The four elephants in the room which suggest the Lord Advocate is wrong

[This is the headline over an article by John Ashton published in today’s edition of the Sunday Herald. It reads as follows:]

The Crown Office has used the 26th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing to proclaim the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset al Megrahi, the only man so far convicted of the bombing.

The department briefed yesterday that a review of the case had "confirmed beyond doubt" the Libyan's guilt, while today its head, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC, has personally reaffirmed that guilt.

Mulholland has been unusually vigorous in denouncing Megrahi's supporters, who include relatives of the Lockerbie dead, branding them "conspiracy theorists" two years ago. It is hard to imagine his opposite number in England and Wales, the director of public prosecutions, taking to the media to defend a conviction and take on critics. But while this strident tone has raised eyebrows, Mulholland's statements are more notable for ignoring four large elephants in the middle of his legal chambers.

The first is the ongoing review of the case by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), the statutory body that has the power to refer convictions to the appeal court. As Mulholland well knows, a previous review by the commission referred the case on no fewer than six grounds. The terminally ill Megrahi abandoned the resulting appeal to improve his chances of being granted compassionate release, but was confident that his name would one day be cleared. Remarkably, one of the six grounds was that the three Scottish law lords who convicted him had made a fundamental error of judgment when they found that the clothes incriminating Megrahi had been bought on December 7. In doing so, the commission, in the eyes of some, came as close as it legally could to saying that the guilty verdict was itself wrong.

More seriously for the Crown Office, four of the other grounds concerned its failure to disclose important evidence to Megrahi's defence team. This included evidence that the Crown's star witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, had expressed an interest in receiving a substantial reward and was under the strong influence of his brother Paul, who regularly nagged the police about being rewarded. The SCCRC discovered Gauci was later secretly paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice, and his brother Paul $1m.

When, in 2012, this ­newspaper published a leaked copy of the SCCRC's 800-page review, the Crown Office went into panic mode, anonymously briefing a Scottish tabloid that Megrahi's case had "more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese" then issuing a press statement that significantly downplayed the commission's findings.

The second elephant is the two-year-old police investigation, led by Police Scotland's Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, into criminal allegations made against some of those originally involved in the inquiry by the committee of the Justice for Megrahi group.

When the allegations were first made to the then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, the Crown Office immediately denounced them as groundless, despite not having seen the detailed dossier of evidence assembled by the committee. Many were shocked by the intervention, believing it might compromise the police inquiry and that it raised serious questions about Mulholland's independence as the chief public prosecutor. Unfortunately for the Crown Office, the police clearly do not share its contempt for the allegations. If the investigation concludes there was no criminal misconduct, the Crown Office still has to explain why it failed to disclose so much important evidence. In the view of its critics, notably Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing, the matter must be addressed in a public inquiry - something successive Scottish governments have been reluctant to grant.

The third elephant is forensic evidence concerning a small fragment of electronic circuit board, recovered from an item of clothing that was supposedly in the same suitcase as the bomb. According to the prosecution, it matched boards in timers supplied to Libya by a Swiss firm called Mebo, which shared offices with a Libyan company part-owned by Megrahi.

Evidence uncovered prior to Megrahi's abandoned appeal demonstrated that the fragment could not have originated from one of the Libyan timer boards. The discovery has fuelled claims the fragment was a plant, which has in turn encouraged the Crown Office to call its opponents conspiracy theorists. However, as Mulholland must be aware, the breaking of the link between the fragment and the Libyan timers leaves the prosecution case in shreds, regardless of whether it was planted.

The fourth elephant is the lack of evidence from Libya to implicate either Megrahi or the Gaddafi regime in the bombing. During the country's 2011 revolution, senior officials, keen to curry favour with the West, lined up to accuse the regime of sponsoring the attack.

The best known of them, the head of the National Transitional Council and former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, claimed to have proof that Gaddafi ordered the bombing.

All this must have been music to the Crown Office's ears, but, when pushed to reveal his proof of the regime's guilt, the best Jalil could offer was that it had funded ­Megrahi's legal case.

