"If you open your eyes you cannot fail to see that there is a problem"

[What follows is an excerpt from an article in today’s edition of the Sunday Post:]

Earlier this year, Megrahi's relatives embarked on a legal bid to clear his name amid claims that his case is the "worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history".

Six immediate members of his family joined forces with 24 British relatives of those who died in the atrocity to seek, ultimately, a third appeal against his conviction in the Scottish courts.

They united to submit an application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for a review of the conviction, a move which could see the case referred back to the High Court.

One of those British relatives, Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the bombing, has expressed his disappointment at Mr Mulholland's latest comments.

Dr Swire told Sky News: "For the Lord Advocate to say there isn't a shred of evidence to suggest that the trial was anything other than what it should have been is analogous with the late Mandy Rice-Davies when she says 'he would say that, wouldn't he'."

He added that Mr Mulholland "wasn't around at the time of Lockerbie, whereas I was, unfortunately".

"Twenty-six years ago is a long time and I suppose he means people currently in his Crown Office don't believe there is anything wrong with the evidence.

"But I think if you open your eyes and look you cannot fail to see that there is a problem.

"More importantly than that, Scotland's own Criminal Cases Review Commission years ago found six reasons why this case should be revisited and reviewed.

"So for the Lord Advocate now to say there isn't a shred of evidence flies in the face of what the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission actually told the world years ago."

The four elephants in the room which suggest the Lord Advocate is wrong

[This is the headline over an article by John Ashton published in today’s edition of the Sunday Herald. It reads as follows:]

The Crown Office has used the 26th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing to proclaim the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset al Megrahi, the only man so far convicted of the bombing.

The department briefed yesterday that a review of the case had "confirmed beyond doubt" the Libyan's guilt, while today its head, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC, has personally reaffirmed that guilt.

Mulholland has been unusually vigorous in denouncing Megrahi's supporters, who include relatives of the Lockerbie dead, branding them "conspiracy theorists" two years ago. It is hard to imagine his opposite number in England and Wales, the director of public prosecutions, taking to the media to defend a conviction and take on critics. But while this strident tone has raised eyebrows, Mulholland's statements are more notable for ignoring four large elephants in the middle of his legal chambers.

The first is the ongoing review of the case by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), the statutory body that has the power to refer convictions to the appeal court. As Mulholland well knows, a previous review by the commission referred the case on no fewer than six grounds. The terminally ill Megrahi abandoned the resulting appeal to improve his chances of being granted compassionate release, but was confident that his name would one day be cleared. Remarkably, one of the six grounds was that the three Scottish law lords who convicted him had made a fundamental error of judgment when they found that the clothes incriminating Megrahi had been bought on December 7. In doing so, the commission, in the eyes of some, came as close as it legally could to saying that the guilty verdict was itself wrong.

More seriously for the Crown Office, four of the other grounds concerned its failure to disclose important evidence to Megrahi's defence team. This included evidence that the Crown's star witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, had expressed an interest in receiving a substantial reward and was under the strong influence of his brother Paul, who regularly nagged the police about being rewarded. The SCCRC discovered Gauci was later secretly paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice, and his brother Paul $1m.

When, in 2012, this ­newspaper published a leaked copy of the SCCRC's 800-page review, the Crown Office went into panic mode, anonymously briefing a Scottish tabloid that Megrahi's case had "more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese" then issuing a press statement that significantly downplayed the commission's findings.

The second elephant is the two-year-old police investigation, led by Police Scotland's Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, into criminal allegations made against some of those originally involved in the inquiry by the committee of the Justice for Megrahi group.

When the allegations were first made to the then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, the Crown Office immediately denounced them as groundless, despite not having seen the detailed dossier of evidence assembled by the committee. Many were shocked by the intervention, believing it might compromise the police inquiry and that it raised serious questions about Mulholland's independence as the chief public prosecutor. Unfortunately for the Crown Office, the police clearly do not share its contempt for the allegations. If the investigation concludes there was no criminal misconduct, the Crown Office still has to explain why it failed to disclose so much important evidence. In the view of its critics, notably Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing, the matter must be addressed in a public inquiry - something successive Scottish governments have been reluctant to grant.

