‘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.]

Megrahi close to death, says member of defence team

[The following is an excerpt from a report published today on the website of The Courier, a newspaper circulating in the Dundee, Tayside and Fife areas.  It reads in part:]

Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is ''slipping away'' but remains confident that he will be cleared after his ''imminent'' death, a close friend has said.

Fife man George Thomson said Megrahi's family had gathered round his sick bed and were preparing for his passing.

Megrahi, who marked his 60th birthday on Sunday, is being aided by morphine as he attempts to quell the pain of prostate cancer.

The last of his British friends to visit Megrahi in Libya, Mr Thomson said few of the birthday gifts he will have received would mean as much to him as the keepsake he gave to the convict when he visited in December — a tea towel with Scots words on it.

The 66-year-old, who worked on the Libyan's defence team, revealed how Megrahi's heartbroken wife Aisha comforted their Scottish visitor as he almost broke down after seeing his old friend ravaged by cancer.

Mr Thomson, from Burntisland, was hit by the disease around the same time as Megrahi, but has battled back to health.

''When I arrived he (Megrahi) was asleep and mumbling prayers to himself,'' he said.

''I was very upset by how he looked. The last time I'd seen him was when he was still in Greenock Prison. He was playing football and looking healthy.

''His wife saw how shaken I was and she came over and put her arm around me.''

When Megrahi woke up Mr Thomson gave him the jokey tea towel, covered in dialect like 'glaikit', 'crabbit' and 'gallus'.

His face lit up,'' said Mr Thomson, a former police officer who worked as an investigator for two of Megrahi's solicitors.

''He has a great affection for the people of Scotland and he used Scots words like 'scunnered' to sum up his mood and 'dreich' to describe his environment. He liked me to teach him a new word every week.'' [RB: This last was a word that Mr Megrahi used in greeting me on the one occasion that I met him in HMP Greenock.]

Mr Thomson also taught football fan Megrahi about the Old Firm rivalry and convinced the Libyan to become a Rangers fan. (…)

Mr Thomson describes Megrahi as a placid character — but said he is capable of ''fiery'' outbursts due to his frustration at being jailed for a crime he still insists he did not commit.

''I saw him with tears streaming down his face. He would ask why they had blamed him for such an atrocity which involved women, children — innocent people.

''However, he had a sense of humour too and enjoyed special birthday cards we made up for him, with in-jokes about the case.''

Mr Thomson is convinced of Megrahi's innocence and talked of his hopes that the ''truth'' will eventually come out.

''He was always very thoughtful about sending birthday and Christmas cards to others and I got a card from him when my mother passed away,'' he continued.

''It is agonising for me to see an innocent man condemned as a terrorist. I have no doubt he didn't do it."

He added: ''When I saw him he was excited about new evidence casting doubt on claims that a timer fragment allegedly from the bomb came from a batch that was sold to Libya. He felt it was a key breakthrough.

''I only hope there can be a public inquiry into his wrongful conviction.

''As I left, knowing it was the last time I would see him, he gave me a gift of a beautifully-made Arabic waistcoat, which I treasure.''

Slalom shirt as dodgy as the timer fragment?

[What follows is taken from an article published on this date in 2011 in the 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.

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. (...)

[George Thomson] 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.”

Megrahi interviewer writes exclusively for The Lockerbie Case

[George Thomson has provided, exclusively to this blog, the following account of his recent meeting with Abdelbaset Megrahi:]

As you are probably aware some of this mornings newspapers are carrying a story of my recent trip to Libya where I managed to meet up with Baset on two occasions.  I was shocked and I must admit a bit distressed by what I found. He is in a very poor state of health and I have no doubt in my mind that he has not got long on this earth.  It will come as a surprise to many to learn that Baset possesses a strong sense of humour and I took him out a gift of a tea towel which had a lot of the old Scottish words on it like glaikit and crabbit. He used to try and learn one word every visit I made to him in prison. I was not slow to point out to him that I had found him to be crabbit on many of the occasions I visited him in jail. He responded by saying to me "George, I have a new word, 'I am knackered'" [RB: For those requiring a translation of these Scots words, resort should be made to the online Dictionary of the Scots Language.]

The reason I was in Tripoli was in connection with the making of a follow-up documentary to Lockerbie -  The Pan Am Bomber in which much of the new evidence discovered by the SCCRC is investigated.  We were hopeful to get a filmed interview with him which would be broadcast as part of the new documentary which will be screened in conjunction with the release of John Ashton's book sometime early in the New Year.

