Pre-hearing briefing by Megrahi family lawyers

[What follows is the text of a press release issued by Aamer Anwar & Co:]

A sitting will be held on Friday 21st August 2020 at 10.00am for the procedural hearing in an appeal against conviction following our successful application to refer the conviction of the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi to the High Court for determination. 

On Friday the case will presided over by Scotland’s most senior judge the Lord Justice General, Lord Carloway along with the Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian and Lord Menzies.

My firm of solicitors has instructed Claire Mitchell QC, Gordon Jackson QC, Clare Connelly and our Edinburgh Agent Rosemary Cameron as part of our legal team.

Our team will appear at the hearing together at the Glasgow Training Rooms, The Pentagon Centre, 36 Washington Street, Glasgow, G3 8AZ on Friday. We will arrive at approximately 9.05am and a statement will be issued following the hearing.

What is likely to happen at the hearing?

a. The hearing will take place by means of WEBEX, a video conferencing online application. The Judges will appear on Screen and our legal team will appear from the one facility in Glasgow. To be given access to the live proceedings please contact the head of Judicial Communications. [RB: To obtain permission for audio access to the hearing, email communications@scotcourts.gov.uk. Only bona fide journalists are accorded video access.]

b. We will need to move the Court to allow the case to proceed in the name of the son of the deceased i.e. Ali Al-Megrahi

c. We need to have the grounds of appeal received and allow the court to consider them.

d. We need to move the Court to consider granting us authority to see certain documents over which public interest immunity is asserted. Our argument is that Public Interest Immunity Certificate is not everlasting, it has been 31 years since the bombing and the UK Government represented by the Advocate General should justify why it is still asserting PII and denying full disclosure of this information to our team.

On the 21st December 1988, 270 people from 21 countries were murdered in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the United Kingdom.

Since then the case of Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi the only man ever convicted of the crime has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history. The Appeal was commenced in 2007 but following the diagnosis of terminal cancer it was suddenly abandoned in 2009.

It is widely claimed that the Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran and carried out by a Syrian based terrorist group in retaliation for a US Navy strike on an Iranian Airbus six months earlier, in which 290 people died. 

The reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system has suffered badly both at home and internationally because of widespread doubts about the conviction of Mr Al-Megrahi; he was convicted in a Scottish court of law and that is the only appropriate place for his guilt or innocence to be determined.

A reversal of the verdict would have meant that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom stand accused of having lived a monumental lie for 31 years, imprisoning a man they knew to be innocent and punishing the Libyan people for a crime which they did not commit.

In June 2014 I lodged an application with the Commission (SCCRC) seeking to overturn the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for murder. The application was submitted on behalf of the Immediate family members of the late Mr. Al-Megrahi along with Dr Jim Swire, Reverend John F Mosey and 22 other British relatives of passengers who died on board Pan Am Flight 103.

The Appeal Court in a judgment in July 2015, ruled that the relatives of Lockerbie bombing victims would not be allowed to pursue an appeal on behalf of the only man convicted of the crime. The families did not give up and in July 2017 a further application was lodged with the Commission on behalf of the Al-Megrahi family.

There can be never be a time limit on justice, the families who support this appeal have never given up their search for the truth.  On March 11th 2020, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided that Mr. Megrahi’s case should be referred to the High Court for the determination.

The Commission believes that there may have been a miscarriage of justice in relation to the conviction, and that it is in the interests of justice to refer the case to the High Court.

The Commission believes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred by reason of an ‘Unreasonable Verdict’ and the ground of ‘Non-Disclosure’. These grounds incorporate many of the issues we had identified in our application.

Unreasonable verdict

S106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act allows an appeal on the basis that a conviction was based upon a verdict that no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned. Despite the fact there was no jury here, that ground of appeal remains open to Mr Al Megrahi.

This ground relates to the Court’s finding that Mr Al Megrahi was the purchaser of items that were located within the suitcase which housed the bomb which destroyed Flight 103. Said items having been bought in a shop in Malta owned by Mr Tony Gauci.

The Commission have agreed with our submission that the Court could not reasonably find that Mr Megrahi was the purchaser of the items on the basis of the evidence which was before them. This finding was central to the Crown case against Mr Al Megrahi, in essence if he could not be linked to the items within the bomb suitcase, there would have been insufficient evidence to allow the Court to convict.

Mr Gauci’s statements and his evidence on identification were inconsistent and made in circumstances hugely prejudicial to Mr Al Megrahi.  His evidence regarding the date of the purchase of the items from his store “could – and should – not have been accepted as credible or reliable.”

The Commission have concluded that no reasonable Court could have accepted the evidence that Mr Megrahi was identified as the purchaser of the items from Gauci’s shop. That being the case, no reasonable Court could have convicted him.

Non-Disclosure

We submitted serious allegations of the failure of the Crown to disclose evidence which could have been key to the defence and interfered with the right to a fair trial.

The Crown failed in its duty of disclosure of relevant material to Mr Al Megrahi’s defence team prior to trial. This prejudiced the defence in their preparation and conduct of the trial to such an extent that the Commission have concluded that this may have given rise to a miscarriage of justice.

