[The following are excerpts from an article under this headline in today's edition of The Independent on Sunday. The full article can be read here.]
A new witness is expected this week to undermine thoroughly the case against the only person to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. New testimony will call into question evidence linking the Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, his lawyers claim. (...)
[Note by RB: In the first session of the appeal, which starts on Tuesday and runs until 22 May, there will be no new witnesses, just legal argument. Any new witnesses, if the Appeal Court allows them to be heard -- and the rules about fresh evidence in appeals are very restrictive -- will only feature in later sessions.]
Appeal hearings are due to begin on Tuesday, and Megrahi's lawyers insisted this weekend they will go ahead as planned, despite speculation that he may be returned to Libya under the terms of a controversial prisoner transfer agreement, due to be ratified tomorrow.
"We are turning up next week," said Tony Kelly, his solicitor. "We are seeking that the court upholds his appeal, admit that there has been a miscarriage of justice, and grant him his liberty. Whatever remedies come after that is for after the appeal."
Appeal documents seen by The Independent on Sunday reveal that testimony from a new witness is expected to undermine the evidence of a key prosecution witness, Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper. His testimony was vital in connecting Megrahi to the bombing at the trial in 2001.
Mr Gauci identified Megrahi as the person who bought the tweed suit, baby sleepsuit and umbrella found among the remnants of the suitcase that contained the bomb on board.
The new witness, not named in the documents, will provide an account the defence claims is "startling in its consistency with Mr Gauci's account of the purchase, but adds considerable doubt to the date the key items were purchased and identification of Megrahi as the purchaser".
All of this may be academic, as 56-year-old Megrahi, who was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in October 2008, has been reported as having less than a year to live and the appeal could take two years.
Increasingly, however, it seems likely that the Lockerbie suspect will spend his last days in Libya. This month, officials wrote to the families of victims of the bombing explaining the prisoner transfer programme, interpreted as a tacit agreement that Megrahi may be returned to Libya. Under the terms of the deal, if Megrahi participates in the transfer scheme, he will forfeit his right to appeal.
"If he goes back to Libya, it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case," said Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed on Flight 103. Dr Swire is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. "I've lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive."
A commentary on the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the murder of 270 people in the Pan Am 103 disaster.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Tony Kelly. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Tony Kelly. Sort by date Show all posts
Sunday 26 April 2009
Tuesday 26 April 2016
New witness casts doubt on Lockerbie bomb conviction
[This is the headline over a report published in The Independent on Sunday on this date in 2009. It reads as follows:]
A new witness is expected this week to undermine thoroughly the case against the only person to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. New testimony will call into question evidence linking the Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, his lawyers claim.
Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, is serving 27 years in Greenock prison for the bombing.
Appeal hearings are due to begin on Tuesday, and Megrahi's lawyers insisted this weekend they will go ahead as planned, despite speculation that he may be returned to Libya under the terms of a controversial prisoner transfer agreement, due to be ratified tomorrow.
"We are turning up next week," said Tony Kelly, his solicitor. "We are seeking that the court upholds his appeal, admit that there has been a miscarriage of justice, and grant him his liberty. Whatever remedies come after that is for after the appeal."
Appeal documents seen by The Independent on Sunday reveal that testimony from a new witness is expected to undermine the evidence of a key prosecution witness, Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper. His testimony was vital in connecting Megrahi to the bombing at the trial in 2001.
Mr Gauci identified Megrahi as the person who bought the tweed suit, baby sleepsuit and umbrella found among the remnants of the suitcase that contained the bomb on board.
The new witness, not named in the documents, will provide an account the defence claims is "startling in its consistency with Mr Gauci's account of the purchase, but adds considerable doubt to the date the key items were purchased and identification of Megrahi as the purchaser".
All of this may be academic, as 56-year-old Megrahi, who was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in October 2008, has been reported as having less than a year to live and the appeal could take two years.
Increasingly, however, it seems likely that the Lockerbie suspect will spend his last days in Libya. This month, officials wrote to the families of victims of the bombing explaining the prisoner transfer programme, interpreted as a tacit agreement that Megrahi may be returned to Libya. Under the terms of the deal, if Megrahi participates in the transfer scheme, he will forfeit his right to appeal.
"If he goes back to Libya, it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case," said Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed on Flight 103. Dr Swire is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. "I've lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive."
Wednesday 26 April 2017
Not a snowball's chance in hell the prosecution case will survive
New witness casts doubt on Lockerbie bomb conviction
[The following are excerpts from an article under this headline in today's edition of The Independent on Sunday. The full article can be read here.]
A new witness is expected this week to undermine thoroughly the case against the only person to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. New testimony will call into question evidence linking the Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, his lawyers claim. (...)
[Note by RB: In the first session of the appeal, which starts on Tuesday and runs until 22 May, there will be no new witnesses, just legal argument. Any new witnesses, if the Appeal Court allows them to be heard -- and the rules about fresh evidence in appeals are very restrictive -- will only feature in later sessions.]
Appeal hearings are due to begin on Tuesday, and Megrahi's lawyers insisted this weekend they will go ahead as planned, despite speculation that he may be returned to Libya under the terms of a controversial prisoner transfer agreement, due to be ratified tomorrow.
