Application to SCCRC by Megrahi family imminent

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in today’s edition of the Sunday Mail:]

A bid to clear the name of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will be launched this week by his family.

Relatives of Abdelbaset al Megrahi will hand a dossier to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

They hope it will result in an appeal against Megrahi’s conviction. The details were finalised in talks with lawyer Aamer Anwar in Zurich.

Details of a planned appeal brought by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s widow and son, who want former justice ­secretary Kenny MacAskill to be quizzed in court over his release, are revealed by the Sunday Mail for the first time today. (...)

The grounds for a new appeal will formally be handed to Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission by the Megrahi family’s lawyer Aamer Anwar this week.

As justice secretary at the time, MacAskill took full responsibility for the decision to release the Libyan.

It’s understood Megrahi’s relatives want to question him on the ­circumstances surrounding the decision to release him and MacAskill said he would co-operate if called to give evidence.

Megrahi’s widow Aisha and son Ali Abdelbaset al-Megrahi agreed the terms of the appeal at a meeting in Zurich last November. (...)

Dr Swire and another relative, Rev John Mosey, are among 25 UK-based relatives of victims who are ­supporting the Megrahis’ appeal.

A source said: “There are too many ­unanswered ­questions and the best place for the truth to come out is in a courtroom.

“One of the main questions is why did Kenny MacAskill feel he had to meet Mr Megrahi in person on his own in prison?

“It is an extraordinary step for a justice ­secretary to meet a prisoner particularly if he is just about to release him on compassionate grounds.

“We need to know if he was ever given the impression overtly or implied that dropping his appeal would increase his chances of compassionate release.”

The new grounds for appeal include ­questions over the integrity of evidence ­produced by the Crown at the original trial, including circuit board fragments and clothes.

They also claim that crucial testimony given by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci was false and should have been ruled inadmissible.

The SCCRC have already ruled that ­Megrahi’s conviction was potentially a miscarriage of justice.

Victims’ relatives, led by Dr Swire, tried to have the conviction overturned posthumously but the SCCRC ruled they could only re-examine if asked by the family. That barrier has been overcome following the summit in Zurich.

Aisha al-Megrahi said: “I wish to pursue this appeal in my husband’s name to have his ­conviction overturned, to clear his name and to clear the name of my family. The world will say sorry to my husband and my family one day. That’s all I wish to say.”

Ali, 22, added: “I still feel bad that my father was innocent and locked up in prison for so many years.

“I lost my father and although nobody can bring him back, I still want justice for him. I’m sure that, with the new appeal, my father’s name will be cleared from all ­allegations.

“The Lockerbie affair hit my family very, very hard and we’re looking forward to the day that Scottish justice prevails and that we can live in peace again.

“We hope the authorities of Scotland will make it possible to correct the controversial verdict and give all the families who lost loved ones, including ours, real justice.”

Also in attendance in Zurich was Edwin Bollier, a Swiss businessman who was a witness at the original trial at Camp Zeist in Holland.

He is a former director of Swiss firm Mebo, who prosecutors claimed made the Lockerbie bomb’s timer. He believes Megrahi’s conviction wrongly implicated him in the atrocity.

The SCCRC have the power to refer the case to the Court of Appeal if they believe there are enough grounds. The process is likely to take months.

Anwar has received thousands of pages of documents from the original trial which had been held by Megrahi’s previous legal team Taylor & Kelly.

Megrahi’s Scottish lawyer while alive was Tony Kelly, a partner in that firm.

Anwar, installed last week as rector of Glasgow University, said: “The Lockerbie case has often been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal ­history.

“A reversal of the verdict would mean that the governments of the United States and the UK would be accused of having lived a monumental lie for over a quarter of a century and having imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for the worst mass murder on British soil.

“The reputation of our criminal ­justice system has suffered at home and internationally because of the widespread doubts over the conviction of al-Megrahi.

“The only place those doubts can truly be addressed are in the Court of Appeal and nowhere else.”

MacAskill, who served as the SNP ­government’s justice secretary between 2007 and 2014 under Alex Salmond, promised to come forward if asked.

