Lockerbie, Megrahi, Ashton and Linklater

[The following item has been published today on John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury website:]

Below is an unpublished letter, which I wrote to The Times in response to Magnus Linklater’s article of 21 December (to which I responded at greater length in an open letter). It provoked a response from Mr Linklater, which I have included below. I shall be responding to it in due course. As yet, he has not responded to either of my open letters, the first of which can be read here.

Dear Sir,

Not for the first time, Magnus Linklater (Times Scottish edition 21 December) seriously misrepresents the position of the majority of those who believe that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the so-called Lockerbie bomber – was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Once again he resurrects the claim that we are conspiracy theorists and ignores the fact that our chief concerns – that the trial court judgment was unreasonable and that numerous items of exculpatory evidence were withheld from the defence lawyers – were shared by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which referred the case back to the appeal court on no fewer than six grounds. Mr Linklater praises the SCCRC’s lengthy report, yet ignores the fact its conclusions were a damning indictment of the Scottish criminal justice system.

He also attaches the conspiracy theorist label to those who suggest that Iran, rather than Libya, was to behind the bombing, while turning a blind eye to the fact that the role of Iran and its terrorist proxies, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, is confirmed by numerous declassified US intelligence documents and is spoken to by two former CIA agents Mr Robert Baer and Dr Richard Fuisz.

Most outrageously, he suggests that Mr Megrahi’s supporters have accused his original defence team of knowingly overlooking or suppressing evidence that might have helped his defence. As Mr Linklater, should know, that is not the view of the Justice for Megrahi group, nor is it mine.

Journalists who conflate fringe views with those of the mainstream and ignore facts that sit uncomfortably with their own opinions should be sent back to journalism college, not let loose on the pages of a respected newspaper.

Yours sincerely,

John Ashton

Dear John Ashton

I don’t know if The Times will publish your letter — that is up to them.

But if you find the phrase “conspiracy theorists” insulting, then I find your suggestion that I should go back to “journalism college” offensive. I’ve been in the husiness for more than 40 years, and have learned over that time a simple principle of reporting: that good investigation requires sound proof.

I use the word conspiracy advisedly. It describes the whole gamut of the pro-Megrahi school, which runs from CIA plots to drug-smuggling, tampered evidence, conniving lawyers, and complacent judges. Your own (first) book sets so many hares running it is quite impossible to track them down. And others have done the same. Only last week the Daily Mail had Dr Swire confronting Abu Talb, whom even you know was not responsible, as the principal suspect; and on  Saturday your fellow-theorist Morag Kerr alleged in a  radio discussion with me that the Crown had deliberately subverted evidence to support their case. If that is not a conspiracy I don’t know what is. 

I am amazed that you should be touting shadowy CIA agents like Fuisz and Baer, whose evidence would never stand up in court. The way that Baer was exposed in the SCCRC report should make you think twice about using his name again. 

Yes, it is true that the SCCRC found grounds for referring the case back to appeal. They mainly centred on Gauci’s evidence. That is certainly worth examining again, and might or might not undermine the prosecution case. But it is grounds for appeal, no more, and it  demonstrates  what an objective and  well-balanced inquiry the SCCRC  was. Far from being “a damning indictment” of the Scottish justice system,” it shows the system working. Of course, Megrahi himself had the opportunity of using the appeal process  to his advantage. But he chose not to. 

I much prefer the meticulous way in which the SCCRC disposed of the various conspiracy theories involving Iran and the PFLP-GC by going back to first principles and invetigating them properly, rather than the wild, headline-grabbing claims that you and your coleagues deploy [sic].

Regards

Magnus Linklater

Lockerbie and the claims of Magnus Linklater

[On 6 January 2016 an article by Magnus Linklater headlined We can be confident that the Scottish prosecutors got the right man appeared in the Scottish Review. On 23 January John Ashton responded to that article on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website. In The Cafe section of today’s issue of the Scottish Review John Ashton and Dr Morag Kerr reply as follows to the Linklater article:]

Magnus Linklater’s article on the Lockerbie case 'We can be confident that the Scottish prosecutors got the right man’ (6 January) makes a number of inaccurate claims, including the suggestion that, when writing the biography of the alleged bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, I deliberately suppressed evidence that was unfavourable to Mr Megrahi.

