Remembering Iran Air Flight 655

[This is the headline over an article just published on the Iranian FARS News Agency website.  It reads in part:]

On July 3, 1988, an Iranian aircraft registered on the radar screen of the USS Vincennes. The US Navy officers on the bridge identified the approaching aircraft as an Iranian Air Force F-14 Tomcat. Though they would later claim that they tried to reach the aircraft on military and civilian frequencies, they failed to try air traffic control, which would have probably cleared the air. Instead, as the aircraft drew nearer, the Americans fired two guided missiles at their target: a civilian Airbus A300B2, killing 290 civilians, including 66 children, en route to Dubai.

Twenty-five years ago, the Iran-Iraq war was well into its eighth bloody year. Then, as now, Iran was considered the foe; and Iraq, the ally. The US government never published a complete report of the investigation and continued to assert that the crew of the USS Vincennes mistakenly identified the aircraft as a fighter jet and acted in self defense. While it expressed its regrets, the United States failed to condemn what happened and never apologized to the Iranian people. The Iranian government asked several times -- rhetorically -- how a guided missile cruiser, such as the USS Vincennes, equipped with the latest in electronic technology, was unable to distinguish a slowly ascending Airbus from a much smaller fighter jet. After Iran sued the United States in the International Court of Justice, the Americans agreed to pay $61.8 million in compensation to the victims' families. However, it did not escape any Iranian that the United States extracted $1.7 billion, a sum 30 times greater, from Libya as compensation for the victims of the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing, which took place the same year. (...)

In fact, for many Iranians, the shooting down of IR655 reminded them of how defenseless they were in their own region and in their own waters and airspace. The military has capitalized on this. Since the end of war with Iraq, Iran's military leadership operates on the presumption that it is incapable of winning a conventional war against a superpower. It also assumes that should such a conflict occur, Iran should not expect any sympathy or help from the international community. The silence over IR655, though convenient at the time for many US allies, continues to haunt many Iranians. Predictably, it has been used by state media to convince segments of the public that Iran stands to gain little or no justice from engaging with the rest of the world. Many Iranian hardliners continue to use the tragedy to argue for a buildup and a militarily powerful Iran. They also use it to underscore the West's dual standards, should anyone forget.

Although no one speaks of IR655 in the United States, it poses a simple and important question about engagement in Iran to almost anyone who thinks of Iran. What does the United States want? A democratic Iran and a government that capitulates to it, or the one that serves its interests? Will the United States again sacrifice Iranian lives to force the Iranian government to accept a short-term political order?

For those with a longer memory span, it's difficult to dismiss some of these concerns particularly when you recall that the reckless behavior of the USS Vincennes commanding officer earned him the Legion of Merits, "a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements." For many Iranians, this is utterly incomprehensible.

[A typical formulation of the thesis that Pan Am 103 was destroyed in retaliation for the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus can be read here.]

Megrahi biographer John Ashton and the Crown Office

[On his Megrahi: You are my Jury website John Ashton has today published an item headed Information is free but everywhere it is in chains.  It reads in part:]

On 18 February this year I sent the following request to the Crown Office press office, which forwarded it to the CO’s freedom of information unit:

I am writing about the Lockerbie bombing and would be grateful if the Crown Office would answer some questions about the following important items of documentary evidence.

PT/82 and PT/88

These documents contain the results of tests conducted on various pieces of Lockerbie debris at the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE). PT/82 contains, inter alia, results of metallurgy tests conducted on the fragment of circuit board PT/35b, while PT/88 contains, inter alia, the results of similar tests conducted on a control sample circuit board, DP/347a, which the police had obtained from the Swiss company Mebo and which was from the same manufacturing batch as those used in the Mebo timers that were supplied to Libya. The tests established that there was a very significant dissimilarity between the two items, namely, that the circuitry of PT/35b was plated with pure tin, whereas the circuitry on DP/347a was plated with an alloy of 70% tin and 30% lead. The documents each contain a handwritten note by RARDE scientist Allen Feraday, dated 1.8.91, which confirm the results. The pure tin plating of PT/35b would have required an entirely different manufacturing process to that used to plate DP/347a. Together the two documents contradict Mr Feraday’s claim, which he made in his forensic report for the Crown and repeated in evidence at trial, that PT/35b’s ‘materials and tracking pattern’ were ‘similar in all respects’ to those of DP/347a. The documents each have a Dumfries and Galloway police label dated 8 November 1999.

