Crown caught out misleading the court

[On this date in 2000, the procurator fiscal in charge of preparations for the Lockerbie trial wrote a highly significant memorandum to two of the senior advocate deputes prosecuting the case. A redacted copy of the memorandum can be read here. When the memorandum eventually came into the public domain more than a decade later John Ashton commented as follows:]

Welcoming the release of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's report on the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on 25 March [2012], Alex Salmond managed to add to the roll call of excuses for not ordering a public inquiry into the case.

    

The report, he said, 'in many ways is far more comprehensive than any inquiry could ever hope to be'. In fact, it's not: the SCCRC's job was to establish whether Megrahi may have been wrongly convicted, not to examine why the case went so badly wrong, although it undoubtedly shed some light on that matter.  

    

If a single document illustrates why we still need an inquiry, it is a confidential memo dated 2 June 2000 by the lead procurator fiscal on the case, Norman McFadyen. Published here for the first time, it reports on a meeting that McFadyen and advocate depute Alan Turnbull QC had had the previous day at the US embassy in The Hague. Large sections of it remain redacted.

    

The two prosecutors were there to inspect CIA cables relating to one of the Crown's star witnesses, an ex-colleague of Megrahi's called Majid Giaka, who was a member of the Libyan external intelligence service, the ESO. Giaka, it transpired, was also a CIA informant. Crucially, he claimed that, shortly before the bombing, Megrahi had arrived in Malta with a brown Samsonite suitcase and that his co-accused Lamin Fhimah had helped him carry it through airport customs. If true, this was highly significant, because the Lockerbie bomb was also contained within a brown Samsonite and, according to the Crown, began its journey in Malta.

    

Twenty-five heavily redacted cables had been disclosed to the defence. The purpose of the meeting, according to the memo, was to view almost entirely unredacted versions in order to determine 'whether there was any material which required to be disclosed to the defence'. Page two states that, at the CIA's insistence, the two men had to sign a confidentiality agreement, the terms of which McFadyen described as follows: 'If we found material which we wished to use in evidence we would require to raise that issue with the CIA and not make any use of the material without their agreement'. In effect, then, the Crown had secretly ceded to the CIA the right to determine what material might be used in court.          

    

But it's what followed a few paragraphs later that's key. MacFadyen reported that, having inspected the cables:

    

We were able to satisfy ourselves that there was nothing omitted which could assist the defence in itself. There were some references to matters which in isolation might be thought to assist the defence – eg details of payments or of efforts by Majid to secure sham surgery – but since evidence was being provided as to the total of payments made and of the request for sham surgery, the particular material did not appear to be disclosable. We were satisfied that the material which had been redacted was not relevant to the case or helpful to the defence.

    

MacFadyen was correct in stating that evidence had been disclosed of the total payments to Giaka and a request for sham surgery in order to enable him to resign from the ESO. The payments were detailed in two separate CIA documents (not cables) while his desire for sham surgery request was referred to in one of the disclosed cables.

    

When, almost three months later, the defence counsel learned of the Hague embassy meeting, they urged the court to ask the Crown to obtain the complete cables from the CIA. In response, the lord advocate, Colin Boyd QC, assured the court that MacFadyen's and Turnbull's review had established that 'there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special [defence of incrimination]'. He added: 'there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid [Giaka] on these matters'.

The court nevertheless urged the Crown to seek fuller versions of the cables from the CIA. Three days later the Crown handed the defence copies with far fewer redactions. What, then, was contained in the previously concealed sections, which, in MacFadyen's view, was 'not relevant to the case or helpful to the defence'? Here's what.

    

There were repeated references not only to Giaka's desire for sham surgery, but also his repeated and successful pleas to the CIA to pay for it. One of the cables described him as 'something of a hypochondriac', while another noted his claim to be a distant relative of Libya's former leader King Idris. A further one revealed that he wanted the CIA to set him up in a car rental business in Malta and that he had saved $30,000 towards the venture. His handlers believed that much of the money had been acquired from illegal commissions and perhaps through low-level smuggling.

