Trial examines 'secret' CIA papers

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

The Lockerbie trial has been shown the CIA documents at the centre of a dispute between prosecution and defence lawyers.

Scotland's senior law official, Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, said the papers - which contain details of cable communications - featured new information.

He said the documents included remarks made by Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka, who worked as a CIA agent at Malta Airport and whom the prosecution wants to call as a witness at the trial.

Mr Boyd said: "This is the first time the CIA has produced evidence for a foreign court.

"It may also be the first time that cables themselves have been used in any court either in the US or outwith.

"It's been emphasised to me that the amount of information now in the public domain far exceeds that ever put in the public domain before by the CIA in relation to these events."

Mr Boyd said he watched last week at the US Embassy in The Hague as a CIA records custodian identified as William McNair undid deletions in the cables from Giaka, whom crown prosecutors refer to as "Mr Majid".

He said: "I can tell the court that everything Mr Majid is reported to have said in these cables is revealed except for three matters."

These refer to the identities of CIA informants and methods of operation.

Newly revealed information included references to CIA payments to Giaka and his request for "sham surgery" to secure a waiver from military service in Libya.

There is also mention of payments from the CIA he could receive in return for giving evidence.

Giaka has been living for the last 10 years under a witness protection scheme in the US and is regarded as a crucial witness against the accused men. He is expected to take the stand later this week. (...)

Arguments over the CIA papers have dominated the last few days of the trial of the two Libyans who are said to have bombed Pan AM flight 103 over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.

The special court in the Netherlands was adjourned on Monday to give the defence time to consider the new information.

[RB: What follows is part of an account of the CIA cables saga written by me for The Scotsman  some ten years ago:]

The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction.

To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been more difficult, and perhaps impossible.

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

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

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

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

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

Stalinist thinking about the infallibility of police and prosecutors

[On this date in 2009, I posted on this blog an item headed That letter from the FBI to the Justice Secretary: is it real?  The first of its two sentences read simply “This is the heading over a devastating exposure by Jonathan Mitchell QC on his blog of the misconceptions and errors of fact and law in the letter from the Director of the FBI to Kenny MacAskill.” Mr Mitchell’s article reads as follows:]

My last post covered two issues; the hypocrisy of the attack on the decision to release Megrahi, and the law relative to compassionate release of prisoners in Scotland. But in linking these I noted in passing that much of the attack on MacAskill was simply ignorant, and wrote “FBI Director Robert Mueller, in his much-quoted open letter to MacAskill, obviously intended primarily for US domestic consumption, thought the Justice Secretary was a ‘prosecutor‘.“. That touched a nerve with one anonymous commenter, who wrote me a poison-pen message in the middle of which he stated:

The first paragraph of the FBI director’s letter he’s clearly putting it forth that he generally stays out of another jurisdiction’s case–in his experience as a prosecutor the cases of other prosecutors–though the phraseology might be a good target for a pendant punching above his weight class. Indeed, in the US and presumably Scotland, the prosecutor’s ultimate boss is the Attorney General of the US (or Justice Minister there). When the director talks about the effect of the release it is on terrorists in general and their conviction in a ‘…the conviction of trial by jury’. He obviously means it in a general sense or perhaps you’d have his sentence read something like ‘…the conviction of trial by jury–unless of course the crime is one that the statute allows the defendant to select a panel of judges or a judge instead–after the defendant is given all due process…’.

Now, I wouldn’t normally bother about poison-pen writers, but this made me go back to the letter to see if I had misread it. I didn’t. It contains glaring errors about the Lockerbie process. But what on reflection is interesting is that Robert Mueller is an extremely experienced lawyer who worked for many years on the Lockerbie prosecution, (although he was not, as the letter claims, ‘in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991‘; that was the Lord Advocate). It seems inconceivable that he would not have known the truth; and I don’t believe he actually can have been as ignorant as I suggested. I apologise for that. I have to wonder if he actually wrote this letter, with its collection of howlers. Let’s look at what it says, and at the true facts.

