UK Lockerbie relatives lying and promoting fable, says Frank Duggan

On 14 November I posted on this blog a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in that day’s edition of The Herald.  It contained the following sentences: ‘Outside a recent presentation of the Scottish play The Lockerbie Bomber in Malta there was an installation with a rotating base carrying the words "Your government and mine know exactly what happened but they're never going to tell". These words were confided in 1989 to a British relative who, like me, had been invited to the US Embassy in London to hear the results of a US presidential inquiry into Lockerbie.’

In response, the President of the US relatives’ organisation Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 Inc, Frank Duggan, has sent out to me and others an email in the following terms:

“This never happened and the story has been peddled for 25 years. I served on the Commission (President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism 1989-90) and was at the meetings held in London and Scotland where the statement was allegedly made by one of us to the father of one of the flight attendants in 1989. We were charged with investigating how it was done, not who did it. Everyone had suspicions, but there was a criminal investigation, at that time the largest ever, that had this responsibility. No one really knew who did it in 1989, since the timer that turned the investigation toward Libyan terrorists was not found until a year later. A father of one of the American victims tried repeatedly to demonstrate that this statement was never made, and offered to show photographs of everyone on the trip to the person who claimed he heard this. The proponents of this fable are not interested in the truth and would rather repeat it to UK tabloids, self promoting bloggers, dubious experts in the case, and assorted nutcases. The story is a lie.”

If it comes to a competition between the credibility of Martin Cadman and Dr Jim Swire on the one hand and Frank Duggan on the other, I know which side I would unhesitatingly choose.

A longer account of Mr Duggan's views can now be found in this article in The Christian Science Monitor.

Behind the Lockerbie frame-up

[This is the headline over an article by Norm Dixon published on this date in 2001 on the Links website. It reads as follows:]

The eminent barrister Horace Rumpole has often noted that the “golden thread running through the history of British justice” is that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty by the prosecution “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Of course, Rumpole is a fictional character created by writer John Mortimer. As the verdict handed down in the Lockerbie bombing trial proves, the “golden thread” is just as fictional.

On January 31, the three Scottish lords sitting in judgement on the charges against two Libyans accused of planting the bomb that felled Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland on December 21, 1988, found Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi guilty of the murders of the 270 people killed in the disaster. Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty.

The nine-month trial was held in the Netherlands and conducted according to Scottish law. It was the result of an agreement between Libya and the US and British governments that finally allowed the trial — which had been stalled for almost five years by London's and Washington's insistence that the case be held in either the United States or Britain — to be heard in a “neutral” third country.

In their 82-page judgement, the three judges found that, despite “uncertainties and qualifications”, “there is nothing in the evidence which leaves us with any reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the first accused [Megrahi]”.

According to the judges, the evidence showed that Megrahi, Libyan Arab Airlines' security chief at Malta's Luqa airport, had purchased items of clothing from a shop in Malta that were of the same brand and type as those that forensics experts had determined were in the Samsonite suitcase that contained the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103. From the presence of these brands and types of clothes in the suitcase, the judges inferred that Megrahi had somehow succeeded in having the “item of baggage”, unaccompanied by a passenger, transferred from Malta, via Frankfurt, to London's Heathrow airport, where it was loaded onto the doomed aircraft.

The judges added that with “other background circumstances” — such as Megrahi's previous (and seemingly continuing) service with Libya's security organisation (JSO), his “association” with the Swiss company that manufactured a type of timer which the prosecution claimed was attached to the bomb and “his movements [between Malta and Libya] under a false name at or around the material time” — “a real and convincing pattern” formed.

Unexpected

Ian Bell wrote in the Scottish Sunday Herald on February 4, “Last week you would have been hard-pressed to find an Edinburgh lawyer willing to bet on any guilty verdict being reached at Camp Zeist. The same belief was evident, it is reported, in Whitehall.”

Robert Black QC, the highly respected professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh University who in 1994 first suggested the plan for a third country trial, told the BBC on February 4: “This was a very, very weak circumstantial case. I am absolutely astounded, astonished. I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish judge would convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such evidence.”

Michael Scharf, a law professor at the New England School of Law, agreed, telling the February 2 New York Times: “It sure does look like they bent over backwards to find a way to convict, and you have to assume the political context of the case influenced them.”

Even some of the British relatives of the Lockerbie victims were sceptical: “All we know from this trial is that one of the two was innocent. I think we should be grateful... But we have our doubts about the guilt of Megrahi”, Martin Cadman, whose son was killed in the disaster, told the February 2 London Independent.

Beyond reasonable doubt?