"We are turning up next week," said Tony Kelly, his solicitor. "We are seeking that the court upholds his appeal, admit that there has been a miscarriage of justice, and grant him his liberty. Whatever remedies come after that is for after the appeal."
Appeal documents seen by The Independent on Sunday reveal that testimony from a new witness is expected to undermine the evidence of a key prosecution witness, Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper. His testimony was vital in connecting Megrahi to the bombing at the trial in 2001.
Mr Gauci identified Megrahi as the person who bought the tweed suit, baby sleepsuit and umbrella found among the remnants of the suitcase that contained the bomb on board.
The new witness, not named in the documents, will provide an account the defence claims is "startling in its consistency with Mr Gauci's account of the purchase, but adds considerable doubt to the date the key items were purchased and identification of Megrahi as the purchaser".
All of this may be academic, as 56-year-old Megrahi, who was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in October 2008, has been reported as having less than a year to live and the appeal could take two years.
Increasingly, however, it seems likely that the Lockerbie suspect will spend his last days in Libya. This month, officials wrote to the families of victims of the bombing explaining the prisoner transfer programme, interpreted as a tacit agreement that Megrahi may be returned to Libya. Under the terms of the deal, if Megrahi participates in the transfer scheme, he will forfeit his right to appeal.
"If he goes back to Libya, it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case," said Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed on Flight 103. Dr Swire is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. "I've lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive."
Saturday 20 May 2017
Victim of one of the most spectacular miscarriages of justice in history
[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died in Tripoli on this date five years ago. What follows is an obituary written by Tam Dalyell that was published in The Independent:]
Acres of newsprint have appeared in recent years, covering various rather separate theories about the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber.
If I thought for one moment that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty as charged in the mass murder of 270 innocent people in the crash of the Pan Am airliner "Maid of the Seas" at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, I would not have agreed to pen an obituary – let alone an affectionate one.
My settled conviction, as a "Professor of Lockerbie Studies" over a 22-year period, is that neither Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103. The Libyans were cynically scapegoated in 1990, two years after the crash, by a US government which had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of the terrible deed.
Libya and its "operatives", Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, only came into the frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, Megrahi has been the victim of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in history. The assertion of innocence is confirmed in the 497 pages of John Ashton's scholarly and remarkable book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, published by Birlinn.
This is an opinion shared by the senior and experienced solicitor Eddie McKechnie, who successfully represented Fhimah at Zeist in Holland, where a Scottish court was assembled to try the two accused under rules conducted by the jurisdiction of the laws of Scotland, and who took on Megrahi's case following his conviction; by Tony Kelly, the immensely thorough solicitor who has represented him for the past six years; by the bereaved relatives Dr Jim Swire and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost daughters and attended the entire Zeist trial; by Professor Robert Black, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, and Lockerbie-born; and by many others in legal Edinburgh.
Furthermore, the Scottish Criminal Review Commission, in the course of its 800-page report, says (paragraph 24, page 708): "The Crown deprived the defence of the opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary – so the defence's case was damaged." It concluded: "The commission's view is that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred."
Megrahi was not in Malta on the date the clothing, so crucial in the whole Lockerbie saga, was bought from the shopkeeper Tony Gauci. The proprietor of Mary's House identified a number of different people, including Abu Talb, who appeared at the trial to deny his part in the bombing.
Talb was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command and is now serving a life sentence in Sweden for the 1985 bombings in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. These discrepancies were part of the reason why the Scottish criminal review commission concluded that there could have been a miscarriage of justice; another was the unexplained payment of $10m from Iranian sources into the coffers of the Popular Front.
The testimony of Lesley Atkinson, who knew Megrahi well in Tripoli, is interesting. She is the wife of Neville Atkinson, who, in 1972, left a career as a night-fighter pilot in the Royal Navy to take up a position as personal pilot to the president of Libya, Colonel Gadaffi, until 1982. "Megrahi was polite and friendly and worked for Libyan Arab Airlines," Mrs Atkinson told me. "Of course, lots of people who worked for LAA were connected to the security services and I do not doubt that he was one of them. We knew him both at work and at the Beach Club – he was a normal, nice guy. I cannot imagine that he would ever have dreamt of planting a bomb on an airliner. He just would not have done that to passengers."
Eddie McKechnie described Megrahi as a cultured man doing a job for his country, and certainly not a mass-murderer. Had he not been given extremely bad advice not to appear in the witness box Megrahi would have revealed the truth – that he was a sanctions-buster, travelling the world to find spare parts for the Libyan oil industry and Libyan Arab Airlines. This role was confirmed to me by Colonel Gadaffi, when, as leader of the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to Libya in March 2001, I saw him in his tent outside Sirte. Gaddafi's own knowledge or involvement in Lockerbie is a different matter.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was born in 1952 and educated in Tripoli and in the Engineering Faculty of Benghazi University. He became involved in the Ministry of Trade, and like many other officials, certainly did so in the intelligence services. He served as the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and as director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. A genuine believer in what the young Gaddafi was trying to achieve, and in the Great Jamariyah, Megrahi was happy to put his talents at the service of the state. Where else in Africa is there no hint of personal corruption among the leadership, he asked me! He had good relations with engineers at Brown and Root, I was told by their chairman and managing director, Sir Richard Morris (1980-90). Brown and Root was the contractor for the huge irrigation projects in Cyrenerica, south of Benghazi, the man-made river bringing water to desert areas that had been fertile in Roman times.
