Death of Tony Gauci announced

[What follows is the text of a report that has just appeared on the Times of Malta website:]

Tony Gauci's death means mystery might remain unresolved

Tony Gauci, the Maltese man who determined the outcome of the Lockerbie trial, has died,Times of Malta is informed.

Mr Gauci, who lived in Swieqi, is believed to have died of natural causes.

He had pointed at Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as the man who had bought the clothes from his Sliema shop, which were said to have been wrapped around aircraft which killed 270 people over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988.

This evidence tied together the prosecution's thesis, that the bomb loaded on to the doomed Pan Am flight at Heathrow Airport had first left from Malta before being transferred via Frankfurt. But serious doubts were raised about Mr Gauci’s testimony over the years.

Libyan national Al-Megrahi died in 2012 with the tag 'the Lockerbie bomber’ despite the fact that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had described Mr Gauci as an “unreliable” witness, putting the onus of the responsibility of the UK’s worst terrorist attack in doubt.

The SCCRC said the Crown prosecution suppressed from Megrahi’s defence team statements showing how much Gauci changed his mind about crucial details over the years.

Documents published later had revealed that the lead investigator in the Lockerbie bombing personally lobbied US authorities to pay Mr Gauci and his brother Paul at least $3 million for their part in securing the conviction of Al-Megrahi.

Mr Gauci never spoke publicly about the case and maintained the media silence that characterised his role in the whole affair. He was last approached for comment for an edition of Times Talk in November 2013.

Mr Gauci's death signals the end of a key witness to a case which continues being fought legally by relatives of victims who believe Mr Al-Megrahi was innocent.

Gaddafi "was no threat to any national security interest of the United States"

[What follows is the text of an article by American lawyer Bruce Fein that was published yesterday in the US edition of The Huffington Post:]

Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential nominee, has derided “Don’t do stupid stuff” as a worthless organizing principle of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

But her substitute of “Doing stupid stuff” is even worse.

As Secretary of State during President Barack Obama’s first term, Ms. Clinton single-handedly compounded problems of international terrorism, nuclear proliferation, war, refugees, and human rights from North Korea and China to South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa to Europe and Russia.

In sum, Ms. Clinton foreign policy makes former President George W. Bush look like a Talleyrand, Metternich, or Bismarck.

Emblematic was her imbecilic orchestration of war against Libya in 2011 to overthrow anti-jihadist Muammar Gaddafi. The secular Libyan leader had recently abandoned weapons of mass destruction, had paid billions in compensation to the victims of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, and had been removed from the United States list of state sponsors of terrorism. He was no threat to any national security interest of the United States.

Secretary of State Clinton should have rewarded Gaddafi with economic, trade, and investment incentives. Such diplomatic savvy would have encouraged North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear ambitions which were fueled by worries that the United States would otherwise overthrow their respective regimes by force and violence.

Instead, Ms. Clinton chose war—a monumental blunder that continues to haunt the United States.

1. Clinton’s justification for war was Gaddafi’s human rights violations in Libya. That casus belli invited wars of aggression everywhere because no nation is without warts. Thus, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea under the pretest that Ukraine was oppressing its Russian ethnic citizens. It could use the same pretext to invade the Baltic States. That is why the United Nations Charter prohibits war except in self-defense under Articles 2, paragraph 4 and Article 51. Clinton flouted that international prohibition.

2. Clinton’s war justification was a stupendous lie known to one and all. On her watch, the United States maintained amicable relations with numerous countries beset with human rights records as bad or worse than Libya’s, for instance, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, China, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia.

3. Clinton lied to Russia in denying that an ulterior motive for the United States military intervention in Libya was regime change and the killing of Gaddafi. Strutting like Julius Caesar, Clinton clucked, “We came, we saw, he died.” Clinton’s lie gratuitously alienated Russia, and invited a new Cold War.

4. Clinton’s war splintered Libya into hundreds of tribal, ethnic, sectarian, or personal militias. The nation was thrown into an ongoing hydra-headed civil war, which gave birth to ISIS in Sirte and rival governments in Tripoli and Tobruk. Gaddafi’s cache of conventional arms fell into the hands of international terrorists throughout the Middle East. The lawlessness and chaos Clinton’s war created fueled the terrorist assassination of our Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens; and, the flight of millions of refugees from Libyan shores to Europe and tens of thousands of drownings in the Mediterranean Sea.

