Gauci rewards documents – Crown Office obfuscates again

[Today’s edition of The Herald contains an article by Lucy Adams headlined 'Rewards for key witness in Lockerbie trial discussed by officers'. The following text, with comments from John Ashton, is taken from the Megrahi: You are my Jury website:]

The Herald has today published an article by Lucy Adams, headlined ‘Rewards for key witness in Lockerbie trial discussed by officers’, about yesterday’s release of documents. The article follows in italics, with my comments in non-italics below.

Newly released intelligence reports show how the police secretly discussed the payment of large rewards to the key witness in the Lockerbie case.

Tony Gauci, the Crown’s key witness, expressed an interest in being rewarded nine years prior to giving evidence against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, according to the documents.

They have been released by John Ashton, author of Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Matters.

The Crown Office last night said no witness was offered any inducement by the Crown or the Scottish police before or during the trial.

Last year, the 800-page report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was published, but many of the accompanying documents have never been seen. Those released yesterday reveal that the FBI told the police that “unlimited money” was on offer for the witness. They indicate police believed paying Gauci and his brother Paul would ensure they would not embarrass the police or Crown.

A letter from a senior Scottish officer on the case, dated 1991, states Tony Gauci was interested in reward money and that “if a monetary offer was made to Gauci this may well change his view and allow him to consider a witness protection programme”.

After Megrahi’s conviction, the senior investigating officer lobbied the US Department of Justice to increase the previously discussed rewards of $2 million for Tony and $1m for Paul.

According to the intelligence report, the Crown Office was aware of the reward application after the first appeal, but did not become involved.

A Crown Office spokesman said: “No witness was offered any inducement by the Crown or the Scottish police before and during the trial and there is no evidence that any other law enforcement agency offered such an inducement. These documents relate to an issue which was before the Appeal Court in Megrahi’s second appeal against conviction.”

He added the Crown had been preparing to defend Megrahi’s conviction when he abandoned the appeal.

As the Crown Office well knows, the SCCRC referred the Megrahi case back to the appeal court on six grounds one of which concerned rewards. Gauci and his brother Paul, expected to be rewarded and were rewarded. His trial evidence was notably more helpful to the Crown than his original police statements. It is clear from the wording of the Crown Office statement that it cannot rule out that the FBI offered an inducement. One of the documents that I released yesterday states that, less than a month after the police found Gauci, FBI agent Chris Murray indicated to Detective Chief Inspector Harry Bell that he had the ‘authority to arrange unlimited money for Tony Gauci and … could arrange $10,000 immediately.’ It seems that neither the SCCRC nor the Crown Office every sought to establish from the FBI whether one of its agents had put the offer to Gauci.

First batch of Lockerbie documents released: The Gauci Files

[At the launch of his book Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, John Ashton promised that over the coming weeks he would be releasing previously-unpublished documents relating to the Megrahi case. The first tranche has been disclosed today.  An accompanying press release reads as follows:]

Released today - the Gauci files

Newly published papers show how key witnesses were tainted by huge financial rewards

Intelligence reports and other previously unpublished papers released today show how the police secretly discussed the payment of large rewards to the most important witness in the Lockerbie case and his brother. The papers describe how Tony Gauci expressed an interest in being rewarded nine years prior to giving evidence against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and before he made the crucial partial identification of Megrahi, which became the cornerstone of the Crown case.

The documents, which are being published by the author of new book Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Matters, John Ashton, also show that:

·         Within weeks of the police finding Gauci, the FBI told the police that ‘unlimited money’ was on offer for the witness.

·         Although the police insisted that he was not motivated by money, he was under the strong influence of his brother Paul, who had ‘a clear desire to gain financial benefit’ from the case and who explored ‘any means he can to identify where financial advantage can be gained.’

·         The police believed that paying the brothers would ensure that they would not embarrass the police or Crown.

·         After Megrahi’s conviction the senior investigating officer lobbied the US Department of Justice to increase the previously discussed rewards of $2 million for Tony and $1 million for Paul.

