James Robertson (and Jim Swire) at London Lit Festival 13

A reminder that on 1 June at 1pm James Robertson will be appearing (along with Dr Jim Swire and Alan Little) at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Lit Festival 13.  Details here.

A new five-star review of James Robertson's The Professor of Truth can be read here.

JFM secretary's report on Justice Committee consideration of Megrahi petition

[What follows is the report by Justice for Megrahi’s secretary, Robert Forrester, on the Scottish Parliament Justice Committee’s consideration of JFM’s petition on 4 June:]

Most of you will already be aware of Tuesday's result, however, for those who do not, I enclose here various links to the event to put you in the picture. In brief, again, the Justice Committee is to be thanked for maintaining the status of our petition, PE 1370, as open. Moreover, they are also to be thanked for agreeing to write to both the Justice Directorate and the Crown Office on our behalf in order to establish a variety of factual information relating to the allegations we have lodged with Police Scotland. I will not go into the details of this here since it is all contained in our submissions to the Justice Committee and is self evident in the Committee's official report.

Clearly this is a positive result, however, and if not too late, the JFM Committee would like to enquire of the Justice Committee whether or not the letter to the Justice Directorate could be made a little more specific. Our feeling is that the form of the question is somewhat open in that it does not specify the laws that we have quoted as being the ones which provide the government with the power to farm out our allegations to an independent investigator: this being of particular relevance here where Mr MacAskill has, by offering us no alternative but to lodge our allegations with Police Scotland, created extraordinary and highly dubious circumstances in which the Crown Office and Police Scotland have become investigator, judge, jury and accused all rolled into one. Whilst there is a directness and simplicity to the from of words chosen by the Justice Committee in the letter, Mr MacAskill has a record of saying 'I 'beg to differ with JFM' in the interpretation of law. This occurred when we gave evidence on the Punishment and Review Act (shortly before the publication of the Statement of Reasons for Mr Megrahi's second appeal in The Herald). The fact is that his interpretation of the law was wrong then because the Scotland Act superseded the Data Protection Act, and Westminster had not seen fit to include the Data Protection Act in the Scotland Act as a reserved issue, therefore, the issue of its being raised at all with Westminster was indeed a red herring, as we said at the time. Nonetheless, and despite the fact that The Herald's actions rendered the whole business redundant, he got away with it on the day. We will be writing to the Justice Committee to see if it is possible to modify this current letter to the Justice Directorate, and I will inform you of the result as soon as I know it.

In the meantime, see here below the relevant links covering the Justice Committee's consideration of PE 1370. I have also included a link to an interview given by James Robertson immediately after the hearing. James's most recent novel, The Professor of Truth was launched in Edinburgh on Thursday to a packed house, and has been receiving enthusiastic and very well-deserved reviews. James has been extremely courageous with this work: a book which, whilst it stands firmly on its own two feet without the references to actual events, quite obviously poses a significant challenge for the author simply because it does have these associations. I strongly recommend it to you all.

The committee wishes to thank both Tessa Ransford and James for joining us at the hearing on Tuesday, and to all of you for your constant support. 

Parliament PE 1370 general references page:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/CurrentCommittees/44107.aspx

Parliament TV broadcast of 4th June JC consideration of PE 1370:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/newsandmediacentre/41408.aspx

JC official report:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28862.aspx?r=8193

Letter from JC to JD:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_JusticeCommittee/Inquiries/20130606_CG_to_Cab_sec.pdf

Letter from JC to COPFS

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S4_JusticeCommittee/Inquiries/20130606_CG_to_Crown_Agent.pdf

James Robertson BBC interview immediately subsequent to 4th June JC consideration of PE 1370:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0210pmg/The_Culture_Studio_with_Janice_Forsyth_04_06_2013/

Lockerbie miscellanea

1.  A Lockerbie timeline has recently been posted on the CNN website.  For those wishing an overview of the chronology of the Lockerbie affair (from an American perspective, of course) it is useful. Other Lockerbie timelines have been produced, eg by the Scottish Government and The Guardian.

