SCCRC 'queried Lockerbie verdict'

[This is the headline over a report published on the Evening Standard website on this date in 2012. It reads as follows:]

New details of the legal grounds that could have cast doubt on the Lockerbie bomber's conviction have been disclosed, according to a newspaper report.

The six grounds for referral back to the appeal court are contained in a document by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), the body which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, with extracts printed in The Herald newspaper.

The Scottish Government has brought forward legislation to bring about the publication of the full report but data protection rules still bar its formal publication.

On claims the verdict was unreasonable, the SCCRC report quoted in The Herald states: "The commission has reached the view that the trial court's verdict is at least arguably one which no reasonable court, properly directed, could have returned."

The six grounds for referral were previously published by the SCCRC in summary. Four of the reasons refer to undisclosed evidence from the Crown to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's defence team.

Those grounds cover evidence about a positive identification of Megrahi by Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who said he sold clothes to a Libyan man. The clothes were linked to a suitcase loaded onto the plane, which was then linked to the bomb and eventually to Megrahi.

The SCCRC raised concerns that evidence suggesting Mr Gauci had seen a magazine article linking Megrahi to the bomb was not passed to the defence.

Contradictions about the day Megrahi was said to have bought the clothes were also highlighted. The court was told the purchase was on December 7 but the SCCRC said Mr Gauci also thought it might have been November 29.

"In the commission's view, by withholding this information the Crown deprived the defence of the opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary," the report in The Herald adds.

Also of concern to the SCCRC was undisclosed evidence about Mr Gauci's interest in rewards. A fifth reason covered "secret" intelligence documents not seen by Megrahi's legal team while the sixth referred to new evidence on the date of clothes purchased in Malta.

Lockerbie witnesses were paid

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer published in OhmyNews International on this date in 2009. It reads in part:]

In recent times, allegations have resurfaced regarding payments offered to key witnesses of the Lockerbie trial.

Specifically, there have been rumors that Majid Giaka, Paul and Tony Gauci were each paid about US$4 million for their help in the conviction of Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988. (...)

Richard Marquise, the FBI agent who led the Lockerbie investigation, forcefully denied that witnesses were ever offered any money.

'"I can assure you that no witnesses were ever offered any money by anyone--including the CIA," Marquise told OhmyNews. "This issue came up at trial and I spoke with the defense lawyers about it in Edinburgh in 1999 -- before trial. No one was promised or even told that they could get money for saying anything. Every FBI agent was under specific orders not to mention money to any potential witness." (...)

'A source speaking on condition of anonymity told Jeff Stein, the national security editor of the Congressional Quarterly, that a key witness, Tony Gauci, and his brother were each paid somewhere between $3 million to $4 million for providing information leading to the conviction of Megrahi.

'Moreover, former State Department lawyer Michael Scharf confirmed to OhmyNews that rewards were paid in the context of the Lockerbie trial.

'"I knew that rewards payments were made, but not the amount. The Awards for Terrorism Information program has been around since the 1980s, and has been expanded to rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of international indicted war criminals like Karadzic and Mladic. When I worked at the Office of the Legal Adviser of the State Department I was involved in the program," Scharf wrote in an email to OhmyNews. (...)

'Prof Black, often referred to as the architect of the Lockerbie trial, agrees. "The issue of payments made or promised to witnesses forms an important part of the Grounds of Appeal," Black told the author.

'"At one time in Scotland, if payment had been made, or promised, to a witness that was an absolute bar to his giving evidence. Today, it is simply a factor that must be taken into account in assessing his credibility. However, in order for this to be done, it is necessary that the court should know that the payment was made or promised. Failure by the Crown to disclose the promise or the payment is a serious breach of their duty to the court and to the administration of justice," Black said.'

There is some deep secret hidden in this tragedy

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

Convicted Lockerbie bomber probably not guilty—so who is the real criminal?

[This is the headline over an article in the current issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by the magazine's publisher, Ambassador Andrew I Killgore. The following are excerpts.]