As it happened Baset was to ill to be bothered with a television crew setting up in his bedroom to which he is now confined, but he was keen to say something about his case before he dies and so he agreed to be interviewed by me on camera on condition that I operated the camera on my own.  Having never held a television camera in my life I was a wee bit dubious as to how that would be possible, but it worked out not too badly and he was able to get some things off his chest.

Because of contractual agreements I am not at liberty to disclose the parts of the interview where he talks about the new evidence which will be revealed in the book and in the film, but he was very keen to say something about the way he was treated during his time here in Scotland.  In particular on camera he thanks the Scottish public for the kindness shown to him and the support he has received for his case.  He also thanks the staff and prisoners of Barlinnie and Greenock Prison for the general way in which he was treated while in custody.

One of my questions to him was "If Tony Gauci was here tonight what message would you have for him?"  With obvious passion he replied, "I would tell him that I have never in my life been in his shop and I have never ever bought any clothes from him, I would tell him that before I saw him in Holland I had never set eyes on him before. I would tell him that he was a simple man who would have to answer to his God and my God one day for what he has done."  Baset went further at this point but I am prohibited from revealing the whole of his response to my question for the time being.

I asked him what he thought of the SCCRC report and he said that in many area they had done a very good job, but in others they had not addressed many of the points that they should have.  He blames the SCCRC for not properly investigating some of the allegation of malpractice by the police and he goes on to identify two officers in particular who he particulary blames for malpractice. He claims that in all Gauci met with the police 55 times, but there exists only a handful of statements from him.

Off camera we talked about the continuing support he receives and in particular from this blog.  He is well aware of the efforts of Bob and many of the regular contributors to the blog and he sends his thanks.  He is no longer able to follow things on a regular basis.

Of particular interest to myself, he formally released me from a confidentiality contract which has been in place for some time now and which has prevented me from answering some of the points made by certain contributors who pop up now and again and talk drivel.

On Baset's behalf I would challenge any of the following such as Mr Marquise, Harry Bell, John Crawford to face me across a table in open debate about the quality of the evidence.  My door is open any time they want to call.

Finally the main purpose of him giving the final interview on camera and the generating of the press interest of today was to hammer home a final request from Baset to be allowed to now die in peace without intrusion from the world media or any other parties. You only have to see him to appreciate how really sick and weak he is now. I only hope that his plea is granted.

[What follows is the text of a comment posted in response to this blog post:]

As it happens, I was working in the education department in HMP Barlinnie during part of Megrahi's incarceration there. I obviously can't speak for them all but I can confirm that such staff as I spoke to who had any involvement with him took their responsibility seriously. It is gracious of a deeply-wronged man to find time to thank them. Thanks for the piece.

Police came to a conclusion and then looked for evidence

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

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.

Vital Lockerbie evidence ‘was made AFTER the doomed flight crashed’

[This is part of the headline over a report in today's edition of the Daily Mail. The following are excerpts:]

Evidence used in the trial of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is unconnected to the case, it has been claimed.

A circuit board used in the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi was probably made after the atrocity, investigators say.

The claims are backed by testimony from a British expert and by tests at a police forensics lab in Zurich.

Documentary-maker Bill Cran and his lead investigator George Thomson, a former Scottish police officer, are re-examining the 1988 bombing and later court case for a forthcoming film. (...)

The circuit board was linked to Swiss electronics firm Mebo, but it is claimed fresh forensic scrutiny has established the fragment did not match the Mebo boards.

It also appears the fragment was from a type of circuit-board not patented until 1991.

The British expert, who has asked not to be named but was interviewed for Cran’s film, said the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the older Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.

He said the technique of adding foil coating to circuit boards only emerged at the end of the 1980s and was not patented until 1991.

The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made my Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986. (...)

Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the UK relatives among the 270 who died on December 21, 1988, said: ‘This evidence underlines that PT35b did not come from boards made by Mebo and sold to Libya. 

'We need a full public inquiry to explore this and to deliver truth and justice before it’s too late for those of us who have the right to know why our loved ones died.’

[RB: An article headlined Doubts over Lockerbie bomb timer fragment appears in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]

A fragment of circuit board linked to Mebo, a Swiss electronics company, used to convict the late Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi for the bombing, does not match the relevant Mebo boards and was probably made after the tragedy on December 21, 1988. (...)