5. Clinton’s war fortified the determination of North Korea and Iran to develop, maintain, or expand nuclear arsenals to deter the United States from invasion. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, recently testified to Congress that negotiating nuclear disarmament with North Korea is now a pipedream. Additionally, Clinton’s so-called “Pivot to Asia” antagonized China and ended any possibility of its necessary cooperation in stopping North Korea’s nuclear adventurism. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated by President Obama with Iran only postpones fulfillment of its nuclear ambitions for ten years.

Hillary Clinton’s Libyan war is the very definition of doing stupid stuff. The multiplicity of calamities that ensued was as predictable as the force of gravity. Libya had never practiced democracy. It had never embraced democratic norms. It sported 140 tribal networks. Civil society was embryonic. Its political development was pre-Magna Charta. And corruption was endemic.

Depend upon it. If Ms. Clinton is elected President, her “doing stupid stuff” foreign policy will find expression in wars with Syria, China, and Russia with consequences far worse than the disasterous fallout from Libya.

Mandela breaks Lockerbie trial impasse

[On this date in 1997 a cartoon by South Africa’s leading political cartoonist, Zapiro, was published in The Sowetan. The text accompanying the cartoon on Zapiro's website reads as follows:]

Mandela backs a neutral country as venue for the trial of Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. The verdict in the protracted Lockerbie trial was a landmark in international law and a tribute to the diplomacy of Nelson Mandela, who played a leading role in bringing about the trial. It was largely through Mandela's ability to influence both Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on the one hand, and the British government on the other, that the unprecedented solution of trying the two Lockerbie suspects in a neutral country, the Netherlands, was agreed upon. Mandela broke an impasse, which arose because Britain, and the US, were insisting on a trial in either of their countries, while Gaddafi refused to hand over the suspects to them.

Lockerbie bomb: the truth will out

This is the title of an article by Paul Feeney published in the current issue of the magazine Notes from the Borderland (issue 11). It provides an excellent summary of the current state of play in the Lockerbie case. With the permission of the magazine’s publishers, the full text of this important article can be read here.

UK goverment adamant in opposing neutral venue trial

[What follows is the Hansard report of an exchange that took place in the House of Commons on this date in 1997 arising out of a question to the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook:]

HC Deb 28 October 1997 vol 299 cc700-702

Mr Dalyell If he will make a statement about his meeting with the Lord Advocate in September on the issues arising out of new information on Lockerbie and Libyan sanctions.

Mr Robin Cook I met my noble Friend the Lord Advocate on 4 September. His view remains that the available evidence supports the case against the two accused Libyans, and that there is no evidence of the involvement of nationals of any other country in the Lockerbie bombing. I fully accept that assessment.

It is for the Libyan authorities to fulfil their clear duty to surrender the two men accused of that act of mass murder to stand trial in Scotland. I am today inviting the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Arab League and the Organisation of African Unity to send a delegation to Scotland, to show them the judicial system there and to discuss arrangements for a trial in Scotland with international observers.

Mr Dalyell Since one of the reasons given by the Foreign Secretary for objecting to a trial on Lockerbie in The Hague is that the Americans might refuse to submit evidence that they held to a court outside Scotland or the United States, can we reflect on why the Americans should do that? Is there a suggestion that the Americans might be unwilling, after nine years, to give information to the Dumfries and Galloway police?

Mr Cook We have had full co-operation throughout from the United States authorities and they have shared fully with the investigating powers all the evidence available to them. It would not be possible, however, to mount a prosecution without the co-operation of the US authorities, who hold part of the evidence. Most of those killed on the Pan Am jet were Americans, and the majority of their relatives do not want a trial to take place outside Scotland or the United States.

Sir Teddy Taylor As the interest of those who lost their relatives in the dreadful disaster is that a trial should take place and the guilty parties be identified and punished, is the Foreign Secretary really saying that there are no circumstances in which he will consider a trial outside Scotland, especially as the Libyans have already said that they would willingly surrender the two accused to an independent party—perhaps Egypt—if the trial were held in any third country?

