Questions that demand an answer

[What follows is the text of an item posted on this blog on this date in 2008:]

Lockerbie questions demand an answer

This is the headline over an article in today's issue of The Times by Magnus Linklater, the newspaper's Scotland Editor (and the editor of The Scotsman in the bygone days when that title was still a serious and responsible journal).

The article reads in part:

'You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise that nagging questions have gnawed away at the Lockerbie case since the first investigations began. The veteran campaigner, Tam Dalyell, who describes himself as a “professor of Lockerbie studies”, is convinced that neither al-Megrahi nor the Libyan Government had any involvement. He, along with the Rev John Mosey and Dr Jim Swire, who both lost daughters in the atrocity, believe that there has been a spectacular miscarriage of justice.

'They have raised questions about basic evidence in the original case. They have challenged eyewitness accounts offered by the chief prosecution witness, the Maltese shopowner who originally identified Megrahi as a suspect. They have raised doubts about the forensic evidence, and have pointed out that al-Megrahi, a civilised and intelligent man, is a most unlikely terrorist.

'Last weekend, their campaign was given fresh impetus when Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent, reported that Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist responsible for some of the worst attacks of the 1970s and 1980s, may have been working for the Americans before the invasion of Iraq. Secret documents - the very phrase is a conspiracy idiom - written by Saddam Hussein's security services state that he had been colluding with the Americans trying to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda. Abu Nidal's alleged suicide in 2002 may have been an execution by the Iraqis for his betrayal.

'From this tenuous connection stems the idea that the US security services may have had previous contacts within Abu Nidal's terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which many experts have long believed was the real perpetrator of Lockerbie.

'Mr Dalyell, who thinks there may be some weight to this theory, points to incidents such as notices that went up in the US Embassy in Moscow in the days before the bombing, warning diplomats not to travel on PanAm flights, and how senior South African figures were hauled off the plane before the flight, almost as if there had been advance warning.

'For me, this kind of evidence strays into the territory of “the second gunman theory” that bedevilled the Kennedy assassination. But there is one aspect of the case that I have never understood: why was it that, for the first 18 months of the investigation, Scottish police, US investigators and European security agents were convinced that the perpetrators were Abu Nidal's PFLP? And why was it that, in the run-up to the Gulf War, when good relations with Syria and Iran were important to Western interests, attention switched abruptly from Abu Nidal's terrorists, and on to Libya?

'These matters have never satisfactorily been explained, and in the interests of common justice they should be addressed. For the sake of the Flight 103 victims, for the wider interests of Western security, and for the man now dying in a Scottish prison, there is a need for a proper inquiry. It does not have to be as wideranging as the Warren Commission that examined the Kennedy case, but it does need to be international, and to have US backing. The appeal in Edinburgh next year will examine legal aspects of the case, but it cannot extend to the wider issues that demand resolution.

'Just possibly a new president taking office next January will find in his in-tray persuasive evidence pointing to a reopening of the case. There are powerful moral reasons for dusting it off and asking a basic question: who was responsible for Britain's worst terrorist outrage?'

[RB: Although this article is mentioned on Mr Linklater’s page on journalisted, it no longer appears on the website of The Times. The most recent article by Magnus Linklater in The Times can be read here. A very different stance is adopted. What has changed over the past seven years? Certainly no new evidence has emerged supporting Megrahi’s guilt. And much evidence has surfaced that further undermines the conviction. What is it, then, that has changed Mr Linklater’s mind? It’s a mystery.]

What do you say, Mr Linklater?

[What follows is the text of a letter to the editor of The Times by Len Murray (a committee member of Justice for Megrahi who has been described by a Scottish High Court judge as the most distinguished pleader of his generation) following Magnus Linklater’s most recent Lockerbie article in that newspaper. As with James Robertson’s letter, it has not been selected for publication:]

Why does Magnus Linklater insist in keeping his head buried in the sands of Libya?  Why does he not face up to the facts of the scandalous conviction of Abdul Basset Al-Megrahi?