·         The Crown Office did not object to this reward application, even though such payments were against its own rules.

Mr Ashton said:

‘Tony Gauci’s evidence was central to Mr Megrahi’s conviction. The judges were clearly impressed by him, but were unaware of the rewards issue lurking in the background. No doubt Mr Gauci did his best to tell the truth, but there is also no doubt that honest witnesses can be unconsciously swayed by the expectation of rewards. Some of his evidence to the trial court was notably more helpful to the Crown than his original police statements.’

The documents were among the appendices to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s statement of reasons on Megrahi’s case. The commission referred the case back to the appeal court on six grounds, one of which concerned Mr Gauci’s expectation of being rewarded. The commission established that the brothers received substantial reward payments from the Department of Justice. The statement of reasons was released last year, but the appendices have remained under wraps.

Mr Ashton has promised to publish more documents in the run up to the Lockerbie 25th anniversary in December. He said:

‘I am releasing documents that the court should have seen, which the Crown failed to disclose. Lockerbie is the UK’s worse mass murder and the public has a right to know the truth, not just what the Crown wanted them to know. The Scottish government has consistently denied calls for a public inquiry in to Mr Megrahi’s conviction so it’s left to his supporters to keep the issue on the public agenda.’

Notes to editors

1.      John has provided explanatory notes to the documents at the start of the accompanying pdf.

2.      270 people were killed when Pan Am flight 103 was destroyed over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

3.      In 2001 Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty of the bombing by a panel of three senior law lords sitting at a specially constructed court at Kamp Zeist in The Netherlands. He remains the only man convicted of the murders. He was released on compassionate grounds by justice secretary Kenny MacAskill on 20 August 2009 and died in Tripoli on 20 May 2012.

4.      John Ashton was the author of Megrahi’s biography Megrahi: You are my Jury, which was published in February 2012. From 2006 to 2009 he worked as a researcher with Megrahi’s legal team on the preparation of his appeal against conviction. He is available for interview (...).

5.      Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters was published by Birlinn Ltd (£7.99pbk) on 3 October 2013.

Scotland's Shame author responds to conspiracy theorist slur

John Ashton, author of Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters has responded on his website to the “conspiracy theorist” jibe directed by Magnus Linklater towards Justice for Megrahi campaigners in an article in The Times on Friday.  The response reads as follows:]

Here we go again. In his column in last Friday’s Times, Magnus Linklater once again wrongly accused Abdelbaset’s supporters of alleging a grand conspiracy to convict him, involving judges, detectives and the intelligence agencies. As I’ve told Magnus before, that’s not what we (Jim Swire, Justice for Megrahi, I and others) are saying. The article follows in italics, with my comments in non-italics.

Jim Swire has been relentless, resolute, and single-minded in pursuit of his campaign for the truth about the Lockerbie atrocity that killed his daughter, Flora.

In all the 25 years that he has spent examining the case, travelling the world to track down evidence, he has never been less than dignified, or given way in public to the frustration and anger he must have felt towards those who stood in the way of his quest. He has dealt with inquiries from the media with patience and courtesy. Throughout, what has driven him is solely the need to find justice in the name of his daughter.

The reasons he now gives for stepping back from his cause are characteristically honest.

“My campaign has been my means of survival,” he says. “I think Flora would be saying ‘You’ve done your very best dad. It’s time to leave it to others, to younger men’.”

Such dedication is hard to challenge: taking issue with Dr Swire’s arguments is to venture into intensely personal territory. Yet his central contention — that Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi was innocent, and that Libya was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing — remains short of the kind of evidence that would stand up in court.

For all the many thousands of words that have been written suggesting that the prosecution case was flawed, and that the Scottish legal system presided over a spectacular miscarriage of justice, the alternative theories are well short of sustaining proof.

It is one thing to challenge the evidence on which al-Megrahi was convicted, another to sustain a case that is not, itself, threadbare.