Mr Cook If I may correct the hon Gentleman, what happened at Lockerbie was not a disaster; it was murder. No one in the House should forget that. I find it strange that it should be argued that a trial by Scots judges under Scots law in another country would be fair, but a trial by Scots judges under Scots law in Scotland would not. We have nothing to be defensive about concerning the impartiality of our courts, and I shall be proud to display that when I meet the delegation.

Mr Menzies Campbell I welcome the Foreign Secretary's announcement of the invitations that he has extended. Is the assertion that no fair trial can be obtained in Scotland not only unfounded but unnecessarily provocative? If the test of fairness of a judicial system is transparency, does not the Scottish system stand comparison with many others, including the Libyan system? May not fairness be established by the presence of independent observers at every stage of the legal process?

Mr Cook The hon and learned Gentleman makes some fair points about the nature of the Scottish legal system. It is, after all, the legal system to which we subject our citizens. I see no reason why there should be a separate system for those from Libya, but I understood that other countries may not be so persuaded. That is why I have made in good faith the offer that we are willing to discuss any reservations that other countries may have, confident in the knowledge that we can put them right. We would welcome monitors and observers from them at a trial so that justice could not only be done but be seen internationally to be done.

Mr Godman It is almost nine years since that terrible night when Pan Am flight 103 fell out of the sky. As one who has all along argued that those deemed guilty of that terrible crime should stand trial in the High Court in Edinburgh and not in America, may I offer my sincere compliments to my right hon Friend for arguing the case that such a trial should take place in Edinburgh?

Mr Cook I am grateful to my hon Friend for his support.

[RB: Ten months later, in August 1998 the UK Government finally conceded that a trial under Scots law should take place in the Netherlands.]

Libya “not involved in any way” in Lockerbie bombing

[What follows is the text of a report published today on the Al Arabiya English website:]

Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam, the special envoy of the former Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi, has denied that his country was involved in any way in the bombing of a US airline plane over the village of Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

In a series of exclusive interviews with Al Arabiya’s Political Memory show, Gaddaf al-Dam says that he visited the main suspect Abdel Basset Megrahi who had sworn on the Quran that “neither he nor Libya had anything to do with it.”

On the other hand , Gaddaf al-Dam also denied any knowledge of the of the bombing of a French airliner over Niger in 1989 telling Al Arabiya’s Taher Barakeh: “The French plane is another issue, I don’t have any information regarding that subject.”

However, he stressed that the bombing of a Berlin cafe could have Libyan prints over it. The operation that targeted Labelle Caffe [RB: usually referred to as the LaBelle Disco] which killed two US soldiers and a Turkish woman was a reaction to the raids on Tripoli in 1986, saying that: “Libya never forgets its aggressors, sooner or later, the country retaliates.”

Libya’s former special envoy said that his country did not support any military coup, but rather defended national liberation movements. He revealed that Libya extradited three Sudanese opponents who were organizing a coup against President Jaafar Nemiri to the Sudani Government on the condition that they would not be executed.

Nevertheless , Nemiri did not respect his promise , which led “to a stressful relationship between the two countries”.

*The second episode of the Political Memory interview with Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam can be viewed in Arabic.

A vague, ill-defined memory

[What follows is the text of an article that appeared in the Malta Independent newspaper on this date in 2009:]

Prof David Canter, a director of The Centre for Investigative Psychology at the University of Liverpool, is questioning the veracity of Anthony Gauci’s testimony during the Lockerbie trial and has published an extensive report based on the proceedings.

Mr Gauci was a key witness in the trial which condemned former Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, as the perpetrator of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing which killed 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1998.

Writing in The Times (UK) yesterday, Prof Canter asserted that many studies have raised doubts on the psychology of memory about witness testimony and the evidence crucial to condemn Mr al-Megrahi was probably based on a vague memory that somehow became convincing enough for the court to convict.

In his report, Prof Canter explains that there are two distinct aspects of Mr Gauci’s memories that can be considered in the light of what is now known of the psychology of memory. This is the synopsis of his report: “One is the recall of the alleged event in his shop and the details of what happened then. The other is his alleged recognition of Mr Megrahi as a person who had come into his shop. These are rather different aspects of memory, but in both cases Prof Canter considers there are grounds for doubting that the recall or recognition are of the events or person as Mr Gauci claims.

