Lockerbie questions for the FBI

What follows is an article originally posted on this blog on this date in 2012.

What the SCCRC should have asked the FBI

[This is the heading over an item posted today by John Ashton on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website.  It reads as follows:]

On 18 March Scotland on Sunday ran an article headlined Megrahi probe ‘failed to speak to FBI agents’, which reported criticisms of the SCCRC by FBI officers Oliver ‘Buck’ Revell and Richard Marquise. [RB: See here and here.]

It states:  Oliver “Buck” Revell, the former associate deputy director of investigations for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, has reacted angrily to the examination into the case by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). In an e-mail seen by Scotland on Sunday, Revell expressed frustration that no-one from the FBI was consulted by the SCCRC when it compiled its report into the safety of Megrahi’s conviction … In his e-mail to government and legal officials in Scotland and the US, Revell complained that the SCCRC failed to interview members of the FBI for its Statement of Reasons. The e-mail pointed out that the original Lockerbie investigation was carried out by Scottish police, Scotland Yard, the German BKA and the FBI. Revell added: “I don’t know what the SCCRC expects to determine when it is not even interviewing the actual investigators involved in solving this terrible crime.”

Marquise said:  “I don’t know if you can say you have done a comprehensive report unless you speak to key people. To me it is an incomplete report whatever they are going to publish. They never did speak to the people who might be able to shed some light on whatever it is that they were looking to find out. If you are going to say you have done a complete investigation, you should talk to everybody who was key, and I like to think people in the FBI were key. I like to think some people in the CIA were key and they could and should have been interviewed.”

While neither man shed any light on what the FBI investigators could have told the commission, we might infer from their comments that the Bureau held further evidence of Abdelbaset’s guilt. Of course, it almost certainly didn’t, because any such evidence would have been handed to the Crown.

That said, I share Revell’s and Marquise’s disappointment that the SCCRC failed to interview anyone from the FBI, as many important questions remain unanswered. For example:

1. What did FBI agent John Hosinski discuss with Tony Gauci when he met him alone on 2 October 1989?

2. What did Senegalese official Jean Collin reveal when interviewed in the US in December 1990?

3. Was the content of Collin’s interview revealed to the Scottish police? And, if not, why not?

4. Why did the FBI’s Tom Thurman ‘front’ for the CIA in relation to the identification of the timer fragment?

5. According to FBI agent Hal Hendershot, Thurman had a laboratory in Lockerbie within days of the bombing. What forensic work did he undertake and was that work shared with the Scottish investigators?

6.When, in June 1990, Thurman demonstrated to the Scottish police that PT/35b matched the control sample MST-13 timer, why did he not reveal that he was already aware that the timers were made by Mebo?

7. Why was Hendershot aware of the contents of the Toshiba manual fragment PK/689 before it was examined for the Scottish police at RARDE?

8. Why was the FBI able to investigate debris item PI/1389 (a blue T-shirt, which, according to the FBI’s Bonn legal attache David Keyes, showed blast damage and the imprint of the grills of two radio speakers) before RARDE?

9. What information did Hendershot, Thurman and Bob Howen uncover in relation to the crystals used in the MST-13 timers? In particular, were they able to establish the date of manufacture of the crystal used in the control sample timer K-1, which was recovered from Togo and which Thurman used for comparative purposes with the fragment PT/35b?

10. Regarding the episode at Frankfurt airport, witnessed by FBI agent Lawrence Whittaker and DI Watson McAteer, in which a baggage handler apparently entered a bag into the automated transit system without recording the transaction, why was Whittaker’s trial testimony at odds with McAteer’s statement S3743A?

11. How many FBI FD302 reports by Lockerbie field agents were handed to the Crown? (Only a handful were provided to the defence.)

12. The US Department of Justice has stated that only three reports were produced in relation to the FBI’s inquiries in Malta. Given the centrality of Malta to the case, why were there so few?

Perhaps Mr Revell and Mr Marquise can answer these questions.

The article is also notable for the following quote by Marquise:  “On the issue of witnesses being paid, no witness [was paid] to my knowledge. What some police officer or FBI agent might have told somebody in the corner in a dark room in the middle night that I don’t know about, I can’t vouch for that. But everybody that worked for me were under orders that they were not allowed to tell people that they could get money for this case. So, as far as I know, nobody was promised or paid money to testify.”

The SCCRC report states, at paragraph 23.19:  Enquiries with D&G [Dumfries and Galloway Police] have established that, some time after the conclusion of the applicant’s appeal against conviction, Anthony and Paul Gauci were each paid sums of money under the “Rewards for Justice” programme administered by the US Department of State. Under that programme the US Secretary of State was initially authorised to offer rewards of up to $5m for information leading to the arrest or conviction of persons involved in acts of terrorism against US persons or property worldwide. The upper limit on such payments was increased by legislation passed in the US in 2001.