He said: “If I am called to give evidence, I will give evidence. Due ­process will take place and I will fully co-operate.”

He added: “This is a matter for the courts. It would be wrong of me to interfere. I am no longer involved in any aspect of it. I am happy to contribute but I will leave the due process of law to work its way.” (...)

Dr Swire backed plans for a new appeal. He said: “Shortly before Megrahi died, I met him in Tripoli and reassured him I would still do everything I could to clear his name.

“I am delighted that this request for an appeal is now being placed before the SCCRC.”

We must lift the burden of false incrimination against a dying man

[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

In a villa, within a high walled garden in Tripoli, Libya, there lies a man wracked by the pain of widespread cancer, living out the last days of his life, cared for by his wife and children.

His name is known around the world as Megrahi, "the Lockerbie bomber".

He is what we would call middle class. His work was as a part-time international entrepreneur, part time employee of his State's airline, where his role involved the unusual task of trying to obtain spares for that airline's Boeing airliners in the face of international sanctions against his state. His work took him often to Malta where he may have had a mistress. It also took him from time to time to Zurich.

Yes, he also had a state-issued passport in a false name, to facilitate and conceal his journeyings and no doubt his trysts. Later when both Abdelbasel Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, pictured, and his family were confined to Tripoli, awaiting trial, (which he had volunteered to attend, in order as he believed to clear his name), he arranged for two of his children also to be issued with false passports so that they could attend a children's festival in another country. Such were the mores of his country, such were the uses of false passports.

The Scottish court at Camp Zeist was told that an investigating Scottish policeman had kept a diary but he was not told to go and get it from Glasgow. Yet we now know it contained contemporaneous evidence that the Scottish investigators knew the Americans were offering multi million dollar rewards "with $10,000 up front" and that those who falsely identified Megrahi were also aware of rewards long before they gave their evidence ("Six key points that cast doubt on Megrahi's guilt", The Herald, March 13).

We now know through the foresight of Megrahi's latter-day defence solicitor (now Professor) Tony Kelly of Glasgow,that it is not possible that the fragment found after the bombing could have come from a genuine Zurich timer board. That is unassailable scientific fact.

I hope that anyone reading this letter will consider the responsibility which Scotland carries for the failures that emerged in the delivery of justice at Zeist. We were responsible for failing to analyse "the fragment" fully, to discover whether it was genuine or not. We seem also to have been responsible for failing to produce evidence of the break-in at Heathrow which may have indicated a much simpler solution than the premeditated, contrived, cruel and criminal perversion of justice reached at Zeist.

It is time to lobby MSPs, to see if we can lift the terrible burden of false incrimination against this individual and his family, for which our court was in part responsible, before he dies. We may only have days or weeks to do so if he is to be alive to hear of it. Surely we owe that to him and to his family, currently cast as pariahs throughout the world. We also owe the truth about all that is known about the real killers, to the relatives of the victims.

We should remember the words of Nelson Mandela when the Zeist trial was announced: "No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge." 

[The letter as published is an edited version of two letters that Dr Swire submitted to the newspaper.  With his permission I reproduce here the full text of both.]

Letter 1

In a villa, within a high walled garden in Tripoli, Libya, there lies a man wracked by the pain of widespread cancer, living out the last days of his life, cared for by his still devoted wife and children.

His name is known around the world as Megrahi, 'the Lockerbie bomber'.

He is what we would call middle class, his work was as part time international entrepreneur, part time employee of his State's airline, where his work involved the unusual task of trying to obtain spares for that airline's Boeing airliners in the face of international sanctions against his State. His work took him often to Malta where he had a mistress, it also took him from time to time to Zurich.

Ah yes, he also had a State issued passport in a false name, to facilitate and conceal his journeyings and no doubt his trysts. Later when both he and his family were confined to Tripoli, awaiting trial, (which he had volunteered to attend, in order as he believed to clear his name), he arranged for two of his children also to be issued with false passports so that they could attend a children's festival in another country. Such were the mores of his country, such were the uses of false passports.

