Lockerbie lies

[This is the heading over a letter from Ian Johnstone published in today’s edition of The Scotsman.  It reads as follows:]

The latest Al Jazeera documentary investigating the Lockerbie bombing effectively concluded that much of the swerve towards Libya as the appointed culprit, and eventually Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi (or anybody Libyan with intelligence connections, however flimsy) hinged on a phone call from George Bush Senior to Margaret Thatcher.

Again, as the documentary pointed out – high-level involvement has put obstacles to the truth in position.

Lying, alas, is institutional, reputational and implicit in our Western politics.

Dr John Cameron (Letters, 12 March) is right to point to the prevailing belief that it was the shooting down of the Iranian passenger jet, Iran Air Flight 655, by a US warship on 3 July, 1988, that triggered the deadly explosive device in the cargo-hold of the Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie on the night of 21 December, 1988.

Everything pointed in this direction. The assembled evidence, which has unfortunately had to tackle a heap of discredited evidence, is overwhelming.

Perhaps it is too overwhelming for governments too acquainted with shuffling false cards to handle comfortably.

The great consolation is that common sense retains its credentials.

It has, again, prevailed. Thanks to a posse of people whose painstaking piecing together of related information has presented a believable picture.

Overweening arrogance best illustrated in the Lockerbie fiasco

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr John Cameron published in today’s edition of The Scotsman:]

I suspect Nicola Sturgeon’s rejection of the call for judges to declare details of their finances in a register of interest will be recalled as her first major misstep as First Minister.

MPs, MSPs, councillors and board members of public bodies must register outside financial interests and judges, sheriffs and justices of the peace should be brought into line.

Scotland leading judge, Lord Gill, argued that acquiescing would “erode public confidence in the judiciary” – whereas most of the general public would argue the very opposite.

The Scottish judiciary has an overweening arrogance best illustrated in the Lockerbie fiasco and it is time they were told that rules which apply to the human race, apply also to them.

[A letter from Iain McKie published yesterday making a similar point can be read here.]

A full inquiry into conduct of Crown Office is essential

[This is the headline over a letter from Rev Dr John Cameron published in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]


"Some of the material which is now disclosed goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just issues of credibility and reliability, but beyond."


This was the verdict of Richard Keen, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, on the recent revelations of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's Lockerbie report.


His bravura performance as Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah's defence counsel was the highlight of the trial and it is still not clear why the Law Lords convicted Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on such risible witness testimony.


It was, however, disappointing that the commission ignored the "canteen culture" of the forensic evidence and the notorious insecurity of Heathrow's inter-line baggage area.


The Scottish Government should initiate a full inquiry into the conduct of the Crown Office and not hide behind Westminster as it did over the release of the SCCRC report.

Lockerbie revelations deserve inquiry

[This is the headline over a group of letters published on The Scotsman website on this date in 2011. Here are three of them:]

Once more another dynamic is added to the case of the Lockerbie bomber and with it comes a whole set of new arguments as to why he was released.

Of course, what people and the media in particular appear to do is see the recent revelations of the previous UK government exerting pressure on the Scottish Government as only a part of the decision to release him.

However, we are still left with the elephant in the room and that is the whole complex nature of the Lockerbie case. One cannot seriously make useful conclusions with this week's "revelations" without looking at the wider conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

This case is not only clouded in terms of the release, but in terms of the process by which he was convicted. How is it that revelations on his release are discussed but none of the more significant revelations in terms of after his trial: ie the new evidence or evidence not given at the trial?

We should go back to before Megrahi was released. Some see the release of the bomber as evidence of global power politics at work. This is perhaps true, but why is it that the question of global power politics in Megrahi's conviction is never debated - including the legal trial of Megrahi?

There are, therefore, two different elements that are clouded: his release, but, more importantly, his conviction, by which we came to this in the first place.

People have the right to be concerned at the release of a convicted bomber but should they not be more concerned about how a legal system can convict a man with such evidence and how a legal system can be bent in the face of global power politics?

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission stated: "The Libyan may have suffered a miscarriage of justice." An independent inquiry would be the only way to sort all these issues.

Jack Fraser

You note that Kenny MacAskill refused to use the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (Comment, 8 February).

In that case, why did he tell Megrahi that he could not be released under that agreement until he dropped his appeal? Megrahi promptly withdrew the appeal and was then released on compassionate grounds. One can only suspect that this was a ruse to bury the appeal and all it might reveal about the safety of Megrahi's conviction.

Steuart Campbell

As our deplorable politicians dive for cover for fear they are accused of moral courage, I prefer to recall the noble people who did seek freedom for Megrahi.