According to DCI Harry Bell’s diary, on 28 September 1989, FBI agent Chris Murray told Bell that he (Murray): ‘had the authority to arrange unlimited money for Tony Gauci and relocation is available. Murray states that he could arrange $10,000 immediately.’  Murray would not have said these things unless he believed that the offer might have been put to Gauci, yet, according to Marquise, “everybody that worked for me were under orders that they were not allowed to tell people that they could get money for this case.” So, was Murray acting against Marquise’s orders? And, if so will he be held to account? Again, maybe Marquise and Revell can enlighten us.

Evidence against Megrahi demolished

[What follows is from an item originally published on this blog on this date in 2012:]

Megrahi evidence "fails to stand up to serious scrutiny"

[Here is an excerpt from Dr Morag Kerr’s Scottish Review article An overview of the Lockerbie case in which the evidence against Abdelbaset Megrahi is set out and demolished:]

Evidence against Megrahi fell under a number of headings.

1. A member of the Libyan security services who had turned CIA informer identified him as a senior security operative.

2. Tony Gauci identified him as 'resembling' the man who bought the clothes in his shop.

3. He was shown to have been at Luqa airport at the time KM180 departed, travelling on a false passport.

4. Baggage transfer records at Frankfurt showed evidence of an item of luggage being transferred from KM180 to PA103A, even though no passenger from the Malta flight was booked on the Heathrow flight, and all the passengers collected their luggage at their destinations with nothing going astray.

5. A small piece of printed circuit board found embedded in a scrap of the Maltese clothes was identified as a part of a countdown timer made by a Swiss firm which Megrahi had had business dealings with. This timer was part of a special order of only 20 items supplied exclusively to Libya.

The difficulty with this is firstly that each of these points fails to stand up to serious scrutiny, and secondly that far more robust evidence exists for both a different modus operandi and a different set of perpetrators.

    1. Membership of the Libyan security services

The CIA informant, Majid Giaka, was originally the Crown's star witness. Without his evidence, the indictments against Megrahi and his colleague Lamin Fhimah (who was acquitted) could not have been issued in the first place. However, CIA cables revealed during the trial exposed Giaka as a fantasist who was inventing 'intelligence' for favours and money from the CIA. The judges discounted all his evidence except for his statement that Megrahi was a member of the Libyan security forces. No other evidence for this was produced, and Megrahi has consistently denied the allegation. No evidence has ever emerged linking Megrahi to any other terrorist atrocities or human rights abuses of the Gaddafi regime, or to refute his claim that he was merely an airline employee who was also moonlighting as an entrepreneur businessman.

    2. The identification evidence

Tony Gauci was first interviewed about the clothes sale on 1st September 1989, nine months after the event. He described the purchaser as Libyan, aged about 50, over six feet tall, heavily built and dark-skinned. Megrahi is 5 feet 8 inches tall, light-skinned, of medium build, and was 36 at the time of the purchase. A photofit and an artist’s impression produced at the time suggest the man may have been negro or mixed race. Gauci was unsure of the date, but this was narrowed down to either 23rd November or 7th December 1988 on the basis of televised football games. Gauci stated that the Christmas lights were not yet lit, and it was raining when the customer left the shop.

On 15th February 1991 (well over two years after the purchase) Gauci was shown a police photospread including a picture of Megrahi. He initially rejected all the men as being 'too young', but when urged to reconsider he chose Megrahi's picture as the one that looked most like the customer. However, all the policemen present knew which picture was the suspect's, a recognised confounder in such exercises and something now banned, and Megrahi's picture was appreciably different from the others in both size and quality. As a further confounder the passport photo reproduction used was such a poor likeness of Megrahi as to be essentially unrecognisable. It did, however, look a bit like the photofit Gauci had produced in 1989.

By the time of the live identity parade in April 1999, better likenesses identifying Megrahi as the 'Lockerbie bomber' had appeared in many publications, which Gauci is known to have seen. (So widespread had been the publicity that most people following the case could probably have picked the accused out without ever having met him.) Megrahi was by then 47, close to the age the purchaser was said to be in 1988. The 'foils' in the parade were nearly all much younger (and bore little resemblance to Megrahi), even though by Gauci's original estimate the purchaser would by then have been in his early sixties. Megrahi in the flesh looked nothing like the images Gauci had produced for the police in 1989, or the blurry passport photo he picked out in 1991. Nevertheless, Gauci once again fingered him as 'resembling' the purchaser.