The prosecution case, and the judges' verdict, rested fundamentally on two points: it was Megrahi who purchased the clothes which were packed into the suitcase that contained the bomb, and that suitcase began its fateful journey in Malta rather than either Frankfurt airport or at Heathrow.

Yet, Megrahi was never positively identified as the man who purchased the clothing, the prosecution did not provide any physical or documentary evidence to link Megrahi to the suitcase or the bomb components, and no evidence was offered to prove that the suitcase began its journey in Malta, let alone that it was Megrahi who sent it on its way.

The guilty verdict hinged most on the testimony of Tony Gauci, the owner of the clothes shop in Malta. In their judgement, the judges stated: “We are nevertheless satisfied that his identification so far as it went of the first accused as the purchaser was reliable and should be treated as a highly important element in this case.”

In their verdict, the judges described the torturous path Gauci's “identification” of Megrahi had taken. The shopkeeper was first interviewed by police on September 1, 1989, and described the purchaser as being “six feet or more” in height and well-built. On September 13, he told police the man was about 50 years old.

Megrahi is five feet, eight inches tall, of medium-build and was 36-years-old in December 1988.

On September 14, 1989, Gauci was shown 19 photos and identified a man as being “similar” to the purchaser but added that the purchaser was 20 years older. The man's photo — who was not Megrahi — was included because police thought he resembled an artist's impression and an identikit portrait based on Gauci's description.

On September 26, 1989, Gauci viewed more photos and pointed out another man included at the suggestion of German police. On August 31, 1990, Gauci was shown 24 photos and pointed out a man who, he said, had a face with a similar shape and style of hair to the purchaser. It was not Megrahi.

On December 6, 1989, and again on September 10, 1990, Gauci was shown photos but did not identify anybody. Included both times were photos of Abo Talb, a Palestinian jailed in Sweden in 1989 for terrorist bombings. Yet, Gauci told the court that in late 1989 or early 1990 his brother had shown him a newspaper article about the Lockerbie disaster which included a photo of a man with the word “bomber” printed across it. Gauci said he thought it was the man that bought the articles from him or that it resembled the person who bought the clothes from him. The man was Abo Talb.

On February 15, 1991, police showed Gauci 12 photos. Gauci told police that all the men in the photos were younger than the purchaser. The police pressed Gauci to “allow for any age difference” and look again. He pointed to a photo and said the man “resembles the man who bought the clothing ... of all the photographs I have been shown, this photograph 8 is the only one really similar to the man who bought the clothing, if he is a bit older, other than the one my brother showed me [of Abo Talb].” Photograph 8 was Megrahi's 1986 passport photo.

Towards the end of 1998 or the beginning of 1999, Gauci approached police after he was shown a magazine article about the Lockerbie disaster which named Megrahi as a suspect. He told police that the photo of Megrahi in the article “looks like the man” he sold clothes to.

On August 13, Gauci picked out Megrahi from an identification parade with the words: “Not exactly the man I saw in the shop. Ten years ago I saw him, but the man who look a little bit like exactly [sic] is number 5”. At the trial, Gauci pointed to Megrahi and said he “resembles him a lot”.

The defence lawyers protested that Gauci's eventual, less than positive identification of Megrahi had taken place after the defendant's photo had been in the world news for years.

In their verdict, the judges admitted that Gauci “never made what could be described as an absolutely positive identification”. The judges defended their assessment of Gauci's “identification” with the incredible statement that, “There are situations where a careful witness who will not commit himself beyond saying that there is a close resemblance can be regarded as more reliable and convincing in his identification than a witness who maintains that his identification is 100% certain.”

Gauci was also unclear as to when the items were purchased. On the witness stand, he agreed the date was either November 23 or December 7, 1988. The prosecution insisted it was December 7 and in the verdict, the judges did too.

However, in his statements to police and in his testimony at the trial Gauci said that it had been, or was, raining when the purchaser entered the shop. The nearby Luqa airport's chief meteorologist testified that it did not rain on December 7, but did so on November 23.

Interestingly, before the indictment of the two Libyans, the press reported that the police had stated that the clothing had been purchased on November 23.

Why is this important? First, because Megrahi was in Malta on December 7 but investigators could find no evidence that he was there on November 23, and second, because Abo Talb, who Gauci first identified as the purchaser, might have been. Talb had visited Malta from Sweden in late October 1988. When he left on October 26, he flew to Sweden on a return ticket valid for one month, raising the possibility could have returned.

Talb, who testified at the Lockerbie trial, could only prove he was in Sweden until November 10 and most of December, including on December 7. Talb presented no evidence to prove he was in Sweden after November 10 and before December 5. It is therefore possible that Talb entered Gauci's shop on November 23.

