Former Lord Advocate ... seriously misled the Megrahi Court claims book author

[This is the headline over a report published today on the Newsnet Scotland website.  It reads in part:]

Former Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, has been accused of misleading the Court during the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The claim, contained in the book Megrahi – You are my Jury, relates to the QC’s intervention in a matter involving secret CIA cables that contained details of discussions between the US agency and a Libyan ‘supergrass’ named Majid Giaka.

Giaka was a former work colleague of Mr Megrahi who had contacted the CIA claiming to have evidence linking the Libyan and his co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhima to the Lockerbie bombing.

Giaka was scheduled to give evidence to the Court in August 2000, but was delayed due to legal wrangling over the telex cables.

Demands by the Libyan’s defence team to see the cables in full led to the intervention by then Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, an episode described by book author John Ashton as “one of the most disgraceful episodes in the Crown Office’s recent history”.

Mr Megrahi’s defence team had requested full disclosure of the secret cables which had been heavily redacted for apparent security reasons.

Lawyers acting on behalf of the two Libyan’s were informed that the twenty five cables were all that existed and that the redacted areas covered general areas not relevant to the Lockerbie incident.

According to the book, Procurator Fiscal Norman McFadyen claimed that no-one from the Crown had seen the unedited cables and that the redacted material was irrelevant.

However it subsequently emerged that weeks earlier on 1st June 2000, members of the Crown Office had indeed seen the unedited cables, one of whom was Norman McFadyen and the other Alan Turnbull QC.

On 22 August on learning of this, Mr Megrahi’s legal team raised the issue with the Court, describing it as “a matter of some considerable importance”.

According to Ashton’s book, Bill Taylor QC argued that without access to the full cables, the defendants would be denied a fair trial, and said: “I emphatically do not accept that what lies behind the blanked out sections is of no interest to a cross examiner … Further, I challenge the right of the Crown to determine for the defence what is or is not of relevance to the defence case.”

Mr Taylor urged the Court to ask the Crown to obtain the complete copies of the cables from the CIA.

In a move, described as unusual by author John Ashcroft, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd then attended the Court in person and admitted that McFadyen and Turnbull had indeed seen the cables but repeated the Crown’s earlier assertions that the redacted areas had no bearing on the cables themselves or the case.

“While they may have been of significance to the Central Intelligence Agency, they had no significance whatsoever to the case” he said.

Mr Boyd explained that according to Crown QC Alan Turnbull: “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 case.”

Mr Boyd also explained that he had no control over the documents that they resided in the USA under the control of US authorities.

Boyd ended by stating categorically: “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.”

Mr Ashton’s book though now reveals that the reason the Lord Advocate had no control over the documents was that Norman McFadyen had signed a non-disclosure agreement before viewing them.

According to Mr Ashton, the Crown had “secretly, ceded to the CIA the right to determine what information should, or should not, be disclosed in a Scottish Court”.

Also, further revelations contained in Mr Ashton’s book show that far from being of no significance to the case, the redacted sections of the cables were in fact highly significant.

The defence team eventually forced the Crown to hand over less redacted versions of the cables that contained, contrary to Boyd’s claims, crucial information about Giaka – including doubts about the value of his intelligence information.

Further sections detailed meetings with Giaka not included in the original documents.

Acting for the defence, Richard Keen QC, questioned claims by the Crown that the redacted sections were of no consequence

Pointing to their clear significance, he told the Court: “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”

According to author John Ashton, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd – now Lord Boyd – had “seriously misled the Court”.

[My own 2007 account in The Scotsman of this shameful and discreditable episode can be read here. What is surprising and deeply regrettable is that the trial judges in their judgement made no mention of this disgraceful Crown conduct.  Had it been a defence advocate who had been detected misleading the court in this way, the matter would certainly not have been overlooked and the consequences for the advocate in question would have been dire.]

