Writer Alexander Cockburn infuriates US Lockerbie relatives

[In the 7 May 2001 edition of The Nation an article by Alexander Cockburn appeared entitled Justice Scotched in Lockerbie Trial. It is well worth reading. However, it infuriated certain American Lockerbie relatives. What follows are their letters of complaint and Alexander Cockburn’s response, as published in the edition of The Nation published on 18 June 2001:]

Alexander Cockburn should show respect for, and knowledge of, the facts. In his May 7 "Beat the Devil" column, "Justice Scotched in Lockerbie Trial," he shows neither.

He starts by praising a report critical of the trial presented to a conference of the Arab League by Hans Koechler, whom he describes as "a distinguished Austrian philosopher." Distinguished for what? Certainly not for his knowledge of Scottish law. Koechler's report is bizarre. He doesn't even seem to know that in a Scottish court the judges do not introduce evidence. Koechler proposes that there was a conspiracy to convict Libyans, which included the United States, Britain, the Scottish court and even the Libyans' defense lawyers. Koechler has wandered out onto the grassy knoll, and Cockburn is trotting right along behind him.

Koechler was "one of five international observers at the trial" appointed by Kofi Annan. He was a representative of something called the International Progress Organization. A second observer appointed from the same organization was Robert Thabit. Koechler acknowledges that he worked with Thabit. Shortly before his appointment as trial observer Thabit had been a lawyer for Libya's UN mission. Cockburn was either unaware of this or just forgot to mention it.

Cockburn characterizes the testimony of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci--who was supposed to identify one of the accused Libyans as the man who bought clothes found in the bomb bag in his shop--as so confused he could barely recognize the accused when he was pointed out in court. We would bet a considerable sum that Cockburn didn't see the Gauci testimony. We did. He was an excellent witness, clearly a man trying his best to accurately describe an event that had taken place over a decade earlier. Not only did he point out the accused Libyan in court, he picked him out of a lineup ("parade," the Scots call it) shortly before the trial opened. In 1991 Gauci picked out a photo of the accused as the man resembling the purchaser of the clothes from twelve photos shown him. Earlier, in 1989, Gauci assisted a police artist in preparing a sketch and in compiling an image of the purchaser. Both images looked strikingly like the accused Libyan looked at the time. This also seems to have escaped Cockburn's notice.

Cockburn says that prosecutors produced "a document" indicating that a bag from Air Malta was loaded onto Pan Am 103 at Frankfurt. Actually, there were two documents: They were the baggage-loading records from Frankfurt. Cockburn counters that there was "firm evidence from the defense" that all bags from the Air Malta flight had been accounted for. The defense presented no evidence at all on that point. It just said that all the bags had been accounted for, and even Cockburn must be aware that evidence is not what comes out of a lawyer's mouth.

That's an impressive number of errors for a short column. The Lockerbie trial was long and complicated, and there was a ton of evidence. Cockburn may know this, but he doesn't care. He appears to believe that if there is evil in the world, the United States is behind it. He can truly paraphrase "the terrible Lord Braxfield": "Let them bring me Americans, and I'll fiddle the facts."

DANIEL COHEN SUSAN COHEN

Parents of Theodora Cohen, murdered in the terrorist bombing of Pam Am 103

I don't expect to agree with every Nation article, but I do expect meticulously accurate facts. I can address only some of Alexander Cockburn's most flagrant falsifications here. He thinks "the prosecution's case absolutely depended on proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Megrahi was the man who bought the clothes" used in the lethal suitcase from a Maltese shop owner. He also claims that "in nineteen separate statements to police prior to the trial the shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, had failed to make a positive identification of Megrahi" and that "Gauci was asked five times if he recognized anyone in the courtroom. No answer. Finally, the exasperated prosecutor pointed [out the accused].... 'the best that Gauci could do was to mumble that 'he resembled him.'"

Gauci did not mumble when he identified Megrahi--the first time he was asked to do so in court. The only number five that can reliably be associated with Megrahi is the number 5 he wore in the police lineup in April 1999 when Gauci pointed him out as the man who came into his shop in December 1988. The number nineteen is the number of photographs Gauci was initially asked to look at on September 14, 1999, in police headquarters in Floriana, Malta. As for the correct number of times Gauci actually met with police and looked at photographs, according to the Opinion of the Court, it seems to be six.

