Dramatic shortcomings and errors

[What follows is the text of a press release issued by Professor Hans Köchler on this date in 2005:]

Vienna, 14 October 2005/P/RE/19402c-is

The Austrian professor who was appointed by the United Nations as international observer at the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands today commented on reports in the Scottish and British media about new doubts on the handling of the case by the judicial authorities.

Dr Hans Koechler said that the dramatic shortcomings and errors in the conduct of the trial that have been brought to the attention of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) confirm his earlier assessment that the Lockerbie trial resulted in a “spectacular miscarriage of justice.” (BBC News, 14 March 2002) Dr Koechler pointed to the following information that transpired in the media and that puts in doubt the very integrity of the judicial process in the Lockerbie case:

1.          The credibility of a key forensic expert in the trial, Mr Allen Feraday (UK), has been shattered. It was revealed that “in three separate cases men against whom Mr Feraday gave evidence have now had their convictions overturned” (BBC, 19 August 2005). Mr Feraday had told the Lockerbie court that a circuit board fragment found after the disaster was part of the detonator used in the bomb on board Pan Am flight 103. In the first case where Mr Feraday’s credibility had been questioned the Lord Chief Justice had stated that Mr Feraday should not be allowed to present himself an expert in electronics.

2.          A retired Scottish police officer has signed a statement confirming that the evidence that found Al-Megrahi guilty was fabricated. The police chief, whose identity has not yet been revealed, testified “that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan” for the bombing of the Pan Am jet (Scotland on Sunday, 28 August 2005). The fragment was supposedly part of the timing device that triggered the bomb. The circumstances of its discovery – in a wooded area many miles from Lockerbie months after the atrocity – have been mysterious from the very beginning.

3.          Much earlier, a forensic specialist of the American FBI, Tom Thurman, who was publicly credited with figuring out the fragment’s evidentiary importance, was later discredited as a forensic expert. A 1997 report by the US Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General found “that in a number of cases other than Lockerbie, Thurman rewrote lab reports, making them more favorable to the prosecution. The report also recommended Thurman be reassigned to a non-scientific job because he lacked a background in science.” (American RadioWorks / Public Radio, March 2000)

4.          The most recent revelation relates to a mix-up of forensic evidence recovered on the ground in Lockerbie with material used during a series of test explosions in the course of the investigation. In one case, a garment which was damaged in a test explosion was presented as if it was the original garment found on the ground (which was completely undamaged). This garment was supposedly placed in the suitcase containing the bomb. “It casts serious doubts over the prosecution case because certain items that should have been destroyed if they were in the case containing the bomb are now known to have survived the blast.” (The Observer, London, 9 October 2005)

All these facts – which are now before the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission – confirm the serious doubts about the Lockerbie proceedings originally raised by the UN-appointed observer, Dr Hans Koechler. In his comprehensive reports on and evaluation of the Lockerbie trial (2001) and appeal (2002) as well as in his statement on the compensation deal made between the US, UK and Libya in 2003, Dr Koechler had criticized the highly politicized circumstances in which the case was handled and drew the attention of the international public to the possible interference of intelligence services from more than one country.

New light is being shed on his original conclusion that the trial was not fair and that the basic requirements of due process had been neglected by what The Herald (Glasgow) most recently has referred to as a “distasteful political fix” (12 October 2005). It has been reported that secret talks are under way to transfer the convicted Libyan national to a North African country, which may frustrate the efforts at a retrial under Scottish law. It is worthy to note, in that regard, that the decision of the SCCRC about a retrial or new appeal has again been delayed until some time next year, Dr. Koechler said. As reported by The Herald, it appears that the key players – the three countries involved in the Lockerbie dispute – “are so anxious to avoid a retrial that officials are said to have held secret talks to secure a get-out clause.” Commenting on these revelations, Dr Koechler stated that only a retrial, if conducted in a fair, impartial and transparent manner according to the requirements set by UN Security Council resolution 1192 (1998), including the presence of international observers, will do justice to the convicted Libyan national and to the victims’ families who deserve to know the full truth about the case. This is also imperative under the fair trial standards set by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, he said.

