"I am an innocent man”

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2012:]

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing above Scotland which killed 270 people, has died at his home in Libya.

Megrahi, 60, was convicted by a special court in the Netherlands in 2001.

He was freed from Scottish jail in 2009 on compassionate grounds because of cancer, stirring controversy when he outlived doctors' expectations.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron said it was a day to remember the 270 victims of "an appalling terrorist act". (...)

Megrahi's release sparked the fury of many of the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster. The US - whose citizens accounted for 189 of the dead - also criticised the move.

But others believed he was not guilty of the bombing.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died at Lockerbie, called Megrahi's death a "very sad event".

"Right up to the end he was determined, for his family's sake... [that] the verdict against him should be overturned," said Dr Swire, who is a member of the Justice for Megrahi group.

His brother Abdulhakim said on Sunday that Megrahi's health had deteriorated quickly and he died at home in Tripoli.

He told the AFP news agency that Megrahi died at 13:00 local time (11:00 GMT).

Megrahi's sister told the Libyan Wal news agency that his funeral would take place at Tripoli's main cemetery on Monday, following early afternoon prayers.

Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, always denied any responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988. [RB: The only evidence at his trial that Megrahi was an intelligence officer came from Abdul Majid Giaka whose evidence on every other matter was rejected by the court as incredible and unreliable. The judges gave no reasons for accepting his evidence on this single issue.]

Investigators tracing the origins of scraps of clothes wrapped around the bomb followed a trail to a shop in Malta which led them, eventually, to Megrahi.

He and another Libyan, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted by the Scottish and US courts in November 1991.

But Libya refused to extradite them. In 1999, after protracted negotiations, Libya handed the two men over for trial, under Scottish law but on neutral ground, the former US airbase at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. [RB: There were no “negotiations”. The United Kingdom and the United States adamantly refused to negotiate with Libya and accepted a “neutral venue” solution only when it became painfully obvious that the UN sanctions regime against Libya was crumbling because of their intransigence.]

Their trial began in May 2000. Fhimah was acquitted of all charges, but Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison.

He served the first part of his sentence at the maximum-security prison at Barlinnie, in Glasgow, but was transferred in 2005 to Greenock prison.

He lost his first appeal against conviction in 2002 but in 2007, his case was referred back to senior Scottish judges. He dropped that second case two days before he was released. (...)

Scottish and American officials have been to Tripoli, trying to persuade the new Libyan government to grant visas to detectives from Dumfriesshire.

They are still searching for the answers to the questions of who ordered the bombing and who else was involved, our correspondent says, but it is not clear whether the Libyans will co-operate.

However, a spokesman for the interim government in Tripoli, the National Transitional Council (NTC), told Reuters that that Megrahi's death would not end its investigations into Lockerbie.

"The Libyan government will continue to investigate the crimes committed by the Gaddafi regime using other witnesses," NTC spokesman Mohamed al-Harizy was quoted as saying.

Last September, it emerged that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair had raised Megrahi's case in talks with Gaddafi in 2008 and 2009 in Libya, shortly before Megrahi was freed.

At the time, Libya was threatening to sever commercial links with Britain if Megrahi was not released.

But Mr Blair's spokesman told Col Gaddafi it was a case for the Scottish authorities and no business deals were discussed.

In his last interview, filmed in December 2011, Megrahi said: "I am an innocent man. I am about to die and I ask now to be left in peace with my family."

Conviction unfinished business and cannot stand

[What follows is the text of a motion lodged in the Scottish Parliament on 17 May 2016:]

Motion S5M-00051:

Christine Grahame, Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale, Scottish National Party,

Date Lodged: 17/05/2016 R

Unfinished Business

That the Parliament notes and welcomes the comments by the former Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, in his book, The Lockerbie Bombing, that “clothes in the suitcase containing the bomb were acquired in Malta though not by Megrahi“; notes that Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper key to the identification of Megrahi as purchasing the items, made 19 separate statements to the police describing the purchaser of the clothes as 6ft tall and more than 50 years of age when Megrahi was 36 and 5ft 8 inches tall; notes further that, prior to the trial, Gauci had seen photographs of Megrahi in the media and understands that Gauci received $2 million from the US, and, in all the circumstances, considers that, with the key failure of identification, the conviction against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is unfinished business and cannot stand.

