Our confidence in our innocence has no bounds

[What follows is the text of a CNN report from this date in 1999:]

Libya has handed over two suspects in the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland to representatives of the United Nations.

The suspects are now en route to the Netherlands, where their trial will take place.

Egypt's Middle East News Agency reported that UN representative Hans Corell was at the handover ceremony in Libya.

"In a historical moment awaited by the world, the two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie case were handed over to be flown to the Netherlands for trial before a Scottish court," MENA said.

With the handover, a decade-long manhunt neared its conclusion Monday, as Scottish legal officers prepared to take custody of the two Libyans.

In the Netherlands, preparations continued Monday for the long-awaited trial.

The Dutch Justice Ministry said it would hold a news conference on Monday in connection with the handover of two Libyans.

"The news conference will be today," a spokeswoman said, but gave no information on the timing or location of the arrival of the suspects in the Netherlands after a handover to the United Nations at Tripoli airport.

Scottish prosecutors and journalists waited in Amsterdam while the two accused -- Abdel Basset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah -- began their journey to Europe.

A temporary detention unit at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands is ready for the suspects, Scottish officials said. The construction of bomb-proof cells below the base's former medical unit, which will serve as a courtroom, will take several months to complete.

Sheriff Graham Cox, the regional judge who will oversee pre-trial proceedings, was expected to arrive in the Netherlands on Monday. Scottish prosecutors Norman McFadyen and Jim Brisbane are already there.

Arab League Secretary-General Esmat Abdel-Meguid had said on Sunday that the handover would take place in "the next 24 or 48 hours."

When Tripoli transferred the men to the charge of the United Nations, that step paved the way for the lifting of punitive UN sanctions against Libya.

[Here is what Megrahi and Fhimah are reported to have said as they were transferred to UN custody in Tripoli:]

Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and Lameen Fhima, have both made a statement on Libyan TV, saying that the two are innocent and going willingly to court. This is Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi's statement:

"We want to reaffirm to everyone that we are two simple Libyan nationals. We do not practise politics. We support families and have children. We love our children and we love our families. This is our normal life.  

"We were employees until we found ourselves involved in this accusation. Our confidence in our innocence has no bounds. We are confident of our lawyers' ability to defend us.

"Through the facts they [the lawyers] have in their possession we are going to prove our innocence to the world. 

"On the occasion of leaving [Libya] we want to tell everyone that, after getting the permission from the investigating judge and the public prosecutor, we are leaving freely and willingly without any pressure in order to appear before the Scottish court in the Netherlands.

"We want everyone to know that we have a great deal of self-confidence.  

"Time will prove that we are telling the truth and you are present here and are witnesses [of what I am saying]. We thank you once again for coming. We are also sorry that you had a difficult journey [by land]; next time you will come directly [by air] to Tripoli, and we are going to welcome you happily. God bless you."

The second suspect, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, gave a V-for-Victory sign as he said: "I have nothing to add to what my friend has said. 

"I hope to see you on our return very soon, God willing. 

"Thank you. I wish for victory, God willing."

First public mention of Lockerbie "star witness" Giaka

[What follows is an article that appeared fifteen years ago today on The Pan Am 103 Crash Website run by Safia Aoude:]

Senior Scottish prosecutors in the Lockerbie bombing case, led by the prosecutor Norman McFadyen, have recently visited the United States to interview a witness who claims to have seen the two Libyan defendants prepare the bomb, according to the British newspaper The Independent. The identity of the mystery witness a Libyan is known to The Independent and has been protected since the man went into hiding in the US in 1992 or earlier. His credibility will be crucial to the full trial, and The Independent did not print his name.

However, this website can reveal that the mystery witness is former Libyan citizen Abdulmajeed Jaeeka. [RB: He is now usually referred to as Abdul Majid Giaka.] He is number one on the witness list of the prosecution, and his address is the US Justice Department in Washington. The witness insisted on dressing as a woman while being questioned recently by Scottish defense attorneys! [RB: It is instructive that this supposedly crucial prosecution witness was precognosced by the defence before he was ever interviewed by the Crown. This nicely illustrates the extent to which the decision to prosecute and the preparation of the prosecution were in the hands of the US Justice Department rather that the Scottish Crown Office.]