This was that on the morning of the bombing, and on a couple of occasions prior, he shared a flight with Libyan Abouagela Masud, who was alleged by a Libyan witness to be the bomb-maker responsible for the La Belle night club bombing in Berlin in 1986. This particular flight was from Malta, which the prosecution alleged was the launchpad for the bomb.

The book examined the evidence used to convict Mr Megrahi. Like the Scottish Police and prosecutors, I was unaware of Mr Masud’s alleged connection to La Belle until told of it by filmmaker Ken Dornstein well over three years after completing that book. Mr Linklater could easily have checked this with me before defaming me, but chose not to. How, I wonder, could I have suppressed something of which I had no knowledge? My book did not dodge the fact that Mr Megrahi was connected to some unsavoury characters within the Gaddafi regime, including the alleged mastermind of La Belle and Said Rashid, yet Mr Linklater fails to mention this, preferring instead to accuse me of burying inconvenient truths.

As anyone who has followed the Megrahi case knows, it is the Crown that suppressed important evidence – lots of it – all of which was helpful to Mr Megrahi. On this scandal Mr Linklater has consistently remained mute.

He also suggests that my claim that Megrahi suffered a miscarriage of justice is based on speculation, rather than hard evidence. Had he read my book properly, he would see that all of its key claims are founded on hard evidence, the bulk of which was from the Crown’s own files. The same goes for Dr Morag Kerr’s book Adequately Explained by Stupidity?, which he breezily dismisses, without naming it, as having 'no concrete evidence’ to back it up.

He implies that I believe Mr Megrahi was the victim of a giant conspiracy in which judges and lawyers knowingly participated in a miscarriage of justice. As I have repeatedly made clear, including to Mr Linklater, I hold no such belief. If there was a conspiracy to frame Mr Megrahi – a big if, but by no means impossible – I don’t believe it would have involved the knowing participation of the Scottish criminal justice system.

Mr Linklater tells us: 'I like the famous Sherlock Holmes quote: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth"', yet applies it selectively. Hard evidence that has emerged since Mr Megrahi was convicted demonstrates the impossibility of the main planks of the prosecution case: that Mr Megrahi bought the clothes for the bomb suitcase from a Maltese shop a fortnight before the attack; that the fragment of bomb timer found at Lockerbie matched timers supplied to Libya by Swiss firm Mebo; and that the bomb began its journey In Malta. In contrast, the only evidence to support the conviction in 15 years is that concerning Abouagela Masud.

Two years ago I wrote an open letter to Mr Linklater, which posed a number of questions. He promised to reply, but never did. Maybe he would like to in the Scottish Review – he has had plenty of time to think of answers.

John Ashton

I’m getting more than slightly tired of Magnus Linklater’s repeated attacks on me and my Lockerbie book (Adequately Explained by Stupidity?, Matador 2013). He uses his entrée as a journalist to disparage and dismiss my work over multiple platforms, without at any point addressing the substance of what I have written. His latest sally is perhaps the weakest to date: '...suggestions that Heathrow Airport was where the bomb was loaded again have no concrete evidence to back them; an entire book has been written on the Heathrow connection, but nothing has emerged to give it the kind of validity which would stand up in court'. (In a supreme discourtesy he doesn’t even cite my book by name to allow readers to access it and judge for themselves.)

My book is stuffed to the eyeballs with concrete evidence that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow. I have repeatedly begged proponents of Megrahi’s guilt to explain to me in what way I am mistaken or what inferences I have missed that might admit of any plausible scenario whatsoever whereby the bomb suitcase might have flown in on the feeder flight. Nobody has answered me. I have specifically begged Mr Linklater in person to address this point, but he has ignored me in favour of yet another sally in the press denouncing 'conspiracy theorists'.

He repeatedly states that no evidence has emerged that would stand up in court. I am quite certain that the analysis I present would stand up in court, as would other evidence being highlighted by other interested parties. The problem is that it has not come before any court. Attempts to bring it to court have been mounted and indeed are ongoing, but so far these have been thwarted by procedural obstacles.

It is not enough simply to hand-wave away a detailed, evidence-based and non-conspiratorial dissection of the Lockerbie evidence with vague platitudes about 'nothing has emerged to give it ... validity'. What does he expect to emerge, from where and from whom, before he will do me the courtesy of actually addressing the substance of my thesis? One might imagine that it would be of some interest to a journalist who repeatedly invokes the name of the respected Sunday Times Insight series, but apparently not.