Supported by: Gillian Martin, Rona Mackay, Jenny Gilruth, Colin Beattie, Kevin Stewart, Mark McDonald, David Torrance, George Adam, John Finnie

MacAskill’s book has a point of ‘enormous significance’

[This is the headline over a letter from Dr Morag Kerr published yesterday on the website of The National. It reads as follows:]

May I correct an inadvertent error in your article “MacAskill reported over Lockerbie book” (The National, May 17)?

The article implied that the material in my own book, Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies was included by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in its six grounds for believing that the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing might have been a miscarriage of justice. This is not the case.

The six grounds cited by the SCCRC in its 2007 report all relate to the identification of Megrahi as the man who bought the clothes packed around the bomb.

As your article correctly observed, Megrahi’s actual appearance differed wildly from the witness Tony Gauci’s original description of the purchaser, and the weather conditions (and incidentally evidence relating to the Christmas lights in the town) placed the purchase on a day when there is no evidence Megrahi was even on Malta.This flawed identification was absolutely fundamental to the original conviction of Megrahi in 2001, and Mr MacAskill’s repudiation of the identification in his forthcoming book is thus of enormous significance.

My own book deals principally with a different aspect of the case, that of the method by which the bomb suitcase was introduced into the airline baggage system.

This analysis was not carried out until after the SCCRC had completed its investigation, and thus it was not included in its 2007 report.

The issue is however now assuming overwhelming importance.

It appears that both Kenny MacAskill and Alex Salmond (on Scotland Tonight, May 16) now accept that Megrahi did not buy these clothes, nevertheless they continue to insist that he was “involved somehow”, based principally on his presence at Malta airport on the morning of the disaster.

The original Lockerbie investigation believed that the bomb suitcase was smuggled on to an Air Malta flight at that time.This belief was however fundamentally mistaken, based on a flawed and incomplete analysis of the recovered crash debris.

Careful analysis of the blast-damaged suitcases and adjacent items shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the bomb was in a suitcase seen in the baggage container at Heathrow an hour before the connecting flight from Frankfurt landed.

Mr MacAskill is thus incorrect in his assertion that “there is no suggestion” that the bomb suitcase was not transferred to the Pan Am feeder flight at Frankfurt. The evidence for this having happened is extremely questionable. The evidence for the bomb’s presence at Heathrow is, in contrast, well-nigh irrefutable. This being the case, not only did Megrahi not buy the clothes, he was a thousand miles away from the actual scene of the crime.

I do not know who carried out the Lockerbie bombing, still less who masterminded it.

It is plain that this will never be known until the authorities understand that they need to be looking for people who were in London in the afternoon, not on Malta in the morning.

'Door wide open' for appeal against Lockerbie plane bombing conviction

[This is the headline over a report published this evening on the website of Sputnik International. It reads as follows:]

Prominent human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar has called into question the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for 270 counts of murder in the case of the Lockerbie plane bombing, and has suggested that there is "serious consideration" to launch another appeal against the conviction of the alleged Libyan intelligence officer.

Following the publication of extracts from a soon to be released book by former Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, family members of the victims of the worst ever act of terrorism to occur on Scottish soil have said the case against Megrahi is now "crumbling."

Mr Anwar, who previously represented the families of the Scottish victims, and Mr Megrahi, told Sputnik on Wednesday that the door was still open for an appeal against the conviction.

"The families have never given up on pursuing a second appeal, it was simply the case that the Commission [Scottish Criminal Cases Commission] refused to refer it back to the Court of Appeal. But the door is still left wide open for a potential appeal," Mr Anwar told Sputnik.

"There are concerns over the conviction, that was revealed by Kenny MacAskill [ex-Justice Secretary for Scotland] and Alex Salmond [former First Minster of Scotland], in regards to the identification evidence that was critical to Mr Megrahi's conviction.

"There's serious consideration of whether to go back to the commission again in light of the shocking revelations that we've seen over the last 48 hours."

The conviction of Megrahi for the bombing of the Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988, killing 270, was based on key evidence from Maltese shop owner, Tony Gauci, who testified that he had sold Mr Megrahi clothing that was found in the wreckage.

Previews of Kenny MacAskill's book, The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice tell that he does not believe that Mr Megrahi bought the clothes, and raised serious concerns over the legitimacy of the testimony given that Mr Gauci had later been unable to identify Mr Megrahi.

