The Lockerbie bombing - the ultimate qisas barbarism

[What follows is excerpted from an article by barrister David Wolchover headlined The obscene rationale of random retaliation published today on the Jewish News website:]

Last week mainstream lovers of Israel doubtless watched in horror as crazed Israeli police were televised beating Palestinians with batons as they lay on the ground outside the Al Aqsa mosque.  

No “context” of security considerations could conceivably excuse such brutality, which sadly brought to mind similar footage of so-called “police” attacking demonstrators in that host of countries ruled over by oppressive regimes. The inflammatory effect it will have worked on the latest generation of Palestinian Arabs already poisoned by decades of the big naqba lie is not hard to imagine.

Yet as sickening as it was to observe the mishtara in action, it pales into insignificance compared with the random ambushing and murder of Anglo-Israeli sisters Rina and Maia Dee and their mother, who subsequently succumbed to her injuries.

It has been reported that Hamas “praised” the attack (and the Tel Aviv car attack) as “retaliation” for the Al Aqsa raids. If accurately reported it is noteworthy that Hamas did not cite Israel’s air attacks on Gaza as legitimating the Dee killings.

Presumably the air raids were accepted by Hamas as a response to the rockets launched from Gaza and Lebanon. Those followed the Al Aqsa raids and since the vast majority were neutralised by the Iron Dome shield, it may be deduced that the Dee murders and the Tel Aviv incident were deemed sanctionable as replacement retaliation.

Even according to the Islamic fundamentalist interpretation of Lex Talionis – the principle of tit-for-tat – the murders were of course utterly disproportionate. No one knows what might have been in the mind of the killer or killers but what is significant is that Hamas, as the official embodiment of would-be genocide, sought by praising them to draw an equivalence between non-fatal beating and homicide.

The episode demonstrates once again the haphazard and muddled rationale behind Islamic Fundamentalism, rooted as it is in the quasi-theocratic doctrine of qisas, the sacred duty to exact revenge in like measure. (...)

But qisas does not require vengeance to be directed personally at the supposedly deserving criminal. If you can’t kill that individual, any old soft target will do, provided they are loosely associated with the original perpetrator. It could be regimental colleagues, family members or friends, fellow citizens or members of the same community.

It might even stretch to people only tenuously connected. The ultimate barbarism here is the Lockerbie bombing. On July 4, 1988, an IranAir jet carrying 290 passengers and crew was shot down by the Vincennes, an American guided-missile cruiser patrolling in the Gulf of Iran, with the loss of all on board.

The Vincennes was engaged at the time in a skirmish with Iranian fast patrol boats and the relevant crew members incompetently mistook the jetliner for an Iranian F-14A Tomcat heading in to attack the ship. Yet no timely apology or offer of compensation was forthcoming; instead the Reagan administration’s lame attempts to excuse the disaster only added salt to the wound.

Incensed, Iran embarked on qisas by collaborating with a Palestinian terrorist faction in the detonating of a bomb on PanAm 103 over Lockerbie the following December 21 with the not quite equivalent loss of 270 lives on board.

Quite apart from the fact that the victims were presumptively innocent it mattered not to the Iranian government that among the passengers a great many were not even American citizens and the 11 killed by falling debris were Lockerbie residents.

Pro-Megrahi backers flayed by new Lord Advocate

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater (whose views on Lockerbie are well-known) in today’s edition of The Times.  It reads as follows:]

Scotland’s Lord Advocate has launched a powerful and stinging attack against “conspiracy theorists” who claim that the Lockerbie bomber was wrongly convicted.

In the most detailed rebuttal yet made to the case mounted by campaigners who argue that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was innocent and that Libya was not involved in the terrorist bomb plot that brought Pan Am 103 down over Lockerbie 24 years ago today, Frank Mulholland, QC, calls the allegations “without foundation”.

He goes on to accuse those making them of uttering “defamatory” comments against High Court judges who are unable to respond. [RB: Justice for Megrahi has made no defamatory comments against any High Court judge.  It is not defamatory of the Zeist judges to say that they were wrong in finding Megrahi guilty. Lawyers all the time say that judges got things wrong (and almost every time an appeal is allowed, other judges say so too). And in the Lockerbie case even the SCCRC concluded that, on an absolutely crucial point, no reasonable court could have reached the conclusion that the Zeist judges reached.  JFM in its recent allegations of criminality was very careful not to say that then Lord Advocate (and now High Court judge) Colin Boyd had attempted to pervert the course of justice.]