The judges found that the unaccompanied suitcase containing the bomb was put on a flight to Frankfurt from Malta when there was not even a scintilla of evidence to justify that finding.  What made that finding worse (if that were possible) was the fact that the records at Luqa Airport accounted for every single piece of luggage and there was none which was unaccompanied.

Their Lordships also held also that this same suitcase managed to make its way, still unaccompanied, from Frankfurt to Heathrow when there was no adequate evidence to justify that conclusion.

Gauci, without whom the Crown had no case, never positively identified Megrahi as the purchaser of the clothing wrapped around the bomb.  His earlier descriptions of the purchaser were so far out in age, height and colouring that they surely constituted proof that Megrahi was NOT the purchaser.

What do you say, Mr Linklater, about the $2 million dollars paid to Gauci by the CIA and which was never mentioned at the Trial?  Or the break-in at the Pan Am hangar right next door to Air Iran only 16 hours before Pan Am 103 took off?

Or what does he make of the finding that the purchase was made on 7 December when Megrahi was on Malta when the preponderance of the evidence was that the purchase was made on 23 November when he was not?

What do you say, Mr Linklater, of the subsequent discrediting of the forensic scientists who gave evidence at Megrahi’s trial?

Why was it that every single inference unfavourable to Megrahi was drawn when there were so many innocent explanations available?

These are the facts of the disgraceful conviction of Megrahi, a conviction utterly condemned by, amongst others, the UN observer at the trial.

But Mr Linklater does not stop at ignoring the facts.  He goes on to say something that is nothing short of astonishing.  He says:  “….every thread of evidence has been examined to distraction and has led nowhere.”  An astoundingly misleading assertion.  Examined where and by whom?

Certainly not the Appeal Court who have never had the opportunity of looking at Megrahi’s conviction.  The first appeal was taken on the wrong grounds and so the evidence was never examined; the second appeal was abandoned before any hearing and Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds.

The nearest the case got to a judicial tribunal was when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission examined the conviction and referred it to the Appeal Court since they detected no fewer than six possible grounds of a miscarriage of justice.

Even some of the relatives of the victims wanted SCCR to examine the case since they are unhappy about the conviction.

These are the facts of the Megrahi case.  May I respectfully suggest to Mr Linklater that he lift his head out of the sands of Libya and face up to the truth of this national disgrace.  We of Justice for Megrahi would welcome his considerable abilities.

Profoundly and wilfully mistaken

Following Magnus Linklater’s most recent Lockerbie article in The Times, James Robertson (in my view Scotland’s most distinguished living novelist, and a Justice for Megrahi stalwart) was moved to pen a letter to the editor. Since The Times has not published the letter, I reproduce it here, with James Robertson’s permission:]

21 October 2015

Sir

Magnus Linklater asserts, once again, that those who believe the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to be unsound are ‘conspiracy theorists’, and that they should ‘accept that the evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya rather than the myriad of misty theories and unsupported allegations on which their case has rested’. It is Mr Linklater who is, once again, profoundly and wilfully mistaken.

He states that last week the Crown Office announced that it had ‘identified two further suspects, and was asking the government in Tripoli to allow it access to them in prison’. This identification appears to have come, not from any ‘long and dogged investigation’ by the Scottish police or Crown Office, but from information contained in the recent American television documentary made by Ken Dornstein, whose brother David was killed at Lockerbie. Mr Dornstein’s motivation in wanting to find out who murdered his brother cannot be questioned, but whether he has uncovered any significant new evidence remains to be seen.

There remain, too, the difficulties of interviewing these men given the current chaotic situation in Libya. The Crown Office has requested the Attorney General of Libya to allow it access to them, but they are held, not by the administration based in Tobruk and recognised by the UK, but by the National Salvation administration based in Tripoli. Those of us who seek justice for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as well as for the families of the victims of Lockerbie would welcome the case being re-opened in a court of law: the prospects of this happening as a result of these latest developments are remote indeed.