Since the trial verdict in 2001 and a failed first appeal, fresh scrutiny has established that, contrary to what the court was told, the fragment did not match the Mebo boards sold to Libya.

A British expert claims that the fragment also appeared to be from a type of board that was not patented until 1991. The expert, who we have been asked not to name but who has recorded an interview for the documentary [by film maker Bill Cran], said that the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.

The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made by Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986.

Edwin Bollier, Mebo’s co-founder, has also secured new evidence after winning the legal right to obtain government files on his company. They suggest that a named member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in 1989 and took away a modern circuit board he passed on to US investigators.

The fragment, known as PT35b, was entered as evidence in October 1990, and later that month the CIA went to Mebo and secured a packet of circuit boards of the type sold to Libya.

Mr Thomson said: “Somehow, the Americans knew 16 months or so before the fragment was found to send a local agent to Mebo to secure a circuit board. You have to wonder whether the investigation was already following a prepared script.”

The Swiss documents also confirmed that the police forensic lab in Zurich had concluded: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial does not match the timers made by Mebo.”

Swiss forensic lab: Lockerbie circuit board fragment does not match timers supplied to Libya

[What follows is excerpted from a report by Marcello Mega today in the Scottish edition of The Sun:]

A key piece of evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial had no link to the atrocity, it has been alleged.

The shock claim emerged as relatives prepare to mark the disaster’s 30th anniversary.

Investigators suggest an electronics fragment that helped to convict Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was made after the jet blast which killed 270 on December 21, 1988.

The fresh revelations emerged in a probe by documentary filmmaker Bill Cran and ex-cop George Thomson, 73.

The tiny circuit board piece, given the court tag PT35b, was said to be part of the bomb that blew up Pam Am flight 103 over the Dumfriesshire town.

Prosecutors claimed it was made by Swiss firm Mebo and sold to Libya in the 1980s.

But a British expert told Cran the piece of board contained traces of copper foil — a technique that was not patented until 1991.

And a Swiss police forensic lab stated: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial doesn’t match the timers made by Mebo.”

The findings will be included in a new film about Lockerbie that Cran hopes to broadcast next year.

His lead investigator Thomson, of Kirkcaldy, was part of Megrahi’s 2009 appeal defence team.

Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the relatives of the UK victims, has said: “We need a public inquiry to explore this.”

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is considering an appeal for the family of Megrahi, who died in 2012, aged 60.

[RB: Another report by Marcello Mega appears in today's edition of The Sunday Times under the headline New evidence ‘undermines’ Lockerbie bomber trial. The subheading over the story reads "Circuit board fragment used to convict Megrahi was likely made after the atrocity, scientists say". The following are two paragraphs from the story:]

Other evidence that appears to undermine the case against Megrahi has come from Mebo’s co-founder Edwin Bollier, who recently won the right through the Swiss Federal Court to obtain government files relating to his firm.

The documents reveal that a member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in June 1989 and took away a circuit board made with copper foil. It was passed on to US investigators. The PT35b circuit board fragment entered the chain of evidence in the Lockerbie case in October 1990.

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.

Megrahi convicted on evidence designed to prosecute Abu Talb

[What follows is taken from an item posted yesterday on Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s PT35B website:]

George Thomson writes:

Armed with the intelligence on the PFLP-GC’s activities in Neuss in October and the FAA Warning, the Scottish investigators on the ground, assisted by their American friends, were in no doubt that they were looking for the remains of a copper Samsonite suitcase which would contain a semtex-based IED concealed within a Toshiba Radio. The radio would be enclosed in a cardboard box along with an instruction manual. They even knew that the explosives within the radio would be wrapped in Toblerone type wrapping foil.

In no time whatsoever they “found” what they were looking for. […]

AG145 - debris from the identification plate of the luggage container which Feraday was satisfied was from a Toshiba 8016 or 8026 but then he changed his mind later on. [RB: information about AG145 can be found here and here.] At trial however the air accident investigator Claiden testified that the fold in the identification plate which harboured the debris identified as originating from a Toshiba HAD NOT BEEN CAUSED AT THE TIME OF THE EXPLOSION

A black explosion-damaged cardigan with Toblerone foil violently impacted into its fabric was found and initially was described as originating from the bomb suitcase, but later the classification was changed as the emphasis moved away from the PFLP-GC.