The Commission conclude that there should have been disclosure to the defence regarding:

* Information contained in the precognition statement provided by Mr Gauci to the Crown.
*A statement given by Sergeant Bussutil and a confidential police report regarding Mr Gauci’s exposure to photographs in a magazine prior to attending an identification parade.
*Reward monies paid to Mr Gauci and his brother. Documents have claimed that Scottish police officers and FBI agents had discussed as early as September 1989 ‘an offer of unlimited money to the Maltese shop keeper Tony Gauci.

Various reports have claimed that Tony Gauci received more than $2m in reward-money.

The Commission concluded that, when applying the Article 6 test regarding a fair trial under the ECHR, the failure by the Crown to disclose information regarding the photographs which had been viewed by Mr Gauci and the information on reward monies paid to the Gaucis, that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

Consent to disclose Information:

We are disappointed that the Scottish Government, the UK Government, the United States and other foreign governments have refused consent to disclose matters which at this time remain redacted in papers disclosed to us.

We have requested that the Lord Advocate abide by his duty to make full disclosure, but also insist that the UK Government do not retain a Public Interest Immunity Certificate thus concealing important information from the appellant’s legal team some 31 years after the actual bombing.

For the Megrahi family and many of the British families of the victims supporting the appeal, there is finally hope on what has been a long journey for truth and justice.


For further background please refer to:-

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-51816857 (Lockerbie Appeal Bid Allowed)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-43987079 (Lockerbie bomber's conviction to be reviewed)
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/lockerbie-bombing-appeal-against-abdelbaset-22133295  (Lockerbie bombing: Appeal against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction lodged at High Court)
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/ghosts-lockerbie-stirred-prospect-posthumous-appeal-200316165937575.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-11/lockerbie-bomber-s-conviction-can-be-appealed-again-panel-finds
https://www.news24.com/news24/world/news/scottish-review-body-refers-lockerbie-bomber-case-for-appeal-20200311
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/lockerbie-exclusive-we-publish-the-report-that-could-have-cleared-megrahi.2012036248
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/today-sunday-herald-publishes-behind.html 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10688067/Lockerbie-bombing-was-work-of-Iran-not-Libya-says-former-spy.html

The primary suitcase and its contents

The Primary Suitcase and Its Contents - Rethinking Basic Assumptions is the title of an article published yesterday on baz’s blog The Masonic Verses, prompted by the recent Aljazeera documentary Lockerbie: what really happened?  As with all of baz’s Lockerbie writings, it deserves careful study.

Lockerbie: what really happened?

Aljazeera’s delayed Lockerbie documentary (the third in the series) is to be broadcast soon. A promotional video can be viewed here.

Libya contact group meets in Qatar

[This is the headline over a report published today on the Aljazeera English language website. It reads in part:]

Libyan rebels seeking international recognition are to tell world powers at a meeting in the Qatari capital Doha that Muammar Gaddafi's removal from power is the only way out of their country's deepening crisis.

Wednesday's conference of the "International Contact Group on Libya" is expected to focus on the future of Libya after an African Union attempt to broker a peace deal between rebel groups and Gaddafi collapsed.

On the eve of the meeting, a spokesman for the rebel Transitional National Council (TNC) said it will accept nothing short of the removal of Gaddafi and his sons from the country.

Mahmud Shammam, whose group seeks international recognition as the legitimate government of Libya, also stressed: "We want to move from the de facto recognition of the council to an internationally-recognised legitimacy."

Shammam said the contact group is comprised of high-level international diplomats, and was set up at a conference in London last month.

The Libyan government has dismissed the talks and Qatar's role in the ongoing conflict.

"We are very hopeful that the American people and the American government will not buy into the Qatari lies and Qatari schemes," a spokesman of the Libyan regime told reporters in Tripoli on Tuesday.

"Qatar is hardly a partner of any kind. It's more of an oil corporation than a true nation," the spokesman said.

Among those expected to come to the Doha talks is Moussa Koussa, Libya's former foreign minister, who fled to Britain last month after he defected. He has reportedly arrived in Qatar to meet Libyan rebels.

Koussa, a long-time top aide to Gaddafi, will not formally participate in the meeting but is expected to hold talks on the sidelines, British sources said.

"He's not connected to (the rebel) Transitional National Council in any way or shape," Mustafa Gheriani, a media liaison official of the rebels, said.

Gheriani added that he was personally surprised to learn that Koussa was leaving Britain to attend the Qatar talks, and suggested that British officials should explain why he was going and in what capacity.

Koussa, the most prominent Libyan government defector, sought refuge in Britain on March 30. A friend said he quit in protest at attacks on civilians by Gaddafi's forces.

The former spy chief was questioned by Scottish police over the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, which killed 270 people, but the British government said he was now free to travel.

"We understand he is travelling today to Doha to meet with the Qatar government and a range of Libyan representatives to offer insight in advance of the contact group meeting," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

No Gaddafi representatives are expected to attend.

"Moussa Koussa is a free individual who can travel to and from the United Kingdom as he wishes," the spokesman said.

British government sources said they expected Koussa to return to Britain after his talks, although others questioned the wisdom of letting him leave. (...)