Mr Mulholland, who has relaunched an investigation into what he calls an act of “state-sponsored terrorism” by the former Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, says that he has been through all the evidence and is convinced that al-Megrahi’s conviction was “safe”.

An outside counsel invited by the Lord Advocate to conduct an independent review of the evidence has also concluded that the conviction was sound. [RB: It would be interesting to know the identity of this outside counsel.  Here, by contrast, is a short list of eminent lawyers who have concluded that the conviction was not sound: Benedict Birnberg, Gareth Peirce, Michael Mansfield QC, David Wolchover, Len Murray, Ian Hamilton QC, Jock Thomson QC, John Scott QC.  There are many more.]

“I am hugely frustrated that there is an unfounded attack on the integrity of the judges involved in the process,” Mr Mulholland said. “I saw a report on the BBC that [claimed] a high court judge — Colin Boyd, Lord Advocate at the time — perverted the course of justice. And it frustrates me that they’re not in a position to answer these allegations, these can be made without being challenged and without any real foundation.” [RB: At least Mr Mulholland does not here make the error of accusing JFM of responsibility for the BBC’s egregious misinterpretation of the English language.]

He compared the allegations to the uncontrolled media attempts to blacken the name of Lord MacAlpine, the former Conservative Party treasurer, over child abuse.

“I deplore any of that,” he said. “The appropriate place for voicing any concerns about the evidence is before a court of law, not in the court of public opinion, or the media. I haven’t spoken to the people who are affected by this, but I would imagine that they are frustrated that their reputations can be so easily attacked, and they can’t do anything about it.”

Mr Mulholland, who has been to Libya to make contact with the new regime, is hopeful that permission will be given soon to send Scottish police officials to Tripoli to gather evidence that would not only buttress the case against al-Megrahi, but reopen the wider plot to down the US airliner.

He believes that a criminal investigation rather than a public inquiry is the best way to resolve the 1988 Lockerbie case.

“I take the view that the calls for a public inquiry are essentially to set up a vehicle which would be a surrogate criminal court, he said. “I believe that the guilt or innocence of al-Megrahi is entirely a matter for the courts.”

He issued a challenge to the al-Megrahi apologists: “If you don’t like the set-up of the justice system, then what you do is you change it, through the democratic vehicle of parliament. You change the law.”

Mr Mulholland says he has studied all the claims advanced in the book Megrahi: You are my Jury by the writer John Ashton, and finds no evidence to support them. He urged those arguing that al-Megrahi was innocent to put any additional evidence to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

“Mr Megrahi stood trial before a Scottish court and was convicted by three judges unanimously, then an appeal, where five judges unanimously upheld the conviction, hearing additional evidence about the Heathrow break-in [the claim that the bomb went aboard there],” he said. “Having heard all the arguments presented to them, they upheld the conviction. Part of our justice system is the [commission] for which I have the highest regard. Anyone who is concerned about a conviction can make an application to the commission.”

He added: “The commission had access to all the Crown’s papers, and they took the view that in relation to a very limited number of grounds, the case should be referred back to the appeal court, which they did. The defence were entitled to expand the appeal beyond the grounds of referral, and they included a number of grounds which had been rejected by the commission, and the court was in the process of hearing that appeal when al-Megrahi abandoned his appeal.

“Now, whatever you think, and everyone is entitled to their view as to whether he is guilty or not, the courts took the view that following a trial and an appeal and a subsequent appeal, which was abandoned, al-Megrahi’s conviction still stands and that is the application of the rule of law.”

Mr Mulholland believes the evidence shows that the previous Libyan regime under Colonel Gaddafi was involved in “an act of state-sponsored terrorism”.

He is working with the FBI, the US Attorney-General and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to pursue investigations. “We are applying the rule of law,” he said. “If you follow the evidence, it leads to Libya.”

Has President Rouhani acknowledged Iran's responsibility for Lockerbie?

[What follows is excerpted from a report in today's edition of the Daily Express:]

Donald Trump has been warned to expect another Lockerbie by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, as Iran continued to mourn the death of its top military leader Qassem Soleimani.

Mr Rouhani responded to the US President’s threat to strike 52 Iranian sites, by posting a cryptic tweet in which he told America to never threaten Iran and to “remember the number 290”. He wrote: “Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290.#IR655. Never threaten the Iranian nation.”