The first weird statement is the one about staying out of another jurisdiction’s cases, to use the commenter’s re-hash. This is what Mueller wrote:

Over the years I have been a prosecutor, and recently as the Director of the FBI, I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors, since only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision.

Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this case.

Now, the ‘practice‘ he says he’s abandoning is the practice that he does not ‘comment on the actions of other prosecutors‘. But the Justice Secretary is not a prosecutor; he has nothing to do with the prosecution process. He is not the ‘prosecutor’s ultimate boss‘; that’s the Lord Advocate, whose constitutional independence of the Justice Secretary is fundamental to the system. Section 48 (5) of the Scotland Act states “Any decision of the Lord Advocate in his capacity as head of the systems of criminal prosecution and investigation of deaths in Scotland shall continue to be taken by him independently of any other person.” 1. If the Justice Secretary tried to tell prosecutors what to do, or how to do it, he would be told to sling his hook; and vice versa. Robert Mueller knows this. He is not stupid. He worked with several Lord Advocates over many years. If Robert Mueller wrote the quotation above, he was telling a deliberate untruth. That seems strange. Why should he bother, just for a minor rhetorical flourish? It seems more likely that the author was some minion who shared the lazy assumption of my commenter that the Justice Secretary just had to be a prosecutor, because that’s the American system.

Now, later in the letter the same howler is repeated in different language:

You apparently made this decision without regard to the views of your partners in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the Lockerbie tragedy.

The Justice Secretary is not a ‘partner in investigation and prosecution‘, any more than he is a ‘partner’ of the accused or the defence. He is independent of both, as a judge is. Here again we see language that suggests a basic ignorance of the separation of powers.

There’s another error which I didn’t mention, the reference to ‘conviction by jury‘, which Anonymous nevertheless identifies and defends:

Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that regardless of the quality of the investigation, the conviction by jury after the defendant is given all due process, and sentence appropriate to the crime, the terrorist will be freed …

It seems obvious from this language that its author thought Megrahi was convicted ‘by jury‘. But Mueller knows as well as Megrahi himself that he was not. He sat through much if not all of the trial. Here, again, it seems extraordinary that for a pointless two words Mueller would write something which he knew perfectly well was wrong. Juries are fundamental to the American system (except, of course, for alleged terrorists), but surely Mueller knows they aren’t the norm in most countries affected by terrorism.

There are other errors, most notably the central fatuous and hysterical claim that the release will give comfort to terrorists: what will actually give them comfort is the Faustian pact of successive American and British governments to forgive the entire chain of command in the Libyan intelligence service and government so as to encourage business opportunities2. If you cheerfully sup with the devil, you… the reader can complete this sentence.

Yet neither Mueller nor the FBI have ever gone on record as critical of the decision of successive US administrations to grant amnesty and forgiveness to those who, they say, gave Megrahi his orders; to give them hospitality, trade with them, sell them military equipment.

So I have to ask: who actually wrote this letter? If it was Robert Mueller, he must have been on the juice, which may perhaps have been what Lord Fraser had in mind when he kindly suggested Mueller visit Scotland to ‘discuss some good whisky‘. If it was some underling, he didn’t do his homework.

Whoever it was, it was someone with the Stalinist thinking about the infallibility of police and prosecutors which coloured the UK governments strenuous efforts to keep the evidence in the recent appeal effectively secret, but in a less disguised form. Look at this:

… only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision.

That’s the thinking that led to the founding of the Cheka in 1918. As Hector MacQueen pointed out, it’s the old chestnut that we don’t need courts or judges to “reach the appropriate decision“; still less any defence. The prosecution, after all, is infallible. No wonder then, perhaps, that the writer of this letter, whoever he or she may have been, was so appalled at anyone not following its instructions. Thus the complaint “You never once sought our opinion” on the release. As the Justice Secretary rightly pointed out in Parliament, however, in Scotland “we have separation of powers“. Someone in the FBI, however, does not believe in this.

There’s a phrase for this, and the phrase is ‘police state’.