What is Cockburn's source? My sources for the facts are: the transcript of the testimony Gauci gave on July 11, 2000; the Opinion of the Court delivered by Lord Sutherland on January 31, 2001; my transcribed remarks of a speech Alistair Campbell, QC, gave when he spoke to the US families in Baltimore on March 5, 2001, during the posttrial briefings of the crown team; and the recollections of other family members who heard that testimony.

Cockburn seems unaware that the prosecution's case against Megrahi was also based on the coded passport issued to him by the Libyan Security Service, the ESO, for which Megrahi worked; the tickets for every flight he took; the records of every hotel he stayed at in Malta in December 1988. Nor does he seem aware that the prosecution team was able to use Megrahi's own words against him by playing the film interview he gave to Pierre Salinger in 1991, in which he lied about his ESO membership and denied staying in the Holiday Inn, Malta, December 20, 1988. Megrahi used his false passport five times in 1987. The next time he used it was December 20-21, 1988, to travel to and from Malta and Tripoli. He never used it again.

I have a passionate need to see justice done in the murder of my husband, Tony Hawkins, and 269 other souls. The evidence as revealed in the Lockerbie trial has convinced me that: 1. The debris trail from Lockerbie leads to Libya; 2. These two men are guilty of assembling the bomb and starting it on its journey; 3. They were not mere soldiers taking the rap for the higher-ups; 4. That of the two, Megrahi was clearly in charge of this operation, Fhimah providing the necessary assistance and access to Air Malta; 5. They clearly did not act on their own without the complete assistance and approval of the Libyan government, i.e., Qaddafi.

What was incomprehensible was not the guilty verdict but the not guilty verdict. It should have been not proven. The case against Fhimah was not as strong as that against Megrahi. I don't know who Cockburn believes to be responsible for this act of terrorism, but he shouldn't use his column to create confusion about this case or to increase the suffering of the families who are still fighting for justice for the people they love.

HELEN ENGELHARDT

Editor, Truth Quest (newsletter published by The Victims of Pan Am Flight 103)

COCKBURN REPLIES

For years the Cohens described the Scottish media in extremely unflattering terms, sending multiple faxes to editors if they even suspected a publication was going to challenge "the official version." Thus, in July 1991, they protested the possible inclusion of the Syrian flag among those of other Gulf War coalition members at a Washington victory parade, on the grounds that the Syrian government had murdered their daughter (the favored line of official US leakers at that time). When Washington decided to shift the blame to Libya they became no less clamant in their denunciations of Qaddafi and indeed of anyone, like distinguished Scottish law professor Robert Black, who attempted to negotiate an agreement under which the two Libyans could stand trial in a neutral country. Certainly, the group of US relatives suing Libya for some $4 billion as responsible for the bombing has every reason to dislike any questioning of the verdict.

Hans Koechler is indeed a distinguished Austrian philosopher who by now probably knows a lot more about Scottish law than the Cohens. Those sitting through the entire trial in Zeist, Holland (which the Cohens, contrary to their misleading insinuation, attended a relatively sparse number of times), recall that Koechler was present for almost the entire proceedings. Thus Koechler may know, as the Cohens do not, that while Scottish judges cannot introduce evidence, they can rule on what evidence is or is not admitted.

Less prejudiced critics might pause to reflect that, since they had brought the indictments, there obviously was a conspiracy by the US and British governments to convict the Libyans. Collusion in such an agreement by the judges and the defense, William Taylor QC (counsel for Megrahi), can only be inferred, but it is not absurd for Koechler to make that inference. The judges found Megrahi guilty solely on the basis of some very shaky circumstantial evidence, and the normally tigerish Taylor, in the opinion of many legal observers, put up an astonishingly feeble performance in his crucial cross-examination of Tony Gauci, the only witness who could link Megrahi to the suitcase bomb. Nevertheless, Gauci was hardly "an excellent witness." Engelhardt has no basis in claiming only six meetings between police and Gauci, who was interviewed by innumerable Scottish, US and Maltese law enforcement groups, as well as prosecution and defense lawyers. On a reasonable count, the number of such interviews goes well into the double digits. The judges themselves admitted in their verdict, "On the matter of identification of the first accused, there are undoubtedly problems," and "We accept of course that he never made what could be described as an absolutely positive identification."

