"Scottish justice ... subject to cynical manipulation"

[What follows is the text of an article published in The Mail on Sunday on this date in 2002:]

The key witness whose evidence helped convict the Lockerbie bomber has enjoyed holiday trips to Scotland and lavish hospitality organised by police officers, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Legal experts believe the revelation could have significant bearing on the  case of Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, whose appeal against conviction for the murder of 270 people in Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity began last week.

Secret tape recordings, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, reveal witness Tony Gauci boasting about being taken from his home in Malta to Scotland by police for fishing, hillwalking and bird-watching trips.

Astonishingly, Gauci also claims he was taken to Lockerbie to be shown the damage caused by the bomb that ripped through PanAm Flight 103 in December 1988.

The tattered remains of clothes bought from Gauci's shop were found in the suitcase that contained the bomb. The shopkeeper is the only person to have linked Megrahi directly to the Lockerbie bombing, telling investigators he “resembled a lot” the man who bought the clothes.

A Scottish undercover investigator travelled to Malta and secretly taped conversations with Gauci, owner of Mary’s House clothes shop in Sliema, and Det Constable Ian Goodall, a Strathclyde Police officer based in Malta.

Gauci claims he has been taken to Scotland by police on five or six occasions since the Lockerbie bombing.

In the early part of the investigation, Gauci claims he was taken to the small Scottish town to be shown the damage - a highly unusual move as the Scottish justice system frowns upon taking a witness to a crime scene before a trial.

Gauci also reveals that the hospitality of the Scottish police has been extended to four other members of his family. He talks of being taken into the mountains, visiting the Aviemore ski resort, going fly-fishing for salmon and bird-watching. While in Scotland he has on at least one occasion stayed at the luxury £150-a-night Hilton Hotel in Glasgow. A day ticket for a top salmon fishing river can cost up to £1000 a day.

Indeed, Gauci is believed to be in Scotland at the moment. A trip was being prepared for him when the investigator, a former detective, left Malta two weeks ago. It is believed that Gauci might have travelled in the last week under an assumed name.

In a conversation with George Thomson, a leading criminal investigator working undercover, Gauci said he had been an important witness in a terrorist trial and that the police had to look after him to keep the “bad man” in jail.

Asked by Thomson if detectives had indeed looked after him well, Gauci replied: “They have to. They want this man to stay in jail.”

In another conversation, Gauci volunteers information potentially crucial to Megrahi’s appeal that officers took him to Scotland on one occasion “to check the quality of my statement and make sure I am saying the same things.”

There are already question marks over the evidence given by Gauci during Megrahi’s trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, which ended in January last year.

On the second day of Megrahi’s appeal in front of five Scottish judges, William Taylor QC, who leads Megrahi’s defence, said the trial judges had drawn the wrong conclusions from evidence riddled with “contradictions and inconsistencies.”

Mr Taylor said Gauci's evidence was “palpably unreliable” both in its identification of Megrahi and on the question of the date when the Libyan is alleged to have bought clothes in his shop.

Also, the shopkeeper made some 20 statements over ten or 11 years before giving evidence. Most have been leaked to journalists and researchers over the years. They show substantial variations, underlining the difficulty of achieving perfect recall over a long period of time. This suggests his recollection of the crucial events he was involved in might not have been as precise as he indicated to the court.

Robert Black, Professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University, said the matter of Gauci’s trips had to be fully investigated during the course of Megrahi’s appeal.

Prof Black added: “As far as I am aware, this is not normal practice. I do not know of any other witness in a Scottish murder trial to have been taken on holidays and fishing trips by the police.”

He said that if a witness in a trial had been offered “treats” by one side, the other side ought to have the opportunity to cross-examine him to establish whether he might have been motivated to “improve” his evidence in favour of those giving the “treats”.

He added: “If it transpires that Gauci was being treated in this way before or during the trial, or indeed understood that he would be given trips after the trial, it would require his credibility as a witness to be re-examined and could alter the outcome of the case.

“Senior police officers and prosecutors worked very closely on this case.  If the prosecution was aware of the arrangement, it ought to have alerted the defence.”

One of Britain's most senior retired judges said he regarded the matter as “wholly improper”.

The judge, who refused to be named because he feared it would seem “impudent” to criticise the conduct of a Scottish trial, said: “If I learned that a crown witness had been treated and spoiled by the police or prosecution, I would be very concerned that it might have interfered with the course of justice.