Elsewhere, Mr Dornstein has been quoted as saying of one of the suspects, Mohammed Abouajela Masud, that, ‘figuring out simply that he existed would solve many of the unanswered questions to the bombing because he was attached to Megrahi according to the best information there was, including at the airport in Malta on the day that the bomb was said to have been infiltrated into the baggage system and ultimately on to Flight 103.’ If this is representative of the quality of the ‘new’ evidence, it is deeply disappointing. It simply reinforces an already discredited line of reasoning, albeit one which the court at Camp Zeist accepted,which insists – despite compelling evidence to the contrary – that the bomb began its journey in Malta and not at Heathrow, that the timer used to detonate the bomb was ‘similar in all respects’ to timers in Libyan hands, that there was no dubiety about the identification of Megrahi as purchaser, in a Malta shop, of clothes later retrieved from the bomb suitcase, and so on.

Despite what Mr Linklater avers, the arguments which oppose this version of events have ‘followed the evidence’ and are indeed based on ‘hard facts’. To dismiss the serious concerns about the way in which the case against Megrahi was prosecuted is to accept that the Scottish justice system operated impeccably throughout, and is beyond reproach. The ‘hard facts’ suggest the very opposite.

It is time, Mr Linklater writes, to ‘extinguish the last embers of controversy that have heated the Lockerbie case for so long.’ There is a straightforward way of doing that: allow all the evidence to be heard by an appeal court or by a properly constituted inquiry.

James Robertson

More Lockerbie errors by Magnus Linklater

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

The following article by Magnus Linklater appears in the Scottish edition of The Times under the headline Lockerbie evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with Mr Linklater’s writing on Lockerbie, it contains numerous distortions and factual errors.

The article follows in italics, interspersed with my comments.

It is time to extinguish the last embers of controversy that have heated the Lockerbie case for so long. For more than two decades critics have argued that Scottish police got the wrong man and that the prosecution of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was — perhaps deliberately — a botched job.

Yet last week, after a long and dogged investigation, the Crown Office announced that it had identified two further suspects, and was asking the government in Tripoli to allow it access to them in prison.

The investigation of the two new suspects was done primarily by Ken Dornstein. The key fact that Ken uncovered (the fact that Megrahi’s alleged associate Abu Agila Mas’ud was a suspect in the La Belle Disco bombing) was missed by the Crown Office for 18 years.

It may not succeed — Libya is in chaos at the moment — but it is clear that enough prima facie evidence has now emerged to perhaps home in on those who planned and helped execute a terrorist attack that killed 270 innocent people 27 years ago.

I agree that there is a prima facie case against Mas’ud, just as there was against Megrahi, and I hope he can be brought to trial. However, the case against him will rely on much of the discredited evidence that convicted Megrahi.

Those who have argued down the years that this line of inquiry is misguided, and that Libya was not responsible, have some hard questions to answer.

No one that I know of has argued that the Crown should not pursue lines of inquiry that point to Libya. Our criticism of the Crown is that it has failed to pursue exculpatory evidence.

Why would the Crown Office still be spending public money and using scarce resources to shore up a case that is — as its critics claim — fundamentally flawed?

One reason might be that, it is a way of keeping at bay the tide of scandal that surrounds Megrahi’s prosecution. Another question, which Mr Linklater fails to ask, is: why is the Crown not using its resources to consider the evidence that points away from Libya, such as the forensic evidence, that shows that the fragment of circuit board PT/35b did not, as the Crown alleged at trial, originate from a timer supplied to Libya by the Swiss company Mebo?

The central accusations that have sustained the conspiracy theorists is that evidence was manipulated by the CIA to accuse Libya rather than Syria or Iran; that information was withheld from defence lawyers representing al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the bombing; and that Scottish judges presided over what they call “the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history”.

Wrong. The central allegation, which is in the realm of fact, not conspiracy, is that the Crown withheld exculpatory evidence. We also believe that it was a terrible miscarriage of justice, for which the judges must share the blame. On this point, Mr Linklater fails to report that the SCCRC ruled that the trial court judgment was unreasonable.

Ever since, they argue, the Scottish judicial system has connived in an attempt to prevent the truth coming out. Allowing al-Megrahi back to Libya on condition that he dropped his appeal was part of the strategy.