Dr Koechler reiterated his call for an independent public inquiry about the background of the terrorist crime as well as the criminal investigation and prosecution by the Scottish judiciary and the institutions of the United Kingdom. He stated that the falsification of evidence, selective presentation of evidence,  manipulation of reports, interference into the conduct of judicial proceedings by intelligence services, etc. are criminal offenses in any country. In view of the above new revelations and in regard to previously known facts as reported in Dr Koechler’s reports, the question of possible criminal responsibility, under Scots law, of people involved in the Lockerbie trial should be carefully studied by the competent prosecutorial authorities.

In a TV talk with Anne Mackenzie for BBC Newsnight Scotland (1 September 2005) Dr Koechler said that, while he does not question the integrity of Scots law as such, the handling of the Lockerbie trial has nevertheless seriously damaged the reputation of the Scottish legal system. A “political fix” such as the one reported last week in the Scottish and British media would confirm these doubts and further undermine the confidence in the integrity of the Scottish judicial system. He also said that he is afraid that, because of the political interests involved in the case, the full truth – including the identity of those responsible for the planning, financing and actual perpetration of the crime – may never be known.

In today’s statement Dr Koechler emphasized that the “global war on terror” cannot be fought credibly and with a chance of success if – in the worst case of terrorism in the history of the United Kingdom – the search for truth is abandoned for political expediency and criminal justice, i.e. the rule of law, is sacrificed on the altar of political and commercial interests.

Flaws in evidence at Lockerbie trial

[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

The Chilcot Inquiry has examined the role of the Blair government’s Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, allegedly converted to believing the Iraq war to be legal following “consultations in the USA”.

Should not the Lockerbie inquiry, when we get it, examine why the government of the day chose to ignore the words of its Lord Chief Justice, and appointed [Alan] Feraday to supply the forensic input to the Lockerbie trial?

Mr Feraday was criticised by the Lord Chief Justice in the case of R v Berry (1991). He declared that the nature of his evidence was dogmatic in the extreme and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field. Also, the Home Office has paid compensation from the public purse to Mr Berry because he was jailed on the erroneous evidence of Mr Feraday.

The Lockerbie case depended heavily upon a piece of timer circuit board allegedly recovered from the wreckage and labelled “PT35B” presented to the court by the same Mr Feraday, who also had consultations with the USA.

Assuming the British Government wanted the Lockerbie trial to reach a fair verdict, was this really the best we had to offer?

Was this really the best we had to offer?

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr Jim Swire that was published in The Herald on this date in 2010:]

Flaws in evidence at Lockerbie trial

The Chilcot Inquiry has examined the role of the Blair government’s Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, allegedly converted to believing the Iraq war to be legal following “consultations in the USA”.

Should not the Lockerbie inquiry, when we get it, examine why the government of the day chose to ignore the words of its Lord Chief Justice, and appointed [Alan] Feraday to supply the forensic input to the Lockerbie trial?

Mr Feraday was criticised by the Lord Chief Justice in the case of R v Berry (1991). He declared that the nature of his evidence was dogmatic in the extreme and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field. Also, the Home Office has paid compensation from the public purse to Mr Berry because he was jailed on the erroneous evidence of Mr Feraday.

The Lockerbie case depended heavily upon a piece of timer circuit board allegedly recovered from the wreckage and labelled “PT35B” presented to the court by the same Mr Feraday, who also had consultations with the USA.

Assuming the British Government wanted the Lockerbie trial to reach a fair verdict, was this really the best we had to offer?

Forensics and Feraday

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2005. It reads in part:]

Fresh doubts have emerged over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber, BBC Scotland has learned.

The evidence of a major prosecution witness who testified during the trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi has been called into question.

Three men who forensic scientist Allen Feraday gave evidence against have since had their convictions quashed.

BBC Scotland understands papers on one case have gone to the commission reviewing Megrahi's conviction.

Mr Feraday is now retired after 42 years' experience in explosives.

He told the Lockerbie trial he was in no doubt that a circuit board fragment found after the disaster was part of the detonator.

The trial judges accepted his conclusion.

However, in three separate cases men against whom Mr Feraday gave evidence have now had their convictions overturned.