“The defence would be entitled to know and to question the credibility of the witness. If such a matter emerged after a guilty verdict, it would be a valid point of appeal. Whether it succeeded would be determined by the weight of other evidence.” [RB: The retired judge in question is still alive.]

Tam Dalyell, the most dogged campaigner on Lockerbie in the House of Commons, expressed shock and dismay last night. He said: “If your information is correct, it is very significant. I believe it’s vital to establish who knew about these trips. Did the trial judges know? Did the lord advocates who were in office during the years of the investigation know? If they did, those who have gone on to become judges should be removed from the bench.”

Dalyell said he would be raising the matter with the appropriate authorities and would seek to establish who was paying for the trips. He added: “This raises the most fundamental questions imaginable about Scottish justice apparently being subject to cynical manipulation.”

British relatives of those who died felt it would be inappropriate to comment because the appeal was underway. But one said: “You can take it we are horrified by this.”

A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police said: “We never comment on matters relating to witness protection.”

Det Ch Supt Tom MuCulloch, head of CID at Dumfries and Galloway police and nominally the senior investigating officer in the case, said through a spokesman: “We do not make any comment in matters relating to witnesses in the Lockerbie investigation.”

Gauci’s contribution to the trial was absolutely central to the conviction of Megrahi a year ago. His co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, walked free while Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum recommendation of 20 years.

The key difference in the case against the two men was that in Fhimah’s case, no credible witness existed to give the court a first-hand account of incriminating conduct.

Gauci was able to tell the court that Megrahi “resembled a lot” the man who bought the clothes from his shop weeks before the bombing.

His original description to investigators was of a man much taller and at least ten years older than Megrahi, but when shown photographs of the Libyan agent, he always said there was a resemblance.

However, he also identified other suspects, including the convicted bomber Mohammed Abu Talb, serving life in Sweden for terrorist bombings, as resembling the man.

Despite acknowledging that Gauci’s identification was not absolute, the three Scottish judges who found Megrahi guilty of murder attached much weight to it and clearly were impressed by his evidence.

Taylor has already set out his grounds for appeal to the five-judge bench that will decide his client’s ultimate fate. Already, it is clear that the appeal hinges largely on Gauci’s evidence.

As well as arguing that the judges were not entitled to conclude from his testimony that Megrahi bought the clothes, they will also argue that they were wrong to conclude the clothes were purchased on December 7.

The trial heard evidence that the likely date of purchase was in fact November 23, when Megrahi was in Libya, but opted instead for December 7, when he was in Malta where he worked for Libyan Arab Airlines.

This conclusion was reached despite evidence that it was raining when the buyer left the shop and testimony from Malta’s met office that it did not rain on December 7.

Thomson learned that Gauci already enjoys protection from armed Maltese officers. Witness protection officers in the UK are normally assigned only to someone whose life is considered to be in danger as a result of their testimony in a trial. In such cases, the witness is moved and given a new identity.

Gauci continues to live on Malta and to run Mary’s House with his brother, Paul, a situation that hardly suggests his life is in danger. He is known to locals as Tony Lockerbie.

Double-dealing and naked hypocrisy

[What follows is an article entitled Know Who Your Friends Are published today on the Derek Bateman Broadcaster blog:]

I have been silent for some days following a family bereavement and will try to catch up with events.

One thing that happened was the report detailing cooperation between the British government and Libya under Gaddafi:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/22/cooperation-british-spies-gaddafi-libya-revealed-official-papers?CMP=share_btn_link

This tale of betrayal of British and American interests – as opposed to commercial advantages which was their real objective – opens up a whole area of the Blair government to exposure for its double-dealing and naked hypocrisy affecting Scotland. It also leads directly to the door of Jim Murphy and reveals an untrustworthy individual who is the enemy of justice and transparency.

The close ties between the UK’s intelligence and security services and those of Libya are nauseating to read laced as they are with a tone of complicity, subterfuge and sadistic pleasure at rendering back into the hands of the Gaddafi regime political dissidents for torture and death.

Not only did Britain play this sordid game of spider and fly with real people and in full knowledge of the consequences, it also invited foreign agents from Tripoli to operate here in our country where they could pursue and harass Gaddafi’s opponents.