The Times of Malta on the CIA Giaka cables

[Today's edition of the Maltese newspaper The Times contains a report on the CIA cables relating to the Pan Am 103 bombing that were referred to in a post on this blog on 5 September 2011. The report reads in part:]

Malta was a “primary launching point” for Libyan intelligence and terrorist teams transiting Europe, according to a recent compilation of declassified CIA cables dating between 1988 and 1991.

But campaigners for justice in the Lockerbie bombing case have slammed such claims, describing the CIA’s main informant as a “money-grubbing fantasist” who led the CIA by the nose.

The informant quoted extensively in the 255-page document (taken predominantly from declassified CIA cables released in 2008 and compiled by an international organisation) is Abdul Majid Giaka, whose testimony, as an informant, was pivotal in convicting Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, despite the court having cast doubts on Mr Giaka’s credibility and reliability as a witness. [RB: Giaka's testimony was not "pivotal" in convicting Megrahi. The Lockerbie judges rejected his evidence in its entirety, with the exception of that part relating to the structure of the Libyan security and intelligence services and Megrahi's alleged position in them.]

According to Lockerbie campaigner Robert Forrester, the recently compiled cables are so heavily redacted that any effort to corroborate the veracity of intelligence is impossible.

“Giaka was showered with US tax dollars in return for nothing of substance,” he told The Times.

Mr Forrester – who forms part of a group of Lockerbie victim family members who believe Mr al Megrahi was wrongly convicted – also criticised the CIA for showing no indication of having tried to independently corroborate any of the “so-called intelligence”. [RB: The Justice for Megrahi group, of which Robert Forrester is secretary, is not, of course, "a group of Lockerbie victim family members" but a group of concerned persons, some of whom are Lockerbie family members.]

“It really does look like [the CIA] swallowed it all, hook, line and sinker, until it finally dawned on them that he was worthless,” he said.

“These additional papers detailing the CIA’s relationship with Mr Giaka, add little to what is already known and to the doubts which have always hung over this case... Malta has absolutely no reason to think that these documents taint the island’s good name any more than it has been.”

However, he added that it is up to the Maltese government to take “concrete steps” to lift the cloud of Lockerbie which hangs over the island.

“The evidence is there which proves that there is no evidence to support this conviction.”

One of the most disgraceful episodes in the Crown Office’s recent history

Two years ago today, I posted on this blog an item headed Former Lord Advocate ... seriously misled the Megrahi Court claims book author.  It bears repeating:

[This is the headline over a report published today on the Newsnet Scotland website.  It reads in part:]

Former Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, [now Court of Session judge, Lord Boyd] has been accused of misleading the Court during the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The claim, contained in the book Megrahi – You are my Jury, relates to the QC’s intervention in a matter involving secret CIA cables that contained details of discussions between the US agency and a Libyan ‘supergrass’ named Majid Giaka.

Giaka was a former work colleague of Mr Megrahi who had contacted the CIA claiming to have evidence linking the Libyan and his co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhima to the Lockerbie bombing.

Giaka was scheduled to give evidence to the Court in August 2000, but was delayed due to legal wrangling over the telex cables.

Demands by the Libyan’s defence team to see the cables in full led to the intervention by then Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, an episode described by book author John Ashton as “one of the most disgraceful episodes in the Crown Office’s recent history”.

Mr Megrahi’s defence team had requested full disclosure of the secret cables which had been heavily redacted for apparent security reasons.

Lawyers acting on behalf of the two Libyans were informed that the twenty five cables were all that existed and that the redacted areas covered general areas not relevant to the Lockerbie incident.

According to the book, Procurator Fiscal Norman McFadyen [now a sheriff in Ayr] claimed that no-one from the Crown had seen the unedited cables and that the redacted material was irrelevant.

However it subsequently emerged that weeks earlier on 1st June 2000, members of the Crown Office had indeed seen the unedited cables, one of whom was Norman McFadyen and the other Alan Turnbull QC [now a Court of Session judge].