Mr Gauci’s reported memory is of one particular customer and sales event out of many others, recalled, initially, at a point 10 months after the alleged event had occurred. In the absence of any particular features, at the time the event happened, that would render the event highly distinctive or emotionally significant to Mr Gauci, the scientific understanding of the rapid decay of human memory soon after the event being remembered would suggest that it is extremely unlikely the details of such a memory are accurate. The decay of memory is also inconsistent with any claims that in court, 10 years after the incident, Mr Gauci could have a more accurate memory than closer to the time of the event.

As well as memory for the event being unlikely, recognition of the individual alleged to be involved and the accurate identification, in such circumstances, of a strange individual more than two years later, is highly unlikely.

The uninformed view that memory is open to improvement after the initial event by simple, effortful thinking on subsequent occasions is not supported by scientific research. Enrichment of the details of what is remembered is only possible by intensive psychological techniques including context reinstatement, which were not utilised in relation to the central features of this case. Furthermore, such improvements tend towards providing additional detail rather than contradicting earlier accounts. Therefore the inconsistencies in Mr Gauci’s testimony, that include a number of changes in details of alleged fact, across the 17 statements examined, are more in accord with a vague memory that Mr Gauci is keen to make clearer than the developing of a more accurate memory of an actual incident.

It is now well established by psychologists that what a witness genuinely claims to remember, with confidence, is open to influence from various sources that will lead to distortions in the actual memory, such as implicitly leading questioning and prior exposure in relation to material that could influence identification of a suspect. So, although working with limited material that provides little information on the police interview process, I do consider that the variations and inconsistencies in Mr Gauci’s accounts of what he remembers are in accord with the recognised processes of influence on memory.

The processes at play in the present case are probably more powerful because of Mr Gauci’s apparent desire to please and his recognition of the importance of his testimony. This could give rise to a phenomenon known as the reduction of ‘cognitive dissonance’ in which a person adjusts his cognitions to accord with his actions. In this case unconsciously adjusting his confidence in his opinion to make it coherent with his commitment to helping the police enquiry.

Of particular importance in influencing Mr Gauci’s identification evidence is the possibility of his memory of who he claims was in his shop having been distorted by his prior exposure to Mr Megrahi in other situations. This is a process which psychologists refer to as ‘unconscious transference’, whereby witnesses remember a person but not the context within which they saw that person, then wrongly assign the person to the context in question. It is also possible that aspects of the administration of the line up procedure, as well as dock-based identification, can have an influence that would also distort what Mr Gauci thought he remembered.

A further challenge to the accuracy of Mr Gauci’s recognition of Mr Megrahi as a man who came into his shop and bought items as alleged is that Mr Gauci positively identified two other men as the individual involved in the alleged incident. For a memory of the person to be clear at a period of months after the incident it would not be expected that a different person would be identified at some point. Such confusions are more consistent with an ambiguous and vague memory that has been unwittingly influenced by external sources.

It does seem possible that at various points in the police enquiry Mr Gauci may have identified up to six different people, at least, as the person who had been to his shop on the day in question in late 1988. It is difficult to know from the information available whether the various identifications were of the same or different people. Such a mixture of apparent recognitions is consistent with a vague, ill-defined memory rather than with the confident claims eventually made in court.

This leads me to the general view that Mr Gauci does not have a distinct memory of the particular incident described. Rather it is suggested the account he provides is constructed, innocently, in attempting to help police, by a witness unaware of the limitations of human memory and police officers unaware of the possible subtle influences of the interviewing and related processes that they used. It probably draws on disparate recollections of different individuals, sales and customer behaviours, drawn together in an account that is then shaped by a variety of recognised influences on memory.”

Operation Autumn Leaves

[On this date in 1988 the German police arrested seventeen men at Neuss in operation “Autumn Leaves” (Herbstlaub). What follows is excerpted (with citations removed) from the relevant article in Wikipedia:]

For many months after the bombing, the prime suspects were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command (PFLP-GC), a Damascus-based rejectionist group led by former Syrian army captain Ahmed Jibril, sponsored by Iran. In a February 1986 press conference, Jibril warned: "There will be no safety for any traveler on an Israeli or U.S. airliner" (Cox and Foster 1991, p28).

