Restoration of UK diplomatic relations with Libya

On this date in 1999, three months after the arrival of Megrahi and Fhimah at Zeist, diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya were restored, having been broken off in April 1984 following the shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher. The announcement was made in the House of Commons by the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook. Mr Cook’s statement is well worth reading, as are the contributions to the debate that followed, particularly those of Tam Dalyell and Sir Teddy Taylor.

System too rigid for Lockerbie justice

[This is the headline over a letter from Thomas Crooks published in today’s edition of The Scotsman.  It reads as follows:]

Predictably, three of Scotland’s judges rejected the contention of the families of the Lockerbie victims that they should be allowed to appeal the conviction of Abdelbaset al Megrahi.

Understandably, the legal establishment bristles with discomfort at the prospect of the conviction being exposed to further scrutiny, if the Scottish Cases Criminal Review Commission (SCCRC) refers the case back to the Court of Appeal. Given the murderous chaos that is tearing Libya apart, the SCCRC may not get the necessary instructions regarding an appeal from Megrahi’s family – hence the contention of the families of the victims that they should be allowed to appeal on behalf of Megrahi.

At stake here is the very concept of justice. Megrahi’s conviction is pervasively flawed.

The Crown’s “star” witness, the Maltese shopkeeper, was made aware of the “Reward for Justice” programme, created by the American Justice Department to elicit information that would lead to a conviction.

The “star” witness knew that evidence that would exonerate Megrahi would not yield a “reward”.

That fact alone is enough to shred his credibility as a witness and therefore the credibility of the Crown’s case against Megrahi.

Lord Carloway, one of the judges who ruled that the families could not pursue an appeal, explained the court’s decision: the law “was not designed to give relatives of victims a right to proceed in an appeal for their own or the public interest”.

In mature, sophisticated jurisdictions, “the law is designed” to facilitate 
justice.

If the “design” has the effect of impeding that objective, a mature judiciary would modify the “design” to accommodate justice. In bowing to the “design” of the law by declaring that the families should not be allowed to appeal on Megrahi’s behalf, Scotland’s judges displayed an immature capacity for rigid inflexibility – and thereby ensured that any further exposure of the “merits” of the Crown’s case was conveniently, and perhaps permanently, delayed.

Dr Jim Swire tests airport security -- it fails

[What follows is the text of an article published in the Los Angeles Times on this date twenty-five years ago:]

Jim Swire hardly looked like a man with a bomb as he opened his suitcase for a security check at Heathrow Airport before boarding a flight to New York.

Swire was dressed in a conservative gray suit and, as he has every day for the past 18 months, he wore a blue lapel button bearing the words: "Pan Am 103. The Truth Must Be Known."

His 23-year-old daughter, Flora, and 269 other people were killed when Pan American Flight 103 was blown up by a terrorist bomb over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on Dec 21, 1988.

Unlikely as it might seem, Swire was carrying a device almost identical to the terrorist bomb as he arrived at Heathrow on May 18 to board British Airways Flight 177 for New York, where he planned to meet relatives of American victims of the disaster. The security check at Heathrow failed to turn it up.

"You simply cannot imagine how depressing it was flying over the Atlantic knowing that there could easily be a bomb in the cargo hold below," Swire said in an interview this week. He knew, of course, that his hidden device was not real. Like the terrorists', his was in a cassette-recorder. The only difference was that theirs was packed with Semtex, a plastic explosive that smells like the almond confection marzipan, and his contained real marzipan.

Swire made public the success of his dramatic demonstration this week when he held a press conference and a series of meetings with officials in London.

His experiment has refocused public attention on the Lockerbie incident. It has touched off new controversy, reawakened the emotions of the victims' relatives and added to the fears of the flying public that international airport safety has not improved significantly since the Lockerbie disaster.

"This was not a prank," Swire said. "It was a serious experiment, and unfortunately it succeeded. Here, 18 months after Lockerbie, one can take an identical device through security. I find that very depressing."

Swire's suitcase was, in fact, examined before he was permitted to board his flight. A security guard looked carefully at the cassette-recorder, which was just like the one described in a warning by West German intelligence several weeks before the Lockerbie disaster, complete with pressure-gauge timer, extra batteries and a dummy detonator.

The doctor had deliberately exposed part of the marzipan, which resembles Semtex, but the guard asked only if the batteries had been removed. When Swire assured him that they had, he was waved through. After disclosing his airport trickery, Swire met with Cecil Parkinson, the secretary of state for transport, and Parkinson announced that a new investigation into airport security lapses will be undertaken.

Swire, who heads a group of victims' relatives called the UK Families Group, said he is still skeptical that the group will realize its goal of getting at the truth behind the bombing.