Feeling guilty over his Maltese mistress, he admitted that he had lied to at least one prominent international journalist as to the reasons for his own visits to Malta.  But the judges at his trial recorded that 'it was a serious problem for the prosecution' that there was no evidence of any sinister action by this man as he passed through Luqa airport on the day of the Lockerbie disaster,on his way back to Tripoli.

Upon his eventual release from a Scottish prison after ten years and the gathering intrusion of his fatal illness, he recorded that he had no grudge against the people of our country, still less against those who had cared for him in prison. Nor did he rail against those who may really have been responsible for the terrible crime of which he had been falsely accused for fear such accusations might themselves turn out to be false..

For those who had deliberately contrived his false conviction or born false witness against him for money, he warned of the judgement they must one day face at least at the bar of history if they believe they have no God.

But it was by means of the innate provision for compassion built into our justice system that we in Scotland were able to free him to die at home. This element of compassion was rightly praised, compared with the judicial systems of America, with their death sentences, and their brooding 'culture of vengeance' by the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal O'Brien, immediately following Megrahi's release to Tripoli.

I had the privilege of begging Kenny MacAskill to free Megrahi, who I was sure by then had played no part in the atrocity. Megrahi was dying, segregated from his family and innocent of this dreadful crime. Kenny on the other hand had at least to maintain that he still did believe Megrahi guilty, but we can now no longer hold such a belief with integrity.

We have known for years that those who identified this man as the buyer of objects from a Maltese shop were offered at least two million American dollars, if they would give evidence identifying Megrahi as the buyer. The Scottish court at Zeist was told that an investigating Scottish policeman had kept a diary, he was never told to go and get it from Glasgow. Yet we now know it contained contemporaneous  evidence that the Scottish investigators knew the Americans were offering multi million dollar rewards 'with $10,000 up front' and that those who falsely identified Megrahi were also aware of rewards long before they gave their evidence.

The faltering giver of the 'identification' evidence, one apple short of a picnic or not, had been bribed.

A central item of forensic 'evidence' found inside a Scottish police evidence bag, where the label had been deliberately altered so as to alert the searching forensic officers to contents other than just 'cloth', was a tiny piece of circuit board, carefully crafted to mimic a piece of a timer supplied by a Zurich firm to Libya. But there is now scientific confirmation that this key item could never have been part of a Zurich/Libyan bomb timer. The patterns traced on the fragment were near perfect copies of the real thing, but  a human error had allowed the fragment copy to be coated with  pure tin, by a process never ever used by Thuring, the Swiss manufacturers of the genuine boards, who always used a tin/lead eutectic solder alloy instead.

With the demise of the authenticity of this fragment the last shreds of support for the verdict against Megrahi and the Malta story also died. A long running digital timer was necessary if the bomb was to survive the time from Malta to Lockerbie.

The prosecution was warned by its forensic officers, before the trial, of the difference between the circuit board fragment 'PT35b' and the real timer boards, but failed to investigate.

Our SCCRC was also aware of this anomaly, yet despite their special 53 page report on 'PT35b' they claimed to have found nothing to show that it was not genuine.

We now know through the foresight of Megrahi's latter day defence solicitor (now Professor) Tony Kelly of Glasgow, that it is not possible that this fragment could have come from a genuine Zurich timer board.

That is unassailable scientific fact.

It is now clear that others, outwith Scotland were determined to pin this terrible crime upon Libya and chose Megrahi as their scapegoat, using hi-tech subterfuge to create the illusion that the bomb, through its timer could have survived the interval between Luqa and Lockerbie. What a price Megrahi has paid for his adultery.

It still remains perfectly possible that Gaddafi might have played a role in facilitating the atrocity for he had a deep hatred against America for that country's attempt to assassinate him in 1986. Perhaps if the current Lord Advocate persists in his plan to send investigators to Libya, evidence will emerge from the fog that follows civil war there, but many are those who would try to save their own skins by alleging the guilt of others, not least Sennousi.

I hope that anyone reading these lines will consider the responsibility which Scotland carries for the failures that emerged in the delivery of Justice at Zeist. We were responsible for the contents of that police evidence bag, we were responsible for analysing 'the fragment' fully, to discover whether it was genuine or not, we seem also to have been responsible for failing to produce evidence of the break-in at Heathrow which may have indicated a much simpler solution than the premeditated,contrived, cruel and criminal perversion of justice reached at Zeist.