Questions:

1) Were the documents passed by the police to the prosecution team prior to the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah?

2) If they were, why were they not disclosed to the defence?

3) Who made the decision not to disclose the documents to the defence?

D8624
This document contains, inter alia, two versions of a memorandum from Detective Inspector William Williamson to Senior Investigating Officer Stuart Henderson, the first dated 16.3.90 and the second 3.9.90. Both of these reported upon scientific tests conducted on PT/35b as part of the investigation of its origin. Both state:

‘Without exception it is the view of all experts involved in the PCB [printed circuit board] Industry who have assisted with this enquiry that the tin application on the tracks of the circuit was by far the most interesting feature. The fact that pure tin rather than a tin/lead mixture has been used is very unusual.’

None of the material disclosed to the defence pre-trial contained similar references to the fact that PT/35b’s pure tin plating was ‘very unusual’.

Questions:

4) Was D8624 passed by the police to the prosecution team pre trial?

5) If it was, why was it not disclosed to the defence?

6) Who made the decision not to disclose it to the defence?

Statement S3743A by Detective Inspector Watson McAteer
In this statement DI McAteer reported:

‘About 1000 hours on Friday, 22nd September, 1989, along with the B.K.A. Airport enquiry team and F.B.I. special agent Whittaker, I visited the V3 interline station, located within the airfield at Frankfurt Airport. During the course of this visit I observed two operators using Gate Number 206.  These operators worked as a team with one unloading baggage from the wagon onto the conveyor belt which feeds through to his colleague who remains seated within the coding gate booth.  The coder then examined the luggage Tags on each piece of luggage prior to keying the details into the computer system.  After completing this task, when the wagon had been completely unloaded, the coder entered the details on a work sheet located next to the key board within the coding gate.  When this particular operation had been completed both workers walked away from the gate leaving it completely unattended, with the computer switched on and operable.  Within the space of one minute, I observed a V3 worker carry a single suitcase from a batch located some fifty yards from gate 206 to that particular gate.  This worker entered gate 206 coding booth and after keying details into the computer sent the single piece of luggage into the system.  This operation was started and completed in less than fifteen seconds with no entry being made on the work sheet which was still in situ within the gate. Through FBI agent Whittaker I questioned the FAG supervisor Herr Zimmerman regarding this practice.  Herr Zimmerman reluctantly agreed that such a practice was not unusual.’

At trial the defence called Mr Whittaker as a witness and questioned him about this incident. When asked if he mentioned the incident to anyone, Mr Whittaker said only that he had discussed it with DI McAteer and, within a day or two, the BKA.   Under cross-examination by Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC, he said he couldn’t be certain that the baggage handler who keyed in the single item of baggage had not filled out the worksheet.  Asked, ‘Do I take it that you would not be close enough to see whether this particular worker made an entry in a notebook?’ he replied, ‘It would be very likely that that could have been missed, yes.’

If the prosecution team had been in possession of S3743A, they should have been aware that: a) DI McAteer expressed no doubts that baggage handler who keyed in the single item had not recorded the transaction on the worksheet; b) according to DI McAteer, Mr Whittaker discussed the incident, not only, with the BKA, but also with a FAG supervisor; and c) according to DI McAteer, the supervisor described the practice as not unusual – a very significant admission when viewed in context.

If the statement had been disclosed to the defence, they would have been able to challenge Mr Whittaker’s evidence and make stronger submissions in respect of the possibility that the primary suitcase was ingested at Frankfurt airport.

Questions:

7) Was S3743A passed by the police to the prosecution team pre trial?

8) If it was, why was it not disclosed to the defence either before, or after, Mr Whittaker testified?

9) Who made the decision not to disclose it?