He was understandably proud of the traditional skills associated with his people. On one occasion, when I visited him in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow and told him that I had been to Leptis Magna, he responded: "You know that my Tripolitanian ancestors were the artists in stone, responsible for work throughout the Empire, not least in Rome itself!" Had the judges had the opportunity to get to know Megrahi, as I knew him, they could never have arrived at the verdict of "guilty" – at most, the good Scots legal term "not proven".
After Zeist, Fhimah, represented by the aggressively formidable barrister Richard Keen QC, was cleared and returned to a hero's welcome in Tripoli. Fhimah talked with knowledge and pride, as did Megrahi, about the wonderful sight of Sabbratah and the glories of the Greek colonial city at Cyrene.
Meanwhile, Megrahi was incarcerated in Barlinnie Prison. I was not his only visitor there and in Greenock who came away with a favourable opinion. Dr Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, a medical student at the University of Nottingham, told me: "On meeting Abdelbaset in Greenock prison, I found him charming, rational, not given to anger or bluster. He made it obvious that his first priority was to clear his name before returning to his much-loved family in Tripoli.
"I saw him for the last time just before Christmas 2008, when, he, a devout Muslim, gave me a Christmas card in which he asked me and my family to pray for him and his family. That card is one of my most precious possessions.
"This meeting was before he could have known just how closely death loomed. I cannot criticise his apparently voluntary decision to spend his last months on earth with his family, above the priority of clearing his name."
I know that in some uninformed quarters, Dr Swire's views are regarded as eccentric. But it is the other British relatives who have studied the position in depth, such as Martin Cadman, who lost his son Bill; Pamela Dix, who lost her brother; and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost a daughter, have arrived at precisely the same conclusions about Megrahi's innocence. Unlike some American relatives, they have bothered to make exhaustive studies of the detail.
In my opinion, whatever Gordon Brown, Kenny MacAskill, Alec Salmond and Jack Straw – all fundamentally decent human beings – may feel they have to say in public due to pressure, and wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh, which, above all, did not want their misdeeds exposed by the truth, they all knew that they were acquiescing in the release of an innocent man. I am not quite so sure that Fhimah did not have an inkling about potentially explosive material on its way to the Bekaa valley.
Even in his final hours, controversy never deserted Megrahi. The Libyan authorities were absolutely justified in declining to extradite him, both for reasons of international law and more importantly, that he was not guilty as charged of the Lockerbie crime – also the considered opinion of Dr Hans Koechler, who attended Megrahi's trial as an official UN observer and has examined his appeal process in Scotland.
As James Cusick, who has followed the twists and turns of the Lockerbie saga for many years as a highly informed journalist, wrote in The Independent on Tuesday 30 August, "The truth behind the Lockerbie bombing remains enmeshed in diplomatic gains."
My last sight of Abdelbaset was on TV on 3 October, attended by Mrs Megrahi, with tubes galore, thanking Dr Swire in gentle tones for trying to furnish necessary drugs and hissing out that there were many liars at Zeist. So there were.
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh
[ Tam Dalyell’s obituary
of Abdelbaset Megrahi in The Independent reads as follows:]
Acres of newsprint have appeared in recent years, covering
various rather separate theories about the release of the so-called Lockerbie
bomber.
If
I thought for one moment that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty as charged in
the mass murder of 270 innocent people in the crash of the Pan Am airliner
"Maid of the Seas" at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, I would not have
agreed to pen an obituary – let alone an affectionate one.
My settled conviction, as a
"Professor of Lockerbie Studies" over a 22-year period, is that
neither Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103. The
Libyans were cynically scapegoated in 1990, two years after the crash, by a US
government which had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want
complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of
the terrible deed.
Libya and its
"operatives", Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, only came into the
frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, Megrahi has been the victim
of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in
history. The assertion of innocence is confirmed in the 497 pages of John
Ashton's scholarly and remarkable book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury – The
Lockerbie Evidence, published by Birlinn.
This is an opinion shared by
the senior and experienced solicitor Eddie McKechnie, who successfully
represented Fhimah at Zeist in Holland, where a Scottish court was assembled to
try the two accused under rules conducted by the jurisdiction of the laws of
Scotland, and who took on Megrahi's case following his conviction; by Tony
Kelly, the immensely thorough solicitor who has represented him for the past
six years; by the bereaved relatives Dr Jim Swire and the Reverend John Mosey,
who lost daughters and attended the entire Zeist trial; by Professor Robert
Black, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, and
Lockerbie-born; and by many others in legal Edinburgh.
Furthermore, the Scottish
Criminal Review Commission, in the course of its 800-page report, says
(paragraph 24, page 708): "The Crown deprived the defence of the
opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary – so the
defence's case was damaged." It concluded: "The commission's view is
that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred."
Megrahi was not in Malta on
the date the clothing, so crucial in the whole Lockerbie saga, was bought from
the shopkeeper Tony Gauci. The proprietor of Mary's House identified a number
of different people, including Abu Talb, who appeared at the trial to deny his
part in the bombing.