Then, impacted into various items of clothing which Gauci later remembered selling to “a suspect”, originally Talb, the scientists found pieces of the cardboard box, the instruction manual and various pieces of plastics and mesh which Hayes claimed was from the IED Radio.

In relation to the detonation device a report was submitted from the Scottish police to the Lord Advocate asking for the detention of various suspects who had been involved with the PFLP-GC in Neuss. In that report the police assert time after time that the bomb had been triggered by a barometric device.

The net was finally closing and by a spectacular piece of detective work a pair of trousers from the bomb suitcase was traced via the manufacturers on Malta to Tony Gauci’s shop where he remarkably remembered selling a variety of clothes to a suspect, which had turned up in the bomb suitcase. To be fair to Tony however he did not make the whole thing up from nothing, he was shown a variety of photographs of items said to originate from the bomb suitcase and he picked them out.

The slight fly in the ointment however is that the police claimed to have been led to Gauci by a manufacturer’s label (Yorkie) attached to the trousers and by a Stamped Number 1705 on a pocket which was an order number for Gauci’s Shop. Unfortunately we now have a police document which indicates that when the trousers first came into the possession of the police there was no such label attached and the number 1705 apparently jumps from one fragment of trousers to another depending on what report or which police statement you chose to read.

Gauci went some way to identifying Talb as the purchaser of the clothing. However Gauci’s identification would have been bolstered by the evidence of a witness with a shop nearby who made a definite identification of Talb being in his own shop at the relevant time. This shopkeeper’s evidence has never been heard.

So sure were the police that Talb was their man, that they even fabricated evidence of a piece of clothing found in his home in Sweden and originally described as a pair of child’s kick-trousers with a size and a manufacturer into being a Babygro with penguins on the front; the same type of course as described in the shipment note lodged at court to prove the evidence of Gauci and his lamb/sheep Babygro he claimed to have sold to the man.

I could go on and on with discrepancies in the case but I want to make the point that Megrahi was in my mind convicted on evidence much of which was designed to prosecute Talb and all they had to do to was change the tentative identification by Gauci of Talb to Megrahi and introduce the small fragment of circuit board, PT35b.

That’s what makes this case so different. Megrahi was convicted on false evidence originally intended to be used against someone else and if any of that evidence was tested in court by a defence team properly briefed by defence investigators then Megrahi’s name would be cleared.

Baset [Megrahi] would be pleased if that were to happen because on his deathbed he asked me to not only try to prove his innocence but prove that he was deliberately convicted on false evidence.

Anger that Malta was so unfairly involved

[I am grateful to George Thomson for sending me the following reflections on his trip to Malta during which he conducted question and answer sessions with the audience following performances of the play The Lockerbie Bomber:]

First of all I thought that the play was fantastic.  I met the whole of the cast over a drink and it was great to hear that not all of them were believers in the case until they began their research for the play and now they are all fully on board and they say this adds to the passion which they clearly show in their acting.

Herman [Grech, the director of the play and also head of media for The Times of Malta] and his team were great and they made me very welcome.  We planned only to do a Q and A on the Friday, but that went down so well it was decided that we should repeat it on the final night. The play was performed to full houses on both nights with people disappointed at not being able to secure a ticket.

The questions were very good both nights and it shows that there is a burning interest and a certain amount of anger that Malta was so unfairly involved. Nobody out there believes that the bomb went on at Luqa.  In that area I was able to give Morag's new book some publicity. [RB: Dr Morag Kerr, Adequately Explained by Stupidity?: Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies, due to be published on 21 December 2013.]

We were also approached by the head of a local well-known film production company who expressed an interest in doing something on the case.

Jim Swire obviously made a very big impression during his recent visit the locals took him to their hearts and he was the main topic of many conversations I had.

Herman and his team intend to keep up the pressure on the Maltese Government and soon they will run a big piece on the Gauci payments.

Aljazeera Lockerbie documentary broadcast times

The new documentary Lockerbie: What really happened? is to be broadcast on Aljazeera English on Tuesday 11 March at 8 pm GMT, Wednesday 12 March at 12 noon, Thursday 13 March at 1 am and Friday 14 March at 6 am.  The premiere showing is in Holyrood’s Committee Room 1 at 1pm on Tuesday 11th.  