Mr Jaeeka has been in a US witness protection programme in undisclosed locations in America since at least 1992. He claims to know the two Libyan defendants, who worked at the Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA) office in Malta, from which the prosecution alleges the bombing was masterminded. Mr Fhimah was working as station manager for LAA in Malta; Mr Megrahi was chief of the security service's airline security division. When the aircraft blew up Jaeeka is said to have been terrified and to have defected. According to The Independent, Mr Jaeeka is believed to have walked into the US Embassy in Rome as a defector.

According to other sources, Mr Jaeeka was simply at that time already showing mental break-up. In 1988 Mr Jaeeka was allegedly undergoing treatment for mental distability following alcoholic abuse. According to the source, Mr Jaeeka did not enter the Libyan embassy in Rome [RB: Surely "US embassy" is meant] as a defector, but he did leave it as such, following a physical attack on the Libyan ambassador in his office. [RB: I do not follow this. In any event it conflicts with the version of Giaka's defection given at the trial.]

Mr McFadyen took a pre-trial statement from the witness, which will be used in the case against the two Libyan defendants. The witness has been in almost total seclusion for at least eight years, fuelling speculation that he may be in a delicate mental state. The Crown Office in Edinburgh, which represents the prosecution, has declined to comment on its contacts with the witness. The defence team will also be allowed to meet the witness.

The indictment against the alleged bombers who were first named three years after the explosion depends heavily on this man's testimony. Under Scottish law, there should be at least one other witness, to corroborate his testimony. About one third of the people on the 1,000-strong witness list come from the US, and many, like the key witness, have their addresses as the US Justice Department in Washington. Most are FBI Agents but there are thought to be others on the witness protection programme. Like the Libyan witness, they are expected to give their testimony to the trial in the Netherlands from behind a screen. It is yet unclear, whether the Scottish judges will allow anonymous witnesses and/or secret evidence in the trial.

The defence will aim to undermine his credibility by showing that he was either misled or is not telling the truth. But the main focus of their case will be that someone else a Middle Eastern group was directly responsible for the destruction of the aircraft.

[RB: The Zeist judges ultimately assessed Giaka as a wholly incredible witness. Read more about him and the Crown’s dealings concerning him here.]

The disgraceful CIA Giaka cables saga recalled

[Fourteen years ago on this date the Scottish Court in the Netherlands was considering the implications of the CIA cables relating to Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka, which had just been made available to the defence, over the Crown’s vigorous objections. Here is how the proceedings were recorded at the time on TheLockerbieTrial.com website:]

Richard Keen QC for Fhimah described the CIA cables, which were made available to the defence today, as "highly relevant" to the defence case.

Keen told the court that the idea that they were not relevant is inconceivable.

[The] Lord Advocate told the court on Tuesday that the redacted passages in the CIA cables were irrelevant to the defence case. He [Richard Keen] said some of the disclosed material goes beyond issue of reliability and credibility to the heart of this case and the defence may now have to consider their position with respect to the trial.

William Taylor QC for Megrahi said that if Giaka is to give evidence on Monday the defence would require more time to review the information contained in the cables. Mr Keen said that a preliminary glance at the cables indicate that at least one additional witness required to be precognosced and this witness is outside Holland and Scotland. He sought confirmation from the Lord Advocate that what has been produced is what the Crown have seen.

The Lord Advocate indicated that there were deletions, which he understood were names but that he would require to speak to Mr Turnbull [Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC] and address the court on Monday in respect of whether the deletions are the same.

Analysis

The Crown appears to be on the defensive again regarding the issue of the CIA cables.

It seems clear that Giaka will not now testify on Monday and if the defence are granted a week long adjournment to examine the issue further then the earliest that Giaka will testify is Tuesday, 5 September.

The case does appear now to be totally disjointed with different chapters of evidence interweaving with the Giaka cables.