2.  A favourable review of James Robertson’s The Professor of Truth has appeared on the website of Minnesota’s Star Tribune newspaper.  The US edition of the book was published on 9 September.

3.  James Robertson will be talking about The Professor of Truth at the Wigtown Book Festival, today at 16.30.

Author warning over Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a report by Marcello Mega in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads in part:]

One of Scotland's leading authors has warned the Scottish Government not to hold a vote on independence before tackling the "enormous stain" on Scotland's justice system left by the Lockerbie bombing.

James Robertson, acclaimed by First Minister Alex Salmond and many others as Scotland's finest living writer, says he is in broad terms in favour of Scottish independence.

But he adds: "I wouldn't want to go into a referendum with people saying our justice system is not in good health and able to point to Lockerbie to support that view."

He said that because of the uncertainty surrounding the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, "there is an enormous stain on the Scottish justice system and we cannot move forward without erasing it".

Mr Robertson, best known for And The Land Lay Still and The Testament of Gideon Mack, has taken a profound interest in Lockerbie, and it has influenced his latest novel, The Professor of Truth, to be published by Penguin in May 2013.

Last year he delivered a compelling Saltire Society lecture at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, spelling out why he believed Megrahi had suffered a miscarriage of justice.

He also wrote to Mr Salmond to express support for the calls of the UK relatives for a full and independent inquiry, and was disappointed to receive the standard response – that the Scottish Government had no reason to doubt the safety of Megrahi's conviction.

Mr Robertson said: "If the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission saw clear grounds for a second appeal, it's hard for the Government to continue to justify that position.

"We need a full and independent inquiry to resolve it, very obviously for the sakes of the relatives, but also to underline Scotland's integrity if we are to move towards independence." (...)

The Scottish Government insists it lacks the powers to preside over a sufficiently wide-ranging probe, but the Crown Office is continuing to investigate the bombing in the hope of bringing others to justice.

Last night, the Scottish Government said: "It remains open for relatives of Mr al Megrahi or the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie atrocity to ask the SCCRC to refer to the case to the Appeal Court again on a posthumous basis, which ministers would be entirely comfortable with."

[The Scottish Government’s excuse that it lacks the powers to convene a sufficiently wide-ranging inquiry is becoming boring. It has been comprehensively refuted on many occasions.  Here is one example.

The attempt by the Scottish Government to deflect attention away from an inquiry towards a new appeal is disingenuous in the exterme, not to say shameful, given the new hurdles that that government’s own recent legislation has erected to any fresh application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and, assuming a successful SCCRC application, to getting an appeal heard by the High Court of Justiciary.]

Intelligence agencies and disinformation

[I wish a happy Christmas to all readers of this blog.

What follows is an article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer published by OhmyNews on Christmas Day 2007:]

British journalists -- and British journals -- are being manipulated by the secret intelligence agencies, and I think we ought to try and put a stop to it.  --David Leigh[1]

Intelligence agencies can manipulate journalists and their newspapers in various ways. Firstly, spies may recruit journalists or even impersonate them. It goes without saying that these long and broadly practiced activities are unhealthy as they put the life of every single journalist in danger, and particularly those who work as foreign correspondents.

