His faith in Scottish justice was understandably low

What follows is an item first posted on this blog on this date five years ago:

Fragments of truth

[This is the heading over an article in the current issue of the magazine Scottish Left Review by Mark Hirst (...) The full article can (and should) be read here. The following are excerpts.]

Earlier this year I met with the man convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in British history. Now back in Libya to await a verdict from a ‘higher court’, terminally ill Abdelbaset al Megrahi steadfastly maintains his innocence in the murder of 270 people over Lockerbie in December 1988. Many professionals involved in the case including US intelligence officers, legal experts and police investigators also share his view, in spite of the concerted propaganda efforts by vested interests in the Crown Office, FBI and US Justice and State Departments. Yet for reasons still to be fully explained by Megrahi, his defence or the Scottish Government, in August this year he dropped his second appeal and a week later Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill released him on compassionate grounds. That decision resulted in a hysterical reaction from representatives of some of the US relatives and somewhat half-hearted condemnatory slogans from the Obama led US Government.

Megrahi was not required to drop his appeal in order to qualify for compassionate release. He subsequently claimed in a newspaper interview after his return to Libya that no pressure was placed on him to do so. So why did he? When I, along with MSP Christine Grahame, met with him his focus had been very much on the detail of the case and the new evidence that would be led during his second appeal. But he made it clear that his priorities had changed since discovering he was terminally ill last year. His over-riding objective was to return to Libya and to see his family before he died. He understood fully why some, mostly UK victim’s relatives, were keen to see the appeal continue, but told us it would not take them any closer to the truth and who was ultimately responsible for the deaths of their relatives.

Megrahi literally was running out of time and was deeply concerned that he would, as he put it very directly, return to Libya in a wooden box in the hold of a cargo plane. I believe he was genuinely supportive of the need of relatives of victims to get to the ‘truth’, but those efforts were not going to bring him any closer to his family in Libya before he died. His faith in Scottish justice and the legal process he had been subjected to was understandably low. “If they have a brave judge who looks and says ‘good or bad’, ‘yes or no’, but I doubt that the chair of the judges, who chairs all the other judges in Scotland, will turn around and say that all the other judges [at the trial and the first appeal] before got it wrong.” Megrahi said, before adding, “They will want to show, to keep the integrity of the system, that they don’t care if they have to keep an innocent man in prison to do that.”

The integrity in the Scottish legal system, whether it deserves it or not, is right at the heart of this issue, because that is what is at stake if the complete truth behind this case emerges and that is why very prominent vested interests are even now working hard to close the case down. The latest spurious police investigation being just one example that will ensure no independent inquiry takes place any time soon. (…)

The message to Megrahi, whether made explicitly or not, appears to have persuaded him to drop his 18-year fight to clear his name. That view was confirmed when his defence counsel Maggie Scott QC addressed the High Court in August to confirm Megrahi was indeed dropping his appeal. Scott stated that her client believed that this action would “assist in the early determination of those applications”. Applications, plural. The link was made explicitly. Ultimately Megrahi was led to believe by vested interests in our own legal establishment that his only chance of returning home was by dropping his second appeal and to leave his family name forever associated with the bombing of Pan Am 103. That outcome is a scandal that will haunt the Scottish legal system in particular, for decades to come.

So was there a conspiracy? Perhaps, but there certainly has been a cover-up which is very much ongoing. A cover-up of the weakness of the evidence, the weakness of the criminal investigation and a cover-up of the shameful conclusions reached by three Scottish judges at the trial. (…)

Earlier this year Dutch filmmaker Gideon Levy completed an award-winning documentary, still to be shown in the UK, that proves that the then-Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of [Carmyllie] was unaware that the crucial fragment used to link Libya to the attack went to the United States FBI lab for examination. It now transpires it also went to West Germany, although despite recent Crown Office claims that movement was not explicitly made during the trial. Levy’s film includes interviews with the chief prosecutor in the case, Lord Fraser, the FBI’s Senior Investigating Officer Richard Marquise and Robert Baer who for 30 years worked in the Middle East Directorate of the CIA and was a senior US intelligence operative. What emerges during the course of Levy’s film is the staggering revelation that this crucial evidence was not properly secured by Scottish police and should never have gone to the US. The importance of this piece of evidence cannot be [overstated]. Marquise states that without the fragment, known as PT-35, there would have been no indictment, let along conviction of Megrahi.

