by Christine Grahame MSP. The news item reads in part:]

The Lord Advocate has told the Holyrood Parliament that “there is no evidence of any criminal act having been carried out in relation to any of the forensic evidence in the Lockerbie investigation.” 

Elish Angiolini was responding to a Parliamentary question from MSP Christine Grahame (...)

Grahame asked Angiolini if she was aware of the reported comments of former FBI scientist Frederic Whitehurst implying that the FBI laboratory in Washington DC may constitute an additional crime scene in the case. 

Former Lord Advocate at the time of the trial, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, has stated publicly in a television interview for Dutch television in 2009 that he was not aware that the timer fragment known as PT35 was sent to the United States of America for examination by FBI officials, and that he would have opposed such transportation of this fragment on the basis of concerns that it might be lost in transit or provoke accusations that it had been tampered with. 

Angiolini said in her Parliamentary answer that she was aware of this information, and confirmed that the fragment was taken to the United States of America by Scottish police officers and a British forensic scientist in June 1990 as part of the investigation into the Lockerbie event. 

"There is no evidence of any criminal act having been carried out in relation to any of the forensic evidence in the Lockerbie investigation," she said.

“The fragment remained in the custody and control of the Scottish police officers and the British forensic scientist during the visit to the United States and was subsequently identified as having come from an electronic timer manufactured by a Swiss company, MEBO, to the order of the Libyan intelligence service,” she said. 

In July 2007, one week after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case back to High Court for Megrahi’s appeal, former MEBO employee Ulrich Lumpert swore an affidavit stating that he had personally manufactured the fragment, and that it had been introduced falsely into the Crown’s evidence chain. He said that he handed the fragment to authorities investigating the case on 22 June 1989, and admitted committing perjury in the Zeist trial, citing fear of his life if his testimony reflected what he narrated in his affidavit. (...)

Angiolini's answers did not narrate what investigations may have been undertaken within the Crown Office or in Scottish police forces to reach the conclusion that there was no evidence of criminal acts.

This is not the first time the conduct of the trail and its handling has been considered a crime. On 14 October 2005, UN Special Observer Hans Koechler concluded that the conduct of the trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmend Al Megrahi had concerned him to the extent that a crime may have taken place at Camp Zeist to manufacture the conviction of Megrahi. 

“The falsification of evidence, selective presentation of evidence, manipulation of reports, interference into the conduct of judicial proceedings by intelligence services, etc. are criminal offenses in any country,” Koechler's office said in a statement. 

“In view of the above new revelations and in regard to previously known facts as reported in Dr. Koechler’s reports, the question of possible criminal responsibility, under Scots law, of people involved in the Lockerbie trial should be carefully studied by the competent prosecutorial authorities.”

[RB 2014: While the Lord Advocate in 2010 may have believed that there was no evidence of any criminal act having been carried out in relation to any of the forensic evidence in the Lockerbie investigation, no such belief can be honestly held today in the light of the revelation that PT35 had a metallurgical profile entirely different from the circuit boards in the timers supplied by MEBO to Libya. And, since the Crown knew this long before 2010 (indeed before the Zeist trial in 2000-2001) but did not disclose it to the defence, it is perhaps permissible to be somewhat sceptical that that belief was honestly held within the Crown Office in 2010. This issue features among the allegations of criminal conduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial that are currently under investigation by Police Scotland.]

US Attorney General resigns

Eric Holder has submitted his resignation as Attorney General of the United States. His interventions in the Lockerbie case can be followed here. At least as far as the Lockerbie case is concerned, his tenure was not a distinguished one.

Greenock, Musselburgh and Edinburgh perfomances of Lockerbie - Lost Voices

[There are to be performances of Lee Gershuny’s play Lockerbie: Lost Voices at the Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock on Friday 3 October 2014; at The Brunton in Musselburgh on Saturday 11 October; and at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh on Friday 7 and Saturday 8 November. The play was first performed, to considerable acclaim, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013. What follows is from an article published yesterday on the Inverclyde Now website:]

A play that looks at the Lockerbie plane bombing from the viewpoint of six hypothetical passengers comes to The Beacon, Greenock, next week.

