A commentary on the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the murder of 270 people in the Pan Am 103 disaster.
Sunday 27 September 2015
Giaka's second day in witness box
Saturday 22 August 2015
The Crown and the CIA
When the trial resumed on Tuesday 22 August, the defence teams complained to the Court that they had just learned the previous day that certain CIA cables relating to the Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka, which they had thought had been made available to both the prosecution and the defence only in a censored or redacted form, had in fact been seen by members of the prosecution team on 1 June 2000 in uncensored or unredacted form. The defence contended that the principle of equality of arms enshrined in article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights required that the defence should have similar access to this material. The Crown opposed the defence's application. They conceded that it is the duty of a Scottish prosecutor to supply to the defence any material available to the prosecution which advances the defence case or is relevant to a defence attack on the credibility of a prosecution witness. However, in the course of the Crown's lengthy submissions, it was stated by the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, that the deletions from the versions of the cables supplied to the defence related only to matters which were (a) irrelevant both to the facts in issue in the Lockerbie trial and to the credibility of the witness Majid Giaka or (b) related to sensitive matters of United States national security. Indeed, it was for the purpose of ensuring that the Crown were in a position to fulfil their disclosure obligations that members of the Crown team inspected the unredacted cables on 1 June. To quote the Lord Advocate:
"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 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 at 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 or may be made, having regard to the special defence...
"There is nothing within these documents which relate to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid on these matters."
The Court was unimpressed by the arguments of the Lord Advocate and instructed him to use his best endeavours to secure the release by the CIA to the defence of the unredacted or uncensored cables.
These cables were in due course made available to the defence, and on Tuesday 29 August various excerpts from them were read out in open court by defence counsel in an attempt to convince the judges that further CIA cables relating to Giaka should be made available to the defence, if necessary by means of a request by the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist to the appropriate Federal Court in the United States of America for an order compelling the CIA to disgorge the relevant material. The Court, wishing to avoid the delays which would necessarily be caused by any recourse to the American courts, has instructed the Lord Advocate again to use his best endeavours to secure the release by the CIA of these additional cables. Only if he is unsuccessful will the Scottish Court reluctantly consider the option of a formal request through the American courts.
The previously blacked-out passages read out to the Court from the cables now in the hands of the defence indicated that, as at 1 September 1989 (more than eight months after the destruction of Pan Am 103), Giaka's CIA handlers were highly critical of him and of the lack of important information supplied by him. He is described in the now-revealed portions of the cables as a man in the business of selling information for his own benefit; as someone who will never have the penetration of Libyan intelligence services that had been anticipated; as someone who had never been a true member of Libyan intelligence; and as someone whose CIA salary of $1000 per month should be cut off if he supplied no significant information. It seems to be the natural inference from this that, by 1 September 1989, Giaka had still not informed his CIA masters that his Libyan colleagues in Malta had been responsible for the Lockerbie bombing: if he had done so, it is difficult to see how these criticisms of his value and of the worth of the information supplied by him could conceivably been made.
But apart altogether from that, if the excerpts read out in court on Tuesday 29 August and summarised in the preceding paragraph accurately reflect passages from the cables which had been blacked out from the versions originally supplied to the defence, it is somewhat difficult to appreciate how it could possibly have been accurate or justifiable for the Crown to state to the Court on Tuesday 22 August that the redacted or censored portions within the documents contained nothing "which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid."
Thursday 30 August 2018
The Crown and the CIA
When the trial resumed on Tuesday 22 August [2000], the defence teams complained to the Court that they had just learned the previous day that certain CIA cables relating to the Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka, which they had thought had been made available to both the prosecution and the defence only in a censored or redacted form, had in fact been seen by members of the prosecution team on 1 June 2000 in uncensored or unredacted form. The defence contended that the principle of equality of arms enshrined in article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights required that the defence should have similar access to this material. The Crown opposed the defence's application. They conceded that it is the duty of a Scottish prosecutor to supply to the defence any material available to the prosecution which advances the defence case or is relevant to a defence attack on the credibility of a prosecution witness. However, in the course of the Crown's lengthy submissions, it was stated by the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, that the deletions from the versions of the cables supplied to the defence related only to matters which were (a) irrelevant both to the facts in issue in the Lockerbie trial and to the credibility of the witness Majid Giaka or (b) related to sensitive matters of United States national security. Indeed, it was for the purpose of ensuring that the Crown were in a position to fulfil their disclosure obligations that members of the Crown team inspected the unredacted cables on 1 June. To quote the Lord Advocate:
"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 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 at 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 or may be made, having regard to the special defence...