After the first case, which took place seven years before the Lockerbie trial, the Lord Chief Justice said Mr Feraday should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics.

The latest case to be quashed happened just last month.

Papers relating to the most recent case have now been sent to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is looking at the Lockerbie bomber's conviction.

The commission will consider whether the Lockerbie trial judges should have given so much weight to Mr Feraday's evidence.

Gerry Brown, of the Law Society of Scotland, said expert witnesses were "essential" in cases like the Lockerbie trial.

"It is like a string of beads," he told BBC Radio Scotland.

"You have to have the beads held together by string, and if the string is weak at one point the beads fall to the ground.

"That is possibly the situation here, and that is probably what is being investigated now by the commission."

Solicitor Eddie McKechnie, who represents Megrahi, said the information raised "serious issues" about the conviction.

"It is a factor that I take very seriously into account on behalf of Mr Megrahi," he said.

"One would have thought that when a professional and a government forensic expert is impugned in a number of cases... then serious issues arise."

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the bombing, said: "I'm personally not satisfied of Mr Megrahi's guilt.

"I emerged (from the trial) riddled with doubts. This will of course augment them.

"If one finds that three cases have been overturned, it rather undermines one's confidence."

However, American lawyer Jody Flowers - who represents one woman whose husband died in the bombing - said she thought the latest claims were "much ado about nothing".

"I don't think it has much impact at all. I think it is a bit of a belated and half-hearted attempt," she said.

"Any serious challenge to Mr Feraday's credibility or the specifics of his testimony would have been raised at the trial or the appeal, and they were not.

"The court accepted his testimony as reliable."

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.]

Flagrantly distorted picture put forward in Camp Zeist

[What follows is excerpted from a review in The Observer on this date in 2001 by investigative journalist Bob Woffinden of John Ashton and Ian Ferguson’s Cover-Up of Convenience:]

Last year, the case against two Libyans, Abdel Al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was heard at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands before three Scottish law lords. Gadaffi would have been briefed about the vagaries of British criminal justice processes, but he could hardly have appreciated that they would be this enfeebled.

It might have been anticipated that only the most reputable forensic scientists would be used. In fact, the Crown employed the services of three men whose credentials were in some doubt. The evidence of Dr Thomas Hayes in previous trials had contributed to the convictions of several innocent people. At the same time that Sir John May's public inquiry was condemning the laboratory staff for 'knowingly placing a false and distorted scientific picture before the jury', Hayes was retiring to become a chiropodist.

Allan Feraday, whose qualifications extended no further than a 1962 Higher National Certificate in applied physics and electronics, was criticised by the Lord Chief Justice in 1996 in a separate explosives case. Then there was the American Tom Thurman, who was criticised in a Department of Justice report for 'routinely altering the reports... in the FBI explosives unit', with the result that they, albeit unintentionally, became more favourable to the prosecution case.

Earlier this year, Fhimah was acquitted, although Al-Megrahi was convicted on the basis that he had placed the bomb on board a feeder flight in Malta. Not only was there no evidence that the bomb had been put on board in Malta, but Air Malta had won a libel action in 1993 establishing that it wasn't. So the trial led inexorably to the wrongful conviction of Al-Megrahi and the final betrayal of the bereaved families.

If Cover-Up of Convenience occasionally loses narrative focus, that is hardly surprising bearing in mind the difficulties with co-authors on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and the speed with which this book has been produced. It's an admirably thorough, exhaustively researched and gripping exposé of the complete Lockerbie scandal. Someone should use it as a basis of a screenplay. Even if Hollywood did its worst, what remained would still be more accurate than the flagrantly distorted picture put forward in Camp Zeist.

Lockerbie and Hillsborough: the deliberate diversion of blame

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire published today on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  It reads as follows:]

Dr Jim Swire writes exclusively for The Firm, following the revelations in the Hillsborough papers, and sees the thread linking the common behaviour of the legal and political institutions that bind the Pan Am 103 affair with the tragic deaths at Hillsborough.

In the world confrontation between the terrorists and the developed communities of the West, the complex structures that regulate our societies have intelligence, high technology, well orchestrated military might and the precepts and respect of our peoples for the rule of law as their main resources.