Several relatives of those who died on Pan Am 103 are also concerned at what might be contained in the CIA cables.

One made the point to me [Ian Ferguson, website co-editor] that they are concerned that Giaka was a paid informer for the CIA before the bombing. "Some family members," he said "shudder at the possibility, that if Giaka did tell the CIA about the planning of the bombing, then why was nothing done about it."

[My account of the CIA cables saga, as published in The Scotsman on 23 July 2007, reads as follows:]

The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction.

To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been more difficult, and perhaps impossible.

Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables. At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 [Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC and Procurator Fiscal Norman McFadyen] were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.

Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way. Second, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Majid... On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."

One judge, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened: "Does that include, Lord Advocate... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"

The Lord Advocate replied: "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters."

Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.

The quality of the Crown's judgement

An item from this blog two years ago today:

Secrets of a memo: the Crown and the CIA

[This is the headline over an article by John Ashton published in today’s edition of the Scottish Review and also here on the Megrahi: You are my Jury website.  It reads in part:]

Welcoming the release of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's report on the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on 25 March, Alex Salmond managed to add to the roll call of excuses for not ordering a public inquiry into the case. 

The report, he said, 'in many ways is far more comprehensive than any inquiry could ever hope to be'. In fact, it's not: the SCCRC's job was to establish whether Megrahi may have been wrongly convicted, not to examine why the case went so badly wrong, although it undoubtedly shed some light on that matter. 

If a single document illustrates why we still need an inquiry, it is a confidential memo dated 2 June 2000 by the lead procurator fiscal on the case, Norman McFadyen. Published here for the first time, it reports on a meeting that McFadyen and advocate depute Alan Turnbull QC had had the previous day at the US embassy in The Hague. Large sections of it remain redacted. 

The two prosecutors were there to inspect CIA cables relating to one of the Crown's star witnesses, an ex-colleague of Megrahi's called Majid Giaka, who was a member of the Libyan external intelligence service, the ESO. Giaka, it transpired, was also a CIA informant. Crucially, he claimed that, shortly before the bombing, Megrahi had arrived in Malta with a brown Samsonite suitcase and that his co-accused Lamin Fhimah had helped him carry it through airport customs. If true, this was highly significant, because the Lockerbie bomb was also contained within a brown Samsonite and, according to the Crown, began its journey in Malta. 

Twenty-five heavily redacted cables had been disclosed to the defence. The purpose of the meeting, according to the memo, was to view almost entirely unredacted versions in order to determine 'whether there was any material which required to be disclosed to the defence'. Page two states that, at the CIA's insistence, the two men had to sign a confidentiality agreement, the terms of which McFadyen described as follows: 'If we found material which we wished to use in evidence we would require to raise that issue with the CIA and not make any use of the material without their agreement'. In effect, then, the Crown had secretly ceded to the CIA the right to determine what material might be used in court. 

But it's what followed a few paragraphs later that's key. McFadyen reported that, having inspected the cables: 

We were able to satisfy ourselves that there was nothing omitted which could assist the defence in itself. There were some references to matters which in isolation might be thought to assist the defence – eg details of payments or of efforts by Majid to secure sham surgery – but since evidence was being provided as to the total of payments made and of the request for sham surgery, the particular material did not appear to be disclosable. We were satisfied that the material which had been redacted was not relevant to the case or helpful to the defence.

McFadyen was correct in stating that evidence had been disclosed of the total payments to Giaka and a request for sham surgery in order to enable him to resign from the ESO. The payments were detailed in two separate CIA documents (not cables) while his desire for sham surgery request was referred to in one of the disclosed cables.

When, almost three months later, the defence counsel learned of the Hague embassy meeting, they urged the court to ask the Crown to obtain the complete cables from the CIA. In response, the lord advocate, Colin Boyd QC, assured the court that McFadyen's and Turnbull's review had established that 'there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special [defence of incrimination]'. He added: 'there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid [Giaka] on these matters'.

