Megrahi's application for compassionate release

[It was on this date in 2009 that news broke that Abdelbaset Megrahi had submitted an application for compassionate release. The report on the BBC News website reads as follows:]

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has asked to be released from jail on compassionate grounds.

Scottish ministers will now consider the application from Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer last year.

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill will make the final decision.

If the application is successful, Megrahi's release from Greenock Prison would allow him to return to Libya without dropping his appeal.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman confirmed that ministers will now seek advice on the application.

Libya has already submitted a request to have Megrahi returned [under the Libya/UK prisoner transfer agreement].

A total of 270 people died when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

According to The Herald newspaper, Mr MacAskill is thought to have released three terminally ill patients on compassionate grounds last year.

Traditionally, only applications from those with three months to live are granted.

Megrahi is currently being held in Greenock prison where he is receiving treatment for advanced stage prostate cancer.

South of Scotland MSP Christine Grahame, who has met Megrahi twice in recent months, said Scottish Prison Service officials had already informed her there was nowhere within the prison estate properly suited to managing his condition.

Earlier this month, she said: "This makes the case for compassionate release absolutely imperative.

"That option is not subject to judicial review and is the only sensible compromise position in light of the fresh evidence and Mr Megrahi's deteriorating health.

"The weight of evidence which has emerged combined with the serious doubts raised over the original evidence that was led at the trial have left me in no doubt of Mr Megrahi's innocence."

She added that if Megrahi was allowed to die in prison but it was later established he was innocent, people would question why the Scottish justice system "failed so dramatically".

[RB: In The Herald’s report I am quoted as saying: "Compassionate release seems to achieve the humanitarian objective of allowing Megrahi to die in his homeland among his extended family, along with the public interest and criminal justice objectives of allowing a court to rule upon the validity of an appeal in the case of a conviction that has been increasingly called into question."]

Lockerbie insurance lawsuit against US Government is still on track

[This is the headline over a report published today on the AllGov website. It reads as follows:]

In a landmark case, the US government has for the first time been denied a dismissal in a foreign claims lawsuit. The ruling by a federal judge means that the government could still be on the hook for nearly $100 million stemming from two 1980s Libyan terrorist attacks.

Three insurance companies have been trying for years to get reimbursed for claims they paid out as a result of the two Libya-sponsored terrorist attacks against airliners: EgyptAir 648 in 1985 and Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The insurers, Lloyd’s of London, New York Marine and General Insurance Co and Aviation & General Insurance Co, are seeking a combined $96 million for the two attacks ($55 million for Pam Am 103 and $41 million for EgyptAir 648).

The lawsuit is directed at the US government because Congress passed the Libyan Claims Resolution Act in 2008, which took the right to oversee suits against Libya away from federal courts’ jurisdiction. “Shortly afterward, the government stopped all suits pending against Libya,” according to Benjamin Lane at Insurance Business America.

That didn’t stop the three insurers from going to court to collect monies owed to their underwriters for paying for the Libyan-sponsored attacks 30 years ago. Lawyers for the plaintiffs convinced the US Court of Federal Claims to allow their lawsuit to proceed after Judge Thomas Wheeler denied a motion by government attorneys to dismiss the case. In its denial, the court said the companies have a legitimate property interest on which to base their claims and, more importantly, did something no federal court had done before.

“The case holds landmark status as the first time the government has been denied a dismissal in a foreign claims suit,” Lane wrote.

Wheeler said in his ruling: “Here, where plaintiffs were excluded from receiving any just compensation whatsoever, the court must decide whether the government violated the Fifth Amendment prohibition of takings without just compensation. Accordingly, the court finds that it is well within its jurisdiction to decide this takings claim against the United States.”

[RB: The history of this court action can be followed on this blog here.]