The date of the purchase was important, as Megrahi was in Malta on 7th December 1988 (using his own passport), but not on 23rd November. Meteorological evidence demonstrated that there was light rain in Sliema at the relevant time on 23rd November, but not on 7th December. The Christmas lights were eventually found to have been switched on on 6th December.

In late 1998 a magazine article was published with a recognisable photograph of Megrahi, together with a list of all the discrepancies between Gauci's original description of the purchaser and date, and the case against Megrahi. Gauci had a copy which was only taken from him four days before the identity parade. When he gave evidence, he consistently back-tracked on his original statements regarding height, build, age, Christmas lights and rain, always to favour the prosecution case. Tony Gauci's brother Paul, who was later rewarded for 'maintaining the resolve of his brother', had long expressed interest in a reward for the family's input, and after Megrahi was convicted the brothers were paid an alleged $3 million by the US Department of Justice's 'Rewards for Justice' programme.

    3. Presence at Luqa airport

Megrahi was at Luqa airport on the morning of the disaster, using a passport in the name of 'Abdusamad'. However, all he did was catch his flight for Tripoli, without going airside, and without checking in any hold luggage. The court accepted that he could not have got the bomb suitcase on to KM180 himself, and must have had an accomplice. That accomplice was originally said to have been Lamin Fhimah, but Fhimah could not even be shown to have been at the airport that morning. The 'false' passport was a legal one, issued to Megrahi to allow him to conceal his airline employment while negotiating business deals to circumvent the sanctions then in force against Libya, and which he occasionally used for personal travel. Although Megrahi used it for that trip, he had business meetings in Malta using his own name, and stayed at a hotel where he was well known.

Not only was no other accomplice identified, security at Luqa airport was unusually tight in 1988, and baggage records provided strong evidence that there was no unaccompanied luggage on flight KM180. Despite intensive and intrusive investigation lasting many months, no plausible mechanism whereby the bomb suitcase could have been loaded was ever identified, and no trace of the bomb was found on the island.

    4. Baggage transfer at Frankfurt

The only evidence for an unaccompanied suitcase coming from Malta was a single line of code in a printout taken from the Frankfurt airport automated baggage system, which surfaced in August 1989. However, that system was far from transparent, and a number of guesses and assumptions were necessary to conclude that something might have been transferred from KM180 to PA103A. In the end, two items apparently loaded on to the Heathrow flight could not be identified, one seeming to have come from Malta and one from Warsaw. The coincidence of the Maltese clothes caused the investigators to become convinced the former item was the bomb, and this was never reconsidered despite the failure to find any way the bomb could have been put on board at Luqa. The Warsaw-origin item was never investigated.

    5. The timer fragment

This is the most notorious item in the Lockerbie case. Originally the investigators believed the bomb to have been triggered by an altimeter device, operating on air pressure, and designed not to explode until the device was airborne (...) This introduced problems in respect of a Frankfurt introduction, as such a device should have exploded over France. A hypothesis was developed that the altimeter had malfunctioned on the feeder flight, only to detonate after the second take-off. When the focus of the investigation switched to Malta and a third flight, this introduced a paradox that was not addressed for over a year, until the identification of this fragment as part of a countdown timer resolved the difficulty.

The MST-13 timer was said to be one of a special run of only 20 supplied exclusively to Libya by the Swiss firm MEBO. Megrahi had business dealings with that firm, but not relating to, or at the time of, the purchase of the timers. Nevertheless this was said to be the 'golden thread' linking him to the bomb. This item had extraordinarily irregular provenance within the forensic investigation, with paperwork anomalies leading many commentators to suspect its appearance in the chain of evidence had been back-dated. In addition, the Libyan provenance was less certain than claimed, with Lockerbie occurring over two years after the timers were supplied, and examples having been found in other parts of Africa.

Irrespective of who had bombed the plane, the countdown timer introduced another paradox. Maid of the Seas exploded only 38 minutes after her wheels left the tarmac, and the plane was not late. There was a seven-hour flight ahead of her, with a thousand miles of Atlantic ocean where incriminating clothes and PCB fragments could have been buried forever. An altimeter timer would inevitably have exploded around 40 minutes into the flight, regardless of take-off time. Using a countdown timer set so early in the flight time carried a huge risk that the explosion would have occurred harmlessly on the tarmac if the plane had missed its slot at Heathrow – as could easily have happened on a stormy winter evening.

It was only in February 2012 that metallurgical evidence concealed from the original trial was revealed, which showed that the fragment could not have been one of the 20 items MEBO had supplied to Libya. This discovery calls into question whether the PCB chip was even part of a countdown timer, rather than some other electronic component using the same basic template.

[RB: Since then, Dr Kerr has, of course, established beyond reasonable doubt that the bomb suitcase was ingested at Heathrow, not Luqa in Malta.]  

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."