From the nature of terrorism and the front line responses of Western intelligence springs a great temptation: to use the innately secretive culture of intelligence to react to terrorism in ways which their defended populations might denounce, were they only privy to them. 'Extraordinary rendition' is a good example of this. Yet reliance upon secrecy from their own populations can only ever be a temporary protection for those who overstep the line and use that privileged secrecy in ways that defy the rule of law, which they ostensibly support.

To cross that line and use our State resources in ways that are illegal is in the end to hand a moral victory to the terrorists. To divert blame away from the actual perpetrators is to protect them and to increase the chances of them striking again. The American response to terrorism has been profoundly different from the British. America has turned to intelligence/military responses in 'the war on terror'. Britain has striven to use intelligence/criminal law. Except where our leaders have got carried away by enthusiasm for the 'special relationship' with the US and dragged us, the people protesting, into military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But State pressure upon our law to produce politically desired convictions has produced terrible distortions of that law such as detention without trial and the warped trials of alleged terrorists such as the Maguire and other IRA related cases.

It is my belief that in the case of Lockerbie the law of Scotland has been subsumed into the priorities of American foreign policy.

Douglas Hurd, a man deserving of great respect for his personal intelligence and integrity has said to Tam Dalyell and Robin Cook, referring to Lockerbie: "I do ask you two to believe that as Foreign secretary I cannot tell the Scottish Crown Office (which was in charge of the Lockerbie case) what to do, nor does the Foreign Office have detailed access to evidence which they say they have. You must understand that law officers really are a law unto themselves."

Yet I have come to believe over the past 25 years that not only did the US manipulate the Scottish criminal legal process, but that the Scottish Crown Office has ever since, fought a battle to maintain the fiction that it acted with integrity throughout the legal prosecution process.

In so doing they are in effect protecting the perpetrators of the dreadful terrorist massacre of the innocents that was Lockerbie in 1988, and damaging positive responses to better protect the future (such as making it a criminal offence for an airport not to report and take immediate appropriate action over break-ins perhaps?). I believe that in the long run it will be less damaging to the reputation of the West, and certainly for my favourite country, Scotland, to address these issues, and to take corrective action ourselves for the future, rather than allow our failures to be eventually exposed at the bar of history.

In a democratic society the more citizens who assess such matters for themselves, the greater is likely to be the integrity of the decisions which their politicians must eventually take to resolve the issues.

[An email sent to me by Dr Swire, in addition to the text reproduced above, contains the following:]

25 years ago my elder daughter, Flora walked the aisles of Heathrow airport, traversed the security check points, left the departure lounge on an exciting trip to board Pan Am 103 in order to spend Christmas with her American boyfriend.

38 minutes later this beautiful, brilliant and innocent 23 year old, along with 269 others was slain by a bomb loaded at Heathrow and exploding aboard her plane high above the heads of the unsuspecting people of Lockerbie as they innocently prepared their homes for Christmas.

I have always been determined that the truth should come out about who did this dreadful thing, our search has been always and resolutely for truth and justice.

Those who oppose that protect the real perpetrators.

We relatives also have a right to know why she and all those who died with her were not protected.

Why was it that as she and all the others walked those long Heathrow corridors neither they nor anyone outside the airport knew that there had been a break-in there 16 hours before PA103 was blown up and that despite raised worries about impending terror attacks, no appropriate steps had been taken there to identify the intruder, nor his motive? Maybe the lurking terrorist even heard their happy voices.

Why was it that during the ensuing trial of Baset al-Megrahi evidence was led, but rejected, of the availability of Syrian-made IEDs to mid East terrorists which were obligated always to explode between 35 and 45 minutes after take off, and for the use of which money appeared to have been paid by Iran, the State having the most pressing need for revenge against the US?

Why was it that although we now know the investigating Scottish police were fully aware of the Heathrow break-in, it remained hidden from view and from the Zeist court until after the verdict?

Why was the unlikely story of Megrahi having used a long running and fully adjustable timer in Malta to arrange for his bomb to traverse Frankfurt and a change of planes at Heathrow only to have it explode a mere 38 minutes into the flight rather than over the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, accepted by the court?

Why on earth would he take such a risk of delays to the take-off time?