Wrong. It has never been seriously suggested by Megrahi’s mainstream supporters that the Scottish judicial system pressured Megrahi to drop his appeal. The pressure was purely political and came from the Scottish Government and/or the Libyan government.

Why, then, should that same legal process be obstinately nurturing a case that it must, by now, have conceded is wrong-headed? Perhaps, as one of its accusers has alleged, the explanation is sheer stupidity. Or, as another claims, it is desperately trying to cover its tracks by pursuing an empty investigation.

But perhaps it is simply following the evidence, and doing what every family of every Lockerbie victim wants it to, which is trying to get at the truth. The hard facts are that every countertheory, and every alternative thread of evidence, has been examined to distraction, and has led nowhere.

Wrong. The counter evidence relating to PT/35b (and much else) has not been pursued.

The time has come for those who cling to them to accept that the evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya rather than the myriad of misty theories and unsupported allegations on which their case has rested.

Wrong. The primary claims of Megrahi’s supporters are supported by a wealth of hard evidence, the great majority of which was gathered by the Scottish police.

Lockerbie evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater in today’s edition of The Times (subscription). It reads as follows:]

Every countertheory has been examined and has led nowhere

It is time to extinguish the last embers of controversy that have heated the Lockerbie case for so long. For more than two decades critics have argued that Scottish police got the wrong man and that the prosecution of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was — perhaps deliberately — a botched job.

Yet last week, after a long and dogged investigation, the Crown Office announced that it had identified two further suspects, and was asking the government in Tripoli to allow it access to them in prison. It may not succeed — Libya is in chaos at the moment — but it is clear that enough prima facie evidence has now emerged to perhaps home in on those who planned and helped execute a terrorist attack that killed 270 innocent people 27 years ago.

Those who have argued down the years that this line of inquiry is misguided, and that Libya was not responsible, have some hard questions to answer. Why would the Crown Office still be spending public money and using scarce resources to shore up a case that is — as its critics claim — fundamentally flawed?

The central accusations that have sustained the conspiracy theorists is that evidence was manipulated by the CIA to accuse Libya rather than Syria or Iran; that information was withheld from defence lawyers representing al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the bombing; and that Scottish judges presided over what they call “the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history”.

Ever since, they argue, the Scottish judicial system has connived in an attempt to prevent the truth coming out. Allowing al-Megrahi back to Libya on condition that he dropped his appeal was part of the strategy.

Why, then, should that same legal process be obstinately nurturing a case that it must, by now, have conceded is wrong-headed? Perhaps, as one of its accusers has alleged, the explanation is sheer stupidity. Or, as another claims, it is desperately trying to cover its tracks by pursuing an empty investigation.

But perhaps it is simply following the evidence, and doing what every family of every Lockerbie victim wants it to, which is trying to get at the truth. The hard facts are that every countertheory, and every alternative thread of evidence, has been examined to distraction, and has led nowhere. The time has come for those who cling to them to accept that the evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya rather than the myriad of misty theories and unsupported allegations on which their case has rested.

[RB: Magnus Linklater is profoundly mistaken. The Justice for Megrahi campaign is not advancing “countertheories”. It is drawing attention to grave flaws in the evidence that resulted in the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi and to credible scientific and other evidence that further undermines the case against him. This evidence has been pointed out to Mr Linklater by John Ashton amongst others and he has been challenged to respond. Although promising to do so, he has not. All that he contributes is the assertion that the conviction was correct (because Scottish judges do not make mistakes, perhaps?) and that those who fail to swallow it hook, line and sinker are purblind conspiracy theorists. For Mr Linklater, as far as the Megrahi conviction is concerned all is for the best in the best of all possible legal systems. When the house of cards crumbles, as it assuredly will, Scotland’s Dr Pangloss will be deservedly left hanging his head in shame at his part in defending the indefensible.]

Investigator whose brother died at Lockerbie has a prime suspect

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater published (behind the paywall) in today’s edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]

By any standards, Ken Dornstein’s investigation is remarkable. The death of his brother David in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 led to a lifetime obsession with discovering the identity of the perpetrators.