In their exhaustive search for clues that could lead them to the Lockerbie terrorists, investigators have uncovered a wealth of detail. They have traced clothing in the suitcase that contained the bomb to a manufacturer in Malta, who sold it a month before the bombing to a suspect now in custody in Sweden on other bombing charges. [RB: This is, of course, a reference to Abu Talb.]

Scottish investigators say that other evidence has significantly narrowed the list of suspects, among them members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [-General Command]. But they say there is not enough evidence to make arrests.

Last week, Scottish authorities announced that a public hearing into the Lockerbie case will begin Oct 1 in the town of Dumfries. Swire said that he and the other relatives of victims are impressed with the thoroughness of the investigation so far, but he criticized the authorities for delaying the public hearing for almost two years.

"I'll be a lot more impressed," he said, "when the criminals who did this are brought to justice."

This week, Swire had to face an inquiry of his own. He was called before investigators at Heathrow Airport who are considering filing criminal charges against him for the marzipan incident.

Swire said he had considered his plan "very, very carefully" and took pains not to alert any passengers and not to put the cassette-recorder in his carry-on luggage, where it might have led to a midair recall of the flight.

"Everybody is different in how they cope with their grief," he said. "Keeping a high profile, as I have, is my way of coping with my grief. And that will not go away."

Investigation badly off the rails from earliest weeks

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr Morag Kerr, published on page 25 of today’s edition of The National:]

While in principle I have some sympathy with the High Court’s view that relatives of the victim should not be permitted to appeal a murder conviction, the recent ruling against the relatives of some of the Lockerbie victims would be less concerning if the Lord Advocate and the Crown Office had not spent the last five years choking off every attempt to pursue other avenues, insisting that an appeal application by these very people was the only proper way to pursue their concerns (Lockerbie families lose bid to appeal al-Megrahi verdict, The National, July 4).

In my opinion the Crown Office now knows perfectly well that the original Lockerbie investigation was badly off the rails from the earliest weeks. Conclusive evidence showing the bomb to have been introduced at Heathrow was ignored, leading to the two-year pursuit of a red herring down the blind alley that led to Malta airport and the unfortunate Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. I explain this clearly in my book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? (Matador 2013), which was submitted to the SCCRC by the legal team as part of the appeal application. Make no mistake, this new analysis of the forensic evidence proves Megrahi’s innocence beyond doubt

1988: Iran Air 655 - Casus Belli Behind Lockerbie Bombing?

This is the headline over an article by Caustic Logic which was originally published in March 2010 but which was re-published yesterday to mark the twenty-seventh anniversary of the shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes. It is the clearest treatment of which I am aware of the evidence (and there’s quite a lot of it) supporting the thesis that the bombing of Pan Am 103 was an Iranian-financed operation motivated by desire for revenge for the destruction of Iran Air 655, an operation in which Libya had no, or at most peripheral, involvement.   

Questions still need answering

[This is the headline over an editorial in today’s edition of the Morning Star. It reads as follows:]

Yesterday’s ruling by the Appeal Court in Edinburgh against Lockerbie family survivors’ bid to challenge the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi cannot be the last word.

Lord Justice Clerk Lord Carloway ruled that the law was “not designed to give relatives of victims a right to proceed in an appeal for their own or the public interest.”

But, if so, there has to be another mechanism to deliver justice not only to Megrahi’s family but also the relatives of all 270 people murdered on December 21 1988 when a bomb blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

The Morning Star has made no secret of its longstanding disquiet over the legal charade that led to the Libyan security official’s conviction.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the casualties, has been relentless in his efforts to discover the truth, meeting the scapegoat before he died and continuing to campaign after Megrahi’s death.

He has refused to be fobbed off by official opacity and convenient but clearly flawed legal proceedings.

US and British authorities have offered differing explanations of how Flight 103 met its fate.

Their first thesis was that the atrocity was a revenge attack masterminded by elements within the theocratic regime in Tehran in response to the shooting down by a US warship of an Iranian civilian passenger plane over the Persian Gulf in July 1988, killing all 290 people on board.

The crime was said to have been contracted out to a Palestinian splinter group, but this theory, proclaimed with great authority, fizzled out in the run-up to the first Iraq war in 1990.

When Washington began building a coalition to oppose Saddam Hussein’s invasion and planned annexation of Kuwait, Iran was persuaded to jump on board.

In contrast, Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi threw his country’s support behind Iraq.

Tripoli rapidly filled the scapegoat pigeonhole vacated by Iran, with US “intelligence” agents concocting an implausible scenario that involved Megrahi and other Libyan officials placing a bomb on Flight 103 in Malta.