The figure 290 refers to the total number of passengers on Iranian Airways flight IR655 who died when their plane was accidentally shot down over the Persian Gulf by the US Navy in July 1988.

In December of the same year, Pan Am flight 103 crashed in Lockerbie after a bomb exploded on board, killing all 270 passengers.

Although Colonel Gaddafi and Libya were blamed for the terrorist attack, Western intelligence agencies believed that Iran ordered the bombing in retaliation for the downing of its plane in July.

Mr Rouhani’s post has been interpreted by some Middle East experts as a veiled reference to the Lockerbie tragedy and an implicit acknowledgement of their involvement in the affair.

Fatima Alasrar, a Middle East analyst from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, linked Rouhani's tweet with the Lockerbie disaster.

She wrote: “Rouhani is basically reminding @realDonaldTrump of the #Iranian Air Flight 655 carrying 290 passengers which was downed by a US navy warship the Vincennes in 1988.

“Though it was deemed a human error, Tehran worked covertly to exact its revenge. How? #Lockerbie.”

She added: 'Boeing 747 airline Pan Am exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and was assumed to be an operation conducted by the Libyans when it was #Iran who orchestrated the downing of the plane and paid the Libyans to do it.

“After years of denying, Rouhani just admitted to it!”

[RB: A longer article along the same lines appears today in the Daily Mail. In February 2016 barrister David Wolchover wrote an article setting out the evidence for Iran and Rouhani's responsibility for Lockerbie.]

Some pertinent questions for the Scottish Government

[What follows is the text of a letter sent and emailed to the First Minister, Alex Salmond, on 19 November by barrister and author David Wolchover:]

The destruction of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie

You may have been made aware of some of my writings on Lockerbie, earlier correspondence with the Government of Scotland on the topic, and of the fact that last week I posted on my website a new and much expanded revision of my treatise, Culprits of Lockerbie (http://www.davidwolchover.co.uk/docs/Culprits%20of%20Lockerbie.doc).

Re-launch of the treatise was reported in an article by Lucy Adams in The Herald on 13 November, 2013 (“Iranian president accused of insight into Lockerbie attack” – for some reason, as Robert Black QC points out in his Lockerbie blog, the newspaper has not posted the article on line, despite its prominence in the paper edition).

As you are doubtless aware the treatise was considered newsworthy because I included the results of my recent researches and analysis inferentially demonstrating the high probability that the Scots-educated President Hassan Rouhani of Iran was complicit in procuring the atrocity with the then Interior Minister Hojatoislam Ali Akbar Mohtashemi. This was also the theme of a recent feature I contributed to the widely read weekly newspaper Jewish News (“The grim Lockerbie shadow over Iran’s new president,” 31.1013, http://jewishnews.co.uk/ the-grim-lockerbie-shadow-over-irans-new-president/).

I am not writing with any hope of eliciting comment from you on this admittedly thorny topic. Were that to be the case I should not be surprised if the result were any different from Lucy Adams’s attempt to obtain a comment from President Rouhani’s office: ie no response. Rather I am writing for a very specific reason.

Lucy asked the Crown Office to comment and in her piece she reported their spokesman’s response:

“The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and Police Scotland are actively working with US law enforcement in pursuit of lines of inquiry to bring to justice the others involved in the Lockerbie bombing. This is a live investigation and in order to preserve the integrity of the investigation it would not be appropriate to offer further comment.”

The thrust of the response was predictable enough but, unless and until Scotland attains independence, I believe that, as a UK taxpayer, I am entitled to ask of you, as Head of the Government of Scotland, the following questions:

• How many officers of the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary or any other Scottish police force or department are there currently assigned to work on the case and how many are actually working on it?

• Of what rank and speciality are they?

• Whether the officers are working on it full-time or in addition to other duties?

• What budget has been set aside for the investigation?

• What has been the expenditure on foreign travel in connection with their inquiries, or telephone calls over the last 12 months?

• Has there been any material progress in uncovering substantive new evidence?

• If there has been no recent relevant evidence uncovered, why are there officers still assigned to, and more importantly working on, the case?

• What is the current Crown Office budget vis a vis Lockerbie inquiries?

If there has been no progress despite significant expenditure I believe I am entitled to know why British tax payer’s money is being devoted to an investigation which is going nowhere.

That might be a matter of relevance in the current constitutional debate.

A substantive reply to the above questions would be appreciated.

For the convenience of your staff I am enclosing/attaching a copy of The Herald article.