Somebody created that clever deceitful fragment, someone intended that our court should seem to incriminate Libya, but surely our compassion, of which the Cardinal spoke in 2010 should now extend to an immediate setting aside of the verdict against this man Megrahi, accompanied by a profound apology. 

One MSP, Christine Grahame (MSP) has long realised the deception carried out here. Now that we all know that this was a premeditated framing of Megrahi, it is time to lobby your own MSP,  to see if we can lift the terrible burden of false incrimination against this individual and his family, for which our court was in part responsible, before he dies.

We may only have days or weeks to do so if he is to be alive to hear of it.

Surely we owe that to him and to his family, currently cast as pariahs throughout the world.

We also owe the truth about all that is known about the real killers, to the relatives of the victims.

Once we have done that we should be slow to attribute individual blame for how this disastrous case was conducted, instead we must urgently seek ways by which such a disaster can be avoided in future, starting with the obligation of our prosecution service to share all relevant information with the defence. Let us use the past with all its errors to learn how to do things better in future. Our criminal system got this case terribly wrong, we need to take transparent steps to minimise the chance of repetition of this disgrace. That would be a real benefit for all of us to extract from this whole miserable business.

Finally we might wish to consider what role our increasingly independent country should adopt towards the International Criminal Court, should a crime of international dimensions occur in our land again. As we consider that question, we might remember the words of Nelson Mandela issued in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was announced.

Letter 2

Thanks to the book by Lockerbie defence researcher John Ashton, we now have a clear account of how the conviction of Megrahi was achieved.

It was not achieved because some alien group wanted to pervert the course of Scottish justice,  nor did it bear any relationship to the simple needs of the relatives of those killed at Lockerbie to know the truth as to who the murderers really were and why they were not stopped.

It was achieved in order to pin the blame specifically upon Libya, presumably in furtherance of perceived political advantage for the country contriving the deceit.

We now know that the famous timer board fragment PT35b was fabricated to match the circuit boards in a set of professional timers sold to the Libyans in the days of Gaddafi.

The patterns traced on PT35b were near perfect copies of those on the real Swiss/Libyan circuit boards, only human error in treating the surface of the copper tracks on them has now revealed the truth through scientific analysis. PT35b simply could never have been part of one of the Libyan owned and Swiss made timers.

It must be clear to all who are not 'blind because they do not wish to see', that the purpose of this slight of hand was to incriminate Libya in this dreadful mass murder, using the hapless Megrahi as scapegoat. 

In Scotland we too are guilty by association. Our prosecution authorities knew before the Megrahi trial had started  that the fragment had 'turned up' inside a Scottish police evidence bag with its label clumsily altered. They knew of the anachronistic insertions in the forensic record for PT35b. They knew that PT35b was not in fact 'similar in all respects' to the circuit boards of the Libyan timers, because the forensic officer who had made that claim had already pointed out that  in fact metallurgical differences existed.

Both our prosecution service, before the trial, and later our SCCRC after the trial knew, (or at least had access to, evidence which clearly showed) that in reality there were differences in the metallurgical details between PT35b and the real Libyan circuit boards. Both failed to investigate these differences, despite the SCCRC's special 53 page special report on the fragment.

It took the detailed diligence and foresight of Professor Tony Kelly of Glasgow (for Megrahi's defence), and John Ashton his researcher, to reveal that the differences between PT35b and the real Libyan boards were irreconcilable, and to show that even if the fragment had really been in a Semtex explosion, this gap was unbridgeable.

In addition we neglected the far more credible story, in view of PA103's flight time, that a Syrian pressure sensitive bomb with their inevitable flight time of 35-45 minutes might have been introduced at Heathrow, avoiding the detailed examination of exhibit PI/1588 which may have been the remains of a pressure sensitive switch from the wreckage field, and if so, pointing to Syria and Iran, not Libya. If that were not fault enough, the evidence of the break-in to Heathrow airport 16 hours before Lockerbie, investigated in January 1989 by the Met. was completely denied to the Zeist trial court. Only last month (Feb 2012) Lord Advocate Mulholland told us that he had still 'been unable to discover' why that evidence was not made available at the trial.