Secret intercepts were reported by author, David Yallop, to have recorded the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) in Baalbeck, Lebanon, making contact with the PFLP-GC immediately after the downing of the Iran Air Airbus. Israeli intelligence (Mossad) allegedly intercepted a telephone call made two days after PA 103 by Mohtashemi-Pur, Interior Minister in Tehran, to the chargé d'affaires at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, instructing the embassy to hand over the funds to Jibril and congratulating them on the success of "Operation Intekam" ('equal and just revenge'). (...)

Jibril's right-hand man, Hafez Dalkamoni, set up a PFLP-GC cell which was active in the Frankfurt and Neuss areas of West Germany in October 1988, two months before PA 103. During what Germany's internal security service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), called Operation Herbstlaub ('Operation Autumn Leaves'), the BfV kept cell members under strict surveillance. The plotters prepared a number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) hidden inside household electronic equipment. They discussed a planned operation in coded calls to Cyprus and Damascus: oranges and apples stood for 'detonating devices'; medicine and pasta for 'Semtex explosive'; and auntie for 'the bomb carrier'. One operative had been recorded as saying: "auntie should get off, but should leave the suitcase on the bus" (Duffy and Emerson 1990). The PFLP-GC cell had an experienced bomb-maker, Jordanian Marwan Khreesat, to assist them. Khreesat made at least one IED inside a single-speaker Toshiba Bombeat 453 radio cassette recorder, similar to the twin-speaker model RT-SF 16 Bombeat that was used to blow up PA 103. However, unlike the Lockerbie bomb with its sophisticated timer, Khreesat's IEDs contained a barometric pressure device that triggers a simple timer with a range of up to 45 minutes before detonation.

Unbeknown to the PFLP-GC cell, its bomb-maker Khreesat was a Jordanian intelligence service (GID) agent and reported on the cell's activities to the GID, who relayed the information to Western intelligence and to the BfV. The Jordanians encouraged Khreesat to make the bombs but instructed him to ensure they were ineffective and would not explode. (A German police technician would however be killed, in April 1989, when trying to disarm one of Khreesat's IEDs). Through Khreesat and the GID, the Germans learned that the cell was surveying a number of targets, including Iberia Flight 888 from Madrid to Tel Aviv via Barcelona, chosen because the bomb-courier could disembark without baggage at Barcelona, leaving the barometric trigger to activate the IED on the next leg of the journey. The date chosen, Khreesat reportedly told his handlers, was October 30, 1988. He also told them that two members of the cell had been to Frankfurt airport to pick up Pan Am timetables.

Acting upon this intelligence, the German secret police moved in to arrest the PFLP-GC cell on October 26, raiding 14 apartments and arresting 17 men, fearing that to keep them under surveillance much longer was to risk losing control of the situation. Two cell members are known to have escaped arrest, including Abu Elias, a resident of Sweden who, according to Prime Time Live (ABC News November 1989), was an expert in bombs sent to Germany to check on Khreesat's devices because of suspicions raised by Ahmed Jibril. Four IEDs were recovered, but Khreesat stated later that a fifth device had been taken away by Dalkamoni before the raid, and was never recovered. The link to PA 103 was further strengthened when Khreesat told investigators that, before joining the cell in Germany, he had bought five Toshiba Bombeat cassette radios from a smugglers' village in Syria close to the border with Lebanon, and made practice IEDs out of them in Jibril's training camp 20 km (12 mi) away. The bombs were inspected by Abu Elias, who declared them to be good work. What became of these devices is not known.

Some journalists such as Private Eye's Paul Foot and a PA 103 relative, Dr Jim Swire, believed that it was too stark a coincidence for a Toshiba cassette radio IED to have downed PA 103 just eight weeks after the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt. Indeed, Scottish police actually wrote up an arrest warrant for Marwan Khreesat in the spring of 1989, but were persuaded by the FBI not to issue it because of his value as an intelligence source. In the following spring, King Hussein of Jordan arranged for Khreesat to be interviewed by FBI agent, Edward Marshman, and the former head of the FBI's forensic lab, Thomas Thurman, to whom he described in detail the bombs he had built. In the 1994 documentary film Maltese Double Cross, the author David Yallop speculated that Libyan agents and agents paid by Iran may have worked on the bombing together; or, that one group handed the job over to a second group upon the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell members. The former CIA head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistraro, who previously worked on the PA 103 investigation, was interviewed in the film and said he believed the PFLP-GC planned the attack at the behest of the Iranian government, then sub-contracted it to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the arrests in Germany meant the PFLP-GC was unable to complete the operation. Other supporters of this theory believed that whoever paid for the bombing arranged two parallel operations intended to ensure that at least one would succeed; or, that Jibril's cell in Germany was a red herring designed to attract the attention of the intelligence services, while the real bombers worked quietly elsewhere.