Talb was a member of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command and is now
serving a life sentence in Sweden for the 1985 bombings in Copenhagen and
Amsterdam. These discrepancies were part of the reason why the Scottish
criminal review commission concluded that there could have been a miscarriage
of justice; another was the unexplained payment of $10m from Iranian sources
into the coffers of the Popular Front.
The testimony of Lesley
Atkinson, who knew Megrahi well in Tripoli, is interesting. She is the wife of
Neville Atkinson, who, in 1972, left a career as a night-fighter pilot in the
Royal Navy to take up a position as personal pilot to the president of Libya,
Colonel Gadaffi, until 1982. "Megrahi was polite and friendly and worked
for Libyan Arab Airlines," Mrs Atkinson told me. "Of course, lots of
people who worked for LAA were connected to the security services and I do not
doubt that he was one of them. We knew him both at work and at the Beach Club –
he was a normal, nice guy. I cannot imagine that he would ever have dreamt of
planting a bomb on an airliner. He just would not have done that to
passengers."
Eddie McKechnie described
Megrahi as a cultured man doing a job for his country, and certainly not a
mass-murderer. Had he not been given extremely bad advice not to appear in the
witness box Megrahi would have revealed the truth – that he was a
sanctions-buster, travelling the world to find spare parts for the Libyan oil
industry and Libyan Arab Airlines. This role was confirmed to me by Colonel
Gadaffi, when, as leader of the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to Libya
in March 2001, I saw him in his tent outside Sirte. Gaddafi's own knowledge or
involvement in Lockerbie is a different matter.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed
al-Megrahi was born in 1952 and educated in Tripoli and in the Engineering
Faculty of Benghazi University. He became involved in the Ministry of Trade,
and like many other officials, certainly did so in the intelligence services.
He served as the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and as director of
the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. A genuine believer in what the
young Gaddafi was trying to achieve, and in the Great Jamariyah, Megrahi was
happy to put his talents at the service of the state. Where else in Africa is
there no hint of personal corruption among the leadership, he asked me! He had
good relations with engineers at Brown and Root, I was told by their chairman
and managing director, Sir Richard Morris (1980-90). Brown and Root was the
contractor for the huge irrigation projects in Cyrenerica, south of Benghazi,
the man-made river bringing water to desert areas that had been fertile in
Roman times.
He was understandably proud
of the traditional skills associated with his people. On one occasion, when I
visited him in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow and told him that I had been to
Leptis Magna, he responded: "You know that my Tripolitanian ancestors were
the artists in stone, responsible for work throughout the Empire, not least in
Rome itself!" Had the judges had the opportunity to get to know Megrahi,
as I knew him, they could never have arrived at the verdict of
"guilty" – at most, the good Scots legal term "not proven".
After Zeist, Fhimah,
represented by the aggressively formidable barrister Richard Keen QC, was
cleared and returned to a hero's welcome in Tripoli. Fhimah talked with
knowledge and pride, as did Megrahi, about the wonderful sight of Sabbratah and
the glories of the Greek colonial city at Cyrene.
Meanwhile, Megrahi was
incarcerated in Barlinnie Prison. I was not his only visitor there and in
Greenock who came away with a favourable opinion. Dr Swire, who lost his
daughter Flora, a medical student at the University of Nottingham, told me:
"On meeting Abdelbaset in Greenock prison, I found him charming, rational,
not given to anger or bluster. He made it obvious that his first priority was
to clear his name before returning to his much-loved family in Tripoli.
"I saw him for the last
time just before Christmas 2008, when, he, a devout Muslim, gave me a Christmas
card in which he asked me and my family to pray for him and his family. That
card is one of my most precious possessions.
"This meeting was before
he could have known just how closely death loomed. I cannot criticise his
apparently voluntary decision to spend his last months on earth with his
family, above the priority of clearing his name."
I know that in some
uninformed quarters, Dr Swire's views are regarded as eccentric. But it is the
other British relatives who have studied the position in depth, such as Martin
Cadman, who lost his son Bill; Pamela Dix, who lost her brother; and the Reverend
John Mosey, who lost a daughter, have arrived at precisely the same conclusions
about Megrahi's innocence. Unlike some American relatives, they have bothered
to make exhaustive studies of the detail.
In my opinion, whatever
Gordon Brown, Kenny MacAskill, Alec Salmond and Jack Straw – all fundamentally
decent human beings – may feel they have to say in public due to pressure, and
wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh, which, above
all, did not want their misdeeds exposed by the truth, they all knew that they
were acquiescing in the release of an innocent man. I am not quite so sure that
Fhimah did not have an inkling about potentially explosive material on its way
to the Bekaa valley.
Even in his final hours,
controversy never deserted Megrahi. The Libyan authorities were absolutely
justified in declining to extradite him, both for reasons of international law
and more importantly, that he was not guilty as charged of the Lockerbie crime
– also the considered opinion of Dr Hans Koechler, who attended Megrahi's trial
as an official UN observer and has examined his appeal process in Scotland.
As James Cusick, who has
followed the twists and turns of the Lockerbie saga for many years as a highly
informed journalist, wrote in The
Independent on Tuesday 30 August, "The truth behind the Lockerbie
bombing remains enmeshed in diplomatic gains."
My last sight of Abdelbaset
was on TV on 3 October, attended by Mrs Megrahi, with tubes galore, thanking Dr
Swire in gentle tones for trying to furnish necessary drugs and hissing out
that there were many liars at Zeist. So there were.