On 22 August on learning of this, Mr Megrahi’s legal team raised the issue with the Court, describing it as “a matter of some considerable importance”.

According to Ashton’s book, Bill Taylor QC argued that without access to the full cables, the defendants would be denied a fair trial, and said: “I emphatically do not accept that what lies behind the blanked out sections is of no interest to a cross examiner … Further, I challenge the right of the Crown to determine for the defence what is or is not of relevance to the defence case.”

Mr Taylor urged the Court to ask the Crown to obtain the complete copies of the cables from the CIA.

In a move, described as unusual by author John Ashton, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd then attended the Court in person and admitted that McFadyen and Turnbull had indeed seen the cables but repeated the Crown’s earlier assertions that the redacted areas had no bearing on the cables themselves or the case.

“While they may have been of significance to the Central Intelligence Agency, they had no significance whatsoever to the case” he said.

Mr Boyd explained that according to Crown QC Alan Turnbull: “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 case.”

Mr Boyd also explained that he had no control over the documents that they resided in the USA under the control of US authorities.

Boyd ended by stating categorically: “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.”

Mr Ashton’s book though now reveals that the reason the Lord Advocate had no control over the documents was that Norman McFadyen had signed a non-disclosure agreement before viewing them.

According to Mr Ashton, the Crown had “secretly, ceded to the CIA the right to determine what information should, or should not, be disclosed in a Scottish Court”.

Also, further revelations contained in Mr Ashton’s book show that far from being of no significance to the case, the redacted sections of the cables were in fact highly significant.

The defence team eventually forced the Crown to hand over less redacted versions of the cables that contained, contrary to Boyd’s claims, crucial information about Giaka – including doubts about the value of his intelligence information.

Further sections detailed meetings with Giaka not included in the original documents.

Acting for the defence, Richard Keen QC, questioned claims by the Crown that the redacted sections were of no consequence

Pointing to their clear significance, he told the Court: “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”

According to author John Ashton, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd – now Lord Boyd – had “seriously misled the Court”.

[My own 2007 account in The Scotsman of this shameful and discreditable episode can be read here. What is surprising and deeply regrettable is that the trial judges in their judgement made no mention of this disgraceful Crown conduct.  Had it been a defence advocate who had been detected misleading the court in this way, the matter would certainly not have been overlooked and the consequences for the advocate in question would have been dire.]

A contemporary comment on Crown's shameful conduct

[What follows is an article by me that was published on TheLockerbieTrial.com website on this date in 2000:]

It will have been apparent to anyone who has followed even cursorily the cross-examination of the Libyan defector and long-term CIA asset, Abdul Majid Giaka, by defence counsel William Taylor QC and Richard Keen QC on 26, 27 and 28 September, that much of the devastating effectiveness of their questioning derived from their ability to refer the witness to the cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings.

Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to Advocate Depute Alistair Campbell QC and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony.  Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the Court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been immensely more difficult and perhaps impossible.

It is in this context that the submissions of the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unredacted or uncensored form, must be viewed.  On that occasion the Lord Advocate said that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 (Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC and procurator fiscal Norman McFadyen) were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence teams material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, considered the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind. 

Mr Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way.  Secondly, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Mr Majid.  They also considered whether there was anything which might bear upon the special defences which had been lodged and intimated in this case.  On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion 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 on may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."

Lord Coulsfield then intervened:   "Does that include, Lord Advocate ... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"

The Lord Advocate replied:  "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that.  In the sense in which My Lord put it to me at the start, that there may be material which relates to a completely different matter, then that cannot be said...  But, in the sense, My Lord, that there is nothing within the -- -- 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 on these matters."

In the light of the use actually, and entirely properly, made by the defence of material from those CIA cables in attacking, in the course of cross-examination, the credibility and reliability of Giaka’s evidence on matters relevant to the responsibility of the two accused men for the bombing of Pan Am 103, it may be that the Lord Advocate will (or at least should) feel that he owes an explanation of the statements made by him on 22 August 2000 which are quoted above.