[Here is what Aljazeera says about the programme:]

In late December 1988 a terrorist bomb destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie and killed 270 people.

Only one man, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan citizen, was tried and found guilty of causing the explosion. But he protested his innocence at the time of his trial in Camp Zeist in Holland in May 2000, and continued to do so up until his death in Tripoli in May 2012.

For three years filmmakers working for Al Jazeera have been investigating the prosecution of al-Megrahi.

Two award-winning documentaries, screened on Al Jazeera in 2011 and 2012, demonstrated that the case against him was deeply flawed and argued that a serious miscarriage of justice may have taken place.

In the first episode, Lockerbie: The Pan Am bomber, we followed defence investigator George Thomson as he revealed how forensic evidence presented at al-Megrahi's trial was not only inaccurate but appears to have been deliberately tampered with.

Then in Lockerbie: Case Closed, we revealed the hitherto secret assessment of the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) - an independent public body in Scotland - which had re-examined the case in detail and had recommended that it be referred back to the courts for possible dismissal.

Crucially, our film also showed how new scientific tests comprehensively undermined the validity of the most significant piece of evidence linking the bombing to al-Megrahi and Libya - a fragment of electronic timer found embedded in the shredded remains of a shirt, supposedly bought by the convicted man in Malta.

The timer, the prosecution had claimed, was identical to ones sold to Libyan intelligence by a Swiss manufacturer. But as our investigation proved, it was not identical - a fact that must have been known to British government scientists all along.

Now, in our third and most disturbing investigation, we answer the question left hanging at the end of our last programme: if al-Megrahi was not guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, then who was?

Evidence cast doubt on Gauci’s identification of Megrahi

[Print and broadcast media yesterday and today offer lots of reports about the death of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci. What follows is excerpted from the report in today’s edition of The National:]

A Maltese shopkeeper whose evidence helped secure the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing has died at the age of 75. Tony Gauci was said to have died from natural causes.

He ran a clothes shop in Malta at the time of the bombing in December 1998, and claimed Megrahi had bought clothing there that was found wrapped around the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103, killing a total of 270 people.

Gauci’s evidence helped secure the conviction of Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, but doubts have been raised about his reliability.

Megrahi was convicted in 2001, but maintained his innocence until his death in 2012, three years after the Scottish Government released him from a life sentence on compassionate grounds.

Gauci was reportedly paid a $2 million reward for evidence against the only man convicted of the atrocity.

The Libyan lost an appeal against his conviction in 2002. Then, in 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) found six grounds where it was believed a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, paving the way for a second appeal.

The commission questioned evidence about the date on which the prosecution said the clothes were bought from Gauci’s shop.

The SCCRC also said evidence that cast doubt on Gauci’s identification of Megrahi had not been made available to the defence – in breach of rules designed to ensure a fair trial.

There was also evidence that four days before he identified Megrahi, Gauci had seen a picture of him in a magazine article about the bombing.

Megrahi dropped a second appeal in 2009 before being released due to his terminal prostate cancer.

In his last interview, he insisted he had “never seen” Gauci and had not bought clothes from him.

In 2014 the then Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland, reaffirmed his belief in Megrahi’s guilt. (...)

In a statement, the campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM), told The National: “JfM members are sad that Mr Gauci has passed away.

“While he will no longer be able to appear in person as a witness, under the Criminal Procedure Scotland Act 1995 all the statements he has previously given to the police and prosecution are likely to be admissible during any future court proceedings.

“All of these statements have of course been available to the ongoing major police inquiry, Operation Sandwood.”

Aamer Anwar, the Glasgow lawyer who acts for the Megrahi family, told The National: “Tony Gauci went to his grave knowing that he had always been accused of falsifying his evidence to convict al-Megrahi who until his dying breath maintained he was innocent.

“It is sad that we were unable to test his ‘unreliable identification’ evidence at appeal, however the Megrahi family remain determined to return to court one day to overturn the conviction of their father Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.”

George Thomson, who worked for Megrahi’s defence team, said the Libyan would look forward to meeting his accuser.

He told The Times of Malta: “When I last spoke to Baset on his deathbed he spoke of the day that he and Tony might meet in another place, where Tony would have to face him and answer for the lies he said against him.

“I personally hope that Tony is in a better place and that he is now at peace because he must have led a tortured life knowing that he had jailed an innocent man for money.”