Abdelbaset
Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, intelligence officer: born Tripoli, Libya 1 April 1952;
married Aisha (four sons, one daughter); died 20 May 2012
Tuesday 19 April 2016
Gauci and the Zeist identification parade
An official report, providing information not made available to the defence during the original trial, stated that, on 19 April 1999, four days before identifying al-Megrahi for the first time [at an identification parade at Camp Zeist], Gauci had seen a picture of al-Megrahi in a magazine which connected him to the bombing, a fact which could have distorted his judgment. Gauci was shown the same magazine during his testimony at al-Megrahi's trial and asked if he had identified the photograph in April 1999 as being the person who purchased the clothing; he was then asked if that person was in the court. Gauci then identified al-Megrahi for the court stating – "He is the man on this side. He resembles him a lot".
[A report in The New York Times headlined Scottish Panel Challenges Lockerbie Conviction, which was published after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the Megrahi conviction back to the appeal court, contains the following:]
The section of the commission’s findings made public centered on evidence relating to purchases of clothing at a shop called Mary’s House in Sliema, Malta, on Dec 7, 1988; the clothing was said to have been wrapped around the bomb. The bomb was said to have been put on board a plane in Malta and then transferred to a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to London before it was loaded onto Flight 103 at Heathrow Airport.
The original trial found that the bomb was hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player placed inside a brown, hard-shell Samsonite suitcase with clothing traced to Mary’s House. The trial court found that Mr Megrahi bought the clothing at the shop on Dec 7, 1988. But, the Scottish commission ruled, new evidence relating to the dates when Christmas lights were switched on in Malta suggested that the clothes had been bought before Dec 6, 1988, before the time when there was evidence that Mr Megrahi was on Malta.
Additionally, the commission questioned the reliability of evidence by the shop’s proprietor, Tony Gauci, who singled out Mr Megrahi in a lineup. It said that additional evidence, not available to Mr Megrahi’s defense in the original trial, indicated that four days before the lineup “at which Mr Gauci picked out the applicant, he saw a photograph of the applicant in a magazine article linking him to the bombing.”
“In the commission’s view, evidence of Mr Gauci’s exposure to this photograph in such close proximity” to the lineup “undermines the reliability of his identification of the applicant at that time and at the trial itself,” the commission said.
In Scotland, Mr Megrahi’s lawyer, Tony Kelly, read a statement from his client: “I was never in any doubt that a truly independent review of my case would have this outcome. I reiterate today what I have been saying since I was first indicted in 1991: I was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing in any way whatsoever.”
Monday 27 February 2012
Megrahi: eight key pieces of evidence
[This is the
headline over the second batch of material derived from Megrahi: You are my Jury published today on the heraldscotland.com website. It reads in part:]
Megrahi: You are my Jury, The Lockerbie Evidence is a detailed book, spanning 460 pages, 15 chapters, four appendices,
and a six-page glossary. It explores a number of key areas which
campaigners will regard as crucial to the case, including eight which relate to
previously unseen evidence. Here, chief reporter LUCY ADAMS present
extracts from the book and explain why they matter.
1.Why Megrahi dropped the appeal
CONTEXT: Abdelbaset Ali
Mohmed al Megrahi had two possible routes out of Greenock jail in August 2009:
a prisoner transfer application for which he first had to drop his appeal, or
compassionate release because of his prostate cancer. The latter route did not
demand that he drop his appeal, in contrast to the former. In the event, he
ended his appeal, yet the PTA was turned down, and Justice Secretary Kenny
MacAskill instead granted compassionate release. The chain of actions has
always been a mystery, leaving those who believe in Megrahi’s guilt to see his
decision as confirmation of their views. Why would an innocent man not pursue
an appeal against conviction that he had waited years to begin? Now, for the
first time, Megrahi claims that he was pressured to drop the appeal by Mr
MacAskill personally through diplomatic channels.
EXTRACT: "On 10
August MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan
officials, including Minister [Abdel Ali] Al-Obeidi. By this time I was
desperate. The 90-day time limit for considering the prisoner transfer
application had passed and, although I had some vocal public supporters,
MacAskill was coming under considerable pressure to reject both applications.
After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obeidi
said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him
in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be
easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He [MacAskill]
said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be
clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk
doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice."
LUCY ADAMS
VERDICT: Mr MacAskill, who was not contacted in advance of today's book
publication, has always said he could not interfere in the judicial process. If
Megrahi's version of events is true, it will prove very damaging to the
minister, who has repeatedly distanced himself from any appeal which, if it had
gone ahead, could have been a massive embarrassment to the Scottish legal
system. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had already found six
grounds on which Megrahi’s conviction was potentially unsafe.
2. The timer fragment
CONTEXT: At Megrahi's
trial at Camp Zeist, it was agreed that the fragment of electrical circuit
board found at the Lockerbie crash site [and referred to as PT/35b] came from
an MST-13 board manufactured by the Swiss company Mebo and Thuring, its
supplier. Mebo revealed that it had sold 20 such timers to the Libyans, and
this became a hugely significant part of the case against Megrahi. However, the
book claims that new evidence shows the fragment of circuit board found at
Lockerbie, which was 100% covered in tin, did not match those in the timers
sent to Libya and alleges that the Crown's forensic expert at trial, Allen
Feraday, was aware of the disparity but failed to disclose it.