[RB: Explanation came there none, either then or at any later time. This disgraceful Crown conduct forms the basis of one of Justice for Megrahi’s allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial that are currently under investigation by Police Scotland.]

Lockerbie questions that US Attorney General William Barr needs to answer

[What follows is excerpted from an article by John Schindler published today on the Top Secret Umbra website:]

With just six weeks left for the Trump administration, speculation is swirling that Attorney General William Barr may step down before the official presidential transition on January 20. Barr has fallen out of favor with the White House since his admission last week that the Department of Justice’s investigation of our November 3 election has uncovered no significant voting fraud, contrary to the loud claims of President Donald Trump and his enraged surrogates. A longtime liberal bugbear, Barr suddenly became the Oval Office’s new whipping boy instead, and the attorney general is reportedly tired of the public presidential abuse. 

That would be the second time that Barr steps down as the attorney general (...)

Before we get to his decisions as Trump’s attorney general, we should first ask Bill Barr about what happened the last time he headed the Justice Department.

Above all, why did Attorney General Barr back in mid-November 1991 decide to indict two Libyan spies for the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, a terrible crime that killed 270 innocent people. Barr’s announcement stunned our Intelligence Community, which had investigated that terrorist atrocity for nearly three years in voluminous detail, yet never suspected that Libya stood behind the attack.

Three decades ago, the Lockerbie tragedy loomed large in American news. A bomb inside a suitcase stowed in the Boeing 747’s forward left luggage container tore the airliner apart as it cruised at 31,000 feet, headed for New York. All 243 passengers and 16 crew on the Pan Am jumbo jet died, as did 11 people in the town of Lockerbie, which was showered by the flaming wreckage of the shattered 747. One hundred and ninety of the dead were Americans, including 35 Syracuse University students headed home for Christmas after a European semester abroad.

It didn’t take long for diligent British investigators to find the remnants of the Samsonite suitcase which contained less than a pound of Semtex plastic explosive manufactured in Czechoslovakia and hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette recorder. That trail quickly led to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, a radical Arab terrorist group that was headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army officer. In the eyes of Western intelligence, the PFLP-GC was little more than an extension of Syria’s security services.

Intriguingly, less than two months before the Lockerbie attack, West German police rolled up a PFLP-GC bomb-making cell around Frankfurt, seizing four bombs made of Semtex hidden in Toshiba radios. Since Pan Am 103 originated in Frankfurt and that was the exact same kind of bomb which took down the doomed airliner, none of this seemed coincidental. Western intelligence circles heard chatter in the autumn of 1988 that the PFLP-GC, whose fifth Frankfurt bomb was never found by police, was planning to blow up U.S. airliners. Plus, one of the men taken into custody was Marwan Khreesat, a veteran bomb-maker who was believed to be behind the downing of a Swissair jetliner back in 1970, a terrorist attack which killed 47 people.

Before long, American intelligence believed that Iran was really behind the downing of Flight 103, given known close connections between Syrian intelligence and Iranian spy agencies. Neither was Tehran’s motive difficult to ascertain. A few months before, on July 3, 1988, the cruiser USS Vincennes, on station in the Persian Gulf, mistakenly shot down an Iran Air Airbus, a terrible accident which killed all 290 people aboard, including 66 children. Iran’s revolutionary regime promised revenge, and the Intelligence Community assessed that they got it over Scotland. As I explained on the thirtieth anniversary of the Lockerbie horror, that Iran stood behind the attack:

Was the conclusion of US intelligence, particularly when the National Security Agency provided top-secret electronic intercepts which demonstrated that Tehran had commissioned the PFLP-GC to down Pan Am 103 (...) One veteran NSA analyst told me years later that his counterterrorism team “had no doubt” of Iranian culpability. Bob Baer, the veteran CIA officer, has stated that his agency believed just as unanimously that Tehran was behind the bombing. Within a year of the attack, our Intelligence Community assessed confidently that Lockerbie was an Iranian operation executed by Syrian cut-outs, and that take was shared by several allies with solid Middle Eastern insights, including Israeli intelligence.