If, as I contend, detailed and logical analysis of the evidence gathered at Lockerbie (with no allegations of fabrication, substitution, evidence-planting, corruption, conspiracy or deliberate malpractice) demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, not Malta, this flips the entire 'was Megrahi guilty?' conundrum on its head. Rather than placing him at the scene of the crime, it provides him with a rock-solid alibi.

Ken Dornstein’s work, which impresses Mr Linklater so profoundly, relies absolutely and fundamentally on the unexamined assumption that the Lockerbie bomb was introduced at Malta. If it wasn’t, then he might as well produce eye-witness evidence that Elvis was checking in for a flight at Luqa airport that morning for all the relevance it would have. It doesn’t matter if Megrahi knew, or travelled with, or was related to any number of rank bad guys implicated in unrelated atrocities – if the scene of the crime that day was a thousand miles away, he didn’t do it. Worse still, the entire multi-million-pound Lockerbie investigation was up a gum tree from its earliest weeks, and due to its failure to investigate the real scene of the crime we simply have no idea who carried out the atrocity.

I challenge Mr Linklater to put up or shut up. To explain in detail where he thinks the mistakes or omissions are in my analysis that invalidate my conclusion that the bomb suitcase was already in the container an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed, or to refrain from disparaging my work and myself in print.

Morag Kerr

John Ashton and Steven Raeburn respond to Magnus Linklater

[1. What follows is John Ashton’s response to Magnus Linklater’s article in today’s edition of The Times:]

Magnus Linklater’s article in today’s Scottish edition of The Times, ‘Has Scotland really swallowed this crazy conspiracy?’, misrepresents my position on the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. It claims that I, and certain others who believe that Mr Megrahi was wrongly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, have alleged a grand conspiracy to frame him and Libya, in which the police, the Crown Office, witnesses, judges, senior politicians and the intelligence services were all complicit. As I pointed out to Mr Linklater at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday, had he read my book, Megrahi: You are my Jury, carefully, he would know that I have done no such thing.

Like the majority of Mr Linklater’s fellow audience members on Saturday, I have not swallowed a crazy conspiracy theory about Mr Megrahi’s conviction. Rather I have noted, among other things, that the Crown failed to disclose to Mr Megrahi’s defence team at least seven key items of exculpatory evidence; that two of the most important Crown witnesses were secretly paid millions of dollars by the US Government; and that the trial court’s judgment was, according to no less an authority than the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, unreasonable. All these facts Mr Linklater’s article omits to mention.

If Megrahi was framed – a big ‘if’, but not inconceivable given their extraordinary antics in the 1980s – it would almost certainly have been done by one of the US intelligence services, without the knowledge of the other protagonists listed by Mr Linklater. It is a matter of public record that during the Eighties the US National Security Council and CIA waged a massive covert campaign against Libya, which involved, among other things, spreading disinformation. During the same decade the same organisations made secret deals with the original prime suspect in the bombing, Iran. One of the Crown’s most important witnesses was revealed to be a CIA informant and prior to Lockerbie the CIA had at least one of the Swiss timing devices that the Libyans were alleged to have used to detonate the bomb. As my book revealed, new forensic evidence proves that the famous fragment of circuit board found within the bomb debris could not have been from one of the timers that, according to the undisputed Crown case, had been supplied to Libya. We don’t know the origin of the fragment, but it is by no means crazy to suggest that it was a plant. According to the head of the FBI’s Lockerbie investigation, Richard Marquise, his opposite number in the Swiss police believed this to be the case.  Indeed, Marquise admitted that this possibility also crossed his mind.

Whatever the truth about the fragment, in my view Mr Megrahi was convicted, not because of a grand conspiracy, but, primarily, because the police, Crown and judges, while no doubt all acting in good faith, failed to pursue the truth objectively. It’s a flaw to which newspaper columnists are equally vulnerable.