"I accuse..."

[This is the headline over an article by me published today on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm. It consists of verbatim extracts (in translation) from Émile Zola’s famous public letter “J’accuse...” on the Dreyfus affair.  The final two paragraphs of my article read as follows:]

With the substitution of Megrahi for Dreyfus, Scotland for France, and the office of First Minister for that of President of the French Republic, every word can with equal justice be addressed to Alex Salmond. The magnitude of the Scottish miscarriage of justice and the flaws in the investigation, prosecution and adjudication that led to it have been exposed in the SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons published by The Herald; in John Ashton’s book Megrahi: You are my Jury ; in David Wolchover’s monograph Culprits of Lockerbie; and in Dr M G Kerr’s article An overview of the Lockerbie case.  There is now no shred of justification for continuing to maintain that all is for the best in the best of all criminal justice systems or  -- the coward’s fallback position -- that, while there may have been a few technical, procedural defects in his trial and conviction, Megrahi was clearly guilty anyway, so what does it matter?

Zola’s letter was headed “J’accuse”.  Although the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and conviction occurred under UK Conservative and Labour administrations, it is Mr Salmond and the Scottish Government that today have the power to put right the disgraceful miscarriage of justice that occurred on the watch of two of their political opponents; and it is accordingly the Scottish SNP Government that today stands accused. The only honourable course of action open to that government is to institute an independent inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the performance of the Scottish criminal justice system in the Megrahi case, as a matter which has caused grave public concern. 


[I am grateful to Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer, author of the encyclopaedic 174-part Lockerbie series Diary of a Vengeance Foretold, for drawing my attention to an article entitled The Dreyfus Affair: Enduring CI Lessons published in the March 2011 issue (vol 55, no 1) of the journal Studies in Intelligence.]

Time to come clean on Rouhani and Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article by barrister David Wolchover published in Jewish News Online on 18 February 2016. It reads as follows:]

Not long after Hassan Rouhani became president of Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu grimly described him as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Islamic Republic’s so-called “moderate” president may have gently smiled his way to a milestone deal over his country’s nuclear development programme and a warm welcome in European capitals, but Israel’s premier was spot on.

Under Rouhani’s administration, a staggering 2,000 people have been executed, mainly by the “traditional” method of slow hanging. For all his cherubic twinkling, Rouhani is as bloodthirsty a customer as the very cruellest of his fellow clerics.

Moreover, his career as a purveyor of death goes way back. In 2013, by simply drawing together biographical details in the public domain, I explained why he was probably implicated in the worst atrocity ever perpetrated in the UK – the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

Now, however, that which was mere supposition has become hard fact, avowed to me by an informant in circumstances lending credence to the individual’s claim to be speaking on behalf of Israeli intelligence. But why do they not come right out with it if they know? Very simply, they are shy of proclaiming officially what they know privately. I’ll come to that.

But first, forget Libya and the two indicted Libyans Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. The case against them was palpable nonsense, cobbled together unconvincingly for reasons of state still only half understood. However, before the US government changed course and blamed Libya, it had already accurately identified the true culprits. Lockerbie was retaliation for Iran Air 655, a packed Airbus negligently shot down by an American warship in the Gulf on 4 July 1988, in the mistaken belief it was a hostile warplane.

Selected journalists were briefed about a trawl of National Security Agency telecom intercepts, which furnished clear proof that Iran’s powerful interior minister, Hojatislam Mohtashami-Pur, had contracted Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command to blow up an American airliner in revenge for IA 655. The PFLP-GC needed the money and had expertise in planting bombs on passenger planes and it is almost certain the device that destroyed Pan Am 103 was the gang’s own barometric pressure type employed by them repeatedly over many years.

Significantly, the NSA intercepts were corroborated and enlarged upon by parallel Israeli intelligence obtained by secreting agents into the heart of terrorist groups. Citing intelligence from such infiltration, my informant asserted the Iranians had not simply been the paymasters but had lent decisive logistical aid. It is certain, contrary to the Crown’s case, that the Lockerbie bomb was planted inside Heathrow’s “interline” shed in the portable luggage receptacle, which in due course was loaded on board the 747.

Records later showed that during the narrow window of opportunity the terrorists had, an IranAir cargo plane was parked not 200 yards from the shed, and departed for Tehran just minutes after the window closed.

In my online treatise Culprits of Lockerbie, I surmised that a terrorist flew in on the cargo jet with the bomb and, masquerading as a baggage handler, placed it in the receptacle. He then immediately flew out on the same plane.