The determination to use this trial as a vehicle for deliberate deception, presumably in pursuance of international political ends did not come from within Scotland. But the multiple failures by our prosecution service responsibly to use the available material and share it with Megrahi's defence did.

For more than a decade some of us, the relatives, have realised that we are being denied the truth about what is really known about this horrible slaughter. We have had to watch Scottish justice twisting and turning to avoid blame for the way its manifest failures contributed to a foreign based wicked and premeditated perversion of justice. We were astonished by the defence position taken in Megrahi's first appeal in Zeist and have squirmed in front of the deliberate delaying tactics exhibited in Megrahi's second appeal in Edinburgh. Now we have learned that even our SCCRC were not astute enough to realise the real origins of PT35b despite their 53 page special report on it.

In contrast to a declaration from 10 Downing Street made just before Ashton's book had even been launched or read, that his book was 'an insult to the Lockerbie relatives', it throws light upon a devious and profoundly dirty aspect of international politics, which on top of our bereavemen,t has burdened us, like some noxious parasite for more than 23 years.

Is Scotland now man enough to investigate these failures, outclassed though they were by the malevolent misuse of our system by a foreign power? Justice delayed is justice  denied. Specially for Megrahi. In the end our system compounded the insults heaped upon the memory of those who died.

It has never been our policy as relatives to seek vengeance against individuals who failed us. Rather let us seek a full inquiry as requested by the group 'Justice for Megrahi', to see how we can do things better in future.  We cannot change the past, but we can and must learn from it. The people of Scotland too need to have faith in their justice system restored, all the more so as they perhaps approach independence.

There is also a middle class Libyan dying in great pain in Tripoli. It is thanks to the compassion built into our justice system that this innocent scapegoat is back home. Perhaps if we hurry we can give him the relief of knowing that his conviction was wrong, and that the incubus is lifted from his family.

We have the power within Scotland to remove this unjust verdict and issue an apology for the part our justice system played in this dreadful miscarriage. How wonderful if our compassion, displayed in allowing Megrahi home to his family could now extend to telling him at last, before his disease finally claims him, that we acknowledge his innocence.

Finally we might wish to consider what role our increasingly independent country should adopt towards the International Criminal Court, should a crime of international dimensions occur in our land again. As we consider that question, we might remember the words of Nelson Mandela issued in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was first announced: 'No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge'. 


[Dr Swire also has a letter in today’s edition of The Scotsman.  It reads as follows:]

My visit to Tripoli in December 2011 showed the interim government there already assuming Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s guilt, without any apparent knowledge of his case.

The atmosphere was one of a determination to blame everything possible on the hated Gaddafi regime.

It would surely be best for truth and justice if Abdullah Senoussi, Gaddafi’s head butcher, were to be arraigned in front of the International Criminal Court (ICC), remembering Nelson Mandela’s famous comment in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was first announced, that: “No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge.”

Bullies are usually cowards when cornered. Senoussi will want to oblige with information blackening the Gaddafi regime (except for his part in it all, of course).

Funny how he surfaced just after John Ashton’s book had revealed beyond any doubt that the central forensic evidence, (the alleged fragment of an exclusively Libyan timer), which the Lockerbie court had relied on to implicate Malta and Megrahi, had been deliberately fabricated to incriminate the Gaddafi regime.

Could there be any connection between “extraordinary rendition” and Senoussi’s appearance? After all, it seems the UK was providing information on selected UK citizens for “scourging” by Senoussi and Co.

It would be almost poetic to reverse the process and “render” him indirectly to the interim government.

What a pity that over the years the US has tended to be antagonistic to the ICC.

Lockerbie bombing prosecutors target Libyan defector Moussa Koussa

[This is the headline over a report just published on the website of The Guardian. It reads in part:]

Scottish prosecutors have asked to interview Moussa Koussa about the Lockerbie bombing after the Libyan foreign minister and spy chief defected to Britain.

