The hidden scandal of Lockerbie

[What follows is the text of a review by Steve James of John Ashton and Ian Ferguson’s Cover-up of Convenience—the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie that was published on the WSWS.org website on this date in 2002:]

John Ashton’s and Ian Ferguson’s work on the circumstances surrounding the destruction on December 21, 1988, of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland is worthy of careful study. It raises serious doubts, not only regarding the recent conviction of the Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, now incarcerated in Barlinnie jail, Glasgow, but over the entire official presentation of events before and after the crash, from 1988 to the present day. They give indicators as to how the full facts regarding the atrocity which killed 270, perhaps 271, people might be uncovered and conclude with a series of searching questions which any genuinely independent inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster should direct toward various governments, intelligence services, and individuals.

Ashton and Ferguson have followed Lockerbie for years. Ashton worked as the deputy to the late British film maker Allan Francovich, whose film The Maltese Double-Cross, examined various alternative scenarios that have been advanced as an explanation for the Lockerbie disaster, favouring that the bombing was a consequence of a CIA controlled drug running operation utilised to spy on Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian armed political groupings and factions.

Ferguson is a journalist, who has written many articles on Lockerbie, and along with Scottish lawyer Robert Black, architect of the Camp Zeist trial, maintains the www.thelockerbietrial.com website.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of the special Criminal Court verdict at Camp Zeist convicting al-Megrahi, Ashton and Ferguson have drawn together the fruits of long research and interviews with a large number of people involved in the disaster, including a number of current and former spies.

The authors do not proclaim that al-Megrahi is innocent. Rather, they review a large body of circumstantial evidence suggesting that responsibility for Lockerbie may lie primarily with the intelligence services of several Western governments, particularly the United States. They are highly critical of the role played by the media in parroting the twists and turns of the official line and note that no major British or US newspaper, radio, or TV channel has had the journalistic independence to undertake a sustained investigation of this most murky aspect of the disaster.

Ashton and Ferguson note that there were many general indications of a possible attack on an American flight in late 1988. After the 1988 American attack by the USS Vincennes on an Iranian Airbus, in which 255 pilgrims were murdered, Iranian broadcasts warned that the skies would “rain blood” in consequence. A Syrian backed Palestinian group with a history of attacks on passenger aircraft was known to be operating in Germany. Many staff at the US Embassy in Moscow altered flight plans to avoid Pan Am over the Christmas period.

More specifically, the authors suggest there may have been prior warnings of an attack on flight PA103. They imply that both the US ambassador to Lebanon, John McCarthy, and the South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha had their travel plans altered at the last minute in order to avoid PA103.

Others, including Charles McKee, a US Army Special Forces Major, and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s Beirut deputy station chief, uniquely amongst US officials, allegedly changed their plans at the last minute to fly on PA103. McKee had been leading a hostage rescue team in Beirut. One suggestion, and it is no more than that, is that these individuals were the target of a successful assassination attempt in which intelligence agencies themselves played a role.

According to the authors, from as little as two hours after the crash, US intelligence officers were at the southern Scottish site. Over the next days many more arrived. They were not looking for survivors or explanations as to the cause of the crash. They did not cooperate with local rescue services. Instead, they were searching for particular pieces of debris, luggage and particular corpses. Ashton and Ferguson cite finds of large quantities of cash, cannabis and heroin on the flight, as well as intelligence papers owned by McKee, whose luggage was removed and replaced. A report noting the location of hostages held in Beirut was apparently found on the ground. There were reports of helicopter-borne armed groups guarding and then removing a large box, and an unidentified body.

A police surgeon from Bradford, David Fieldhouse, insists that one body was moved, after it had been tagged and its location noted, while another disappeared entirely. Fieldhouse was subsequently victimised. Other concerns were raised by local police officers, some of which phoned Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who then began to take an active interest in the case.

Ashton and Ferguson detail the main alternative theory—that the bombing was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PLFP-GC). This was also largely the official position until 1991. Ahmed Jibril formed the PFLP-GC in 1968, when he broke away from the PFLP. The authors assert, on the basis of discussions with a number of spies, that the PFLP-GC were recruited by the Iraqi, Iranian, or Syrian governments to attack a US plane. When considering the motivation for such a terror operation, whether on the part of the PFLP-GC or any of their possible sponsors, the book is at its weakest. It gives very little insight into the politics of these governments or of the PFLP-GC, other than to make such observations as support for the PFLP-GC allowing the regime of Hafez Al Assad in Syria to appear to be supporting the Palestinian struggle against Israel.