The real conspiracy, that undertaken by US spooks, included bribery of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci to testify that he remembered Megrahi buying clothing in his shop shortly before the flight, fragments of which were discovered in the wreckage around Lockerbie.

The approach of most British MPs to what is self-evidently a miscarriage of justice has been one of indifference.

Their attitude reflects a viewpoint that the key players — victims and supposed perpetrator — are all dead, so move on.

Some point out that Gadaffi stumped up $2.5 billion in compensation for the families of those killed in the bombing, but this ignores the fact that this payment was a quid quo pro for the US and its allies dropping their embargo of Libya and resuming trade and investment links.

It was as cynical a payoff as the CIA agents’ sweetener to their Maltese “witness.”

Dr Swire is as intent as ever on finding out what really happened, pointing out last year that his daughter “was brutally murdered in a situation where it’s clear that the national protection security services had abysmally failed.

“Do you not think that even 25 years later you might want to feel that you had a status in discovering the truth about who murdered her and why she was not protected?”

Whatever the finer points of interpretation over the design of current law, too many questions still remain over Lockerbie for the grass to be allowed to grow over this inquiry.

Lockerbie families lose bid to appeal al-Megrahi verdict

[What follows is excerpted from a report in today’s edition of The National. It provides further details about the arguments advanced during yesterday’s hearing on the SCCRC’s Megrahi petition:]

An attempt to appeal the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi by families of those who died in the Lockerbie bombing has failed.

Judges at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh said legally the bid had to be rejected as the families could not be considered to have a “legitimate interest” in the appeal. (...)

Yesterday’s hearing came about after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which is looking at Megrahi’s conviction, asked the Appeal Court in Edinburgh for guidance on whether members of the victims’ families can take forward an appeal.

Previous rulings mean a post mortem appeal can only be requested by the executor of a dead person’s estate or their next of kin.

The panel of three judges had heard legal arguments from Ailsa Carmichael QC on behalf of the SCCRC and Gordon Jackson QC for the relatives.

Carmichael told the court the SCCRC needed to determine at an early stage if relatives of victims were considered to be a “person with a legitimate interest to pursue an appeal”.

This, Carmichael said, was necessary to know before the SCCRC could decide to refer the case back to the High Court for a third appeal.

She said: “It would be a waste of public funds for the [SCCRC] to move into a full consideration of whether to make a reference and carry out all the investigations that would be required in order to take that decision if they have a reasonable apprehension as to whether there will be anybody to pick up an appeal in the event a reference was made.”

Jackson said it wrong to worry about the public funds given all the work that has already gone into the case.

He said: “If [the families] believe, as they do, that a miscarriage of justice has happened and there has been a wrongful conviction, as they do believe, in the case of the death of their relative then that in my submission is a legitimate interest.”

Delivering his report yesterday, the Lord Justice Clerk Lord Carloway, sitting with Lord Brodie and Lady Dorrian said the law was “not designed to give relatives of victims a right to proceed in an appeal for their own or the public interest” and the relatives of those who died could not be considered to have a “legitimate interest”.

Dr Jim Swire and the Reverend John Mosey, who both lost relatives in the Lockerbie bombing stood with Aamer Anwar, the solicitor for the Megrahi family and 26 British relatives of Lockerbie victims, to deliver a statement outside the court.

Anwar said: “It is regularly claimed that we place victims at the heart of our justice system.

“So why should the families of murder victims not have a legitimate interest in seeking to overturn the wrongful conviction of a person convicted of the murder of their loved ones? Justice does not die with the accused in this case Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

“Despite 26 long years since the Lockerbie bombing the families will not give up their fight for justice and the truth.”

Anwar said that the legal battle was not concluded, as he remains instructed by the family of al-Megrahi who seek to overturn the conviction. (...)

It was the first time in UK legal history relatives of murdered victims have united with the relatives of a convicted deceased in such a way.

However, the SCCRC previously said that they have struggled to get proof from al-Megrahi’s family members of their wish to be involved in any appeal. 

[RB: Unlike the SCCRC, apparently, I have no doubt that Aamer Anwar is instructed by the Megrahi family (including the son who is the equivalent of Abdelbaset’s executor under Libyan law) to pursue a further appeal. I have seen the relevant documents and have had contact, through Facebook, with members of the family.]

Court's reasons for holding victims' relatives not entitled to pursue Megrahi appeal

[What follows is the text of the statement made by the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Carloway, when the High Court today ruled that victims’ relatives are not entitled to pursue an appeal on behalf of a deceased convict:]

“The court will furnish a full written Opinion to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in terms of the statute (section 194(d)(3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995) in early course. At this stage, it will give brief oral reasons for its decision.