I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

John Ashton.

Under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act, the Crown Office should have responded within 20 working days, unless it needed to consider the public interest test, in which case it should have informed me within that 20-day limit. It failed to respond until 19 June, when it sent me this refusal notice from John Logue, the senior procurator fiscal for the East of Scotland, who was formerly a member of the Lockerbie prosecution team.  The key passage reads:

We do endeavour to provide information whenever possible. However, in this instance an exemption under section 34(1)(a) of the 2002 Act applies to all the information requested.

The exemption covers information which has been held by a Scottish public authority for the purpose of an investigation into criminal matters whether the public body is the prosecuting authority or has an obligation to make a report to the Procurator Fiscal. In particular, it exempts information which at any time has been used for the purposes of:

• an investigation an authority has a duty to conduct to ascertain whether a person should be prosecuted for an offence;

• an investigation which may lead to a report to the procurator fiscal in connection with possible criminal proceedings; and

• criminal proceedings instituted in consequence of such a report.

Your questions relate to the steps taken by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in relation to four documents during the preparation of the prosecution of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing and murder of 270 people. Information held in relation to the submission of evidence to the Procurator Fiscal and its consideration for disclosure is information which falls within the terms of section 34(1)(a).

As the exemption is conditional we have applied the ‘public interest test’. This means we have, in all the circumstances of this case, considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption. While we recognise that there is some public interest in release because it relates to the Lockerbie bombing which remains a significant event in Scotland and to Mr Megrahi’s conviction, this is outweighed by the public interest in withholding information because of the ongoing criminal investigation into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi in the bombing and the possibility of further legal proceedings in relation to Mr Megrahi’s conviction.

The ‘possibility of further legal proceedings in relation to Mr Megrahi’s conviction’ is presumably a reference to the current police investigation into the complaints of alleged criminal misconduct made by the committee of Justice for Megrahi. Revealing why the documents were not disclosed, and who made the decisions, could not possibly jeopardise ‘the ongoing criminal investigation into the involvement of others’. It might well, of course, jeopardise the reputations of the Crown Office and its officers.

I am entitled to request an internal review of the refusal, but the likelihood of one of Logue’s colleagues overturning his decision is minimal. Section 47(1) of the act allows a right to appeal internal review decisions to the Scottish Information Commissioner, however, handily for the Crown Office, section 48 exempts it from that provision. In other words, the Crown Office is the final arbiter on whether or not its information should be made public. No other Scottish public authority enjoys this privilege.

The current issue of Private Eye carries the following article on the story (...)  [RB: the article can be read here.]

UK families of Lockerbie victims contemplate new Megrahi appeal

What follows is a story on page 23 of the Scottish edition of today's Sunday Express.  It does not feature on the newspaper's website.

click on image to enlarge

Some of the formidable hurdles that would have to be jumped if UK Lockerbie relatives seek to launch a fresh appeal against the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi are outlined here.

Lockerbie is still unfinished business

[A long and perceptive review by Malcolm Forbes of James Robertson’s latest novel has just been published on the website of the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National.  The following are excerpts:]

"Scotland's a wee place," says one of James Robertson's characters in his 2010 magnum opus, And the Land Lay Still. Be that as it may, for each of his four novels Robertson has mined his native land and extracted enough rich and vital ore to do big things. As with Walter Scott, the subject of his doctoral study, Robertson is in many ways a historical writer. The Fanatic (2000) spliced modern-day Edinburgh with tales of 17th-century skulduggery including witchcraft and assassinations. Joseph Knight (2003) chronicled the search for a former slave in 19th-century Scotland. When Robertson doesn't plunge into the past, he allows it to encroach upon the present: from the wondrous, James Hogg-flavoured gothic fable, The Testament of Gideon Mack (2006), the personal account of a "mad minister who met with the devil and lived to tell the tale", to the epic panoramic vision of modern Scotland on show in And the Land Lay Still.

Now, after a three-year hiatus, comes a fifth novel, The Professor of Truth. As it is set in the present but taps into the past - at times feeds hungrily from it - it clearly belongs to that second group of novels. (...)