My informant agreed and added that the “porter” was the PFLP-GC’s expert in airport and airline security, Marwad Bushnaq, Ahmed Jibril’s nephew, nom de guerre Abu A’Ali.

Even before Lockerbie, Israel discovered Heathrow was a likely target and warned MI6, but the warning was spurned because of a major row between British and Israeli intelligence services.

Where does Hassan Rouhani fit into this?

Published details about him show three points of particular interest, the first that Rouhani held senior executive positions in intelligence, security and special operations and was on the Supreme Defence Council. In 1989, he was offered the job of minister of intelligence, though he opted instead to become new supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s plenipotentiary on the Supreme National Security Council and its first secretary.

Point two: Mohtashami-Pur was deeply antagonistic to the genuinely more moderate future president, Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani. In June 1988, mounting opposition to the war with Iraq led the original supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to charge Rafsanjani with bringing hostilities to an end. With Rafsanjani eclipsing the extremist Mohtashami, the destruction of the Airbus on 4 July presented the perfect opportunity to spike his opponent’s rising influence.

Three: Rouhani had a very special motive to conspire with Mohtashami in their shared opposition to Rafsanjani. As so often in political intrigue, the key to understanding alliances often lies rooted in personal vendetta. In 1980, Rouhani had joined the Supervisory Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Authority. Rafsanjani was chief executive and Rouhani was deeply critical of the policy of televising foreign – un-Islamic – content. By 1983, Rouhani was council chair and engineered a revolt against Rafsanjani, triumphantly replacing him at the helm. But Rafsanjani had Khomeini reinstate him, and the egg on Rouhani’s face (for once devoid of smiles) doubtless sowed the seeds of deep and lasting enmity.

We know from informal briefings by US and Israeli intelligence after Lockerbie that the Mohtashami/Jibril deal was sealed in the interior minister’s Tehran office in late August 1988. There was much more. Two senior Iranian officials attended the meeting with Mohtashami. One, Mehdi Karroubi, custodian and treasurer of the Martyr’s Fund, would fund the multimillion-dollar bounty. The other didn’t say much but smiled a lot and was obviously more than a neutral observer. He was none other than our cherubic friend, Supreme Defence Council member Hassan Rouhani.

Why has Israel never breathed a word of this publicly? Since 1989, the United States has turned away from accusing Iran, will hardly do so now and has anyway invested too much in the story of Libyan guilt to relent after all this time. Israel for its part dare not break ranks publicly with its benefactor but, the informant asserted, hoped that a leaked but “plausibly deniable” narrative would do enough damage to the prospect of a nuclear accord without jeopardising relations with US intelligence.

Of course, Bibi could well have ordered the whole thing to be invented to condemn Iran, with your writer as his useful idiot. Who knows?

The grim Lockerbie shadow over Iran’s new president

[This is the headline over an article by David Wolchover published yesterday evening on the Jewish News website.  It reads as follows:]

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly this month, Benjamin Netanyahu memorably described Hassan Rouhani, the recently elected president of Iran, as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, cautioning that we should not be taken in by his “charm offensive” on the West.

Is this any more than bombastic alarmism, cried out in desperation by a worried man in charge of an increasingly-beleaguered Israel or is there substance in the warning? Analysis of Rouhani’s biography will provide a clear answer and it is chilling. His ostensible career as a serious-minded and seemingly decent person begins promisingly enough.

Educated at the prestigious Qom seminary with a clerical career beckoning, he went on to obtain his doctorate in Constitutional Law from Glasgow Caledonian University in 1999 with a thesis worthily entitled “The Flexibility of Shariah (Islamic Law) with reference to the Iranian experience”. Yet Rouhani’s distinguished scholastic attainment contrasts with a rather less happy connection with Scotland a decade earlier.

On 3 July 1988 a jumpy radar analyst on board the US Navy’s Gulf-based missile cruiser Vincennes identified an approaching aircraft as an Iranian F-14 Tomcat. Two missiles were launched but the target proved to be an Airbus, IranAir Flight 655, making the short hop from Bandar Abbas to Dubai with 290 passengers and crew.

Instead of eating humble pie, the Reagan administration ineptly tried to justify the tragedy as the consequence of a legitimate measure of self-defence and rubbed salt in the wound by awarding the hapless “air warfare co-ordinator” a navy medal for “heroic achievement”. Absurdly, the Iranian government claimed the destruction of Flight 655 was intended to celebrate the Fourth of July and with its traditional penchant for “symmetry” determined on revenge in like measure.