The court nevertheless urged the Crown to seek fuller versions of the cables from the CIA. Three days later the Crown handed the defence copies with far fewer redactions. What, then, was contained in the previously concealed sections, which, in McFadyen's view, was 'not relevant to the case or helpful to the defence'? Here's what.

There were repeated references not only to Giaka's desire for sham surgery, but also his repeated and successful pleas to the CIA to pay for it. One of the cables described him as 'something of a hypochondriac', while another noted his claim to be a distant relative of Libya's former leader King Idris. A further one revealed that he wanted the CIA to set him up in a car rental business in Malta and that he had saved $30,000 towards the venture. His handlers believed that much of the money had been acquired from illegal commissions and perhaps through low-level smuggling. 

Crucially, there were references to other meetings with the CIA, for which no cables had disclosed. Eventually the CIA coughed up 36 more, about which McFadyen and Turnbull were seemingly unaware.

The most telling fact concealed by the redactions was that the CIA had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Giaka. One noted that his information about the ESO's structure and administration 'may be somewhat skewed by his prolonged absence and lack of seniority'. Another revealed that he would be told: 'that he will only continue his $1,000 per month salary payment through the remainder of 1989. If [he] is not able to demonstrate sustained and defined access to information of intelligence value by January 1990, [the CIA] will cease all salary and financial support until such access can be proven again'. 

A later section of the same cable noted: 'it is clear that [Giaka] will never be the penetration of the ESO that we had anticipated… [He] has never been a true staff member of the ESO and as he stated at this meeting, he was coopted with working with the ESO and he now wants nothing to do with them or their activities… We will want to ensure that [he] understands what is expected of him and what he can expect from us in return. [CIA] officer will therefore advise [him] at 4 Sept meeting that he is on "trial" status until 1 January 1990'.

Having analysed the unredacted sections, Richard Keen QC, respresenting Megrahi's co-accused, Lamin Fhimah, told the court it was 'abundantly clear' that much of the newly uncovered information was highly relevant to the defence, adding, 'I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise... Some of the material which is now disclosed goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability, but beyond'. 

In order words, the Crown had been caught out misleading the court. I do not suggest that Boyd did so deliberately, neither that McFadyen and Turnbull deliberately concealed evidence that they knew would be helpful to the defence. Motive is not the issue: what really matters is the quality of the Crown's judgement. 

Armed with the new information and the 36 additional cables, Keen and Megrahi's counsel, Bill Taylor QC, were able to demolish Giaka's credibility and with it the case against Fhimah, who was acquitted. Had the court taken Boyd at his word and the redactions not been lifted, Giaka might have left the witness stand with his credibility intact and Fhimah may well have been convicted along with Megrahi. 

The big remaining question raised by the McFadyen memo is: was it an isolated failure of judgement or the tip of the iceberg? The SCCRC found numerous items of significant evidence which the Crown had failed to disclose to Megrahi's lawyers. Did the prosecutors also satisfy themselves in each instance 'that there was nothing omitted which could assist the defence'? Only a full public inquiry can adequately answer such questions. It is high time that Salmond's government ordered one.

[My own 2007 account in The Scotsman of the shameful CIA cables episode can be read here. It contains the following paragraph:]

Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.

[Had it been defence lawyers who had been caught misleading the court in this fashion, censure and severe professional consequences would inevitably have followed.]

One of the most disgraceful episodes in the Crown Office’s recent history

Two years ago today, I posted on this blog an item headed Former Lord Advocate ... seriously misled the Megrahi Court claims book author.  It bears repeating:

[This is the headline over a report published today on the Newsnet Scotland website.  It reads in part:]

Former Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, [now Court of Session judge, Lord Boyd] has been accused of misleading the Court during the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The claim, contained in the book Megrahi – You are my Jury, relates to the QC’s intervention in a matter involving secret CIA cables that contained details of discussions between the US agency and a Libyan ‘supergrass’ named Majid Giaka.

Giaka was a former work colleague of Mr Megrahi who had contacted the CIA claiming to have evidence linking the Libyan and his co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhima to the Lockerbie bombing.