"There is nothing within these documents which relate to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid on these matters."
The Court was unimpressed by the arguments of the Lord Advocate and instructed him to use his best endeavours to secure the release by the CIA to the defence of the unredacted or uncensored cables.
These cables were in due course made available to the defence, and on Tuesday 29 August various excerpts from them were read out in open court by defence counsel in an attempt to convince the judges that further CIA cables relating to Giaka should be made available to the defence, if necessary by means of a request by the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist to the appropriate Federal Court in the United States of America for an order compelling the CIA to disgorge the relevant material. The Court, wishing to avoid the delays which would necessarily be caused by any recourse to the American courts, has instructed the Lord Advocate again to use his best endeavours to secure the release by the CIA of these additional cables. Only if he is unsuccessful will the Scottish Court reluctantly consider the option of a formal request through the American courts.
The previously blacked-out passages read out to the Court from the cables now in the hands of the defence indicated that, as at 1 September 1989 (more than eight months after the destruction of Pan Am 103), Giaka's CIA handlers were highly critical of him and of the lack of important information supplied by him. He is described in the now-revealed portions of the cables as a man in the business of selling information for his own benefit; as someone who will never have the penetration of Libyan intelligence services that had been anticipated; as someone who had never been a true member of Libyan intelligence; and as someone whose CIA salary of $1000 per month should be cut off if he supplied no significant information. It seems to be the natural inference from this that, by 1 September 1989, Giaka had still not informed his CIA masters that his Libyan colleagues in Malta had been responsible for the Lockerbie bombing: if he had done so, it is difficult to see how these criticisms of his value and of the worth of the information supplied by him could conceivably been made.
But apart altogether from that, if the excerpts read out in court on Tuesday 29 August and summarised in the preceding paragraph accurately reflect passages from the cables which had been blacked out from the versions originally supplied to the defence, it is somewhat difficult to appreciate how it could possibly have been accurate or justifiable for the Crown to state to the Court on Tuesday 22 August that the redacted or censored portions within the documents contained nothing "which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid."
Friday 2 June 2017
Crown caught out misleading the court
Saturday 5 December 2020
Majid Giaka's CIA handler speaks out "after a lifetime of silence"
[What follows is excerpted from a report by Paul Martin headlined Former CIA agent reveals he was excluded from Lockerbie bombing inquiry published today on The Telegraph website:]
A former CIA agent has claimed he was excluded from the original Lockerbie bombing trial and that investigators should turn their attention to the "true culprit" – Iran.
John Holt, 68, says he was the author of secret cables showing that the Libyan double agent put forward by Scottish prosecutors as the star witness in the Lockerbie bombing trial had a history of "making up stories".
Mr Holt was never sent to the trial by his bosses, even though he had been the CIA handler for Libyan double agent and principal witness Abdul-Majid Giaka.
"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," he told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview.
"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."
Mr Holt spoke out for the first time as Scottish Supreme Court judges consider whether to quash the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who died of cancer in 2012. (...)
Giaka became a US asset after claiming he had information about Libyan involvement with terrorism while working as an assistant to the station manager of Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA) in Malta.
Explaining the key importance of his cables, Mr Holt said: "I handled Abdul-Majid Giaka in 1989 for a whole year during which he never mentioned Libyan involvement in the bombing.
"My cables 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 the CIA knew Giaka had a grudge against Megrahi.
"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 re 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 [the CIA and FBI], 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 PanAm-103 bombings – like hearing Megrahi and another man talking about a plan to bomb an American airliner." (...)