The Professor of Truth is a scintillating read - part political thriller, part meditation on grief, truth and the internal struggle to speak out, be heard and right wrongs. (...)

The book is energised by tension, charged by Robertson's treatment of a man going it alone, out of his depth, prepared to risk all to obtain a final, critical reckoning. The drama unfolds through Tealing's intense and intimate first-person narration, which pulls the reader further in and places us firmly on Tealing's side. We sympathise with his plight and cheer his defiance. Like the faithless Gideon Mack, he is unable to find succour in God. He has been dismissed as an obstinate fool, a crank in thrall to conspiracy theories, rooting around for a smoking gun and an unpunished murderer, neither of which exists. His wife's parents sever the connection with him when he visits Khalil Khazar in prison, a man Tealing believes innocent of their daughter's murder. His sister urges him to move on. A lawyer mocks his idealism and thinks his perception of truth is naive: "It is not pure and separate. It is dirty and decayed and has frayed edges, and holes and tears in it. The last thing the truth does is gleam." Only his new partner, Carol, spurs him on.

Much is made of Tealing's grief. In a less skilled writer's hands we would be plodding through maudlin passages on the heels of a moping protagonist. But Robertson is too good for that, and eschews woe-is-me navel-gazing for heartfelt soul-searching and has his hero retrace his steps in pertinent, life-changing events rather than aimlessly wander down Memory Lane. Tealing's recollections of the crash and his day spent looking for wreckage are superbly managed, swinging powerfully, though unsettlingly, between unsparing recorded detail and creative reconstruction. (...)

Robertson excels as much with what he says as what he withholds. The Professor of Truth, like Robertson's previous novels, delves into Scotland's past, and this time round his source is the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. However, Lockerbie is never mentioned. The bomb begins its journey from an unnamed island in the Mediterranean. Khalil Khazar and another suspect come from an undisclosed "hostile regime", a "rogue state". Even Tealing's university town is anonymous, given only as a place in Scotland that "positively groans under the accumulation of history". A dead body that may or may not be Nilsen is found in the snow. Al Megrahi becomes Khazar; the rest - Lockerbie and Libya, Qaddafi and Pan Am Flight 103 - all go unsaid and perhaps rightly so. Robertson has gone on record as saying that the true story of Lockerbie "is still unfinished business, and for some it always will be". His novel reflects and articulates this reality and, although it exhibits clear parallels, it offers no neat conclusions. Ambiguity reigns. Smoke and mirrors prevail at every turn to conceal that hard-sought-for truth.

Not every literary author is capable of changing gear and successfully pulling off a thriller, not least one that is thought-provoking instead of action-packed. Most end up like John Updike's belly-flop, Terrorist: tendentious efforts that preach, generalise, rationalise and aim to resolve. Robertson does the opposite and beguiles us with broken lives and loose ends. Rather than answer, his novel asks: What, if any, are the limits to the grieving process? How, if at all, do we achieve closure? Is truth everything? And how much of what we do is chance and how much choice?

In Julian Barnes' 2005 novel, Arthur & George, Arthur Conan Doyle is described by his sister, Connie, as "Scottish practicality streaked with sudden fire". The same can be said of James Robertson's incendiary fiction.

He may well have peaked with And the Land Lay Still, but that doesn't mean he can't continue to produce searing, sinuous, first-rate novels like The Professor of Truth. 

[Another serious and thought-provoking review is to be found here on the Scots Whay Hey! blog.]

Lockerbie: Hiding to nothing

[This is the headline over an article in the current issue of Private Eye (No 1343, page 32).  It reads as follows:]

Nearly 25 years after the Lockerbie bombing, the Scottish authorities are still sitting on material which may help uncover the truth about the worst terrorist atrocity on UK soil, killing 270 people.

Freedom of information requests to the Crown Office, aimed at uncovering how and why the trial of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi came to be seriously misled over the key piece of forensic evidence -- a tiny piece of bomb fragment recovered from the Pan Am 103 crash site -- have been turned down “in the public interest”.