In December 1989, it was reported in several major newspapers that Scottish police, in papers filed with the Swedish legal authorities, had named Talb as the suspect “in the murder or participation in the murder of 270 people”.

The judges, however, chose to declare that “there is some support for Abo Talb when he said that he remained in Sweden and did not return to Malta after 26 October 1988”.

PFLP-GC

Talb's possible involvement is in line with the defence team's argument that there was a more plausible — and simpler — theory of how the bomb-laden suitcase reached Heathrow than the prosecution's convoluted speculations.

Talb was a member of the Syria-based Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, which worked closely with another Syria-backed terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). On October 26, 1988 — less than a month before the Lockerbie disaster — West German police raided PFLP-GC safe-houses and seized Toshiba radio cassette players, explosives, detonators, timers, barometric pressure devices, as well as Pan Am timetables and unused airline baggage tags.

The cache suggested a plot to bomb an aircraft. A trade mark of the PFLP-GC's bombs at the time were that they were concealed within Toshiba radio cassette players. The bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 had been concealed in a Toshiba player, although a different model from that generally used by the PFLP-GC. That not all the PFLP-GC's stock of bombs had been discovered was proven when, in April 1989, three explosive devices were seized in a raid.

At first, US and British investigators also were convinced that the PFLP-GC — with the backing of the Syrian and Iranian governments — was the prime suspect in the Lockerbie disaster.

The FBI in April 1989 leaked news that the PFLP-GC had smuggled the bomb onto flight in Frankfurt. The Washington Poston May 11, 1989, reported that the US State Department had stated that the CIA was “confident” that the PFLP-GC had carried out the attack on behalf of the Iranian government. The attack was said to be in retaliation for the 290 pilgrims massacred while returning from Mecca when a US warship blew a Iranian passenger jet out of the sky as it passed over the Persian Gulf.

On December 16, 1989, the New York Times reported that Scottish investigators had announced that they had “hard evidence” that the PFLP-GC was behind the bombing.

In October 1990, US and British authorities suddenly did a backflip as the US build-up in the Gulf was gathering pace following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Investigators attention suddenly shifted from the Syria-backed PFLP-GC to Libya. In 1991, the two Libyans were formally indicted.

What changed between 1988 and 1991? Syrian dictator Hafiz Assad was an enthusiastic participant in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, whereas Libya's leader Moammer Qadhafi opposed the war and campaigned for a peaceful settlement.

The judges rejected this alternative theory, although they did “accept that there is a great deal of suspicion as to the actings of Abo Talb and his circle, but there is no evidence to indicate that they had either the means or the intention to destroy a civil aircraft in December 1988”.

This contention is based on the claim that the Lockerbie bomb was triggered by a Swiss-made timer of a type (MST-13) that had been supplied to the Libyan army in the mid-1980s. Yet the owner of the company that made the devices testified that MST-13s had also been supplied to the East German Stasi spy agency. East Germany is known to have harboured the PFLP-GC.

Despite the judges' proviso that “we are unable to exclude the possibility that any MST-13 timers in the hands of the Stasi left their possession, although there is no positive evidence that they did and in particular that they were supplied to the PFLP-GC”, their verdict stated that “the evidence relating to [the terrorist activities of the PFLP-GC] does not create a reasonable doubt in our minds about the Libyan origin of this crime”.

‘Major difficulty for Crown’

The judges' verdict doggedly insisted that “we are satisfied that it has been proved that the primary suitcase containing the explosive devise was dispatched from Malta, passed through Frankfurt and was loaded onto PA103 at Heathrow”.

Yet, the judges contradict themselves by admitting that there were no records that showed any unaccompanied baggage was carried on the flight to Frankfurt and that all luggage in Malta was checked by military personnel for the presence of explosives. The judges noted that the Luqa airport had a “relatively elaborate security system” and security procedures that “seem to make it extremely difficult for an unaccompanied and unidentified bag to be shipped on a flight out”.

The judges conceded that: “If therefore the unaccompanied bag was launched from Luqa, the method by which that was done is not established, and the Crown accepted that they could not point to any specific route by which the primary suitcase could have been loaded... The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [the Malta to Frankfurt flight] is a major difficulty for the Crown case.”

The judges' determination to deny that the bomb could have been introduced at a point other than Malta, and by a culprit other than Megrahi, led them to ignore that the security at Frankfurt airport was notoriously lax — something the US law enforcement authorities knew about at the time.

According to an October 30, 1990, US NBC television news report, “Pan Am flights from Frankfurt, including 103, had been used a number times by the [US Drug Enforcement Agency] as part of its undercover operation to fly informants and suitcases of heroin into Detroit as part of a sting operation to catch dealers in Detroit... Informants would put suitcases of heroin on the Pan Am flights apparently without the usual security checks ... through an arrangement between the DEA and the German authorities.”