Lockerbie – Lost Voices is being staged by The Elements World Theatre, an Edinburgh based new writing company. The play premiered to great acclaim during the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe.

It comes to the Beacon Studio Theatre on Friday 3 October at 7:30 pm. Tickets are £10 (£8 concessions), available online or from the box office on 01475 723723.

The play gives voice to six hypothetical passengers both before and after flight Pan Am 103 explodes over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

It takes them out of the anonymity of a statistic and reveals courage, love and humour in their real family relationships just moments before they die. Their personal conflicts draw the audience into the intimate, thought-provoking issues raised in the characters’ personal lives, making the actual explosion even more shocking.

In the final scenes, the dead passengers honour the lives they have lived while presiding over their own funeral and creating an opportunity for the audience to participate in a dramatic requiem. Speaking from the neutrality of death, the characters also give voice to those whose published reports challenged the official version of the disaster.

Many Scots feel that Megrahi was unjustly convicted

[What follows is an excerpt from an article published on this date in 2009 in The New York Times and reproduced on this blog:]

In Scotland, opinion polls show a mixed reaction to the Megrahi release. A BBC poll found the majority were opposed to the decision. But polls in local newspapers found heavy majorities applauding it, and in an Internet poll conducted by The Firm, a magazine for lawyers, judges and others in the legal profession, some 69 percent of responders said they supported the release.

And, as a complicating factor, many Scots — including influential members of the legal establishment — feel that Mr Megrahi was unjustly convicted and should never have been imprisoned in the first place.

Among them are Robert Black, the lawyer who helped broker the deal to hold the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands rather than in Scotland; and Hans Koechler, the United Nations observer at the trial, who called the guilty verdict “inconsistent” and “arbitrary,” and has been a harsh critic of Scottish justice.

Mr Megrahi has always maintained his innocence. His first appeal failed, but an influential group called the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission then referred his case back for another appeal, saying that it believed he “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”

Mr Megrahi dropped the appeal in August, a tactic that he thought would help his chances of being released early, his lawyer said. But he has begun publishing on the Internet the legal arguments he had planned to use, as a way toward establishing his innocence.

In the Scottish Parliament, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s justice secretary, defended his decision to release Mr Megrahi on compassionate grounds, saying that humanity “is viewed as a defining characteristic” of Scotland.

In fact, releasing terminally ill prisoners is fairly standard practice in Scotland. Since 1997, 31 prisoners, including Mr Megrahi, have applied for compassionate release. Twenty-four have had their applications granted; the remaining seven did not meet the medical criteria, in which, generally, the prisoner is deemed likely to die within three months.

“Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed but compassion be available,” Mr MacAskill told Parliament. “Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown.”

Protection of the system and its wrongdoers taking precedence

What follows is an item posted on this blog on this date two years ago:

Hillsborough-Pan Am 103 links laid before Justice Committee

[This is the headline over an article published today on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  It reads as follows:]

The Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament has been told by the Justice for Megrahi campaign group that the Pan Am 103 debacle bears parallel’s with “England’s shame”, the Hillsborough cover up.

In its submission to the committee ahead of tomorrow’s hearing of a petition calling for an inquiry into the affair, the Justice for Megrahi group say the efforts of the government to protect “wrongdoers” was prioritised ahead of the protection of innocent people.

The JFM campaigners also say that a further criminal appeal may be raised in the event the committee does not convene an inquiry.

“The outcome of the Hillsborough enquiry has undoubtedly shone a light on the inner workings of a justice system that purported to keep its citizens safe and secure,” the submission says.

“Now we can see that protection of the system and the wrongdoers within it took precedence over protection of the individual citizen. Indeed efforts were made to transfer blame to innocent third parties.

“If Hillsborough was England’s shame then Lockerbie is Scotland’s, and much of the indifference and arrogance identified within the former can be identified in the latter. We applaud the open- minded approach of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and hope to see a similar scrutiny of the Lockerbie investigation, without fear or favour.”