EXTRACT: "On 23
October 2008, at just after 7pm, a member of [Tony] Kelly's [defence] team
finally put the crucial question to Bonfadelli [Urs Bonfadelli was responsible
for the manufacture of Mebo’s MST-13 boards]: was the circuitry of the MST-13
boards coated with pure tin or a tin/lead alloy? His answer was clear and
devastating: all were coated with an alloy of 70% tin and 30% lead. There could
be no mistaking this, he said. It was imminently apparent what this meant: if
PT/35b’s coating had not been changed by the explosion, then it could not have
been made by Thuring and therefore could not have been one of the 20 timers
supplied to Libya."
Mr Kelly subsequently instructed two
independent experts to see if the heat of the explosion could have turned the
fragment’s tin/lead alloy to tin – Dr Chris McArdle, who had 25 years
experience in the electronics industry, and Dr Jess Cawley, a metallurgist with
over 35 years experience. The book adds: "..McArdle pointed out there was
no way that it would have been hot enough for the lead to have evaporated away…
Cawley agreed, pointing out that, although plastic explosives of the type used
in the Lockerbie bomb produce a flash of intense heat, lead, like most metals,
requires a far longer exposure to high temperatures before it would melt, let
alone evaporate."
Documents from the Ministry of Defence
Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment, disclosed by the Crown
just before Megrahi's appeal was dropped, revealed contradictory notes from Mr
Feraday saying the coating was pure tin and then "70/30 SN/Pb" (70%
tin and 30% lead). The book states: "Had these documents been disclosed to
the defence team, they would have provided the basis for a vigorous
cross-examination of Feraday."
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT:
This was one of the most important components of the prosecution case against
Megrahi. As the book admits, this was the "golden thread". However,
shortly before Megrahi dropped his appeal, his defence team found proof that
the timer was not one of those supplied by Mebo to the Libyans. If anything
author John Ashton suggests – based on expert opinion – that the circuit board
was likely to have been "DIY" rather than commercially manufactured.
With this information, the golden thread falls.
3. The Iranian connection
CONTEXT: In the book's
preface, Megrahi says he does not want to "point the finger of blame at
anyone else", but much of the material drawn together will lead readers to
believe that Iran funded the PFLP-GC [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- General Command] to carry out the bombing, in retaliation for the American
warship the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian passenger jet and killing
all 300 people on board in 1988. The US apparently mistook it for an F-14
fighter.
EXTRACT: "The most
difficult witness [for the defence team] to get to was the PFLP-GC bomb-maker
and double agent Marwen Khreesat. Asked about the aim of his October 1988
mission to West Germany, Khreesat was unambiguous: 'It was made very clear to
us by Ahmed Jibril [leader of the PFLPC-GC] that he wanted to blow up an
aeroplane. This was the whole purpose of being there. Dalkamoni and I travelled
to Frankfurt in order to go to the offices of Pan Am to get information about
their flight schedules. We did this. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind
that Jibril wanted a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt blown up.' Although
Khreesat remained adamant that his bombs were not of the twin-speaker type used
for the Lockerbie bomb, he revealed that Dalkamoni had at least one other radio
cassette bomb. If Khreesat was right, here at last was confirmation that the
PFLP-GC had at least one twin speaker device in West Germany."
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: The
initial investigation into Lockerbie in 1989 all pointed towards the
culpability of a German cell of the PFLP-GC. There is much within the book,
including the above statement by bomb-maker Marwen Khreesat which appears to
confirm this view. There are also notes showing that Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher blocked a public inquiry in the bombing and an explanation that
politically it was not expedient to fall out with Iran – whose oil was relied
upon - in the run-up to the Gulf War against Iraq. A great deal of the evidence
incriminating the PFLPC-GC was not disclosed at the original trial or appeal.
The heavily referenced allegations in the book make it seem more likely that
they were behind the Lockerbie bombing than Libya. To have dismissed the
evidence against them at the time raises questions about the role and potential
bias of some of the security agencies involved, and the murkiness of the
international politics which has always shrouded the Lockerbie case.
4. Reward money and the reliability of
witnesses
CONTEXT: In the UK
witnesses cannot be paid for their information. However, the book describes in
detail how both Tony and Paul Gauci were offered reward money by the American
Justice Department. And, we learn for the first time, that this was discussed
even before Tony Gauci's first statement. The book also reveals that Edwin
Bollier, who ran Mebo and testified against Megrahi, was very interested in
"the reward money".
EXTRACT: "The
Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) concluded 'In referring the
case on this ground the Commission is conscious of the potential impact of its decision
on Mr Gauci who may well have given entirely credible evidence notwithstanding
an alleged interest in financial payment. On the other hand there are sound
reasons to believe that the information in question would have been used by the
defence as a means of challenging its credibility. Such a challenge may well
have been justified, and in the Commission’s view was capable of affecting the
course of the evidence and the eventual outcome of the trial.'"