[2. What follows is a response to Magnus Linklater from Steven Raeburn, editor of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm:]

Magnus makes some challenging points: thankfully, diligent reporting allows us to go through them. Shall we?
　
1) Magnus: “To demonstrate that Libya was framed, they have to prove that there was a calculated decision to do so….”
01 Mar 2012 Swire seeks meeting with Cameron: "Deliberate concealment of the truth" in Pan Am 103 case (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2827/Swire_seeks_meeting_with_Cameron%3A_%22Deliberate_concealment_of_the_truth%22_in_Pan_Am_103_case.html
29 Mar 2011 What's Libya Got to Do With It...? (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/features/910/What's_Libya_Got_to_Do_With_It...%3F.html
　
2) Magnus: “That decision would have had to lead to the planting or suppression of forensic evidence…”
26 Mar 2012 Crown Office under pressure to explain withheld Pan Am 103 evidence (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2850/Crown_Office_under_pressure_to_explain_withheld_Pan_Am_103_evidence.html
06 Jan 2010 UN explosives consultant says Pan Am 103 circuit board fragment could not have survived explosion (link)　
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/1834/UN_explosives_consultant_says_Pan_Am_103_circuit_board_fragment_could_not_have_survived_explosion.html
19 Dec 2011 Minister’s testimony ignored for 19 years is “nail in the coffin” of discredited Megrahi conviction (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2739/Minister%E2%80%99s_testimony_ignored_for_19_years_is_%E2%80%9Cnail_in_the_coffin%E2%80%9D_of_discredited_Megrahi_conviction_.html
　
3) Magnus: “the control of witnesses by intelligence services…”
09 Jun 2011 Former Lord Advocate concedes key Pan Am 103 witness was bribed (link)　
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2430/Former_Lord_Advocate_concedes_key_Pan_Am_103_witness_was_bribed.html
Exclusive: US Department of Justice won’t rule out investigation into FBI bribery of Pan Am 103 witnesses (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2846/Exclusive%3A_US_Department_of_Justice_won%E2%80%99t_rule_out_investigation_into_FBI_bribery_of_Pan_Am_103_witnesses_.html
　
4) Magnus: “the approval of senior politicians….
24 May 2011 Exclusive: Guildford Four and Birmingham Six solicitor condemns Tony Blair’s role in the “layers and layers of deceit” in Pan Am 103 case (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2567/Megrahi_release_linkage_to_oil_deals_confirmed_to_BBC.html
07 Sep 2011 Megrahi release linkage to oil deals confirmed to BBC (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2400/Exclusive%3A_Guildford_Four_and_Birmingham_Six_solicitor_condemns_Tony_Blair%E2%80%99s_role_in_the_%E2%80%9Clayers_and_layers_of_deceit%E2%80%9D_in_Pan_Am_103_case_.html
10 Sep 2009 "Al Megrahi was not the Lockerbie bomber" - former UK Ambassador (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/1699/%22Al_Megrahi_was_not_the_Lockerbie_bomber%22_-_former_UK_Ambassador.html
08 Dec 2010 Political interference in “compassionate” release laid bare (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2190/Political_interference_in_%E2%80%9Ccompassionate%E2%80%9D_release_laid_bare_.html
　
5) Magnus: “the complicity of police officers….”
31 Dec 2011 Scottish police’s “desperate attempts” to block Megrahi miscarriage report to “hide” bribery revelations (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2754/Scottish_police%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9Cdesperate_attempts%E2%80%9D_to_block_Megrahi_miscarriage_report_to_%E2%80%9Chide%E2%80%9D_bribery_revelations_.html
Scottish MP Says Lockerbie Evidence Destroyed - Libyan Innocent (link)
http://rense.com/general21/lock.htm
　
6) Magnus: “a prosecution team prepared to bend every rule to secure a conviction….”
27 Oct 2008 Crown Office guilty of "obstructionist wheeze" and "appalling" treatment of Megrahi (link)　
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/1124/Crown_Office_guilty_of_%22obstructionist_wheeze%22_and_%22appalling%22_treatment_of_Megrahi.html
22 Dec 2011 “Blinkered” Lord Advocate “failing in his duty” over Pan Am 103 (link)　
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2746/%E2%80%9CBlinkered%E2%80%9D_Lord_Advocate_%E2%80%9Cfailing_in_his_duty%E2%80%9D_over_Pan_Am_103_.html
08 May 2012 Exclusive: Crown Office under fire over “corruption of the trial court” in Pan Am 103 case (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2898/Exclusive%3A_Crown_Office_under_fire_over_%E2%80%9Ccorruption_of_the_trial_court%E2%80%9D_in_Pan_Am_103_case.html
　
7) and a set of senior Scottish judges willing to go along with that….
13 Oct 2010 Justice system "available to manipulation" (link)
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/2125/Justice_system_%22available_to_manipulation%22_.html
02 Oct 2009 Exclusive: Lockerbie judges under pressure to convict, despite unprecedented denial (link)　
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/1733/Exclusive%3A_Lockerbie_judges_under_pressure_to_convict%2C_despite_unprecedented_denial_.html
　
Now, any good sportsman knows that you should always play the ball, and not the man, but diligence also obliges me to point out a fascinating fact that Magnus Linklater himself revealed to us.
　
14 Aug 2009 Exclusive: Former Scotsman editor confirms government and CIA influence over Lockerbie investigation
　
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/1638/Exclusive%3A_Former_Scotsman_editor_confirms_government_and_CIA_influence_over_Lockerbie_investigation_.html
　
Perhaps Magnus would consider debating these with me [Steven Raeburn] at a public event.