First among these is the GP, Jim Swire, whose daughter Fiona was a victim but who relentlessly campaigned for the unsafe verdict at Camp Zeist to be overturned.

He was joined by such seekers after justice as Nelson Mandela, Lockerbie's Robert Black, the UN observer Hans Kchler, Tam Dalyell and the leaders of the Scottish churches.

Even in the vengeful USA, there were brave individuals such as President Kennedy's valued adviser, Pierre Salinger, who protested the innocence of Megrahi.

He reminded Americans that, not only was there no evidence that the bomb had been put on board in Malta, but Air Malta won a libel action in 1993 establishing that it was not.

(Dr) John Cameron

... a prosecution which should never have been brought ...

[What follows is the text of a letter from Rev Dr John Cameron published in today’s edition of The Herald:]

We should be grateful that Joe Beltrami, the legendary Scottish criminal lawyer, took the time to comment on the direction in which Scots law is heading.

I was appalled by the Lockerbie trial and remember how Richard Keen, now Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, shredded a prosecution which should never have been brought. That farrago was not as disturbing as the trend being followed in rape trials where the mere word of the complainant is rapidly becoming sufficient for conviction.

On the side of the angels

[What follows is the text of a letter from the Rev Dr John Cameron published in today’s edition of The Herald:]

For a dyed-in-the-wool old Tory like me, Tam Dalyell represented the Labour Party at its very best and he was an asset not only to his own party but to the nation as a whole. His importance as a voice crying in the wilderness of Westminster was beyond measure for so often he was spot on – Scottish devolution, Suez, Iraq, Porton Down, Diego Garcia, etc.

I treasured his phone call when I was being rubbished for having produced a highly critical report for the Kirk on the forensic evidence presented at the Lockerbie trial. He told me to "hang in there"; that he too believed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was innocent and that I was “on the side of such angels as Nelson Mandela, Jim Swire and the UN observer”.

Explain guilty verdict at Lockerbie trial

[This is the headline over a letter by Rev Dr John Cameron published today on the website of The Courier and Advertiser. It reads as follows:]

The guilty verdict issued on January 31 2001 by the three Scottish judges – Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and Maclean – at the conclusion of the Pan Am 103 trial was unsound by all normal legal criteria. After 84 days of controversy, questionable evidence as well as weeks of adjournments, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was found guilty of the atrocity while his sole alleged accomplice, Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted on all charges.

In their 82-page verdict, the three law lords – who had acted not only as judge and jury but all too often as prosecutor – exposed the weakness of the prosecution case and how they ignored a mass of contradictory forensic and circumstantial evidence when it suited them to bring a guilty verdict against Megrahi. Significantly they rejected out of hand the defence argument that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) was responsible.

Initial police investigations suspected it was a reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian plane with 290 civilians on board by the US warship Vincennes six months before Lockerbie. There was a money trail between Iran and the Syrian-backed PFLP-GC however, in 1990, then-US president George H Bush placed huge pressure on Margaret Thatcher to drop this line of inquiry.

Mrs Thatcher later refused a public inquiry on the grounds that it was against the “national interest”.

The question remains as to why there was such a discrepancy between the standards applied to defence arguments implicating Iran, Syria et al and those employed by the prosecution against the two Libyans. The latter’s case was just as circumstantial and unconvincing, a fact acknowledged in part by the acquittal of Fhimah.

I suspect an explanation as to why a guilty verdict was delivered lies far in the future and should be sought in the political rather than the judicial arena.

The farcical imprisonment of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr John Cameron published in today’s edition of The Scotsman:]

Italy’s highest court of appeal has issued its written explanation for dismissing out of hand the conviction of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the Meredith Kercher murder trial.

In a scathing critique of the prosecution’s hopelessly flawed case it said there was a “total lack of any biological evidence” that they were in the room or had touched the body.

The trial had shamed the Italian justice system and yet, in the end, it proved self-correcting unlike our own system in the equally farcical imprisonment of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Forensic folly

[This is the heading over two letters published in today’s edition of The Scotsman:]

Few forensic-based cases have caused greater concern than the Lockerbie trial, with the review commission deeply concerned by the prosecution’s tactics of disinformation (your report, 23 December).

The lead prosecutor, Colin Boyd, was also involved in an earlier forensic disaster when the fingerprint evidence against Detective Constable Shirley McKie was thrown out and the she was acquitted.

One of the foremost critics of the trial is the famous criminal lawyer Michael Mansfield, who has long warned against over-reliance on forensic evidence to secure convictions.

He said: “Some of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history have come from cases in which the forensic science was later shown to have been grossly misleading.”