Dr Swire believes that the bomb was not put on board Pan Am 103 on Malta, but that it was smuggled onto the plane at Heathrow Airport. This, along with other theories, was advanced at the time of the trial, examined, and dismissed for want of evidence.

As Magnus should know (because he claims to have read Megrahi: You are my Jury), key evidence regarding Heathrow was not disclosed to either Megrahi’s trial or his first appeal. As he should also know, the defence put forward compelling evidence that the bomb was contained in the mysterious suitcase seen by Heathrow loader John Bedford, yet it was dismissed by the judges, who, in effect, reversed the burden of proof on this matter.

It may, as Dr Swire, maintains, be the truth, but so far no reliable witness has come forward to confirm it. Yet surely this must be as important as challenging the prosecution case. After all, the al-Megrahi defence suggests that eight Scottish judges, five Lords Advocate, senior Scottish detectives and US intelligence agencies were involved in what must count as one of the most serious conspiracy theories of our time, to deflect blame away from Syria or Iran and point towards Libya.

For the avoidance of doubt, the opening of chapter 6 of Scotland’s Shame reads:

“Let us be clear, there was no grand conspiracy by the intelligence services, senior politicians, police officers, prosecutors and judges to subvert the Lockerbie investigation and frame Megrahi and Libya. Conspiracies, of course, do sometimes happen, but seldom ones involving so many diverse parties.

“There is, however, no doubt that important evidence was suppressed, that US intelligence agents interfered with the crash site and that some of the evidence against Megrahi was highly dubious. It can also be reasonably argued that the case against Libya was concocted in order to serve the agenda of the government of US president George H. W. Bush, who came to power less than a month after the bombing.

“In all these things the Scottish authorities were, very likely, no more than unwitting accomplices. There are allegations – not made by this book and so far unproven – that certain of their representatives acted illegally. If they did, it was almost certainly in order to secure the conviction of people they sincerely believed to be guilty, and not because they were party to a wider plot to protect the real culprits and convict innocents.”

Conspiracy theorist is a label used by politicians and lazy journalists who have run out of reasonable arguments, in order to denigrate and marginalise those who challenge the official line on controversial issues. Funnily enough, the lord advocate uses it too.

Of course, at one time that might have been achieved in the best forum of all, a court of law. Yet al-Megrahi chose to drop his appeal, a decision that has never been properly explained. It remains the weakest plank in the al-Megrahi campaign and for Dr Swire, it must, to this day, be a cause for anguish and frustration.

As Magnus well knows, the explanation for Abdelbaset dropping his appeal is quite simple: he had advanced cancer and was desperate to get back to his family. On 10 August 2009 he met with the delegation of Libyan officials who had just been to visit the justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, and some of his civil servants. Obedi told Abdelbaset that MacAskill had privately indicated to him (Obedi) that it would be easier to grant compassionate release if he dropped the appeal. If Magnus had been stuck in a foreign jail with advanced cancer, would he have reacted differently to such pressure? Answers on a postcard please.

Jock Thomson QC: brave critic of a deeply flawed system

[The following are a few snippets from the obituary of Jock Thomson QC in The Herald:]

Jock Thomson QC, who has died aged 71, was one of Scotland's finest and most respected criminal lawyers whose strong social conscience often brought him into conflict with the legal establishment. [RB: I was amazed to learn that Jock was 71. Had I been asked, I'd have guessed he was up to ten years younger.]

Never afraid to speak his mind, he railed against injustice and unfairness throughout his career. Only last year he attacked what he called the unholy, unhealthy alliance of law makers and senior figures at the Crown Office which he said had resulted in a morally and mortally flawed legal system.

Mr Thomson, a robust figure in every way, was among the country's most distinguished and effective advocates. His guid Scots tongue, confident courtroom manner and vast experience ensured that he always enjoyed a busy and successful career. Over the years, he was involved in some of the country's most notorious criminal trials. (...)

He was educated at Robert Douglas Memorial School, Scone, before moving to Perth Academy. He left school at 16 and joined the merchant navy as a deck hand.