1. See this description in a recent paper by the Judiciary on reform of the Lord Advocate’s status for a fuller analysis.
2. Musa Kusa, who the British government expelled in 1980 after he announced “The revolutionary committees have decided last night to kill two more people in the United Kingdom. I approve of this“, and who the CIA found had direct responsibility for the PanAm 103 bomb (and indeed many other murders), was in 2003 entertained by both governments in the Travellers Club in Pall Mall, London. The last time I was in the Travellers Club, I noticed the fine portrait of Lord Castlereagh half-way up the staircase. He was the Foreign Secretary of whom Shelley wrote in ‘The Masque of Anarchy’ ‘I met Murder on the way/He had a mask like Castlereagh/Very smooth he looked, yet grim/Seven bloodhounds followed him/All were fat, and well they might/Be in admirable plight/For one by one and two by two/He tossed them human hearts to chew/Which from his wide cloak he drew…‘ . Was the setting deliberate? Castlereagh would have been an appropriate host.

If the evidence was so flawed, why was Megrahi convicted?

[What follows is the text of an article published on the Daily Beast website on this date (BST) in 2011:]

There’s fresh trouble for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Amid a clamor of criticism, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was released from a Scottish jail two years ago, allowed home on compassionate grounds. After a diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer, he had been given just three months to live. Now the collapse of the Gaddafi regime has brought calls for Megrahi’s extradition to the United States or his return to prison in Libya.

For a vocal lobby in Washington, his freedom—and continuing survival—represent an affront that can at last be addressed. In the words of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: “Seeing him participate in good health at a pro-Gaddafi rally recently was another slap in the face not just for the families of the Lockerbie victims but for all Americans and for all nations of the world who are committed to bringing terrorists to justice.”

A tad overstated? Such rhetoric certainly won’t find universal support in Britain. Megrahi is far from friendless back in Scotland, where Pan Am flight 103 crashed in 1988 killing 270 passengers and residents of the small town of Lockerbie. Campaigners convinced of his innocence are pressing the Scottish parliament for an inquiry leading to a possible appeal that would clear Megrahi’s name.

And the roll-call of big-name supporters for the Justice for Megrahi group can’t be easily ignored. On the list: Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu; the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien; Jim Swire, the parent of a Lockerbie victim, and Professor Robert Black, the lawyer who devised the special court which tried Megrahi in the Netherlands in 2001.

One more backer, the leading lawyer Ian Hamilton, has blogged: “I don’t think there’s a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr. Megrahi was justly convicted."

The group insists there’s no case for extradition on legal grounds. Says Robert Forrester, secretary of the campaign: “Mr. Megrahi is a Scots prisoner released under license and still falls under Scots jurisdiction therefore and neither Washington nor Westminster has any jurisdiction under Scots law.” But he concedes that politics may determine his fate. “The man should be left alone to continue with his medical treatment but he has become such a pawn that I can’t believe that is going to happen.”

Campaigners have long fought to highlight what they see as serious flaws in the case against Megrahi, the only person ever convicted over the bombing. They point in particular to the contradictory testimony of the prosecution’s star witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who claims to have sold Megrahi the clothes packed in the suitcase that carried the bomb. Gauci reportedly received a $2 million reward from the U.S. for giving evidence. Megrahi abandoned an appeal against his conviction so as to ease his release in 2009.

One frustration, says Forrester, is that the facts of the case are so little known to the public. “The problem is that so many people come to this from a basis of ignorance. We end up having arguments with people in the pro-trial camp who haven’t read the transcript or even the judgment.”

His own involvement dates from a chance encounter with a Libyan neighbor in Glasgow who needed help to start his car. Through his new acquaintance, Forrester, a retired language teacher who has worked in the Middle East, was asked to proofread a letter on behalf of a Libyan student group in the city to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond calling for the Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds.