Writing exclusively in The Firm last week, Dr Jim Swire also said the Hillsborough cover up was part of a consistent pattern of the Government in instances where it was at fault after the fact, such as the Chinook crash in 1994, the Shirley McKie affair and the Bloody Sunday events.

The issue will be discussed at a Firm Event addressed by Professor Robert Black QC, taking place in Glasgow tomorrow.

The JFM campaigners say that the possibility exists for a further appeal to be initiated by the executors or immediate family of Abdel Baset Al Megrahi, under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, section 303A, which permit’s the transfer of the rights of appeal of a deceased person.

The committee adds that if the al-Megrahi family opt not to pursue it, “the door may be open for bereaved families” to do so.

“Whilst for some the death of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on 20 May this year may have changed the tenor of the debate surrounding the 1988 Pan Am 103 tragedy, it has not deflected the determination of campaigners seeking justice for the 270 victims of the disaster and an independent inquiry into the conviction of Mr al-Megrahi for the atrocity,” the group adds.

“Events of 2012 have only strengthened the argument for an inquiry.”

The campaigners have also sent a letter to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, lodging serious formal allegations relating to the conduct of the Lockerbie investigation and the Kamp van Zeist trial.

“Out of respect to Mr MacAskill, JFM does not propose to go public with the text of the letter or to divulge detail concerning the precise nature of the allegations for a period of thirty days from 13 September, in order to allow Secretary MacAskill sufficient latitude to respond,” the group said.

“The manner in which the allegations are dealt with could have a direct bearing on [the petition].”   

[This story has now been picked up on The Scotsman website.  It can be read here.]

RB 2014: Mr MacAskill, of course, refused to appoint an independent person to investigate JFM’s allegations and insisted that they be lodged with the very police force whose conduct featured amongst the complaints of criminality embodied in these allegations. The allegations are now under investigation by Police Scotland whose report will, when completed, be submitted to the Crown Office. Crown Office personnel also feature prominently in the allegations of criminal conduct levelled by JFM.

Further steps on the path towards a Lockerbie trial

[What follows is the text of a Reuters news agency report published on this date sixteen years ago:]

Libya fears the two men accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing could be assassinated if they go to the Netherlands for trial, the spokesman for British relatives of the victims said on Wednesday.

Jim Swire, who had just returned from a visit to Tripoli where he met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the suspects' legal team, said he felt the fears were real and were not just a stalling manoeuvre. Swire said that if the matter could be cleared up, the trial could begin within weeks.

Libya has criticised a plan by Britain and the United States under which the two men would be tried before three Scottish judges in the Netherlands. The proposal was intended to end a prolonged impasse over Libya's refusal to hand over the men for trial either in the United States or Britain.

“There are real worries...that the lives of these men are at risk,” Swire told a meeting at a conference of Britain's minority Liberal Democrats in Brighton, southern England. He later told reporters the Libyans' fears related primarily to the US Central Intelligence Agency, although defence lawyers were also worried about the possibility of attempts on their clients' lives by Iranian or Syrian agents.

Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrats conference in Brighton, Dr Swire, a spokesman for UK Families Flight 103, said: "There are structures in this wicked world that don't want this trial happening and one way to stop that happening might be to kill these two."

Asked who was the most likely to carry out such an attack, he said: "The most obvious sources would be structures inside the US. It would be a convenient way of blocking other forms of investigation." He agreed it was "quite possible" that the Syrians or Iranians, who were blamed very soon after the 1989 bombing for funding and ordering the atrocity, could also attempt such an attack.

Swire travelled on Saturday to Tripoli along with Robert Black, a professor who pioneered the idea that the trial should take place under Scottish law in the Hague out of deference to Libyan objections to it being held in Scotland.

Swire said he and Black held talks with lawyers for the two Libyans, Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, and with the Libyan foreign ministry as well as with Gaddafi. Libya announced on Wednesday that it had subsequently replaced the defence lawyers.

“The objections (the Libyans drew) to our attention...were really sensible objections which require to be sorted out in a satisfactory manner, and not delaying tactics,” Swire said. He said he had discovered that the US air force still had the right to use the Dutch air base to which it was proposed to fly the two suspects. Swire based his optimism that a trial could still be imminent on proposals that he said Black had just sent to the United Nations to speed up negotiations on outstanding issues.