On Aug 21 Scotland freed Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi—convicted under Scottish law at a special court in The Netherlands of destroying Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on [December] 21, 1988. Killed were 259 persons, including 189 Americans on board and 11 people on the ground. The terminally ill Megrahi, after dropping his second appeal, was released on compassionate grounds. Back in Libya, he continues to protest his innocence. (...)

At the Lockerbie trial so-called “key witness” [Tony] Gauci would identify Megrahi as the purchaser of certain items of clothing found at the crash site that Gauci claimed were purchased at his shop in Valetta, Malta. But on the witness stand Gauci proved to be a flop at identification. An FBI officer, Harold Hendershot, called to the witness stand to bolster Gauci’s testimony, also appeared to lack credibility.

Another puzzling aspect of the Lockerbie trial was that, despite the prosecution’s insistence that the bombing could only have been a two-man job, Megrahi’s co-defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. No explanation was ever forthcoming. A middle-aged American (judging by his accent) attending the trial was overheard by this writer on a BBC broadcast expressing uncertainty about the testimony: “I wonder who killed our relatives?”

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, is sure that Gauci identified the wrong man. Swire is an unusual man. As an officer in the British army, he was trained in the use of plastic explosives. After completing his army national service, he worked for the BBC as an electronics engineer before studying medicine and becoming a practicing physician. Dr Swire cannot accept as credible the Lockerbie trial’s technical details about the explosives that brought down Pan Am 103. He became a spokesman for relatives of British nationals killed in the crash. Overwhelmingly these relatives do not believe that Megrahi is guilty.

Dr Swire is convinced that shopkeeper Gauci identified an innocent man as the bomber. In a Dec 27, 2007 e-mail from Swire to this writer, Swire quoted Gauci as saying that Megrahi was “like” the man who bought clothes in his shop, but that the age and height were “very different.” Nevertheless, the Scottish judges accepted Gauci’s testimony.

Gauci reportedly now lives in Australia with a $2 million (some reports say $4 million) reward from the American government. According to the State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” Web site, since its inception in 1984 the program has paid $77 million to more than 50 people.

But the biggest reason for questioning the validity of the “Libya-did-it” scenario is the sheer improbability of placing a bomb on a plane in Valetta, Malta, bound for Frankfurt, Germany, there to be offloaded on a second plane bound for London, where it would be offloaded on a third plane bound for New York, to explode 38 minutes later. Common sense would dictate a far more simple scheme: load the bomb aboard a plane in London with a simple pressure mechanism to go off when the plane was safely out to sea (...)

In the aforementioned e-mail, from which I am free to quote, Dr Swire said the Lockerbie court heard of a “specialized timer/baroceptor bomb mechanism” made by the PFLP-GC in the Damascus suburbs. This device would explode within 30 to 45 minutes after takeoff, but was stable indefinitely at ground level. The court heard that these devices could not be altered. “Yet the court believed,” Swire wrote, “that Megrahi ‘happened’ to set his Swiss timer in such a way that it went off in the middle of the time window for the Syrian device, surviving changes of planes at Frankfurt and London.”

Dr Swire told the BBC News of Aug 20, 2009 that the prosecution at the Lockerbie trial failed to take into consideration the reported break-in of the Pan Am baggage area at Heathrow in the early morning hours of the day of Pan Am 103’s doomed flight.

Many of the British relatives of Pan Am 103 victims have come to believe that the bomb was loaded in London, and thus that Megrahi could not be guilty. These relatives and Dr Swire were opposed to Megrahi’s withdrawing his second appeal on the grounds that further evidence would come out that might have pointed to the real culprit.

In a Jan 4, 2008 e-mail, Dr Swire warned that “ which evokes virulent responses...when questions are raised.”

In an Aug 20, 2009 e-mail response to this writer’s inquiry, Dr Swire said “that it appears that the Iranians used the PFLP-GC as mercenaries in this ghastly business.” According to this theory, held by many who doubt Megrahi’s guilt, including CounterPunch’s Alexander Cockburn, Iran hired the PFLP-GC to avenge the July 3, 1988 shooting down by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian Airbus passenger plane, killing 290 passengers, including 66 children. The US ship’s officers later received medals for heroism in combat.