The court did hear how an available type of air pressure sensitive IED made by a Syrian terror group, if put aboard a target aircraft at the airport of take-off would always explode between 35 and 45 minutes following take off. Why did the court decide that this cock and bull story about Malta and Megrahi should take precedence over the so simple concept that one of the Syrian IEDs might in fact have been put aboard at Heathrow?

Why did the Crown Office and their investigators withhold the information from the court about the Heathrow break-in until after the verdict?

Why was it that the court was not made fully aware of the known excitement between the Maltese Gauci brothers who claimed to identify Megrahi, over the prospects of multi million dollar rewards if they would only identify him?

Why was the court not made fully aware of the police methodology used to 'encourage' those brothers to identify Megrahi, contrary to the accepted police identification processes?

Why was it that the Crown Office failed to listen even to the warnings of their own forensic expert Feraday that a fragment of circuit board (allegedly originating from the wreckage) simply did not match the Libyan bomb timer board allegedly used?

Why was it that this fragment was found within the only police evidence bag which showed signs of having had its label tampered with, in such a way as to draw attention to debris such as the fragment, rather than simply cloth within the bag's contents?

Who changed that label?

What was his motive?

What else might have been done to the contents of the bag?

Since it is now known, courtesy of a book Megrahi: You are my Jury that the famous fragment could not have come from a Libyan timer circuit board as believed in the court, where might it have originated?

The sole justification for the acceptance of the fragment as genuine evidence was that it was found inside the police evidence bag (with its corrupted label) and the ensuing (now known to be erroneous) belief that the fragment had been part of a Libyan timer. Now that we know that the scientific evidence shows irrefutably that it could not have come from a batch of Libyan timers sold to Libya by the Swiss firm MEBO, where could it have come from?

The fragment contains evidence of the use of a most unusual plating process, provably not available to the Swiss firm which made the Libyan timers. There was not a scrap of evidence of any other possible origin for this fragment, such as other electronic equipment among the wreckage. So where did it originate and how did it get into that evidence bag?

Why was it that the police notebooks of some of the officers involved in the searches of the crash site were destroyed?

Who ordered that?

What was their motive for doing so?

Now that we know that PT35b, the fragment, did not come from a Libyan timer in the bomb, we find that we know of no other origin in the wreckage for it. If it really was recovered from the crash site, a full search of all police notebooks relevant to the search at the wreckage field, and to the transactions occurring over the sorting of wreckage taken into hangers etc would be mandatory if the fragment's point of origin is to be established. Yet key police notebooks appear to have been destroyed.

How can today's Lord Advocate expect us to believe that everything is being done to reach the truth through an active ongoing criminal investigation, when his Department, the Crown Office appears to have allowed the destruction of substantial tranches of what might have been key evidence, in addition to appearing to have allowed illegal changes to have been made to at least one police evidence bag label?

Frankly, on the basis of common sense it looks as though the role of 'fall-guy', prepared by the police at Hillsborough for the fans in the crowd was replaced in this case by the Libyan Megrahi. It seems the available evidence has been selectively massaged in such a way as to make the verdict against him possible.

Who could have wanted such an outcome?

Where in the world was the extraordinary plating process used on the 'famous fragment' available before Lockerbie?

In whose interest would it be to divert blame to a Libyan individual?

We have fought for nearly 25 years for our right to see the truth about how our lovely families came to be murdered.

Personally I would still wish to avoid attacking those who made mistakes, but I would also want to see the truth about Lockerbie used to enhance the protection that we have against future terror attacks partly through the protection we afford in future to our legal systems against insidious and improper infiltration.

There is a warning in Christian faith against seeking revenge against our enemies, and until now I have tried politely to request a full and objective inquiry into all these and many other aspects of this dreadful business, believing that the judicial process should supplant the human lust for revenge.

If the judicial process has indeed failed, then it needs to be improved. If the outcome of the trial was achieved by deliberate manipulation of the evidence with destruction of parts hostile to the desired outcome, then criminal charges will be mandatory.Those individuals through whom it failed should certainly be identified and the nature of and motives for their failures analysed, the better to prevent recurrence, but the overall aim should be to ensure that such manipulation of our justice system can never occur again, rather than the hounding of individuals.