“If this (Black's proposal) is accepted, I think there is no reason why we should not be looking at weeks,” he said, declining to give details.

The path towards a Lockerbie trial

[What follows is the text of an Associated Press news agency report issued on this date sixteen years ago:]

The issues delaying the trial of two Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet could be resolved "in a matter of weeks," two Britons said today after meeting with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Jim Swire, who speaks for some British families, and Robert Black, a law professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said their talks Tuesday with Gadhafi in Tripoli were constructive and they will soon submit new proposals to UN officials to speed up the trial. They refused to give details.

"If we can reach agreement over certain technicalities which have been holding up the process, then the trial could be under way within weeks," Swire told The Associated Press. He spoke from the Tunis airport, where the men were waiting for a flight home.

The United States and Britain propose to try the suspects in the Netherlands by Scottish judges under Scottish law. Libya has accepted the proposal but continues to argue about specifics.

Swire said the Libyans offered no assurances that they will soon surrender the suspects. "But we are definitely more confident now than when we left for Tripoli," he said.

Libya has agreed in principle to accept the US-British compromise plan, but Gadhafi has demanded guarantees for the legal rights and safety of the men.

The US-British proposal calls for the Libyan suspects, if convicted, to serve their prison time in Britain. Libya has said they should serve any sentence in Libya.

For their part, British families are concerned that officials and lawyers should have full, unfettered access to all relevant witnesses and evidence, wherever they are, said Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the attack over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

The United Nations imposed sanctions in 1992 to try to force Gadhafi to hand over the suspects for trial. The sanctions ban air travel to and from Libya, freeze foreign assets and bar the sale of some oil equipment.

The UN Security Council has passed a resolution saying that the sanctions will be lifted when the suspects are turned over for trial in the Netherlands. 

[In fact it was not a matter of weeks but another six months before the hurdles were overcome, largely through the good offices of the UN Under-Secretary-General and Legal Counsel, Hans Corell. Here is my brief account of this stage in the Lockerbie saga:]

From about late July 1998, there began to be leaks from UK government sources to the effect that a policy change over Lockerbie was imminent, and on 24 August 1998 the governments of the United Kingdom and United States announced that they had reversed their stance on the matter of a "neutral venue" trial. (...)

Although the British proposal was announced in late August 1998, it was not until 5 April 1999 that the two suspects actually arrived in the Netherlands for trial before the Scottish court.  Why the delay? The answer is that some of the fine print in the two documents was capable of being interpreted, and was in fact interpreted, by the Libyan defence team and the Libyan government as having been deliberately designed to create pitfalls to entrap them.  And since the governments of the United Kingdom and United States resolutely refused to have any direct contact with either the Libyan government or the Libyan defence lawyers, these concerns could be dealt with only through an intermediary, namely the Secretary-General of the United Nations. 

Between 20 and 22 September 1998, Dr Swire and I were again in Tripoli and were able to provide to the Libyan government and the Libyan defence team a measure of reassurance regarding some of the issues that concerned them.  However, it was we who (having received the information hot off the presses from a journalist in The Hague) had to inform the Libyan government that the chosen location in the Netherlands for trial was Kamp van Zeist, a former NATO base to which the air force of the United States still had extant treaty rights of access.  I anticipated that this information would cause the Libyans to renounce the "neutral venue" concept in high dudgeon and complain of the lack of good faith demonstrated by Her Majesty's Government in selecting, or agreeing to, such a site.  But they did not do so.  This, more than anything else, convinced me that the Libyan government and the Libyan defence lawyers genuinely wished a trial to take place and that the concerns they had expressed regarding details of the scheme now on offer were genuine concerns, not merely a colourable pretext for evading their earlier commitment to such a solution.