    

Crucially, there were references to other meetings with the CIA, for which no cables had disclosed. Eventually the CIA coughed up 36 more, about which MacFadyen and Turnbull were seemingly unaware.

    

The most telling fact concealed by the redactions was that the CIA had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Giaka. One noted that his information about the ESO's structure and administration 'may be somewhat skewed by his prolonged absence and lack of seniority'. Another revealed that he would be told: 'that he will only continue his $1,000 per month salary payment through the remainder of 1989. If [he] is not able to demonstrate sustained and defined access to information of intelligence value by January 1990, [the CIA] will cease all salary and financial support until such access can be proven again'.

    

A later section of the same cable noted: 'it is clear that [Giaka] will never be the penetration of the ESO that we had anticipated… [He] has never been a true staff member of the ESO and as he stated at this meeting, he was coopted with working with the ESO and he now wants nothing to do with them or their activities… We will want to ensure that [he] understands what is expected of him and what he can expect from us in return. [CIA] officer will therefore advise [him] at 4 Sept meeting that he is on "trial" status until 1 January 1990'.

    

Having analysed the unredacted sections, Richard Keen QC, respresenting Megrahi's co-accused, Lamin Fhimah, told the court it was 'abundantly clear' that much of the newly uncovered information was highly relevant to the defence, adding, 'I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise... Some of the material which is now disclosed goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability, but beyond'.

    

In order words, the Crown had been caught out misleading the court. I do not suggest that Boyd did so deliberately, neither that MacFadyen and Turnbull deliberately concealed evidence that they knew would by helpful to the defence. Motive is not the issue: what really matters is the quality of the Crown's judgement.

    

Armed with the new information and the 36 additional cables, Keen and Megrahi's counsel, Bill Taylor QC, were able to demolish Giaka's credibility and with it the case against Fhimah, who was acquitted. Had the court taken Boyd at his word and the redactions not been lifted, Giaka might have left the witness stand with his credibility intact and Fhimah may well have been convicted along with Megrahi.

    

The big remaining question raised by the MacFadyen memo is: was it an isolated failure of judgement or the tip of the iceberg? The SCCRC found numerous items of significant evidence which the Crown had failed to disclose to Megrahi's lawyers. Did the prosecutors also satisfy themselves in each instance 'that there was nothing omitted which could assist the defence'? Only a full public inquiry can adequately answer such questions. It is high time that Salmond's government ordered one. 

Lockerbie trial personnel

What follows is excerpted from an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2008:

Where are they now?

[I]t has been reported that Megrahi's junior counsel at the Zeist trial, John Beckett, has been appointed a sheriff (a judge in Scotland's lower court system). Beckett became a QC in 2005 after the trial, and served briefly as Solicitor General for Scotland (deputy to the Lord Advocate, the chief Scottish Government law officer and head of the prosecution system) in 2006 to 2007. See http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2008/04/10100308

As far as the other lawyers involved in the trial are concerned, most remain in practice but two of the prosecutors, Alastair Campbell QC and Alan Turnbull QC, have become judges of the Scottish supreme courts (the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary); Megrahi's solicitor, Alistair Duff, has become a sheriff; and Richard Keen QC, the senior counsel for the acquitted co-accused, Lamin Fhimah, has been elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (leader of the Scottish Bar). The then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC (later Lord Boyd of Duncansby) has taken the highly unusual step of resigning from the Faculty of Advocates and becoming a solicitor. He is now a partner in a large Edinburgh law firm.

The three judges who presided at the trial, Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacLean, have all now retired from the bench.

[RB: Sheriff Alistair Duff is now Director of the Judicial Institute for Scotland; Richard Keen QC is now Baron Keen of Elie and Advocate General for Scotland; Colin Boyd QC is now a judge of the Court of Session and High Court of Justiciary; Lord Coulsfield died in March 2016.]

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.]