Lord Fraser, who brought the original indictments against Megrahi is then asked if he was aware that PT-35 had ever been to the US. “Not to my knowledge... I would not have permitted this as it was important evidence that could have been lost in transit, or tampered with or lost,” He is then shown the interview with Marquise, who confirms the fragment did go to the US before the trial. Fraser responds; “Well this is all news to me”. Later in the film Levy challenges Marquise to clarify whether PT-35 was taken to the US without the knowledge of the Lord Advocate. Standing next to him is retired Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson, the senior Scottish investigating officer in the case. Marquise initially seems confused over whether PT-35 was taken to Washington, contradicting his earlier on-camera interview, before Henderson interrupts and states categorically that the fragment was never in the US. “It was too important to be waved around”, Henderson states. “It was never in the US, it was never out of Scottish control. They [The FBI] came to the UK to see it, but it was never in the US.” After filming Marquise emailed Levy to “clarify” and confirm that PT-35 was indeed in the US and apologised for the earlier confusion. It is clear that if Marquise did not understand the significance of PT-35s foreign movements then Stuart Henderson clearly did.

What has not yet been made public, until now, is that Stuart Henderson states in his precognition statement that he gave to the Crown, ahead of Megrahi’s second appeal, that the fragment, PT-35 definitely did go the US. Henderson states that on the 22nd of June 1990 he travelled to the US with the fragment accompanied by Chief Inspector McLean, DI Williamson and Alan Feraday of RARDE, the forensic explosives laboratory in Kent. According to Henderson’s statement to the Crown they met with Metropolitan Field Officers of the FBI and Thomas Thurman, the FBI official who, it is claimed later ‘identified’ the origin of the fragment. Thurman has a degree in political science and has no relevant formal qualifications in electronics or any other scientific field.

I have also seen one of the crucial productions that was to be led during Megrahi’s second appeal which is the official log that accompanied PT-35 and is meant to record each movement of the evidence in order to protect the evidential chain. At each point it is signed for by the relevant police officer. This is an extremely important process and is meant to ensure the chain of evidence is not broken. There is no entry in this log recording that PT-35 ever went to the US, at any point. That has to cast serious doubts over its integrity in light of Henderson’s precognition statement and the confirmation from the FBI’s Dick Marquise that the fragment was in the US prior to the trial.

Recruitment of the FBI's Lockerbie "golden informant"

[What follows is taken from an article headed Richard Marquise and his "Golden Informant" Majid Giaka - An Extract from "Enemies - A History of the FBI" by Tim Weiner posted yesterday on baz’s blog The Masonic Verses:]

Tim Weiner's recent book Enemies - A History of the FBI is a fascinating story of the creation of the FBI within the US Justice Department following American entry into the Great War, not for the purpose of criminal investigation but to counter the threat of radicals, anarchists and communists by means of dubious constitutionality. (...)

The author devotes six pages to an uncritical account of the Bureau's involvement in the Lockerbie case focusing on the role of the leader of the FBI taskforce (of 7 persons) Richard Marquise. (Tom Thurman is not mentioned.)

Marquise was recently quoted in the Dutch media in a story titled "The Lessons of Lockerbie" in relation to the shooting down of flight MH17 over the Ukraine. Marquise advocated the recruitment of a "Golden Informant" to solve the case just as he had done in the Lockerbie case (and by ignoring the actual evidence). Weiner's book gives a very interesting summary of how this "Golden Informant" Majid Giaka was recruited (page 372).

"Marquise needed to turn intelligence into evidence.  He needed a witness who would link Megrahi to the Samsonite suitcase with the Semtex.  He needed to find someone who knew that the suitcase carried the bomb from Air Malta to Pan Am 103.  He went back to the CIA. The Agency told him, belatedly, that it had once had a Libyan informant named Abdul Majid Giaka. He had gone on the CIA's payroll four months before Lockerbie. He was on it the night Pan Am 103 was bombed. But the Agency had dropped him a few months later, deeming him a fabricator milking his interrogators for money.

Marquise was dying to talk to Majid, no matter how dubious he seemed to the CIA.  In June 1991 the Agency flew him from a navy ship off the coast of Malta to give the FBI the chance to interview him in Virginia.  Justly wary of its informant, the CIA imposed one condition: don't tell anybody."  (Marquise immediately phoned Stuart Henderson.)  

"Majid was debriefed for at least two weeks during September 1991. He insisted that he knew three facts. He identified Megrahi as an intelligence officer serving as Libya's airline security chief. He said that Megrahi's subordinate in Malta had a cache of Semtex. And he said he had seen Megrahi with a large brown suitcase at the airport in Malta during the weeks before the Lockerbie bombing. Majid was without doubt an unreliable witness. But the FBI had faith that he was telling the truth on those three points. Marquise thought he had the foundation of a case that would stand up in court."