Scottish police interviewed him last week but do not have power over his movements.

"We have every reason to believe that the Scottish authorities will be able to interview him again if required," Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, said.

US and Scottish authorities had hoped Koussa would provide intelligence on Lockerbie which could lead to more convictions.

Pamela Dix, whose brother Peter was killed in the bombing, said she could not understand why Koussa had been allowed to leave Britain. "I'm astonished that he is apparently free to come and go in this way," she told Reuters news agency.

"This current government has been very quick to condemn the previous one over Lockerbie, but they too have been very hands off. This demonstrates their continuing lack of interest in solving the biggest mass murder we have seen in this country."

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan agent, was sentenced to life in prison in 2001 for his alleged part in blowing up the US airliner but was released by the Scottish government in 2009 when he was judged to be terminally ill with cancer.

Koussa played a key role in the release of Megrahi, who is still alive. Britain's Conservative-led coalition government, which came to power in May 2010, has heavily criticised the decision to let Megrahi go.

Koussa is believed to be no longer under the supervision of British security agencies who had questioned him at a secret location after his defection to Britain.

[The Scotsman's long report on reaction to Moussa Koussa's departure can be read here.]

Lockerbie as a diplomatic weapon

[What follows is an excerpt from Megrahi's death - An end to a century of mistrust? by Jason Pack of Cambridge University, published on the Aljazeera website on this date in 2012:]

In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland in what was the deadliest "modern-style" terrorist attack of the 20th century. Since then, rather than searching for the genuine causes of the tragedy, the US and UK wielded Lockerbie as a diplomatic weapon against Libya. (...)

In the wake of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher - both of whom had long standing personal grievances with Gaddafi - decided to isolate Libya from the international system. They and their successors used Lockerbie as a pretext to pass crippling UN sanctions. From 1992-1999, Libya was literally cut off from the world. International flights into and out of the country were forbidden, GNP dropped by over a third, oil infrastructure rusted and many Libyans grew up nursed by Gaddafi's anti-Imperialist rhetoric.

The economic damage from the sanctions compelled Gaddafi to back away from his support for international terror and to turn over Abdel Basset al-Megrahi (and his co-suspect Lamin Fhima, who was later acquitted) to face a Scottish tribunal at Camp Zeist in Holland. Conclusive evidence has never existed that Megrahi was actually involved in Lockerbie. To this day, many experts believe that he was indicted on fraudulent evidence from a Maltese shopkeeper and that the CIA bribed witnesses.

In 2003, Libya agreed to formally accept responsibility for the bombing, pay over two billion dollars in compensation to victim's families and voluntarily surrender its WMD program. This initiated a limited detente with the West. Yet, the relationship remained plagued by mutual suspicion and backsliding was common.

Gaddafi hoped to receive a warmer embrace from Western leaders and a greater flood of investment. Western diplomats hoped for significant internal political change as a precursor for warmer relations. In August 2009, Megrahi was released on humanitarian grounds from Scottish prison due to a diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer. He was accompanied back to Tripoli by Gaddafi's son, Saif al Islam. Cynics claim that the Scots released him to help BP secure a favourable contract.

American anger over the Scottish decision further poisoned US-Libyan relations (...)

Western politicians should bite their tongue and not engage in any grandstanding about Megrahi's passing.

In fact, they should no longer refer to Lockerbie when dealing with the new Libyan leadership. Furthermore, the sensationalist Western media should stop fueling the fire in an attempt to make the Megrahi controversy fresh again. Lockerbie is a decades-old sore. The time has come to stop picking the wound and let it heal.

Lockerbie: Case closed

[The description of the Lockerbie: Case closed documentary on the Aljazeera website reads as follows:]

Wednesday, December 21, 1988 was the longest night of the year, the night of the winter solstice. At 6.30pm that evening Pan Am Flight 103 took off from London Heathrow airport en route to JFK New York. On board Clipper Maid of the Skies, as it was called, were 16 crew members and 243 passengers, many of whom were carrying Christmas gifts in their luggage for family and friends.

But also in the baggage hold was a brown Samsonite suitcase, packed with new clothes and a Toshiba radio cassette player. Investigators later determined that hidden in the Toshiba were some 450 grammes of high explosive and an electronic timer. At 7.03pm as the plane was 31,000 feet over Scotland, the device exploded. A little under a minute later, 200,000 pounds of Kerosene ignited as the wings and part of the fuselage fell onto the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. All on board were killed, so too were 11 residents of Lockerbie - 270 innocent people murdered by a terrorist bomb.

Twenty-three years later, the scene changes to a small house on the outskirts of Tripoli in Libya, where the only man found guilty of causing those events lies helpless in bed. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, whom the world knows as the Lockerbie bomber, is dying of prostate cancer. For the first, last and only time he is about to give a television interview about his case - and he is to tell Al Jazeera that new evidence will prove that he was wrongly convicted. 