The IC was therefore taken aback on November 14, 1991, when Attorney General Barr announced the indictment of two Libyan spies, Abdelbaset el-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, for the downing of Pan Am 103. Libya denied the accusations, as did the two Libyan intelligence officers, and it took Britain almost a decade to bring the men to trial. In a unique arrangement, the trial was held in the Netherlands under Scottish law. In the end, the court did not convict Fhimah but did find Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder in early 2001. Megrahi maintained he was framed and, suffering from cancer, he was released on compassionate grounds in 2009. He returned to Libya and succumbed to cancer there in May 2012, protesting his innocence to the end.

Quite a few people who looked at the evidence believed that Megrahi really may have been innocent, including some relatives of Pan Am 103 victims. Many in intelligence circles had doubts too, particularly because the prosecution’s star witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, was another Libyan intelligence officer who became a CIA asset. Giaka claimed to have witnessed Megrahi and Fhimah’s preparations in Malta to take down Pan Am 103 with a bomb made by Libyan intelligence. The Scottish court found Giaka less than credible, yet his claims against Megrahi stood up adequately to produce a conviction.

CIA made Giaka available to the court as the star witness, while obscuring some of their clandestine relationship with the Libyan spy. Langley offered several of its own officers to the court as well, something CIA recounted with pride in its official telling of their support to the Lockerbie trial, but the agency was careful to only produce officials who endorsed the Libya-did-it hypothesis.

There was the rub. Some CIA officers who were close to Giaka did not find his claims about Pan Am 103 and his own intelligence service’s involvement to be credible; in fact, they considered their “star” to be an unreliable fabricator. However, this secret – which raises fundamental questions about the US government’s official position on Lockerbie since late 1991 – was kept confined to spy circles for decades. Until now.

John Holt, a retired CIA officer who served as Giaka’s handler three decades ago, has broken his silence, granting a detailed interview to British media about his role in this sensational case. The 68-year-old Holt spoke out for the first time about what really happened behind the scenes with Giaka, whom he dismissed as an asset who was prone to “making up stories.” Giaka was far from a reliable source and the former American spy opined that CIA kept Holt away from the trial, since agency leaders knew that his account contradicted the official US position on Lockerbie. As he explained:

I handled Abdul-Majid Giaka in 1989 for a whole year during which he never mentioned Libyan involvement in the bombing. My cables [back to CIA headquarters] showed he was a car mechanic who was placed by Libyan Intelligence as Malta Airport office manager with Libyan Arab Airlines and had very little information about anything to do with bombs – or Lockerbie. He felt humiliated by Megrahi, who was an official with the Libyan Intelligence Service. “I was treated,” he said, “like a dog when Megrahi came to the office.” That's all reported in my cables, so CIA knew Giaka had a grudge against Megrahi.

This was a personal vendetta, in other words, one that was driven by Giaka’s needs and his changing memory, as Holt elaborated:

Every time I met Giaka, which was each month or two, I would also ask him if he had any information at all about the Pan-Am bombing. All of us CIA and FBI field officers were asked by the CIA to keep pressing our assets for any answers or clues.  His answer was always: No.

I expressed my opinion to the FBI that Giaka was nothing more than a wannabe who was not a real Intel Officer for the Libyans. He had no information [about] Lockerbie, and I told the CIA all this in comments I made in my cables. He went back to Libya at the end of 1989 and I moved on to another assignment.  

In 1991, Giaka told the CIA that he had been exposed and the Libyans would kill him. When he was told he was useless to our intelligence services, he began making up stories. It was only when he needed desperately to get some financial and logistical support from the US to flee Libya in 1991 that he started telling the CIA things relevant to the Pan Am 103 bombing.