The report stated that the DEA was investigating the possibility that a young man who lived in the US and regularly visited the Middle East may have unwittingly carried the bomb aboard flight 103.

An investigation commissioned by Pan Am's insurance company in 1989 also concluded that the most likely source of the bomb was that the PFLP-GC had infiltrated the DEA's protected drug smuggling operation and succeeded in having the bag containing the bomb placed on Pan Am 103 in Frankfurt.

Megrahi should have been found not guilty because the prosecution did not prove him guilty beyond “reasonable doubt”. A terrible miscarriage of justice has taken place because the three loyal servants of the British imperialist ruling class who sat in judgement on the fate Megrahi and Fhimah had already decided to find one of them guilty regardless of the facts.

The lords knew that the political stakes were too high to allow both Libyans to walk free. Such a verdict would have exposed the lies upon which nine years of UN sanctions, which have cost Libya US$33 billion and 10,000 lives, have been based. It would have also shed some light on the cynical, sleazy and embarrassing political operations that the US government is involved in throughout the world.

“They're never going to tell”

[On this date in 1990, members of President George [H W] Bush’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) met members of the families of UK Lockerbie victims at the US embassy in London. What follows is taken from the Wikipedia article Pan Am Flight 103:]

On 29 September 1989, President [George H W] Bush appointed Ann McLaughlin Korologos, former Secretary of Labor, as chairwoman of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) to review and report on aviation security policy in the light of the sabotage of flight PA103. Oliver "Buck" Revell, the FBI's Executive Assistant Director, was assigned to advise and assist PCAST in their task. Mrs Korologos and the PCAST team (Senator Alfonse D'Amato, Senator Frank Lautenberg, Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt, Representative James Oberstar, General Thomas Richards, deputy commander of US forces in West Germany, and Edward Hidalgo, former Secretary of the US Navy) submitted their report, with its 64 recommendations, on 15 May 1990. The PCAST chairman also handed a sealed envelope to the President which was widely believed to apportion blame for the PA103 bombing. Extensively covered in The Guardian the next day, the PCAST report concluded:

"National will and the moral courage to exercise it are the ultimate means of defeating terrorism. The Commission recommends a more vigorous policy that not only pursues and punishes terrorists, but also makes state sponsors of terrorism pay a price for their actions."

Before submitting their report, the PCAST members met a group of British PA103 relatives at the US embassy in London on 12 February 1990. Twelve years later, on 11 July 2002, Scottish MP Tam Dalyell reminded the House of Commons of a controversial statement made at that 1990 embassy meeting by a PCAST member to one of the British relatives, Martin Cadman: "Your government and ours know exactly what happened. But they're never going to tell." The statement first came to public attention in the 1994 documentary film The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie and was published in both The Guardian of 29 July 1995, and a special report from Private Eye magazine entitled Lockerbie, the flight from justice May/June 2001. Dalyell asserted in Parliament that the statement had never been refuted.

Release of Megrahi forecast

[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009:]

Lockerbie bombing prisoner to go free

[Most British daily newspapers today contain reports to the effect that compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi is imminent. The following are excerpts from the report in today's edition of The Herald, which is the longest and most detailed.]

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is expected to be released next week on compassionate grounds - nearly eight-and-a-half years after he was jailed for life for the murders of 270 people in the atrocity over Scotland.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who is in the terminal stages of prostate cancer, is expected to return home to Tripoli before the start of Ramadan on August 21. His return will also coincide with the 40th anniversary of the coming to power of Libya's leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The Herald understands a final decision on Megrahi will be made and announced by the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill next week.

The Scottish Government has strongly denied allegations that the prisoner and the recent Libyan delegation were given any suggestion that he should drop his appeal in order to win the right to return home. The decision will be based on Megrahi's deteriorating health and medical assessments.

However, he is expected to drop the appeal which began in April of this year. (...)

Originally it was thought that Megrahi would return home under a recent Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed with Libya. The Justice Secretary consulted with relatives of victims, Megrahi himself and the US State Attorney on this decision.

Prisoner transfer is thought to have been rejected as an option because it would be subject to judicial review and could lead to interminable delays. There is concern that Megrahi, who is serving a 27-year sentence in HMP Greenock, could die before the end of such a review and before the end of the current appeal. (...)

Martin Cadman, whose son lost his life in the Lockerbie bombing, last night welcomed news of Megrahi's imminent release.