Lockerbie relatives cautiously welcome review

[This is the headline over a report that was published in The Herald on this date in 2009. It reads as follows:]

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the 270 killed, said yesterday a desktop review of the criminal inquiry has always been the excuse to block a full investigation into how Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on December 21 1988. [RB: Such a review had just been announced by the Crown Office.]

In a letter in today’s Herald, Dr Swire states: "The ‘ongoing criminal investigation’ has been repeatedly used as a reason for denying us the full inquiry into the truth, to which we are entitled under human rights law and now the Inquiries Act 2005."

He also told reporters yesterday: "I think if they are really going to have a meaningful investigation then that is all well and good and long overdue. But if it is just a dodge to prevent an investigation into why the lives of those killed were not protected then I would be livid."

Dr Swire is among many who do not believe that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan agent convicted of the bombing in 2001 and released in August on compassionate grounds, was guilty of the atrocity. Days before his release Megrahi, who has inoperable cancer, dropped his second appeal against his conviction, although he has always protested his innocence.

Eleven relatives of the victims went to Downing Street on Friday to hand a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling for a public inquiry into the bombing. The UK Government has always resisted demands for an independent inquiry and insists that Mr Megrahi’s conviction still stands despite his release.

[RB: The letter by Dr Swire does not appear on the newspaper’s website. As submitted it read as follows:]

After more than 20 years, the Crown Office has just announced that the Lockerbie Criminal Investigation is to re-examine the available evidence and assess new channels of investigation. Their announcement coincides to the day with the public announcement by the UK Lockerbie families group 'UK Families-Flight 103' that they are yet again demanding (this time of Gordon Brown), a full inquiry into the failure to protect their loved ones and the identity of the perpetrators.

The 'ongoing criminal investigation' has been repeatedly used as a reason for denying us the full inquiry into the truth as to why our families were not protected back in 1988, to which we are entitled under Human Rights law and now the Inquiries Act 2005.

If further serious meaningful investigation really is to be pursued by the police and Crown Office (CO) as to who elsemay have contributed to the ruthless murder of our families back in 1988 I would be the first to applaud it. Abu Talb, a potential incriminee has now been released from jail and according to the Crown Office itself was not granted immunity against prosecution over Lockerbie, though appearing as a witness at Zeist. That might be no bad place to start looking for the truth. Trouble is, if he bought 'the clothes from Gaucis’ shop' then Megrahi clearly didn't. Honest further investigation is almost bound to embarrass the Zeist verdict, on which the CO's reputation, and that of its members past and present heavily depends.

'Who else' I write. Interested parties should go to the website of the London Review of Books (lrb.co.uk) and read the article by Gareth Peirce, one of England's foremost miscarriage of justice and human rights lawyers. Her article is titled 'The framing of Al Megrahi'. There they will find an erudite critism of the trial.

After that they might like to consider the words of the UN's specially appointed International Observer at the Lockerbie trial, Professor Hans Koechler of Vienna, who found the verdict against Megrahi 'incomprehensible' and a 'travesty of justice'. He was also forthright enough to say that the verdict could not have been reached without 'deliberate malpractice on the part of Scotland's Crown Office'.

That is a weighty charge, which the CO has not publicly contested, nor have Scottish or UK politicians.

Then interested parties might like to press for the public UK showing of Lockerbie Revisited, a brilliant documentary film by Gideon Levy of the Netherlands which has just won a major international prize, yet which no one in the UK has yet had the guts to screen outside the privilege of the Scottish Parliament, under the redoubtable wing of Christine Grahame MSP.

Forgive me, if for now the jury is out as to what the Crown Office are really up to. Let us not forget that very serious issues still surround the conduct of the Crown Office throughout this case, and the verdict against Al Megrahi in particular.