The request from the Crown Office in Scotland follows demands from Libya's rebel leadership for Koussa to be returned to Libya for trial for murder and crimes against humanity after Muammar Gaddafi is toppled from power.

William Hague, the British foreign secretary, has said the UK is not offering Koussa immunity from prosecution.

The Crown Office in Edinburgh has said it is formally asking for its prosecutors and detectives from Dumfries and Galloway police to question Koussa about the 1988 bombing. "We have notified the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that the Scottish prosecuting and investigating authorities wish to interview Mr Koussa in connection with the Lockerbie bombing," it said.

"The investigation into the Lockerbie bombing remains open and we will pursue all relevant lines of inquiry."

Dumfries and Galloway police, which investigated the Lockerbie case, has confirmed its detectives are keen to interview Koussa.

It remains unclear what role Koussa played when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing 270 passengers, crew and townspeople. He later emerged as head of Libyan intelligence services. (...)

Senior figures in the Lockerbie case – including Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the attack, and Professor Robert Black, a lawyer and architect of the trial of two Libyans accused of the atrocity – have said they believe Koussa might have significant information about Libya's role.

Koussa was pivotal in the negotiations to hand over the two suspects – Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah – for trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001. He oversaw Libya's negotiations to pay billion of pounds in reparations for the attack.

The Libyans' consistent denial of responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing has been repeatedly rejected by the UK and US governments, and Scottish prosecutors.

Swire, from UK Families of Pan Am Flight 103, and Black, emeritus professor of Scots law at Edinburgh University, have said they believe Megrahi is innocent. He remains the only man convicted of the bombing.

As Libyan foreign minister, Koussa met Foreign Office and Scottish government officials at least twice in 2008 and 2009 to negotiate Megrahi's release from Greenock prison. Koussa visited Megrahi in jail. Megrahi's lawyer, Tony Scott [RB: now corrected to Tony Kelly], has declined to comment on the latest developments.

Swire said the weight of evidence pointed to Syria as the main culprit but "within the Libyan regime [Koussa] is in the best position of anyone other than Gaddafi himself to tell us what the regime knows or did. He would be a peerless source of information".

Detective Superintendent Mickey Dalgliesh, who is in charge of the Lockerbie case at Dumfries and Galloway police, said the Crown Office request to interview Koussa was "in line with our position that the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing remains open and we are determined to pursue all relevant lines of inquiry".

[A column by former UK ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles has just been published on the Comment is free website of The Guardian. It is headed "Moussa Koussa's defection should be exploited: Denying Moussa Koussa immunity from prosecution in Britain does nothing to encourage others to desert Gaddafi".

A further Guardian report headlined "Moussa Koussa's defection surprises Libya – and maybe Britain too" can be read here.

The report on this issue on the BBC News website quotes extensively from this blog.]

"I've lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system"

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

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 [28 April 2009] 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."

Second anniversary of death of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

[Today marks the second anniversary of the death in Tripoli of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. A statement issued by Justice for Megrahi at the time can be read here. Tam Dalyell’s obituary of Megrahi, published two days later 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 [in Scotland] 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

[It is to be hoped, even if it cannot be confidently expected, that before the third anniversary of Megrahi's death his conviction may again be before the High Court of Justiciary for review.]

Press release regarding publication of appeal documents

Mr Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who has returned to his homeland, Libya, today commences the release of information which he hopes will establish his innocence. Through the website megrahimystory.net he will release details of Grounds of Appeal 1 and 2 of his challenge to the conviction for involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.

Grounds 1 and 2 dealt with the challenge to the conviction on the grounds of legal sufficiency and reasonableness.

The detailed written submissions lodged by Mr Megrahi’s defence team insupport of the grounds, also published today, break down the various steps in the reasoning of the Trial Court it said led to the conclusion that it was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of Mr Megrahi.

In publishing this material Mr Megrahi made the following statement:

“I have returned to Tripoli with my unjust conviction still in place. As a resultof the abandonment of my appeal I have been deprived of the opportunity to clear my name through the formal appeal process. I have vowed to continue my attempts to clear my name. I will do everything in my power to persuade the public, and in particular the Scottish public, of my innocence.