"I've been waiting for it for a long time," he said. "First of all they were saying that Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah were accused, then Fhimah was found not guilty, and they were accused of acting with others, and as far as I know the Scottish authorities and everyone else has done nothing try and find who these others are. The whole thing is really very unsatisfactory for relatives like myself."

David Ben [Aryeah], who advised some of the UK families affected by the Lockerbie tragedy, said: "The majority of UK relatives have been extremely unhappy with the whole trial and the first appeal and what has been happening now. I was present the day of the verdicts and I was confused. So, I do not believe, and I will never believe, that this man was guilty of the crimes he was charged with.

"Of the American relatives, the vast majority are very quiet but a few very vocal ones have never accepted anything other than Megrahi's total guilt. Some of them, sadly, would like him to rot in prison for the rest of his days." (...)

History will be the judge if as expected Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, next week takes the decision to send the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing back to Libya on compassionate grounds.

The legal process which began almost 21 years ago will finally be over. Whether Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the atrocity, did or did not plant the bomb which exploded over Lockerbie may never be known.

[The Herald's contention that Mr Megrahi is expected to abandon his appeal if granted compassionate release and its assertion that once compassionate release is granted the legal process will be finally over are deeply worrying. What is the source of this expectation? The Scottish Government Justice Department has stated unequivocally, in correspondence with me, that it has never been suggested to Mr Megrahi or to his government that compassionate release was dependent upon, or could be influenced by, his agreeing to abandon his appeal. Mr Megrahi's stated position has always been that he wishes the appeal to proceed in order to clear his name, though if it came to a bald choice between clearing his name and being allowed to return to his homeland to die surrounded by his family, he would reluctantly choose the latter. That was the dilemma that faced him when prisoner transfer was the only option on the table. But compassionate release is not contingent upon abandonment of the ongoing appeal: that is precisely its advantage over prisoner transfer from the standpoint of both Mr Megrahi and the Scottish public interest. Why therefore are there still rumblings about the appeal being abandoned if compassionate release is granted?]

The truth about Lockerbie? That’s the last thing the Americans want the world to know.

By Tam Dalyell
Former Labour MP for Linlithgow and former Father of the House of Commons.

Why have US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her officials responded to the return of Megrahi with such a volcanic reaction? The answer is straightforward. The last thing that Washington wants is the truth to emerge about the role of the US in the crime of Lockerbie. I understand the grief of those parents, such as Kathleen Flynn and Bert Ammerman, who have appeared on our TV screens to speak about the loss of loved ones. Alas all these years they have been lied to about the cause of that grief.

Not only did Washington not want the awful truth to emerge, but Mrs Thatcher, a few - very few - in the stratosphere of Whitehall and certain officials of the Crown Office in Edinburgh, who owe their subsequent careers to the Lockerbie investigation, were compliant.

It all started in July 1988 with the shooting down by the warship USS Vincennes of an Iranian airliner carrying 290 pilgrims to Mecca - without an apology.

The Iranian minister of the interior at the time was Ali Akbar Mostashemi, who made a public statement that blood would rain down in the form of ten western airliners being blown out of the sky.

Mostashemi was in a position carry out such a threat - he had been the Iranian ambassador in Damascus from 1982 to 1984 and had developed close relations with the terrorist gangs of Beirut and the Bekaa Valley - and in particular terrorist leader Abu Nidal and Ahmed Jibril, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.

Washington was appalled. I believe so appalled and fearful that it entered into a Faustian agreement that, tit-for-tat, one airliner should be sacrificed. This may seem a dreadful thing for me to say. But consider the facts. A notice went up in the US Embassy in Moscow advising diplomats not to travel with Pan Am back to America for Christmas.

American military personnel were pulled off the plane. A delegation of South Africans, including foreign minister Pik Botha, were pulled off Pan Am Flight 103 at the last minute.

Places became available. Who took them at the last minute? The students. Jim Swire's daughter, John Mosey's daughter, Martin Cadman's son, Pamela Dix’s brother, other British relatives, many of whom you have seen on television in recent days, and, crucially, 32 students of the University of Syracuse, New York.

If it had become known - it was the interregnum between Ronald Reagan demitting office and George Bush Snr entering the White House - that, in the light of the warning, Washington had pulled VIPs but had allowed Bengt Carlsson, the UN negotiator for Angola whom it didn't like, and the youngsters to travel to their deaths, there would have been an outcry of US public opinion.

No wonder the government of the United States and key officials do not want the world to know what they have done.

If you think that this is fanciful, consider more facts. When the relatives went to see the then UK Transport Secretary, Cecil Parkinson, he told them he did agree that there should be a public inquiry.

Going out of the door as they were leaving, as an afterthought he said: 'Just one thing. I must clear permission for a public inquiry with colleagues'.