Giaka's account did stand up unchallenged before a patriotic US Grand Jury leading to the November 1991 indictment. However, it crumbled before even the Mickey Mouse Camp Zeist tribunal when in the defence team's finest hour they had admitted in evidence a large number of CIA cables regarding Giaka. What is astonishing is that Megrahi was actually convicted despite Giaka being discredited, a fact not mentioned in Mr Weiner's book.

Perhaps some of the parties to the MH17 atrocity will, (or have already) recruited their own "Golden Informant".

Marquise's wrote his own account of the Lockerbie investigation in his book Scotbom.  (Which I have never read.) Giaka of course never wrote his memoirs and has never been heard of since the close of the Camp Zeist trial.

I am afraid the only "Lesson of Lockerbie" for the families of those murdered on flight MH17 is how Governments fabricate evidence to suit their own political objectives regardless of the facts.

The crumbling Lockerbie case

[This is the headline over an article published today on the Consortium News website. It reads as follows:]

A quarter century ago, the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people and later was pinned on a Libyan agent. In 2011, Lockerbie was used to justify a US-backed war to oust Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, but the evidence now suggests the case was a miscarriage of justice, John Ashton writes.

Dec 21, 2013, marked the 25th anniversary of what, until 9/11, was the worst terrorist attack on US civilians. A total of 270 people died when Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the sky over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie; 189 of the dead were Americans.

Officially the crime was partially solved on Jan 31, 2001, when Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the murders by a panel of three senior Scottish judges, sitting at a specially convened Scottish court at Kamp Zeist in The Netherlands. His co-defendant, Lamin Fhimah, was acquitted.

As Megrahi was allegedly a puppet of the Gaddafi regime the Scottish and US prosecutors have vowed to pursue those who were pulling his strings. The ex-FBI Director Robert Mueller said on the 25th anniversary that he expected further charges to be brought. Yet, to most of those who have scrutinized the Megrahi conviction – and Consortiumnews.com is one of the few U.S. media outlets to have done so (see here, here and here) – it is, at best, odd and, at worst, a sham.

One of the UN trial observers, Professor Hans Koechler, noted: “there is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime. In such a context, the guilty verdict in regard to the first accused appears to be arbitrary, even irrational,” while eminent Scottish lawyer Ian Hamilton QC has said, “I don’t think there’s a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr Megrahi was justly convicted.”

More importantly, in 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, a statutory body that reviews alleged miscarriages of justice, referred the conviction back to the appeals court on no fewer than six grounds, one of which was that the trial court’s judgment was unreasonable. Shockingly, four of the other grounds concerned the non-disclosure of important evidence by the prosecution. Sadly, Megrahi succumbed to pressure to abandon the appeal, shortly before his release from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2009.

More Promising Leads

Another reason to doubt the official line that the bombing was a solely Libyan operation is that there is ample circumstantial evidence that it was commissioned by Iran (possibly in retaliation for the U.S. military shoot-down of an Iranian airliner on July 3, 1988, killing 290 people) and carried out by a radical Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).

Two months before the Pan Am 103 attack, on Oct 26, 1988, the group was caught red-handed by the German federal police with a barometric bomb designed to explode at altitude. The police also uncovered a huge terrorist arsenal, which the group had amassed in an apartment in Frankfurt, the city from which PA103’s feeder flight, PA103A, would originate. Like the Lockerbie bomb, the barometric bomb had been built into a Toshiba radio cassette player. Although it was a single-speaker model – the Lockerbie device had twin speakers – by a rather sick twist, both models were from Toshiba’s BomBeat range.

The man who made the German bomb, Marwan Khreesat, turned out to be a mole for both the Jordanian and German intelligence services. He told the police that he had made five bombs, only four of which were recovered. He and another PFLP-GC member, Mobdi Goben, who led the group’s Yugoslavian cell, confirmed that the organization had other bomb makers and that the Oct 26 raids did not snare all of its German operatives.

Significantly, both men independently named a member with the nomme de guerre Abu Elias as the operation’s linchpin. His true identity remains unknown. Declassified U.S. intelligence documents stated as fact that Iran and the PFLP-GC were behind the bombing. Another, written months after the investigation had shifted decisively to Libya, said that Iranian interior minister had paid $10 million for the hit.

The increasingly rickety “Libya-did-it” line appeared to receive a much-needed boost 2½ years ago with the fall of the Gaddafi regime. At the start of the revolution, in early 2011, the opposition leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who had been Gaddafi’s justice minister, told the Swedish newspaper Expressen that he had proof that his old boss was responsible for Lockerbie. Other senior government defectors implicated the old regime in the bombing.