This, remember, was a Labour government, ostensibly a left-of-centre party committed to human rights and an ethical foreign policy.

At play was a desire to bring Gaddafi in from the cold by encouraging him to disown weapons of mass destruction – an initiative with a social conscience which required delicate handling.

Like much else in the contradictory world of Blairism, this became confused with other objectives like securing oil deals in North Africa for BP, a long-time corporate friend of New Labour and benefactor to its lieutenants.

What this attempted rapprochement did not need was to engage Libyan state security as Britain’s best friends in the grubby world of kidnap, torture and kill. Little wonder that when Moussa Koussa defected in 2011 it was to the UK and his friends in the Foreign Office that he turned for sanctuary, to be spirited away unscathed to a new life.

The other link http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/feb/07/labour-government-lockerbie-bomber-release

is to the story of how the Labour government simultaneously had an undeclared policy of trying to get the Lockerbie bomber freed in order to improve relations with Gaddafi and ease the way for those oil contracts in the Deal in the Desert. Here, Sir Gus O’Donnell, head of the Civil Service (the one we now we can trust courtesy of Sir Nicholas Macpherson) produced a report for the Prime Minister which proves that throughout the years of Megrahi’s imprisonment in Scotland it was the Labour government’s policy to help get him released.

So two things are going on…the UK is buttering up the man responsible for the Lockerbie bombing to the extent that it is working hand in glove with his state security while simultaneously it is beavering away behind the scenes to free the man they agree performed the actual bombing. It is a twin-track approach to appease the sponsor of the worst terrorist atrocity on British soil.

Meanwhile what was going on in Scotland where the Pan Am flight came down? Well, another Labour member, Scottish leader Iain Gray was regularly excoriating the SNP for  releasing Megrahi – the very thing that the head of the Civil Service now says was Labour policy.

Gray said: ‘The last time the SNP appealed to ‘moral authority’ was when they released the Lockerbie bomber. They were wrong about that and most Scots agree that was the wrong decision. That’s another example of poor judgement.’

Gray used the release as a trump card during the election in 2011. He said: ‘The SNP must provide the US with details of how it reached the decision to free Megrahi, who has always maintained his innocence. We have to make it clear to the US what the basis of the decision to release Megrahi was. I don’t believe that lobbying by BP had anything to do with his release. I think it was a decision made by Kenny MacAskill and Alex Salmond and a decision I think they both got wrong. If we reach the anniversary of his release and Megrahi is still alive, I think Kenny MacAskill should apologise and admit he made a mistake and should apologise to the families of the victims.’

Now you see where this is going…in London it is the secret policy of Labour to work behind the scenes for the release of Megrahi because that will open up trade links and should make Libya a safer place. But up the road at Holyrood, poor old Labour is hammering away at a cracked bell trying to get a ring. How they must have smiled at Westminster when they read of Gray’s desperate attempts to condemn the very policy they were actively supporting.

So why didn’t Gray know the truth? (He told the BBC he didn’t know and made up his own view). After all there is a Secretary of State for Scotland in Cabinet whose job is to represent Scotland and to act as intermediary between the two.

Enter Jim Murphy. For most of this time (2008 – 10) Murphy was Scottish Secretary. (Des Browne is also but more briefly culpable).

Yet it seems Murphy did not disclose any information to Gray or his Labour colleagues to rein in their criticisms of the SNP in case the news leaked that they wanted Megrahi released all along. Why not? I contacted Murphy’s office several times through the BBC and never once received a reply, clearly indicating that he knew he was guilty of deceiving his own party and Scotland on an issue of huge emotional importance. He sided with secret deals with Gaddafi and Moussa Koussa and the torture of dissidents instead of truth and fair dealing, even when dealing with his own side.

Iain Gray’s humiliation came in the 2011 election of course but if he ever wants to revisit the issue with double-dealing Jim, well he’s in his Cabinet today…

[RB: Derek Bateman is entirely correct in pointing out the hypocrisy of Labour over the release of Megrahi. There is no doubt that Tony Blair & Co were striving mightily to secure his repatriation by means of prisoner transfer, but were swift to condemn Kenny MacAskill when he granted compassionate release. But I am extremely disappointed at the reference to “the Lockerbie bomber” and “the man responsible for the Lockerbie bombing”. Does anyone who has taken the trouble to study the case (and who is outside the Crown Office) still believe that Megrahi was the Lockerbie bomber? Certainly, as Ian Hamilton QC has said, “I don't think there's a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr Megrahi was justly convicted.” 