Dr Swire, John Mosey and Pamela Dix, the secretary of the Lockerbie relatives, imagined that it was a mere formality. A fortnight later, sheepishly, Parkinson informed them that colleagues had not agreed.

At that time there was only one colleague who could possibly have told Parkinson that he was forbidden to do something in his own department. That was the Prime Minister. Only she could have told Parkinson to withdraw his offer, certainly, in my opinion, knowing the man, given in good faith.

Fast forward 13 years. I was the chairman of the all-party House of Commons group on Latin America. I had hosted Dr Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, between the time that he won the election and formally took control in Bogota.

The Colombian ambassador, Victor Ricardo, invited me to dinner at his residence as Dr Uribe wanted to continue the conversations with me.

The South Americans are very formal. A man takes a woman in to dinner. To make up numbers, Ricardo had invited a little old lady, his neighbour. I was mandated to take her in to dinner. The lady was Margaret Thatcher, to whom I hadn't spoken for 17 years since I had been thrown out of the Commons for saying she had told a self-serving fib in relation to the Westland affair.

I told myself to behave. As we were sitting down to dinner, the conversation went like this. 'Margaret, I'm sorry your "head" was injured by that idiot who attacked your sculpture in the Guildhall.'

She replied pleasantly: 'Tam, I'm not sorry for myself, but I am sorry for the sculptor.' Raising the soup spoon, I ventured: 'Margaret, tell me one thing - why in 800 pages...'

'Have you read my autobiography?' she interrupted, purring with pleasure.

‘Yes, I have read it very carefully. Why in 800 pages did you not mention Lockerbie once?' Mrs Thatcher replied: 'Because I didn't know what happened and I don't write about things that I don't know about.'

My jaw dropped. 'You don't know. But, quite properly as Prime Minister, you went to Lockerbie and looked into First Officer Captain Wagner's eyes.'

She replied: 'Yes, but I don't know about it and I don't write in my autobiography things I don't know about.'

My conclusion is that she had been told by Washington on no account to delve into the circumstances of what really happened that awful night. Whitehall complied. I acquit the Scottish judges Lord Sutherland, Lord Coulsfield and Lord MacLean at Megrahi's trial of being subject to pressure, though I am mystified as to how they could have arrived at a verdict other than 'Not Guilty' -or at least 'Not Proven'.

As soon as I left the Colombian ambassador's residence, I reflected on the enormity of what Mrs Thatcher had said. Her relations with Washington were paramount. She implied that she had abandoned her natural and healthy curiosity about public affairs to blind obedience to what the US administration wished. Going along with the Americans was one of her tenets of faith.

On my last visit to Megrahi, in Greenock Prison in November last year, he said to me: 'Of course I am desperate to go back to Tripoli. I want to see my five children growing up. But I want to go back as an innocent man.'

I quite understand the human reasons why, given his likely life expectancy, he is prepared, albeit desperately reluctantly, to abandon the appeal procedure.

[This is the text of an article that appeared yesterday in the Scottish edition of The Mail on Sunday. It does not appear on the newspaper's website. Also not appearing there is a long article in the same edition by Marcello Mega headlined "Lockerbie: the fatal cover-up". If some kind reader were to send me a digital version, I would post it -- or excerpts from it -- here.

Marcello Mega's article is now available online. It can be read here.]

Flight 370 families deserve the truth, just as Lockerbie families do

[This is the headline over an article by Niall Fraser in today’s edition of the South China Morning Post.  It reads as follows:]

Barring dramatic overnight news, by the time you read this, more than a week will have passed since a Boeing 777 jetliner vanished over the South China Sea.

Our hearts go out those directly involved, the 239 souls on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and their loved ones waiting for news, who must be in a living nightmare.

The wait for facts and an explanation of what has happened must be as unbearable as it is heartbreaking.

It will come as no comfort to them, but they are not alone. And - at the risk of sounding insensitive - not even time might tell.

More than 25 years ago, on the evening of December, 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb blew apart Detroit-bound Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, killing 259 passengers and crew instantly. A further 11 people perished on the ground as burning wreckage and aviation fuel rained down on the tiny town of Lockerbie.

The man many - but by no means all - believe carried out the atrocity, Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, has already been jailed, released and died of cancer.

Yesterday, a documentary on the Al-Jazeera news network cast credible doubt over Megrahi's conviction, reporting that the bombing was carried out by Palestinian terrorists on the orders of Tehran as an act of revenge for the downing of a passenger jet full of Iranian civilians by the United States months earlier.