So, when Scotland’s prosecution service, the Crown Office, announced that it would be seeking the cooperation of the new Libyan government to gather evidence against Megrahi’s alleged co-conspirators, Lockerbie watchers were braced for some rapid developments.

Getting Nowhere

Unfortunately for the Crown Office and police, in the intervening 2½ years, they appear to have got precisely nowhere. Last December, Libya’s new UK ambassador, Mahmud Nacua, said that his government would be happy to open all of its Lockerbie files to the police, but added that this would only happen when the government had fully established security and stability – a process he believed would take at least a year. A year on, there’s no hint that the files are about to be opened.

It was not until February 2013 that the police, prosecutors and the FBI got to visit Tripoli to speak to the new government. Embarrassingly, no sooner had they left than the new deputy justice minister, Hameda al-Magery, told the Daily Telegraph that the case was closed.

The Crown Office swiftly issued a press release, which described the discussions with the Libyans as “positive” and added “it is hoped there will be further progress as a result.” That hope seems increasingly forlorn. Only last month did the Libyan government appoint prosecutors to work on the case with Scottish and US investigators.

The development was hailed as a “significant step” by Scotland’s chief prosecutor, the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland. That is one interpretation, but, when viewed as a whole, the events since Gaddafi’s fall suggest that the Libyans might be trying to put off the day when they have to admit to the Scots and FBI that the cupboard is bare: they have no evidence of the Gaddafi regime’s involvement.

Since Gaddafi’s fall, the only document about the case to surface publicly from his regime’s files is a letter from Megrahi to his relative, Gaddafi’s security chief Abdullah Sennousi, in which, according to the Wall Street Journal, he protested his innocence and blamed his plight on “the immoral British and American investigators” who “knew there was foul play and irregularities in the investigation.”

What, then, of Mustafa Abdel Jalil’s proof? When asked about it on BBC Newsnight, the best he could offer was the fact that Gaddafi’s government had paid Megrahi’s legal bills. A year later Jalil insisted in another newspaper interview that Expressen had misquoted him, adding: “All I said then is what I say right now, which is that the regime was involved in this case, evident by insisting [Megrahi] returns [to Libya] and that they spent a lot of money on him while he was in jail.”

It was preposterous to claim that the old regime’s funding of Megrahi’s legal defense, and its efforts to secure his return to Libya, was evidence of its guilt.

Exonerating Evidence

While the police investigation in Libya has stalled, the police and Crown Office are studiously ignoring new evidence that destroys the case against Megrahi and Libya. It concerns the most important physical evidence of the entire case, a tiny fragment of circuit board, known by its police reference number of PT/35b, which was allegedly part of the bomb’s timer.

According to the prosecution case, the fragment matched boards in timers designed and built for the Libyan intelligence service by a Swiss firm called Mebo. During preparations for Megrahi’s aborted second appeal, his legal team (with whom I worked as a researcher) discovered that the fragment could not have originated from one of the Libyan timers’ boards, because it bore a crucial metallurgical difference.

When combined with a wealth of existing anomalies concerning the fragment’s provenance, the discovery strongly suggested that it was a fake that was planted in order to implicate Libya. According to the published memoir of the head of the FBI’s Lockerbie investigation, Richard Marquise, his opposite number in the Swiss police also suspected the fragment was a plant.  The thought even occurred to Marquise and the Scottish police’s senior investigating officer, Stuart Henderson.

Why, then, have the Scottish police and Crown Office failed to approach the witnesses who can attest to the mismatch between the fragment and the Libyan timers – witnesses who include the man who made the boards used in the those timers, and two independent scientists? The obvious answer is that they want to avoid evidence that shows the official case to be built on sand.

John Ashton, who worked as a defense investigator on the Pan Am 103 case, is the author of Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters.

Megrahi biographer John Ashton and the Crown Office

[On his Megrahi: You are my Jury website John Ashton has today published an item headed Information is free but everywhere it is in chains.  It reads in part:]

On 18 February this year I sent the following request to the Crown Office press office, which forwarded it to the CO’s freedom of information unit:

I am writing about the Lockerbie bombing and would be grateful if the Crown Office would answer some questions about the following important items of documentary evidence.