Last days of the lockerbie trial

[This is the headline over an article by Neil Mackay that appeared in the Sunday Herald on this date in 2001. It reads in part:]

When the Lockerbie trial finally limps towards its end this week it will be with a whimper rather than a bang. Somehow or other, the dying days of a court case about mass murder and international terrorism have been muted to the point of anti-climax.

In the opening months of 2000 this was being hailed as the trial of the century. Just over six months later, the courtroom at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands is less than a quarter full. Only a handful of reporters from agencies such as Associated Press and Reuters are present to watch the proceedings.

On Wednesday there was a farcical moment of excitement among the press when two unknown faces walked into the court. They turned out to be a local mother and her teenage son from the town of Soesterberg who had nothing to do so decided to spend a day rubbernecking at alleged terrorists.

Even the defence team last week sent the trial into its endgame by deciding to put forward no defence as they believed there was nothing really to defend or disprove. There are few insiders and Lockerbie watchers who believe the two accused, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, will be found guilty of the murder of 270 people over Scotland in December 1988.

That is hardly a criticism of the prosecution team, led by Colin Boyd, Scotland's Lord Advocate. They are, after all, trying to shine a light into a world that even British and American intelligence find impenetrable. (...)

The rumour mill also got a little over-heated earlier in the week when two of the three charges against the Libyans were dropped by the prosecution. The Crown abandoned charges of conspiracy and a breach of aviation laws to concentrate solely on the murder charge. There were claims that this showed just how confident the prosecution was in securing a guilty verdict on the murder charge.

In fact it shows nothing of the sort. Even in the most anodyne of murder cases it is a recognised tactic of prosecutors to add additional charges in order to be able to present as much damaging evidence as possible to the court. These additional charges are often dropped at the last moment so a jury can concentrate on convicting a defendant on the most serious charge before them - murder.

There is a feeling of despair and inevitability around the court. On Thursday there were little more than 10 British and American relatives of the Lockerbie dead in the court. On the first day of the trial there were probably more than 100 family members there. Many have lost heart. Few of the American relatives see the case as more than a show trial. Many never wanted to see Megrahi and Fhimah on trial by themselves. They wanted their bosses, and their bosses' bosses, and everyone in the chain of command right up to Colonel Gadaffi himself in the dock.

Then there is Dr Jim Swire, the most prominent of the British family members, who never really believed that Libya was behind the bombing in the first place. Since the beginning of the trial he has been a daily fixture in the court and now, ever the diplomat, he is hinting heavily that the Libyan theory was far from rock-solid. While the defence insisted in its summing up that a Palestinian terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), was actually behind the Lockerbie bombing, Swire said: "Everything that has been said in court until now pales into insignificance in comparison to these claims. If what is being put forward is true, it would have the gravest of consequences for the prosecution."

Another member of the delegation of British families, the Rev John Mosey, said: "I think we are just hearing now that there is more to this case than meets the eye."

The only frustrating problem is that the defence decision to put on no defence robs us of the detail of why the PFLP-GC may have been the bombers. Defence now believes it has only to destroy the prosecution's case to get the two defendants off the hook, so the legal team didn't take the gamble of calling witnesses to the stand who, although they may have proved the PFLP-GC theory, might also have been damaging to Fhimah and Megrahi.

There was nobody in court during the week who had not reached the conclusion that the Lockerbie trial is serving a purpose beyond that of attempting to seek justice. Throughout the week Hamed El Houden, Libya's ambassador to the Benelux countries, sat at the back of the courtroom in one of the boxed-off VIP and observer areas. He hinted, during a short recess, that the trial's real success was bringing Libya, that one-time rogue state and haven for the West's bogeymen, in from the cold, opening the way for lots of rich oil investment in his country by the UK and USA.

"Without question, this trial has significantly improved relations between my country and yours - and America," said El Houden. "I do not envisage these relations deteriorating again. One should also say that there has been nothing said in this court that confirms that my country had anything to do with the bombing. I have every confidence in this court in recognising that fact." (...)