When asked if he believed that the conviction could have occurred without this key evidence Mr Anwar said: "That's a matter for the Lordships, but the testimony was significant.

"Had we known then, what we know now it might have put a different slant on matters. At the end of the day, in any court in this land, if you were to subsequently find out that a witness has been offered money to give positive testimony in court, or if you found out that they had been unable to identify an individual and they had been cajoled into recognizing someone — and there were all these problems with that identification evidence, then it's unlikely that that evidence would have been allowed into court," Mr Anwar told Sputnik.

Kenny MacAskill wrote that he received numerous death threats for the decision that the he and the SNP government made in 2009 to release Mr Megrahi to the Libyan authorities on compassionate grounds when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Mr Megrahi died three years later in Libya.

Mr MacAskill has now revealed that at one stage he and the then First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, tried to use the planned transfer of Mr Megrahi to secure further powers for the Scottish Government in Holyrood. Mr Anwar suggested that this raises further questions over the previous attempts to bring this case to the Court of Appeal.

"At the time of Mr Megrahi's release it was always denied vociferously that it had anything to do with shady oil deals in the desert or weapons contracts, we now know that to be different, but there was also a denial that any pressure had been put on Mr Megrahi [to drop the appeal in return for release on compassionate grounds], so one wonders what is it that we are no supposed to believe."

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the explosion, has campaigned to uncover the truth behind the bombing for several years.

He told Scottish newspaper, The National, that the case against Mr Megrahi was now "falling to pieces."

Mr MacAskill's book will not be published in full until the [26] May 2016.

[RB: Aamer Anwar is understandably and commendably cautious on the issue of whether Megrahi could still have been convicted if the court had not found that he was the Malta purchaser. "That's a matter for the Lordships, but the testimony was significant,” he is quoted as saying. 

Unlike Mr Anwar, I have no need to be circumspect on this matter. If the trial court judges had not treated the evidence as establishing that Megrahi was the purchaser I confidently assert that they would not, and in law could not, have returned a verdict of guilty. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission shares my view. In para 21.100 of its Statement of Reasons in the Megrahi application the Commission states: “It is sufficient to say that in the Commission's view any finding that a reasonable court could not have inferred that the applicant was the purchaser would render the remaining evidence against him insufficient to convict.”]

Lockerbie bombing conviction ‘crumbling’

[This is part of the headline over a report in today’s edition of The National. It reads as follows:]

The official case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, is crumbling, according to the father of one of the victims.

Dr Jim Swire’s comments came as the fallout continued from the first extracts published of former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s book The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice.

MacAskill wrote that clothes in the suitcase used to carry the bomb “were acquired in Malta, though not by Megrahi. But if Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes, he was certainly involved”.

The verdict reached at Megrahi’s trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, hinged on evidence from Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci that he had bought the clothes in his shop.

Swire told The National: “I think what we’re seeing is the official case is falling to pieces. There will have to be a legally powerful review of all the evidence, the way the trial was conducted and it’s more than justified whatever the decisions reached by Operation Sandwood.”

Sandwood is a Police Scotland investigation into allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial by the campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM) of which Swire is a founder member.

“If Sandwood confirms any of the criminal acts that are alleged then it’s absolutely inevitable that there should be such an inquiry. The evidence has to be reviewed in a way that would have the power to overturn the verdict if it so decided.

“If Megrahi didn’t buy the clothing there’s no case against him.”

Megrahi was released by MacAskill on compassionate grounds in August 2009 suffering from terminal prostate cancer, and died three years later in Libya.

Lawyer Aamer Anwar, meanwhile, has claimed that pressure is mounting for a further appeal against the conviction. He had previously applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to have it overturned – an application made on behalf of Swire, the Rev John Mosey and 22 other British relatives of passengers who died on Pan Am Flight 103, as well as immediate Megrahi family members.

“This is not the end of the matter and the fact that a former Justice Secretary and First Minister are raising concerns about the conviction of Megrahi adds to the pressure for a further appeal, because they’re privy to information that none of us are privy to,” Anwar told The National.

“At the end of the day … Megrahi was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopkeeper who claimed to have sold him clothes, gave a description of him in multiple statements and failed to recognise him in a courtroom.