The application raises a sharp point of statutory interpretation. Section 303A(1) of the 1995 Act permits ‘any person’ to apply to the court for an order authorising him to institute or continue any appeal which could have been authorised by a convicted person who is deceased. Subsection 303A(4), however, assumes that it will be the executor of the deceased who will do so. It continues by referring also to an applicant who ‘otherwise appears to the court to have a legitimate interest’. This application on behalf of the Commission raises a general question of the scope of that phrase. The more particular issue is whether it extends to the relatives of deceased victims of a deceased convicted person and, presumably, in other cases, to the victims themselves.  

The court does not consider that this statutory provision applies to the relatives of the deceased’s victims in this case.

First, on a plain reading of the statute, the person who has a right to make an application for authority to instruct or continue an appeal is the executor, who is the personal representative of the deceased. This is demonstrated by subsection (5), whereby the person authorised to institute or continue the appeal steps into the position of the deceased in the appeal. He does not represent a separate interest. The Scottish criminal justice system does not, at present, allow victims or relatives of victims to be direct participants in criminal proceedings. The court does not consider that this provision was intended to provide such a right, just because the convicted person is deceased.  

Secondly, to decide otherwise would reverse a central element in criminal proceedings in this jurisdiction. If that were what was intended, the court would have expected it to have been spelled out clearly in the statute.  

Thirdly, in recommending this mode of procedure, the Sutherland Committee referred to persons who could demonstrate ‘good reason for pursuing an appeal, for example a personal or business partner, close relation or executor’; that meaning a close relative of the deceased, who might wish to clear the convicted person’s name posthumously and to persons with, for example, an interest in the estate of the deceased who may be affected financially by the conviction. The discussion by the Sutherland Committee provides a helpful aid to construction, were that required.

What the statute is intended to provide is an avenue whereby an executor as of right, and others in a similar relationship with the deceased, can continue or institute appeal proceedings. It is not designed to give relatives of victims a right to pursue an appeal for their own, or the public, interest in securing that miscarriages of justice should not occur.”

Families lose Lockerbie case ruling

[This is the headline over a Press Association news agency report as published today on the website of The Star. It reads as follows:]

Judges have ruled that relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing should not be allowed to pursue an appeal on behalf of the only man convicted of the atrocity.

A group of British relatives argued that they had a ''legitimate interest'' in trying to get the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi back before a court for a full appeal.

They believe the Libyan, who died protesting his innocence in his home country in 2012, was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and want his conviction overturned.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which is once again looking at Megrahi's conviction, asked the Appeal Court in Edinburgh for guidance on whether members of the victims' families can take forward an appeal.

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: There were no previous decisions explicitly excluding victims' relatives from applying.]

A hearing took place at the court today before The Lord Justice Clerk Lord Carloway sitting with Lord Brodie and Lady Dorrian.

Delivering their judgment, Lord Carloway said that the law was "not designed to give relatives of victims a right to proceed in an appeal for their own or the public interest".

Two of the relatives of victims involved in the action - Dr Jim Swire and Rev John Moseley - were present in court for the hearing.

After the decision, they joined Aamer Anwar, solicitor for the Megrahi family and 26 British relatives of Lockerbie victims, to deliver a statement outside the court saying the fight would continue.

Mr Anwar said: "It is regularly claimed that we place victims at the heart of the justice system, so why should the families of murder victims not have a legitimate interest in seeking to overturn the wrongful conviction of the person convicted of the murder of their loved ones?

"Justice does not die with the accused, in this case Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

"Despite 26 long years since the Lockerbie bombing the families will not give up their fight for justice and the truth.

"The matter is not concluded as we remain instructed by al-Megrahi's family."

Lockerbie families told they cannot appeal Megrahi's conviction

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

Relatives of Lockerbie bombing victims have been told they cannot pursue an appeal on behalf of the man convicted of the atrocity.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the south of Scotland on December 21, 1988, in which 270 people were killed.

Some families believe his conviction was a miscarriage of justice and say it should be overturned.

The Justice for Megrahi Campaign appealed to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) in June last year. [RB: The SCCRC application was not at the instance of the Justice for Megrahi campaign, but of a group of victims' relatives.]

The SCCRC asked the High Court for guidance on whether the families can take forward an appeal on Megrahi’s behalf and a hearing was held at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh on Friday.

Judges declined their petition, saying the families were not allowed to continue with the appeal.

Megrahi died in 2012 after abandoning his second appeal against his conviction.

He was released on compassionate ground in 2009 and went back to Libya.