In fact, when Gauci gave evidence on July 11 last year, he was asked several times by the crown counsel if he could identify anyone in the court as the man who had bought the clothes from his shop that were later found in the suitcase containing the bomb. He failed to do so, and only when asked if the person sitting next to the policeman in the dock was the man in question did he grudgingly reply: "He resembles him a lot." On an earlier occasion, when shown a photograph of Mohammed Abu Talb, a Palestinian terrorist whom the defense contended was the real bomber, Gauci used almost the same words, declaring, according to his brother, that Talb "resembles" the clothes buyer "a lot." Gauci's identification of Megrahi at the identity parade just before the opening of the trial was with the words "not exactly the man I saw in the shop. Ten years ago I saw him, but the man who look [sic] a little bit like is the number 5" (Megrahi).

It is highly likely that the evidence of identification of Megrahi, its unsatisfactory nature and the comments by the trial judges will bulk large in the appeal this coming fall. However Gauci's testimony may have later appeared in a transcript or on a video recording, two relatives who were physically present at the courtroom testimony have confided that they found Gauci far from confident in his identification.

Whether Megrahi had a false passport, or stayed in Maltese hotels, or was there on December 20-21, 1988, is irrelevant--grassy knoll territory, if you will. Is there evidence that links him to the bomb? That's the sole pertinent issue. That's why Gauci's testimony is crucial. As I noted above, even the judges admitted that identification was squishy. As for Fhimah, the judges would doubtless have preferred to opt for a "not proven" verdict, but there was no evidence of any sort against him, apart from testimony of the prosecution's supergrass Giaka, who was on the CIA's payroll before, during and after the bombing, but who failed to mention the alleged role of Megrahi and Fhimah in the bombing to his paymasters until 1991. Even the judges called him a liar. The prosecution described Fhimah in indictments and thereafter, up until almost the end of the trial, as a Libyan intelligence agent, then dropped the accusation.

As far as the baggage is concerned, the prosecution's sole achievement was to demonstrate that it was theoretically possible for a bag from the Air Malta flight to have found its way onto the Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to London that connected to Flight 103. The fact remains that there is no conclusive evidence that this transfer occurred. When Granada TV broadcast a documentary asserting such a transfer as a fact, Air Malta sued and extracted damages.

ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Fragments of truth

[The Forensic Institute in Glasgow is hosting this year’s FORREST conference. On the Institute’s website it is described as follows:]

FORensic RESearch and Teaching (FORREST) is an annual international academic conference now in its eleventh year, of interest to academics, lawyers, law enforcement, and forensic practitioners, organised by The Forensic Institute Research Network (FIRN) in the UK.

FORREST 2015 will be held in Glasgow, UK, from 30th June to 2nd July 2015.

The purpose of FORREST is to present the latest and most relevant work in forensic research and teaching. It is the only conference to deal specifically with the ever-increasing topic of forensic education. Reviews, case studies, applications, and research programmes are delivered by lectures and workshops that allow every delegate to find and explore something of interest and value to them. The conference also provides excellent opportunities for informal networking and sharing of ideas with a social programme and conference dinner.

[Details of speakers and booking information are set out here. The paper that I shall be delivering on 2 July is described as follows:]

The Lockerbie bombing: fragments of truth

The conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi of the murder of the 270 people who died aboard Pan Am flight 103 was based entirely upon circumstantial evidence. This paper considers that evidence, how it was obtained, how it has been undermined and how other available evidence was withheld.

The case was flaky

[What follows is excerpted from an article published in The Observer on this date in 2007:]

The case of the only man found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, Britain's biggest terrorist outrage that killed 270 people, could be reopened after fresh evidence that his conviction was based on unreliable evidence.

If the appeal is successful, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi could walk free.