News breaks in US of neutral venue Lockerbie trial

[What follows is the transcript of a news report that was broadcast on Voice of America on this date in 1998:]

Byline - Delia Robertson
Dateline - Johannesburg

Intro: The suspects in the 1988 Pan Am aircraft bombing over Lockerbie in Scotland may finally come to trial, in a compromise deal negotiated by Scottish law professor Robert Black. V-O-A's Delia Robertson talked to professor Black, who is now in South Africa on a sabbatical from the university of Edinburgh.

Robertson: Robert Black says it has taken Britain and the United States more than four years to accept a compromise that may finally bring to trial the two Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan American aircraft over Scotland. Professor Black, law professor at Scotland's Edinburgh university, says it is shameful it has taken so long.

Black: And it is particularly galling for the families I think, that Britain and the United States are now saying that they are the ones who were putting forward this means of resolving the logjam. In fact this proposal for resolving the logjam was submitted to those two governments four and a half years ago, and up till this week they have adamantly refused even to consider it. In my view that is disgraceful.

Robertson: The compromise for bringing the suspects to trial will mean the trial will be conducted in a neutral country -- possibly the Netherlands -- and without a jury. However, the trial will be held under Scottish law, presided over by a Scottish judge and will include a panel of judges selected by the British government.

Up until now, Britain and the United States have insisted on a trial by jury and also that it take place in Scotland or the United States. Professor Black says the Libyan suspects' lawyer refused to bring his clients before a jury trial because of the wide publicity surrounding the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in which 270 people were killed.

Black: And the lockerbie incident has had so much publicity there, their view (suspects lawyers view is) that their clients could not get a fair trial because the jurors already have partially made up their minds because of pretrial publicity.

Robertson: Professor Black is in South Africa as a visiting professor at the University of Stellenbosch and is completing a book on Scottish law of evidence. He told V-O-A he was prompted to try and find a resolution to the Lockerbie trial impasse because he was born and raised in Lockerbie and considers himself a citizen of the town.

He said after extensive negotiations in 1994 with the suspects' lawyer, he received an undertaking the Libyans would attend a trial in a neutral country.

Black: After considerable negotiation, he agreed to those proposals and he gave me an undertaking -- in writing -- that if such a court were set up, his clients would attend for trial before it. And I also got the agreement of the Libyan government at that time, in january 1994, that they would permit their citizens to stand trial before such a court.

Robertson: The Organization of African Unity has decided to end United Nations sanctions against Libya within months because they say Libya has made concessions after at first refusing to allow its citizens to be tried by a U-S or Scottish court. Professor Black says this is what compelled Britain and the United States to accept the compromise.

Black: They, the member states of the Organization Of African Unity, would not any longer comply with United Nations sanctions against Libya as from September of this year. Now you see I think that is the real pressure that has caused Britain and United States to change their position, because the whole system involving sanctions against Libya was beginning to crumble.

Robertson: While many victims' families in the United States continue to demand a jury trial in the United States or Scotland, those in Britain have accepted the compromise proposal. Professor Black says they want two things: that the evidence be tested before an independent tribunal and that if found guilty, the suspects are punished. He says this can be achieved if the suspects are tried in a Scottish court sitting in a neutral country.

No legal justification for Megrahi's conviction

[On this date in 2007 an article written by me was published in The Scotsman.  It reads as follows:]

The fairy story of the Crown's independence

At the end of June, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi's conviction of the Lockerbie bombing back to the High Court of Justiciary for a further appeal.

The case had been under consideration by the SCCRC since September 2003 and its statement of reasons (available only to Megrahi, the Crown and the High Court) extends to more than 800 pages, accompanied by 13 volumes of appendices. The commission, in the published summary of its findings, rejected submissions on behalf of Megrahi to the effect that evidence led at the trial had been fabricated and that he had been inadequately represented by his then legal team, but went on to indicate there were six grounds on which it had concluded a miscarriage of justice might have occurred. Strangely, only four of these grounds are enumerated in the summary. They are:

• That there was no reasonable basis for the trial court's conclusion that the date of purchase of the clothes which surrounded the bomb was 7 December 1988, the only date on which Megrahi was proved to have been on Malta and so could have purchased them. The finding that he was the purchaser was "important to the verdict against him".