Secondly, intelligence agencies can plant disinformation in mainstream media under false identity. In the months preceding the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, intelligence agencies used this technique abundantly and without any difficulty, according to a copy of the CIA's secret history of the coup, which surfaced in 2000. "The Iran desk of the [US] State Department was able to place a CIA study in Newsweek, using the normal channel of desk officer to journalist. The article was one of several planted press reports that, when reprinted in Tehran, fed the war of nerves against Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh," the document said. The third way for the spook to gain access to the media is rather subtle and particularly insidious. It consists of exploiting the vanity of journalists to impress on them to hide or lie about the real identity of their sources. Spies are said to have used this technique -- known as "I/Ops" for Information Operation -- heavily in the British press. Yet, it can rarely be documented. But once in a while, an I/Op gets out of control, giving the public a rare opportunity to take a peek inside the world of disinformation. In November 1995, The Sunday Telegraph published a sensational story about one of our then favorite villains: Libya. The paper accused Col Muammar Qaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, of running a major money laundering operation in Europe intended to fund weapons of mass destruction: Saif al-Islam is a "thoroughly dishonest, unscrupulous and untrustworthy maverick against whom the international banking community has been warned to be on its guard." The article had been written by then-senior correspondent Con Coughlin. Coughlin's source was described as a "British banking official." When The Sunday Telegraph was served with a libel writ by Qaddafi's son, the paper was unable to back up its allegation. The paper lodged three defenses. First, the lawyers argued that the newspaper had not injured Gaddafi's reputation. Second, they argued that the article about him was true. Finally, claiming the defense of qualified privilege, the lawyers argued that it was in the public interest to publish the articles even if they turned out to be untrue. For those who follow the Lockerbie farce -- the Megrahi second appeal over the Lockerbie judgment -- it is hard not to notice the irony of the last argument. Indeed, it seems that in the UK it is good for the public to be told lies while at the same time it is good for the same public not to be shown secret documents believed to be vital to unearthing the truth about the largest crime ever committed on UK soil. "Is it in truth a classic muddle? A story of security service incompetence, a story of black propaganda, a story The Sunday Telegraph did not take that much care with because it never thought the matter would come to court?" asked James Price, QC, for Saif al-Islam. During the trial in April 2002, bits of the true story began to emerge. On Oct 19, 1995, the Conservative foreign secretary Malcom Rifkind had arranged a lunch that Coughlin attended. During that meeting, Coughlin was told by Rifkind that Iran was trying to get hold of hard currency to fund its WMD program in spite of UN sanctions. Rifkind encouraged Coughlin to follow this story. The dispute was settled in less than two days of trial.[2] "There was no truth in the allegation that Gaddafi participated in any currency sting," said Geoffrey Robertson, QC, representing Telegraph Group Ltd. "The Sunday Telegraph has accepted not only that there is no truth in these allegations, but that there is no evidence to suggest that there is any truth in them, and they have agreed to apologize to the claimant [Saif al-Islam] in this court and in the newspaper," Price told journalists. One had to wait for the publication of David Hooper's book Reputations Under Fire to learn that the source of the article was not a "British banking official." Actually, they were intelligence officers working for MI6. It is now understood what really occurred. On Oct 25 and 31, 1995, Coughlin was briefed by a MI6 man (source A) who appeared to be his regular contact with the agency. Source A gave Coughlin an overview of the plan. Through an Austrian Company, Iran was selling oil on the black market to fund its secret military nuclear program. Moreover, on Nov 21, 1995, source A introduced Coughlin to a second MI6 person (source B) who described the involvement of Saif al-Islam in the counterfeiting scam.[3] Source B requested strict confidentiality. The next day, the two MI6 officers described the money laundering deal in great detail during a four-hour meeting. Eight billion dollars would be transferred out of banks in Egypt and replaced by Libyans dinars, minus a substantial commission. The Libyans would hide their involvement through a Swiss branch of an international finance company. Meanwhile, an Iranian middleman would provide a large amount of fake currency. On Nov 23, Coughlin met once more the two intelligence officers who showed him copies of the banking records. There is just one problem with the story. The intelligence officers made it up. It was pure fabrication and Coughlin bought it while hiding the true identity of his source. "I believe he [Coughlin] made a serious mistake in falsely attributing his story to a British banking official. His readers ought to know where his material is coming from. When The Sunday Telegraphgot into trouble with the libel case, it seems, after all, to have suddenly found it possible to become a lot more specific about its sources," wrote David Leigh. "Our first task as practitioners is to document what goes on in this very furtive field. Our second task ought to be to hold an open debate on what the proper relations between the intelligence agencies and the media ought to be. And our final task must then be to find ways of actually behaving more sensibly." Has Coughlin learned anything from the affair? It seems that the answer to this question is definitely no. He went on writing about the false link between Saddam and al-Qaida and the false allegations concerning the Iraqi WMDs. He wrote that the Iraqis could access their WMDs within 45 minutes. Coughlin has written numerous articles about the alleged Iranian military program such as "Meanwhile, Iran Gets On With Its Bomb," "Israeli Crisis Is a Smoke Screen for Iran's Nuclear Ambitions," "Iran Accused of Hiding Secret Nuclear Weapons Site," "Iran Has Missiles to Carry Nuclear Warheads," "UN Officials Find Evidence of Secret Uranium Enrichment Plant," "Iran Plant Has Restarted Its Nuclear Bomb-Making Equipment," and "Iran Could Go Nuclear Within Three Years." Not a single one of these articles quotes a named source. 1. "Britain's Security Services and Journalists: The Secret Story," British Journalism Review, Vol 11, No 2, 2000, pages 21-26. David Leigh is assistant editor of The Guardian. He is former editor of The Guardian's comment page and former assistant editor at The Observer. He is a distinguished investigative reporter and formerly a producer for Granada Television's World in Action program. In 2007, he was awarded the Paul Foot prize, with his colleague Rob Evans, for the BAE bribery exposures. 2. Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C., and a nephew of King Fahd, is understood to have brokered the settlement at the request of The Sunday Telegraph. 3. The reader should keep in mind that in late November 1995, MI6 was approached by Libyan dissidents concerning their plan to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi in February 1996. MI6 met with one member of the group, code name Tunworth, in late November 1995.