This theory is not new. Less than two weeks after Lockerbie, the newspaper I then worked for in Scotland reported the same story. In fact, it was a widely believed to be a credible turn of events, until, that is, it fell victim to the geopolitical machinations of the United States and United Kingdom, who "discovered" evidence that Libya - a much smaller and convenient suspect - did it.

Almost three decades have passed since Lockerbie and grieving families still ache for the truth. The nearest they came was not long after the Iranian theory was ditched in favour of Libya.

At a meeting in London, Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter, Flora, at Lockerbie was told [RB: It was actually Martin Cadman who was told] by a senior UK official: "Our government knows who did it, the US government knows who did it, but they're never going to tell you."

The families of flight MH370 must be given the truth - whatever it is.

We need to know the whole truth

[What follows is the text of a letter from Martin Cadman published in The Independent on this date in 1998. I cannot trace the letter of 7 December to which it is a response:]

Mervyn Benford is mistaken (letter, 7 December). As a signatory of the Montreal Convention, which it has not denounced, Britain is evidently content with the Libyan system and legally obliged to accept that Libya should try the two men accused of the Lockerbie bombing in Libya.

Under Article 7 of the Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation 1971, signed by Britain, Libya and the USA, a contracting state in whose territory an alleged offender is found shall, if it does not extradite him, be obliged without exception whatsoever and whether or not the offence was committed in its territory to submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution. That is the legal position. Morally and ethically Britain may take a different view.

As the father of a Lockerbie victim, my concern is not whether the two men, acting on their own or as agents for the Libyan state, contrived to get a bomb through all the checks in Malta, Frankfurt and Heathrow with or without assistance by others. My concerns are: why Pan Am 103 was blown up; how it was blown up given the intelligence services and aviation security systems, and how terrorism can be prevented by enabling people or countries with grievances, real or imagined, to get a fair hearing so that they are not driven to terrorism.

I hope that the present moves to get a trial in The Hague succeed. But the trial, whatever its outcome, would not alleviate by one little bit our pain. We need to know the whole truth and perhaps could then find some grain of comfort from that knowledge contributing to preventing acts of terrorism.

[Here is something that I wrote a few years ago about the Montreal Convention:]

On 27 November 1991 the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States each issued a statement calling upon the Libyan government to hand over the two accused to either the Scottish or the American authorities for trial in Scotland or the United States.  Requests for their extradition were transmitted to the government of Libya through diplomatic channels.  No extradition treaties are in force between Libya on the one hand and United Kingdom and the United States on the other.

Libyan internal law, in common with the laws of many countries in the world, does not permit the extradition of its own nationals for trial overseas.  The government of Libya accordingly contended that the affair should be resolved through the application of the provisions of a 1971 civil aviation Convention concluded in Montreal to which all three relevant governments are signatories.  That Convention provides that a state in whose territory persons accused of terrorist offences against aircraft are resident has a choice aut dedere aut judicare, either to hand over the accused for trial in the courts of the state bringing the accusation or to take the necessary steps to have the accused brought to trial in its own domestic courts.  In purported compliance with the second of these options, the Libyan authorities arrested the two accused and appointed a Supreme Court judge as examining magistrate to consider the evidence and prepare the case against them.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, the UK and US governments refused to make available to the examining magistrate the evidence that they claimed to have amassed against the accused, who remained under house arrest in Libya until they were eventually handed over in April 1999 for trial at Camp Zeist.

Lockerbie bombing prisoner to go free

[Most British daily newspapers today contain reports to the effect that compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi is imminent. The following are excerpts from the report in today's edition of The Herald, which is the longest and most detailed.]

Then man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is expected to be released next week on compassionate grounds - nearly eight-and-a-half years after he was jailed for life for the murders of 270 people in the atrocity over Scotland.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who is in the terminal stages of prostate cancer, is expected to return home to Tripoli before the start of Ramadan on August 21. His return will also coincide with the 40th anniversary of the coming to power of Libya's leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The Herald understands a final decision on Megrahi will be made and announced by the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill next week.

The Scottish Government has strongly denied allegations that the prisoner and the recent Libyan delegation were given any suggestion that he should drop his appeal in order to win the right to return home. The decision will be based on Megrahi's deteriorating health and medical assessments.

However, he is expected to drop the appeal which began in April of this year. (...)

Originally it was thought that Megrahi would return home under a recent Prisoner Transfer Agreement signed with Libya. The Justice Secretary consulted with relatives of victims, Megrahi himself and the US State Attorney on this decision.

Prisoner transfer is thought to have been rejected as an option because it would be subject to judicial review and could lead to interminable delays. There is concern that Megrahi, who is serving a 27-year sentence in HMP Greenock, could die before the end of such a review and before the end of the current appeal. (...)