John Ashton responds to Magnus Linklater's latest article

On 6 January 2016 an article by Magnus Linklater headlined We can be confident that the Scottish prosecutors got the right man appeared in the Scottish Review. John Ashton has now responded to that article on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website. Mr Ashton’s response gives the full text of the Linklater piece, interspersed with Ashton’s comments and corrections. John Ashton’s article can be read here.

Crazy conspiracy theory

[This is the headline over an article posted today on Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph’s Lockerbie Truth website.  It reads as follows:]

The discussion and Q&A session (...) at Saturday's Edinburgh [International Book] Festival was highly successful. It seemed that the RBS hall could have been filled several times over. Time restrictions prevented a full presentation and questions were unfortunately restricted.

Only one hostile question was asked. Magnus Linklater is [The] Times Editor for Scotland. Having read the John Ashton book, he felt that it pointed to a vast conspiracy spanning several continents and many organisations. Such a conspiracy was neither feasible nor credible.

Having received a full and honest explanation by John Ashton that he was making no such allegation, but merely dealing in facts, Mr Linklater then went to his office and vented his spleen against all who had, in his words, swallowed this "crazy theory".

In other words, as with every devious politician, he had created then answered his own question.

Space will not allow a full listing of all the facts - not theories - contained in the miscarriage of justice enacted against Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. Suffice to list a few. Mr Linklater is cordially invited to tell us, and you, which of these facts is incorrect.

1. The [Crown]’s principal witness, Majid Giaka, was discounted by the trial judges on the grounds that his motives in giving evidence were based on fear, self-preservation (...) [RB: and saying what was required to ensure continuance of his CIA retainer]. The judges were, however, unaware that Giaka had been promised a reward of $2m by the US Department of Justice.

2.  The Scottish Crown Office's principal identification witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, was in discussion within days of his first contact with Scottish police regarding "unlimited monies with $10,000 available immediately" on offer through the US Department of Justice. Gauci would in time be paid $2m and his brother [Paul] $1m for their evidence.

And yet the trial and appeal judges were not informed of this fact by anyone, notably the (...) Scottish police investigator Harry Bell.  

For Mr Linklater to claim therefore that we are alleging that the judges "presided" over this matter is a bland falsehood. The judges and defence team were not informed of the fact.

3. The fragment of timer circuit board said to have been found in the hills around Lockerbie is now proved to have false provenance.  

During the trial the defence team and the judges accepted its provenance, since no contrary information was available from the prosecution team and the chief forensic scientist Alan Feraday.

And yet Feraday was aware of a strange anomaly between the fragment found at Lockerbie, and the timer boards supplied by Swiss manufacturers Thuring as control samples. It was said that the Lockerbie fragment had been part of a timer board made by Thuring and supplied to Libya in 1985. But Feraday had noted in his own handwriting that that the Lockerbie fragment was coated with "100% tin", and the control sample board with "70/30% tin-lead alloy".

The judges were unaware of this difference. For Mr Linklater again to claim that John Ashton and Jim Swire are alleging that the judges "presided" over a miscarriage is a false claim.  The judges simply did not know.

The Feraday notations were [later] investigated by the defence team with the assistance of two independent reputable and highly experience scientists. There is now indisputable scientific proof that the Lockerbie fragment did not originate from the batch sold to Libya, and therefore was quite unconnected to Mr al-Megrahi. 