The fear is that if the relatives of the dead do not get the verdict they want they will need a whipping boy on whom to vent their anger - and that whipping boy comes in the shape of Scottish justice. For those who believe the Libyans did it - and that is nearly all the American families - Scottish justice will be seen as failing them, of being inadequate and cowardly, if Megrahi and Fhimah walk free from court. The fall-out will be even worse should the not proven verdict be called into play. In that case the US families will say that the law in Scotland is indeed an ass. In their eyes the country will have spent tens of millions of pounds on this case in order to reach no conclusion.

Families like the Cohens are already beginning to sharpen their knives for the assault on Scots law. Dan and Susan Cohen, who lost their young daughter Theo in the bombing, are starting to remind those who will listen that America helped finance the trial. They have also begun claiming that Britain was without the money or investigative ability to either stage such a murder inquiry or prosecute the case. (...)

Bob Black says: "If we do get a not guilty verdict, the outburst of fury from the US families will be spectacular - but their pain will have been made worse if the Department of Justice is currently preparing them for success."

Many of Scotland's best lawyers are already saying that if a guilty verdict does come in then there is no way it will stand up under appeal. This is fuelling the guessing game. Some reckon that the chance of the appeal succeeding will play heavily on the judges' minds. No judge wants their finding overturned in the appeal court.

Perhaps one indicator of whether this tortuous case will reach a guilty or not guilty verdict comes from a man with so much to lose - Megrahi's brother, Mohammed. There is something of an acceptance around the court that Fhimah will be freed, as little of substance has been said about him at all throughout the trial, but no-one is making a firm call on Megrahi.

Last May, his brother Mohammed was a nervous wreck. As he smoked tar-packed Arabian cigarette after cigarette, he constantly wiped tears from his eyes. There was a real and desperate fear in him that his baby brother - as he calls Megrahi - was going to go to jail in Scotland forever. This time around, he is not so despondent. "There is a God in the world, and God is just. Justice is part of God," he says. "Only the devil can now keep my brother in jail. I see in my mind's eye a month from now, my brother beside me and both of us beside our mother. That will be justice - and I know it is coming."

Lockerbie sentence “too lenient”

[This is the headline over a report that appeared in the Daily Mail on this date in 2003. It reads as follows:]

The sentence handed down to the Lockerbie bomber last month is to be challenged on the grounds that it was unduly lenient, prosecutors said.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed Al Megrahi was told by three Scottish judges he must spend at least 27 years in jail before he was considered for parole.

The hearing at the High Court in Glasgow took place to determine the "punishment part" of Megrahi's mandatory life sentence as required under European Human Rights legislation.

Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, Scotland's senior legal figure, has lodged an appeal against that length of term.

American relatives, who said the sentence passed in November was too little for the crime, welcomed the move, while British reaction was critical.

Megrahi's legal team said they were concerned they had not been informed of the move by the Crown Office and said they were considering their own appeal against sentence.

The Libyan's solicitor Eddie MacKechnie said the length of the punishment was irrelevant because his actual term in jail may be longer.

"The period of 27 years is that which he has to serve before he is even considered for release and it does not follow that he will be released."

He added: "Mr Megrahi is currently considering an appeal himself on technical grounds, but it has not yet been decided whether to proceed."

He said it would not be appropriate to comment further without studying grounds on which the Lord Advocate's appeal had been lodged.

The former Libyan intelligence agent was convicted at a special trial in the Netherlands in 2001 of killing 270 people in the 1988 atrocity and is serving a life sentence at Barlinnie prison in Glasgow.

At the High Court in the city on November 24, Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacLean ruled he must spend at least 27 years in jail before a parole board could review whether he should be released. The sentence was backdated to April 1999 when he was extradited from Libya for the trial at Camp Zeist in Holland.

[RB: The Lord Advocate dropped this appeal on 21 August 2009, one day after Abdelbaset Megrahi was released from prison on compassionate grounds.]

Closing of prosecution case

[What follows is excerpted from a report that appeared on the BBC News website on this date in 2000:]

The Lockerbie trial has been adjourned for a week to allow the defence teams to prepare their cases.