The authors instead draw attention to the bombing by the PFLP-GC 18 years earlier, in 1970, of two aircraft destined for Israel—one survived with a two foot hole in the fuselage, the other, Swissair 330 to Zurich crashed killing 147 people—and another bombing 16 years earlier, in 1972. The PFLP-GC in 1988 certainly appears to have had a European operation based in Nuess in the Ruhr, Germany, intent on attacking US and Israeli targets. The group eventually blew up some railway lines used by US troop trains, planned an attack on an Israeli sports team, and became the target of a huge surveillance operation by German state security, the BKA. Their operation was hopelessly compromised. Raids by the BKA eventually discovered timers, guns, along with various electrical goods altered to contain explosives. Two PFLP-GC members were eventually jailed in 1991 for the train attacks.

Astonishingly, however, bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat was released on a legal technicality and left Germany. According to Ashton and Ferguson, Khreesat, who built the bombs used in the attacks during the 1970s, had by this time become a Jordanian spy in the PFLP-GC. Jordanian intelligence apparently has a close relationship with the Israeli Mossad and the CIA. Khreesat is still living in Amman, the Jordanian capital, under protection.

Ashton and Ferguson note an interview with Khreesat by the FBI, which was cited at the Camp Zeist trial but never reported in the world’s press, in which Khreesat alleges that one of his bombs went missing after the BKA raid. On this basis, the authors speculate as to whether the CIA had, with the cooperation of other intelligence agencies, played a more active role in allowing the destruction of the plane. They restate the suggestion that this might have been to prevent exposure of the CIA’s drug running operations from the Bekaa Valley, or for other reasons associated with US policy in the Middle East, particularly the aftermath of the Iran-Contra machinations. They suggest that a CIA approved suitcase, loaded with heroin from the Bekaa Valley, might have been swapped for one loaded instead with a bomb intended to kill McKee.

McKee and others had reportedly developed serious reservations about the drug-running operation; it having recently endangered their own lives through an aborted hostage rescue operation. The authors note that PA103 was brought down shortly after the election of ex-CIA chief George Bush, father of the current US president, when exposure of CIA drug running would have been highly embarrassing.

Those who have made allegations of possible CIA involvement include an ex-Mossad spy, Juval Aviv, hired by Pan Am to investigate the destruction of its aircraft, an erratic ex-US spy Lester Coleman, who at one point sought political asylum in Sweden, William Chasey, a Washington DC lobbyist, and Time journalist Roy Rowan.

Ashton and Ferguson trace the development of the official position of blaming Libya for the bombing. Bush called Margaret Thatcher in early 1989 asking for the inquiry to be “toned down”, at a time when Syria and the PFLP-GC were favoured suspects. Just over two years later, on November 14, 1991, simultaneous indictments were brought by the Scottish Crown Office and the US State Department against Libyan airline staff al-Megrahi and Lamen Fhimah. Days later, Bush announced that Syria, which had acquiesced in the 1991 US attack on Iraq, had taken a “bum rap”. The State Department put out a fact sheet to justify the change of position, claiming that previous pointers to the PFLP-GC and Syria had been cunning ruses by the Libyan government. UK Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said that no other countries besides Libya were targets for investigation. Four days later, the last Western hostages, including the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, Terry Waite, were released from Beirut.

The authors thereafter recount the official line that the bomb, equipped with an MST-13 timer from MeBo of Zurich, was loaded in a Samsonite suitcase packed with clothes, which was inserted by Libyan agents onto flight KM180 from Luqa airport in Malta, transferred at Frankfurt to a feeder flight for PA103, and then shuttled to Heathrow, where it was loaded on the fated Boeing 747. This was the case presented in the Camp Zeist trial.

Ashton and Ferguson carefully summarise the numerous problematic aspects of all the prosecution evidence at the trial; the dubious visual identification of al-Megrahi by Maltese shop owner Tony Gauci; the contradictory and bizarre ramblings of CIA spy Abdul Majid Giacka, the so-called “star witness” at Luqa airport whose evidence collapsed in court; the contested luggage records at Frankfurt airport; and the claim by MeBo owner Edwin Bollier that he had been approached by the CIA and encouraged to frame Libya, and that the CIA had had an MST-13 type timer in their possession before 1988.