Senior legal and intelligence officials have told The Observer that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission will conclude that the conviction of al-Megrahi is unsafe and that he may have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

The commission's verdict follows a three-year inquiry that examined new evidence submitted by Megrahi's legal team. They registered concern over the testimony of expert witnesses, contradictory forensic evidence and vital material not aired at the trial.

They say in their 500-page report that the new evidence casts reasonable doubt on the verdict that Megrahi was responsible for the bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 four days before Christmas 1988.

Sources close to the commission, an independent body made up of senior police and legal figures set up to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice, said 'hundreds' of inconsistencies have been uncovered in the crown's case. Megrahi, 54, received a life sentence in 2001 for plotting and carrying out what was then the world's worst terrorist atrocity following a trial costing £80m at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. Megrahi has always insisted he was innocent. The development suggests that the perpetrators responsible for blowing up the airliner over Lockerbie might remain free almost 20 years after the attack.

The commission will refer the case to the High Court in Edinburgh on appeal in 10 days' time, where it is expected that the conviction will either be quashed or that Megrahi could face a retrial. Although the court has the power to uphold Megrahi's conviction, sources believe the weight of evidence examined by the commission suggest this is unlikely.

Major concerns with the crown's case include:

· Credibility of the key forensic scientists used by the prosecution during Megrahi's trial.

· Inconsistencies of statements made by the Maltese shopkeeper who allegedly sold Megrahi clothes found scattered around Lockerbie.

· New evidence not presented at the trial pointed away from Libyan involvement and towards Palestinian terrorists as those responsible for the atrocity.

Megrahi has served seven years in British custody. During sentencing he was told he must serve at least 27 years before being considered for release.

Politically the ramifications of the commission's decision are enormous, posing questions for both British investigators and the Scottish judicial system. In addition, the decision will add succour to the theories that Megrahi was framed for a crime he never committed.

Named in a 400-page report of evidence collated by Megrahi's seven-strong legal team are those suspected of carrying out the attack. Among them is Mohammed Abu Talb, a convicted Palestinian terrorist and initial suspect for the Lockerbie bombing. He was a member of the Syrian-led Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, a terrorist group backed by Iranian funding. The claims will raise the political stakes at a sensitive time in relations between the West and Iran.

Following Megrahi's trial, a number of legal observers expressed unease over the 'circumstantial' nature of the case against the Libyan intelligence officer.

A legal source who has seen the evidence collated by Megrahi's team said: 'The case was flaky and you only had to shake it a bit for it to start falling apart. A steamroller has been taken to it'.

[An accompanying article in The Observer can be read here; and a somewhat similar one in the same day’s Mail on Sunday can be read here.]

Co-owner of MEBO testifies at Lockerbie trial

[On this date in 2000, [Erwin] Meister, co-owner with Edwin Bollier of the Swiss company MEBO, gave evidence at the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist. What follows is taken from a report on that date on the BBC News website:]

The owner of the firm which made the timer allegedly used in the Lockerbie bomb says he did business with one of the men accused of the atrocity.

At the Scottish court in the Netherlands, [Erwin] Meister said he recognised Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi from business dealings which took place in Libya and Zurich prior to the bombing.

He alleged that his Swiss-based company, MEBO, received an "urgent" order for timers from the Libyan army just a few weeks before the explosion of Pan Am 103 which saw the death of all on board.

At that time the firm had been doing regular business with the Libyans, supplying radio and communications equipment and a batch of 20 of its own design "MST-13" electronic timers in 1985.

But Mr Meister told the court that when the urgent order came, MEBO did not have the right materials to produce its own type in time.

Instead the company purchased Olympus timers for delivery to Libya by Mr Meister's business partner Edwin Bollier.

Mr Bollier returned from his trip - via Malta - on the eve of the Lockerbie bombing - still with the timers which the Libyans had returned as unsuitable. [RB: This is not correct. Although he had expected to fly back to Zurich via Malta, Bollier was able to get a direct flight from Tripoli to Zurich: see From Zurich to Malta to Tripoli to Malta to… .]

But then in the first fortnight of January 1989, Mr Bollier looked again at the batch of Olympus timers which had been left on a shelf in the MEBO offices in Zurich since his return the night before the Lockerbie bombing.