Having lost his daughter in the Pan Am crash, and as an expert in explosives, Dr Swire is uniquely qualified to examine the Pan Am tragedy. America and its mainstream media did not reflect credit on themselves by refusing to acknowledge questions about Megrahi’s guilt.

Dr Swire may well be right in blaming the PFLP-GC for the tragedy. But this writer still has his doubts — because the ineptness of the trial and Washington’s fanaticism in pushing such a flimsy case against Libya leave an impression that it must be covering up for the real criminals. Somehow it seems unlikely that the US would go to such lengths to protect Iran, much less the PFLP-GC.

Crown’s breaches of duty of disclosure

[What follows is the text of a report published in The Independent on this date in 2009:]

The Libyan man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing today published more documents he claims prove his innocence.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi insisted the move was not meant to add to the upset of the people "profoundly affected by what happened in Lockerbie".

But he added: "My only intention is for the truth to be made known."

Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, was controversially freed from prison on compassionate grounds earlier this year.

He had been serving a life sentence at Greenock prison for the bombing of the Pan Am flight 103 in 1998, in which 270 people were killed.

Before his release, the bomber dropped his second appeal against that conviction.

His Scottish lawyers, Taylor and Kelly, said Megrahi remained ill in hospital in Tripoli, and that the documents published on the website www.megrahimystory.net related to his appeal.

In a statement Megrahi said: "I recognise that the Court of Criminal Appeal in Scotland is the only authority empowered to quash my conviction. In light of the abandonment of my appeal this cannot now happen."

However he added: "I continue to protest my innocence - how could I fail to do so?"

Megrahi said much of the material published today was "buttressed by the independent investigations of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission".

It was the commission that referred Megrahi's case back to the courts for its second appeal.

Megrahi - who was convicted of the bombing in January 2001 at a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands - had mounted an unsuccessful appeal in 2002.

But in 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice, sent his case for a subsequent appeal.

Today he said: "The commission found documents which they concluded ought to have been disclosed to my defence."

And he claimed this included a "record of interest in financial reward" by Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold clothing found to have been in the suitcase that contained the bomb.

Megrahi also said the commission had seen documents which should have been given to his defence team at the trial.

He stated: "The commission concluded that the non-disclosure of these documents and other material may have affected the trial process and caused a miscarriage of justice."

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill made his decision to free Megrahi "based on the due process of Scots Law" and he "supports the conviction".

He added: "The Scottish Government has already released as much relevant information as possible, and have met with the SCCRC to look at what documentation relating to the appeal could be released by them."

The newly-published papers include claims that Tony Gauci was paid two million dollars (about £1.2m) by US authorities after the trial.

Much of the document published today relates to evidence which, Megrahi's lawyers say, was not produced at his trial.

When the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission sent Megrahi's case to the appeal court, it said doubt had been cast on some of the evidence which helped convict him, in particular evidence relating to his visit to Tony Gauci's shop in December 1988.

New evidence suggested the clothing had been bought before December 6, at a time when there was no evidence that Megrahi was in Malta, said the SCCRC.

And other evidence not available at the trial undermined Gauci's identification of him, it said.

Much of what is published today on the Megrahi website relates to Gauci's identification.

The legal documents by Megrahi's defence team say the SCCRC found material showing Mr Gauci was paid more than two million dollars by the US department of justice after the trial, and his brother Paul Gauci was paid one million dollars (about £600,000).

The SCCR also unearthed a statement made to police by David Wright, a friend of Tony Gauci, which had not been made available to the defence.

The statement from Mr Wright, who visited Tony Gauci, told of a purchase of clothing by two Libyans in October or November - but the statement was not investigated.

Other material published today also questions the reliability of Mr Gauci's identification of Megrahi.

The "missing evidence" on the identification of Megrahi was not put forward at his trial for a variety of reasons, according to the appeal papers published today by his lawyers.