After four years sailing the world he returned to Perthshire and joined the local constabulary, rising to the rank of sergeant. In 1971 the force, in its wisdom, gave Mr Thomson the opportunity to study law at Edinburgh University. Three years later, at the age of 32, he graduated LLB. However, instead of returning to the police, he chose to embark upon a legal career.

He secured a traineeship at the Campbeltown firm of Stewart, Balfour and Sutherland and after completing his training joined the procurator fiscal service, working first in the Borders. He later became a fiscal in Glasgow before being called to the Bar in 1983. (...)

In 2000, by then one of the country's most experienced and respected defence counsel, Mr Thomson was promoted to the "rank and dignity" of Queen's Counsel. (...)

Mr Thomson was a man of great principle who was always prepared to speak out when the occasion merited an opinion. Though he never courted controversy, he never shied away from it either.

Last year, in a letter to The Herald, he entered the ongoing debate about the issue of corroboration in court cases. He went on to raise fears about any moves to scrap an accused person's right to silence, declaring: "Will the next inexorable step be the replacement of the presumption of innocence with that of a presumption of guilt? It's beginning to look that way."

He was also a stalwart supporter and advisor to the Justice for Megrahi campaign. (...)

As a younger man, Mr Thomson was a keen rock climber, skier, sailor and windsurfer. He was also a guitarist and folk singer and helped found Perth Folk Club.

Latterly, as a lover of opera, he became a director on the board of the award-winning Opera on a Shoestring company.  

[Robert Forrester’s appreciation on behalf of JFM can be read here.]

Media coverage of Ashton book publication

[Links to media coverage following on from the publication of John Ashton's Scotland's Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters can be found here on his website. In addition, an opinion piece by Magnus Linklater is to be found (behind the paywall) in Friday's edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]

Jim Swire has been relentless, resolute, and single-minded in pursuit of his campaign for the truth about the Lockerbie atrocity that killed his daughter, Flora.

In all the 25 years that he has spent examining the case, travelling the world to track down evidence, he has never been less than dignified, or given way in public to the frustration and anger he must have felt towards those who stood in the way of his quest. He has dealt with inquiries from the media with patience and courtesy. Throughout, what has driven him is solely the need to find justice in the name of his daughter.

The reasons he now gives for stepping back from his cause are characteristically honest.

“My campaign has been my means of survival,” he says. “I think Flora would be saying ‘You’ve done your very best dad. It’s time to leave it to others, to younger men’.”

Such dedication is hard to challenge: taking issue with Dr Swire’s arguments is to venture into intensely personal territory. Yet his central contention — that Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi was innocent, and that Libya was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing — remains short of the kind of evidence that would stand up in court.

For all the many thousands of words that have been written suggesting that the prosecution case was flawed, and that the Scottish legal system presided over a spectacular miscarriage of justice, the alternative theories are well short of sustaining proof.

It is one thing to challenge the evidence on which al-Megrahi was convicted, another to sustain a case that is not, itself, threadbare.

Dr Swire believes that the bomb was not put on board Pan Am 103 on Malta, but that it was smuggled onto the plane at Heathrow Airport. This, along with other theories, was advanced at the time of the trial, examined, and dismissed for want of evidence.

It may, as Dr Swire, maintains, be the truth, but so far no reliable witness has come forward to confirm it. Yet surely this must be as important as challenging the prosecution case. After all, the al-Megrahi defence suggests that eight Scottish judges, five Lords Advocate, senior Scottish detectives and US intelligence agencies were involved in what must count as one of the most serious conspiracy theories of our time, to deflect blame away from Syria or Iran and point towards Libya.

Of course, at one time that might have been achieved in the best forum of all, a court of law. Yet al-Megrahi chose to drop his appeal, a decision that has never been properly explained.

It remains the weakest plank in the al-Megrahi campaign and for Dr Swire, it must, to this day, be a cause for anguish and frustration.