The Lockerbie disaster was Europe's worst terrorist outrage - more civilians died than in any other attack before 9/11. It has also become the most infamous. The events of that night, the painstaking police forensic investigation that followed, the identification of al-Megrahi and Libya as the likely culprits, his eventual trial and conviction in Holland, the overwhelming sense of relief that justice had been done felt by many relatives of the victims, and the controversy surrounding his subsequent return to Libya on compassionate grounds - all of these things have been the subject of intense scrutiny over the years.

As has been the growing concern, felt by some, that al-Megrahi may have been wrongly accused. 

This film, Lockerbie: Case Closed, will give hope to all those who believe that the Libyan is an innocent man and not the mass murderer that the prosecution claimed at his trial.

It reveals the hitherto secret assessment of the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) - a quasi-public body in Scotland that is independent from the courts and the government - which has examined the case against al-Megrahi in detail. Its report, which has never been published, raises numerous reasons for concern about a possible miscarriage of justice - especially the status of the testimony given by one Tony Gauci, a Maltese shop owner and the prosecution's main witness. He identified al-Megrahi as a man who had bought clothing and an umbrella from him on December 7, 1988 - remnants of which were later recovered from among debris from the disaster scene and which, according to investigators, had been in the same suitcase as the bomb.

As the film shows, the SCCRC found a number of reasons to seriously question this identification and Gauci's account about events on December 7 - the only date that al-Megrahi could have been in Malta to make such purchases. The report also raises concerns about the legitimacy of the formal identification process, in which Gauci picked al-Megrahi out from a line-up. The commission found that Gauci had seen al-Megrahi's photo in a magazine article identifying him as a possible suspect before the parade took place. The SCCRC also found that Scottish police knew that Gauci was interested in financial rewards, despite maintaining that Gauci had shown no such interest. Gauci reportedly picked up a $2m US government reward for his role in the case. Under Scottish law, witnesses cannot be paid for their testimony.

Prior to his return home, al-Megrahi had been seeking an appeal against his conviction. Had that hearing ever taken place then the SCCRC's conclusions and their evidence would have come to light. 

On that basis alone, the Libyan would have almost certainly walked from court a free man. However, the film also reveals the results of new scientific tests that comprehensively undermine the validity of the most crucial piece of forensic evidence linking the bombing to Libya - a fragment of electronic timer found embedded in the shredded remains of a shirt that was supposedly bought from Gauci's shop by al-Megrahi. The timer, said the prosecution, was identical to ones sold to Libyan intelligence by Swiss manufacturers. But as the new tests show, it was not identical and it now seems that British government scientists knew this all along.

John Ashton, who has been investigating the case for nearly 20 years, including time spent as part of al-Megrahi's defence team, has written a book on the affair with al-Megrahi. In the Al Jazeera film he says: "The Lockerbie disaster was Europe's worst terrorist attack. More Americans died in that attack than in any other terrorist event before 9/11. It's also Britain's worst miscarriage of justice, the wrong man was convicted and the real killers are still out there."

Lockerbie: Case Closed was produced and directed by William Cran and Christopher Jeans and is a Network Features production for Al Jazeera. It is narrated by Sean Barrett.

[The Sydney Morning Herald today publishes a report headlined Lockerbie evidence is in doubt; and on the website of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism there appears a long article entitled Lockerbie: was Megrahi innocent?]

Controversy remains 25 years after Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a report by Alasdair Soussi published today on the Aljazeera website. It reads as follows:]

Lockerbie was one of the most infamous attacks of the modern age, a crime that claimed hundreds of innocent lives and thrust a sleepy little town into the full glare of the world's media and watching public.

That crime was the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and Saturday marks 25-years since the American-bound airliner fell out of the skies above Lockerbie, Scotland. Killing all 259 passengers and crew on board and 11 others on the ground, the December 21, 1988 bombing lead to the largest criminal investigation in Scottish legal history.

For the victims' families especially, the anniversary is a chance to remember loved ones who lost their lives that terrible winter's night. But, divisions between those who vigorously endorse the guilty verdict handed down to the only person convicted of the bombing, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, and others who gravely doubt the safety of his conviction and are pressing for the real "truth" behind Lockerbie remain as entrenched as ever. The Libyan himself proclaimed his innocence up until his last breath when, nearly three years after his compassionate release from a Scottish jail, he died from prostate cancer at his Tripoli home in May last year - yet his death did little to unite what has become an ever-increasing divide.

'Red herring'?

"What definitely happened over the course of the Lockerbie investigation is that the police and the forensics people missed a shed load of evidence showing that the bomb was actually introduced at (London) Heathrow," says Morag Kerr, author of the new book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? - Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies, who contends that the bomb was not, as the prosecution successfully argued at Megrahi's trial at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, loaded onto an Air Malta flight at the island's Luqa airport by the Libyan.

"Whether that was pure incompetence or whether they were being prodded - it may have actually been a combination of both."

Kerr told Al Jazeera that one of the golden threads of evidence against the man who was convicted in 2001 - the clothes, which were said to have been wrapped around the bomb and which were traced to a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci who testified to selling them to Megrahi - was "a red herring".

"Once the police saw Malta it was a lost cause," says Kerr, who is also secretary-deputy of the UK-based Justice for Megrahi campaign. "The coincidence of the red herring that led them to Malta I think convinced them that they got the right guy. And, at that point I think it was a lost cause that they were ever going to go back and investigate Heathrow."