It is now 18 months since new scientific evidence came to light which, in effect, destroyed both the prosecution case against Megrahi and any direct link to Libya itself.  Two experts, Dr Chris McArdle and Dr Jess Cawley, showed that the fragment of bomb timing device circuitboard said at the trial to match those known to have been supplied to Libya was different. The plating metal on the debris fragment was of pure tin, while on the boards in Libyan timers it was a tin/lead mix.

Further police and prosecution documents released under disclosure to Megrahi’s lawyers, just weeks before his controversial return to Libya, showed that it was known at the time that there was no match.  Yet government scientist Allen Feraday claimed on behalf of the Crown during the trial that the materials and tracking pattern on both boards were “similar in all respects”.

The documents suggesting otherwise were never disclosed to the trial, nor to Megrahi’s defence team -- as they should have been. Details only emerged in the book Megrahi: You are my Jury by John Ashton, a researcher, writer and one of the Libyan’s defence team. Ashton has since been trying to find out whether the material gathered by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary was kept secret by the police or passed to the Crown and prosecution team.

Last week Ashton’s hopes that FOI legislation would provide some answers were dashed when the Crown Office cited an exemption under section 34 of the 2002 Act, protecting evidence gathered as part of a criminal investigation. It said the public interest in releasing the material was “outweighed by the public interest in withholding information because of the ongoing criminal investigation into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi in the bombing and the possibility of further legal proceedings in relation to Mr Megrahi’s conviction”.

The hope is that the Scottish authorities are taking seriously allegations of misconduct levelled against some of those involved in the investigation and prosecution.  The allegations come in a report by the Justice for Megrahi campaign group that has been handed to Dumfries and Galloway police.

The Scottish justice committee at Holyrood earlier this month asked ministers what resources had been committed to investigating the campaign’s allegations.  The justice committee fell short of demanding a public inquiry into the conviction, but it did ask ministers to report back on their powers to appoint an independent investigator.  Watch this space.

The ghost of Lockerbie

[This is the title of an event at the 2013 Edinburgh International Book Festival.  What follows is taken from the festival website:]

The much-anticipated new book by James Robertson, The Professor of Truth, represents one of the literary highlights of the year. The Scottish author’s novel, featuring a man searching for the truth two decades after his wife and daughter were murdered in the bombing of a plane over Scotland, has clear echoes of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Robertson discusses the ideas behind his fictional creation.

Sunday 18 August

8:30pm - 9:30pm

ScottishPower Studio Theatre

£10.00, £8.00

[Tickets can be bought through the festival website.]

Lockerbie jet was set for the scrapheap after law chiefs’ decision

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

The wreckage of the bombed Lockerbie jet was almost SCRAPPED — even though it is vital evidence in the hunt for the terror attack’s plotters.

Law chiefs planned to destroy the remains of Pan Am Flight 103, which was blown out of the sky with the loss of 270 lives.

The move was only ditched because Crown Office officials had no idea who owned the ravaged fuselage.

Last night a legal source said: “If anyone else does end up on trial, it wouldn’t have looked good that they allowed evidence to be disposed of or destroyed.

“The defence would have had a field day. The wreckage had been stored at an Air Accident Investigation Branch hangar in Farnborough, Hants for almost 25 years.

We told how it was brought to Scotland in April.

But in 2009, weeks after dying bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi dropped his appeal and was freed on compassionate grounds, a senior official wrote: “The Crown no longer has any interest in retaining the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103.”

However, efforts to get rid of the wreck were hampered because of problems establishing who owned the remains.

And while the wrangle dragged on, Libyan despot Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown — prompting a change of heart by prosecutors. Campaigner Robert Forrester, secretary of the Justice for Megrahi group, blasted the Crown for trying to scrap the jet.

He said: “It is material evidence and it shouldn’t be messed around with, let alone destroyed.

“That would have been an absolute scandal and would have landed the Crown in quite a lot of difficulty.

“It must have been apparent in 2009 that it could have been used in further legal proceedings.”