For years now, ever since I heard the description of the Syrian bombs with their obligated 35-45 minute flight times revealed in the Zeist court, I have been convinced that justice got it wrong over Lockerbie and that other interests than justice and truth were allowed to intrude. Much has come to light since to reinforce that view, to the point where serious study of the evidence is incompatible with an objective belief in the propriety of the court's findings

There is also a special case for compassion for the majority of the US relatives. They have suffered every bit as much as we have, yet they believe they have 'closure' in the blaming of Megrahi.

Together with one other UK relative I was present throughout the trial of Megrahi. There was a capacious lounge set aside for the relatives who came to watch the trial. The US Department of Justice offered each American family an 'all expenses paid' fortnight. As those families trooped through the relatives' lounge they (and we) were treated to evening reviews by  a mixed group of Scottish prosecution lawyers and US lawyers invited to sit on the prosecution bench in court. The content was choreographed to convey, right from the start the message 'these are the bastards who murdered your families, we got them they are going to go down for a very very long time'. The defence side was not represented.

This was grooming writ large and official, and our Scottish prosecution lawyers were an integral part of it.

It now transpires that a similar campaign of propaganda has continued ever since, culminating in disgraceful attempts by US Secretary Clinton with the full backing of some US relatives, to extradite Megrahi from his family and from Libya in his last few dying days, to face a new sentencing in the US.

Whilst we cannot blame US relatives for believing what their country and our justice system were telling them, this looks to me like the very thirst for revenge that Christ warned us against.  It has long been a worry to me that insistence on trying to unravel the real facts about Lockerbie was making bereavement more difficult for those who thought they found closure over the Megrahi case.

Three events this year have triggered my belief that there is evil stalking the corridors of power over this case.

1. In February the current Lord Advocate explained to us that he was puzzled as to why the Heathrow evidence had not been available to Megrahi's defence during his trial. Here the evil might simply be complacency and sloth. Surely twelve years is long enough for the Crown Office to find the answer to that one.
Consequent to this meeting I asked for help and received a reply from the current Chief Constable of the D & G police. I then wrote to the Crown Office about  the D & G letter writing that:- 'It (the letter) shows that despite prompt investigations  at Heathrow by the Met. and the passing of their findings to the Lockerbie incident control centre certainly by February 1989, a decision must have been taken not to follow the implications of this information, and to assume that the bomb had come to Heathrow from Frankfurt via Pan Am 103A.'

I have now received a reply to that letter in which the head of Serious and Organised Crime Division of the Crown Office,on behalf of the Lord Advocate, writes:

'In relation to the insecurity at Heathrow, you suggest that "a decision must have been taken not to follow the implications of this information and to assume that the bomb had come from Frankfurt to Heathrow via Pan Am 103 A." No such decision was taken and no such assumption was made.'

Really? I feel no match for the skill of the Crown Office in using words in this way. Why then did this information not get passed to Megrahi's defence team till after the verdict?

2. In May John Ashton's book Megrahi: you are my Jury was launched in Edinburgh by the doughty publishing company Birlinn. The book tells of sound scientific evidence that the 'famous timer fragment' simply could not have originated from one of the Libyan timers as alleged in court.

That very May morning, before they had had time to review the book, Downing Street issued a statement alleging that 'The book is an insult to the Lockerbie relatives'. Since I had written to [Prime Minister David] Cameron long before to ask him to review the Lockerbie case and received no help whatsoever for such a suggestion, he was presumably intending to speak for the US relatives.

In fact the book adds very significantly to what is now known about the truth, that is no insult. What is the full fear that Westminster seems to harbour over the exposure of truth in this case?

It is not the job of a British Prime Minister to speak for US relatives and ignore his own citizens. Surely it was his predecessors' job to protect our families on board an aircraft at Heathrow. It is not alleged even by the Crown Office that the bomb was loaded aboard PA103 itself anywhere other than at London Heathrow.

No help for British relatives there then...

3. The Hillsborough disaster has revealed the lengths to which the police there were prepared to go to divert blame from the failure to provide for the safety of citizens by their own and other organs of state.