Strong 'circumstantial evidence'

While the likes of Kerr are adamant that both the direction of the investigation and Megrahi's guilt were grave errors - others take the opposite view. Richard Marquise led the FBI's task force on Lockerbie and refuses to be swayed by any notion that the investigation was flawed or that Megrahi suffered a miscarriage of justice, though he does lament the acquittal of Megrahi's co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah.

"When we did the investigation, we collected all the evidence that was available… and when it was all said and done the evidence we collected pointed to Megrahi, Fhimah and Libya," says the retired special agent, speaking to Al Jazeera. "We always hoped that we would get, through the years, more information that would substantiate that in greater fashion, but unfortunately we didn't get a lot. But, the circumstantial case was as strong as I've seen in my career, and I think the judges got it half right - I think Fhimah was involved although the circumstantial evidence was not quite as strong as it was against Megrahi. But, I'm convinced of [Megrahi's] guilt."

Stephanie Bernstein lost her husband on Pan Am Flight 103. Like Marquise, the American is emphatic that all the evidence points towards Megrahi.

"He did not wake up one morning, along with Fhimah, and say 'we've got nothing better to do, lets put a bomb on a plane,' they were agents of the Libyan intelligence service so they were of that part of (Muammar) Gaddafi's Libyan regime," Bernstein told Al Jazeera. "So they absolutely did not act alone - but I've got absolutely no doubt about [Megrahi's] guilt in terms of what he was convicted of."

As a dissenting voice to those of Bernstein, few are more high profile than Jim Swire. The Brit lost his daughter in the bombing and has consistently rejected the trial's outcome, arguing that the wrong man was convicted for the atrocity, and that two crucial points remain unanswered, both of which he and involved members of the British relatives are intending to officially challenge through an application for a further appeal against Megrahi's conviction or another route.

"Our position is that we've always wanted to know the truth about why the plane wasn't protected and who it really was that killed our loved ones," Swire told Al Jazeera. "And, we're not just going to go away because the (Scottish and British governments) are refusing our reasonable requests to give us that information… I've taken steps to organise the British relatives - and we are having a series of meetings with lawyers, but there won't be a satisfying statement about what the British relatives are going to do until the third week of January at the earliest."

Megrahi: A scapegoat?

Yet, as to searching out other avenues of blame for the Lockerbie disaster and giving credence to the claims made by Kerr and others who, by way of published works, have cast doubt on the eyewitness account of Gauci selling the clothes, Malta airport being the starting point for the bomb and other aspects of the evidence, Bernstein remains unmoved.

"These are old recycled stories - none of these are new," says Bernstein, who argues "the real story of Lockerbie is the dogged determination of the Scottish police and the FBI and Scottish law enforcement in general who covered every single inch of that territory (of debris) by foot". "If you said to me a couple of months ago, what would you predict about what would happen about press coverage around the 25th anniversary, I think we all would have predicted this."

But, why the widely-reported difference between the conviction of the US families who believe in Megrahi's guilt and many of their UK counterparts who have expressed grave doubt? Swire claims that the stateside relatives "seem to be ready to accept what their government tells them much more readily than many of us do".

"When the trial was ongoing, it was two British relatives, one of whom was me, who were there and watched the trial unfold - and became convinced to their horror that they were seeing a scapegoating of Megrahi," adds the retired GP, who contends that the American families likely "wish I would just go away and forget it all".

But, even for many of those on the other side of the Atlantic who are themselves yet to be convinced of Megrahi's innocence, there is a belief that efforts to clear his name must be directly confronted if only to lift a shadow from one of Scotland's most revered national institutions.

"Lockerbie is a huge cloud hanging over the Scottish justice system," Magnus Linklater, a leading Scottish political commentator, told Al Jazeera. "It's almost as if the allegation that Megrahi is innocent is the default position. But, that in its turn has not been tested and it's been allowed to go unchallenged and it's high time that it was properly challenged."

No excuse whatsoever

[This is the heading over an article by me just published on the website of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads as follows:]

Writing exclusively for The Firm, Professor Robert Black QC argues that the latest revelations which strike at the heart of the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi leave no excuse left for the Government to avoid convening an inquiry in the Pan Am 103 affair.

This is a comment that I posted a few days ago on the Lallands Peat Worrier blog:

“In an ideal world, I would prefer there to be no Scottish recourse, civil or criminal, to a UK Supreme Court. But, at present, on human rights issues, Scottish prosecutors and courts are getting it wrong far too often for comfort. How this is to be remedied, I do not know (but having career Crown Office civil servants as our law officers certainly doesn't help).

“And it is tragic that two of the best Scottish judges of their generation (Lords Hope and Rodger) have to be transported to London (where most of their time is spent hearing English appeals) when they are so badly needed in Scotland.”

One way of showing that we do not in Scotland need a UK Supreme Court nanny would be to take rigorous steps domestically to investigate cases where there is clear evidence of the justice system having miscarried. The clearest and worst such case is the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing.