• That evidence not heard at the trial about the date on which Christmas lights were switched on in Malta further undermined the trial court's conclusion that the date of purchase was as late as 7 December.

• That evidence was not made available to the defence that four days before the shopkeeper made a tentative identification of Megrahi at an ID parade he had seen a magazine article containing a photograph of Megrahi, linking him to the bombing.

• That other evidence which undermined the shopkeeper's identification of Megrahi and the finding as to the date of purchase was not made available to the defence.

The reasons given by the commission for finding that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in this case are not limited to the effect of new evidence which has become available since the date of the original trial and the non-disclosure by the police and prosecution of evidence helpful to the defence. The prima facie miscarriage of justice identified by the commission includes the trial court's finding in fact on the evidence heard at the trial that the clothes which surrounded the bomb were purchased in Malta on 7 December 1988 and that Megrahi was the purchaser. This was the cornerstone of the Crown's case against him. If, as suggested, that finding had no reasonable basis in the evidence, then there is no legal justification for his conviction.

I have always contended that no reasonable tribunal could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence led. Here is one example of the trial court's idiosyncratic approach to the evidence. Many more could be provided.

A vitally important issue was the date on which the goods that surrounded the bomb were purchased in Malta. There were only two live possibilities: 7 December 1988, a date when Megrahi was proved to be on Malta, and 23 November 1988, when he was not. In an attempt to establish just which of these dates was correct, the weather conditions in Sliema on those two days were explored. Shopkeeper Tony Gauci's evidence was that when the purchaser left his shop it was raining so heavily his customer thought it advisable to buy an umbrella to protect himself while he went in search of a taxi. The unchallenged meteorological evidence led by the defence established that, while it had rained on 23 November at the relevant time, it was unlikely to have rained at all on 7 December and, if there had been any rain, it would have been at most a few drops, insufficient to wet the ground. On this material, the judges found in fact that the clothes were purchased on 7 December.

On evidence as weak as this, how was it possible for the trial court to find him guilty? And how was it possible for the appeal court to fail to overturn the conviction? The Criminal Appeal Court dismissed Megrahi's appeal on the most technical of technical legal grounds: it did not consider the justifiability of the trial court's factual findings at all (though it is clear from their interventions during the Crown submissions in the appeal that at least some of the judges were only too well aware of how shaky certain crucial findings were and how contrary to the weight of the evidence).

I contend that at least part of the answer lies in the history of the Scottish legal and judicial system. For centuries courts have accorded a specially privileged status to the Lord Advocate. It has been unquestioningly accepted that, though a political appointee and the government's (now the Executive's) chief legal adviser, he (now she) would at all times, in his capacity as head of the prosecution system, act independently, without concern for political considerations, and would always place the public interest in a fair trial above the narrow interest of the prosecution in gaining a conviction. This vision of the role of the Lord Advocate was reinforced by the fact that, until the Scottish Judicial Appointments Board commenced operations in 2002, all Scottish High Court Judges (and sheriffs) were nominated for appointment to the Bench by the Lord Advocate of the day. This meant that, in all criminal proceedings, the presiding judge owed his position to the person (or one of his predecessors in office) who was ultimately responsible for bringing the case before him, and for its conduct while in his court.

The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction. To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been more difficult, and perhaps impossible.

Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables. At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.

Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way. Second, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Majid... On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."

One judge, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened: "Does that include, Lord Advocate... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"

The Lord Advocate replied: "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters."

Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.

Beyond the Lockerbie trial, the failure of the Crown to place the public interest in a fair trial above the interest of the prosecution in obtaining convictions is illustrated by the extent to which the Lord Advocate has recently had to be dragged through the Privy Council in London before making available to the defence material in the prosecution's possession that no-one could conceivably deny was of relevance and assistance in the accused person's defence. So much for the fairness of the trial being the Crown's primary and predominant motivation!