Through my website I have published the material which featured in the first full hearing of my appeal namely the challenges under Grounds of Appeal 1 and 2 to the legal sufficiency and reasonableness of the Court’s findings. I hope that this can assist in the understanding of my case, especially for those who have been most profoundly affected by it. As can be seen from the documents released today some of the challenges mounted before the Court are supported by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Argument was heard upon these challenges but unfortunately the Court was not, by the time of my abandonment, in a position to provide its opinion. Thus, there is no Court judgement or adjudication upon these challenges”.

Mr Megrahi hopes to continue to publish details of his appeal challenge in the course of the forthcoming weeks.

[The above is the text of a press release issued at noon today by Abdelbaset Megrahi's Scottish solicitor, Tony Kelly. The Scotsman's report on the matter can be read here and The Times's here. The Times of Malta website contains a report focussing on what the documents have to say about the identification evidence of Tony Gauci and the evidence relating to ingestion of the bomb at Malta's Luqa Airport.

The Lord Advocate has issued a press release commenting on this development it reads:

'The Lord Advocate, the Right Honourable Elish Angiolini QC, has criticised the publication of selected material relating to his appeal by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber.

'Mrs Angiolini said:

'“I deplore the efforts by Abdelbaset Megrahi to challenge his conviction through selective publication of his view of the evidence in the media after he has abandoned his second appeal against conviction.

'“The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court. Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges following trial and his conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an Appeal Court presided over by the Lord Justice General, Scotland’s most senior judge. Mr Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history .

'“The Crown has supported the conviction vigorously and stood ready, willing and able to do so throughout the appeal process which Mr Megrahi abandoned.

'“As he and his legal team have made clear, the decision to discontinue the appeal proceedings was taken voluntarily by Mr Megrahi himself. He did not require to abandon his appeal. Having done so, he now seeks to retry his case in the media and criticise the evidence against him. Mr Megrahi exercised his right of silence throughout the judicial proceedings.

'“The only evidence that the trial court ever heard from Mr Megrahi was in the television interview which he gave, after publication of the criminal charges in 1991, to the veteran journalist Pierre Salinger. In that interview, which was played to the trial court by the prosecution, Mr Salinger put to him the detailed allegations and his responses on many important matters were disproved and discredited in the trial.”'

This is a bit rich coming from the person whose office was responsible for the lion's share of the outrageous delay in getting Mr Megrahi's second appeal to the stage of argument. This had the consequence that, given his terminal illness, there was no chance of his surviving until its conclusion and also ultimately led to his regrettable, but entirely understandable, decision to abandon the appeal to maximise his chances of repatriation by keeping open the prisoner transfer option. At the end of the day the Cabinet Secretary for Justice chose another option -- compassionate release -- but Megrahi had no way of knowing that that was going to happen.

Here is what I wrote on this blog almost a year ago, on 26 October 2008:

"More than sixteen months have passed since then. More than thirteen months have passed since the first procedural hearing in the new appeal was held. More than ten months have passed since the appellant’s full written grounds of appeal were lodged with the court. Why has no date yet been fixed for the hearing of the appeal? Why does it now seem impossible that the appeal can be heard and a judgement delivered by the twentieth anniversary of the disaster on 21 December 2008?

"The answer is simple: because the Crown, in the person of the Lord Advocate, and the United Kingdom Government, in the person of the Advocate General for Scotland, have been resorting to every delaying tactic in the book (and where a particular obstructionist wheeze is not in the book, have been asking the court to rewrite the book to insert it). These tactics include, to name but a few, raising difficulties about allowing the appellant access to productions used at the original trial; seeking to overturn previous appeal court decisions on the scope of the appeal in SCCRC references; and claiming public interest immunity on “national security” grounds in respect of documents which have been in the hands of the Crown for more than twelve years and which have been seen by the SCCRC. The judges on a number of occasions have expressed disquiet at the Crown’s dilatoriness; but have so far done little, if anything, meaningful to curb it."]