Sadly, Libya has become too dangerous for the Scottish police to conduct investigations there. Even if it were not, they would likely find the cupboard was bare. In the four years since the revolution, ­nothing has emerged publicly from the ruins of the old regime to affirm Megrahi's guilt, let alone Libya's.

No doubt Mulholland's public declarations will continue to ignore the four elephants in his legal chambers, but he must knows that their ever-fiercer stamping may one day bring Megrahi's conviction crashing around his ears.

John Ashton is the author of the authorised ­biography of Abdelbaset al Megrahi, Megrahi: You are my Jury, (Birlinn, 2012) and Scotland's Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters (Birlinn, 2014). From 2006-09, he worked as a researcher with Megrahi's legal team. 

[Here are links to some other reports in the media:

Megrahi was innocent of Lockerbie bombing, insists victim's father
Lockerbie victim's father criticises prosecutor's comments
Lockerbie bombing: Prosecutor's comments about al-Megrahi 'unfortunate'
Remember Lockerbie as crimes of intelligence services are exposed
Lockerbie: Lord Advocate to track down accomplices

And here is a moving reminiscence from someone engaged in the rescue operations on 21 December 1988:
Lockerbie -- 26 years on.]

Pro-Megrahi backers flayed by new Lord Advocate

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater (whose views on Lockerbie are well-known) in today’s edition of The Times.  It reads as follows:]

Scotland’s Lord Advocate has launched a powerful and stinging attack against “conspiracy theorists” who claim that the Lockerbie bomber was wrongly convicted.

In the most detailed rebuttal yet made to the case mounted by campaigners who argue that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was innocent and that Libya was not involved in the terrorist bomb plot that brought Pan Am 103 down over Lockerbie 24 years ago today, Frank Mulholland, QC, calls the allegations “without foundation”.

He goes on to accuse those making them of uttering “defamatory” comments against High Court judges who are unable to respond. [RB: Justice for Megrahi has made no defamatory comments against any High Court judge.  It is not defamatory of the Zeist judges to say that they were wrong in finding Megrahi guilty. Lawyers all the time say that judges got things wrong (and almost every time an appeal is allowed, other judges say so too). And in the Lockerbie case even the SCCRC concluded that, on an absolutely crucial point, no reasonable court could have reached the conclusion that the Zeist judges reached.  JFM in its recent allegations of criminality was very careful not to say that then Lord Advocate (and now High Court judge) Colin Boyd had attempted to pervert the course of justice.]

Mr Mulholland, who has relaunched an investigation into what he calls an act of “state-sponsored terrorism” by the former Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, says that he has been through all the evidence and is convinced that al-Megrahi’s conviction was “safe”.

An outside counsel invited by the Lord Advocate to conduct an independent review of the evidence has also concluded that the conviction was sound. [RB: It would be interesting to know the identity of this outside counsel.  Here, by contrast, is a short list of eminent lawyers who have concluded that the conviction was not sound: Benedict Birnberg, Gareth Peirce, Michael Mansfield QC, David Wolchover, Len Murray, Ian Hamilton QC, Jock Thomson QC, John Scott QC.  There are many more.]

“I am hugely frustrated that there is an unfounded attack on the integrity of the judges involved in the process,” Mr Mulholland said. “I saw a report on the BBC that [claimed] a high court judge — Colin Boyd, Lord Advocate at the time — perverted the course of justice. And it frustrates me that they’re not in a position to answer these allegations, these can be made without being challenged and without any real foundation.” [RB: At least Mr Mulholland does not here make the error of accusing JFM of responsibility for the BBC’s egregious misinterpretation of the English language.]

He compared the allegations to the uncontrolled media attempts to blacken the name of Lord MacAlpine, the former Conservative Party treasurer, over child abuse.

“I deplore any of that,” he said. “The appropriate place for voicing any concerns about the evidence is before a court of law, not in the court of public opinion, or the media. I haven’t spoken to the people who are affected by this, but I would imagine that they are frustrated that their reputations can be so easily attacked, and they can’t do anything about it.”