Mr Meister explained: "Mr Bollier called me and said: 'Look what I've discovered'. He had in his hand one of the Olympus timers. He asked me to look at it. It was programmed for 7.30pm and the day of the week was a Wednesday."

The Lockerbie explosion in fact occurred shortly after 1900 GMT on Wednesday 21 December, 1988. (...)

The court has already heard that a radio-cassette recorder packed with Semtex attached to an "MST-13" was placed in a suitcase on a Frankfurt-bound flight from Luqa Airport, Malta.

From Frankfurt it was placed aboard Pan Am Flight 103 to Heathrow, exploding on the plane's next leg, from Heathrow to New York, above Lockerbie.

Mr Meister, 62, had told Alan Turnbull QC, prosecuting, that MEBO first established commercial contacts with the Libyan army in about 1980.

He was asked how business was conducted with the Libyans: "It was not like the army purchasing offices in the west," he replied. "We moved from one contact to another." (...)

Mr Meister named his contacts as a communications expert called Ezzadin Hinshiri and another man named Said Rashid - both identified in the Lockerbie indictment as a link between MEBO and the two accused men in obtaining electronic timers.

And he said that on several occasions, in Tripoli and once in Zurich, he met a man called Abdelbaset - and he is one of the men in dock. (...)

Mr Meister said he recalled hearing about the Lockerbie bombing from television reports and he had discussed the tragedy with Mr Bollier.

Then in 1990, Mr Meister told the court, Scottish police first visited MEBO headquarters in the Novapark Hotel in Zurich, requesting an interview about the production of "MST-13" timers and the Pan Am tragedy.

Tom Thurman "identifies" the dodgy timer fragment

[It was on this date twenty-five years ago that the FBI’s James ‘Tom’ Thurman, so he says, identified the fragment of circuit board PT/35b as coming from a MST-13 timer manufactured by the Swiss company MEBO. The circumstances are narrated in chapter 4 of John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury, especially at pages 62 to 66. The account that follows is taken from a long article entitled Thurman’s Photo Quest on Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide:]

What we have in Thurman's case, with or without the actual piece of evidence, was the crucial identification. And one point that's consistent throughout is that he held a photo only when he found the match. The question at hand is how long it took him to find it and to determine its meaning vis-a-vis who carried out the bombing.

Tom Gets a Green Light

On the 10th of January 1990 new Senior Investigating Officer Stuart Henderson (who replaced John Orr) presented at a meeting of investigators in the UK. He did not openly mention the circuit board fragment PT/35(b), an amazing find UK investigators had been puzzling over for four months. But off to the side, he told FBI chief investigator Richard Marquise about it, Marquise says in his 2006 book SCOTBOM.  [p58] He expressed interest in helping find a match, but Henderson insisted on going it alone. “This decision cost us six months,” writes Marquise.

It was at a later conference in Virginia, on 11 June, when Marquise relates how the Scots finally made their puzzlement known to all, having blindly checked 55 companies to no avail. Given the opening, special Agent Thurman “approached Henderson and asked if he could take photographs of PT-35 and attempt to identify it. Henderson, who believed the Scots had done all they could do, agreed.” [p60] This passage is (...) rather ambiguous. It seems to read that Thurman, in Arlington, was allowed to snap a pic of evidence SIO Henderson had there with him. Then perhaps it means he took some of the prints they had brought.

Either way, he walked away with a picture or pictures of this crucial and curious evidence, a half-inch square, perfectly readable, mammoth of implausibility. The "forensic explosives expert" didn't balk at it, just ran with it. Or crawled, as he suggests.

"Months, Literally" or 2-4 Days?

A 1991 Miami Herald article, based on interview with Thurman, reported that he had “meticulously compared the picture of the fragment to hundreds of other devices,” a lengthy-sounding process. Affirming this, Thurman himself told the adoring program Air Crash Investigation in 2008:

“I spent, uh, months, literally, looking through all about the files of the FBI on other examinations that we had, uh, conducted over many many many years. […] After a period I just ran out of leads. And at that point I said, okay now we need to go outside the physical FBI laboratory.”

And it was there, in a CIA facility, that he found the long-sought answer.