At Camp Zeist, the trial was in danger of disintegrating. By November 2000 few observers, including the book’s authors, expected anything other than an acquittal, or a not proven verdict which is available under Scottish law. But the verdict delivered on January 2001, which admitted that the prosecution case was full of holes and based on circumstantial inferences, nevertheless found al-Megrahi guilty, while his only alleged accomplice Fhimah, was acquitted.

Ashton and Ferguson by no means completely exonerate Libya or al-Megrahi. They note that his refusal to account for his activities on 20 December 1988 and his visit to Malta using a false passport cannot be dismissed. Trial evidence suggests that al-Megrahi indeed worked for Libyan intelligence and he has, so far, offered no explanation as to why he chose not to take the stand to defend himself. Many aspects of the whole business remain to be uncovered.

What the authors do is to cite 25 questions to which any genuinely independent inquiry must seek answers. These include:

* the circumstances of the warnings given prior to the disaster.

* the circumstances of the booking changes for Pik Botha’s entourage, and McKee and Gannon.

* the drug and cash finds at Lockerbie.

* the possibility of an extra body, the circumstances under which bodies were moved, and the circumstances of wrong police evidence given against David Fieldhouse at the 1989 Fatal Accident Inquiry.

* why Transport Secretary Paul Channon was able to announce that arrests were imminent and why Margaret Thatcher blocked a full judicial enquiry?

* the relationship of the British MI6 to the Iran Contra deals and why was the Foreign office official in charge of liaising with the US on Iran-Contra, Andrew Green, was put in charge of the Lockerbie investigation.

* the role of the CIA and MI6 in hostage deals made after the exposure of Iran Contra in 1986 and 1991.

* why Juval Aviv and others were never interviewed by the investigation authorities about the bombing. What were the circumstances of legal cases brought against Aviv and others?

* why did it take a year for the MeBo circuit board to be discovered, what were the circumstances of its discovery, and what were the connections between MeBo’s Edwin Bollier and the CIA?

* why did the CIA and the Scottish Lord Advocate seek to block access to CIA cables that were helpful to the defence?

Under conditions where the US government is refusing to investigate its own intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 terror attacks, any exposure of a possible CIA role in aircraft terrorism clearly assumes great significance. Earlier this year, al-Megrahi’s appeal against his conviction was thrown out, despite defence evidence that made a strong circumstantial case for the bomb having been loaded at Heathrow airport in London.

Following Tam Dalyell’s question in parliament, on March 26, there is a suggestion that police evidence relating to Lockerbie is being destroyed, and that yet another suitcase owned by another Special Forces member, Joseph Patrick Murphy, was at one point early in the investigation thought to contain the bomb.

Without making wild or unsustainable accusations, and despite serious political limitations, Ashton and Ferguson have provided an essential reference for anyone seeking to understand why a Boeing 747 should explode in mid-air killing hundreds of ordinary air travellers, and yet, more than 13 years later, there is still no generally accepted explanation of why it happened and who was responsible.

Lockerbie: The question that has not been asked

[This is the headline over an article that appeared in The Herald on this date in 1994. It reads as follows:]

One of the bloodiest terrorist attacks ever, the explosion of the PanAm jumbo above Lockerbie in 1988, has never been solved. Two Libyans,according to the early version, allegedly carried out the crime alone. This report, by Der Spiegel journalists, following a trail that took them to Berlin, Budapest, Geneva, and Moscow, unearths new leads leading to Germany. The key figure, a Swiss businessman, turns out to have been in the pay of the East German security service for almost 20 years -- and possibly worked for the CIA as well. KGB officials say they knew of the connection -- and are astonished that the Americans have yet to ask them about it.

A colour photo, magnified 15 times, reveals only a scorched fragment of a chip of green synthetic resin smaller than a fingernail. Only magnification allows one to see the soldering typical of an electronic circuit board.

Nor does the picture of a two-part plastic housing reveal much at first glance. The upper and lower part are held together by a wire. Not visible from the outside are two dials mounted on the plastic. Electronics experts say the dials were used to set a timer, necessary for the precise detonation of a bomb.