The third elephant is forensic evidence concerning a small fragment of electronic circuit board, recovered from an item of clothing that was supposedly in the same suitcase as the bomb. According to the prosecution, it matched boards in timers supplied to Libya by a Swiss firm called Mebo, which shared offices with a Libyan company part-owned by Megrahi.

Evidence uncovered prior to Megrahi's abandoned appeal demonstrated that the fragment could not have originated from one of the Libyan timer boards. The discovery has fuelled claims the fragment was a plant, which has in turn encouraged the Crown Office to call its opponents conspiracy theorists. However, as Mulholland must be aware, the breaking of the link between the fragment and the Libyan timers leaves the prosecution case in shreds, regardless of whether it was planted.

The fourth elephant is the lack of evidence from Libya to implicate either Megrahi or the Gaddafi regime in the bombing. During the country's 2011 revolution, senior officials, keen to curry favour with the West, lined up to accuse the regime of sponsoring the attack.

The best known of them, the head of the National Transitional Council and former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, claimed to have proof that Gaddafi ordered the bombing.

All this must have been music to the Crown Office's ears, but, when pushed to reveal his proof of the regime's guilt, the best Jalil could offer was that it had funded ­Megrahi's legal case.

Sadly, Libya has become too dangerous for the Scottish police to conduct investigations there. Even if it were not, they would likely find the cupboard was bare. In the four years since the revolution, ­nothing has emerged publicly from the ruins of the old regime to affirm Megrahi's guilt, let alone Libya's.

No doubt Mulholland's public declarations will continue to ignore the four elephants in his legal chambers, but he must knows that their ever-fiercer stamping may one day bring Megrahi's conviction crashing around his ears.

John Ashton is the author of the authorised ­biography of Abdelbaset al Megrahi, Megrahi: You are my Jury, (Birlinn, 2012) and Scotland's Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters (Birlinn, 2014). From 2006-09, he worked as a researcher with Megrahi's legal team. 

[Here are links to some other reports in the media:

Megrahi was innocent of Lockerbie bombing, insists victim's father
Lockerbie victim's father criticises prosecutor's comments
Lockerbie bombing: Prosecutor's comments about al-Megrahi 'unfortunate'
Remember Lockerbie as crimes of intelligence services are exposed
Lockerbie: Lord Advocate to track down accomplices

And here is a moving reminiscence from someone engaged in the rescue operations on 21 December 1988:
Lockerbie -- 26 years on.]

We got it right, says Lord Advocate

[Today’s edition of The Times contains a report by Magnus Linklater headed Lockerbie conviction is upheld by review. It reads as follows:]

A review of the Lockerbie bombing case by Scottish investigators has concluded that there is “not a shred of evidence” to support claims that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted.

Not only have investigators confirmed beyond doubt that the Libyan was the man responsible for the deaths of 270 people on December 21, 1988, they believe his fellow accused, Lamin Fhimah, who was acquitted, was almost certainly involved as well.

The findings will come as a blow to those, such as Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of those killed, and Robert Black, QC, who maintain that prosecutors advanced a flawed case and that judges presided over a miscarriage of justice. Ever since Megrahi was convicted in 2001 there have been allegations that evidence was manipulated to implicate Libya, steering suspicion away from Middle Eastern states.

Scottish prosecutors have been accused of deliberately ignoring evidence that the bomb was put aboard Pan Am Flight 103 at Heathrow rather than at Malta, and that the timer fragment, the principal piece of forensic evidence against Libya, was planted or altered.

The claims have been examined in detail in the course of the investigation by the Crown Office and Police Scotland, which have been working on the case with the FBI to identify others who were involved in the bombing.

Sources close to the investigation said there was “not a shred of evidence” to suggest the prosecution got it wrong.

Active pursuit of the case in Libya, they added, has served to confirm rather than undermine the evidence against both Megrahi and Fhimah.

Last night Frank Mulholland, QC, the Lord Advocate, said: “During the 26-year-long inquiry not one Crown Office investigator or prosecutor has raised a concern about the evidence in this case . . . our focus remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition.”

Evidence on the bomb itself, and the crucial timer fragment that linked the attack to Libya, found three weeks after Pan Am 103 exploded, have undermined the conspiracy theory.