[With the exception of the well-deserved tribute to Dr Swire, this article is as wrong-headed as Magnus Linklater's other contributions on Lockerbie and Megrahi.]

Media reports following launch of John Ashton's Scotland's Shame

[The following are excerpts from media reports following upon yesterday’s launch of John Ashton’s Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters:]

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie tragedy, has written about the "painful task" of clearing out her room after her death and his struggle to avoid becoming bitter.

In the foreword to a new book by John Ashton, biographer of the Libyan convicted of the bombing, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, Dr Swire describes Flora as "our deeply loved elder daughter" slaughtered "a day short of her 24th birthday". She was on flight PanAm103 because she wished to visit her boyfriend in Boston for Christmas. "If we had only said no..." he writes. "We would still have Flora with us."

Yesterday, at the launch of the book, Scotland's Shame, Dr Swire and Mr Ashton released an open letter to Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate, asking why he dismissed new evidence revealed in the [2012] biography of Megrahi, and why the witnesses relating to this evidence have not been questioned. Dr Swire said a public inquiry is the only way to answer the questions and concerns of the relatives of the 270 victims and the only way to hold the Crown Office to account.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly refused and instead called for Westminster to hold an inquiry or for the case to be tested with another appeal in the courts.

Dr Swire and Mr Ashton said an appeal, even if feasible, would not answer questions about the Crown Office's failure to disclose key documents.

The Crown Office said the case is still live and it therefore cannot comment. 

(From The Herald)

Twenty five years after his daughter was killed by the Lockerbie bomb, Jim Swire is to step back from active involvement in the campaign to uncover the full facts about the atrocity.

Dr Swire, 76, a retired GP, is the most prominent spokesman for British families affected by the attack on Pan Am Flight 103. Among the 270 dead was Flora, 23, his daughter, a medical student. He hoped he might find closure when Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi came to trial in 2001.

Instead he was horrified by what he saw as the flimsy case against the Libyan, who was found guilty. Dr Swire redoubled his efforts to get to the bottom of the crime.

Yesterday, at the launch of a book entitled Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, he said he was ready to “disappear from the battlements”.

“I think my campaign has been my means of survival, but I have got to a point where I really have to cut back on it, otherwise it will do harm,” said Dr Swire. “One of the parameters of doing it is what Flora would have thought. I think Flora would be saying, ‘You’ve done your very best dad. It’s time to leave it to others, to younger men.’

“I suspect I will be called in to make comments to the media from time to time. That’s OK. What I don’t think is OK is investing as much time as I have been doing. I’m going to try to find ways of trying to avoid spending as much time on it.” Dr Swire has already bought a computer programme which converts words to text, which he say will cut by two thirds the time he has to devote to writing. By the anniversary, December 21, he would be ready to move on. (...)

There was little immediate sign that he was ready to wind down. In the foreword to the book, Dr Swire says the country’s justice system had survived the act of Union with England intact, only to be blighted by “the impenetrable arrogance of her prosecuting authorities”, the Crown Office.

Together with John Ashton, the book’s author, he used a press conference to launch an outspoken attack on Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate. Dr Swire and Mr Ashton have also written an open letter to the Crown Office, questioning aspects of the al-Megrahi trial, including the alleged withholding of evidence and the payment of a key witness, Tony Gauci.

At a meeting London in 2011, Dr Swire said he had asked Mr Mulholland repeatedly why evidence of a break-in at Heathrow airport in 1988, the night before the bombing, had not been presented at the trial.

“We went through this routine four times,” recalled Dr Swire. “At the end of, Mr Mulholland said. ‘You know, I wondered why it wasn’t available, but I haven’t been able to find out’. An incredible statement.”

Mr Ashton added: “Frank Mulholland, with aspects of his behaviour ... has really raised questions about whether he is fit to hold office.”

The Crown Office said that because the bombing was still a live case it could not comment on it. A spokesman said the remarks attributed by Dr Swire to the Lord Advocate at the meeting in London were “simply untrue”.  

(From The Times)

A report in The Scotsman can be read here.