On Monday the prosecution case ended after more than six months of evidence.

When the trial resumes, one of the two accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, is expected to ask the judges to throw out the case against him.

It is expected that the legal argument concerning that matter could take up to three days.

The lawyer for Mr Fhimah will argue at the Scottish court in the Netherlands that insufficient evidence has been presented against his client.

The hearing, which was opened 71 days ago by Scotland's most senior law officer, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, has featured 250 witnesses and several lengthy adjournments.

The Crown is seeking to show that a huge amount of circumstantial evidence, when taken together, proves Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah carried out the bombing, in which 270 people died.

Next week the court will hear a motion that there is no case to answer against Mr Fhimah.

The judges will be asked to decide on the weight of evidence against him, rather than the quality of the Crown case. [RB: This is inaccurate:  a “no case to answer” submission is not about the weight of the evidence led by the prosecution. It is simply about whether corroborated evidence has been led of the essential facts (that the crime charged was committed and that the accused committed it).  The credibility and reliability of that evidence are not considered at this stage.]

There has been no similar move from Megrahi, and there is now speculation he will be the first witness when the defence case begins next week. [RB: Fhimah’s no case to answer submission was rejected by the court. Neither Megrahi nor Fhimah gave evidence.]

Three dead men and their secrets

[This is the headline over an article by Kenneth Roy in today’s issue of the Scottish Review. It reads in part:]

Three of the key figures in the tangled politics of Lockerbie have now died within four years of each other: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person ever to have been convicted of the bombing (died 2012), Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the Lord Advocate who initiated the criminal proceedings against al-Megrahi (2013) and Tony Gauci, the chief prosecution witness (a few days ago). To say that all three left unanswered questions would be one of the under-statements of our time.

Gauci was the owner of a clothes shop in Malta called Mary’s House. It was alleged that on 7 December 1988, a fortnight before the atrocity, al-Megrahi bought some clothes and an umbrella from his shop, that the clothes were wrapped round the device which brought down flight 103, and that al-Megrahi, a former head of security at Libyan Arab Airlines, collaborated with an official of the airline to breach the security at Luqa Airport and get the device on the first stage of its journey as an interline bag to Frankfurt.

But how reliable was Gauci? His credibility took a battering four years after the trial in a remarkable newspaper interview with Lord Fraser. The words attributed to Fraser – he never denied using them – were: 'Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say he was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy. I don’t think he was deliberately lying, but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer’.

When his successor as Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, read this assessment of the Crown’s star witness, he asked Fraser to clarify his opinion of Gauci; others, including Tam Dalyell and al-Megrahi’s counsel, William Taylor QC, spoke out more strongly. If Fraser did clarify his opinion, the world was not made aware of it at the time.

Three years later, however, he gave Gauci a friendlier character reference in a television programme about the Lockerbie case: 'I have always been of the view, and I remain of the view, that both children and others who are not trying to rationalise their evidence are probably the most reliable witnesses and for that reason I think that Gauci was an extremely good witness’.

How this statement could be reconciled with his earlier disobliging view of the witness, Fraser did not divulge. But the remarks received little attention, for the story had moved on dramatically: al-Megrahi was now on his way home to Tripoli, released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer, after serving eight years of a life sentence for mass murder.

Fraser’s re-evaluation of Gauci as 'an extremely good witness’ looked ridiculous on close scrutiny. When the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had a detailed look at the case, it concluded that there was 'no reasonable basis’ for the judges’ opinion that the purchase of the clothes from Mary’s House took place on 7 December; the commission decided that they have must have been bought on some unspecified date before then.

This was an encouraging finding for the many defenders of al-Megrahi (myself included) who believed that 7 December was the date of his only visit to Malta. But in 2014, in a documentary for American television, Ken Dornstein, whose brother died at Lockerbie, produced evidence which undermined the case for al-Megrahi’s innocence. During 15 years of patient investigation, Dornstein discovered that al-Megrahi had been in Malta in the weeks leading up to the bombing, and that he had company: a Libyan bomb-maker, Abu Agila Mas’ud, who was among those who greeted him on his return to Libya. (...) [RB: It was never disputed that Megrahi had been in Malta earlier in 1988. What was disputed -- and what has never been proved -- is that he was there on 23 November, the other possible purchase date. On the Dornstein films, see John Ashton here and Kevin Bannon here.]