Mr Mulholland, who has been to Libya to make contact with the new regime, is hopeful that permission will be given soon to send Scottish police officials to Tripoli to gather evidence that would not only buttress the case against al-Megrahi, but reopen the wider plot to down the US airliner.

He believes that a criminal investigation rather than a public inquiry is the best way to resolve the 1988 Lockerbie case.

“I take the view that the calls for a public inquiry are essentially to set up a vehicle which would be a surrogate criminal court, he said. “I believe that the guilt or innocence of al-Megrahi is entirely a matter for the courts.”

He issued a challenge to the al-Megrahi apologists: “If you don’t like the set-up of the justice system, then what you do is you change it, through the democratic vehicle of parliament. You change the law.”

Mr Mulholland says he has studied all the claims advanced in the book Megrahi: You are my Jury by the writer John Ashton, and finds no evidence to support them. He urged those arguing that al-Megrahi was innocent to put any additional evidence to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

“Mr Megrahi stood trial before a Scottish court and was convicted by three judges unanimously, then an appeal, where five judges unanimously upheld the conviction, hearing additional evidence about the Heathrow break-in [the claim that the bomb went aboard there],” he said. “Having heard all the arguments presented to them, they upheld the conviction. Part of our justice system is the [commission] for which I have the highest regard. Anyone who is concerned about a conviction can make an application to the commission.”

He added: “The commission had access to all the Crown’s papers, and they took the view that in relation to a very limited number of grounds, the case should be referred back to the appeal court, which they did. The defence were entitled to expand the appeal beyond the grounds of referral, and they included a number of grounds which had been rejected by the commission, and the court was in the process of hearing that appeal when al-Megrahi abandoned his appeal.

“Now, whatever you think, and everyone is entitled to their view as to whether he is guilty or not, the courts took the view that following a trial and an appeal and a subsequent appeal, which was abandoned, al-Megrahi’s conviction still stands and that is the application of the rule of law.”

Mr Mulholland believes the evidence shows that the previous Libyan regime under Colonel Gaddafi was involved in “an act of state-sponsored terrorism”.

He is working with the FBI, the US Attorney-General and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to pursue investigations. “We are applying the rule of law,” he said. “If you follow the evidence, it leads to Libya.”

Campaigners’ Lockerbie plea to government over Lord Advocate's comments

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The National. It reads in part:]

A campaign group whose members believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was innocent of the Lockerbie bombing has urged “political intervention” from the Scottish Government.

The call from Justice for Megrahi (JfM) comes after the outgoing Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland speculated about a possible new trial for the bombing – which JfM said showed he had “gone rogue”.

Investigators from Scotland and the US said last year that they had identified two Libyans as suspects over the 1988 atrocity.

Mulholland had previously indicated he would stand down after the Holyrood elections and, in an interview to mark the occasion he told STV there was a “realistic possibility” of a second trial over bombing, which killed 270 people.

JfM told The National: “The time has come for political intervention by the Scottish Government as the Lord Advocate appears to have gone rogue in relation to his speculation about Lockerbie. It is particularly difficult to understand his statements given that we are awaiting the result of a three-year Police Scotland investigation into criminal allegations related to Lockerbie which, if proved, will cast severe doubt not only on Mr Megrahi’s original conviction but by implication on the guilt of the other ‘suspects’ Mr Mulholland claims to be pursuing.

“It was only in March this year that leading legal commentators criticised Mr Mulholland in relation to this report and yet he continues to publicly undermine the police inquiry.

“This makes it quite clear that he has made his mind up and will not be diverted from making his views public at every opportunity.

“Given this unprecedented stance it is a constitutional disgrace that the Crown Office will have the final say in relation to any prosecutions resulting from the police inquiry.

“The time is long overdue for the Scottish Government to intervene on behalf of the Scottish people.”

In his interview, Mulholland said he had been to the Libyan capital Tripoli twice, and had established “good relations” with the country’s attorney general.