“It’s now accepted by an ex-Justice Secretary that Megrahi might not have bought those clothes. It’s all very well for Mr MacAskill to say he’s got no doubt that he was involved in the bombing in some way, but that’s not how it works in criminal law.

“If Megrahi did not buy those clothes that were found in the wreckage of Pan Am flight 103 then that casts doubt on his conviction.”

Anwar added that the Scottish and UK governments had always denied playing any role in pressuring Megrahi into dropping his appeal.

MacAskill was unavailable for comment last night.

[A letter from Iain A D Mann published in The Herald today reads as follows:]

It comes as no great surprise to learn from the new book by former Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, analysed by Iain Macwhirter, that the release of the convicted prisoner Abdul baset al Megrahi from a Scottish jail was the result of a cynical undercover deal between Gordon Brown’s UK government and Libya’s President Gadaffi. It was all about undercover oil deals and defence contracts, and had little to do with Megrahi’s state of terminal illness (“Macaskill, Megrahi and a host of questions”, The Herald, May 17).

But the question must then be asked: why on earth did the Scottish Government agree to take all the blame and then be subject to years of abuse from the British and American governments and media? What benefit was that to Scotland? Does Mr MacAskill’s book explain this, and also why the Scottish Government insisted on taking sole responsibility for Megrahi’s early release?

It seems that the new book also confirms that the attack on [Pan Am] 103 “was in revenge for the downing of an Iranian civilian passenger aircraft by a US naval ship”. Most rational people have believed this for years, but again the question arises: why did Libya agree to carry out the retaliation on behalf of Iran? I am sure the Iranian secret service was just as capable of doing its own dirty work, rather than sub-contracting the job to another country which had no good reason to become involved.

Questions also still remain about the reliability of some of the evidence given at the Camp Zeist trial, despite Mr MacAskill’s lengthy review of the case in his book. He also confirms that “other states and terrorist organisations also played their part”. Again many of us have believed that for years, but it was never mentioned at the trial. Sadly this case remains a stain on the reputation of our much revered Scottish justice system, and Mr MacAskill has not helped this situation by these latest revelations.

Why MI6 disastrously spurned Mossad’s Heathrow alert

[This is the headline over an article by barrister David Wolchover that was published on the Jewish News website on 16 May 2016. It reads as follows:]

In my recent article on the part played by President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, I stated that Israeli intelligence had warned MI6 that Heathrow was the likely target for planting a bomb on a passenger aircraft but the warning was ignored because of a major rift between British and Israeli intelligence services. A number of readers have expressed curiosity about the episode.

During tensions in the Gulf earlier that year the US Navy had negligently shot down a packed Iranian Airbus. Israel and American intelligence soon learnt that for a multi-million dollar bounty Ahmed Jibril’s Syrian-based “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command” – experts in planting bombs on passenger planes – had been contracted by Iran to destroy an American airliner in revenge. Infiltrated Israeli agents also learnt that Heathrow was the prime target for the planting of a bomb on a US plane and British intelligence was duly alerted.

The significance of that warning was its prescience. Detailed scrutiny of the totality of the Lockerbie evidence proves conclusively that, contrary to the official story, the suitcase containing the bomb was placed by a terrorist in a portable luggage bin in Heathrow’s “interline” shed before the bin was taken out to the doomed Jumbo Jet. But Iran was not merely the paymaster. As reported in my earlier article, an Israeli intelligence source has confirmed that Iran in fact provided key logistical support. The bomb was flown into Heathrow on board an IranAir cargo jet which docked 200 yards from the Interline shed and was taken across to the shed by a PFLP-GC terrorist, named by my source as Jibril’s nephew, Marwad Bushnaq.

To learn why MI6 spurned the warning we must go back to the summer of 1988 when MI5 and Special Branch officers arrested a suspected member of the Palestinian Fatah Force 17 faction. But their captive turned out to be a Mossad double agent and in the light of other intelligence about Mossad’s activities in the UK the British Government concluded that the Israelis had been running an extensive network of operatives throughout the realm, engaging in the infiltration of various Fatah and PFLP cells. Since it was accepted that a number of Palestinian activist groups were cultivating close links with Irish republican terrorist bands it might have been supposed that British intelligence would have relished the chance to pool resources with their Israel counterparts. But other considerations prevailed. Whitehall was bound to show its outrage that Mossad had unilaterally made the UK Israel’s own private intelligence fiefdom.