PT/82 and PT/88

These documents contain the results of tests conducted on various pieces of Lockerbie debris at the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE). PT/82 contains, inter alia, results of metallurgy tests conducted on the fragment of circuit board PT/35b, while PT/88 contains, inter alia, the results of similar tests conducted on a control sample circuit board, DP/347a, which the police had obtained from the Swiss company Mebo and which was from the same manufacturing batch as those used in the Mebo timers that were supplied to Libya. The tests established that there was a very significant dissimilarity between the two items, namely, that the circuitry of PT/35b was plated with pure tin, whereas the circuitry on DP/347a was plated with an alloy of 70% tin and 30% lead. The documents each contain a handwritten note by RARDE scientist Allen Feraday, dated 1.8.91, which confirm the results. The pure tin plating of PT/35b would have required an entirely different manufacturing process to that used to plate DP/347a. Together the two documents contradict Mr Feraday’s claim, which he made in his forensic report for the Crown and repeated in evidence at trial, that PT/35b’s ‘materials and tracking pattern’ were ‘similar in all respects’ to those of DP/347a. The documents each have a Dumfries and Galloway police label dated 8 November 1999.

Questions:

1) Were the documents passed by the police to the prosecution team prior to the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah?

2) If they were, why were they not disclosed to the defence?

3) Who made the decision not to disclose the documents to the defence?

D8624
This document contains, inter alia, two versions of a memorandum from Detective Inspector William Williamson to Senior Investigating Officer Stuart Henderson, the first dated 16.3.90 and the second 3.9.90. Both of these reported upon scientific tests conducted on PT/35b as part of the investigation of its origin. Both state:

‘Without exception it is the view of all experts involved in the PCB [printed circuit board] Industry who have assisted with this enquiry that the tin application on the tracks of the circuit was by far the most interesting feature. The fact that pure tin rather than a tin/lead mixture has been used is very unusual.’

None of the material disclosed to the defence pre-trial contained similar references to the fact that PT/35b’s pure tin plating was ‘very unusual’.

Questions:

4) Was D8624 passed by the police to the prosecution team pre trial?

5) If it was, why was it not disclosed to the defence?

6) Who made the decision not to disclose it to the defence?

Statement S3743A by Detective Inspector Watson McAteer
In this statement DI McAteer reported:

‘About 1000 hours on Friday, 22nd September, 1989, along with the B.K.A. Airport enquiry team and F.B.I. special agent Whittaker, I visited the V3 interline station, located within the airfield at Frankfurt Airport. During the course of this visit I observed two operators using Gate Number 206.  These operators worked as a team with one unloading baggage from the wagon onto the conveyor belt which feeds through to his colleague who remains seated within the coding gate booth.  The coder then examined the luggage Tags on each piece of luggage prior to keying the details into the computer system.  After completing this task, when the wagon had been completely unloaded, the coder entered the details on a work sheet located next to the key board within the coding gate.  When this particular operation had been completed both workers walked away from the gate leaving it completely unattended, with the computer switched on and operable.  Within the space of one minute, I observed a V3 worker carry a single suitcase from a batch located some fifty yards from gate 206 to that particular gate.  This worker entered gate 206 coding booth and after keying details into the computer sent the single piece of luggage into the system.  This operation was started and completed in less than fifteen seconds with no entry being made on the work sheet which was still in situ within the gate. Through FBI agent Whittaker I questioned the FAG supervisor Herr Zimmerman regarding this practice.  Herr Zimmerman reluctantly agreed that such a practice was not unusual.’

At trial the defence called Mr Whittaker as a witness and questioned him about this incident. When asked if he mentioned the incident to anyone, Mr Whittaker said only that he had discussed it with DI McAteer and, within a day or two, the BKA.   Under cross-examination by Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC, he said he couldn’t be certain that the baggage handler who keyed in the single item of baggage had not filled out the worksheet.  Asked, ‘Do I take it that you would not be close enough to see whether this particular worker made an entry in a notebook?’ he replied, ‘It would be very likely that that could have been missed, yes.’

If the prosecution team had been in possession of S3743A, they should have been aware that: a) DI McAteer expressed no doubts that baggage handler who keyed in the single item had not recorded the transaction on the worksheet; b) according to DI McAteer, Mr Whittaker discussed the incident, not only, with the BKA, but also with a FAG supervisor; and c) according to DI McAteer, the supervisor described the practice as not unusual – a very significant admission when viewed in context.

If the statement had been disclosed to the defence, they would have been able to challenge Mr Whittaker’s evidence and make stronger submissions in respect of the possibility that the primary suitcase was ingested at Frankfurt airport.

Questions:

7) Was S3743A passed by the police to the prosecution team pre trial?

8) If it was, why was it not disclosed to the defence either before, or after, Mr Whittaker testified?

9) Who made the decision not to disclose it?

I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

John Ashton.