Just one man — Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi — has been convicted of the atrocity. But Mr Dornstein knew that there must have been others behind the attack, and that someone must have manufactured the bomb. He set about interviewing anybody and everybody who knew anything about the case.

He has travelled three times to Libya, interviewed the widow of one of the suspects, and accompanied Jim Swire, whose daughter was also killed, on a trip to see al-Megrahi.

In the course of his inquiries, Mr Dornstein met Kathryn Geismar, who had dated his brother for two years. They fell in love and are now married.

In order to aid his investigation, he took a job at a detective agency. His career has been as an investigative reporter for the PBS television show Frontline, working on programmes about Iraq and Afghanistan. But his real obsession has been the Lockerbie story.

He travelled to Scotland, interviewed Scottish investigators and located the exact spot where David’s body had landed. In 2006 he published a book, The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky. The book explores his drive to investigate. “I had found a less painful way to miss my brother, by not missing him at all, just trying to document what happened to his body,” he says.

The New Yorker article that documents his search reports that one room of his house in Somerville, Massachusetts, is lined with books about espionage, aviation, terrorism and the Middle East. Another is papered with mugshots of Libyan suspects. Between the two rooms is a large map of Lockerbie, with hundreds of coloured pins indicating where the bodies had fallen.

He has examined all the “counter-theories” which maintain that al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted and that Libya was not involved, but has found no hard evidence to support them. [RB: No hard evidence to support them? The metallurgy discrepancy between PT35b and the timers supplied to Libya? Dr Morag Kerr’s irrefutable demonstration that the bomb was already in luggage container AVE4041 before the transfer baggage arrived from Frankfurt?] Instead, he has focused on tracking down those in Libya who may still be able to cast light on the origins of the plot.

In the course of his inquiries he has made a friend of Mr Swire. He continues to maintain that al-Megrahi was inncocent, but respects Mr Dornstein’s determination to get at the truth, and does not rule out a Libyan connection. Scottish prosecutors gave Mr Dornstein a list of eight prime suspects.

Some of them are dead, some – like Abdullah al-Senussi, Colonel Gaddafi’s former head of intelligence – have been sentenced to execution.

That did not prevent the American from travelling three times to Libya. In the course of one visit he met the widow of Badri Hassan, one of the men on the suspect list, who had died of a heart attack. The New Yorker reports that over several meetings at her family home, she told Mr Dornstein of her long-standing suspicion that her husband had been involved in Lockerbie. She had asked him about it repeatedly, but he had never confessed. “I’m absolutely sure of it,” she said, adding, when she learnt that Mr Dornstein’s brother had been on the plane: “Badri left behind such suffering.”

Mr Dornstein’s prime suspect, Abu Agila Masud, is alive, and serving a ten- year sentence in prison. Libya today, however, is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Even an investigator as intrepid as Mr Dornstein does not feel that it is fair to himself or his family to travel there again and take that final risk.

[A further article by Mr Linklater in the same newspaper can be read here.]

A fair re-examination of all the evidence is exactly what we have been calling for all along

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in The Times today (but which, as far as I can see, does not appear on the newspaper’s website):]

Magnus Linklater has a long record of articles defending the story presented at the Zeist court in 2000-01, which claimed that a Libyan (Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi) sent the Lockerbie bomb by air from the island of Malta.

In his Opinion article (July 8), however, he claims that most lawyers up to and including several lord advocates would relish seeing the case back in court.

A fair re-examination of all the evidence is exactly what we UK relatives have been calling for all along.  Welcome, Magnus, to the ranks of those who seek such a resolution. May I sit by you in the court's public gallery please?

An untested appeal is a disservice to justice

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater in today’s edition of The Times (behind the paywall). It reads as follows:]

Families of the 7/7 victims at least have resolution but in the case of Lockerbie the truth may now be buried for ever

For the victims of the 7/7 attacks in London, the memorials yesterday may have helped to draw a line under an atrocity that robbed families of those they loved and tore apart their lives. By now they have gathered most of the detail of what happened on that day. They know who did it; they have pieced together the last moments of those who died; the gaps in their knowledge have been steadily filled.