Secretive men have been presenting such photos for months to investigators in Berlin. Swarms of secret agents from the intelligence services of all the world are here; it is as if the Cold War had never ended and Berlin was the spies' capital.

For German investigators, this is a ''home game''. Officials of the Federal Office for the Defence of the Constitution, colleagues from the State Security Service, investigators from the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency, and public prosecutors from Berlin and Frankfurt are trying to solve the toughest political crime puzzle of recent years: the history of the timer.

One question is: whose hands held the clock? Terrorists may have used such a timer to detonate the bomb that ripped apart the PanAm jumbo. All 259 aboard, most of them US citizens, were killed, along with 11 people on the ground.

Many people thought the case was officially closed. American and Scottish authorities claimed in November 1991 that two Libyan secret agents, Amin Khalifa Fuheima, then 35, and Abdel Bassit Ali el-Mikhrahi, then 39, were behind the Boeing 747 outrage. Once again, the hand of Libya's chief of state, Moammar Gaddafi, was seen lurking behind Arab terrorism.

The US Justice Department demanded the extradition of the two suspects -- in vain. The United Nations decreed an embargo of Libya as a result, and tightened it last November.

But new facts have emerged that cast serious doubt on the hypotheses pieced together so far. Investigators and agents speak of a ''German trail'' -- and it is hot.

Lockerbie, according to Scotland Yard, was ''the most expensive piece of detective work in criminal history''. Fifteen thousand witnesses were interviewed, 20,000 names checked, 35,000 photos analysed, 180,000 pieces of evidence evaluated.

One German trail was discovered almost from the beginning: in all likelihood, the deadly luggage came from Frankfurt. According to investigators, the suitcase bearing the bomb reached the German airport on the morning of December 21, 1988, on an Air Malta flight and was transferred to the PanAm jet as unaccompanied luggage. Around 1.07pm, a computer gave the bronze-coloured Samsonite suitcase the code number B-8849. Then, between 3.12 and 4.50, it was loaded, unchecked, on to flight 103 to London, a stopover on the transatlantic flight.

But there is a new German trail. It leads to East Berlin and the former Ministry for State Security, the Stasi. Prominent names from the ministry have recently been added to a list of witnesses to be interrogated. Not only former Politburo members but Egon Krenz, who succeeded East German leader Erich Honecker, have been named. Everything revolves around one question: when was the timer given to whom, and for what purpose?

No-one is saying that Lockerbie was the Stasi's direct work but it seems Stasi officers may have provided key assistance to an Arab state or terrorist group. It has been discovered that detonators of the Lockerbie type were in the possession of the ministry.

From the beginning, the key to the Lockerbie puzzle was a piece of the tape player that investigators found after an exhaustive search of the crash site. It was found burned into a shirt collar belonging to one victim, Karen Noonan.

In weeks of painstaking work, the Scottish specialist Thomas Hayes was able to identify the plastic fragment, production number PT 30, as part of the detonator. That indicated that the Lockerbie bomb was of the same type as one built two months earlier by a group of militant Palestinians in the German city of Neuss. The explosive used in both cases was Semtex H; in both cases, a lump of it was hidden in a Toshiba radio recorder.

The Palestinian group in Neuss used a barometric detonator, which would set off a bomb explosion after a change in air pressure -- for example, when an airplane had reached a certain altitude. As a result, the Neuss terrorists, operating under Syrian sponsorship, were long considered leading suspects in the Lockerbie attack.

However, when it became absolutely clear that the explosives on flight PanAm 103 were set off by a simple timer, the investigation took another direction.

CIA analysts led investigators to the Mebo AG firm in Zurich. It deals with electronic devices of all sorts. The timer was part of one it had produced -- Type MST-13 -- in 1985 for use by Libyans in desert warfare. It was both dust and water-tight.

According to the CIA, one of these timers was used in 1986 in a bomb attack on the American Embassy in Togo. In February 1988, two Libyans were arrested in Senegal in connection with that attack; they had 10 kilograms (22lbs) of plastic explosives and two MST-13 timers in their possession. Though the name of the manufacturer had been scratched off, lab technicians were able to make it out: Mebo.

Fewer than two dozen of the timers were produced, all of them apparently for Gaddafi's people. Mebo officials told the CIA, as well as American and British Lockerbie investigators, that the timers were sold only to Tripoli and to the Libyan People's Bureau, or embassy, in East Berlin. The charges against the two Libyan suspects rest largely on this evidence.