They blamed both the prosecution for omitting some evidence from the trial - and the defence for not fully investigating the identification evidence.

Other arguments put forward in the documents relate to alleged inconsistencies in identification evidence, and to the possibility of Mr Gauci's recollection being tainted by "prejudicial" publicity.

The previously undisclosed evidence of David Wright was found by the SCCRC.

A friend of Mr Gauci and long-standing visitor to Malta, he called police in November 1989 after seeing TV coverage of Lockerbie which included footage of Mr Gauci's shop.

He told police he visited Mr Gauci in his shop in late October or November 1988, and saw two Libyans buy clothing.

The pair were smartly-dressed, had a lot of money, and bought several items of clothing.

Mr Gauci had referred to them as "Libyan pigs", and the descriptions given by Mr Wright did not resemble Megrahi.

But no further inquiries were made and Mr Wright's statement was not disclosed to the defence, the papers say.

The material showing that Mr Gauci asked for and received payment was also unearthed by the SCCRC, say the papers.

The commission found material showing that, at an early stage, he expressed an interest in receiving payment or compensation.

The material also "indicated" that US authorities offered to make substantial payments to him, that an application for reward money was made after the trial - and that Mr Gauci received "in excess of" 2 million dollars after the appeal, with his brother receiving 1 million dollars.

"The SCCRC states that, at some time after the appeal, the two witnesses were each paid sums of money under the Rewards for Justice programme administered by the US Department of Justice," said the papers.

And none of this had been disclosed to the defence, the papers say.

"The failure to disclose the information that reward monies have been discussed, that offers of rewards related to the witness have been discussed, and that substantial rewards have in fact been paid to the witness, is in breach of that duty to disclose."

The Maltese shopkeeper

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer that was published on this date in 2008 on the OhmyNews International website. It reads as follows:]

Edward Gauci owns a small store Mary's House, at 63 Tower Road, Sliema in Malta. His sons, Paul and Tony, run the business. On Sept 22 1988, Paul ordered a few Babygros. The investigator of the bombing of Pan Am 103 discovered that the IED had been surrounded by clothes bought from the Gauci store. According to the US State Department, the clothes were bought on, or about, Dec 7, 1988.

In September 2003, Megrahi, the only person convicted of the bombing of Pan Am 103, applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission [SCCRC] for a legal review of his conviction. His request was based on the legal test contained in section 106(3)(b) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.

The provision states that an appeal may be made against "any alleged miscarriage of justice, which may include such a miscarriage based on ... the jury's having returned a verdict which no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned."

In June 2007, the SCCRC decided to grant Megrahi a second appeal and to refer his case to the High Court. An impressive 800-page-long document, stating the reasons for the decision, has been sent to the High Court, the applicant, his solicitor, and Crown Office. Although the document is not available to the public, the Commission has decided "to provide a fuller news release than normal."

Based on new evidence not heard at the trial, as well as additional and other evidence not made available to the defence, the Commission formed the view "that there is no reasonable basis in the trial court's judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary's House, took place on Dec 7, 1988."

The conviction of Megrahi relies heavily, in fact almost entirely, on the fact that the bomb was wrapped in clothes that he personally bought in Malta. The prosecutor established that Megrahi was indeed in Malta on Dec 7, 1988 and Tony Gauci, the shopkeeper of the clothes store Mary's House, testified that he had sold the clothes to a man who resembles Megrahi.

New evidence, concerning the date on which the Christmas lights were illuminated in the area of Sliema in which Mary's House is situated, combined with Gauci's testimony and police statements, led the Commission to conclude that the items must have been bought prior to Dec 6, that is at a time where there is no evidence that Megrahi was on the island.

Additional evidence completely undermines the identification of Megrahi by Gauci. Just days before he picked him in an identification parade, Gauci had seen Megrahi's picture in a magazine.

In fact, the judgment (§69) recognizes that Gauci never positively identified Megrahi. On Feb 15, 1991, Gauci was shown 12 photos, among them a picture of Megrahi 1986 passport.