Older readers may recall the dramatic outcome. On 17 June 1988 Mossad’s London station chief Arieh Regev and four other agents with diplomatic cover were sensationally expelled.

According to the late Samuel Katz’s 1993 book Israel Versus Jibril (Paragon, p205) Mossad alerted MI6 in late November 1988 that a Middle Eastern terrorist gang, probably one of the Syrian-sponsored anti-Arafat groups, would try to sabotage an airliner departing from Europe in the run-up to the Christmas holidays. Katz noted that the British dismissed the warning as no “hot tip” but a purely self-serving sham by which Mossad supposed they could worm their way back into MI6’s good books. He gave no further details of the warning and simply referenced an article by Yisrael Rosenblat in Ma’ariv Sofshavu’a (the Israeli newspaper’s weekend magazine) for November 22, 1991.

In fact my source confirmed that the warning was much more specific than that described in Rosenblat’s report. MI6 were very definitely told that because of the appalling shambles in Heathrow’s security (with airside passes easily obtained under the counter, hundreds having gone missing during the rebuilding of Terminal 3) the airport was Number One target to get a bomb into the hold of a wide-bodied plane operated by one of the premier American carriers.

Whitehall’s hostile attitude was conveyed back to Israel by an exasperated British intermediary and Mossad washed its hands of the whole business. The catastrophic aftermath may explain the desperate efforts to show that the bomb was not infiltrated at Heathrow. Doubtless the response of the joint intelligence chiefs to this revelation will be silence rather than denial but it is enough to hope that these days our security services are more pragmatic and less Israel-averse.

Statement by Aamer Anwar on MacAskill revelations

[What follows is the text of a statement issued today by Aamer Anwar:]

Statement issued by Aamer Anwar - lawyer instructed on behalf of the family of the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Dr Jim Swire and other British relatives.

LOCKERBIE REVELATIONS BY EX-JUSTICE SECRETARY KENNY MACKASKILL

In 2014 I submitted an application with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) seeking to overturn the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for murder. That application was submitted on behalf of Dr Jim Swire, Rev’d John F Mosey and 22 other British relatives of passengers who died on board Pan Am Flight 103 and also the six immediate family members of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The Commission determined on the 28th June 2007 that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice in relation to his conviction and identified six grounds for referring the case to the High Court. We asked the Commission to reconfirm these six grounds and address the issue of whether it was in the interests of justice to refer the case to the High Court for a further appeal. Sadly last November the SCCRC refused the application for referral. Today family members of the victims were angered and shocked by Kenny MacKaskill’s claims that Mr al-Megrahi’s release was part of a larger scheme to secure £13billion oil deals and £350 million worth of defence contracts for British firms. If true that is a shocking abuse of our justice system. An Appeal was commenced but following the diagnosis of terminal cancer it was suddenly abandoned in 2009. At the time the British Government and Scottish Government denied they played any role in pressurising Mr al-Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release but also denied that squalid deals for oil or weapons were behind his release. Of course a prisoner transfer was never open if the appeal was ongoing, but it was claimed that al-Megrahi had no way of knowing that Kenny MacAskill would ultimately opt for compassionate release rather than prisoner transfer, but it is also alleged that al-Megrahi was led to believe that he would not be released unless he dropped his appeal. Mr Megrahi was convicted on the word of a Maltese shop owner Gauci who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in multiple statements. Yet it is now accepted by the ex-Justice Secretary, that Megrahi might not have bought those clothes found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft. Yet Gauci was central to al-Megrahi’s conviction because the clothes recovered from the suitcase that carried the bomb onto Pan Am 103 were traced back to his shop. The case of al-Megrahi has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history. A reversal of the verdict would have meant that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom stood exposed as having lived a monumental lie for 25 years and having imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for ten years. Sadly once again the reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system has been damaged both at home and internationally. The truth will only ever be exposed by allowing the Appeal Court to consider a fresh appeal challenging the original verdict. Background Notes   http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/lockerbie-exclusive-we-publish-the-report-that-could-have-cleared-megrahi.2012036248 http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/12/lockerbie-bombing-abdelbaset-al-megrahi http://www.thenational.scot/news/kenny-macaskill-reported-to-police-over-claims-about-lockerbie-bombing-trial.17646 http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/lockerbie-bomber-appeal-case-dropped-6775520 http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13198408.Court_to_rule_on_Lockerbie_appeal/

Lawyer calls for fresh appeal over Lockerbie bombing

[This is the headline over a report published this evening on the website of The Herald. It reads in part:]

Revelations by former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill about the decision to release the only man ever tried over the Lockerbie bombing, should trigger a fresh appeal challenging his conviction, according to lawyer Aamer Anwar.