Yet the Mebo version turned out to be a cover story. Edwin Bollier, 56, one of Mebo's top two executives, claims to have suddenly remembered six months ago that there was a second client: ''the Institute for Technical Research or something like that'' in East Berlin. In fact, that institute, ITU for short, served as a highly-specialised workshop for the Stasi, making specialist tools such as listening devices and miniature transmitters for its agents.

At first, investigators believed that the Libyans had bought off Bollier to exonerate themselves. Investigators also paid close attention to the fact that in January, during a Geneva meeting between US President Bill Clinton and the Syrian head of state, Hafez Assad, in the President Hotel, an intriguing group was in attendance: the so-called Libyan defence team, including London lawyer Stephen M. Mitchell and the American defence attorney Frank Rubino.

Even Bollier found his way to Geneva, where he recounted further details on the sale of Mebo timers to East Berlin. It is known that, in 1985, the Stasi acquired MST-13 timers. State prosecutors say Bollier sold as many as seven of them to the East Germans. This number comes from a copy of a bill Bollier suddenly ''found''.

Some former Stasi buyers have since admitted ordering MST-13-type timers. A former Stasi colonel, questioned by the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency in Munich, has said that his ministry played no direct role in the Lockerbie explosion but that it was entirely possible that it had passed along such a timer.

Meanwhile, the Stasi has been linked to other murderous attacks. Not long ago, its anti-terrorism specialist Helmut Voigt was sentenced to four years in prison for passing on the explosives used in the 1983 bombing of the Maison de France in Berlin (one dead, 22 injured). This all raises questions about the earlier theory that the Libyans acted alone.

Bollier may have worked for the East Germans as an unofficial collaborator of the Stasi, providing sensitive materials for decades. At Stasi headquarters, he was registered under file number 2550/70. Bollier tells Der Spiegel he had no idea he had been given a code name.

In the late 60s, the East Germans had enormous need for electronic spying devices. The Stasi created a special unit whose mission was to listen in on the West German telephone network. Its name: Department III.

Meeting in a Berlin hotel, the department's head, Horst Mannchen, quickly reached agreement with Bollier. The Swiss would provide the Stasi with special antennas, coders, police radios, and data terminals. Mannchen wanted radio equipment for 3000 spies.

The Stasi paid Bollier in cash, hard West German marks. ''Bollier,'' says one former Stasi official, ''did well over a million marks business with us.''

Bollier's firm also had surprising contacts within the Western services. Bollier was thus able to obtain a device that was then a closely guarded American secret: the ''Mark'' voice analyser. The device, which works like a lie detector, registers subtle changes in the voice. Stasi's top man, Markus Wolf, wanted it to test the loyalty of his agents.

However, the Stasi people became suspicious of the ease with which Bollier was able to obtain the machine. They decided to try to find out who he really worked for.

Bollier travelled so much and was so active that Stasi agents were unable to keep a tail on him, and never proved anything but the suspicion grew that Bollier was also working for a Western service, probably the CIA, according to one internal report.

Is it possible that a man in the service of the CIA was even indirectly responsible for the horrible disaster over Lockerbie? German prosecutors aren't ready to provide a final answer to that. However, one former Stasi man told investigators: ''A man like Bollier had hidden protectors in the West.'' When asked by Der Spiegel about CIA contacts, Bollier said simply: ''No comment.''

Mr Joachim Wenzel, a brilliant technician for Stasi, says Bollier delivered timers to him in 1987, in his offices on Ferdinand Schultze Street in East Berlin. The Stasi people there had close contacts to militant Arab groups and also to the Red Army Faction of West Germany.

The timers have since disappeared. It is not clear whether they were destroyed in the chaos surrounding the end of communist rule, or whether they found their way into the world of international terrorism. There were many possible takers. The Stasi's connections to Arab terrorist groups formed a web with many spiders. The Stasi, for example, delivered to the security division of the Palestine Liberation Organisation around 5000 hand grenades, explosives, and 1000 detonating devices in 1980 alone.

Many splinter groups of the Palestinian movement also found a new base in East Germany. The terrorist Carlos, sought around the world for his part in a series of murderous attacks, spent time in the Palast Hotel on East Berlin's Unter den Linden boulevard. The fighters of the infamous Abu Nidal took a three-month course at Stasi headquarters in 1985, including training with rocket and grenade launchers.