It is surely time for all involved in the Scottish criminal justice system to put away childish things. We are all of us, judges included, surely too old to believe any longer in fairytales. Fairytales can be convenient and comforting and can bolster our self esteem. But, as in the case of the belief that the Crown can uniformly be relied upon always to act selflessly in the public interest, they can be dangerous and, if acted upon, work terrible injustice.

It is submitted that the Lockerbie case demonstrates just how necessary it is, if public confidence is to be maintained, for the Scottish Executive to institute a high-powered independent investigation into all three aspects - investigation, prosecution and adjudication - of the Scottish criminal justice system, as has already been called for by, among others, Dr Jim Swire, Tam Dalyell and Professor Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial.

• Robert Black, QC, FRSE, is Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh.

Psychic link to Lockerbie bomb probe

[This is the headline over a short item posted on the Hotspotsz.com website on this date in 2003. The source is given as an article in the Sunday Herald. I cannot find the article on the heraldscotland website (which is not surprising since the new website is so appalling that it is a miracle if anything can ever be found on it). However, Yahoo Groups on 20 July 2003 has a post which bears to be the full text of the article.  It reads as follows:]

Psychic link to Lockerbie bomb probe

By Magin McKenna

The CIA used psychics to investigate the Lockerbie bombing and reconstruct images of the baggage container said to have held the bomb that caused PanAm Flight 103 to explode.Declassified documents obtained by the Sunday Herald reveal the extraordinary attempts that were made to glean vital clues relating to Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity – 270 people died when PanAm Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in December 1988.

The 26-page report is an insight into the now decommissioned Star Gate programme, a $20m CIA initiative which ran from 1972 to the mid-1990s.

It was launched with the aim of training individuals to gather intelligence information by “transcending the boundaries of space and time” through their minds.

Using a process known as “remote viewing”, investigators attempted to provide information that could be useful to the intelligence sources about international tensions and major investigations.

The files on Lockerbie are included in the declassified Star Gate files held at the US National Archives in College Park, Maryland. They relate to the pivotal moment in the aircraft’s flight path when the bomb exploded, causing the aircraft to split apart and descend from an altitude of 36,000ft at roughly 1000ft per second.

According to the report of June 7, 1990, an unnamed remote viewer was commissioned by the CIA’s Star Gate programme based at Fort Meade, Maryland, for an eight-hour remote viewing session.

The viewer’s mission was to give CIA agents a clearer picture of the doomed baggage container as well as the co-ordinates of the airplane when it began its nightmare descent through the night sky.

The findings are recorded, along with scrawled sketches, crude child-like diagrams, letters and figures. According to the report summary, the agents said of the doomed plane: “The target is an activity or event. There is a cylindrical shape that is clear and see-through. There is something inside it that seems to be moving through it and out on one end.

“The stuff inside it is light, smooth, stringy, air, and it is moving down, making a ‘whoosh’ sound. It is speeding up as it goes down and out. It makes me want to throw up.”

It is not known whether the CIA was able to make any use of the efforts of the remote viewer, who goes on to describe their perceptions of the container which may have held the bomb: “The cylindrical shape seems to be in the bottom of something, in a horizontal position. It could be in the bottom of a square box. There is a bomb in the box and it explodes.”

Such agents were charged with describing “tangibles and intangibles of more than one word” which might help with an investigation.

The Lockerbie bomb assessment went on: “It makes me think of a bomb blowing up a person. I can see red, fire, and jagged flames. The outside of the box seems to have diagonal lines going from left to right and right to left.

“Something about the target makes my nose burn, my eyes water, choke, and makes me feel queasy enough to vomit. It makes me think of gas. It also makes me think of a car and a car crash.

“Something is political, dizzy, confused, stuffy, lunatic, nervous and colourful. I keep seeing a small blue spot of light and three shapes. One of the three shapes seems to be more important than the others.”