The idea of a long-timer bomb starting at Malta in a piece of
unaccompanied baggage before finding its way on to Pan Am 103 is beyond absurdity.

There is no proof it entered at Malta – in fact, Air Malta won a libel action establishing it did not – and the evidence of a 
Heathrow-loaded barometric device is overwhelming.

(Dr) John Cameron

I do not understand the 
Megrahi deniers (Letters, 23 December). If Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was not responsible for Lockerbie that means that after 26 years the Scottish Government has failed to hold a single person accountable for the murder of 270 
people in Scotland’s worst terrorist atrocity.

That surely is a definition of “miscarriage of justice”.

This is compounded by the fact that it prematurely released the person it thought was 
responsible and then sought to spin the news of his release by writing to Nelson Mandela et al to encourage them to endorse the decision.

Miscarriage of justice compounded.

Neil Sinclair

1000 days of shame

[What follows is the text of a letter submitted by Dr Jim Swire to The Herald two days ago, but not (yet) published:]

On 27th February this year a book was launched by Edinburgh publisher Birlinn called Megrahi: You are my Jury.

Earlier that very morning, just before the actual launch, 10 Downing Street, which could not have seen the book, issued a statement saying the book was an insult to the [Lockerbie] relatives. I was in Edinburgh reading the 'insult' for myself. Do read pages 355-362 in particular. Just who was insulted by whom?

No 10's statement was self evidently made in ignorance of the book's contents. Among many other issues raised, the book shows for all who will look, that there is responsible and repeatable scientific evidence that a fragment of circuit board designated as 'PT35b' at trial and found within a Scottish police evidence bag could not after all have been a piece of a Libyan owned bomb timer mechanism as the court believed.

There are of course many other reasons for doubting the safety of the Scottish verdict against Megrahi, but of this one tiny fragment even the US FBI's Edward Marshman, deeply involved, along with the Dumfries and Galloway police in assembling evidence for the Zeist court has said publicly that he believes that without this fragment the case could not have been brought to trial.

It is indeed a thousand days since Mr Megrahi was released from Greenock under a provision for compassion for sick prisoners which has become available within our Scottish legal system. I am not a Catholic, but like Cardinal Keith O'Brien, head of that Church in Scotland I believe we should be proud of that provision in our law. In a letter to your paper on 9th August 2010, I wrote:

'It is as the Cardinal says: there is a 'clash of cultures'[between the US and Scotland] and like him I want to live in a culture capable of compassion. I believe that the Church of Scotland also supported compassionate release of Mr Megrahi.'

However our First Minister, as well as Kenny MacAskill have both repeatedly claimed during the 1000 days since his release that they see no reason to doubt the Zeist verdict against Mr Megrahi. The Holyrood Parliament heatedly discussed the release, stalked by an elephant they could not see: on its flank, the words was he guilty or not?' Perhaps it was the animal's trunk which nearly brought down the roof of the debating chamber, since it had already been stalkng them for so many years.

I think we can no longer tolerate ignorance about this terrible case. Currently we do not even know, because we have not investigated it, how it was that a piece of circuit board, so important that even the FBI say the case could not have run without it came to be found inside a Scottish police evidence bag, the label for which had also been illegally changed.

Let me say to you, Mr Cameron, through this gallant newspaper that the book Megrahi: You are my Jury is not an insult to this British relative of one of the dead, indeed the book should be read by you, your staff and all your legal advisers. Amongst much else, it tells us that a fragment of circuit board on which, even according to the Americans the whole trial depended, could not have originated from a Libyan timer. Feel free to get the scientific proof of this repeated. Do please go and ask all your Government Departments to release for public inspection all documents relevant to this case which have been made subject of 'PII certificates' over the years. The last time I wrote to you directly, on 29th February 2012 all I got was a reply from the Foreign Office dated 4th May 2012: was that perchance an insult to a relative? But you are of course a very busy and honourable man.

Meanwhile Mr Salmond please launch an inquiry into how this case came to be compromised by the spurious belief that we had evidence of the use of a Libyan timer, when in fact we did not?. Don't you want to know how that fragment got into a Scottish police evidence bag? Don't you want to know if there is any connection between that and what Tam Dalyell records in his forward to Ashton's earlier work Cover up of Convenience, (Mainstream publishing, Edinburgh, 2001)? '....American agents were swarming around the area [of the Lockerbie crash site]...... the [Scottish] police were doing nothing to stop them.'

To Mr Cameron I would say remember the disgrace of the IRA wrongful convictions under English law. Even those who do look at the facts before making judgements sometimes get things dreadfully wrong. In this case you haven't even looked at the facts, have you?