Only months later, the group killed 16 people in an attack on Rome airport and four in Vienna.

Abu Daoud, who was linked to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, lived in Berlin in the 80s, at Prenzlauer Allee 178.

But who was behind the Lockerbie attack? Was it the Iranians, furious over the shooting down of an Airbus full of civilians by the destroyer Vincennes over the Strait of Hormuz in 1988? Did the Syrians help?

The KGB is not convinced by the theory that the Libyans acted alone and although the Russians are well-placed to have information on both the Arabs and the Stasi, they have not been contacted by American investigators. One former head of Soviet foreign intelligence said: ''They haven't asked us a single question.''

Lawyer agrees to Lockerbie bombing trial pact

[This is the headline over a report published in The Herald on this date in 1998. It reads as follows:]

The Libyan lawyer for two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing last night said he had reached agreement with a lawyer for victims' families on a proposed trial in the Netherlands under Scots law.

Ibrahim Legwell said he told Scots lawyer Professor Robert Black, from Edinburgh University, and Dr Jim Swire, who represents families of British victims of the disaster, that his two Libyan clients were ready to stand trial in a neutral country for the 1988 bombing, which killed 270 people.

Professor Black and Dr Swire held talks in Tripoli this week with Mr Legwell and Libyan officials. They also met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in a bid to gain support for a trial plan drawn up by Professor Black.

Mr Legwell said: ''We agreed on several basic points and details. I confirmed to them, as I have done previously, that my clients would stand for trial before such a court, which will be set not in Scotland nor the United States, but in a neutral country.

''We also agreed that it would be established with an international panel of judges to be agreed upon and presided over by a senior Scottish judge. The court would operate under the criminal law and procedures of Scotland,'' he added.

''We also are very concerned about how to ensure the safety, the security and the rights for our clients pending, during and after the trial.

''We really have done very good work which will end the suffering of the victims' families and the suffering of my two clients and my country,'' Mr Legwell said.

Since 1992, the UN Security Council has imposed sanctions on Libya for failing to extradite the two men, alleged intelligence agents Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, for trial before a Scottish court or in the United States.

Libya, which denied any involvement of its two citizens in the bombing, said such a move would not be fair, but Colonel Gaddafi has previously said he would support whatever arrangements were accepted by the suspects' lawyers.

The Foreign Office stressed that Dr Swire had been acting in a private capacity and the US State Department dismissed any agreement on trying the case in a neutral country.

Pleas of not guilty tendered by Megrahi and Fhimah

[What follows is the text of a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000:]

Formal pleas of not guilty have been entered by the two Libyan men accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people died.

They were lodged at the end of a preliminary hearing dealing with administrative matters for the trial, which is due to start in the Netherlands on 3 May.

During the hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh, the judge Lord Sutherland refused to hear an approach by the BBC for permission to televise the trial. The BBC said it would seek a judicial review.

The accused, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, 47, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, 43, have been charged with conspiracy, murder and a breach of the Aviation Security Act.

The allegations follow the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 from Heathrow to New York, which blew up in the skies over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, killing all 269 people on board and 11 people on the ground.

Entering pleas for the first time, Bill Taylor, QC, for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, said: "In the absence of my client I formally tender a plea of not guilty to the indictment."

Trial broadcast

A similar plea was tendered by Richard Keen QC, for the second accused Libyan.

Neither of the two accused was present at the hearing, where an attempt by the BBC to raise the issue of whether the Lockerbie trial should be broadcast was rejected.

Roy Martin QC, for the BBC, was told he had no formal role in the hearing and Lord Sutherland told Mr Martin it was up to him to decide what further steps the BBC should take.

"I am afraid you have no locus", he told the lawyer.

Earlier, Mr Martin told the judge he had been instructed to appear at the hearing on the basis of 1992 Scottish legal guidelines which enabled a court to authorise "in certain circumstances" the televising of proceedings.

"There have been a number of instances when such televising has taken place," said Mr Martin.

Mr Martin said he was appearing now as a matter of courtesy and told the judge it might be open to the BBC to take the issue forward by another route.

Witness disguises

Earlier, Solicitor General for Scotland, Colin Boyd QC, said Mr Martin was not a party to proceedings and invited the judge to ask him to leave.