Remote viewing was also used on hundreds of defence missions up to the final days of the Gulf war, according to a 1991 CIA report also obtained by the Sunday Herald from the National Archives.

Star Gate’s main plan was to “develop a long-range systematic and comprehensive approach to the investigation of anomalous mental phenomena”. The US Congress disbanded the programme in 1995 after negative media publicity as well as public outcry over ethical concerns of mind warfare.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, a Libyan, was convicted in 2001 of killing 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing. He is serving a life sentence in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow, but is preparing to appeal to the European Court.

News breaks of UK & US volte face on Lockerbie trial

[It was on this date in 1998 that The Guardian broke the story that the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States were about to drop their opposition to a trial of the two Libyan suspects under Scots law in the Netherlands. Two articles by the newspaper’s Diplomatic Editor, Ian Black (which are not wholly accurate and no longer seem to appear on The Guardian website) read as follows:]

New move to force trial of Lockerbie bomb suspects

Tuesday July 21, 1998

Britain and the US have decided that two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing can be tried in The Hague under Scottish law, reversing their position that justice can only be done under their jurisdiction - and shifting the onus on to Colonel Gadafy to hand them over.

Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary and Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, are to make the announcement simultaneously in London and Washington in the next few days, The Guardian has learned.

The U-turn follows growing evidence that the campaign to isolate Libya through sanctions was beginning to crumble in the face of an obdurate Libyan leader.

The two allies reached agreement earlier this month but the announcement has been held up pending a new government in Holland, whose approval is required for the trial to go ahead.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, described as Libyan intelligence agents, were accused in November 1991 of planting the suitcase bomb that killed 270 people on Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.

It was the worst act of terrorism in British history, and there have been several conflicting theories and much speculation about who was responsible.

Libya has consistently refused to hand over the men, despite the imposition of United Nations sanctions which Britain and the US are finding increasingly hard to maintain in the face of their refusal to accept a third country trial.

For nearly seven years both have insisted that the trial can be held only in Scotland or the US. They rejected as disingenuous Libyan claims that the two could not get justice under such jursidiction.

The move will be welcomed by families of the British victims, long frustrated at the impasse. They have urged London and Washington should show flexibility.

Libya has not yet been informed of the new position, which is likely to follow closely a proposal made by the Arab League and the Organisation of African Unity, which have said Colonel Gadafy will accept a court operating under the Scottish legal procedure.

Under this proposal, it would have an international panel of judges instead of a jury, presided over by a senior Scottish judge appointed by Tony Blair.

The Hague is home to the International Court of Justice and the Bosnia War Crimes Tribunal. If the two men are handed over, and convicted, special arrangements will have to be made for their imprisonment.

Diplomats believe it is unlikely that Colonel Gadafy will agree to surrender the men but argue that if he does not, it should be easier to reinforce the sanctions.

In recent months both governments have watched with mounting alarm as they have become isolated over the sanctions in the Arab world, Africa, and beyond. They have concluded that they need to regain the initiative.

Both countries also want to focus their energies on maintaining the far more important UN sanctions against Iraq, still seen as a significant international threat in the way that Libya no longer is.

Only last week Italy said it wanted to normalise relations with its former colony, while Mrs Albright was furious when the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, sought and obtained UN permission on humanitarian grounds to fly to Libya to see Colonel Gadafy, suffering from a broken hip.

Lockerbie: the West takes a gamble

Most of the world has lost its taste for punishing Libya. Ian Black reveals how the US and Britain are hoping to regain the whip hand

Tuesday July 21, 1998

Nearly 10 years after the worst act of  terrorism in contemporary British history, the decision to agree to the Lockerbie bombing suspects being tried in a neutral venue -  expected to be announced later this week - offers the first chance for justice to be done.

It represents a dramatic turning point in the long and exhausting battle of wills between the United States and Britain on the one hand and Colonel Muammar Gadafy on the other - a battle that began when Libya's leader was blamed for the deadly suitcase bomb placed on a Boeing jet, probably in Malta, just before Christmas 1988, and which brought mayhem and carnage to the Scottish town over which the plane broke up.