A number of fascinating secrets now go to the grave and seem destined to stay there. We shall never know what Peter Fraser really thought of the witness who was to prove so vital to his successful prosecution. We shall never know how much Tony Gauci was paid by the American authorities in return for his helpful evidence (or how much the Scottish authorities knew of the deal). And we shall never know what al-Megrahi was doing in Malta with Mas’ud if he was not there to facilitate the planting of the device.

There is a fourth 'we shall never know’ that can be stated with a sense of growing probability: that with the passage of time, and as the important players in the saga continue to fall off their perches, we shall never know the truth about Lockerbie.

Lockerbie-Pan Am 103: Prosecution case evaporates

In the wilds of the Roggeveld Karoo we have been without internet access for the past three days. Here is what I would have posted on Monday, 17 October had it been possible.

[This is the headline over an article by Steve James that was published on the WSWS.org website on this date in 2000:]

After six months, the prosecution case in the trial of the two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am 103 on December 21 1988 has all but evaporated. The defendants, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, are being tried at a special court in Camp Zeist, a former US military base in the Netherlands, which was designated as Scottish territory for the purpose of the proceedings.

At the time of writing, the trial has again been interrupted after Scottish Lord Advocate Colin Boyd informed the three trial judges that new and unspecified information relating to the defence case had been made available to the prosecution by "a government”, but not that of the USA. The adjournment came on the day before Mohamed Abu Talb, a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) was due to give evidence for the prosecution. Talb, who is already serving a life sentence in Sweden for planting bombs, is one of those cited by the defence in their special defence of incrimination. This states that the PFLP-GC was, with others, responsible for the atrocity that killed 270 people. Talb denies any involvement and is now scheduled to give evidence on October 17. He has apparently been offered remission of his present sentence and immunity from further prosecution if he testifies.

A report in the October 15 Scotland on Sunday newspaper suggested that the government in question referred to by Boyd was Syria, and that a "confession" by Talb had been handed over to the prosecution. The Lord Advocate has also arranged an explanatory meeting with angry relatives of those who died in the explosion, who fear the trial may now disintegrate.

The present adjournment is the latest in a series that have preceded the appearance of particularly controversial witnesses or pieces of evidence.

Shortly before the trial commenced, the Swiss manufacturer of the timing device implicated in the explosion announced that from their own research, they concluded the bomb had not been located in the luggage container in a Samsonite suitcase, as the prosecution team claimed, but was jammed against the aircraft wall. Such public announcements from a leading witness threw the prosecution into crisis, triggered a round of legal threats to newspapers such as the Glasgow-based Sunday Herald who had printed the claims made by Edwin Bollier, CEO of MEBO, which made the MST-13 electronic timers alleged to have triggered the explosion.

When he eventually took the stand in June, both prosecution and defence questioning of Bollier revealed the extent of MEBO's relations both with the Libyan government and the former East German security police, the Stasi. He sold prototype timers, and millions of pounds worth of electronic equipment, including exploding mobile pagers and encryption manuals to the Stasi, who are known to have supplied the PFLP-GC with equipment. Bollier supplied Libya with radio antennae, bomb timers, and had observed explosives' trials in the Libyan desert. He rented a Swiss office to one of the accused, who it is likely had some role in the Libyan intelligence service. Bollier also had unspecified relations with other Middle Eastern governments and with the CIA.

Bollier's was followed by a series of witnesses—CIA and ex-Stasi spies, other MEBO staff, airport staff, a clothes shop owner—whose testimony reveals a prosecution case that is characterised by its extreme flimsiness, resting almost exclusively on tenuous circumstantial evidence, for which alternative explanations can easily be found.