“We’re currently at a stage where there are a number of outstanding international letters of request, one of which is seeking the permission of the Libyan authorities to interview two named individuals as suspects,” he said. “I hope that the Libyans will grant permission for that to be done. I obviously can’t say too much publicly but a lot of work is going on behind the scenes to make that happen.”

Mulholland and the US Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced in October that there was “a proper basis in law” to treat the two Libyans as suspects. Authorities did not name the men, but they are known to be Colonel Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi, and Abouajela Masud.

Both are being held in Libyan jails, where Senussi is appealing against a death sentence and Masud is serving 10 years for bomb making.

Mulholland to be new Lord Advocate

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]

Solicitor General Frank Mulholland will today be named Lord Advocate, succeeding Elish Angiolini who last year announced plans to step down.

This will create a vacancy for the second law officer post and The Herald understands that it has been decided that a woman will fill the deputy role.

One of the names mooted for the Solicitor General post had been experienced QC Ronnie Clancy, a son of a police officer who has been at the bar since 1990 and was senior Crown counsel in the Lockerbie appeal.

However, The Herald has been told that with the promotion of Mr Mulholland, his No 2 will be a woman. A source at the Faculty of Advocates made the point that the number of women there has expanded from 10 to 100 in just 20 years, so with other senior female fiscals there will be no shortage of choice. (...)

Mr Mulholland was appointed by Alex Salmond as Solicitor General four years ago and it is understood he will now be promoted to the top post.

Mr Salmond will name his Cabinet team today after being sworn in at the Court of Session. He will swear three oaths – as First Minister, as Keeper of the Seal, and of allegiance to the Queen – before receiving the Royal warrant confirming his appointment as First Minister.

[This appointment is not unexpected, but it is to be regretted. Virtually the whole of Frank Mulholland's career has been spent as a Crown Office civil servant. This is not, in my view, the right background for the incumbent of the office of Lord Advocate, one of whose functions has traditionally been to bring an outsider's perspective to the operations and policy-making of the department. Sir Humphrey Appleby was an outstanding civil servant of a particular kind, but his role was an entirely different one from that of Jim Hacker and no-one would have regarded it as appropriate that he should be translated from Permanent Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs to Minister (or, indeed, from Secretary of the Cabinet to Prime Minister).

The appointment by the previous Labour administration in Scotland of Elish Angiolini as Solicitor General and then as Lord Advocate was a mistake, both constitutionally and practically, as was her retention as Lord Advocate by the SNP minority government (though the political reasons for her re-appointment were understandable). It is sad that the new majority SNP Government has not taken the opportunity to return to the wholly desirable convention of appointing an advocate or solicitor from private practice to fill the office of Lord Advocate. The much-needed casting of a beady eye over the operations of the Crown Office is not to be expected from this appointee. This is deeply regrettable since such scrutiny is long overdue.

The Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm has picked up this post. Its report can be read here.]

The Scottish injustice

[This is the headline over an article by Neil Berry published today in the Kuwait newspaper the Khaleej Times:]

Megrahi apparently suffered a monstrous miscarriage of justice

Scotland’s former first minister, Alex Salmond, has often voiced contempt for the manner in which former British prime minister, Tony Blair, led Britain into war in Iraq on the basis of manipulated intelligence and secretive deliberations. Salmond’s boast is that, in contrast to the Machiavellian political establishment in London, his nation’s political culture stands for openness and democratic accountability.

But would Scottish public life have become a model of transparency if Scotland had voted to quit the United Kingdom in this year’s referendum on independence? Does candour really come more readily to Scotland’s devolved government than it does to the UK government in London? Signs are not wanting that Scottish power is capable of being every bit as opaque and arbitrary as power in the British capital.

This December Scotland’s chief law officer, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, has brushed aside the multiple reasons for suspecting that the Scottish judiciary wrongfully convicted the late Libyan, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, and killing 270 passengers, many of them Americans. There is, he bullishly declared, no evidence to cast doubt on Megrahi’s conviction.

In truth, there is an abundance of such evidence. The Scottish writers John Ashton and Morag Kerr have between them written three books that furnish solid grounds for believing that Megrahi suffered a monstrous miscarriage of justice when in 2001 he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands.