This fix was in, however, and Holt found his first-hand view of the case sidelined by his own agency. His cables which illuminated Giaka’s unreliability as a source were not shared by CIA with the Scottish court, while Langley declined to let Holt provide evidence at the trial. “We now all need to admit we got the wrong man, and focus on the real culprits,” Holt explained, pointing a finger at Bill Barr:

I have reason to believe there was a concerted effort, for unexplained reasons, to switch the original investigations away from Iran and its bomb-making Palestinian extremist ally the PFLP—General Command. Now we should focus a new investigation on the Iranians and their links with the bomber…I would start by asking the current attorney general, William Barr, why he suddenly switched focus in 1991, when he was also attorney general, from where clear evidence was leading, toward a much less likely scenario involving Libyans.

In May of this year, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ordered a fresh look into Abdelbaset el-Megrahi’s conviction. So far, this review has revealed claims that the prosecution presented a distorted version of the late Megrahi’s alleged role based on “cherrypicked” evidence in order to obtain a conviction. Bill Barr won’t be attorney general for much longer and he ought to avail himself of the opportunity to explain why credible information from veteran intelligence officers like John Holt was ignored to make a case against Megrahi, who may not be guilty of his supposed role in the murder of 270 innocent people.

Nearly a year ago, Attorney General Barr delivered remarks about the Pan Am 103 tragedy at a memorial service held at Arlington National Cemetery. He commemorated the dead of Lockerbie: “The Americans who died that day were attacked because they were Americans. They died for their country. They deserve to be honored by our nation.” Barr added that the case remains far from over for him: “In 1991, I made a pledge to you on behalf of the American law-enforcement community: ‘We will not rest until all those responsible are brought to justice.’ That is still our pledge. For me personally, this is still very much unfinished business.” The thirty-second anniversary of the Lockerbie attack is two weeks from today. If Barr meant what he said about resolving that tragedy’s unfinished business, John Holt’s testimony is an excellent place to commence the search for the full truth about what happened to Pan Am 103.

Libyan defector Giaka in the witness box

[On this date in 2000, the Crown’s “star witness” Abdul Majid Giaka started his evidence at the Lockerbie trial. TheLockerbieTrial.com reported as follows:]

Witness number 684, Abdul Majid Giaka, today finally stepped into the witness box at the Lockerbie Trial. His appearance at the trial had been delayed due to legal wrangling over CIA cables.

Today the accused Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the two Libyans charged with bombing Pan Am 103 came face to face once gain with the man billed by the Scottish Crown and the US Department of Justice as the star witness.

In a surprisingly brief and low key examination, Giaka was questioned by Advocate Depute Alistair Campbell QC, for the Crown.

Giaka said he contacted the US embassy in Malta in August 1988 (four months before the Pan Am attack) after becoming disillusioned with the Libyan security service. He stated that he had worked with the accused, for Libyan Arab Airlines and agreed to stay on at the airport and report to

the CIA monthly.

Earlier reports of these meetings show that while he was acting as a double agent his CIA handlers were not impressed with the quality of his information and were continually asking him for new material.

Giaka told the court that in August 1986, more than two years before the Lockerbie bombing, Fhimah showed him two bricks of what he said was the explosive TNT.

The TNT was in the drawer of a desk in an office they shared with another airline employee.

“Fhimah told me he had had 10 kg of TNT delivered by Abdel Basset (Megrahi). He opened the drawer and there were two boxes which contained a yellowish material,” Giaka said, adding Fhimah kept over $10,000 worth of travelers cheques.

The court referred to a CIA document dated October 5, 1988, in which Giaka recounted how the story of the explosives in the drawer had been relayed to CIA officers.

Continuing his testimony Giaka said Megrahi arrived in Malta from Tripoli on December 7, 1988, and had brought some cabin luggage with him. Two to three weeks later, Giaka said he saw Fhimah and Megrahi take a brown hard-shell suitcase off the carousel at Luqa.

Giaka said," They walked together toward customs. The suitcase was not opened for inspection.”