Authorities still trying to keep a lid on Lockerbie scandal

John Ashton’s Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters was launched this morning at a press conference in Edinburgh.  The book contains the following chapters:

Foreword by Dr Jim Swire (9 pages)

1.  Flawed Charges (18 pages)

2.  Getting Away with Murder (18 pages)

3.  A Nation Condemned (9 pages)

4.  A Shameful Verdict (9 pages)

5.  Burying the Evidence (23 pages)

6.  A Bigger Picture (16 pages)

7.  The Crown out of Control (15 pages)

8.  A Failure of Politics (13 pages)

Conclusion: A System in Denial (12 pages).

At the launch, addresses by John Ashton and Jim Swire were followed by a lively question and answer session to which, amongst others, representatives of The Herald, The Scotsman, The Times, STV News, Iain McKie and I contributed.  A taste of Dr Swire’s remarks can be found here.  The press release issued to accompany the launch can be accessed here. An open letter sent today to the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC by Mr Ashton and Dr Swire can be read here.

Mr Ashton indicated that he would, starting next week, be releasing previously unpublished documents: “These are the documents the Crown didn’t want you to see.  I am making them public because, after 25 years, the authorities are still trying to keep a lid on this scandal.”  

Following this morning’s launch, a further press release has been issued.  It reads as follows:

Lockerbie 25th anniversary:

Will Scotland head for independence with a justice system the country can’t believe in? Will the politicians of Scotland continue to ignore 270 innocent victims?

Leading author joins voices with bereaved father to accuse Crown Office and Scottish Government of protecting murderers

At a press conference this morning, Dr Jim Swire, the father of a woman killed in the Lockerbie bombing, made his most outspoken attack on the Scottish authorities over their handling of the case. Speaking at the launch of a new book Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, which marks the 25th anniversary of the bombing, Dr Swire said:

“It is Scotland’s shame that our judicial prosecution system is cowering behind its privileges in a brazen attempt to continue to block all reasonable allegations of its previous failures. In doing so it destroys its own credibility, demeans our country, and protects those who really were responsible for the murders of our families almost 25 years ago.”

He added:

“… of course there is still time for the SNP to announce an enquiry before this scandal undermines the referendum assuming it has not already done so and threatens independence. But this is much more than party politics and the 270 victims deserve more from our politicians.”

John Ashton, biographer of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and author of this new book: Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, brands the case the greatest scandal of Scotland’s post-devolution era.

At the press conference this morning he stated:

“The conduct of the Scottish criminal justice system – and the Crown Office in particular – in the Lockerbie case has hugely undermined the public’s trust in it. This raises a fundamental question: if people don’t trust Scotland’s foremost independent institution, will they trust an independent Scottish government? I believe that this is why the current government has tried to keep a lid on the scandal by refusing a public inquiry in to the Crown Office’s conduct. It’s a significant miscalculation by Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill, because they would only gain public trust by granting an inquiry.”

He also questioned Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland’s position:

“ Despite the fact that we now know that the Crown withheld numerous items of important evidence from Megrahi’s defence team, the current Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland has refused to acknowledge that anything went wrong. Furthermore, he has failed to order the police to follow up new witness evidence that undermines the prosecution case. Instead he has engaged in bluster and distortions and has smeared his critics by branding them conspiracy theorists. I believe that, if he continues in the vein, he will no longer be fit for office.”

In this new book, Ashton argues that the evidence against Megrahi was so weak that the charges should never have been brought and that the guilty verdict against him was blatantly unreasonable. It also describes how the Crown Office withheld crucial evidence from Megrahi’s defence team and how successive Scottish governments have turned a blind eye to the scandal. It demonstrates that, as a consequence of these failings, the real bombers went free and the Libyan people were unjustly subjected to seven years of biting UN sanctions.

John Ashton will also release documents hithero unseen over the next few weeks:

‘These are the documents that the Crown didn’t want you to see. I am making them public because, after 25 years, the authorities are still trying to keep a lid on this scandal.’