The prosecutions most heralded witness was Abdul Majid Giacka, who has been living in the US under a witness protection programme since 1991. Long presented to the family members of the US victims as a crucial eyewitness, Giacka's evidence proved disastrous for the prosecution case.

Giacka, it finally emerged, offered to provide the CIA with information after he joined Libyan intelligence to avoid military service in 1988. Such was the low level of the information that he presented to the CIA that by 1991 his handlers considered halting all payments to their dubious asset, who was costing them $1,000 a month. Despite a period working alongside both the accused at Malta airport, Giacka never mentioned Lockerbie or suitcase bombs to his CIA handlers at the time.

In July 1991 Giacka attended a meeting with the CIA, at which his continued employment on Langley's payroll was to be discussed. The next day, more than two years after the Pan Am bombing, Giacka presented the CIA with an account according to which Fhimah and Megrahi had carried a "Samsonite" suitcase through Maltese customs.

The defence also cited censored CIA cables to illuminate some of Giacka's other extravagant accusations. He claimed at one point that Libyan leader Moammar Qhaddaffi was a freemason, and that he (Giacka) was related to the former Libyan monarch, King Idris. It also became clear from the cables that at the time of the bombing the CIA did not consider Fhimah to be a member of the Libyan intelligence services.

According to Clare Connolly from the Glasgow University's Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit, "The defence cross-examination made it clear that Giaka's actions in providing this information to investigators could have been motivated by a desire for money and a wish to secure his future as a US citizen."

On other occasions, Giaka's reliance on US officials sitting on the prosecution bench was so blatant that UN observers attending the trial told the Sunday Times, "We could not see how Mr Giaka conducted himself, but the defence raised objections repeatedly to the looks that passed between him and the Americans... With other witnesses introduced at the American end of the investigation, through the CIA or the FBI, we have witnessed those types of exchanges."

The prosecution are so short of serious evidence that, despite the numerous delays, the trial is expected to last much less than the full year initially anticipated.

The PFLP-GC were the original suspects, and for two years after the crash most of the investigating authorities operated on the basis that the evidence against the PFLP-GC was overwhelming. The US intelligence services have played a dubious role from before the crash right through to the trial. It is a fact that several US Special Forces members died on Pan Am 103, and that their luggage recovered from the crash site was interfered with.

No trial in legal history has been so bound up with shifts in world politics, a study of which is very revealing. Initial accusations directed against the PFLP-GC regarded the Lockerbie bombing as a reprisal, organised by Iran, Syria and the PFLP-GC, for the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus on July 3, 1988 by the US. The December 21 1988 bombing came little more than a month after the Palestinian National Council meeting which effectively sanctioned the existence of Israel. On December 13 PLO leader Yassir Arafat expounded on this in his historic speech to the United Nations. The pro-Syrian PFLP-GC opposed the PLO's line, and, along with other Palestinian groups advocating the continuation of a military strategy against Israel, launched a series of raids designed to derail the PLO's developing relations with the US. The PFLP-GC had on numerous occasions been involved in fire-fights in Beirut with the PLO and had been implicated in a series of attacks on aircraft.

The change in focus to Libya was, at the time, widely interpreted as a political response by the US in line with its preparation for the Gulf War, with both Syria and Iran acting as crucial US allies in the attack on Iraq. Subsequently, the US used Lockerbie and other attributed bombings as a justification for imposing sanctions against Libya. The present case only emerged in the context of the Libyan regime's developing international relations, particularly with Europe, and after months of negotiations by Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan.

If the Scotland on Sunday reports are confirmed, it would not be the first time that the Syrian government has dumped its erstwhile allies, in pursuing closer relations with the US. Following Syria's support for the Gulf War, Syria's then leader, Hafez al-Assad, handed over information on planned terrorist attacks, evicted Carlos "the Jackal" from Damascus, and latterly expelled Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, allowing his capture by the CIA and subsequent trial in Turkey.

[RB: Regrettably, the Zeist judges did not agree that the prosecution case had evaporated, but swallowed it hook, line and sinker.]