The book also reveals
that several other witnesses had the possibility of reward money dangled before
them: "Lamin [Fhimah's – Megrahi's co-accused, cleared at Camp Zeist]
former business partner Vincent Vassalo whom Abdelbaset and Lamin had visited
the evening before the bombing. He confirmed that it was his first meeting with
Abdelbaset, who had introduced himself by his real name, rather than the one on
his coded passport. He described Lamin's shock on learning of the police
investigation and his willingness to allow them to search the Medtours office
and take his diary. Once the search was finished he said DCI [Harry] Bell [who
was in charge of the police investigation in Malta] reminded him that a 'big
reward' was on offer for any helpful information he could provide."
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: The
fact that Tony Gauci, the Crown's key witness who testified that he saw Megrahi
buy specific clothes in his shop which were later identified as having been
near the bomb, was even offered a reward raised the concerns of the SCCRC. It
undermines his witness statements, which we now know were far more inconsistent
and numerous than previously disclosed. The revelation that Bollier and others
were offered the possibility of reward money also goes some way towards
discrediting the integrity of the investigation itself.
5.Undisclosed evidence
CONTEXT: The SCCRC
unearthed numerous statements, police reports and other documents which had
never been shared with the defence team. Part of the reason the case was
referred back for a fresh appeal was the non-disclosure of evidence. A
fascinating part of the book talks about the James Bond-like tales of attempted
coups, spying and double agents going on across the world. In particular, it
makes reference to an attempted coup in Togo in which timers matching those
thought to have been used in the Lockerbie bombing were discovered, and hints
at subterfuge and espionage by the American security services and others and
details the confusion caused. The prosecution had claimed that there were only
20 Mebo MST-13 timers and that they were sold only to the Libyans.
EXTRACT: "The
Commission unearthed potentially significant information about the MST-13
timers found in West Africa. Two timers were recovered from Togo in 1986. Among
the documents disclosed to the Commission was a previously confidential memo,
produced by [Senior Investigating Officer] Stuart Henderson the month after the
interview of Jean Baptiste Collin [the official in charge in Togo], which
provided a lengthy overview of the investigation. As the following passage made
clear, the West Africa investigations were causing considerable concern. [SIO
Henderson wrote]: 'After the recent interview of Collin, it is now more clear
than ever that the circumstances surrounding the recovery of the 'boxed MST-13
timer' in Senegal must be clarified beyond doubt. The whole essence of the
'MST-13 timers' is the sole manufacture by the Mebo company in world terms and
the explicit distribution to the Libyan ESO. Unless we can consolidate the
precise number of MST-13 timers circuit boards manufactured to fit the ‘boxed
timers’ and confirm the fact they were distributed, solely to the Libyans, then
we have serious problems with our direct evidence. [Collin] inferred that the
Americans knew the whole story... Crucially the notes [by DI William Williamson]
went on to record that Collin said the timer had been given to an 'intelligence
agency'."
To date, at least two
documents not disclosed to the defence still remain a secret because the UK
Government claims publicising them would be a threat to national security. The
book states: "The last of the Commission's Statement of Reasons... was
certainly the strangest of the six. It concerned two secret documents, supplied
by another country, which members of the Commission’s team had been allowed to
view at Dumfries police station in September 2006. They were forbidden from
copying them. On 27 April 2007, the Crown Office confirmed to the Commission
that they had carefully considered whether or not the documents required to be
disclosed to the defence and had concluded they did not. The Statement of
Reasons gave only two clues to the documents' contents. The first was an
extract from the Crown's 27 April 2007 letter which read 'it has never been the
Crown's position in this case that the MST-13 timers were not supplied by the
Libyan intelligence services to any other party or that only Libyan
intelligence services were in possession of the timers'. The second came in
paragraph 25.6 of the Statement which read 'In the Commission's view the
Crown's decision not to disclose one of the documents to the defence indicates
that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.'"
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT:
Since the trial at Zeist, Scots law has been challenged at the Supreme Court
and the policy of non-disclosure has had to be changed. A number of appeals
have been won on the grounds that important evidence was not shared with
defence lawyers. We now know that numerous documents were not disclosed to the
Lockerbie defence team. Some were sent to them after the second appeal was dropped.
Others may never be shared. Advocates in the past have described the unfairness
of partial disclosure as "playing with a stacked deck". This alone
could have seen Megrahi acquitted if his appeal had proceeded.
6. Forensics anomalies
CONTEXT The forensics
case against Megrahi was critical. The book reveals anomalies, contradictions,
and arguments between police, the forensics team, the CIA, and the FBI. It also
claims that information was withheld by the CIA and says anomalies later found
in the forensic evidence from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research
and Development Establishment "cast doubt on the overall reliability"
of some of the forensic reports.
EXTRACT: "Six
years after [Dr Thomas] Hayes [of RARDE] testified, a previously secret police
memo came to light that contradicted his evidence and stated that a residue
test had, in fact, been conducted...Most of the contradictory accounts about
how PT/35b was linked to the MST-13 timer were only revealed seven years later,
when the Crown’s precognition statements of Feraday, Williamson, Thurman and
Orkin were released by the SCCRC. Had the defence known about them at trial,
they would have provided the basis for vigorous cross-examinations of the
relevant witnesses...
"Viewed in isolation, the
individual anomalies surrounding the fragment may have appeared trivial, but
together they formed a shroud of suspicion that could not be dislodged. Had
they concerned a less important item, they could, perhaps, have been
overlooked, but the fragment was easily the most crucial physical evidence in
the entire case – the golden thread that linked Abdelbaset to the bomb."