On 22 September we had a further meeting with the Leader of the Revolution.  On this occasion the meeting took place not in Tripoli but 400 kilometres to the east in a genuine (not reinforced concrete) Bedouin tent in a desert location inland from the town of Sirte.  Surrounded by sand dunes and noisily ruminating camels, Colonel Gaddafi, Dr Swire and I  discussed the details of the British scheme.  He accepted my assurance that at least some of the concerns that Libyan government lawyers had raised were unwarranted and that it would be worthwhile to continue to seek clarifications and reassurances through the office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations regarding the remaining issues.

The CIA and the Lockerbie trial

[As an addendum to the CIA document CIA's rôle in the Pan Am 103 investigation and trial, which has been recently disclosed, here is the text of a message delivered to relatives of the Pan Am 103 victims in September 2000 during the Lockerbie trial (and just before the CIA asset Abdul Majid Giaka was due to testify) by the then Director of the CIA, George J Tenet:]

When the trial began, I made a pledge to you that the Central Intelligence Agency would put its full support behind the prosecution of the case by the Scottish Crown Office. I want to assure you that the CIA remains committed to making every relevant piece of evidence available to the court.

As you know, allegations recently were made that the CIA has not been as forthcoming as it should be in our release of information. Those allegations are false. The men and women of the CIA -starting with me-- are doing all that we possibly can to ensure justice for your loved ones. Whenever we have been asked by prosecuting authorities to release specific information because it may be relevant to the prosecution or defense of the case, we have done so.

In deference to Scottish Law, I cannot comment upon the specific evidence in the trial so I cannot give you a detailed picture of our efforts. I am however permitted to share some general information with you.

The CIA has released numerous operational cables to the Crown Office. Although some limited information in these documents must remain protected from exposure in the interests of national security and the safety of people mentioned in them, we have gone to great lengths to declassify certain information and make it available as evidence. And we will continue to lean forward in response to requests for information by the prosecuting authorities.

Beyond making documents available to the court, we have made current and former employees available to testify as witnesses. Some of them are or were members of the CIA's Directorate of Operations who have served or are now serving undercover in the field. Two agency employees already have appeared. Another witness is a former intelligence source of the CIA. This is unprecedented. Never before has the CIA made one of our intelligence sources available to testify in a trial on foreign soil. Since CIA officers and intelligence sources who testify do so at some risk to themselves and their families, the court has allowed them to testify in alias and in disguise.

The thoughts and prayers of the men and women of CIA remain with all Pan Am 103 families. From the beginning, we have been working closely with the Department of Justice and the Scottish Crown Office, and you have my word that we will continue to cooperate intensively with them until justice is fully and finally served.

CIA's rôle in the Pan Am 103 investigation and trial

This is the title of a document from the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence Oral History Program which has very recently been disclosed under the United States federal Freedom of Information Act (5 USC § 552). It is heavily redacted but nevertheless provides a fascinating insight into the part played by the CIA in the investigation of the Lockerbie disaster, in the building of the prosecution case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah and at the trial. The document is a very lengthy one but is nonetheless required reading for anyone interested in the Lockerbie trial débacle.

I am grateful to Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer for drawing this document to my attention.

Only a full inquiry can unravel the truth

What follows is an item first posted on this blog on this date five years ago:

Misguided Magnus

For all Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi's protests about the fragility of the prosecution case against him, there are three crucial facts to be borne in mind in reading these documents. [RB: Documents released by the lawyers representing Megrahi in the appeal abandoned by him to secure his repatriation to Libya].

First, there appears to be nothing new here. It is evidence that has already been tested and rejected in the course of two court hearings: the original trial and his first appeal.

Secondly, what al-Megrahi presents is, inevitably, only one side of the case. It would have been challenged point by point in front of three High Court judges if his next appeal had gone ahead. By abandoning that legal process and returning to Libya, al-Megrahi has sacrificed the opportunity of having his evidence properly heard in a forum that would have been recognised and respected.

Third, if he was so sure of the strength of his case, why was he not willing to see the appeal go ahead in his name, even though he himself was absent? The legal position is that the accused person does not need to be present for an appeal to be heard - he may even be dead.

Yet al-Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to ensure his speedy release from Greenock prison. Indeed, even at the original trial, he declined to give evidence in his own defence. That severely undermines his attempt to demonstrate that the prosecution case was flawed.