If the evidence was so flawed, why was Megrahi convicted? Forrester won’t endorse conspiracy theories or suggestions of political interference, but he’s ready to speculate on unconscious motives. “This was the most high-profile case ever to come before a Scots court. Perhaps at the back of the mind of the judges was ‘if we can’t get any conviction out of this incredibly high profile trial of this it will be hugely embarrassing.’ If ever the case returns to court, acquittal could prove far more embarrassing.

No-one really wants the Lockerbie files reopened

[What follows is the text of an article by Alex Massie that was published in the Coffee House column in The Spectator on this date in 2009:]

There’s no need for me to take pro-American lessons from anyone but that doesn’t mean I necessarily or secretly want to be American. That can’t be said of everyone on the British right. Take Douglas Carswell for instance. The MP for Harwich and Clacton is deeply upset by the Scottish government’s decision to free Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds. That’s his right.

What’s odder is that he seems to be more upset by the fact that the Americans are upset than by anything else. In one post he suggested that the US ban those responsble for freeing Megrahi from entering the United States. In another, he asks "Is Britain a Reliable Ally?" and suggests that, actually, she’s not and that what’s needed is a set of policies that will tie the United Kingdom still more closely to the United States. Carswell, in fact, seems to agree with some of the more extreme elements on the American right that Britain is done for and no longer worth considering a useful, let alone a reliable, ally.

I imagine Carswell thinks that his favoured policies would be good for Britain and only incidentally good for the United States. But he gives the impression, perhaps unintentionally, that it’s the other way round. That is, Britain should follow policies that demonstrate it is a reliable ally of the US. If that also benefits Britain then that’s all to the good but it’s not necessary.

Perhaps this is an unfair interpretation of his position. Nonetheless, there are some British rightists who really do view everything through a filter marked What will the Americans think?

Not much, in this instance. Sure, there’s been some official outrage (though, as I’ve said before, no-one really wants the Lockerbie files reopened and that includes the Americans) and there’s been some disappointment, nay anger, expressed. But Lockerbie has not, to put it mildly, been the talk of the American blogosphere. Nor has "old media" been much exercised by it. for instance, the word Lockerbie has not appeared on the New York Times’ editorial or opinion pages since Megrahi was released.

[RB: Here is what I wrote on an earlier occasion about the real US Government attitude towards Megrahi’s repatriation:]

The implications [of repatriating Megrahi by means of prisoner transfer] had, of course, already been seen on this blog: Britain accused of breaking promise to US over Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi and Foreign Office told Scotland it made no promises to US over how long Megrahi would stay in prison.

The reason why the "promise" was not taken seriously by the UK Foreign Office was that the only country that might have an interest in complaining if it was broken was the United States of America. And both the United Kingdom government and the Libyan government knew (because -- as Libyan officials informed me -- they had checked) that Washington was relaxed about Abdelbaset Megrahi's repatriation, though it would have to huff and puff for US public consumption when it happened.

When Kenny MacAskill rejected the application for prisoner transfer his principal reason for doing so was the undertaking contained in the “initiative” that led to the Zeist trial that, if convicted, the suspects would serve their sentence in the UK. Of course, if it had been accepted by the Libyan Government that transfer of Megrahi to a prison in Libya was simply not possible under the terms of the “initiative” (and I did my very best to convince them) no prisoner transfer application would have been made and, in consequence, abandonment of Megrahi’s appeal would not have been necessary when, later, his application for compassionate release was lodged. The prisoner transfer application may have been -- indeed, was -- doomed from the outset, but it served the interests of the United Kingdom and the United States very well by ensuring the abandonment of Megrahi’s appeal.

Neutral venue Lockerbie trial accepted by UK and USA

[On this date in 1998 the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States, succumbing to international pressure, announced that they had reversed their stance on the matter of a "neutral venue" trial, such as I had proposed (and the Libyan Government, and the Libyan lawyer for Megrahi and Fhimah, had accepted) in January 1994. What follows is the text of a report published on the website of The Independent on the evening of 24 August:]

Britain and the United States took the unprecedented step yesterday of agreeing to hold a special trial in The Hague, under Scottish law, to bring to justice the alleged terrorists behind the Lockerbie bombing.