The Aljazeera documentary Lockerbie: The Pan Am Bomber? is just the latest in a series of hammer-blows, ranging from the published views of UN observer Dr Hans Koechler, the findings (to the extent that they have been released) of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, to the devastating critiques of Gareth Peirce, the most experienced and successful UK lawyer in overturning gross miscarriages of justice.

The outraged reaction of Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC (the Lord Advocate who brought the charges against Megrahi and Fhimah) to the evidence presented to him that the Crown’s principal witness was being offered monetary inducements will be shared by any lawyer who has the slightest concern for the probity of our criminal justice system. The acceptance by the Zeist court of that witness’s credibility and reliability was essential to their verdict of guilty and without his evidence there could have been no conviction. Had the judges known of the shady financial dealings going on behind the scenes, their assessment of the witness’s evidence must have been very different.

There is now no excuse whatsoever for the Scottish Government to deny an independent inquiry into the Megrahi conviction. If the career Crown Office civil servants who are currently Scotland’s law officers stand in the way, they must be sacked.

It is time that the Scottish criminal justice system regained its self-respect.

[A news item in the magazine on this article can be read here.]

Scottish Sunday Express on the Aljazeera documentary

[What follows is the text of a report by Ben Borland that appeared in yesterday's Scottish edition of the Sunday Express:]

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was convicted on the basis that he bought clothes from Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, including a grey men’s Slalom shirt. The clothing was then packed in a suitcase with the bomb that brought down Pan Am 103, killing 270 on December 21, 1988.

The charred remains of the shirt were crucial to the prosecution, as a forensic scientist found a piece of circuit board from the bomb embedded in the collar which first led investigators to Libya, and ultimately Megrahi.

However, it has now emerged that clothing manufacturers in Malta told Scottish police in January 1990 that the shirt recovered from the crash site was in fact a boy’s size.

Campaigners have stepped up calls for an inquiry after the claims surfaced in a documentary broadcast on Thursday by Arab TV network Al Jazeera but seen by only a handful of Scottish viewers. [RB: The programme can be watched on You Tube here.]

In it, Scotland’s former Lord Advocate also accepted that Gauci, the main prosecution witness, was paid $2million to give evidence against Megrahi. Scottish private investigator George Thomson tracked down shirt manufacturers Tonio Caruana and Godwin Navarro in Malta. They recalled being shown a fragment of shirt by DC John Crawford and telling him, independently of each other, that it was a boy’s shirt

Speaking to the Sunday Express yesterday, Mr Navarro, 76, said: “I stand by my statement. I believe it is a boy’s shirt because of the size of the pocket and the width of the placket, where the button holes are.”

Retired Strathclyde Police superintendent Iain McKie, now a campaigner against miscarriages of justice, said: “The fact that the witnesses say it was a boy’s shirt and not an adult shirt seems to me quite critical.”

He said that if it was a boy’s shirt, then it cannot be the same one purchased from Gauci by the man he later identified as Megrahi – destroying the “evidence chain”.

Supt McKie said the latest claims added weight to calls for the Scottish Government to set up an independent inquiry into Megrahi’s conviction.

He added: “The whole chain of evidence has been totally and utterly shattered. It is looking more and more like the police came to a conclusion and then looked for evidence.”

The programme, Lockerbie: The Pan Am Bomber, also alleged that a piece of the shirt had been altered, as it is clearly a different shape in two police photographs.

However a spokesman for the Crown Office said yesterday that the matter was easily explained. He said: “The fragment of cloth alleged to have been removed from the shirt was examined by the scientists and is referred to in the forensic science report. It is clearly a separate fragment.”

But Fife-based Mr Thomson stood by his claims. He said: “In January 1990 they realise that what they have is a fragment of a boy’s shirt, while Gauci is saying he sold a gents’ shirt.

“The reason for people saying this is mainly down to the size of the pocket and lo and behold the next thing a fragment of the pocket has been removed.”

The documentary is the latest foreign TV show to expose doubts in Scotland’s handling of the case.

Dutch filmmaker Gideon Levy won the Prix Europa for the best current affairs programme of 2009 for Lockerbie Revisited, which has never been broadcast in Britain.

Editor of The Firm speaks on Radio Scotland about Megrahi inquiry

Steven Raeburn, editor of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm, was interviewed this morning on BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme. The topic was the need for an inquiry into the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi following the Aljazeera documentary and Marcello Mega's related article. The programme can be accessed here, through The Firm's website.

‘These are my last words: I am innocent’

[This is the headline over a report (behind the paywall) in today's Scottish edition of The Times. The article, under the byline of Marcello Mega and the paper's Scotland editor Magnus Linklater, gives an account of a very recent visit to Abdelbaset Megrahi by George Thomson (who presented the Aljazeera documentary on the Lockerbie case broadcast in June 2011). The report reads in part:]

The Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has given what he says is his last interview, using it to protest his innocence.

Speaking from his sick bed in Tripoli, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, insisted that he was not involved in the attack on Pan Am 103 in December 1988 that killed 270 people. He also accused a key witness, whose evidence helped to convict him, of lying in court.