Last night a Crown Office spokesman said: “This is a live investigation into the others who acted with Megrahi in the bombing of Pan Am 103.

“It is necessary to retain the fuselage which was used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial.” 

[Perhaps it is appropriate to draw attention once again to How do you solve a problem like Crown Office?]

Lord Fraser and the unanswered questions

[This is the headline over an article in today’s edition of the Scottish Review by the editor, Kenneth Roy.  It reads as follows:]

Two of the leading figures in the Lockerbie scandal have fallen off their perches within 13 months of each other. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man to have been convicted of the bombing, died on 20 May 2012, aged 60, and Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the lord advocate who drew up the indictment against al-Megrahi and his co-accused, died on 23 June 2013, aged 68.

Few tears were shed for al-Megrahi, except by those – a small minority, though a significant one – who believed him to be innocent. In remarkable contrast, the tributes to his accuser, in the few days since his sudden death at the weekend, have been fulsome. Leaders of most parties, including Scotland's ruling one, have been at pains to assure us that he will be keenly missed from Scotland's public life.

Perhaps he will. He was certainly an ornament of it for long enough; and he had an enviable capacity for bouncing back from life's adversities. Just before Christmas 2006 he was charged with disorderly conduct on board an aircraft; two months later the Crown Office dropped the charge 'due to insufficient evidence that an offence had been committed'; and by August of the following year he was back in business as a member of the government-appointed Scottish Broadcasting Commission. This swift rehabilitation said much for his essential geniality and his popularity with the political and media classes.

In the general election campaign of 1979, which brought Margaret Thatcher to power and Peter Fraser into parliament as the member for South Angus, the young advocate (as he then was) took part in a BBC outside broadcast of the 'Any Questions' type. I was in the chair that night and remember him as pleasant but unremarkable. Three years later he became solicitor-general for Scotland and in 1989, at the age of 44, he was promoted to lord advocate. Not bad going, all things considered.

But the fulsome tributes should not be allowed to obscure important questions of continuing public interest about his record as Scotland's chief law officer (1989-92).

It was Fraser who was responsible for the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am flight 103; Fraser who issued warrants for the arrest of the two Libyans; Fraser who initiated the prosecution which led to the trial at Camp Zeist. And it was Fraser's opinion that Tony Gauci could be depended upon as the chief prosecution witness – relied upon to the extent that, without Gauci's testimony, the case against al-Megrahi effectively collapsed.

Did Fraser really think that Gauci could be trusted? Or was the lord advocate bounced into the prosecution of al-Megrahi and his co-accused by the US justice department? The architect of the Camp Zeist trial, Professor Robert Black QC, believes that improper influence was exerted on Fraser and that he bowed to it. We shall probably never know.

It was five years after the trial that Fraser, long out of major public office by then, gave an unguarded interview to The Sunday Times in which he cast doubt on Gauci for the first and only time. This is what he said (and never denied saying): 'Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say he was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy. I don't think he was deliberately lying, but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer.'

These comments scandalised the legal establishment. The lord advocate at the time, Colin Boyd, said that at no stage had Fraser 'conveyed any reservation about any aspect of the prosecution to those who worked on the case, or to anyone in the prosecution service'. Colin Boyd challenged Fraser to clarify his apparent repudiation of Gauci. Fraser declined to rise to the challenge: there was no clarification.

William Taylor, the QC who defended al-Megrahi at his trial, went further: 'A man who has a public office, who is prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland, has a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable. He [Fraser] was prepared to advance Gauci as a witness of truth in terms of identification and, if he had these misgivings about him, they should have surfaced at the time. The fact that he is coming out with this many years later, after my former client has been in prison for four and a half years, is nothing short of disgraceful. Gauci's evidence was absolutely central to the conviction and for Peter Fraser not to realise that is scandalous.'

Lord Fraser had nothing to say publicly about these serious allegations. But in August 2009, long after the fuss had died down, he gave a little-noticed television interview which was concerned mainly with al-Megrahi's release and the justice secretary Kenny MacAskill's handling of it. In the course of the interview he again referred to Tony Gauci, but in rather different terms. I was so struck by what he said that I played it back and took a note of it: 'I have always been of the view and I remain of the view that both children and others who are not trying to rationalise their evidence are probably the most reliable witnesses and for these reasons I think that Tony Gauci was an extremely good witness.'