Critics say the fragment was either planted at the site, exchanged later for another, or was tampered with to show a link to Libya that was never there.

Police are adamant, however, that the fragment was under supervision. They point out that the evidence would have to have been planted within 23 days, requiring knowledge of all the evidence to come — including Megrahi, whose existence was then unknown.

Set against the speculation are facts that have never been disproved: the presence of Megrahi in Malta, carrying a false passport, on the day the prosecution says the bomb went on board flight KM180 to Frankfurt; Fhimah arriving with him; and their subsequent telephone conversations.

[RB: The police investigation here referred to is not that which is currently being conducted by Police Scotland (under the supervision of an independent QC) into Justice for Megrahi’s allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial. Progress reports on that investigation can be accessed here. Furthermore, an application (at the joint instance of the Megrahi family and a group of victims’ relatives) for Megrahi’s conviction to be referred back to the High Court for a further appeal is currently under consideration by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. In these circumstances and in the light of the evidence disclosed by John Ashton and Dr Morag Kerr in their respective recent books it seems somewhat rash and premature for the Lord Advocate to be trumpeting his confidence that they got the right man after all. But Mr Mulholland, of course, is not noted for circumspection: he characterised Justice for Megrahi’s criminality allegations as “defamatory and without foundation” before they had even been investigated.

Today’s edition of The Times also contains a long comment piece by Magnus Linklater headlined Lockerbie review kills conspiracy theories. Mr Linklater has long been convinced that concerns about the Megrahi conviction are the province of conspiracy theorists (all too often, of course, a lazy slur). In view of his confident certainty, it does seem a pity that he has never responded to John Ashton’s two open letters to him, having indicated that he would do so.]

Lockerbie evidence planted or "improved"? "I don't know" said Lord Advocate Fraser.

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

Peter Fraser pins colours to the mast

In an article in The Times, the Lord Advocate at the time that charges were brought against Abdelbaset Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah for the destruction of Pan Am 103, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC, expresses his confidence in the evidence that led to the conviction of Megrahi. Here are excerpts:

'Lord Fraser does not discount the involvement of other states, but he points out that no definitive evidence has been produced to link them to the attack. The Libyans, on the other hand, were traced through the diligence of Scottish detectives, who managed to identify the manufacturers of clothing found in the suspect suitcase that had held the bomb. By proving that the clothing had been bought in Malta, and then establishing that the purchaser was al-Megrahi, they laid the foundations of the Crown case. “For me that was the most significant breakthrough,” Lord Fraser says now.'

'Tam Dalyell, the former MP, has argued that the CIA may have known about the attack beforehand. Lord Fraser rejects that. “I told Tam Dalyell: if there was a conspiracy, then I am in it up to the neck. I have to be involved. The only other possibility is that I have been so naive that bits of evidence have been planted, and I have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But four other Lord Advocates have also examined the evidence and they have all concurred with it.”'

On the issue of the provenance of the MST-13 circuit board fragment which was crucial to the establishment of a link between Libya and the destruction of the aircraft, Lord Fraser hedges his bets somewhat:

'The discovery of a fragment of circuit board from a timer made by a Swiss company with links to Libya was critical to the prosecution. But accounts of how, where and by whom it was found varied. The original fragment was found several miles from the wreckage, and some weeks after the disaster.

'It was not until very much later that the CIA claimed to have identified it and matched it with a circuit board manufactured by Mebo of Zurich, a company run by Edwin Bollier, who had supplied timers to the Libyan Government. Some experts have argued that the find was just a bit too convenient to the US investigators, since, by targeting the Libyans, they could avoid falling out with Iran and Syria, important allies at the time of the Gulf War. So could the CIA have planted the evidence? “I don’t know,” says Lord Fraser. “No one ever came to me and said, ‘Now we can go for the Libyans’, it was never as straightforward as that. The CIA was extremely subtle. For me the significant evidence came when the Scottish police made the connection with Malta.” Pressed for his own view, he cites a Scottish murder case, that of Patrick Meehan, in which, it was alleged, the prosecution case had been “improved” by the planting of evidence. Was there a similarity? “I don’t know,” he said again, “but if there was one witness I was not happy about, it was Mr Bollier, who was deeply unreliable.”'