For the families of the Lockerbie victims, 26 years have passed without the same resolution. For some, such as Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, there is the visceral conviction that the wrong man was targeted and that the trail to Libya was a false one. Others, like the redoubtable Tam Dalyell, share that belief. It will stay with them for ever; nothing will convince them otherwise. For others — equally certain that the right man was convicted — there is the frustration of not knowing who ordered the attack. Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, found guilty on the evidence of placing the bomb on board a feeder flight from Luqa airport in Malta, could not, they believe, have acted alone. Who gave the orders remains an unanswered question.

Last week, three appeal judges rejected the final route open to those who wished to bring the Lockerbie case back before the courts. Only the family of a dead man can appeal his conviction, they ruled; campaigners for relatives of the victims have no such legal standing. Since al-Megrahi’s family in Libya were unwilling or unable to back the appeal, that marked the end of a long narrative of rumour, doubts, suspicions and accusations that reach back almost as far as the attack itself.

The story will not, of course, end here. Already campaigners have announced that they intend to pursue their quest “for justice”. Within hours of the decision, Robert Black, QC, a Lockerbie man who was partly responsible for the original trial being held in the Netherlands, criticised the Scottish legal system for being “too rigid” in refusing the appeal and said it was predictable that the judges had rejected it. They “bristled with discomfort”, he wrote, at the prospect of the case being brought back, in case the conviction fell apart. [RB: I have said or written no such thing. What I did do is post on this blog a letter from Thomas Crooks in The Scotsman where such comments are made.]

Actually, the reverse is true. Most lawyers, up to and including several lord advocates who have been involved in the prosecution case or have studied it in detail, would relish seeing it back in court — if only to subject the conspiracy theories to forensic cross-examination and to see them fall apart. Investigators have been labelled corrupt, stupid or simply blinkered for failing to challenge the prosecution case. They would welcome the chance to contest that view.

For all the heated controversy that has surrounded police and lawyers involved in putting together the case against al-Megrahi, none of the counter-theories have stood up to scrutiny. They have been paraded in books, TV programmes and articles, but they have always foundered on an absence of hard evidence. Suggestions, for instance, that the bomb was loaded at Heathrow rather than in Malta remain in the domain of speculation rather than of sustainable proof. The idea that the critical fragment of a timer linking the bomb to the Libyans was planted, altered, or swapped requires a leap that would be thrown out in any serious court of law. The explanations offered as to what al-Megrahi was doing in Malta at precisely the time that the bomb was loaded, and how it came to be wrapped in clothes bought in a local shop, have been as unconvincing as they have been varied.

The case that exonerates the Libyans, while at the same time attempting to explain away the hard forensic and circumstantial evidence that links them to the bombing, is almost as tortuous as the negotiations that persuaded Colonel Gaddafi to surrender the two men accused of the bombing to face a Scottish trial.

The Justice for Megrahi campaign relies ultimately on the lengthy report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which spent three years on the most detailed examination of the evidence ever carried out; which had the right — and exercised it — to summon every witness cited by those who argued that the conviction was unsafe; and which dismissed each and every counter-theory that came before it.

It did, however, produce six grounds for appeal, and it is on those that al-Megrahi’s defenders rely in arguing that the case was a miscarriage of justice. They centre, largely, on delays by the Crown in producing key pieces of evidence and on details of how the evidence of Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothes used to wrap the bomb, was handled. The campaigners claim that this evidence would have blown the prosecution case out of the water. That is unlikely. Most independent experts who have examined all, rather than part, of the evidence, say that none of the six grounds for appeal would have been sufficient to overturn the prosecution case.

The sad fact is that we will never know. The gulf that separates the sides in the story is too wide to be bridged. The proof may be out there in the turmoil that is Libya today. But even were it now to emerge, who would believe it? Time, in a case like this, does little to heal — it merely cements deep-seated suspicions. If nature abhors a vacuum, then an untested appeal is a disservice to justice. Without that final process, the truth is buried for ever.