How could Gauci be 'not quite the full shilling' according to Lord Fraser in 2005, yet 'an extremely good witness' according to the same Lord Fraser four years later? Is there any way of reconciling these conflicting assessments of the chief prosecution witness?

After the death of al-Megrahi, and the Justice for Megrahi committee's clumsy attempts to revive interest in the scandal, it seemed unlikely that the truth about Lockerbie would ever be established. But I suppose some of us were clinging to a faint hope that, in his old age, in some distant memoir serialised by The Sunday Times, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie would reveal all about his pivotal role in the affair. Since, like al-Megrahi, he has failed to reach old age, that hope has now gone. The unanswered questions seem destined to remain just that: unanswered.

Lockerbie Lord Advocate Peter Fraser dies

The death at the age of 68 has been announced of Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC (Peter Fraser) who was Scotland’s Lord Advocate at the time of the bringing of charges against Abdelbaset Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. The mentions of Lord Fraser on this blog, extending over the period 14 November 2007 to 14 November 2012, can be accessed here. A statement from the present Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland QC, can be read here; and a sympathetic appreciation on the website of The Telegraph, the house newspaper of Lord Fraser's political party, can be read here.

Peter Fraser was a genial figure who was popular across the political spectrum in Scotland. What he was not, was a great lawyer or a distinguished Lord Advocate. When Alan Rodger QC -- later House of Lords and UK Supreme Court judge Lord Rodger of Earlsferry -- who was a great lawyer, was appointed Peter Fraser's Solicitor General an official photograph was taken which showed Fraser seated at a desk with a massive tome open in front of him and Alan Rodger looking at it over his shoulder. A version of this photograph was posted in the robing room of the Faculty of Advocates with a bubble coming from Fraser's mouth saying, "What's this, Alan?" and a bubble coming from Rodger's mouth saying, "It's a book, Peter." This, I think accurately, if somewhat cruelly, indicates the Bar's assessment of Peter Fraser's legal abilities.  

As far as the Lockerbie charges against Megrahi and Fhimah are concerned, it is a widely held view that Fraser allowed himself to be bounced into bringing them by the US Department of Justice, which assured him that it had a credible and reliable eye-witness to the suspects' preparation of the bomb on Malta. Fraser took this on trust: whether or not he sought it, he was not given access to the witness in question. The witness was, of course, the Libyan CIA asset Abdul Majid Giaka who testified at Camp Zeist and whose evidence was dismissed by the judges as totally lacking in credibility, largely on the basis of CIA cables (which the prosecution sought to have excluded from evidence) that showed that his CIA handlers regarded him as a fantasist prepared to say virtually anything to keep his US stipend and to gain asylum in the United States.

Peter Fraser's career as a law officer began in 1982 when Sir Nicholas Fairbairn QC MP was compelled to resign as Solicitor General under Lord Mackay of Clashfern as Lord Advocate. There were at that time two young Tory MPs who were advocates -- Peter Fraser and Alexander Pollock. Neither was a QC, but Fraser had passed advocate in 1969 whereas Pollock was not called to the Bar until four years later in 1973. It was probably for this reason that Fraser was preferred for appointment to the vacant office, assuredly not because of superior legal reputation and ability. He became a QC at the same time. On Lord Mackay's resignation as Lord Advocate in 1984, Kenny John Cameron QC was appointed to replace him, with a seat in the House of Lords as Lord Cameron of Lochbroom. Peter Fraser remained as Solicitor General. He lost his seat in the House of Commons in the 1987 general election (as, incidentally, did Pollock) but was confirmed in office. Lord Cameron resigned as Lord Advocate in January 1989, the month following the Lockerbie disaster. Peter Fraser succeeded him and was immediately given a peerage. When in 1992 he became Minister of State in the Scottish Office, his Solicitor General, Alan Rodger, became Lord Advocate.