To Mr Salmond: your people of Scotland must be allowed to see whether the Zeist court went dreadfully wrong or not. The more independent we become, the greater will become their need to be sure that their justice system is free of all political interference.

As for some of us, the relatives of those brutally murdered at Lockerbie, we are tired of being treated as if we were ignorant children. We are not going away, we have a right to the truth. My lay advice would be to bite the bullet both of you now, before it cripples your careers. We have seen enough of party political point scoring in Holyrood and Westminster. Call in the experts, look at the facts: all we want is the truth, and to protect us all better in the future.

Meanwhile Mr Cameron and Mr Salmond consider this please.... if we are correct in believing that the story of a Libyan bomb launched by Megrahi from Malta is fiction, then to protect that fiction would be to protect the real culprits who carried out this terrible action. Is that really what you want to be associated with in the annals of history? These are indeed a thousand days of shame.

So how about a deep breath and having a fresh look at all the facts? Ashton's title claims that we - the public -  are now Megrahi's jury. To be an effective jury, we need first to hear all the facts of the case laid out fair and square before us: are you afraid to allow that to happen? If so why?

[A letter submitted by Dr Swire to The Scotsman and also as yet unpublished reads as follows:]

On Monday David Cameron issued a stinging attack on Mr Salmond's Government over the compassionate release of Abdel Baset al Megrahi just 1000 days ago.

I had the privilege of petitioning Mr Kenny MacAskill before his release decision claiming that Mr Megrahi should be released at once.

I had two reasons for doing that.

First, as a doctor I knew that he was dying and had an incurable and extremely painful future before him and, guilty or innocent, compassion alone dictated that he should now live out his remaining time with his loving wife and family. I believe that his survival for almost exactly 1000 days after MacAskill's decision is due basically to the love and care of his family replacing his isolation from them in Greenock prison, however humane his care was there. In addition advanced chemotherapy, including Abiraterone available in Libya, though not Scotland, may have bought him some extra months. All of us male potential victims of this cancer in the future should rejoice, not moan at his prolonged survival, who knows for whom the bell may toll next?

Second, I believed that the verdict against him was unsafe. Yet I had attended the debate at Holyrood following MacAskill's decision, where the blowtorches of the party political infighters had been turned upon Kenny for his decision, not to mention those of Westminster and the United States. Only one MSP (Christine Grahame, SNP) really tried then to point to the uncertainty over the verdict against this man.

On 29th February this year immediately prior to the launch of John Ashton's book Megrahi: You are my Jury 10 Downing street issued a statement claiming the book to be 'an insult to the [Lockerbie] relatives, they had not yet seen it. Now Cameron, speaking of Megrahi's survival till almost 1000 days after his release claimed on Monday:-

"One thousand days on, this is yet another reminder that Alex Salmond's Government's decision to free (sic) the biggest mass murderer in British history was wrong and an insult to the families of the 270 people who were murdered". Make that 269 and counting rapidly down, Mr Cameron.

The Ashton book shows among many other serious weaknesses in the prosecution case that a item of evidence, (the circuit board fragment known as PT35b) could not have come from a Libyan owned timer circuit board after all, as the court believed that it did; this was the last secure bastion of the fable (now surely myth) of Megrahi having started the bomb from Malta:  Even the leader of the FBI Lockerbie investigators Edward Marshman had said publicly that the trial could not have proceeded without it.

In the 1000 days since Kenny made his move, the Salmond administration has maintained the position that it has no reason to doubt the Megrahi verdict. They too appear to choose to be ignorant of the accumulating evidence indicating the urgent need for a re-assessment of the facts in this case.

Time perhaps for Mr Salmond to take the cue from Willie Rennie MSP a voice I hear above the party political babel North of the border who has said inter alia "...... we should be investigating whether crucial information was withheld from the trial". We have already wasted 1000 days.

We should also be investigating just how the fragment PT35b came to be found within an official Scottish police evidence bag. The firm allegation from the Ashton book, supported by impeccable science (partly of Scottish origin) shows that the fragment presented to court could not have come from one of the Libyan timers. There was no evidence led of any other source for it among the wreckage. So just how did it appear in that bag apparently recovered from the debris field? There it was in that bag, wrapped in a shirt collar however did it get there if it had no real origin among the debris? Someone must know. and it's our responsibility Mr Salmond to discover how it emerged within the supposedly secure Scottish police evidence chain, is it not?

It would also be useful to know where the fragment PT35b really did come from, would it not?

That is if, as I'm sure is really the case Mr Salmond, you wish,like us relatives, to know the truth. This was the last bastion of the fable  of Megrahi having started the bomb from Malta: Marshman is right: no fragment, no trial.