"Number 8 [The photo of Megrahi] is similar to the man who bought the clothing. The hair is perhaps a bit long. The eyebrows are the same. The nose is the same. And his chin and shape of face are the same. The man in the photograph number 8 is in my opinion in his 30 years."

"He would perhaps have to look about 10 years, or more, older and he would look like the man who bought the clothes. It's been a long time now, and I can only say that this photograph 8 resembles the man who bought the clothing, but it is younger," Gauci said.

The US Department Fact Sheet accompanying the indictment does not say that Gauci had identified Megrahi as the buyer of the clothes. The text merely states that "in February 1991, Megrahi was described as the Libyan who had purchased the clothes."

The Commission did not comment on what may constitute other evidence. "Other evidence, not made available to the defence, which the Commission believes may further undermine Mr. Gauci's identification of the applicant as the purchaser," the press release says.

There is however much reasons to suspect that Tony Gauci is not a reliable witness. Lord Fraser is the former lord advocate who issued the arrest warrant against Megrahi.

On Oct 23, 2005, Lord Fraser told the Times Online that he was not entirely happy with the evidence brought against Megrahi.

"Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say (that he) was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy, I don't think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer," Fraser said.

"You do have to worry, he's a slightly simple chap, are you putting words in his mouth even if you don't intend to?"

According to The Observer, Gauci was interviewed 17 times by the police and his statements are grossly inconsistent.

"A key witness who could be proven to be so unreliable is more than sufficient to collapse any trial. Plus there was evidence of leading questions put to Gauci, a practice then known to distort evidence," a legal source argues.

According to the verdict, Megrahi bought from the Gaucis several clothes including the "cloth" in which the fragment of the infamous MST-13 timer was "discovered" by Dr Hayes. At first sight, the "cloth" appears to be part of a Slalom shirt, indeed sold in Mary's House.

However, upon closer examination, the "cloth" raises a series of issues. Firstly, the colour of the label is incorrect. A blue Slalom shirt label should have blue writing, not brown.

Secondly, the breast pocket size corresponds to a child shirt, not a 16½ sized allegedly bought by Megrahi, for the pocket would have been 2 cm wider.

Thirdly, German records show the shirt with most of the breast pocket intact while the evidence shown at Zeist has a deep triangular tear extending inside the pocket.

Fourthly, last but certainly not least, the storekeeper initially told the investigators he never sold such shirts to whoever visited him a few weeks before the Lockerbie tragedy.

On Jan 30, 1990, Gauci stated: "That time when the man came, I am sure I did not sell him a shirt." Then, on Sept 10, 1990, he told the investigators that: "I now remember that the man who bought the clothing also bought a 'Slalom' shirt." And to make things worse, two of his testimonies have disappeared.

According to the verdict, Megrahi bought the clothes on Dec 7, 1989. Gauci remembered that his brother had gone home earlier to watch an evening football game (Rome vs Dresden), that the man came just before closing time (7 pm), that it was raining (the man bought an umbrella) and that the Christmas lights were on.

The game allows for only two dates: Nov 23 or Dec 7. The issue is critical for there is no indication that Megrahi was in Malta on Nov 23 but is known to have been on the island on December 7th.

Malta airport chief meteorologist testified that it was raining on Nov 23 but not on Dec 7. Yet the judges determined the date as Dec 7. This rather absurd conclusion from the judges raises two other issues.

The game Rome-Dresden on Dec 7 was played at 1 pm, not in the evening. What is more, Gauci had previously testified that the Christmas lights were not up, meaning that the date had to be Nov 23.

On Sept 19, 1989, Gauci stated that "the [Christmas] decorations were not up when the man bought the clothing." Then, at the Lockerbie trial, Gauci told the Judges that the decoration lights were on. "Yes, they were ... up."

In early October, OMNI reported that huge amounts of money were offered by US officials to at least three key witnesses (see "Lockerbie Investigator Disputes Story"). The defense was never told that the CIA had offered millions of dollars to their star witnesses. Both the FBI and CIA denied ever having offered money to any of the witnesses.