Giaka was scheduled to give evidence to the Court in August 2000, but was delayed due to legal wrangling over the telex cables.

Demands by the Libyan’s defence team to see the cables in full led to the intervention by then Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, an episode described by book author John Ashton as “one of the most disgraceful episodes in the Crown Office’s recent history”.

Mr Megrahi’s defence team had requested full disclosure of the secret cables which had been heavily redacted for apparent security reasons.

Lawyers acting on behalf of the two Libyans were informed that the twenty five cables were all that existed and that the redacted areas covered general areas not relevant to the Lockerbie incident.

According to the book, Procurator Fiscal Norman McFadyen [now a sheriff in Ayr] claimed that no-one from the Crown had seen the unedited cables and that the redacted material was irrelevant.

However it subsequently emerged that weeks earlier on 1st June 2000, members of the Crown Office had indeed seen the unedited cables, one of whom was Norman McFadyen and the other Alan Turnbull QC [now a Court of Session judge].

On 22 August on learning of this, Mr Megrahi’s legal team raised the issue with the Court, describing it as “a matter of some considerable importance”.

According to Ashton’s book, Bill Taylor QC argued that without access to the full cables, the defendants would be denied a fair trial, and said: “I emphatically do not accept that what lies behind the blanked out sections is of no interest to a cross examiner … Further, I challenge the right of the Crown to determine for the defence what is or is not of relevance to the defence case.”

Mr Taylor urged the Court to ask the Crown to obtain the complete copies of the cables from the CIA.

In a move, described as unusual by author John Ashton, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd then attended the Court in person and admitted that McFadyen and Turnbull had indeed seen the cables but repeated the Crown’s earlier assertions that the redacted areas had no bearing on the cables themselves or the case.

“While they may have been of significance to the Central Intelligence Agency, they had no significance whatsoever to the case” he said.

Mr Boyd explained that according to Crown QC Alan Turnbull: “that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special case.”

Mr Boyd also explained that he had no control over the documents that they resided in the USA under the control of US authorities.

Boyd ended by stating categorically: “there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid [Giaka] on these matters.”

Mr Ashton’s book though now reveals that the reason the Lord Advocate had no control over the documents was that Norman McFadyen had signed a non-disclosure agreement before viewing them.

According to Mr Ashton, the Crown had “secretly, ceded to the CIA the right to determine what information should, or should not, be disclosed in a Scottish Court”.

Also, further revelations contained in Mr Ashton’s book show that far from being of no significance to the case, the redacted sections of the cables were in fact highly significant.

The defence team eventually forced the Crown to hand over less redacted versions of the cables that contained, contrary to Boyd’s claims, crucial information about Giaka – including doubts about the value of his intelligence information.

Further sections detailed meetings with Giaka not included in the original documents.

Acting for the defence, Richard Keen QC, questioned claims by the Crown that the redacted sections were of no consequence

Pointing to their clear significance, he told the Court: “I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise … Some of the material which is now disclosed goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability, but beyond”

According to author John Ashton, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd – now Lord Boyd – had “seriously misled the Court”.

[My own 2007 account in The Scotsman of this shameful and discreditable episode can be read here. What is surprising and deeply regrettable is that the trial judges in their judgement made no mention of this disgraceful Crown conduct.  Had it been a defence advocate who had been detected misleading the court in this way, the matter would certainly not have been overlooked and the consequences for the advocate in question would have been dire.]

Crown Office's Lockerbie shame revisited

[One year ago today, two items were published on this blog.  The first was headed Former Lord Advocate ... seriously misled the Megrahi Court claims book author and dealt with the disgraceful episode of the redacted CIA cables relating to "star" Crown witness Abdul Majid Giaka.  The item merits perusal in full, but here is a taster:]

[Lord Advocate Colin] Boyd explained that according to Crown QC Alan Turnbull: “that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special case.”

Mr Boyd also explained that he had no control over the documents that they resided in the USA under the control of US authorities.

Boyd ended by stating categorically: “there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid [Giaka] on these matters.”