[RB: Yet more misrepresentation by Magnus Linklater of the evidential flaws in the Megrahi conviction. His blinkered stance has been exposed time and again by John Ashton, amongst others.  Here is a link to one of Mr Ashton’s pieces demolishing the Linklater arguments: Lockerbie, and the mangled logic of Magnus Linklater.]

"Conspiracy theorist" bites back

One year ago today, John Ashton published his demolition of Magnus Linklater’s Scottish Review article stigmatising Justice for Megrahi campaigners as obsessive conspiracy theorists, impervious to fact or reason. Mr Ashton’s rebuttal appears in the Scottish Review too, with an expanded version on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website. If you haven’t read these pieces you have a treat in store.

Hubris in defence of the indefensible

[What follows is a response from Dr Jim Swire to Magnus Linklater’s articles Lockerbie conviction is upheld by review and Lockerbie review kills conspiracy theories in The Times on 20 December. Dr Swire intended to post the response on the relevant thread on this blog but I thought it should appear as a separate item:]

There were three particular aspects of comments attributed to the Crown Office and thus to Lord Advocate Mulholland, by Mr Linklater in The Times of 20 December 2014 which were intensely irritating to some Lockerbie relatives.

The first was that the Lord Advocate should be involved in such comments at all on that particular date knowing full well that many relatives here, such as myself, can no longer believe the Megrahi verdict to be justified and that therefore the precious memories to be renewed on the following day would be disturbed by his clear attempt to pander to US relatives, most of whom have not yet realised the extraordinary twisting of justice which seems to have occurred at Zeist, through not having reviewed the proceedings and subsequent fallout for themselves.

I am not aware that it is part of the remit of the Crown Office to suckle the American public, rather than objectively to examine evidence in criminal cases on behalf of the people of Scotland.

Those who do care about the human tragedy of this case should remember that the exhibition of such hubris in defence of the indefensible will, when the truth does eventually emerge, only add to the misery of those relatives who never detected the deception for themselves.

The second was the claim that the facts had been re-examined and that there was not a shred of doubt about the integrity of the verdict. In the face of the previous findings by the SCCRC after three years hard work, the Crown Office appears to have insulted their work as well as astonishing many Scots. Perhaps Lord Advocate Mulholland should hang the famous comments of the late Mandy Rice-Davies at the foot of his bed.

The third was the claim by the Lord Advocate that “our focus remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition.” This is supported according to Mr Linklater by the police who are quoted as saying that the evidence (the forensic item PT35b etc) would have to have been planted within 23 days. Linklater writes:

‘Police are adamant, however, that the fragment was under supervision. They point out that the evidence would have to have been planted within 23 days, requiring knowledge of all the evidence to come — including Megrahi, whose existence was then unknown.’

Perhaps Lord Advocate Mulholland and those representing the police have forgotten the details of the provenance of these items.

They were presented to the court as having been recovered by prosecution forensic scientists from the only police evidence bag found to have had its official label illegally interfered with. The alteration to the label was both criminal and significant. The wording had been changed from the ‘charred cloth’ of the original label to read ‘charred debris’ The other debris of course included PT35b, the mysterious board fragment, mimicking boards belonging to the Libyans, but having a fundamentally different mode of finish simply not available to the firm which had made the Libyan boards prior to December 1988. It could not therefore have been derived from the remains  of a Libyan bomb timer allegedly  found in the innocent fields round Lockerbie.

An explanation from the Crown Office as to what they have done to discover who altered that police label and whether or not that crime was accompanied by any additions to the bag's contents, might, if conducted intensively by a party free of any hubristic attachment to the marvels of Lord Advocate Mulholland's office do more to advance the truth in this dire case than does the police assumption that any interference 'must' have occurred 'within 23 days'. Again the late Mandy applies.

Has the Crown Office had the sanctity of the ‘supervision’ which the police claim protected their evidence bags objectively investigated?

If so, what was found?                 

If not, why not? 

[Other responses to the articles in The Times can be found here.]