The botched and bungled Lockerbie bombing farce

[I am grateful to Sharyn Bovat for drawing my attention to an article by Andrew McKillop headed Torture, Terror And Elite Schizophrenia In The UK published on 16 December on The Market Oracle website. The following is a brief extract:]

The BBC excelled itself in the bizarre quest of justifying torture (even revelling in its use), while stoutly telling viewers and listeners that "we don't do that here". BBC News TV's first response and reaction to the Senate report included a 30-minute special report in peak viewing time "with data compiled by the BBC itself" on its claimed tally of Islamic terror deaths around the world in the month of November. The total was a suspiciously exact 5042 and Iraq and Nigeria topped the "goal average' of dead the BBC registered in, or concocted for, third-place Afghanistan. But curiously enough, Syria wasn't even mentioned.  Not a single terror war death happened in Syria in the whole of the month of November 2014 - despite all the terror war funding by the football-loving and hotel-buying Arab Gulf petro-states which are "moving towards democracy"! My oh my.

Scarcely 3 days later however, by Sunday 14 December the British mainstream media's tone had dramatically changed. The previous propaganda blitz cracked asunder. Suddenly the UK's elite-serving mainstream press was asking in a stern way: "How much did the UK government know?", and what bits of the Senate report were "redacted" to censor details of active British participation in CIA torture since the years 2001-2004? It was now urgent to know. Three days before, there was no such thing as UK complicity in American torture!

One likely or probable reason for this "sea change" includes the fact that the bulk of UK complicity and aid to CIA torture and "extraordinary rendition" or kidnapping followed by torture, was decided under a Labout government headed by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw, in which Labour Party leader Ed Miliband's brother was Foreign Secretary for a while. The true blue press and media, like the BBC can therefore rally to support the clean-fingernailed English Conservative party by suddenly trumpeting the horrors of UK complicity in US torture. You can trust the media!

Extraordinary rendition, as its tastefully called, was firstly described as "not in any way really concerning the UK", give or take a few isolated cases, such as the botched and bungled Abdul al-Megrahi Lockerbie bombing farce, in which al-Megrahi was released early on "compassionate grounds" to prevent his appeal being heard, where his Scottish lawyers would have produced devastating proof that the prosecution had used completely tainted and false testimonies, including purchased testimonies, and completely false material evidence invented by "you guess who".  

[RB: Extraordinary rendition was not involved in he cases of Megrahi and Fhimah. Nor was extradition. They voluntarily surrendered themselves for trial. But I have no quibble with the rest of the account.]

Equality of arms? Fair trial? Forget it!

What follows is an item posted on this blog on 17 December 2007:

Crown refuses to reveal secret Lockerbie paper

This is the title of a front-page article in The Herald by Lucy Adams. Whereas I on this blog on 14 December merely speculated that the reason for this week's procedural hearing might be that the Crown had refused to hand over to Mr Megrahi's legal team the document relating to timers seen by the SCCRC, Lucy Adams (whose sources are usually impeccably reliable) states as a fact that this is the reason why the hearing has been called. She writes:

"Two months ago, the Crown Office was instructed to pass on the document or provide substantial reasons as to why it could not be given to the defence.

"However, The Herald can reveal the Crown has since opposed the petition and suggested it has no duty to disclose. It has refused to reveal, even to the defence, the country from which the document originated, or its full reasons for not sharing the information.

"The defence team is understood to be seeking the document which relates to supply of timers and an additional paper."

For the full story, see

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1911239.0.Crown_refuses_to_reveal_secret_Lockerbie_paper.php

The Edinburgh Evening News has picked up the story:

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/scotland/Crown-refuses-to-reveal-secret.3599269.jp

And here is a link to Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer's commentary on OhMyNews:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=381263&rel_no=1

It looks, therefore, as if the Crown is claiming Public Interest Immunity in relation to the document, on the basis of the public interest in maintaining good relations with the foreign country which supplied the document with the condition that its confidentiality be preserved. What the judges of the High Court will be required to do, in deciding whether to order the document to be handed over, is to balance that aspect of the public interest against the public interest in a fair trial (protected, inter alia by article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights) which involves an accused person having access to all evidence that might assist his case.