But Marquise said “what Thurman did yielded fruit within two days.[…] Henderson and his colleagues were on an airplane headed back to Scotland” when Thurman set to work. They had barely settled back in at home before his efforts “would turn Henderson around quicker than he ever imagined,” putting him back stateside, along with electronics fiend Alan Feraday, within 24 hours of the discovery. [p60]

Further evidence against Thurman’s "months" claim is his own well-memorized “day that I made the identification,” recalling it as one would a wedding anniversary: June 15 1990. He had four days tops to get this grueling season of cross-checking out of the way after the 11 June conference (perhaps a multi-day event) where Marquise has him first learning of the thing.

Who He Ran To

What Thurman did, Marquise sums up, is know where to look. He took the photo to a CIA explosives and timers expert code-named John Scott Orkin (real name unknown - he testified under this name at Camp Zeist). [p60] Thurman mentions him only as an unnamed "contact" in the 2008 ACI interview.  From the vast photo files on hand, "Orkin" helped locate an obvious fit with the blow-up of PT/35(b). If you were Tom Thurman and knew about John Orkin, would you waste even one afternoon scrounging in the FBI's files, or go right to him?

Nothing I've seen specifies this match-up was achieved in only one visit on a single day, but that makes the most sense, as does starting right there. That would give us no more than "hours, literally" to describe the search duration. And either way we're at the point of days at most.

The matching circuit board was found in a timer confiscated in the African nation Togo in 1986. This device, assembled in a small plastic case, was physically available for Thurman to look at. He was given permission to take it apart and examine the main board inside. Upon confirming again the obvious similarities, “within a few minutes, literally, I started getting cold chills,” he told Air Crash Investigation.  He's also described as declaring "I have you now!" [p60] and other variations. In a 2010 interview, he said "I could not believe it under any circumstances, and it was there."

That he got these chills only after getting access to the CIA’s special stores is noteworthy, and the Agency is right to claim much of the credit, as they have in places. An AFIO newsletter from just after the Zeist verdict purred that “the CIA’s most important contribution in helping secure the conviction” was “when a CIA engineer was able to identify the timer […] shifting the focus of the probe from a Palestinian terrorist group to Libya.”  (This report's oblique reference to the CIA's less brilliant offering, Giaka, is also worth a read.)

As the overall story tells it, this was clearly a collaborative CIA-FBI effort, via Thurman and "Orkin", that neither side can claim sole credit for. And without this coming together, we're to infer, the naming of this planted piece of Libyan black magic would be delayed or impossible for both Scottish and American investigators. The power of cooperation, between intelligence and law enforcement, and across the Atlantic - a running theme of the 103 investigation - is nicely illustrated here.

[Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer is currently engaged on his PT35B blog in a meticulous exploration of all the evidence about the identification of this fragment.]

A travesty perpetrated by a credulous court

[What follows is excerpted from an article published on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm on this date in 2011:]

Claims given to selected media by the Crown Office that a retrial of acquitted Pan Am 103 co-accused Lhamin Khalifa Fhimah is the "top priority" of their double jeopardy unit have been dismissed as "public relations puffery" by Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the unique Zeist trial of Fhimah and Abdelbaset Al Megrahi.

The newly appointed Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland, has also briefed sections of the media about raising a prosecution against Libyan Leader Colonel Gadaffi, despite the fact that the entire Lockerbie trial arrangement was brokered under the auspices of the United Nations under an internationally agreed legal arrangement which did not include the possibility of proceedings against Gadaffi.

Professor Black, who earlier this year highlighted the legal errors contained in the former Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini’s advice to the Scottish Government over the case has said that "the evidence does not exist" to try Fhimah.

"There will be no re-trial of Lhamin Fhimah or any trial of Colonel Gaddafi for the bombing of Pan Am 103," Professor Black said this morning.

"The Crown Office is perfectly well aware that the evidence simply does not exist to make a conviction a realistic prospect; and that the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi on the evidence led at Zeist was a travesty perpetrated by a credulous court which has long since been exposed, by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission amongst many others."

In February this year Black and members of the Justice for Megrahi Committee said the "misinformation" promulgated by the Crown Office was "symptomatic of a culture of self interest where openness and accountability is seen as threatening that interest."