The hearing was a continuation of an earlier procedural hearing in December at Camp Zeist in Holland, which had ended with legal argument over an application by the Crown for prosecution witnesses to disguise their identities.

The Crown expressed concern that the safety of some witnesses, including members of the East German security services, the Stasi, could be at risk.

This was resisted at the Camp Zeist hearing by the defence team, which had raised the prospect of witnesses wearing wigs.

Mr Boyd said the Crown was altering the formal request - set out in a formal document lodged with the court - so that it was no longer sought for their "true physical appearance" to be disguised.

Modifications agreed

This followed an indication from Lord Sutherland at the previous hearing that the judge was not prepared to agree to measures like wearing masks or other methods that went "far beyond what was appropriate".

The court heard the modifications had been agreed following discussions between the Crown and defence.

The Crown also revealed that it would not seek to determine where in the Camp Zeist courtroom observers appointed by the UN should sit.

And agreement was reached between the Crown and defence over non-controversial evidence, which would spare the need for "hundreds" of witnesses to be called.

The BBC said it would decide within a week whether to make a legal challenge.

It said it would argue that the trial was unique, that there was no jury, and it would be difficult for justice to be seen to be done as it was due to be held in the Netherlands.

Gaddafi confirms support for neutral venue trial

[On this date in 1998 Dr Jim Swire and I had a meeting in Tripoli with Colonel Gaddafi. Here is what I have previously written about the occasion:]

The Libyan Foreign Ministry committee, with whom all of my previous dealings had been, arranged for Dr Swire and me to have a meeting with Colonel Gaddafi and this took place on 20 April 1998 at his reinforced concrete tent on the outskirts of Tripoli.  The meeting was initially a frosty one, with the Colonel refusing to make eye contact but instead staring straight ahead with his arms folded and making lengthy pronouncements about the inflexibility and intransigence over more than four years of the British government.  When eventually he interrupted his monologue to take breath, we were able to dive in with comments to the effect that the Labour government had been in office for less than a year, was still finding its feet in foreign affairs and that it was possible to detect some signs that its position over the Lockerbie issue might just be somewhat more flexible than that of its Conservative predecessor.  Gaddafi then made a few highly complimentary remarks about Tony Blair, and the remainder of the meeting was held in a much more cordial atmosphere.  After about an hour, we departed with the reassurance that the Libyan government’s policy in relation to a “neutral venue” trial would remain unchanged for at least a further six months.  As we were leaving Gaddafi's compound the then Libyan Foreign Minister, Omar al-Muntasser, who had been present at the meeting, said to us: "You made the Leader laugh three times!  Someone will pay for that!"  I think he was joking.

[The Herald’s report on this meeting reads as follows:]

The two men suspected of causing the Lockerbie bombing could soon be handed over for trial in a neutral country, reports claimed yesterday after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi met British representatives, writes Ron MacKenna.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the 270 who died in the disaster a decade ago, and Professor Robert Black, from Edinburgh University, had a 40-minute meeting with the Libyan leader in Tripoli on Monday. They said the talks were “of some substance” but refused to elaborate.

However, Egypt's Middle East News Agency quoted Ibrahim el-Ghoweily [Legwell], a lawyer for the suspects, as saying the two sides had agreed ''to hold the trial in a third country with a panel of judges headed by a Scottish judge and in light of Scottish law''.

The talks indicate movement towards ending the seemingly intractable problems over having the two men accused of the outrage tried. Both Britain and the United States both want to try the men but Libya has so far refused to surrender them to either country, saying they will not get a fair trial.

El-Ghoweily said Dr Swire and other representatives of British relatives will ''work to convince'' Britain and the United States ''that the trial should be held in a third country''.

Libyan officials have apparently indicated they are prepared to compromise, allowing a trial before an international panel headed by a Scottish judge.

British relatives would prefer the trial to be held in Scotland but many have indicated they would agree to it being held in a neutral country, possibly the Netherlands.

El-Ghoweily said both sides had agreed on Monday on ''the importance of avoiding prejudiced jurors and any country in which the media or other factors would influence the trial'', and wanted the hearing to take place ''as soon as possible''.

The British and American governments argue that the accused men should not be allowed to dictate conditions for their trial and they are concerned that there will be no jury.