If this is indeed what the procedural hearing will be concerned with, I, for one, will find it interesting to hear the the Lord Advocate's representative arguing that maintaining good relations with a foreign country is a matter that should take precedence over the fairness of Scottish criminal proceedings.

[The sordid saga of the UK Government’s successful attempt to prevent Abdelbaset Megrahi’s lawyers obtaining access to this document, aided and abetted by the Scottish Crown Office, can be followed here.]

A political fiction convenient to US foreign policy

[What follows is the text of an open letter sent by Dr Jim Swire on 14 December 2014 to Sir Malcolm Rifkind KCMG QC MP, Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament:]

I applaud your statement on Radio Four this morning, as chairman of the intelligence and Security committee that you will seek clarification from the Americans over the heavily redacted Senate report on CIA torture.

Of course you will want to know whether aircraft spotted transiting Prestwick airport really were part of the CIA run 'extraordinary rendition' programe which is widely alleged to have included the sending of British Nationals to Libya to be tortured.

May I remind you that prior to that in President Reagan's day, the CIA were deeply involved in the deeply illegal Iran Contra activities of the mid 1980s, involving extra-judicial killings on an industrial scale.

The present investigation was into post 9/11 (2001) CIA activities.

In 1988 in your own homeland of Scotland the Lockerbie disaster occurred.

At the subsequent trial at Zeist the CIA were seen to have blatantly attempted to mislead the court by concealing the lying and fantasizing of their 'star witness' known as Jiaka, to the point where, after the then Lord Advocate Colin Boyd had been brought to the very edge of perjury in his attempts to prevent the court from hearing the truth contained in the CIA cables concerning 'Jiaka' the court rejected him as a reliable witness.

What the court did not know because the information was not made available to it, was that a technical forensic item which was produced in court, seeming to be a piece of circuit board from Libya, had in fact been manufactured using technology not even available to manufacturers in the late 80s.

This item accepted by the court seems clearly to have been designed expressly to deceive the court.

Its technical excellence suggests a sophisticated organization behind its production.

Please will you therefore request that the Americans also to research and divulge divulge to your committee what actions were taken by the CIA during the years between Iran/Contra and '9/11' which were relevant to the UK, particularly with respect to their major role in providing evidence to the court which convicted a Libyan over Lockerbie?

As a distinguished Scot you must surely be deeply concerned were any proof to emerge that our Scottish Criminal Justice system had been deliberately subverted by the CIA.

Would you also, having the ear of the Prime Minister, please inform him of this letter and of any information from America relevant to Lockerbie, and then explain to us why you believe there is no need for a full inquiry, denied us for 26 years over the slaughter of our families?

As recently as 2012, Downing Street claimed publicly that a book published in Edinburgh confirming, with independent and responsible scientific support, that false forensic evidence had been introduced at Zeist, was "an insult to the relatives".

I would like him to be aware that the Downing Street statement about this book was the insult to many UK relatives of the Lockerbie dead, not the evident confirmation of some of our worst fears contained in the book.

We still seek the truth about who murdered our families. We are not going to go away until we know the truth and see it publicly confirmed. That is our right. It has long been evident to some of us that the blaming of the two Libyans was a political fiction convenient to US Foreign policy.

In the past you have taken quite a hostile attitude to our attempts to discover the whole truth, but you may well have been unaware at the time, of the information certainly denied to the public and the trial court, but now widely available. The post 9/11 Senate report even as published reveals an ongoing ethos of contempt within the CIA for the restraints which the law imposes. I feel sure that you will wish to pursue this hitherto enigmatic horror story through to the truth on which it must eventually be founded, for the sake of Scotland's reputation and in the name of justice.

Malpractice at the CIA and the Lockerbie trial

[What follows is the text of a letter submitted by Dr Jim Swire to The Times on 10 December but not (as yet) published:]

The Senate inquiry [into torture and the CIA] was essentially limited to post 9/11 behaviour by the CIA.

During the Lockerbie trial of two Libyans over the Lockerbie disaster the CIA was the major provider of evidence to the court.

Their attempts to conceal the true status of their key witness by selective redaction and concealment of their cable traffic led to their Lordships rejecting his entire evidence. It emerged that the man was a liar, a fantasist and a corrupt consumer of their resources and that the CIA knew this before the trial.

