A commentary on the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the murder of 270 people in the Pan Am 103 disaster.
Sunday 4 October 2015
Colin Boyd resigns as Lord Advocate
Thursday 5 April 2012
Megrahi prosecutor to become Scottish judge
Monday 22 April 2024
"He now had 270 murders to solve"
[What follows is excerpted from the obituary of John Boyd published today on the website of The Times:]
Four days before Christmas 1988 John Boyd was balanced precariously on a chair, hanging wallpaper in the kitchen of his village home. At about 7.30pm a news flash interrupted the programme playing on the television in the next room: an aircraft had crashed over the Border town of Lockerbie. “My God, that’s wrong; there’s something wrong there,” the chief constable of Dumfries and Galloway muttered to himself. Moments later his control room called confirming the incident.
Boyd, who was once described as “a slight man with an unfashionable crew cut and a perpetually quizzical look”, threw on his uniform, jumped in his car and drove the 14 miles to Lockerbie. There he learnt that Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York, a Boeing 747 known as Clipper Maid of the Seas, had crashed carrying 243 passengers and 16 crew. Bodies had rained down on the rooftops of Lockerbie and a fireball had destroyed several houses, killing 11 of the town’s 3,500 residents.
As chief constable of one of the smallest police forces in the country Boyd, a diffident figure, was not accustomed to dealing with many major crimes. He had never dealt with an air crash; in fact, he had rarely flown. With the crash site falling under his jurisdiction, he now had 270 murders to solve.
Using emergency police powers he called in the army, the air force and officers from neighbouring forces. He also requisitioned all private helicopters at Glasgow airport. With Lockerbie police station damaged in the explosion and too small for the role, he set up a control room at Lockerbie Academy. Recalling the bombing of an Air India flight from Montreal to Delhi via London off the Irish coast in 1985, he was suspicious that the crash was the work of terrorists and from the outset urged his officers to treat the case as such.
Within hours the town had been invaded by hundreds of police, military investigators and representatives of the press. Soon their numbers were augmented by intelligence teams from Britain and the US, though Boyd remained unruffled. “He appreciated every bit of amazing help and support that the FBI gave him,” said Brian Duffy, co-author of The Fall of Pan Am 103 (1990).
Boyd understood the need to share as much information as possible. Speaking with dignity at an emotionally charged late-night news conference, he told how debris had been spread over many miles. “Wreckage has fallen at six different locations both within Lockerbie and some miles outside the town. There are bodies at each of these locations,” he said. Within a week evidence had been found of an explosive device, creating what he described as “a criminal inquiry of international dimensions”.
Inevitably there was pressure for answers, with some of the American press demanding immediate results and questioning Boyd’s abilities. A Pan Am pilot whose wife died in the attack claimed that Dumfries and Galloway police were “paralysed by inexperience and incompetence”, adding that the force “reach their upper limit of competence directing traffic and issuing parking tickets”. It was not a view shared by Pan Am or others involved in the investigation.
Reflecting on the disaster during the subsequent judicial inquiry, Boyd described the difficulties his officers encountered when giving information to grieving relatives. [RB: The "judicial inquiry" referred to is probably the fatal accident inquiry held in Dumfries by Sheriff Principal John Mowat QC in 1990.] Because of the severe damage to the victims, they had to be dissuaded from seeing the bodies. Most of their loved ones had to be identified from X-rays, dental records and fingerprints. (...)
The Lockerbie bombing was by far Boyd’s biggest case and he remained determined to investigate it thoroughly, insisting that there would be no shortcuts. “With all the help and assistance from so many different parties, good, solid police work will get us there,” he told The New York Times two years after the crash. “It has not been easy and it won’t be easy. But it will happen.”
He was true to his word and in 2001 Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, was convicted in connection with the attack. Al-Megrahi was released in 2009 on compassionate grounds, having been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and died in Libya in 2012. [RB: The only evidence at his trial that Megrahi was an intelligence officer came from Abdul Majid Giaka whose evidence on every other matter was rejected by the court as incredible and unreliable. The judges gave no reasons for accepting his evidence on this single issue.]
John Boyd CBE, QPM, chief constable of Dumfries and Galloway, 1984-89, was born on October 14, 1933. He died on April 9, 2024, aged 90
Wednesday 26 March 2014
One of the most disgraceful episodes in the Crown Office’s recent history
Saturday 1 January 2022
Divergent views on Colin Boyd as Lord Advocate
[The following are excerpts from a report published today in The Herald:]
Jack McConnell tactlessly told his elected colleagues in the Scottish cabinet that he valued the advice of an unelected minister more than theirs.
The then Labour First Minister somewhat ungraciously rated the input from the Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd, above that of his fellow politicians.