Mr Holt alleges he first realised there was an effort to distort the realities when called into the office of the CIA director George Tenet.
There, his description of Giaka was not included in the initial presentation of evidence to the trial. Later, summoned a second time to the director's office, his cables were thrust in front of him by FBI agents and he claims he was told to sign that they were written by him. He says no explanation was given. These were eventually released to the trial by the CIA, with some 'redaction', in 2000.
"Operational cables that I wrote did not get sent to the original trial," he revealed. "They were withheld by the CIA and the FBI, who – even when my cables did emerge – declined to let me give evidence to the Scottish court hearing, held in Camp Zeist near Utrecht.
"We now all need to admit we got the wrong man, and focus on the real culprits."
After 24 years of distinguished service with the CIA, Mr Holt has had deep concerns about speaking out. He has chosen his words with great caution, anxious to avoid accusations that he has leaked any secrets that could compromise his former agency.
"I'm speaking out now, after a lifetime of silence. But I feel deeply frustrated and I want justice to be done," he said.
Mr Holt believes intelligence services worldwide already have enough evidence to pinpoint the Lockerbie perpetrators.
"Whatever the Scottish Supreme Court decides, Britain should reopen the whole Lockerbie saga, have a heart-to-heart with the Americans, and go after Iran," he told The Telegraph.
"I have reason to believe that the three security agencies of the US Government were working on evidence pointing directly to Iran, before the Libyan connection was brought into play. I believe the US Government tried to hide evidence for political reasons, and Britain also was willing to go along with this.
"I have reason to believe that a crucial decision was made in 1991 by the US Justice Department and its enforcement arm the FBI: to drop all evidence pointing toward Iran and instead manipulate the evidence to place blame on Gaddafi's Libya. Gaddafi was a long-time nemesis to numerous US presidents."
Mr Holt feels that Americans were particularly keen to pin the blame for Lockerbie on Libya because of an ongoing feud. After the coup that brought Gaddafi to power, the Libyans had expelled American oil companies from oil drilling fields, and US forces from a massive American-built airbase constructed during the Cold War.
And in the 1980s the Gaddafi regime was suspected of being a massive danger to the West by developing a secret WMD programme.
He said the first thing British and US intelligence officers should do is demand access to the former chief of Libyan intelligence, Abdallah Senoussi, son-in-law of Colonel Gaddafi, who is still languishing in a Libyan jail under sentence of death.
Gaddafi and his henchmen were overthrown, with British military intervention, in 2011 and Senoussi, now aged 60, was convicted in 2015 for crimes against humanity that had no connection with Lockerbie.
"An interpretation is that the British and the US are not demanding to see him – because they already know Libya did not do it," says Mr Holt.
Monday 31 August 2015
CIA memos reveal doubts over 'key' Lockerbie witness
Thursday 31 August 2017
CIA memos reveal doubts over 'key' Lockerbie witness
Tuesday 25 September 2012
Deliberately false and misleading allegations, says rattled Crown Office
But the Crown Office yesterday branded the allegations “defamatory and entirely unfounded”. A spokesman added that one of the allegations had been investigated by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SSCRC) which found no basis for appeal, while it was also found there was “no basis” for claims that any police officers or officials fabricated evidence.
“It is a matter of the greatest concern that deliberately false and misleading allegations have been made in this way,” he added. The Lockerbie conviction has already been upheld by five appeal court judges, while Megrahi abandoned a second appeal.
[Justice for Megrahi has undertaken not to make public the allegations of serious wrongdoing in the Lockerbie investigation and prosecution until 30 days after the date of its letter (13 September 2012). However, since the article from which the following is excerpted has been in the public domain since its publication in The Scotsman on 23 July 2007, I see no reason not to reproduce it:]
The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction.
To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of 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 the Advocate Depute 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 more difficult, and perhaps impossible.
Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables. At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.
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. Second, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Majid... 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 or 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."
One judge, 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... 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 Majid on these matters."
Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.
[The allegations in Justice for Megrahi’s letter to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice are equally weighty and equally strongly founded on evidence.]