In a U-turn by the two governments, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said the decision to hold the trial in a neutral country 10 years after the bombing of PanAm 103, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground, should be seen as a signal to other terrorists responsible for the attacks on the US embassies in East Africa that "however long it takes, they will be brought to justice".

The trial could take place by next May, but there was widespread scepticism at the highest levels of Government that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would surrender the two suspects for trial - Abdul Basset al-Megrahi and al- Amin Khalifa Fhimah - despite repeated Libyan demands for a trial in a neutral country, such as the Netherlands.

"I cannot answer for Colonel Gaddafi. His government has said they would accept a trial by a Scottish court with Scottish judges. If they choose not to take up that offer, it will very severely undermine the credibility that they will have for making that undertaking earlier this year," said Mr Cook. He added that sanctions against Libya could be lifted the moment the two accused were handed over for trial. The terms were not negotiable. The Lord Advocate, Lord Hardie, said the two could not be tried in their absence. There will be extradition proceedings, and, if they submit themselves for trial, a full committal procedure with a trial by three Scottish judges under full Scottish law held within 110 days.

They would be held "in a special facility" in The Hague by Scottish prison officers until the trial, and if found guilty, would serve their sentence in Scotland. Lord Hardie rejected calls for an international court, with a presiding Scottish judge, "because there is no body of international criminal law and procedure under which it could operate".

The move won support from Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Tory Lord Advocate at the time of the bombing. He said that,10 years on, "the anguish of the relatives of all those who died in the tragedy and the way that conspiracy theories have proliferated" dictated holding a trial.

Families of the victims welcomed the decision. Jim Swire whose 23-year- old daughter, Flora, died on flight 103 on 21 December 1988, was "euphoric". He said: "Anyone in their right mind would welcome this decision." Mr Swire, the spokesman for the UK Families Flight 103 group, said: "This is something that our group have been working for six years for."

Alistair Duff, Scottish lawyer for the two Libyans, said the issue of the judges was not insurmountable. But Mr Duff told BBC Radio the men would need various reassurances, such as the condition of their custody and access to lawyers before agreeing to leave Tripoli.

Until recently the British and American governments maintained that the Libyans must be handed over for trial in Britain or the United States.

The US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, announcing the joint proposal in Washington, called for Libya to end its "10 years of evasion". She said: "We now challenge Libya to turn promises into deeds. The suspects should be surrendered for trial promptly."

The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, welcomed the joint initiative and offered the UN's services to arrange the transfer of the accused men to the Netherlands, if Libya agreed. Details of the proposed compromise were to be given to Tripoli by Mr Annan.

The US and Britain are expected to submit the draft of a new resolution to the UN Security Council that will envisage an end to international sanctions against Libya if it agrees to surrender the accused men for trial.

[RB: The UK/US government statement is contained in a letter to the UN Secretary-General. It can be read here.]

People in authority who are relying on Lockerbie fatigue

[What follows is the text of an article by Christine Grahame MSP headlined Al-Megrahi is home. And he is innocent that was published in The Independent on this date in 2009:]

I became involved with Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi quite by accident. Like many people I had been suffering from Lockerbie fatigue. For me, and for you, I suppose, life had moved on from that horrendous crime over 20 years ago and the imprisonment of the Libyan murderer. That was that.

At least it was, until I agreed, by chance, to sponsor the showing of a Dutch documentary about the Lockerbie bombing at Parliament. I invited all MSPs and researchers, and indeed the press corps, to see this film. One MSP and one member of the press came, and I really only saw it because I felt obliged to attend. But that film changed my perspective. From that casual moment, and from much that I have learned since, I am convinced not only that Megrahi was not found guilty "beyond reasonable doubt", the test in Scots law, but that he is an innocent man.

He is not a saint, of course – he had a history with Libyan intelligence – but his hands are clean over Lockerbie. For you should recall that five months before the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 on that dark, wild December night just before Christmas in 1988, an American military cruiser, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane carrying 290 pilgrims. No one has been charged, let alone prosecuted, over that, even though it was all captured on film.