The admission came at the Scottish cabinet of October 4, 2006, when Lord Boyd announced he was standing down after six years in post as “the longest serving Lord Advocate for more than a century”.
He said that the trial of the Lockerbie bombing suspects in 2000 and 2001 at the special court in the Netherlands had been a major achievement for the Scottish justice system.
Lord Boyd led the prosecution of the two Libyans accused of the 1988 atrocity. (...)
Mr McConnelll said it was “impossible to overstate the importance” of Lord Boyd’s role in the Lockerbie trial and conviction, and also saluted his court reforms.
“There was no one whose judgment as a Cabinet colleague he had valued more.”
[RB: Lockerbie campaigners did not share Jack McConnell's views about Colin Boyd. Here are some comments published on the occasion of his resignation:]
"Colin Boyd tried to balance what was known to his prosecution team of the famous ‘CIA telegrams’ in the court at Zeist, in the knowledge that the ‘star’ prosecution witness (Giaca) was also a worthless CIA quisling. His struggles to meet his clear duty to truth and justice and fair dealing with the court and the defence, made a ‘rabbit in the headlights’ look cool and sagacious. Meantime his predecessor in office had made the wise choice of lolloping off to the safety of a secure burrow in the nick of time." Dr Jim Swire
"I believe that history will view Colin Boyd’s reign as Lord Advocate as a shameful period where the independence of the Lord Advocate was sacrificed to the will of his political masters.
"Two cases dominated his tenure – the Lockerbie Bombing and the Shirley McKie case. In both cases he stands accused of weakness and vacillation in the face of political pressure and a complete failure to act as, ‘the watchdog for justice’ – the role assigned to him by Lord McCluskey.
"His dramatic overnight resignation in October 2006 has been seen by some as the captain jumping ship to save his skin. I hope that this accusation will be thoroughly tested during the planned judicial enquiry into my daughter’s case and in any future enquiry into the Lockerbie disaster." Iain A J McKie
[RB: Further, largely critical, accounts of Colin Boyd's performance in the Lockerbie case can be found here, here, and here.]
Monday 26 March 2012
Former Lord Advocate ... seriously misled the Megrahi Court claims book author
The claim, contained in the book Megrahi – You are my Jury, relates to the QC’s intervention in a matter involving secret CIA cables that contained details of discussions between the US agency and a Libyan ‘supergrass’ named Majid Giaka.
Wednesday 10 August 2011
Lord Boyd hits back at Lockerbie allegations
A former Lord Advocate yesterday broke his silence to hit back at campaigners who claim that the Libyan bomber was wrongly convicted.
In a powerful statement to The Times, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, who was in charge of Scotland’s prosecution service when Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi came to trial, said that allegations that the Crown Office had influenced the judges were “ludicrous”.
He added that Professor Robert Black, QC, who told an Edinburgh Fringe audience on Monday night that the judges had reached a guilty verdict contrary to the evidence because they were “consciously or unconsciously” under pressure from him to do so, was “irresponsible” and had cast “a slur on the reputation of senior and experienced judges”.
He added: “Al-Megrahi was properly convicted in this case and that conviction was upheld on appeal. He will die convicted of the worst mass murder ever carried out in British history, and deservedly so.” (...)
In the course of it, Professor Black said that the three trial judges, Lord Sutherland, Lord Coulsfield and Lord Maclean, had reached a verdict contrary to the evidence because they had been influenced by the power of the Lord Advocate, who was not only in charge of the prosecution but was also responsible for the appointment of Scottish judges.
Lord Boyd, who has not spoken publicly about such allegations before, said: “It’s a frankly pretty ludicrous allegation — a slur on the reputation of judges who are all very senior and experienced . . . I had been in office for all of three months when the trial took place, so I could not possibly have been responsible for their appointment. Had I been, there is no question of my having a hand in influencing them. This is not the culture of the Scottish judiciary. I utterly reject the suggestion.”
He was entirely satisfied that the conviction of al-Megrahi had been safe. “Every Lord Advocate from Peter Fraser to Elish Angiolini has examined the evidence at one time or another — six in total,” he said. “All were satisfied that there was either sufficient credible evidence to prosecute or, in my case, and Elish’s, that the conviction on that evidence was sound. Not one of us would have prosecuted or defended the conviction if we considered that there was any doubt . . . The process was robust and the conviction sound.”
Lord Boyd said that, as Solicitor General, he had been in charge of the preparation of the Crown case, and was entirely satisfied with its strength.
[Lord Boyd in his comments does not mention that one of the six grounds upon which, after a three-year investigation, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found that Megrahi's conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice, was that, on the evidence led at Camp Zeist, no reasonable court could have reached the conclusion that Megrahi was the purchaser on Malta of the clothes that surrounded the bomb. Without that finding in fact, Megrahi could not have been convicted.]