Ashton has demolished the credibility of the key prosecution witness, the Malta shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, who supposedly sold clothes to Megrahi that were wrapped round the bomb alleged to have been loaded onto a feeder flight from Malta to London via Frankfurt. Considered by one of the very trial judges to be in doubtful possession of his faculties, Gauci gave details of Megrahi’s age and appearance that were wildly at variance with the facts. Moreover, it was to transpire that Gauci and his brother Paul were paid $3 million by the US Department of Justice – an item of vital information damagingly withheld from Megrahi’s defence.

On top of all this, it has emerged that the bomb timer found at Lockerbie did not belong the batch of such devices sold to Libya by a Swiss firm and held by the prosecution to confirm Libyan culpability. There are also grounds for scepticism about whether the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb originated in Malta.

In a compelling review of the evidence, Morag Kerr concluded that it was planted at London Heathrow where, not long before Pan Am 103 took off, there was a breach of airport security that has never yet been explained.

What above all makes Frank Mulholland’s re-affirmation of Megrahi’s guilt ring hollow is that in 2007, five years before the Libyan’s death, Scotland’s Criminal Cases Review Commission accepted that the issue deserved to be re-visited. Megrahi’s sentence was ready to be appealed when in 2009 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and allowed, on compassionate grounds, to go home to his family in Libya. Almost certainly the verdict would have been that the case against him came nowhere near to satisfying the fundamental requirement of Western justice that guilt be established ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.

It is far from being of mere incidental interest that Frank Mulholland formally re-affirmed Scottish belief in Megrahi’s guilt while attending a 26th Lockerbie anniversary memorial service in Washington. The suspicion is hard to escape that the enduring official resistance to re-opening the Megrahi case is bound up with fear in Scottish high places of re-kindling the venomous US outrage that was ignited in 2009 when Scotland freed a ‘terrorist’ who looms large in American demonology.

Mulholland assured his American audience that Scottish justice has ‘no sell-by date’ and that despite current turbulence in Libya the Scottish authorities would continue to pursue Megrahi’s accomplices. Yet what could be more grotesque than for a senior law officer to speak of justice in the language of the supermarket! Mulholland’s choice of expression is all the more crass considering that in this instance, far from having no sell-by date, Scottish justice appears to have been sold with indecent haste.

US and UK living "a monumental lie for 26 years"

[The following are excerpts from a report published yesterday evening on the BBC News website:]

Scotland's top law officer has met the director of the FBI to discuss progress in the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing.

Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC described Friday's talks with James Comey as "very useful".

Mr Mulholland also revealed he recently met the Libyan ambassador to the UK. (...)

On Saturday, Mr Mulholland said he continued to believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty of carrying out the bombing, and pledged to continue tracking down his accomplices. (...)

But his involvement in the bombing of the flight from London to New York has been called into question by campaigners who believe evidence in the case was manipulated to implicate Libya and divert attention away from Iran and Syria. (...)

The Lord Advocate said he was also keeping in close contact with the UK ambassador to Libya, who is currently based in Tunis, to get regular updates on what is happening.

The ambassador has been "able to get information for us which has been helpful in shaping our approach going forward." Mr Mulholland said.

Turning his attention to work with officials in the US, the Lord Advocate added: "I met with Director Comey of the FBI on Friday to discuss progress in the inquiry. It was a very useful meeting and the avenues of enquiry currently under investigation were discussed in detail.

"Despite the difficulties we remain hopeful that progress will be made. We reiterated our commitment to work closely together to make progress in Libya and elsewhere; wherever there is an opportunity we will be there. We will follow the evidence relentlessly."

Details of the ongoing investigation have not and will not be made public, the Lord Advocate said.

But he added: "What I can say however is that in addition to the lines of enquiry in Libya there are other lines currently being pursued outwith Libya.

"We remain cautiously optimistic that these lines of enquiry will bear fruit." (...)

An investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) led to a finding in 2007 of six grounds where it believed a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, paving the way for a second appeal.