Following his 1986 showdown with the Regan government, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi made a show of “going straight”, including cutting off funds from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine: General Command, whose founder, Ahmed Jibril, was forced to seek fresh sources of revenue. To Jibril, the Airbus incident seemed like manna from heaven and with its network of informants on the ground Israeli intelligence soon learnt he was serenading the Iranians with an offer to execute a contract of revenge. Using their combined technical resources, Mossad and the CIA obtained clear evidence of a deal between Jibril and Iran’s powerful hard-line interior minister, Hojatolislam Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, by which Iran agreed to pay the PFLP-GC a bounty running into millions of dollars if it managed to destroy a packed American airliner.

The upshot was the destruction over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 of Pan American Flight 103, with the loss of only 20 souls fewer than went down with the Airbus. The US chose to accuse Libya instead of the PFLP-GC, but even a cursory reading of the evidence against the only man to be convicted of the bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, shows the case against him, and by extension Gaddafi, was tosh. This article is not about retrying Megrahi, dead now for 18 months.

President Rouhani is the subject. But what has he to do with Lockerbie? For those who know their history of Iranian revolutionary power-politics, the answer is not difficult to infer.

We need to look at his connection with Mohtashemi, the Lockerbie deal-maker. As ambassador to Syria, Mohtashemi had a key role in the creation of Hezbollah in the Lebanon and although appointed interior minister in 1995 continued an active association with Syrian military intelligence in the Lebanon.

In that capacity, he was the natural choice to talk to Jibril and in agreeing to pay out millions of dollars for an act of war against the US we can be certain he was hardly engaging “on a frolic of his own,” as lawyers might put it. As a mainstream politician it is inconceivable that he was not plenipotentiary for his government and the Ayatollah Khomeini. The Supreme Leader had been quite prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands as cannon fodder in the Iran-Iraq war, demonstrating no aversion to the shedding of innocent blood, especially of citizens of the “great Satan,” the USA.

So to the supposedly-moderate figure of Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani, later to become president of the Republic. In June 1988, backed by Khomeini, who had at last seen the light, Rafsanjani was working on ending hostilities with Iraq. His star was in the ascendant but Mohtashemi saw the downing of the Airbus as a perfect opportunity to strike at Rafsanjani and discredit the rising influence of the moderates. Rouhani, born in 1948, was a contemporary of Mohtashemi’s, born in 1947, and had already been marked for high office, elected to the Majlis, the parliament, as early as 1980, and, importantly, a member of the Supreme Defence Council in the crucial period from 1982 to 1988. He held top military positions during the Iran-Iraq war, and was heavily involved in the Iran-Contra episode.

He held diverse positions of executive authority over Iran’s intelligence, security and clandestine operations establishment for a number of years straddling the fateful year 1988 and was plainly a significant player. As such it is inconceivable that he could have had no knowledge of the deal with Jibril.

Of course, exercising all due forensic restraint, it can be argued that knowledge of a plan is no proof of complicity in its execution or of having aided and abetted the instrumental perpetrators. Yet knowledge of the existence of a secret conspiracy is usually regarded as the best evidence of participation. The deal with Jibril can only have been authorised on the highest authority.

Rouhani was a high official in intelligence and security. He was a close ally of Mohtashemi in their opposition to Rasfanjani. Can he conceivably have played no role with others in formulating the terms of the contract and authorising his intimate associate to close the deal? Metaphorically speaking, the fingerprints of President Rouhani are all over the bomb that shattered Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

• David Wolchover is a barrister. He has written extensively on the Lockerbie bombing

A completely circular argument

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2011.

Masking justice with “mercy”

[This is the title of an article by barrister David Wolchover in the current issue of Criminal Law & Justice Weekly. Over nine pages it painstakingly dissects the evidence relating to the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The following is just one short section of the article:]

Although the trial court found that the Samsonite bag had been carried from Luqa on KM180 they did not find that al-Megrahi had been instrumental in getting it on board. Nor did they find that he brought bomb components to Malta on December 20, and they rejected the Crown’s contention that he had access to explosives in Malta. But they found that he was involved as some sort of accessory on the basis of a package of assumptions: (i) the MST-13 timer was a type which had been supplied, though apparently not exclusively, to the Libyan military/JSO; (ii) al-Megrahi was a member of the JSO; (iii) he bought the clothes in the suitcase from Mary’s House on July 7; (iv) using a false passport for unexplained purposes he made a flying visit to Malta on December 20, returning to Tripoli next day at virtually the same time as KM180 flew out; (v) although there was no evidence as to how the bag could have been placed on board KM180 at Luqa, the Frankfurt evidence was consistent with the possibility that it was.