As he has made clear on Twitter (@DerekBateman2) Derek Bateman is not someone who believes that Megrahi was guilty. The point he was making was that Labour Government ministers believed that Megrahi was "the Lockerbie bomber" and that Gaddafi was "the man responsible for the Lockerbie bombing” (or at least said that they did) but nevertheless had the dealings that they did with the Gaddafi regime.]

A convenient scapegoat over Lockerbie

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

"Justice was never done"

[Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Reverse the Qaddafi Revolution is the title of a book by Professor Francis A Boyle which is due to be published on 28 February 2013.  A blurb on the Amazon website reads as follows:]

It took three decades for the United States government -- spanning and working assiduously over five different presidential administrations (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama) -- to overthrow and reverse the 1969 Qaddafi Revolution in order to resubjugate Libya, seize control over its oil fields, and dismantle its Jamahiriya system. This book tells the story of what happened, why it happened, and what was both wrong and illegal with what happened from the perspective of an international law professor and lawyer who tried for over three decades to stop it. Francis Boyle, who served as Qaddafi's lawyer at the World Court, provides a comprehensive history and critique of American foreign policy toward Libya from when the Reagan administration came to power in January of 1981 up to the NATO war on Libya that ultimately achieved the US goal of regime change. He deals with the repeated series of military conflicts and crises between the United States and Libya over the Gulf of Sidra and the fraudulent US claims of Libyan instigation of international terrorism during the eight years of the neoconservative Reagan administration. He reveals the flimsy factual basis and legal machinations behind the Lockerbie bombing allegations against Libya initiated by the Bush administrations I and II. In 2011, under the guise of the UN R2P "responsibility to protect” doctrine newly-contrived to provide legal cover for Western intervention into third world countries, and override the UN Charter commitment to prevention of aggression and state sovereignty, the NATO assault led to 50,000 Libyan casualties and the complete breakdown of law and order. Boyle analyzes and debunks the doctrines of R2P and its immediate predecessor, "humanitarian intervention”, in accordance with the standard recognized criteria of international law. This book provides an excellent case study of the conduct of US foreign policy as it relations to international law.

[An excerpt from the book on the same website reads as follows:]

After the Bush Senior administration came to power, in late 1991 they opportunistically accused Libya of somehow being behind the 1988 bombing of the Pan American jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. I advised Libya on this matter from the very outset. Indeed, prior thereto I had predicted to Libya that they were going to be used by the United States government as a convenient scapegoat over Lockerbie for geopolitical reasons. Publicly sensationalizing these allegations,in early 1992 President Bush Senior then mobilized the US Sixth Fleet off the coast of Libya on hostile aerial and naval maneuvers in preparation for yet another military attack exactly as the Reagan administration had done repeatedly throughout the 1980s. I convinced Colonel Qaddafi to let us sue the United States and the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the Lockerbie bombing allegations; to convene an emergency meeting of the World Court; and to request the Court to issue the international equivalent of temporary restraining orders against the United States and the United Kingdom that they not attack Libya again as they had done before. After we had filed these two World Court lawsuits, President Bush Senior ordered the Sixth Fleet to stand down. There was no military conflict between the United States and Libya. There was no war. No one died. A tribute to international law, the World Court, and their capacity for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Pursuant to our World Court lawsuits, in February of 1998 the International Court of Justice rendered two Judgments against the United States and the United Kingdom that were overwhelmingly in favor of Libya on the technical jurisdictional and procedural elements involved in these two cases. It was obvious from reading these Judgments that at the end of the day Libya was going to win its World Court lawsuits against the United States and the United Kingdom over the substance of their Lockerbie bombing allegations. These drastically unfavorable World Court Judgments convinced the United States and the United Kingdom to offer a compromise proposal to Libya whereby the two Libyan nationals accused by the US and the UK of perpetrating the Lockerbie bombing would be tried before a Scottish Court sitting in The Hague, the seat of the World Court. Justice was never done. This book tells the inside story of why not.

The Lockerbie inquiry petition

What follows is an item posted on this blog on 25 January 2011:

Lockerbie inquiry petition 'remains open'

[This is the headline over a report on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

A petition calling for an inquiry into the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber has been kept open despite an earlier refusal from the Scottish government.