Martin Cadman, whose son lost his life in the Lockerbie bombing, last night welcomed news of Megrahi's imminent release.

"I've been waiting for it for a long time," he said. "First of all they were saying that Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah were accused, then Fhimah was found not guilty, and they were accused of acting with others, and as far as I know the Scottish authorities and everyone else has done nothing try and find who these others are. The whole thing is really very unsatisfactory for relatives like myself."

David Ben [Aryeah], who advised some of the UK families affected by the Lockerbie tragedy, said: "The majority of UK relatives have been extremely unhappy with the whole trial and the first appeal and what has been happening now. I was present the day of the verdicts and I was confused. So, I do not believe, and I will never believe, that this man was guilty of the crimes he was charged with.

"Of the American relatives, the vast majority are very quiet but a few very vocal ones have never accepted anything other than Megrahi's total guilt. Some of them, sadly, would like him to rot in prison for the rest of his days." (...)

History will be the judge if as expected Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, next week takes the decision to send the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing back to Libya on compassionate grounds.

The legal process which began almost 21 years ago will finally be over. Whether Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the atrocity, did or did not plant the bomb which exploded over Lockerbie may never be known.

[The Herald's contention that Mr Megrahi is expected to abandon his appeal if granted compassionate release and its assertion that once compassionate release is granted the legal process will be finally over are deeply worrying. What is the source of this expectation? The Scottish Government Justice Department has stated unequivocally, in correspondence with me, that it has never been suggested to Mr Megrahi or to his government that compassionate release was dependent upon, or could be influenced by, his agreeing to abandon his appeal. Mr Megrahi's stated position has always been that he wishes the appeal to proceed in order to clear his name, though if it came to a bald choice between clearing his name and being allowed to return to his homeland to die surrounded by his family, he would reluctantly choose the latter. That was the dilemma that faced him when prisoner transfer was the only option on the table. But compassionate release is not contingent upon abandonment of the ongoing appeal: that is precisely its advantage over prisoner transfer from the standpoint of both Mr Megrahi and the Scottish public interest. Why therefore are there still rumblings about the appeal being abandoned if compassionate release is granted?]

Architect of Lockerbie trial attacks guilty verdict

[This is the headline over a report by Jenny Booth that was published in The Sunday Telegraph on this date in 2001. It reads as follows:]

The Scots law professor who masterminded the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands has launched a scathing attack on the judges for finding the defendant guilty on "very, very weak" evidence.

Professor Robert Black described the decision by three Scottish judges to convict Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, a Libyan secret serviceman, of the murder of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie as "astonishing". He warned that the bomber stands a better-than-average chance of being acquitted on appeal.

Professor Black, a former judge with 13 years' experience and Scotland's leading expert on criminal procedure and evidence, said that in his view the Crown case had failed to comply with strict Scottish legal rules - tougher than English law - that evidence be corroborated.

Professor Black said: "I thought this was a very, very weak circumstantial case. I am absolutely astounded, astonished. I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish judge would convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such evidence." Professor Black's reservations will fuel the concerns of bereaved families that, despite the criminal trial, the truth is yet to emerge about the

Lockerbie bombing.

At a hushed press conference in London the day after the verdict, Martin Cadman, whose son Bill died in the bombing, said: "We have our doubts about the guilt of Megrahi and that will have to remain the subject of any appeal to come. The appeal will hold uup for another year or so before we can have an inquiry into the truth of who was responsible and what the motive was."

The chief spokesman for the families, Dr Jim Swire, a former army explosives expert, produced a bomb timer to illustrate why he found it hard to believe the Crown's version of events. He said that the timing of the explosion, 38 minutes after the aircraft took off from Heathrow and while the jet was still over land, made the bomb more likely to have been detonated by a crude pressure-activated timer, such as those used by the Palestinian terror group operating
in Germany under the command of Ahmed Jibril, than by a sophisticated 999-hour electronic timer of the type bought by Libyan secret services from MeBo, a Swiss arms firm.

Professor Black's concerns are likely to be seized upon by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to back claims of Libya's innocence of the bombing.  Professor Black devised the unique format of the Lockerbie trial, which was held in a neutral country without a jury, and campaigned alongside the bereaved families for its acceptance by Libya, America and Britain.

Megrahi has a further 11 days to lodge an appeal, which would probably be heard in the same courtroom in Camp Zeist, in front of a bench of five judges, over about two weeks in late summer. The appeal bench is expected to be chaired by Lord Cullen, Scotland's second most senior judge. Under ordinary circumstances, barely a handful of appeals against conviction ever succeed in the Scottish courts, but Professor Black said that the unique circumstances of
the trial meant that Megrahi stood a better chance.