The witness then recounted another story where he remembered being asked by another Libyan Intelligence officer if it was possible to put an unaccompanied bag on a UK plane.

“My answer was that it was possible to place an unaccompanied bag on the flight,” Giaka said.

William Taylor QC for Megrahi then launched into a fierce cross-examination of Giaka forcing the Crown's star witness in to making several contradictory statements. Taylor was to prove relentless in his onslaught and during questioning, when Giaka would occasionally look over in the direction of the two US lawyers [RB: Brian Murtagh and Dana Biehl] who sit behind the Crown team, Taylor reminded him that they could not help.

Taylor had earlier objected to some of Giaka's testimony, calling it “tittle tattle and hearsay.”

“We’ll see many, many more examples of a story becoming embellished and changed to make it look better,” Taylor said as he highlighted more inconsistencies in Giaka's testimony.

Taylor will continue with his cross-examination followed by Richard Keen QC for Fhimah.

[A verbatim transcript of Giaka’s evidence can be found here.]

Promotions for prosecutors involved in CIA Giaka cables scandal

[What follows is the text of an item posted on TheLockerbieTrial.com on this date in 2000:]

The Lord Advocate [Colin Boyd QC] announced on Monday [9 October 2000] that Alan Turnbull QC, one of the senior Crown counsel at the Lockerbie trial, was being promoted to Home Advocate Depute. [RB: The Home AD was the most senior prosecutor in the Crown Office after the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General for Scotland.]

The announcement has come as a surprise to many including Turnbull himself, who has of late been keeping a very low profile at the Camp Zeist trial.

Turnbull's low profile in the courtroom has had a good deal to do with the results of his trips to the CIA "reading room" at the US Embassy in The Hague.

Accompanied by Senior Procurator Fiscal Norman McFadyen, Turnbull read through the secret text of numerous CIA documents.

Presumably both he and McFadyen decided that what was hidden behind the redacted versions of the CIA cables and shown to them was not relevant to the defence case or that it did not undermine the Crown case.

Subsequent events in court have shown that the text that lay behind the redacted cables was highly relevant to the defence. What compounded the problems for the prosecution was that Turnbull and McFadyen, knowing now what lay behind the some of the redactions, must also have known that the notations written along side the redacted areas which were supposed to describe in general terms what was hidden, turned out to be utterly misleading and bogus.

These notations were obviously designed to throw any interested party off the track of what really lay behind the blacked out sections of the cables.

Turnbull clearly was clearly involved in this exercise in preparation for the Crown's examination of the Libyan informer Giaka but that task fell to Advocate Depute Campbell and Turnbull took a back seat.

Turnbull and McFadyen, both highly experienced prosecutors, must have been aware that allowing this deception to go forward could be damaging to the Crown's relationship to the court, leaving aside the legalities and ethical consideration of their actions.

Sources close to the trial have told us that Alastair Campbell QC, was very concerned about this and was not prepared to allow this situation to go unresolved and his actions ensured that the defence was informed.

That Turnbull and McFadyen stayed silent on these matters for so long is a real cause for concern. We do know that they had to sign confidentiality documents before the CIA would allow them to see material and one could fairly ask if they had any authority to do so, bearing in mind the Crown's responsibility to the Court. What form of undertaking Turnbull and McFadyen gave the CIA should be made public. 

Given the background to these events, the timing of the announcement of Turnbull's promotion caused surprise in many quarters.

Informed sources have told us that that there are several members of the legal profession considering lodging formal complaints with the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland regarding the conduct of Alan Turnbull and Norman McFadyen in relation to the CIA cables. 

[RB: In March 2003 there was also promotion for Norman McFadyen. He became Crown Agent, the civil service head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. These two promotions tellingly illustrate just how seriously Lord Advocate Boyd took the Crown’s shameful behaviour over the CIA Giaka cables.

All four of the prosecution lawyers mentioned above are now judges in Scotland.]