The Justice For Megrahi (JFM) group handed over a petition to the Scottish Parliament in October last year.

It sought an independent probe into the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man to be convicted of the bombing which killed 270 people in 1988.

The petitions committee agreed to write to the government and Lord Advocate.

The JFM group claimed it was "imperative" that the case be examined once more.

However, the Scottish government has already indicated that it has no plans to hold an inquiry and "does not doubt the safety of the conviction". (...)

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, sat through the proceedings during the parliamentary session.

He later said the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) had already decided there may have been a miscarriage of justice and urged the government to open an inquiry.

Dr Swire added: "I think this will be unwelcome in the dying days of the Scottish government to have had this decision by the committee.

"The issue here is so much greater than Scottish party politics. This is not about the SNP. This is about the integrity and, above all, the credibility of Scottish justice."

[A report on the Public Petitions Committee's proceedings from The Press Association news agency reads in part:]

A petition calling for an inquiry into the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber has been kept open despite an earlier refusal from the Scottish Government.

MSPs on Holyrood's Petitions Committee made the decision after discussing the request by pressure group Justice For Megrahi (JFM).

SNP MSP Christine Grahame backed the group's position, appealing to the committee that the petition should be kept alive.

She argued that recent changes to legislation had raised questions over the remit of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which deals with alleged miscarriages of justice.

She said: "I think the SCCRC has been neutered, in many respects. If I may say to the committee, I wish you to continue to pursue the inquiry route, not close this down."

[RB: Four years later, the petition (PE1370) remains open. It is expected to feature on the agenda of the Scottish Parliament Justice Committee for the meeting to be held on 3 February 2015.]

Dear Muammar ... Yours Tony

The following reports in today’s editions of The Herald, The Independent and The Guardian, although not directly related to the Lockerbie case, perhaps add support to the contention that the Blair Government was determined, by hook or by crook, to secure Abdelbaset Megrahi’s return to Libya: Dear Muammar ...Yours Tony: Blair letter is latest evidence of UK-Libya links and Letter between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi revealed as part of documents seized following Libyan revolution and Revealed: How Blair colluded with Gaddafi regime in secret.

From my own meetings with Libyan officials at the very highest level, I can testify that the Libyan government, as a result of its dealings with Tony Blair, Sir Nigel Sheinwald and Sir Mark Allen, believed in 2008 that the repatriation of Megrahi was a done deal. There was a distinct measure of consternation and some scepticism when I informed the Libyan officials that the question of repatriation was one for the Scottish Government, not the UK Government.  

Today's High Court hearing on SCCRC Megrahi application

[What follows is the report on the BBC News website of today’s (purely procedural) hearing in the High Court of Justiciary before Lady Dorrian:]

A High Court judge has been asked if families of some of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing can launch an appeal on behalf of the only man convicted of the atrocity.

It is the latest attempt by relatives to bring the case back to court.

The families want the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi overturned.

Lady Dorrian has now ordered that a hearing should take place to decide whether they can pursue an appeal on his behalf.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) wants guidance on the legal status of the relatives of those who lost their lives in the atrocity.

After hearing submissions from legal teams, Lady Dorrian arranged a hearing to take place on 27 March.

Al-Megrahi died three years ago, having abandoned his own second appeal brought by the SCCRC.

The SCCRC is considering a joint application from members of Megrahi's family and the Justice for Megrahi campaign group, which includes relatives of British victims of the bombing, to review the conviction.

It previously said that despite repeated requests, members of Megrahi's family had failed to provide "appropriate evidence" supporting their involvement in the application.

The SCCRC concluded that the application was being "actively supported" only by the members of the victims' families.

Previous court decisions have meant that only the executor of a dead person's estate or their next of kin could proceed with such a posthumous application. [RB: This is incorrect. There are no Scottish judicial decisions one way or the other on this issue. That is why the SCCRC feel the need to seek guidance.]

The SCCRC wants to determine if a member of the victims' families - such as Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing - might be classed as a "person with a legitimate interest to pursue an appeal" if the case is referred back to the High Court.

Dr Swire and Aamer Anwar, solicitor for the Megrahi family, were among those at court for the latest hearing.

Mr Anwar said: "We would submit that the commission are wrong and that we remain instructed by members of the Megrahi family as well as the British relatives.