Scotland's then Lord Advocate was led to the very brink of perjury in trying to defend that evidence. [RB: More about this disgraceful episode can be read here.]

Since the trial it has now become clear that a key forensic item  allegedly from the crash site had in fact been manufactured using advanced electronic technology simply not in use at the time of Lockerbie.

The verdict reached has contributed to NATO's decision to bomb the unfortunate Libya into current chaos, the murder of Colonel Gaddafi and a failed State where ISIS is already training jihadies, an whence arms have infiltrated the terrorist groups throughout much of the Sahel region.

It also led to the conviction of an innocent Libyan, the destruction of the reputation of Scottish Justice the protection of the real Lockerbie perpetrators, and much extra suffering for inquisitive Lockerbie relatives.

I have faith in the philosophy underlying the Obama regime, based on his magnificent Cairo speech after election. I believe the President should now seek an extension of investigation of the CIA prior to 9/11 as well.

If one is to lance a boil it is wise to curette out all the pus on the same occasion.

Contempt shown to Scotland's legal system during Lockerbie shambles

[The following are excerpts from a column headlined Will torturers be banged to rights? in today’s edition of the Sunday Herald. The columnist is not readily identifiable from the newspaper’s website (though I think I detect the style of Ian Bell):]

I have, as our American friends sometimes say, a dream.

In my little reverie, two of Glasgow's finest one day turn up at the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Virginia, and ask to have a word with whoever is claiming to be in charge that week. For the sake of good taste, neither copper will say: "There's bin a torture."

After all, the reality of the allegations involving CIA rendition flights and Scottish airports does not approach even black comedy. The world's most powerful country stands revealed, in a vast report from its own Senate, as a torture state. That's not how America likes to see itself. On this side of the Atlantic, numerous politicians have issued denials of complicity which turn out to be - for how dare we say more? - "untrue". And then there's little Scotland.

Inevitably, the security establishment in the United States - and in London, for that matter - will treat that detail as an actual joke. The contempt shown to Scotland's legal system during the Lockerbie shambles ought to have been evidence enough that in those circles we don't count for much. But the fact does not oblige us to remain silent, not where grotesque violations of human rights and international law are concerned.

Those sleek, mysterious private jets turning up everywhere from Prestwick to Wick were not secrets for long. The CIA's rendition flights, "black sites" and outsourcing of torture when Dick Cheney was pulling the strings for George W Bush were all documented, to a degree, before the Senate set to work. The politicians, in the US, Britain and beyond, simply responded with unrelenting, blanket denials. Legislatures were kept - no pun offered - in the dark. Thus was democracy defended.

This was not a failure of journalism, or of honest politicians. As long ago as 2005, my colleague Neil Mackay was describing the operations of a global torture industry in harrowing detail, telling of 75 flights through Prestwick, almost as many through Glasgow, and of 20 British airports exploited for the trade in "intelligence", most of it - says the Senate - worthless.

Mackay documented the horrific treatment of one individual now named by the committee. Direct British involvement was described. No-one resigned; no-one was arrested. (...)

Police Scotland should be encouraged to ask their questions, starting at home. They should be joined by police the world over. This might prove to ordinary citizens that reasonable questions are too often met by an unreasonable silence, that our safety has now become a permanent excuse for the state within the state.

The advocates of torture, like Cheney, have few justifications now. While democracy is debauched we are left with a just-in-case argument: systematic abuse merely to be on the safe side, to guard against a possibility while reality becomes still more dangerous than before. Yet, ironically (or comically), Britain has a bigger problem than the US. The behaviour of Bush and his crew was more or less known. Our Westminster politicians just lied, time and again.

Sending round a DI and a DC from Police Scotland might not be such a bad idea. If tortured prisoners were on our soil they are, in any sense that counts, on our consciences. Scots law has plenty yet to say about that kind of offence.

Victim's father urges new investigation into Lockerbie case

This is a translation of the headline over an article published yesterday on the Austrian Wings website. It deals with Dr Jim Swire’s letter in yesterday’s edition of The Scotsman. An English version, courtesy of Google Translate, can be read here.