Gauci and the Zeist identification parade

[What follows is excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pan Am Flight 103:]

An official report, providing information not made available to the defence during the original trial, stated that, on 19 April 1999, four days before identifying al-Megrahi for the first time [at an identification parade at Camp Zeist], Gauci had seen a picture of al-Megrahi in a magazine which connected him to the bombing, a fact which could have distorted his judgment. Gauci was shown the same magazine during his testimony at al-Megrahi's trial and asked if he had identified the photograph in April 1999 as being the person who purchased the clothing; he was then asked if that person was in the court. Gauci then identified al-Megrahi for the court stating – "He is the man on this side. He resembles him a lot".

[A report in The New York Times headlined Scottish Panel Challenges Lockerbie Conviction, which was published after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the Megrahi conviction back to the appeal court, contains the following:]

The section of the commission’s findings made public centered on evidence relating to purchases of clothing at a shop called Mary’s House in Sliema, Malta, on Dec 7, 1988; the clothing was said to have been wrapped around the bomb. The bomb was said to have been put on board a plane in Malta and then transferred to a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to London before it was loaded onto Flight 103 at Heathrow Airport.

The original trial found that the bomb was hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player placed inside a brown, hard-shell Samsonite suitcase with clothing traced to Mary’s House. The trial court found that Mr Megrahi bought the clothing at the shop on Dec 7, 1988. But, the Scottish commission ruled, new evidence relating to the dates when Christmas lights were switched on in Malta suggested that the clothes had been bought before Dec 6, 1988, before the time when there was evidence that Mr Megrahi was on Malta.

Additionally, the commission questioned the reliability of evidence by the shop’s proprietor, Tony Gauci, who singled out Mr Megrahi in a lineup. It said that additional evidence, not available to Mr Megrahi’s defense in the original trial, indicated that four days before the lineup “at which Mr Gauci picked out the applicant, he saw a photograph of the applicant in a magazine article linking him to the bombing.”

“In the commission’s view, evidence of Mr Gauci’s exposure to this photograph in such close proximity” to the lineup “undermines the reliability of his identification of the applicant at that time and at the trial itself,” the commission said.

In Scotland, Mr Megrahi’s lawyer, Tony Kelly, read a statement from his client: “I was never in any doubt that a truly independent review of my case would have this outcome. I reiterate today what I have been saying since I was first indicted in 1991: I was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing in any way whatsoever.”

Libya confirms support for proposed neutral venue trial

[On this date in 1998 Dr Jim Swire and I were in Libya. During our discussions in Cairo on 16 April 1998 at the headquarters of the Arab League, it was suggested that it would be useful for us to make a visit to Tripoli. This we did. What follows is from a press release issued following that visit:]

A meeting to discuss issues arising out of the Lockerbie bombing was held in the premises of the Libyan Foreign Office in Tripoli on the evening of Saturday 18 April 1998. Present were Mr Abdul Ati Obeidi, Under-Secretary of the Libyan Foreign Office; Mr Mohammed Belqassem Zuwiy [or Zwai], Secretary of Justice of Libya; Mr Abuzaid Omar Dorda, Permanent Representative of Libya to the United Nations; Dr Ibrahim Legwell, head of the defence team representing the two Libyan citizens suspected of the bombing; Dr Jim Swire, spokesman for the British relatives group UK Families-Flight 103; and Professor Robert Black QC, Professor of Scots Law in the University of Edinburgh and currently a visiting professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

At the meeting, discussion focused upon the plan which had been formulated in January 1994 by Professor Black for the establishment of a court to try the suspects which would: operate under the criminal law and procedure of Scotland; have in place of a jury an international panel of judges presided over by a senior Scottish judge; and, sit not in Scotland but in a neutral country such as The Netherlands.

Among the issues discussed were possible methods of appointment of the international panel of judges, and possible arrangements for the transfer of the suspects from Libya for trial and for ensuring their safety and security pending and during the trial.

Dr Legwell confirmed, as he had previously done in January 1994, that his clients agreed to stand trial before such a court if it were established. The representatives of the Libyan Government stated, as they had done in 1994 and on numerous occasions since then, that they would welcome the setting up of such a court and that if it were instituted they would permit their two citizens to stand trial before it and would co-operate in facilitating arrangements for that purpose.

Dr Swire and Prof Black undertook to persist in their efforts to persuade the Government of the United Kingdom to join Libya in accepting this proposal.