"We have been in communication with the Megrahi family, both via intermediaries and directly.

"Communication is hampered by an extremely dangerous situation in Libya, a situation referred to in December by the Lord Advocate, by way of an explanation for lack of any progress in relation to investigations into the Lockerbie atrocity."

He added that with regards to the rights of the victims' families to pursue an appeal there was a "fundamental duty" to protect the rights of victims of crime.

"It is submitted that the families of the victims have as much right to make an application for referral as the family of Mr al-Megrahi," he said.

"Finality and certainty in the Megrahi case is unlikely ever to be achieved unless a referral is made to the Appeal Court."

Megrahi case goes back to court

[What follows is a report published today on the BBC News website:]

A High Court judge is to be asked if members of the families of some of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing can launch an appeal on behalf of the only man convicted of the atrocity.

It is the latest attempt by the relatives to bring the case back to court.

BBC Scotland Home Affairs Correspondent Reevel Alderson said it could be the start of a protracted legal battle.

The families want the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi overturned.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) wants the court to rule whether it is allowed to investigate the Lockerbie case again, on behalf of members of victims' families.

Al-Megrahi died three years ago, having abandoned his own second appeal brought by the SCCRC.

The application will be contested by the Crown Office, and it is likely a formal hearing will be arranged later for full-scale legal arguments.

[RB: 1. A slightly longer report appears on the website of The Independent.

2. The SCCRC’s petition to the High Court flows from its decision to regard the current application as brought only by victims’ relatives and not also by Megrahi’s close family. In the light of recent evidence regarding the intentions of the Megrahi family, it is hoped that the SCCRC will soon reverse this decision, rendering the petition otiose. Today’s hearing at 10.00 in the High Court will be attended by Dr Jim Swire.]

Lockerbie chat on Independence Live

This evening’s Skype chat between David McGowran and me is archived here. It was intended to be a video chat, but the technology let us down and it is audio only.

Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer contributed a reference to an article published today on the website of The Guardian. I had not in fact seen it, but have now had a chance to read it. Absolutely fascinating: Cooperation between British spies and Gaddafi’s Libya revealed in official papers. 

Dr De Braeckeleer also mentioned the recent death of the Argentinian investigating judge Alberto Nisman. How does that relate to Lockerbie? Here is an excerpt from an article published today on the website of The Christian Science Monitor:

"Mr Nisman had been obsessively on the trail of the perpetrators of the July 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires for the past decade. He was tasked with the investigation by Nestor Kirchner, the former president and deceased husband of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Nisman died at home on Sunday night, shortly before he was to expound publicly on a political bombshell he laid on Argentina's public earlier this month, namely that President Kirchner had promised to cover up Iran's involvement in the 1994 terrorist attack, the worst in Argentina's history, in which 85 people died. (...)

"Mr Nisman took over in 2005.

"By 2006, he was claiming that senior Iranian officials were involved in the attack, including the country's former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. His key witness? Abolghasem Mesbahi, an alleged former Iranian intelligence officer, who has made a career of leveling accusations against Iran since his defection in 1996. He claimed that former President Carlos Menem was paid about $10 million to hide Iran's involvement.

"Mr Mesbahi has also insisted that Iran was behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland, instead of Muammar Qaddafi's Libya. A Libyan intelligence agent was ultimately found guilty of murder by a special tribunal; Mr Qaddafi's regime paid substantial reparations over the attack."

Air crash relatives hold 'emotional' Lockerbie meeting

This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It elaborates on the news report in The Herald that I reproduced on this blog yesterday. The programme in question is being broadcast for the first time tonight on BBC Alba at 8.30pm GMT.

Megrahi's 2001 appeal

[What follows is the text of a report published in The Scotsman on this date in 2001:]

Tne appeal of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi has been plagued by bitter in-fighting because members of his defence team have not been paid for their services.

The Scotsman has learned that Megrahi’s Libyan backers owe tens of thousands of pounds to the lawyers and spin doctors hired to bolster his case. Two members of the defence team have already resigned from the organising committee and one has even served a writ on Megrahi’s UK representative, claiming £30,000 in unpaid fees.

Megrahi was found guilty a year ago of mass murder for bombing New York-bound Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky in December 1988, killing all 259 passengers and crew and 11 people in Lockerbie.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he serve at least 20 years.