Mr Ashton’s book though now reveals that the reason the Lord Advocate had no control over the documents was that Norman McFadyen had signed a non-disclosure agreement before viewing them.

According to Mr Ashton, the Crown had “secretly, ceded to the CIA the right to determine what information should, or should not, be disclosed in a Scottish Court”.

Also, further revelations contained in Mr Ashton’s book show that far from being of no significance to the case, the redacted sections of the cables were in fact highly significant.

[The second item is headed A clear signal... It is a blistering piece from the pen of Steven Raeburn, editor of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  Again, it merits perusal in full.  Here is just one paragraph:]

The Crown Office persistently and desperately clings to the manufactured fantasy of Megrahi’s guilt, a fabrication specifically designed to implicate Libya as a matter of geopolitical convenience. It has steadfastly opposed every opportunity to undertake its duty and apply justice in this case. The Crown has been conducting an elaborate charade almost from the outset, with the explicit, curiously coordinated support of the Scottish Government, and tacit consent of the Westminster Government, whose own malfeasance from Thatcher downwards is transparent and warrants investigation.

Megrahi prosecutor to become Scottish judge

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

Four high-profile QCs, including the former Lord Advocate Colin Boyd and Tommy Sheridan's former defence counsel, Maggie Scott, are about to become high court judges.

Mr Boyd, now Lord Boyd, who led the prosecution of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, was recently criticised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for failing to disclose crucial information to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi's defence. He rejected the claim. [RB: An account of Colin Boyd QC's conduct at one stage of the Lockerbie trial can be read here.]

Ms Scott, who was sacked by Mr Sheridan during his perjury trial in 2010, and led Megrahi's recent appeal case and the defence in many high-profile cases, including Ice Cream War murderer Thomas "TC" Campbell and more recently Nat Fraser, as well as Luke Mitchell, who was convicted of murdering teenager Jodi Jones in January 2005.

The Herald understands Michael Jones and David Burns have also been recommended for the appointments.

A source close to the process said: "Colin Boyd and Maggie Scott are two of the people the Judicial Appointments Board has recommended to the First Minister. It would be highly unusual for ministers to reject such a recommendation. Their appointments are expected to be confirmed shortly."

Lord Boyd resigned as Lord Advocate in 2006. His decision was seen as unusual and triggered speculation he was concerned about the inquiry into the Shirley McKie case, in which a police officer was wrongly accused of leaving a fingerprint at a murder scene and lying about it.

Another potential reason raised was the imminent decision on whether the Lockerbie case would be referred back for a fresh appeal.

Lord Boyd denied he was leaving because of the McKie fingerprint investigation or any other case and said it was simply "time to move on".

Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the Lockerbie bombing, said: "I understand the limited personnel and resources of the Scottish criminal justice system but I am surprised that Colin Boyd would have been put forward as a potential judge.

"In support of his colleagues on the prosecution team, it seemed to me that Boyd made a statement to the court [at Zeist] which was later shown by the revelations in the CIA cables to be untrue. It was over a matter of extreme importance because it concerned the credibility of the prosecution's star witness." (…)

Maggie Scott has described herself as "relatively rebellious". Following her sacking by Sheridan in 2010, the former MSP represented himself and was convicted of perjury in his defamation action against the News of the World in 2006.

Mr Jones, QC, acted for the News of the World in the Sheridan case and the owners of the Rosepark care home in South Lanarkshire after 14 residents died in a fire. Mr Burns recently acted for Craig Roy, who was convicted of murdering Jack Frew. [RB: David Burns QC was second senior counsel for Abdelbaset Megrahi at the Zeist trial and at the first appeal.]

Maggie Scott, QC, said last night that she could not comment. Lord Boyd could not be contacted.

[Two other members of the prosecution team, Alastair Campbell QC and Alan Turnbull QC have already become High Court judges. The principal procurator fiscal at the trial, Norman McFadyen, has become a sheriff.  A commentary by Lucy Adams in the same newspaper headlined Judges are no strangers to controversy focuses particularly on Colin Boyd’s controversial role in the Lockerbie trial.]