Having regard to al-Megrahi’s membership of the JSO and the supply of MST-13 timers to Libya, they were able to find that the bag had been put on board KM180 on December 21 because al-Megrahi (a) was the purchaser of the clothes on December 7, (b) was in Malta on December 21, using a false passport with no explanation and (c) was, as they found, therefore “connected,” in some unspecified way with the planting of the bomb. How could they be sure he was the purchaser of the clothes on the basis of mere resemblance to the purchaser and his brief presence in Sliema on December 7? Oh, because the bomb had been flown out of Luqa on December 21, when he was at the airport (using a false passport) and he was therefore “connected” with planting it. But, wait. How could they be sure it had started on its way from Luqa on the 21st? Ah, because he was found to have bought the clothes.

The argument was completely circular. The trial Judges professed to apply the principle of circumstantial evidence, an exercise which normally involves weaving together a number of disparate strands of evidence, reasonably well established or even undisputed though in themselves capable of proving very little, to wrap the accused in a net so tight as to permit no escape from a judgment of guilt. But the actual principle the court applied was petitio principii: assuming what is to be proved as a component of the would-be proof. Thus, a fundamental corruption of basic logic intellectually bankrupted the whole exercise.

The circle is dependent on the soundness of the finding that al-Megrahi was the purchaser. If that finding is wholly unsustainable the circle is broken and the other components prove nothing. The case against al-Megrahi depends therefore on the question whether there is a substantial case for contending that he was the purchaser. There is not.

Twenty-four years on: why Lockerbie does not simply go away

Twenty-four years ago today Pan Am 103 exploded in the sky above Lockerbie. In May this year, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering those killed aboard the aircraft and on the ground, died. Why, therefore, does the Lockerbie case not simply fade into the mists of history? Here are some of the reasons:

1.  From me: Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result and The fairy story of the Crown's independence

2.  From Dr Morag Kerr: Lockerbie: Fact and Fiction

3.  From Gareth Peirce:  The framing of al-Megrahi

4.  From David Wolchover:  Exploding Lockerbie -- Part 1 and Part 2, and A postscript on Lockerbie

5.  From James Robertson:  The Lockerbie affair and Scottish society

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

[Two years ago today, I posted on this blog an excerpt from a column headed “I accuse…” that I had written for Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm. It consisted in large part of verbatim extracts (in translation) from Émile Zola’s famous public letter “J’accuse...” on the Dreyfus affair. The article no longer appears on the magazine’s website*, but here is the excerpt:]

With the substitution of Megrahi for Dreyfus, Scotland for France, and the office of First Minister for that of President of the French Republic, every word can with equal justice be addressed to Alex Salmond. The magnitude of the Scottish miscarriage of justice and the flaws in the investigation, prosecution and adjudication that led to it have been exposed in the SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons published by The Herald; in John Ashton’s book Megrahi: You are my Jury; in David Wolchover’s monograph Culprits of Lockerbie; and in Dr M G Kerr’s article An overview of the Lockerbie case.  There is now no shred of justification for continuing to maintain that all is for the best in the best of all criminal justice systems or  -- the coward’s fallback position -- that, while there may have been a few technical, procedural defects in his trial and conviction, Megrahi was clearly guilty anyway, so what does it matter?

Zola’s letter was headed “J’accuse”.  Although the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and conviction occurred under UK Conservative and Labour administrations, it is Mr Salmond and the Scottish Government that today have the power to put right the disgraceful miscarriage of justice that occurred on the watch of two of their political opponents; and it is accordingly the Scottish SNP Government that today stands accused. The only honourable course of action open to that government is to institute an independent inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the performance of the Scottish criminal justice system in the Megrahi case, as a matter which has caused grave public concern. 

[I have today completed a significant Lockerbie-related piece of writing. The details cannot at present be disclosed, but I hope that it may lead to a major development in the quest to rectify the miscarriage of justice suffered by the late Abdelbaset Megrahi.]

*I am grateful to sfm for pointing out that the article does still appear on The Firm's website.