He now argues that the evidence against him was circumstantial and built on inference. But circumstantial evidence is very often at the heart of a prosecution case, and in Scottish law, an extra strand of corroborative proof is required before the evidence is accepted, and this would have happened in the al-Megrahi case.

What we are now asked instead to believe is that experienced judges and counsel ignored the custom and practice of Scottish law in the course of two full trials, and waved through unconvincing circumstantial evidence in order to ensure a conviction.

That is not only inherently improbable, it is insulting to the Scottish legal system and the lawyers who were involved in it. Only a full inquiry can unravel the truth, rather than the partial version we have been presented with here.

[The above is the full text of a comment in today's edition of The Times by Magnus Linklater, the paper's Scottish Editor. Apart from the very last sentence of the article, everything that Mr Linklater says is either factually incorrect or demonstrably misguided.

First: the released material has not been tested and rejected in two court hearings (the original trial and the first appeal). The released material advances the contentions that the evidence heard at the original trial was (a) insufficient in law to warrant a guilty verdict and (b) that no reasonable court, on that evidence, could have convicted Abdelbaset Megrahi. These contentions were not advanced at the Zeist trial or at the first appeal. As far as that appeal is concerned, the five judges stated in paragraph 369 of their Opinion:

“When opening the case for the appellant before this court Mr Taylor [senior counsel for Megrahi] stated that the appeal was not about sufficiency of evidence: he accepted that there was a sufficiency of evidence. He also stated that he was not seeking to found on section 106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act [verdict unreasonable on the evidence]. His position was that the trial court had misdirected itself in various respects. Accordingly in this appeal we have not required to consider whether the evidence before the trial court, apart from the evidence which it rejected, was sufficient as a matter of law to entitle it to convict the appellant on the basis set out in its judgment. We have not had to consider whether the verdict of guilty was one which no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have returned in the light of that evidence.”

The true position, as I have written elsewhere, is this:

"As far as the outcome of the appeal is concerned, some commentators have confidently opined that, in dismissing Megrahi’s appeal, the Appeal Court endorsed the findings of the trial court. This is not so. The Appeal Court repeatedly stresses that it is not its function to approve or disapprove of the trial court’s findings-in-fact, given that it was not contended on behalf of the appellant that there was insufficient evidence to warrant them or that no reasonable court could have made them. These findings-in-fact accordingly continue, as before the appeal, to have the authority only of the court which, and the three judges who, made them."

Second: "By abandoning that legal process and returning to Libya, al-Megrahi has sacrificed the opportunity of having his evidence properly heard in a forum that would have been recognised and respected. (...) [I]f he was so sure of the strength of his case, why was he not willing to see the appeal go ahead in his name, even though he himself was absent? The legal position is that the accused person does not need to be present for an appeal to be heard - he may even be dead. Yet al-Megrahi dropped his appeal in order to ensure his speedy release from Greenock prison."

Abdelbaset Megrahi was terminally ill. He had only a few months to live. His absolute priority was to return to his homeland to die surrounded by his family. Two ways of achieving this were available: prisoner transfer and compassionate release. The first required that there be no ongoing legal proceedings (like his second appeal); the second did not. Applications for repatriation were made under both mechanisms. Megrahi did not know which, if either, of the mechanisms would be successful, and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice said from the outset that there would be no nods or winks. In order to keep open the possibility of benefiting from prisoner transfer Megrahi had to abandon his appeal. At the end of the day, Kenny MacAskill opted for compassionate release. But until it actually happened, Megrahi did not, and could not, know that. The decision to abandon was effectively forced upon him. 

And, of course, it would all have been unnecessary if the Crown Office, the Advocate General for Scotland (representing the UK Foreign Secretary in his public interest immunity claims) and the Appeal Court had not reduced the progress of the second appeal to a pace that would have shamed a self-respecting snail.