In the case of the D & G police and Crown Office over Lockerbie diversion of blame was to the Libyan Megrahi. I don't know why the Scottish Crown Office allowed themselves to divert the blame from Iran/Syria and the criminal negligence of the security at Heathrow airport. Perhaps it was all down to human error, but consider these two paragraphs below from Tam Dalyell's foreword to a previous book from John Ashton [and Ian Ferguson] titled Cover-up of Convenience written in 2001 and published by Mainstream also of Edinburgh.

   a) Tam was told by an off duty Scottish police officer that....'American agents were swarming around the (crash) area openly removing items of debris.....the police were doing nothing to stop them'.

   b) “Douglas (Hurd) swooped down on Robin (Cook) and myself (Tam). He said 'I  do ask you two to believe that as Foreign secretary I cannot tell the Scottish Crown Office (which was in charge of the Lockerbie case) what to do, nor does the Foreign Office have detailed access to evidence which they say they have. You must understand that law officers really are a law unto themselves.’”

So it is indeed from 'the Scottish Crown Office' and their agents the D & G police that answers must come. They may be a 'law unto themselves' yet they must abide by the parameters of the justice system which they are supposed to serve.

In previous years the Chinook and McKie (fingerprint) cases north of the border have shown similar police failings. With the blatant diversion of blame over Chinook, diverting it away from the Ministry of Defence to the pilots, and in the McKie case, away from the Scottish fingerprint service onto his innocent daughter Shirley McKie.

I doubt that those seeking to protect their own reputations understand the anguish that such deceit adds to the burden of families. The need for the truth does not fade for the families, and deceit achieves nothing in the long run, except to add to their suffering and to undermine public confidence in the blindfold against becoming partial which justice should always wear.

Never ever should the families be denied the truth.

There are lessons to be taken from Hillsborough, the magnificent persistence and determination of the families and the fallibility of inadequate inquiries which actually increased the anguish of those families.

I dread seeing other families traumatised in the future by failure to learn the lessons of Lockerbie.

At Lockerbie the majority of the deaths were Americans and what happened? The US groomed the relatives to 'help' them to believe they were seeing justice at Zeist.

John Mosey and I were there throughout we saw it all but were too naive and too polite to tell them to go away and let us make up our own minds.

The result? Those relatives mostly still believe that the Megrahi story was true, despite all that has come out since.

I think both John and I have felt restrained by the US relatives whose pain and loss is just as great as ours, and we have tried not to cause additional distress to them by directly challenging their 'closure'. We have even watched silently as Hillary Clinton and others, in the last days of Megrahi's life, and egged on by those very relatives, made efforts to extract him from Libya to be 'retried'. That was difficult.

Thus many of the US relatives unwittingly have been forged into a useful tool in the hands of those who want the wickedness of the trial to remain in position.

The 'police wickedness' over Lockerbie is very real and very Scottish. Not for nothing did I use Tam Dalyell's foreword to John Ashton's previous book at the [Edinburgh International] Book Festival meeting. His words describe how the D & G police were allowing Americans to run freely all over the crash site doing what they liked and making no effort to prevent them from doing so. From day one that became the pattern, and thus the dictates of US foreign policy have been enabled to become the overriding guide for how the prosecution was designed to work out.

During Megrahi's second appeal the Advocate General was sent scuttling to Westminster to ask permission for a revealing document to be released to the defence. The result was the imposition of a Public Interest Immunity (PII) Certificate by the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband blocking the document's release. In a radio four programme in August 2009, David Miliband was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Great Lives. He had stated that he believed there are circumstances in which terrorism is "justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective" – though he added that "it is never effective on its own".

The ability of terrorism to inflict damage on its target State and that State's citizens is hugely amplified if that State allows the normal parameters of its legal system to be blunted in order to transfer the attribution of blame to an innocent third party. The impartial rule of law is arguably the strongest weapon we have against the anarchy of terrorism. To restrict the freedom of our law in favour of such anarchy by the deliberate transfer of blame away from the real perpetrators is indeed to make terrorism more effective.

In the case of Lockerbie the terrible damage that terrorism inflicted on its targets at the time has been amplified by the actions of its target states themselves in distorting their own justice systems.