As Cardinal Keith O'Brien has said he is glad that our Scottish justice system embodies a moiety of compassion.. We should also be proud of that even if Cameron is not. But people of this country need and deserve transparency in their justice systems. We are not at present moving towards that. It is too late now for Megrahi. It is not too late for the Scottish people nor for Megrahi's family. We must have objective reassessment of this case. Mr Cameron already has the examples of the gross miscarriages of justice under English law in IRA bomb cases, he might benefit from reviewing those findings.It is possible to be well intentioned, but wrong.

For 1000 days we may already have been screening the real perpetrators from justice through our inactivity. 

[An article by Tom Peterkin in The Scotsman today contains the following:]

If a week is a long time in politics then 1,000 days is the equivalent of a political aeon. This week saw the 1,000th day since the Lockerbie bomber was controversially released by Kenny MacAskill.

That “milestone” led to a bit of discussion in the Holyrood canteen – not so much on the remarkable longevity of a man who supposedly only had three months to live. It was more that the brouhaha and wall-to-wall coverage associated with Megrahi’s journey to Tripoli seemed to belong to a different age.

Since his release in August 2009, we have seen a general election, a Scottish election and local government elections. Political leaders have departed (Gordon Brown, Iain Gray, Annabel Goldie, Tavish Scott). Fortunes and reputations of others have risen and fallen (David Cameron, Nick Clegg).

Alex Salmond’s stock soared at the Scottish election but was checked slightly at the local elections. But the point was that it had been 1,000 days since Megrahi’s release and, as someone cleverly noted, there is a certain symmetry in that there are another 1,000 days to go before Salmond holds his independence referendum.

'Insult' to injury

[This is the headline over an article in the current issue of Private Eye.  It reads as follows:]

David Cameron would have done better to read a detailed new book on the Lockerbie atrocity before dismissing it in a soundbite as an “insult” to the families of the 270 who  perished just before Christmas 1988. Families want and deserve the truth.

The book reveals fresh scientific evidence relating to a tiny fragment of electrical circuit board which the prosecution claimed had in effect solved the mass murder. Had there been a second appeal, the new evidence would have shown that not only did Abdelbaset al-Megrahi suffer injustice, but also that there was no evidence tying Libya to the atrocity.

The book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, by John Ashton, a researcher, writer and one of the Libyan’s defence team, also claims that the results of forensic tests carried out by British government scientists on the circuit board cast doubt on prosecution claims but were kept from the trial and defence team. In fact they were not disclosed until a month before Megrahi was freed to return to Libya.

The tiny fragment of board was said to have been found among remains of a man’s shirt at the crash site. The shirt was traced to Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who said more than two years alter the bombing that Megrah resembled a man who bought the clothing. As Eye readers know, Megrahi bore no resemblance to the man originally described by Gauci to investigators.

The board fragment was said to have been found by Dr Thomas Hayes at Rarde, the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment, on 12 May 1989. At trial his colleague Allen Feraday said it was “similar in all respects” to circuit boards used in timing devices from a Swiss company Mebo, which had supplied the Libyans with 20 such devices.

But it was never revealed that Feraday had overseen tests on the metallic content of the fragment which found it was different from a control sample of one of the Mebo boards. Had the results been disclosed, not only would Feraday had been called to answer for them, but defence experts could have been called upon to examine the metal mix, including under blast conditions. According to Ashton’s book, Megrahi’s legal team recently did exactly that and two experts, Chris McArdle and Dr Jess Cawley, confirmed the fragment was no match for Mebo and was probably not commercially made.

Eye readers have long been aware of concerns about the discovery of the fragment and its handling. Relevant pages on Dr Hayes’s notes had been renumbered and the shirt’s exhibit label had been altered.

It seems that by the time of Megrahi’s 2001 trial, prosecutors had learned few lessons from scathing criticisms eight years earlier from the May inquiry, which heard in essence that an Irish family had been wrongly convicted of handling IRA explosives largely thanks to the activities - including hidden results and altered notebooks of Rarde scientists.

This new material, coupled with doubts over Gauci’s identification evidence, destroy the two main pillars of Megrahi’s conviction. It also confirms the fears of observers who sat through the original trial in the Netherlands. One of those was Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the Atrocity. He is convinced that a grave injustice has allowed the real killers to go free and is now at the forefront of demands for a public inquiry.

Dr Swire told the Eye that it was Cameron’s attempt to dismiss the book without reading it that was the “insult” to families, who are now confronted by what appears to be a deliberate cover-up. The question is, how high does the cover-up go?