[A further article on the same website headed A short history lesson can be read here.]

Shameful incompetence

[On this date in 2012 the Edinburgh International Book Festival featured a session devoted to John Ashton’s recently-published Megrahi: You are my Jury. The report of the event on the EIBF website reads as follows:]

“Eight senior Scottish judges got it wrong, but the question is why? It is not because of a lack of intellectual skills”, said Hans Köchler this morning at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, suggesting an international government cover up over the conviction of the Libyan bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Speaking at the first keynote event on the opening morning of the Book Festival, Köchler, who was an observer at the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie) bombing trial and subsequent appeal, argued that the verdict was reached for political motives and that the Scottish judges at Camp Zeist passed a ruling which was not logical upon examination of the facts.

Joining Köchler in the event was John Ashton, author of Megrahi: You are My Jury, as well as Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.

Ashton, who worked on Megrahi’s legal team and has written the biography of Megrahi on his request, agreed with Köchler, arguing that the Crown Office withheld evidence in the initial trial, “their incompetence was shameful” he said.

Following a meeting with the Lord Advocate in February of this year, Jim Swire spoke of his fury that the Lord Advocate did not know why evidence was withheld by the Crown Office in the original trial, specifically the evidence surrounding a break in to Heathrow airport around the time Pan Am Flight 103 took off from London.

Megrahi, who died in May this year, was released on compassionate grounds from Scottish prison in 2009 – a decision that was deeply divisive. “Megrahi’s cancer was a gift from God for everyone involved in this case. It was a tragedy for Megrahi but everyone else was punching the air”, said Ashton, suggesting that the release allowed for improved relations between the UK, Libya and the United States, having earlier said it was “plain as daylight” there was a deal between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi.

[RB: Magnus Linklater was present at the session and was most unhappy about the warm reception given by the packed audience to the speakers’ contention that the Megrahi conviction was a disgrace. His column in The Times two days later can be read here; responses by John Ashton and Steven Raeburn can be read here.]

Magnus at it again

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Magnus Linklater headlined A chance to challenge Lockerbie conspiracy theories published in today's edition of The Times:]

Suspect’s extradition to the US represents a pivotal moment in a case that has long been dogged by doubt

For those who have followed the tortuous Lockerbie trail, this is a key moment, the first chance to test not just Masud’s involvement but to challenge the long list of conspiracy theories that have dogged the case since the outset. It is almost conventional wisdom to argue that the one man convicted of the bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was innocent; that Libya had nothing to do with the attack and that agencies on both sides of the Atlantic conspired to fix the evidence so as to shift blame away from the most likely perpetrators, a Palestinian terrorist group sponsored by Iran.

Many thousands of words have been devoted to sustaining a sequence of events that has US intelligence agents planting or altering a bomb fragment to implicate Libya, then coaching a Maltese witness into identifying Megrahi as the man who came into his shop in December 1988 to buy clothing later used to wrap the bomb. So dodgy was the witness and so conflicting his evidence, say Megrahi’s defenders, that the charge against him is unsustainable and the Scottish judges and lawyers who convicted him are guilty of a miscarriage of justice.

As with all conspiracy theories, this one requires a massive suspension of disbelief. Not just the falsifying of evidence, or the manipulation of a witness, but the number of people who would have to know about it yet have remained silent — intelligence agents and detectives on both sides of the Atlantic, Scottish lawyers and judges, bomb specialists and other technicians — a rogue’s gallery of experts, all subscribing to a lie.

There is one fact, however, that no conspiracy theory can quite explain. Present in Malta the day when, prosecutors say, the bomb was loaded on to a connecting flight from Luqa airport, was not only the Libyan intelligence officer Megrahi, but a shadowy figure who, like Megrahi, left the island later that day to return to Libya.

A long and detailed investigation to find out who was behind the attack was embarked upon by Ken Dornstein, an American film-maker whose brother died on Pan Am 103. His inquiries began with a bomb exploding in a Berlin nightclub in 1986, killing two US servicemen. Dornstein succeeded in identifying the man who made the bomb and was sent a picture from Libya that confirmed it. That man was Masud. His presence in Malta with Megrahi is confirmed by passport records. Later he appears as a blurred figure behind bars in a Libyan court, facing charges on a separate bombing offence. He is seen again, in the back of a car, among the welcoming party when Megrahi returns to Libya after release from a Scottish jail in 2009.