For Libyans and many Arabs, Lockerbie has become a byword for American-inspired arrogance, another example of superpower readiness to use the blunt instrument of sanctions, like those imposed on Libya, to bully smaller countries.

For relatives of the 270 victims of Pan-Am flight 103 - American, British and others - it was a personal tragedy. Many had all but given up hope of seeing the two Libyans under suspicion brought to trial.

Britain and the US always insisted that the two, members of the Libyan intelligence services, must face trial either in Scotland or  the US, and argued that Libyan claims that the men could not expect justice in these venues were simply disingenuous.

Pressure from the relatives has certainly had some effect in changing the stance of London and Washington. But the key lies in the sense both capitals now have that without some movement on the Western side, Col Gadafy would never budge.

Lockerbie has been high on the Labour Government's agenda since it took office in May last year, when it ordered a review of the evidence, though so far there has been no public hint from the Foreign Office or elsewhere of the extraordinary turnaround in the case.

Indeed, Libya itself has yet to be to informed of the change of heart by Britain and the US, but there have been preliminary contacts in recent days through the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan.

There must be grave doubts, however, that Col Gadafy will allow two secret agents to appear in any court. Most Libya-watchers agree that to do so would be to expose his own regime to a charge of state terrorism.

So while there is clearly no guarantee that the suspects will come to court, the British-American agreement to a neutral venue puts the onus squarely on Libya to comply. This - given that international support for the Anglo-American position has been withering away - should make it easier to maintain Libya's isolation if it does not comply.

Few details are known of the precise offer to be made to Tripoli, but it is likely to follow closely one made by two key supporters of  Libya - the Arab League and the Organisation of African Unity - which have said Col Gadafy will accept a court operating under the criminal law and procedure of Scotland.

In place of a jury, the envisaged court would have an international panel of judges, presided over by a senior Scottish judge appointed by Tony Blair.

It is understood that the court would sit in The Hague, already home to the International Court of Justice and the Bosnia War Crimes Tribunal. If the two were handed over, and convicted, there would be the question of where they would be imprisoned.

The Britain-US decision will be applauded by many of the Lockerbie relatives, led at the British end by Jim Swire, who lost his daughter, Flora, in the atrocity on December 21, 1988.

Dr Swire asked recently: "What do Britain and America have to lose by agreeing to a neutral-country trial, except perhaps a smidgeon of national pride? Are not justice and truth more important than that?"

Years of pain and frustration have led many of the bereaved to believe in complex conspiracy theories about the bombing, variously blaming Iran, Palestinian radicals or Syria, even though the evidence gathered in this country by Dumfries and Galloway Police is said to provide a strong case against the two Libyans.

Indictments against the two agents were issued in November 1991 but Libya has always refused to hand the men over. In 1992 the United Nations imposed an air and arms embargo intended to isolate the North African country until it complied.

The curbs were tightened in 1993 to include a freeze on some Libyan assets abroad and a ban on some types of equipment used in oil terminals and refineries.

But because of the scale of European dependence on Libyan oil the sanctions were not allowed to affect the country's oil exports or oil drilling equipment.

Recently international enthusiasm has waned sharply and the US and Britain have found themselves almost alone as Col Gadafy has bought friends and influence in Africa with cheap oil deals and outright bribes.

The Organisation of African Unity is threatening to cease complying with the sanctions from September this year, unless the UN Security Council agrees to a third-country trial. Last October, South Africa's influential president, Nelson Mandela, visited Libya on his way to and from the Commonwealth summit in Edinburgh.

Last week, Egypt's moderate president, Hosni Mubarak - the largest recipient of US aid after Israel - flew to Libya to visit Col Gadafy after the Libyan leader broke his hip.  The UN gave permission on humanitarian grounds, but the message was clear: patience with Libya's punishment was running out.

[RB: The official announcement came just over a month later, on 24 August 1998.]