"I cannot speak for the CIA but I believe they had no access to witnesses. But [speaking for the FBI] I can say that no one was ever offered any money for testimony. The FBI does not operate that way," Marquise, the former FBI leading investigator, told me.

"This issue came up at trial and I spoke with the defense lawyers about it in Edinburgh in 1999 -- before trial. No one was promised or even told that they could get money for saying anything. Every FBI agent was under specific orders not to mention money to any potential witness."

In response to a query, a CIA spokesperson ridiculed a witness's accusations that it offered or paid him anything. "It may disappoint the conspiracy buffs, but the CIA doesn't belong in your story," a CIA spokesperson said, insisting on anonymity. The witness is none other than Edwin Bollier whose company is accused of having sold the timer that detonated the bomb on Pan Am 103.

An FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, has confirmed that the bureau met with Bollier in Washington in 1991. Marquise told me that he attended the meeting. But both marquise and the official denied Bollier was offered anything to implicate Libya.

In a formal statement, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko emphatically rejected any suggestions of a payoff. "Any accusations that any witness was paid to lie are complete fabrications and these ridiculous statements should be immediately discounted as the untruths they are," Kolko said. "That is not the way the FBI operates."

However, a source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Jeff Stein, the national security editor of the Congressional Quarterly Web site, CQ Politics, that Tony Gauci and his brother Paul were paid somewhere between $3 to $4 million each for providing information leading to the conviction of Megrahi.

The US State Department has acknowledged that rewards were paid. "A reward was paid out in the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 case," a spokesperson there said on condition of anonymity, "but due to operational and security concerns we are not disclosing details regarding specific amounts, sources or types of assistance the sources provided."

In the weeks preceding the visit of [US Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice to Tripoli, the name of Megrahi has been mysteriously removed from the Rewards for Justice US Web site.

MacAskill ‘has destroyed the Lockerbie conviction’

[This is the headline over a report by Mike Wade published in today’s edition of The Times. It reads in part:]

The eminent lawyer who designed the Lockerbie trial believes that the former Scottish justice secretary has destroyed the case against the only man found guilty of the atrocity.

Robert Black, QC, said that Kenny MacAskill’s contention in his new book that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi had not bought the clothes wrapped around the explosive device that destroyed an airliner amounted to “the end of the conviction”.

[Professor Black said that Mr MacAskill] had in effect accepted a key finding of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which in June 2007 found that “no reasonable court could have drawn the inference that [al-Megrahi] was the purchaser”. [RB: See Chapter 21 of the SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons.]

The SCCRC’s position was to form the substance of al-Megrahi’s second appeal. Before his death in 2012 the Libyan said he had dropped the case as part of a deal to allow him to leave jail in Scotland for his home in Tripoli after he had terminal cancer diagnosed.

“As the SCCRC correctly said, if Megrahi was not held to be the purchaser in Malta then there was insufficient evidence in law to convict him,” Professor Black said. [RB: See para 21.100 of the SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons.] “I wonder if Kenny MacAskill realises he is undermining the whole basis of the conviction.”

Professor Black noted that Mr MacAskill’s belief that the “clothes were purchased in Malta, but not by Megrahi” had recently been endorsed by Alex Salmond, the former first minister.

“If that were now the official Scottish government position, that is the end of the conviction,” Professor Black said. In a statement, the Crown Office said it remained certain of al-Megrahi’s guilt.

Professor Black, emeritus professor of law at the University of Edinburgh, intervened after a series of extraordinary interviews by the former justice secretary. Mr MacAskill’s book, The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search For Justice, is published tomorrow. On Monday, Mr MacAskill told Border Television that al-Megrahi’s conviction was probably “unsafe”. Yesterday he reiterated a claim made in the book that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC) carried out the attack.

Al-Megrahi was a “small cog”, said Mr MacAskill, in a large scheme: “It involved Libya, it involved Iran, it involved no doubt Syria, involved the Palestinian terrorist organisations, they came together and they carried it out.”