The interview was published as relatives of the American and Scottish victims gathered yesterday to mark the 23rd anniversary of the atrocity. At the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, stood alongside US officials, including Eric Holder, the US Attorney-General, and Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, to lay a wreath at the Lockerbie cairn.

They were joined by Ali Aujali, the Libyan ambassador to the United States, a mark of the new relationship between Tripoli and the West, and also a signal that new evidence may be produced in the search for the original instigators of the Pan Am bombing. (...)

A friend, George Thomson, who conducted the interview on Saturday, described him as ravaged by the cancer and very weak. “For any doubters who may think he is not ill, you only have to look at the man and how wasted he is to see he has not got long in this life,” said Mr Thomson on his return.

However, al-Megrahi still had enough strength to deliver a personal challenge to the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, whose identification was instrumental in securing his conviction. Clothes from Mr Gauci’s shop were found, along with a tiny fragment of the timing device that triggered the bomb, in a briefcase among the wreckage of the plane.

Asked by Mr Thomson, a former police officer who was part of his defence team, what he would say to Mr Gauci if he met him again, al-Megrahi said: “If I had the chance to see him, I would tell him that I never ever in my entire life bought clothes from his shop, I never bought clothes from him. He dealt with me very wrongly, I have never seen him in my life before he came to the court. I am facing my death and I swear by my God, which is my God and Gauci’s God, I swear with him I have never been in that shop or buy any clothing from Gauci. He has to believe this because we are all together when we die.”

It is not suggested that the claims against Mr Gauci have any basis in fact. [RB: Well done, Magnus Linklater! The Times's lawyers will be proud of you!]

Mr Thomson filmed the 20-minute interview as part of a documentary about Lockerbie to be broadcast in February. The Libyan revealed that he has co-operated in writing a book with an investigative journalist, John Ashton, that will contain “dramatic” new evidence about his case.

Scottish prosecutors remain convinced that the evidence on which he was convicted is substantial, but al-Megrahi said: “I want people to read the book and use their brain, not hearts, and make judgment. Information is not from me, not from lawyers, not from the media, but experts who deal with criminal law and science, and they will be surprised when they read it. It will clear my name.”

Al-Megrahi is convinced that US agencies were determined to secure a conviction. “I am facing my death any time, and I don’t want to accuse anyone, or any country. But the Americans led the way,” he said.

He also revealed that he had been paid a visit a few days earlier by Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the atrocity, and who has long campaigned to clear his name. He said that he had confided in Dr Swire the details of new discoveries about the timing fragment made by investigators still working on his behalf.

He claimed that police were aware that there was another witness to the purchase of clothing in the Maltese shop, who might have helped to clear his name — Mr Gauci’s brother, Paul. It has always been believed that Mr Gauci was the only witness who could identify the buyer of the clothes.

“The commission met with Gauci. At the end of the statement they said he was nervous. He told them that when the man who bought the clothes left the shop, his brother Paul came to the shop, and took the parcels from the man and took them to the taxi he was taking. This information has never been raised before. There is an opportunity to have another physical witness who could have identified the man, yet they kept the brother out of it.”

Al-Megrahi ended the interview by saying he had a message for the international community, especially the people of Scotland and the UK: “I am about to die and I’d ask now to be left in peace to die with my family, and they be left in peace by the media as well. I will not be giving any more interviews, and no more cameras will be allowed into my home ... I am an innocent man, and the book will clear my name.”

[A longer and more personal article by Marcello Mega about George Thomson's visit to Megrahi appears in today's Scottish edition of The Sun. A further article appears in the Daily Mail. A Maltese perspective is to be found in this article in Malta Today; and a Libyan perspective in this article in The Tripoli Post.]

Moussa Koussa and the Scottish police and prosecutors

[The following is from a report in The Independent today:]

Libya's acting foreign minister flew into Athens last night on a mission from Muammar Gaddafi which his Greek government hosts said meant the regime was now seeking an end to the fighting.

Disilllusioned with what he sees as the betrayal by France, Britian and Italy because of the NATO-led military intervention, the Libyan leader may see Greece—with which he has long enjoyed good relations—as a possible diplomatic conduit to the West.

After Abdelati Obeidi met Prime Minister George Papandreou, Mr Obeidi's Greek counterpart, Dimitri Droutsas, said last night: "It seems that the Libyan authorities are seeking a solution." Though there were few details of what, if anything, the regime is proposing, Mr Papandreou has been in touch with Western governments over the past few days. Mr Obeidi is expected to travel on to Malta and Turkey. [RB: An article on the Aljazeera website on the Obeidi mission can be read here.]

Meanwhile, Scottish officials have arrived in London to question Libya's former foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, on what he knows about the Lockerbie bombing. The interview, which may take place today, comes as MPs and families of victims of the attack demand that Mr Koussa should not be granted immunity from prosecution, even if there have been attempts to encourage others in the Gaddafi regime to defect.

Despite reports that Mr Koussa is named in court documents as overseeing Libya's supply of Semtex explosive to the Provisional IRA, British officials will seek to delay any legal moves against him, arguing that the priority is to oust Colonel Gaddafi.