Megrahi's son joins campaign to clear his father's name

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

The son of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has joined a Facebook group protesting his father's innocence to help dispel the notion that an application for a posthumous appeal is not backed by his family.

Khaled El Megrahi has joined the Friends of Justice for Megrahi group and has been welcomed warmly by the other 180 members committed to clearing his father's name.

They include British relatives of the 270 victims who perished 26 years ago, Professor Robert Black, the architect of the trial under Scots Law in a neutral country, and prominent figures like James Robertson, one of Scotland's greatest novelists. Robertson's acclaimed novel, The Professor of Truth, was based loosely on the Lockerbie atrocity which killed 270 people in December 1988.

Shortly before El Megrahi joined the group, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had expressed doubts about continuing the investigation that could lead to a fresh attempt to overturn the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.

The commission had asked the High Court to decide whether it could continue with the application, submitted earlier this year by Aamer Anwar, the Scottish solicitor acting for the Megrahi family and other supporters.

Scots Law allows for posthumous appeals to be pursued by the executor of the deceased, and leaves it open to others with an irrefutable interest to pursue justice, but their right is not enshrined in the same way as the executor's.

The SCCRC is seeking clarification about whether the victims' families alone could pursue a fresh appeal without the support of Megrahi's executor.

The confusion has arisen because the SCCRC insists it must have the original document confirming El Megrahi as his father's executor.

Mr Anwar said that the current climate in Libya made it extremely unlikely the legal team could travel there soon to obtain the necessary documentation, nor would they ask the Megrahi family to put their lives at risk.

He added: "With regards to the rights of the victims' families to pursue an appeal, we would submit that there is a fundamental duty on the state to protect the rights of victims of crime, which includes responsibility for the administration of justice."

Without the original executry documents, other Megrahi family members and "outsiders" like the British relatives of the victims, including Dr Jim Swire and the Rev John Mosey, would have to persuade the High Court of the legitimacy of their interest.

Given the stakes for the Scottish criminal justice system, there are fears that the judges who decide on the SCCRC's submission will not be easily convinced to encourage further close scrutiny of crucial aspects of the case, most notably the conduct of police, prosecutors and expert witnesses.