But Megrahi dropped that appeal in 2009 before being released from prison by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds in light of his diagnosis with terminal prostate cancer. (...)

But earlier this year, Megrahi's relatives embarked on a legal bid to clear his name amid claims that his case is the "worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history".

Six immediate members of his family joined forces with 24 British relatives of those who died in the atrocity to seek, ultimately, a third appeal against his conviction in the Scottish courts.

They united to submit an application to the SCCRC for a review of the conviction, a move which could see the case referred back to the High Court. (...)

Solicitor Aamer Anwar, who is co-ordinating efforts to quash Mr Megrahi's conviction, said: "The Lord Advocate's speech in Washington makes for great sound bites with an American audience but lacks analysis of the essential facts."

He accused the Crown Office of repeating "an age old mantra of the Crown of never doubting the safety of the conviction", despite "many miscarriages of justice over the years".

Mr Anwar added: "The case of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi is described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history for a reason.

"A reversal of the verdict would mean that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for 26 years, by imprisoning a man they knew to be innocent."

In a statement, the Megrahi family said it would "keep fighting for justice to find out who was responsible for 271 victims of the Lockerbie disaster."

Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the bombing, has also expressed his disappointment at Mr Mulholland's latest comments.

Dr Swire said: "For me this case is about two families, mine and Abdelbaset's, but behind them now are seen to lie the needs of 25 other families in applying for a further appeal 26 years after the event itself.

"We need the truth and Scotland's management of this case produced a verdict perfectly tailored for use by those who would seek to ensure that the full truth remains hidden."

Media reports following launch of John Ashton's Scotland's Shame

[The following are excerpts from media reports following upon yesterday’s launch of John Ashton’s Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters:]

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie tragedy, has written about the "painful task" of clearing out her room after her death and his struggle to avoid becoming bitter.

In the foreword to a new book by John Ashton, biographer of the Libyan convicted of the bombing, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, Dr Swire describes Flora as "our deeply loved elder daughter" slaughtered "a day short of her 24th birthday". She was on flight PanAm103 because she wished to visit her boyfriend in Boston for Christmas. "If we had only said no..." he writes. "We would still have Flora with us."

Yesterday, at the launch of the book, Scotland's Shame, Dr Swire and Mr Ashton released an open letter to Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate, asking why he dismissed new evidence revealed in the [2012] biography of Megrahi, and why the witnesses relating to this evidence have not been questioned. Dr Swire said a public inquiry is the only way to answer the questions and concerns of the relatives of the 270 victims and the only way to hold the Crown Office to account.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly refused and instead called for Westminster to hold an inquiry or for the case to be tested with another appeal in the courts.

Dr Swire and Mr Ashton said an appeal, even if feasible, would not answer questions about the Crown Office's failure to disclose key documents.

The Crown Office said the case is still live and it therefore cannot comment. 

(From The Herald)

Twenty five years after his daughter was killed by the Lockerbie bomb, Jim Swire is to step back from active involvement in the campaign to uncover the full facts about the atrocity.

Dr Swire, 76, a retired GP, is the most prominent spokesman for British families affected by the attack on Pan Am Flight 103. Among the 270 dead was Flora, 23, his daughter, a medical student. He hoped he might find closure when Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi came to trial in 2001.

Instead he was horrified by what he saw as the flimsy case against the Libyan, who was found guilty. Dr Swire redoubled his efforts to get to the bottom of the crime.

Yesterday, at the launch of a book entitled Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, he said he was ready to “disappear from the battlements”.

“I think my campaign has been my means of survival, but I have got to a point where I really have to cut back on it, otherwise it will do harm,” said Dr Swire. “One of the parameters of doing it is what Flora would have thought. I think Flora would be saying, ‘You’ve done your very best dad. It’s time to leave it to others, to younger men.’

“I suspect I will be called in to make comments to the media from time to time. That’s OK. What I don’t think is OK is investing as much time as I have been doing. I’m going to try to find ways of trying to avoid spending as much time on it.” Dr Swire has already bought a computer programme which converts words to text, which he say will cut by two thirds the time he has to devote to writing. By the anniversary, December 21, he would be ready to move on. (...)