[The other UK media that I have been able to access online go no further than to state that Scottish officials will today discuss with UK Foreign Office officials the possibility of interviewing Moussa Koussa. There is no suggestion that any such interview will take place today or, indeed, any time soon. For example, the report on the BBC News website can be read here; that on the Sky News website can be read here; that in The Scotsman (which is misleadingly headlined) can be read here; and the Press Association news agency report here.

However, the report in the Daily Record contains the following:]

A young Scottish prosecutor is leading efforts to question the high-profile Libyan defector Musa Kusa over the Lockerbie bombing.

Lindsey Miller, head of the Crown Office Serious and Organised Crime Division, has been liaising with families of the Lockerbie victims and wrote to them promising to pursue Gaddafi's former spy chief.

Lawyers and police could start interviewing Kusa today.

Miller, 39, is the senior procurator fiscal heading the investigation into the terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 that killed 270 people.

In an email sent to relatives of the victims after Kusa arrived in Britain, Miller said her staff had notified the Foreign Office that "we wish to interview [Kusa] regarding any information he may have concerning the bombing of Pan Am flight 103."

She added that the bomb probe "remains open and we will pursue all relevant lines of inquiry in conjunction with our US counterparts". [RB: Regrettably, the Scottish police and prosecutors have a very narrow concept of what is "relevant" -- only material that supports the Malta-Frankfurt-Heathrow scenario.]

Representatives of the Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary are to meet Foreign Office officials today to discuss access to the Libyan foreign minister.

Last night, Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill said: "They'll be seeking to interview him tomorrow.

"It's not for me to interfere with due process here. I have to stand back and leave that to the relevant authorities, but they've been there waiting in London since Friday." (...)

Foreign Secretary William Hague yesterday gave the green light to the Crown Office after denying there would be an amnesty deal with Kusa if he helped topple Gaddafi.

Hague said: "It is a good thing, of course, where the Crown Office in Scotland wish to talk to him about what's happened in the past such as at Lockerbie.

"My officials are discussing with the Crown Office how to go about that. That's not a bad thing either - we want more information about past events."

Hague insisted there is no deal with Kusa. He said: "The Prime Minister and I have made clear there is no immunity from prosecution, there will be no immunity, he hasn't asked for that, there isn't a deal."

MacAskill added: "I welcome the commitment of the Foreign Secretary to allow them access and I hope that this provides further clarity on the Lockerbie atrocity."

Lockerbie anniversary TV programmes

A reminder that various television programmes about Lockerbie are being broadcast in the run-up to the 25th anniversary of the disaster on 21 December. Among them are:

Aljazeera’s If Not Megrahi, Then Who? which features, among others, Justice for Megrahi’s Dr Morag Kerr, to be shown on Sunday 15 December and then on Monday 16, Tuesday 17 and Wednesday 18 [The showings of this documentary have now been postponed.];

BBC’s Living with Lockerbie, to be shown on BBC One Scotland on Monday 16 December at 22.35, then on the BBC News Channel at various times on 21, 22 and 27 December;

STV’s The Lockerbie Bombing, to be shown on STV on Tuesday 17 December at 21.30 and on other ITV channels at 23.00 and on the US Smithsonian Channel on 21 December at 20.00 Eastern Time and Pacific Time.

$2.7 billion Lockerbie settlement reached

[This is the headline over a report published on Aljazeera’s English language website on this date in 2003. It reads as follows:]

Libya has signed a deal with the families of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which Tripoli will shell out $2.7 billion in compensation.

Under the accord, Tripoli will pay each of the families $10 million in instalments, based on the lifting of United Nations and United States sanctions, said lawyers on Thursday.

Libya will also be removed from Washington’s list of nations which allegedly support “terrorism”.

Representatives of British families whose relatives were killed in the Pan Am flight 103 disaster over the Scottish town of Lockerbie that left 270 people dead, said the deal was “purely financial” and doubted the money would be paid.

“This is a financial deal for Libya. This is all Libya cares about, to extricate itself from the sanctions and re-enter the international, in particular US, market,” claimed Mark Zaid, a US lawyer for 50 of the families.

In 2001, Scottish court Camp Zeist, set up in the Netherlands, convicted Abd al-Basset Ali al-Megrahi, one of two Libyan agents charged with the bombing, and sentenced him to life in prison.

After signing the accord on Wednesday, family lawyers said they expected the compensation to be deposited with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) soon, and that Libya would be sending its letter accepting responsibility to the UN Security Council.

Diplomatic sources said on Tuesday that Libya had agreed to send a letter to the Security Council, either by Thursday or Friday, admitting it was behind the attack. [RB: Libya, of course, never did admit it was behind the attack: it accepted "responsibility for the acts of its citizens".]

The first $4 millions are expected to be paid to the victims’ families when world body sanctions against Tripoli are lifted, following its acceptance of responsibility.

The embargo was suspended but not llifted after Libya handed over the two former Libyan intelligence agents in the case.

Lifting UN sanctions will pave the way for talks between Washington and Tripoli about the lifting of separate US sanctions.

A further $4 million would be delivered to each family once US sanctions are lifted and the final $2 million would be handed over if Libya is removed from the US list of states allegedly supporting “terrorism”.