Under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act, the Crown Office should have responded within 20 working days, unless it needed to consider the public interest test, in which case it should have informed me within that 20-day limit. It failed to respond until 19 June, when it sent me this refusal notice from John Logue, the senior procurator fiscal for the East of Scotland, who was formerly a member of the Lockerbie prosecution team.  The key passage reads:

We do endeavour to provide information whenever possible. However, in this instance an exemption under section 34(1)(a) of the 2002 Act applies to all the information requested.

The exemption covers information which has been held by a Scottish public authority for the purpose of an investigation into criminal matters whether the public body is the prosecuting authority or has an obligation to make a report to the Procurator Fiscal. In particular, it exempts information which at any time has been used for the purposes of:

• an investigation an authority has a duty to conduct to ascertain whether a person should be prosecuted for an offence;

• an investigation which may lead to a report to the procurator fiscal in connection with possible criminal proceedings; and

• criminal proceedings instituted in consequence of such a report.

Your questions relate to the steps taken by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in relation to four documents during the preparation of the prosecution of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing and murder of 270 people. Information held in relation to the submission of evidence to the Procurator Fiscal and its consideration for disclosure is information which falls within the terms of section 34(1)(a).

As the exemption is conditional we have applied the ‘public interest test’. This means we have, in all the circumstances of this case, considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption. While we recognise that there is some public interest in release because it relates to the Lockerbie bombing which remains a significant event in Scotland and to Mr Megrahi’s conviction, this is outweighed by the public interest in withholding information because of the ongoing criminal investigation into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi in the bombing and the possibility of further legal proceedings in relation to Mr Megrahi’s conviction.

The ‘possibility of further legal proceedings in relation to Mr Megrahi’s conviction’ is presumably a reference to the current police investigation into the complaints of alleged criminal misconduct made by the committee of Justice for Megrahi. Revealing why the documents were not disclosed, and who made the decisions, could not possibly jeopardise ‘the ongoing criminal investigation into the involvement of others’. It might well, of course, jeopardise the reputations of the Crown Office and its officers.

I am entitled to request an internal review of the refusal, but the likelihood of one of Logue’s colleagues overturning his decision is minimal. Section 47(1) of the act allows a right to appeal internal review decisions to the Scottish Information Commissioner, however, handily for the Crown Office, section 48 exempts it from that provision. In other words, the Crown Office is the final arbiter on whether or not its information should be made public. No other Scottish public authority enjoys this privilege.

The current issue of Private Eye carries the following article on the story (...)  [RB: the article can be read here.]

Lockerbie: Seven new Libyans named (by Sunday Express)

[This is the headline over an article by Ben Borland and Bob Smyth in today’s edition of the Sunday Express. It reads as follows:]

A new 'all-star' squad of Scottish detectives will take over the Lockerbie bombing investigation, with the pursuit now likely to focus on seven key Libyan fugitives from justice.

At least two of the men are now dead, killed during the 2011 uprising against Colonel Gaddafi, but the search for the remaining suspects is set to become an unprecedented international manhunt.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced last week that British police will conduct inquiries in Libya for the first time, in a bid to clear up the remaining questions surrounding the December 1988 atrocity.

When the new Police Scotland force is formed on April 1, the case will pass from Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary to a team of specialist officers gathered from every area of Scottish law enforcement working directly for Chief Constable Stephen House.

So far, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi - who died of cancer last year - remains the only man ever convicted of murdering the 270 people who died on board Pan Am Flight 103 and in Lockerbie.

His co-accused and fellow Libyan intelligence officer, Lamin Fhimah, was found not guilty after a historic trial under Scots Law at The Hague in 2000.

However, the prosecution also named seven other co-conspirators - at least two of whom are now dead - who were also involved in planning the attack.

These agents in Colonel Gaddafi's feared secret service, the JSO, can today be named as Nasser Ali Ashour, Mohammed Abouagela Masud, Said Rashid, Ezzadin Hinshiri, Badri Hussan, Mohamed Marzouk and Mansour Omran Saber.

In 2009, Stuart Henderson, a former detective chief superintendent who led the Lockerbie probe for four years, said his team had asked to interview eight other "strong suspects" but been blocked by the Gaddafi regime.

He said: "We submitted eight other names of people that we wished to interview that were strong suspects. Unfortunately, we never got that opportunity."

The eighth man is thought to be former spy chief Abdullah Senoussi, who is facing imminent trial and a possible death penalty in Libya alongside Saif Gaddafi.

In addition, now that the law on double jeopardy has been scrapped, the Crown Office could bring fresh charges against Fhimah, who is known to still be in Tripoli.

The Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland QC, has already travelled to Libya, along with US investigators, to meet members of the new Libyan regime.

Detectives from Dumfries and Galloway are expected to follow in March, before the case comes under the remit of the new nationwide force.

A Police Scotland spokesman said: "The Lockerbie investigation will clearly continue beyond the transition date of the current forces including Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary into the single service. The service is committed to the investigation.

"The experience and knowledge of officers who have been involved in the case as well as the expertise and specialisms from other parts of the wider service will continue to be applied to the inquiry as has always been the case."

Meanwhile, it has emerged that a series of secret court hearings in Malta were focused on gathering evidence about the additional bombing suspects.

The hearings, requested by Scottish prosecutors, were held in September behind closed doors, with security so tight that courtroom peepholes were covered over with envelopes.

A source close to the Maltese judicial authorities has now revealed the probes were focused on gathering evidence into a mystery "third man".

The most likely candidate is Masud, who worked with Megrahi and Fhimah in Malta - where prosecutors said the bomb that brought down Flight 103 was planted at Luqa Airport.

One Lockerbie expert said: "It's possible they are looking at Masud, who allegedly arrived in Malta with Megrahi and was said to have been with him when he flew out of the country on the day of the bombing.

"He was also accused of plotting with Megrahi to mount an operation in Africa.

"I don't think the police ever found him."

Masud and several of the other suspects were first linked to the Lockerbie case by controversial CIA informant Majid Giaka.

The junior Libyan intelligence officer, who was on secondment at Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), claimed he saw Masud arriving at the airport in Malta with Megrahi in December 1988.

He alleged they met Fhimah and collected a suitcase from baggage reclaim resembling the Samonsite case which contained the bomb.

Justice for Megrahi campaign member Professor Robert Black, a lawyer who was the architect of the original Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands, said:

"It looks like the Crown Office is trying to shore up the Malta connection, which is pretty weak."

A Crown Office spokeswoman said: "The investigation into the involvement of others with Megrahi in the Lockerbie bombing remains open and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary continues to work with Crown Office and US authorities to pursue available lines of inquiry."

The seven agents:

- Nasser Ali Ashour, the 'Armourer'. A "smooth, cultured" spy who supplied Semtex and guns to the Provisional IRA for Gaddafi in the 1980s. Adrian Hopkins, the Irish skipper who helped smuggle the arms, told French police: "He spoke English with a very distinguished accent. He never looked you in the face, likes to parade, has small feet, wears Italian shoes, drinks whisky but does not smoke." He managed Libya's network of agents in the Mediterranean and hunted down Libyan dissidents throughout Europe. Now aged 68, his whereabouts are unknown.

- Mohammed Abouagela Masud, the 'Technician'. Introduced to a CIA undercover agent as an airline technician, he worked with Megrahi and Fhimah in Malta where the bomb was allegedly planted on a feeder flight in an unaccompanied Samsonite suitcase. The evidence against Masud is thought to have been the subject of secret court hearings held behind closed doors in Valletta last year, at the request of the Crown Office. His whereabouts are unknown.

- Said Rashid, the 'Assassin'. A former head of JSO's operations section and close friend of Gaddafi who went on to become a powerful government figure. He was killed in a shoot-out with rebels in February 2011 following a speech by the dictator's son, Saif. In 1983, Rashid was arrested in France in connection with the murders of Libyan dissidents in London, Bonn and Rome, but later released.

- Ezzadin Hinshiri, the 'Diplomat'. Another senior JSO figure who became a top official and one of Gaddafi's most loyal lieutenants. He was killed along with 52 other regime supporters in an infamous massacre at a seafront hotel in Sirte in the final days of the uprising in April 2011.

- Badri Hussan, the 'Businessman'. Set up a front company with Megrahi and rented an office in Zurich from Mebo, the Swiss firm linked to the timers used in the bombing. The firm's co-founder, Edwin Bollier, told the Lockerbie trial that he delivered a suitcase from Hussan to Hinshiri in Tripoli on December 17, 1988 - just days before the terror strike. Whereabouts unknown.

- Mohamed Marzouk and Mansour Omran Saber, the 'Missing Links'. Arrested at Dakar airport in Senegal in February 1988 with Semtex, TNT and bomb triggers. They were released without charge. In 1991, a "brilliant, young" CIA analyst realised the triggers matched those used in the Lockerbie bombing, changing the entire course of the investigation. Whereabouts unknown.

[A long article entitled Lifting the lid on Libya's secrets by Eddie Barnes is to be found in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday.