Mr Anwar, who applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for a review of the case in 2014, acting on behalf of some of the relatives of those killed in the terrorist attack, said only an appeal could restore the credibility of Scottish justice.

A previous attempted appeal was abandoned in 2009 after Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi was diagnosed with cancer, and the Libyan was subsequently released on compassionate grounds.

However Mr Anwar claimed that a forthcoming book on the case by Mr MacAskill had revealed that prior plans for a prisoner transfer agreement between the UK and Libya had been part of a larger scheme to secure £13 billion in oil deals and £350m of defence contracts.

Mr MacAskill says the Scottish Government opposed any prisoner transfer agreement that involved Mr Al-Megrahi, despite pressure from then Home Secretary Jack Straw.

Mr Anwar claimed Mr Al-Megrahi had also faced pressure, leading him to believe he would not be released if he went ahead with his appeal.

He said:"The case of Al-Megrahi has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history. A reversal of the verdict would have meant that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom ... imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for ten years.

"Sadly once again the reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system has been damaged both at home and internationally. The truth will only ever be exposed by allowing the Appeal Court to consider a fresh appeal challenging the original verdicts."

Mr MacAskill was not available for comment.

[RB: I suspect that this report omits a reference by Mr Anwar to the MacAskill revelation that, above all others, points to the need for a fresh appeal: namely, the concession that the items from Malta that surrounded the bomb were not purchased by Abdelbaset Megrahi. If the trial court had not found (wrongly) that he was the purchaser, it could not and would not have convicted him.

Aamer Anwar has confirmed on Twitter that my suspicion was correct:]

Aamer Anwar ‏@AamerAnwar  2m2 minutes agoGlasgow, Scotland

@rblackqc spot on Robert I mentioned that MacKaskill said he didn't believe Megrahi purchased the clothes!

CIA officer aboard Pan Am 103

[The website Libya: News and Views contains an item (sourced to The Washington Post) dated 17 May 2000 that reads as follows:]

A new book published this week reveals that CIA officer Matt Gannon died aboard Pan Am Flight 103, a jumbo jet that was blown out of the sky in 1988 by, US officials believe, Libyan operatives in retaliation for US attacks on Libya in 1986. By coincidence, Gannon was the son-in-law of Thomas A Twetten, a top CIA official who helped plan the air strikes on Tripoli. Throughout the book, its author Ted Gup, a former Washington Post investigative reporter, describes how agency officials lied to family members about how their loved ones died to maintain "plausible deniability" and keep the CIA from being linked to controversial overseas missions.

[RB: I cannot find the article in question on The Washington Post’s website. But an article dated 15 May 2000 on the CBS News website contains the following:]

One of the 189 Americans killed when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, just before Christmas 1988 was a CIA officer, reports CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv.

A new book, by former Time correspondent Ted Gup, says 34-year-old Matthew Gannon, an Arabic-speaking CIA officer, was returning from an undercover mission in Beirut "to gather intelligence on a number of terrorist cells."

The Book Of Honor also reveals that Gannon's father-in-law, Tom Twetten, was director of covert operations at the CIA at the time who helped plan the airstrikes on Tripoli. It's believed the Pan Am bombing was in retaliation for those raids.

Now retired in Vermont, Twetten told CBS News he has assured himself the two Libyans on trial are the bombers — "the right guys" — but they probably didn't know a CIA operative was aboard the doomed jet.

And, until now, neither did Americans.

"The agency maintains that identifying its casualties, even decades later, would endanger foreign nationals who may have provided the CIA with intelligence," writes Gup, a former Washington Post investigative reporter who now teaches journalism at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "But the oft-invoked argument wears thinner and thinner as the years wear on and bereaved families are asked to bear their losses in continued silence."

Gup reports agency officials often lie to family members about how their loved ones died to maintain "plausible deniability" and keep the CIA from being linked to controversial overseas missions.

[RB: A version of the well-known Pan Am 103 explanation involving Matthew Gannon and Charles McKee can be read here.]