El Megrahi's public support for his father, therefore, could be very significant.

The SCCRC in 2007 referred the case back to the appeal court for what would have been a second appeal on six grounds that suggested there might have been a miscarriage of justice.

Since then, the case for an appeal has been strengthened by fresh scientific evidence showing that a fragment said to be from the timer that detonated the bomb was not a match for a type of device that the court accepted had been used and had been sold only to Libya.

Megrahi died on 20 May 2012, some 33 months after his release on compassionate grounds as he was dying from cancer.

He abandoned his appeal believing it would help secure his compassionate release, and although the Scottish Government has always denied a deal was done, his controversial release was confirmed soon after.

El Megrahi was welcomed to the Facebook group by Prof Black, who said: "I hope that 2015 will be the year when the injustice to your father, and your family, will begin to be rectified."

The sentiment was echoed later by other members, and El Megrahi later posted short messages thanking supporters, expressing hope for progress, and offering best wishes and a happy new year to all members.

[RB: Other members of Abdelbaset Megrahi’s immediate family are also members of the Facebook group.]

US and UK were ‘double-dealing’ on Megrahi release

[This is part of the headline over a report in today’s edition of The National. The following are excerpts:]

It was one of the most controversial decisions taken during Alex Salmond’s time as First Minister – now he is to revisit the 2009 release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi with the man who made that call, former justice secretary Kenny MacAskill.

In a special St Andrew’s Day edition of the Alex Salmond Show on RT today, MacAskill makes the explosive claim that Scotland was “slapped about mercilessly” by the British and American governments, who he accuses of “double dealing”.

Salmond himself says the identification evidence which helped convict Megrahi is “open to question” and berates the “total cynicism” of those who attacked the Scottish Government over the decision to send the Libyan home on compassionate grounds because he had terminal prostate cancer. He says the UK Government wanted Megrahi sent home to secure an oil deal. (...)

Salmond and MacAskill were colleagues in the Scottish Government when both came under huge pressure not to release Megrahi.

After they did so, his life was prolonged by American-made cancer drugs not available in Scotland before he died in 2012.

MacAskill tells Salmond: “A month after I was being criticised for releasing Megrahi, it was coming to light that the British [Government] through the Police Service of Northern Ireland, were training Gaddafi’s elite battalion.

“It’s also since become clear that Britain, through and with assistance of the United States, was rendering prisoners to Colonel Gaddafi.

“So this was about building a relationship between the West and Gaddafi and Scotland was slapped about mercilessly. I believe we did the right thing and yet Britain and America were conniving to achieve what we delivered, but blaming us for doing what we did for the right reasons.”

Asked by Salmond if the full truth about Lockerbie would ever be known, MacAskill replies: “I think it is going to be a bit like the grassy knoll at Dallas. I think there will always be doubts because there will always be people that don’t accept it and there still is that million-dollar question of how did they get the suitcase on board at Malta? But it’s got to be remembered that as a consequence of getting it on board at Malta, Pan Am went into administration.

“So, I think it went on at Malta we don’t quite know how. I have a theory in my book about how I think it went on, but I think there is no doubt that Libya did it, but they were aided and abetted by others. Megrahi had a role, but it was a relatively minor role.”

[Kenny MacAskill’s “theory” and his conviction that Libya “did it” and that “Megrahi had a role” are convincingly demolished in this review of the MacAskill book by James Robertson and this review by John Ashton.]

What do you say, Mr Linklater?

[What follows is the text of a letter to the editor of The Times by Len Murray (a committee member of Justice for Megrahi who has been described by a Scottish High Court judge as the most distinguished pleader of his generation) following Magnus Linklater’s most recent Lockerbie article in that newspaper. As with James Robertson’s letter, it has not been selected for publication:]

Why does Magnus Linklater insist in keeping his head buried in the sands of Libya?  Why does he not face up to the facts of the scandalous conviction of Abdul Basset Al-Megrahi?