In his book, he claims he was told by “several sources” about a document that implicated the PFLP-GC in the bombing. This week, he suggested that Westminster officials had been ready to “close down” a Scottish newspaper that published an article based on the document. Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing 270 people. 

It would take 12 years for al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, his co-accused, to come to trial at the specially convened Scottish court devised by Professor Black at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

Only al-Megrahi was found guilty, to the disbelief of Professor Black. [RB: What astonished me was, of course, that Megrahi was found guilty, not that “only Megrahi” was.] Critics of the verdict focused on the testimony of Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who said al-Megrahi “resembled” a man who bought clothes in his store. It later emerged that Mr Gauci had been paid $1 million by the US justice department’s Rewards for Justice programme. Professor Black said that according to Mr MacAskill the investigation, prosecution and trial were apparently all exemplary. He added: “In fact, there were grave — and perhaps criminal — flaws in all three.”

Al-Megrahi’s first appeal was rejected in 2002 but five years later the SCCRC found four grounds to refer the case to the High Court. The SCCRC recommendations were passed to the Crown a month after the SNP came to power in May 2007. (...)

Last night the Crown Office said that Mr MacAskill’s suggestion about PFLP-GC involvement in the Lockerbie bombing was fully considered by the trial court “and does nothing to undermine the Crown’s case that Megrahi acted with others in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103”.

A spokesman added: “All material which met the Crown’s disclosure obligations in relation to the PFLP-GC was properly disclosed to the defence before the trial and this was confirmed by the SCCRC’s investigation.” [RB: But lots of other material was not “properly disclosed”. See SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons, Chapters 22, 23, 24(2) and 25.]

[The same newspaper contains an article by Magnus Linklater headlined Lockerbie book raises doubts about MacAskill. It reads in part:]

His newly published book, The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice, reveals that after al-Megrahi’s release, Mr MacAskill harboured grave doubts about the safety of his conviction, and in particular the identification evidence that led to his life sentence. In the book, he states unequivocally that al-Megrahi was not the man who walked into a Maltese shop and bought the clothes that were later found to have been wrapped around the bomb. “The clothes were acquired in Malta, though not by Megrahi,” he writes. “The identification is suspect.”

Since this was a central part of the prosecution case, it is odd, not to say dumbfounding, that the minister with responsibility for the Scottish prosecution service now says that the case against its prime suspect was flawed.

The theory that Mr MacAskill prefers challenges the conclusions of the department he once ran and the Crown Office he represented. He believes that the bombing was planned by a Palestinian group, the PFLP-GC, led by its founder, Ahmed Jibril, and was later delegated to the Libyans to carry out. What is more, he says that a document held by the UK government would have confirmed this line, but was withheld from the defence.

Warming to his theme in television and radio interviews, Mr MacAskill revealed that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London had tried to prevent The Heraldnewspaper from publishing a Jordanian document implicating the PFLP-GC, on the ground that it might interfere with the British government’s attempts to deport the radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada. Not only that, in order to prevent its publication, the FCO had threatened to suppress an entire edition of the paper — “an action unheard of in my lifetime in Scotland”, as Mr MacAskill put it. (...)

If all this was known to him during his term in office, why was he content to allow the official version of the Lockerbie case to stand unchallenged, and indeed as a member of the Scottish government, to defend the outcome of the Lockerbie trial, when he harboured such grave doubts about it? (...)

Coming from a former justice secretary these theories will, of course, be seized upon gleefully by those who have argued so loud and long that the whole prosecution case was misconceived. Indeed that has already happened, with one member of the pro-al-Megrahi team declaring that Mr MacAskill’s book blows a hole in the prosecution case.

It does nothing of the sort, of course. The PII document and the identification of al-Megrahi by the Maltese shop owner would both have formed part of an appeal, and, if al-Megrahi had not withdrawn from the process, would have been duly tested in court. Few lawyers believe that they would have been enough to overturn the conviction. 

[RB: This is an utterly astonishing assertion by Mr Linklater. Very much closer to the truth is the statement by Ian Hamilton QC: "I don't think there's a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr Megrahi was justly convicted.”]