It is reasonable to deduce that when an American plane carrying, as some believed, military personnel back home to their religious festival, is blasted out of the sky, the finger of suspicion should not point first at Libya. Iran, maybe. However, Iran had to be kept on side because of the Iraq/Kuwait conflict. The Iran/Syria connection was soon dropped, and so Libya was indeed blamed. Here was a credible culprit.

To successfully frame a nation, pick one like Libya, in which all the baddies of the Middle East are personified in a recognisable hate figure like Gadhafi. If you want to frame a man, pick one with a feasible track record. Then first sell it to the world through the press and, hey presto!

But back to that film, which has not yet been seen here. After watching this disconcerting documentary, which challenged the reliability of key evidence, I got into conversations that night with Dr Jim Swire, with a forensic police scientist who had to label those bodies scattered across hundreds of acres of dark wintry hillside, with Father Patrick Keegans, the priest who lived in Sherwood Crescent (the only person who survived in that street) and with others. None of them supported the case against al-Megrahi.

Since then I have met the man at the centre of it all on several occasions. Our first meeting took place on a blustery morning some months ago. Afterwards I was confronted by a crowd of reporters who waited until I emerged one hour later from speaking to a man so detested, so reviled by many that death in prison from cancer would be too good for him.

He was sitting in front of a laptop, across the table in a room set aside of lawyers and their clients. His English was excellent and I remember trying to impress upon him that I was there for the duration, and not just this one visit. I told him that if I thought for one minute he was guilty I would walk out of the room. But he was intent on scrolling through the pages of the trial, pausing now and then to emphasise a point. Perhaps he was listening.

On subsequent visits we could go straight to the point, and deal with "prisoner transfer": to qualify he would have to abandon the appeal which could allow him to clear his name. We also talked more of his family and the growing need, as his health worsened, as it clearly was doing, to be with them. It was then that his composure was momentarily lost; the emotion and tension were tangible. But although his priority was to be with them in his last days, he told me he did not want his name to go down in history as the Lockerbie bomber. He told me, in short, that he did not do it. I told him again that I thought he was innocent.

Let me make one thing clear: I understand the hatred some feel for him, particularly the US relatives of the dead. It is, however, misplaced and it is in order to unravel for them the true story of Lockerbie, as much as to liberate an innocent man, that I and others worked hard for his compassionate release. This would have allowed the appeal process to be exhausted and evidence-led. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission considered there was evidence vital enough for it to consider that there might have been a miscarriage of justice. That evidence, particularly relating to the identification of al-Megrahi linking him directly to the bombing has never and will now never be tested in a Scottish court.

My final meeting with him was on 23 July. He requested that it be private and I have kept my word till now. Apart from discussing his deteriorating health, increasing frailty and his family, we discussed at length his compassionate release. He wanted my advice. I told him I thought he had nothing to lose because if it was rejected he could abandon his appeal and take the prisoner transfer route. I advised him to consult his legal team.

The next day he applied for compassionate release. Stupidly, I thought there was a good chance that after his death at home his appeal could still be pursued, by his family. But, like al-Megrahi, I am a tiny cog in an elaborate mechanism. Last week he abandoned his appeal. His counsel advised the court that he believed that to do so would "assist" with his "applications".

The previous week I had received an email from a whistleblower in the Justice Department telling me that the Libyan officials were being told in no uncertain terms that he must drop his appeal or there would be no compassionate release.

Al-Megrahi was a desperate man, but I believe there are other desperate men and women – in the US Justice Department and in Whitehall, – all with their own reasons for wanting that appeal to be ditched. Now he is home, but he is still, officially, a guilty man.

Those who believe him guilty are crying foul. So are those of us who believe him innocent. And then there are those who are happily sipping their claret, their eyes on a comfortable unblemished retirement. As for any inquiry, that's out there in the long grass. They are people in authority who are relying on Lockerbie fatigue setting in again. It mustn't.