Other items were not contained within
the forensic reports – including a small piece of circuit board from the radio
cassette bomb found in Dalkamoni's [of the Palestinian PFLPC-GC] car in Germany
– something the defence team only learned about years later. The book states:
"Whatever lay behind the multiple anomalies, inconsistencies, and
omissions, their cumulative effect was to erode the façade of forensic
certainty that surrounded the Crown case."
There were other pieces of forensic
information not disclosed by the Crown which pointed – again – at the potential
involvement of the PFLPC-GC. "Further important forensic information was contained
in a Crown precognition statement by Hayes's RARDE colleague Allen Feraday. He
revealed that he had been unable to rule out one of the debris items, PI/1588,
as being part of a barometric trigger. Given that the PFLP-GC bombs found in
Neuss [in the German raid on the PFLPC-GC] were barometric, this was
potentially significant."
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT This
is one of the densest and most complex sections of the book. The details of
different dates, reports, and contradictions is confusing but the overall
impression is that the scientists and forensics experts involved were working
under enormous pressure in very difficult circumstances. There is a sense that
the American security services often failed to disclose or delayed disclosure
of information to the Scottish police investigating. The overall picture is
that non-disclosure of certain forensic information at the trial and the
inconsistencies in the forensic reports subsequently seen by the defence team,
raise serious questions about aspects of the prosecution's forensic case.
7. The Bedford suitcase
CONTEXT: Ascertaining
which suitcase contained the bomb was critical in the initial stages of the
police investigation and subsequent forensic work. Much of the investigation
focused on where the suitcase was "ingested" – whether it was through
the airport at Malta, Frankfurt or Heathrow. Who put it on to the plane and
how? According to the Crown, forensic analysis of the fuselage indicated the
suitcase containing the bomb was in the second layer of suitcases – indicating
it had come from a feeder flight, rather than Heathrow. However, the book
reveals that Tony Kelly's review of the evidence focused on a brown hard-sided
suitcase seen by baggage loader John Bedford before the Frankfurt feeder flight
arrived. At trial, the judges described Bedford as a "clear and impressive
witness" but said there were many items of luggage not dealt with in
detail in the evidence of the case.
EXTRACT: "Kelly’s
team uncovered evidence that, had it been heard at trial, might have denied the
judges these get-outs. If the Bedford bag were not the primary suitcase then,
since he [Bedford] saw it before the arrival of PA103A [from Frankfurt], it
must have been legitimate. By checking the surviving bags and descriptions
provided by the victims’ relatives, [Detective Constable Derek] Henderson
established the colour and type of all the legitimate Heathrow interline bags.
None were brown, hard-sided suitcases...which meant it was almost certainly the
primary case."
That information from
DC Henderson was not in the list of productions for the original trial. The
book states: "Abdelbaset’s draft grounds of appeal claimed that the
absence of the Henderson schedules from the trial constituted a 'material
irregularity'...'that material evidence supporting the defence was not properly
presented and the appellant was denied a fair trial'."
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT
Subsequent to the trial and appeal, evidence emerged of a break-in at Heathrow
the night before the bombing. Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in
the tragedy, has consistently drawn attention to this break-in and campaigned
for a full inquiry into what happened. The Crown case was, in part, based on
the assertion that Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, his co-accused, ensured the
primary suitcase containing the bomb was on the feeder flight from Malta. The
fact the break-in at Heathrow the night before the tragedy only came to light
after the trial seems shocking. The fact that UK Governments have refused since
1988 to hold a full public inquiry into the case, even more so.
8. Why Megrahi used a coded
passport when in Malta
CONTEXT: At the trial,
the original appeal and indeed in a press release last week, the Crown has
always made much of Megrahi’s use in Malta of a false passport under the name
Abdusamad.
EXTRACT: "My
numerous absences created difficulties at home. Like most Libyan marriages at
the time ours was very traditional... she was understandably unhappy about my
frequent foreign trips, and would often become upset on learning that one was
imminent. I therefore fell into the habit, on shorter trips, of telling her I was
visiting people elsewhere in Libya...The Libyan Government had by then
introduced a policy of issuing those involved in the importation of embargoed
goods with so-called coded passports which concealed their real names and their
connections to state bodies. These passports were in no sense forgeries, but
were rather official documents issued by the Secretary of Transport and tightly
regulated. A further advantage was that it enabled me to leave my normal
passport at home, which made it easier to travel abroad without Aisha
knowing."
LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: Chapter 2 of the book, entitled Before the
Nightmare, explains Megrahi’s work importing embargoed cars, soap and
cigarettes lighters, and aviation parts. Much of the chapter is in the first
person, explaining in detail his course in marine engineering at Cardiff, his
first job as a flight dispatcher for Libyan Arab Airlines and his subsequent
promotion to controller of operations at Tripoli Airport. It provides a
fascinating insight into his life before the indictment but I found it
difficult to understand some of his justifications for lying to his wife as he
suggest above. It might seem easier to believe if he said he had been having an
affair. However, it may be difficult to understand because it is hard to relate
to what it must have been like to live in a country under such strict trade
sanctions as Libya had at the time.
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