There was little immediate sign that he was ready to wind down. In the foreword to the book, Dr Swire says the country’s justice system had survived the act of Union with England intact, only to be blighted by “the impenetrable arrogance of her prosecuting authorities”, the Crown Office.

Together with John Ashton, the book’s author, he used a press conference to launch an outspoken attack on Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate. Dr Swire and Mr Ashton have also written an open letter to the Crown Office, questioning aspects of the al-Megrahi trial, including the alleged withholding of evidence and the payment of a key witness, Tony Gauci.

At a meeting London in 2011, Dr Swire said he had asked Mr Mulholland repeatedly why evidence of a break-in at Heathrow airport in 1988, the night before the bombing, had not been presented at the trial.

“We went through this routine four times,” recalled Dr Swire. “At the end of, Mr Mulholland said. ‘You know, I wondered why it wasn’t available, but I haven’t been able to find out’. An incredible statement.”

Mr Ashton added: “Frank Mulholland, with aspects of his behaviour ... has really raised questions about whether he is fit to hold office.”

The Crown Office said that because the bombing was still a live case it could not comment on it. A spokesman said the remarks attributed by Dr Swire to the Lord Advocate at the meeting in London were “simply untrue”.  

(From The Times)

A report in The Scotsman can be read here.

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.]

"It’s a long process but I’m not giving up" says Lord Advocate

[What follows is the Lockerbie portion of an article reporting on an exclusive interview given by Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland QC, to the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser:]

A steely determination to seek the truth and deliver justice has catapulted Coatbridge-born Frank Mulholland to the powerful top law post in Scotland of Lord Advocate.

And in an exclusive interview with the Advertiser this week, the nation’s top prosecutor reveals his views on the Lockerbie bombing (...)

The 53-year-old former St Bernard’s Primary and St Columba’s High School pupil told how he will not give up on the Lockerbie bombing investigation (...)

Mr Mulholland travelled to Libya in April with the director of the FBI Robert Mueller to discuss opportunities for stepping up the probe into the 1988 bombing, which killed 270 people.

He said: “Going to Libya was the right thing to do.

“The Interim Prime Minister made very helpful statements regarding co-operation.

“I was looked after by a lot of good people and felt safe under their security.

“I would go back if there was good reason to do so and if my visit was not putting others at risk.

“It’s a long process but I’m not giving up. A lot of people lost their lives.”

[Be assured, Mr Mulholland, Justice for Megrahi is not giving up either, notwithstanding Crown Office bluster.]

Two years of Frank Mulholland as Lord Advocate

[Today marks the second anniversary of the appointment of Frank Mulholland QC as Lord Advocate.  Here is what I wrote on this blog at the time:]

This appointment is not unexpected, but it is to be regretted. Virtually the whole of Frank Mulholland's career has been spent as a Crown Office civil servant. This is not, in my view, the right background for the incumbent of the office of Lord Advocate, one of whose functions has traditionally been to bring an outsider's perspective to the operations and policy-making of the department. Sir Humphrey Appleby was an outstanding civil servant of a particular kind, but his role was an entirely different one from that of Jim Hacker and no-one would have regarded it as appropriate that he should be translated from Permanent Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs to Minister (or, indeed, from Secretary of the Cabinet to Prime Minister). 

The appointment by the previous Labour administration in Scotland of Elish Angiolini as Solicitor General and then as Lord Advocate was a mistake, both constitutionally and practically, as was her retention as Lord Advocate by the SNP minority government (though the political reasons for her re-appointment were understandable). It is sad that the new majority SNP Government has not taken the opportunity to return to the wholly desirable convention of appointing an advocate or solicitor from private practice to fill the office of Lord Advocate. The much-needed casting of a beady eye over the operations of the Crown Office is not to be expected from this appointee. This is deeply regrettable since such scrutiny is long overdue.

[The Mulholland tenure of office has been just as undistinguished as anticipated. The melancholy history of his Lockerbie involvement can be followed here.]