His co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was cleared. Megrahi’s appeal is due to start on Wednesday [23 January 2001].

Professor Alan Dershowitz, a leading American civil rights lawyer and one of the main legal brains behind the appeal, has admitted technical specialists and lawyers gathering vital evidence for the case have yet to be paid by the Libyans.

He said: "I’ve been a consultant to the law firm and (I know) some people have not been paid. Some of the experts have not been paid as well. Some of the people that have been retained to do some of the scientific research on the case have not been paid."

Professor Dershowitz’s comments came after David Wynn Morgan and Patrick Robertson, the London-based PR experts brought in to publicise the appeal, resigned from their posts over financial disputes.

Mr Robertson has served a writ on Stephen Mitchell, the representative for Needleman Treon, Megrahi’s London-based solicitors, for almost £30,000.

Last night, Mr Robertson, who has represented former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, confirmed he had served a writ on Mr Mitchell. He said: "I was forced to resign from the committee because I was not paid the agreed sum in my contract to assist the team. I was brought in to inform the media on the case, set up a website on the appeal and organise a seminar for the committee and I had agreed a sum to carry out these functions.

"Unfortunately I have been forced to issue a writ to retrieve the money owed to me, that is now public knowledge and it is a position I would rather not be in."

It has also emerged that Mr Wynn Morgan resigned from the appeal committee by sending an e-mail to his colleagues, stating he was no longer in a position to carry out his duties. The disagreement is said to have come to a head after a five-figure cheque paid to Mr Wynn Morgan’s PR firm was allegedly stopped by representatives acting for the Libyans. A source close to Mr Wynn Morgan said: "David did resign from the appeal committee and it is fair to suggest there was a financial disagreement but we are in a tricky position at the moment.

"All we can say is this ‘disagreement’ has since been resolved and we hope to contribute more to the team in the future, but it was the basis for our withdrawal from the appeal team."

An appeal team insider suggested the timing for the dispute could not be worse and the growing financial cloud hanging over the committee could undermine the Libyan’s case.

He said: "There is a growing unease in the team and many of the lawyers and specialists who have contributed to the appeal feel they have been used by the Libyans."

Megrahi’s appeal is being financed and co-ordinated by a consortium of Libyan lawyers headed by Tripoli-based academic Dr Ibrahim Legwell. [RB: Dr Legwell was not an academic (save for an honorary professorship) but a practising lawyer.]

In a bid to bolster the appeal case, the Libyan lawyers raised funds to recruit the services of some of the world’s leading legal minds and PR men.

The appeal is to be heard by Scotland’s highest-ranking judge, Lord Cullen, the Lord Justice-General, sitting with Lords Kirkwood, Osborne, Macfadyen and Nimmo Smith.

Professor Robert Black, QC, of Edinburgh University, who helped to pave the way for the Lockerbie trial to be held in a neutral country, believes that Megrahi should win his appeal.

He added: "I did not believe either of the accused should have been convicted, and it is pretty plain my view is that the appeal should succeed, simply because Megrahi should never have been convicted in the first place on the evidence that was led.

"I believe that conclusions drawn by the court, that Megrahi bought clothing on Malta on a day when he was known to be on the island, went against the weight of the evidence.

"These conclusions were absolutely vital to his conviction. But it is very difficult for five judges to turn round and say, ‘Our three very senior colleagues at the trial got it wrong and they were not entitled to convict.’ I’m not oozing confidence that my view will turn out to be correct."

RB: My lack of confidence in the outcome of the appeal was regrettably justified. The reasons for its failure are set out here, in the section headed “The Appeal”. My view that the trial court’s conclusion, that the clothes that surrounded the bomb were bought in Malta on a day when Megrahi was present on the island, was contrary to the weight of the evidence is shared by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission:

“… the Commission formed the view that there is no reasonable basis in the trial court's judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary's House took place on 7 December 1988. Although it was proved that the applicant was in Malta on several occasions in December 1988, in terms of the evidence 7 December was the only date on which he would have had the opportunity to purchase the items. The finding as to the date of purchase was therefore important to the trial court's conclusion that the applicant was the purchaser. Likewise, the trial court's conclusion that the applicant was the purchaser was important to the verdict against him. Because of these factors the Commission has reached the view that the requirements of the legal test [RB: that no reasonable court could have reached that conclusion on the evidence] may be satisfied in the applicant's case.”