Anniversary of shooting down of Iran Air 655 by USS Vincennes

It was on this date in 1998 that Iran Air flight 655 was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz by the USS Vincennes. The story can be followed on this blog here and on Wikipedia here.

Judges hear Lockerbie appeal bid

[This is the headline over a Press Association news agency report published today on the Yahoo! News website.  It reads as follows:]

A hearing will take place today to decide whether relatives of Lockerbie bombing victims could pursue an appeal on behalf of the only man convicted of the atrocity.

A group of British relatives maintain they have a ''legitimate interest'' in trying to get the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi back before a court for a full appeal.

They believe the Libyan, who died protesting his innocence in his home country in 2012, was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and say his conviction should be overturned.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which is once again looking at Megrahi's conviction, has petitioned the High Court asking for guidance on whether members of the victims' families can take forward such an appeal on the convicted man's behalf.

A hearing on the issue will take place before three judges at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh today.

Megrahi was found guilty of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the south of Scotland on December 21 1988 in which 270 people were killed.

He died after abandoning his second appeal, which itself came after the SCCRC referred the case back to senior High Court judges in 2007.

Since June last year, the SCCRC has been considering a fresh, 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.

Aamer Anwar, solicitor for the Megrahi family and 26 relatives of Lockerbie victims, said: "On June 5 2014, the Commission received an application for a further review of Mr Al-Megrahi's conviction from my office.

"This application was lodged on behalf of two separate groups: Family members of the deceased victims of the Lockerbie bombing and members of Mr Al-Megrahi's family.

"Our legal team will argue today that the Commission is premature with their petition, as the role of the SCCRC is to investigate whether there has been a miscarriage of justice.

"When Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, 270 people from 21 countries perished. It remains the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the UK but the consequences are still being felt 26 years later.

"The family members of the Lockerbie victims instructing us maintain that they have as much a right to pursue an appeal as the Megrahi family because they also believe the wrong person was convicted.

"The families hope this matter can be resolved as finality in the Megrahi case is unlikely ever to be achieved unless a referral is made to the Appeal Court."

Substantive hearing on SCCRC Megrahi petition on Friday 3 July

In December last year the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission petitioned the High Court of Justiciary seeking guidance on whether relatives of Lockerbie victims, such as Dr Jim Swire and the Revd John Mosey, had a “legitimate interest” to pursue an appeal on behalf of the late Abdelbaset Megrahi, should the SCCRC decide that a miscarriage of justice might have occurred. The reaction of the relatives’ lawyers to this petition can be read here. A procedural hearing on the petition was held at the end of March 2015. The case is back before the High Court in Edinburgh tomorrow (Friday, 3 July) at 10.30 am when the substantive legal issues will be debated. Written heads of argument have been lodged by the SCCRC, the Crown and the relatives.

Lockerbie link to deported terrorist

[This is the headline over a report published on the website of The Herald newspaper on this date in 1996. It reads as follows:]

Germany has deported a Palestinian terrorist who has been linked to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, justice officials said today. Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni was flown to Damascus, Syria, last Thursday, the news magazine Focus reported today.

A justice ministry spokes-woman in the central German city of Saarbrucken, Marion Walter, said the decision to deport Dalkamoni was made by the Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karslruhe. Dalkamoni, believed to be a member of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, served half of a 15-year sentence for an attack against two US military trains in 1987 and 1988. Dalkamoni and another suspected member of the Popular Front were arrested in Germany two months before Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground. A search of the Frankfurt apartment where the men were arrested turned up a portable radio-cassette recorder containing plastic explosives similar to the type that blew up the plane.

"The true culprits have literally gotten away with murder"

[Following on from its article of 8 June 2000, The Lockerbie Bombing Trial: Is Libya Being Framed?, the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin published on this date in 2000 Susan Lindauer’s sworn Lockerbie deposition dated 4 December 1998. The following are a few sentences from the end of the document:]

First, the accused Libyans are effectively denied the right to a fair trial where they might bring forth witnesses in their own defense, which could immediately exonerate them of all charges. And secondly, the families are denied the ability to close this terrible wound, and experience the healing that would be gained from discovering the complete truth and facts surrounding this case.

On both accounts, I cannot be silent. I suspect my disclosure will grieve the families with the horrible revelation that US government officials have behaved so cynically and despicably as to withhold evidence in this case. And yet such a cynical and desperate act must be condemned by civilized society. I dare say Libya is entitled to financial compensation for the economic harassment her people have endured because of these blatantly false accusations, and the deliberate efforts to mislead potential judges, and victimize potential witnesses by a policy of aggressive harassment and punishment for speaking out. Meanwhile, the true culprits have literally gotten away with murder.