The judges found that the unaccompanied suitcase containing the bomb was put on a flight to Frankfurt from Malta when there was not even a scintilla of evidence to justify that finding.  What made that finding worse (if that were possible) was the fact that the records at Luqa Airport accounted for every single piece of luggage and there was none which was unaccompanied.

Their Lordships also held also that this same suitcase managed to make its way, still unaccompanied, from Frankfurt to Heathrow when there was no adequate evidence to justify that conclusion.

Gauci, without whom the Crown had no case, never positively identified Megrahi as the purchaser of the clothing wrapped around the bomb.  His earlier descriptions of the purchaser were so far out in age, height and colouring that they surely constituted proof that Megrahi was NOT the purchaser.

What do you say, Mr Linklater, about the $2 million dollars paid to Gauci by the CIA and which was never mentioned at the Trial?  Or the break-in at the Pan Am hangar right next door to Air Iran only 16 hours before Pan Am 103 took off?

Or what does he make of the finding that the purchase was made on 7 December when Megrahi was on Malta when the preponderance of the evidence was that the purchase was made on 23 November when he was not?

What do you say, Mr Linklater, of the subsequent discrediting of the forensic scientists who gave evidence at Megrahi’s trial?

Why was it that every single inference unfavourable to Megrahi was drawn when there were so many innocent explanations available?

These are the facts of the disgraceful conviction of Megrahi, a conviction utterly condemned by, amongst others, the UN observer at the trial.

But Mr Linklater does not stop at ignoring the facts.  He goes on to say something that is nothing short of astonishing.  He says:  “….every thread of evidence has been examined to distraction and has led nowhere.”  An astoundingly misleading assertion.  Examined where and by whom?

Certainly not the Appeal Court who have never had the opportunity of looking at Megrahi’s conviction.  The first appeal was taken on the wrong grounds and so the evidence was never examined; the second appeal was abandoned before any hearing and Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds.

The nearest the case got to a judicial tribunal was when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission examined the conviction and referred it to the Appeal Court since they detected no fewer than six possible grounds of a miscarriage of justice.

Even some of the relatives of the victims wanted SCCR to examine the case since they are unhappy about the conviction.

These are the facts of the Megrahi case.  May I respectfully suggest to Mr Linklater that he lift his head out of the sands of Libya and face up to the truth of this national disgrace.  We of Justice for Megrahi would welcome his considerable abilities.

Lord Advocate Peter Fraser ennobled

[On this date in 1989 Peter Fraser QC was elevated to the peerage as Lord Fraser of Carmyllie. What follows is excerpted from his entry in Wikipedia:]

Fraser first stood for Parliament for Aberdeen North in October 1974, but was beaten by Labour's Robert Hughes.

He was elected as a Conservative & Unionist Member of Parliament for South Angus in 1979, where he remained in the House of Commons until June 1987 (from 1983 representing East Angus). He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to George Younger, Secretary of State for Scotland. In 1982 he was appointed Solicitor General for Scotland by Margaret Thatcher and became Lord Advocate in 1989. He was created a life peer as Baron Fraser of Carmyllie, of Carmyllie in the District of Angus on 10 February 1989 and was appointed a member of the Privy Council the same year.

During his time as Scotland's senior law officer, he was directly responsible for the conduct of the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Lord Fraser drew up the 1991 indictment against the two accused Libyans and issued warrants for their arrest. But five years after the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, when Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of 270 counts of murder, he cast doubt upon the reliability of the main prosecution witness, Tony Gauci. According to The Sunday Times of 23 October 2005, Lord Fraser criticised the Maltese shopkeeper, who sold Megrahi the clothing that was used to pack the bomb suitcase, for inter alia being "not quite the full shilling" and "an apple short of a picnic".

Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, who was chief prosecutor at the Lockerbie trial, reacted by saying: "It was Lord Fraser who, as Lord Advocate, initiated the Lockerbie prosecution. At no stage, then or since, has he conveyed any reservation about any aspect of the prosecution to those who worked on the case, or to anyone in the prosecution service." Boyd asked Lord Fraser to clarify his apparent attack on Gauci by issuing a public statement of explanation.

William Taylor QC, who defended Megrahi at the trial and the appeal, said Lord Fraser should never have presented Gauci as a crown witness: "A man who has a public office, who is prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland, has got a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable. He 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 many years later after my former client has been in prison for nearly 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," Taylor said.

Tam Dalyell, former Labour MP who played a crucial role in organising the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, described Lord Fraser's comments as an 'extraordinary development': "I think there is an obligation for the chairman and members of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to ask Lord Fraser to see them and testify under oath - it's that serious. Fraser should have said this at the time and, if not then, he was under a moral obligation to do so before the trial at Zeist. I think there will be all sorts of consequences," Dalyell declared.

[RB: Readers may also care to be reminded of James Robertson's magnificent jeu d'esprit Oh, come on, it's all over now.]

Public concern that a great injustice may have been done in 2001

[What follows is a review by Graeme Purves on the Bella Caledonia website of Dr Morag Kerr’s Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies.]

Most of us who are old enough will remember the shock with which we learned of the atrocity which ended the lives of 270 people at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.  I first heard about it from an evening BBC radio news bulletin while lying in bed with a nasty dose of flu.  At first I thought it was a preposterous fantasy conjured up by my fevered condition and staggered through to the television in the sitting room to have the horror confirmed.

Dr Morag Kerr is a Borders-based vet who has previously written books on veterinary laboratory medicine and pet care.  A trip which involved driving along the A74 less than two days after the Maid of the Seas fell from the sky was the initial stimulus for her meticulous research into how that terrible event came about.  She has been Secretary Depute of Justice for Megrahi since 2010.

The safety of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s conviction at the trial at Camp Zeist has troubled the national conscience for the last 13 years.   Dr Jim Swire whose daughter Flora died at Lockerbie was one of those not persuaded by the prosecution case.  He subsequently befriended Megrahi and has campaigned tirelessly and with great integrity and dignity for a re-examination of the evidence.  Dramatisations challenging the version of events accepted in the Camp Zeist judgement have played to packed houses at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  James Robertson’s novel, The Professor of Truth, draws its power from the widespread unease over the official attribution of responsibility.

A number of books have examined the voluminous evidence accumulated as a result of the investigations into the crime. John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury explores in detail the provenance of the circuit board fragment identified by investigators as part of a timer used in the bomb and the questions over the reliability of Tony Gauci’s identification of Megrahi as the man who bought the clothes packed in the bomb suitcase.  And disquieting revelations about the case continue to emerge.  On 20 December, Channel 4 News reported that between 1990 and 1995 several senior Syrian officials had told CIA agent Dr Richard Fuisz that the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril, was responsible for the bombing.

Morag Kerr’s book is the first book about Lockerbie to deal rigorously with the detail of the transfer baggage evidence.  On the basis of a careful analysis of reports, statements and photographs not previously available to the public she presents compelling evidence that the Samsonite hardshell case containing the bomb could not have been loaded on flight KM180 in Malta because it was already in luggage container AVE4041 in the interline shed at Heathrow an hour before the connecting Boeing 727 from Frankfurt (PA103A) had landed.

If the bomb was indeed introduced into the luggage transfer system at Heathrow, then the whole case against Megrahi and Libya crumbles away.  Morag Kerr wants to see an inquiry into the police and forensic investigations of Lockerbie which she regards as seriously flawed.  Given the growing body of evidence which cannot readily be reconciled with the Camp Zeist judgement, only a fresh consideration of the case by a Scottish court can assuage public concern that a great injustice may have been done in 2001.