An interesting addendum to the Sunday Express article is to be found on the Malta Today website.  The relevant paragraphs read as follows:]

Scottish detectives are said to be focusing their inquiries on seven key Libyan fugitives from justice, among whom a 'third man' who allegedly arrived in Malta with convicted terrorist Abdelbaset Megrahi, and was said to have been with him when he flew out of the country on the day of the bombing in 1988.

A series of secret court hearings in Malta were reportedly focused on gathering evidence about the additional bombing suspects.

The hearings - requested by Scottish prosecutors - were held last September behind closed doors, and was said to have been aimed at  gathering evidence into a mystery 'third man' connected to the bombing.

According to sources, the most likely candidate is Masud, who worked with Megrahi and Fhimah in Malta - where prosecutors still insist that the bomb that brought down Flight 103 was planted at the old Luqa Airport.

Known as 'the technician' after being introduced to a CIA undercover agent as an airline technician, Masud worked with Megrahi and Fhimah at the Libyan Arab Airlines offices in Malta, where the bomb was allegedly planted onto a feeder flight inside an unaccompanied suitcase.

One Lockerbie expert told a Scottish newspaper today that "it's possible they are looking at Masud, who allegedly arrived in Malta with Megrahi and was said to have been with him when he flew out of the country on the day of the bombing. He was also accused of plotting with Megrahi to mount an operation in Africa. I don't think the police ever found him."

Masud and several of the other suspects were first linked to the Lockerbie case by controversial CIA informant Majid Giaka. [RB: The Zeist judges held Giaka to be wholly unworthy of credit and excluded the whole of his evidence from consideration -- except his evidence relating to the structure and personnel of the Libyan intelligence services. The judges gave no reason for accepting his evidence on these matters.]

The junior Libyan intelligence officer, who was on secondment at Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), claimed he saw Masud arriving at the airport in Malta with Megrahi in December 1988.

He alleged they met Fhimah and collected a suitcase from baggage reclaim resembling the Samonsite case which contained the bomb.

[What follows is an excerpt from a report on the website of The Malta Independent:]

Former FBI assistant director Buck Revell, who oversaw that agency’s Lockerbie investigation until 1991, told The Scotsman newspaper this week: “The two individuals initially charged were not the only people involved. So there’s no doubt that this was approved by Gaddafi and everyone in the chain of command below him.

“There are documents, witnesses and other evidence that they can obtain in the intelligence service, or the military, or from other individuals involved in support organisations.

“I expect much, if not most, of it has been destroyed, but maybe some was saved.”

He added: “The crime itself is such that I don’t believe this case should ever be closed.”

However, British relatives of victims of the bombing of the Pan Am flight 103 who have protested that Megrahi was innocent are sceptical of what might be achieved in Libya.

Mr [Frank] Mulholland [the Lord Advocate] told the families that he intended to send police to the country in February last year, two months before he himself visited.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora, 23, died in the bombing, said: “He told us how he was going to send officers to Tripoli to try and find out more.

“Anyone who tries to gather evidence from modern day Libya should be careful. The interim government wishes to place every conceivable blame on the Gaddafi administration.”

Reverend John Mosey, who lost his daughter, Helga, 19, in the bombing, added: “I would be extremely sceptical about what could be found in those blasted and burned out offices.

“The former regime probably shredded anything it had.”

The campaign group Justice for Megrahi, which wants an independent inquiry into the conviction, was scathing about the continued focus on Libya.

“As far as I am concerned, the conviction was a gross miscarriage of justice and the efforts the police and Crown Office are making to locate other Libyans who may have colluded in the bringing down of Pan Am flight 103 amount to little more than eye-wash,” said group secretary Robert Forrester.

But the Crown Office remains convinced Libya is key to their investigation. One man widely believed to know the secrets of the Gaddafi government is Moussa Koussa, who briefly sought refuge in the UK, following the Libyan revolution.

John Ashton, author of Megrahi: You are my Jury, and former FBI agent Richard Marquise – two men with very different views on whether Megrahi was guilty – have both said investigations should focus on the former intelligence chief.

In his book, Mr Ashton argued Megrahi could not have been the bomber because the timer used in the explosion contained a different coating to circuit boards sold to Libya.

Abdallah Senussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and head of the intelligence services, who was Megrahi’s immediate boss, is another man the FBI have looked at in connection with Lockerbie.

Other potential suspects include Saeed Rashid, whom an FBI report previously claimed “managed a sustained Libyan effort to conduct terrorist attacks against US interests since the early-1980s”, and Izz Aldin Hinshiri, who was suspected of buying the trigger for the Lockerbie bomb.