Edinburgh talk on Lockerbie evidence

Dr Morag Kerr, author of Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies is giving a presentation on the "suitcase jigsaw" aspect of the Lockerbie evidence on Wednesday 17 June in Edinburgh.  The venue is The Edinburgh South Yes Hub and Cafe, 1-2 Liberton Dams, EH16 6AJ, and the time is 7 pm till 9 pm.

http://yescafeedinburghsouth.weebly.com/events-calendar.html

The illustrated talk should last about 40 to 45 minutes, after which there will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

A kernel of morality

[What follows is an excerpt from a speech delivered by Nelson Mandela on 13 June 1999, his third-last day as President of South Africa:]

There must be a kernel of morality also to international behaviour. Of course, nations must place their own interests high on the list of considerations informing their international relations. But the amorality which decrees that might is right can not be the basis on which the world conducts itself in the next century.

It was pure expediency to call on democratic South Africa to turn its back on Libya and Qaddafi, who had assisted us in obtaining democracy at a time when those who now made that call were the friends of the enemies of democracy in South Africa.

Had we heeded those demands, we would have betrayed the very values and attitudes that allowed us as a nation to have adversaries sitting down and negotiating in a spirit of compromise. It would have meant denying that the South African experience could be a model and example for international behaviour.

In many ways, our modest contribution to resolving the Lockerbie issue will remain a highlight of the international aspects of our Presidency. No one can deny that the friendship and trust between South Africa and Libya played a significant part in arriving at this solution. If that be so, it vindicates our view that talking to one another and searching for peaceful solutions remain the surest way to resolve differences and advance peace and progress in the world.

We look forward with joy and anticipation to the full re-entry of Libya into the affairs of our continent and the world.

Slalom shirt as dodgy as the timer fragment?

[What follows is taken from an article published on this date in 2011 in the Scottish edition of the Sunday Express:]

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was convicted on the basis that he bought clothes from Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, including a grey men’s Slalom shirt. The clothing was then packed in a suitcase with the bomb that brought down Pan Am 103, killing 270 on December 21, 1988.

The charred remains of the shirt were crucial to the prosecution, as a forensic scientist found a piece of circuit board from the bomb embedded in the collar which first led investigators to Libya, and ultimately Megrahi.

However, it has now emerged that clothing manufacturers in Malta told Scottish police in January 1990 that the shirt recovered from the crash site was in fact a boy’s size.

Campaigners have stepped up calls for an inquiry after the claims surfaced in a documentary broadcast on Thursday by Arab TV network Al Jazeera but seen by only a handful of Scottish viewers.

In it, Scotland’s former Lord Advocate also accepted that Gauci, the main prosecution witness, was paid $2million to give evidence against Megrahi.

Scottish private investigator George Thomson tracked down shirt manufacturers Tonio Caruana and Godwin Navarro in Malta. They recalled being shown a fragment of shirt by DC John Crawford and telling him, independently of each other, that it was a boy’s shirt.

Speaking to the Sunday Express yesterday, Mr Navarro, 76, said: “I stand by my statement. I believe it is a boy’s shirt because of the size of the pocket and the width of the placket, where the button holes are.”

Retired Strathclyde Police superintendent Iain McKie, now a campaigner against miscarriages of justice, said: “The fact that the witnesses say it was a boy’s shirt and not an adult shirt seems to me quite critical.”

He said that if it was a boy’s shirt, then it cannot be the same one purchased from Gauci by the man he later identified as Megrahi – destroying the “evidence chain”.

Supt McKie said the latest claims added weight to calls for the Scottish Government to set up an independent inquiry into Megrahi’s conviction.

He added: “The whole chain of evidence has been totally and utterly shattered. It is looking more and more like the police came to a conclusion and then looked for evidence.”

The programme, Lockerbie: The Pan Am Bomber, also alleged that a piece of the shirt had been altered, as it is clearly a different shape in two police photographs. (...)

[George Thomson] said: “In January 1990 they realise that what they have is a fragment of a boy’s shirt, while Gauci is saying he sold a gents’ shirt.

“The reason for people saying this is mainly down to the size of the pocket and lo and behold the next thing a fragment of the pocket has been removed.”