Third: Megrahi is not complaining that the evidence against him was circumstantial. Everyone accepts that a conviction can properly be obtained on evidence which is wholly circumstantial. The true point being raised is that for proof beyond reasonable doubt to be achieved in a case based wholly on circumstantial evidence, the incriminating inferences that the court is asked to draw from the evidence must be the only reasonable inferences open on that evidence. It is the failure of the Crown to reach (or even approach) this standard at the Zeist trial that Megrahi is complaining about.]

The sorry saga of Magnus Linklater’s writings over the years on the Megrahi case can be followed here.

UK Government blocks release of evidence to Megrahi lawyers

What follows is an item posted on this blog six years ago on this date. On this historic day I do not expect anyone, at least in Scotland, to read it.

Court rules Lockerbie timer details to stay secret

This is the headline over an article by Lucy Adams in The Herald. The story reads in part:

'The Appeal Court in Edinburgh has decided to appoint a special defender to view confidential documents thought to contain vital information about the electronic timer that detonated the Lockerbie bomb.

'The decision follows an unprecedented hearing, held behind closed doors, at which the UK Government argued that revealing the documents would compromise security.

'The advocate general, who represents the UK Government in Scottish courts, asked the court to appoint a security-vetted lawyer who could look at the documents on behalf of the defence team of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing.

'This special defender would then argue which parts of the document should be published - although judges would make the final decision about how much, if anything, should be revealed.

'So far the court has not published its decision, but Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has written a letter confirming that the court has decided to appoint a special defender.

'It will be the first time such a course has been taken in Scotland, although some English courts have appointed special defenders to examine evidence in terrorism cases.

'There has been no official comment from Megrahi's legal team, although it is thought it is planning an appeal to the Privy Council, arguing that the move will violate his human rights.'

The full article can be read here.

Megrahi's release and the West's intervention in Libya

[The following are excerpts from an interesting long article published today on the ConservativeHome website by John Baron MP:]

Three years on, it is clear the West’s Libyan intervention has been a disaster. A vicious civil war, growing civilian casualties and refugees, and warring tribal and religious groups have gone largely unnoticed in Britain. Things are so bad that the Libyan Parliament is now taking refuge in a Greek car ferry in Tobruk’s famous harbour. As with most of our interventions over the last decade, it was never meant to turn out like this. As we once again contemplate intervention in Iraq and Syria, Libya offers chastening lessons. (...)

We were told that Western intervention would avert an humanitarian catastrophe and prevent genocide in Benghazi – ironically now where the Islamists are arguably at their strongest. At the time of the vote, many of us in Parliament pointed out that not enough thought had been given to the challenges post-Gaddafi, to the various tribal and religious factions that would surface, and the knock-on effects beyond Libya’s borders. Some of us pointed to regional allies, who were more than capable of exercising control of the skies over Benghazi – after all, the West had been selling them tens of billions of pounds of kit for this very purpose.

Some of us also suspected the real motive was one of regime change. US anger following the Scottish release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was palpable. In February 2011, when the Foreign Affairs Select Committee met our American counterparts in Washington, the only topic they wished to discuss was not Afghanistan or Iraq, but the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber. We would not have been alone in picking up the negative vibes.

However, whatever the West’s motives, UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorised the protection of civilians ‘by all means necessary’ other than a ‘foreign occupying force’. On the strength of this wording, and reassurances from London, Paris and Washington that regime change was not the objective, Russia and China did not use their Security Council vetoes. (...)

If regime change was the objective, then perhaps Libya post-Gaddafi was never really going to be a concern. However, if one accepts the West’s declared motive, then once again it has been found wanting.

A lack of rigorous assessment as to the difficulty of removing Gaddafi; of post-Gaddafi planning; of understanding the various components and parties in theatre, and of the consequences, both in the vast swathes of territory in the south of the country and beyond Libya’s borders – these were just some of the errors committed: a lack of local knowledge perhaps being the common denominator. Years of cuts to the FCO budget, and the consequent dilution of skills, was a factor.

Libya is a good example of how not to intervene. Knocking the door down is always going to be the easy part. The post-intervention planning was once again the Achilles’ heel. As the West once again stands poised to intervene in Iraq and Syria, such lessons must be heeded. The consequences of getting it wrong there could be much greater.