Those who claim Megrahi was wrongly convicted have a lot of explaining to do. Why, if he was innocent, was he in Malta with a known bomb-maker? And how did all those clever US agents manage to ensure the men they would later frame were in the right place at the right time? I am sure the conspiracy theorists will come up with an answer. It had better be good.

[Magnus Linklater has a long history of branding as conspiracy theorists those of us who remain unconvinced of the legal justification for the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The manifold replies to this repeated Linklater slur can be found here. His silence in response to challenges to answer the points raised in them is eloquent. Examples of such rebuttals by John Ashton and Dr Morag Kerr are to be found in Lockerbie and the claims of Magnus Linklater.]

We got it right, says Lord Advocate

[Today’s edition of The Times contains a report by Magnus Linklater headed Lockerbie conviction is upheld by review. It reads as follows:]

A review of the Lockerbie bombing case by Scottish investigators has concluded that there is “not a shred of evidence” to support claims that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted.

Not only have investigators confirmed beyond doubt that the Libyan was the man responsible for the deaths of 270 people on December 21, 1988, they believe his fellow accused, Lamin Fhimah, who was acquitted, was almost certainly involved as well.

The findings will come as a blow to those, such as Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of those killed, and Robert Black, QC, who maintain that prosecutors advanced a flawed case and that judges presided over a miscarriage of justice. Ever since Megrahi was convicted in 2001 there have been allegations that evidence was manipulated to implicate Libya, steering suspicion away from Middle Eastern states.

Scottish prosecutors have been accused of deliberately ignoring evidence that the bomb was put aboard Pan Am Flight 103 at Heathrow rather than at Malta, and that the timer fragment, the principal piece of forensic evidence against Libya, was planted or altered.

The claims have been examined in detail in the course of the investigation by the Crown Office and Police Scotland, which have been working on the case with the FBI to identify others who were involved in the bombing.

Sources close to the investigation said there was “not a shred of evidence” to suggest the prosecution got it wrong.

Active pursuit of the case in Libya, they added, has served to confirm rather than undermine the evidence against both Megrahi and Fhimah.

Last night Frank Mulholland, QC, the Lord Advocate, said: “During the 26-year-long inquiry not one Crown Office investigator or prosecutor has raised a concern about the evidence in this case . . . our focus remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition.”

Evidence on the bomb itself, and the crucial timer fragment that linked the attack to Libya, found three weeks after Pan Am 103 exploded, have undermined the conspiracy theory.

Critics say the fragment was either planted at the site, exchanged later for another, or was tampered with to show a link to Libya that was never there.

Police are adamant, however, that the fragment was under supervision. They point out that the evidence would have to have been planted within 23 days, requiring knowledge of all the evidence to come — including Megrahi, whose existence was then unknown.

Set against the speculation are facts that have never been disproved: the presence of Megrahi in Malta, carrying a false passport, on the day the prosecution says the bomb went on board flight KM180 to Frankfurt; Fhimah arriving with him; and their subsequent telephone conversations.

[RB: The police investigation here referred to is not that which is currently being conducted by Police Scotland (under the supervision of an independent QC) into Justice for Megrahi’s allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial. Progress reports on that investigation can be accessed here. Furthermore, an application (at the joint instance of the Megrahi family and a group of victims’ relatives) for Megrahi’s conviction to be referred back to the High Court for a further appeal is currently under consideration by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. In these circumstances and in the light of the evidence disclosed by John Ashton and Dr Morag Kerr in their respective recent books it seems somewhat rash and premature for the Lord Advocate to be trumpeting his confidence that they got the right man after all. But Mr Mulholland, of course, is not noted for circumspection: he characterised Justice for Megrahi’s criminality allegations as “defamatory and without foundation” before they had even been investigated.

Today’s edition of The Times also contains a long comment piece by Magnus Linklater headlined Lockerbie review kills conspiracy theories. Mr Linklater has long been convinced that concerns about the Megrahi conviction are the province of conspiracy theorists (all too often, of course, a lazy slur). In view of his confident certainty, it does seem a pity that he has never responded to John Ashton’s two open letters to him, having indicated that he would do so.]