Politicians linked to Lockerbie case return to court

[This is the headline over a report dated 15 October on the Zapaday website.  It reads as follows:]

The court case resumes for two former government officials working for the late Moammer Gaddafi's regime. They are accused of squandering public money by granting a compensation deal of $2.7 billion to the families of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing victims.

The accused, Mohammed Abu El-Gassem Yusuf al-Zwai and Abdulati Ibrahim Muhammad al-Obeidi, allegedly brokered this compensation deal in exchange for the lifting of UN sanctions and US trade sanctions on Libya. In addition, they requested that Libya be removed from a list of states known for sponsoring terrorism.

These two former senior officials are charged with treason for engaging in negotiations with the lawyers of the victims' families, with the full knowledge that lawyers are not authorised by the US administration to negotiate the conditions of trade sanctions and terrorism suspects.

The presiding judge has argued that the compensation deal was a waste of public money since there was no guarantee that the conditions would be met, nor that the charges for the bombing would be dropped. Observers have registered surprise at the wording of the charges. Given that Libya's central government is still weak after the ousting of Gaddafi, it has been argued that legal proceedings at the moment do not meet international standards.

However, it is evident that Libya's new rulers are keen to show citizens that those who helped Gaddafi cling to power shall be held accountable. Both Saif Al-Islam, Gaddafi's son and Abdullah Al- Senussi, Libya's former chief spy are awaiting trial.

[An earlier post on this blog relating to the trial of Messrs Zwai and Obeidi can be read here.]

I have a burning desire to clear my name

[What follows is excerpted from an article headlined The Megrahi dossier: why he was set free that was published in The Herald on this date in 2009:]

The Greenock visit

One question mark that remains relates to Mr MacAskill's decision to visit Megrahi in Greenock Prison. An eight-page document by a senior civil servant in the justice department advises the minister: "Mr Megrahi, as a subject of the transfer request, should be given opportunity to make his own representation on the proposal."

That advice concludes with the recommendation: "The groups and individuals identified should be offered short meetings with you to present their representations."

That Mr MacAskill inferred from this that he should go to meet the prisoner at Greenock is still being challenged by opponents, but the advice appears sufficiently robust to entitle him to say he was acting on advice.

There are then two documents relating to the meeting at HMP Greenock on August 6 - the official minute from the government side and Mr Megrahi's own handwritten note of his presentation to the meeting. (...)

The minute records, in dry official language, the prisoner's insistence that he had been unjustly convicted and his sympathy for the "terrible loss" of the victims' families. The minute adds, as Megrahi told The Herald in Tripoli last week: "He feels there is little prospect that his appeal will be concluded before his death, and that his dreams of returning home cleared no longer exist."

While the minute records Mr MacAskill advising Megrahi that prison transfer could only take place if there were no court proceedings ongoing, there is no specific mention that compassionate release would not require this. However, aides pointed out last night that the meeting was specifically about prisoner transfer, not compassionate release.

The handwritten note from Megrahi states: "I'm a very ill person. The disease that I have is incurable. All the personnel are agreed that I have little chance of living into next year. The last report which I received some weeks ago from consultant reaches the view that I have a short time left. I have a burning desire to clear my name. I think now that I will not witness that ultimate conclusion."

And in words that echoed Mr MacAskill's later reference to a "higher authority", he stated: "As I turn now to face my God, to stand before him, I have nothing to fear." (...)

Holyrood-Westminster relations

The big question for UK ministers arising from documents released yesterday is simply this: Did UK ministers tell the Libyans that Gordon Brown did not want Megrahi to die in a Scottish jail?

According to the minute of a meeting in Glasgow with Libyans on March 12 this year, Abdulati Alobidi [RB: the normal English transliteration of this name is al-Obeidi], minister for Europe, spoke of a visit to Tripoli the previous month by Foreign Minister Bill Rammell at which it was pointed out that if Megrahi died in custody it would have "catastrophic effects" on Libyan-UK relations.

Mr Alobidi was minuted as saying: "Mr Rammell had stated that neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign Secretary would want Mr Megrahi to pass away in prison but the decision on transfer lies in the hands of the Scottish Ministers."

That remains a clearer statement of the Prime Minister's opinion than Mr Brown has since been prepared to offer in public.

[RB: The accuracy of Mr al-Obeidi's statement was confirmed by David Miliband in a radio interview. According to a report on The Times website:

"The Foreign Secretary admitted that it was true that Bill Rammell, a Foreign Office minister, had told his Libyan counterpart back in February that the Prime Minister did not want Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi to pass away in Greenock prison."]

Megrahi: how MacAskill linked my release to dropping my appeal

[This is the headline over an extract (with commentary) from John Ashton’s book Megrahi: You are my Jury being published today on the heraldscotland.com website. The extract reads in part:]

Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill personally urged the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing to drop his appeal as a way of helping his compassionate release from prison, a new book claims today.

The authorised biography of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi reveals for the first time that the minister responsible for deciding whether he would return to Libya actively encouraged Megrahi to give up his case in the appeal court, telling a senior Libyan minister in a private meeting in Edinburgh that "it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal".

By doing so, the Scottish legal system was spared further scrutiny over a case which many observers believe was based on a fundamental miscarriage of justice. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had already highlighted six grounds for suggesting Megrahi's conviction for the murder of 270 people at Lockerbie was unsafe.

The book, released this morning at a press conference in Edinburgh, contains the most explicit account of the extraordinary events leading up to Megrahi's controversial release on compassionate grounds in August 2009, which divided public opinion across the world and brought a storm of criticism, particularly from US officials and relatives.

Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, was said to have only three months to live, but is still alive more than two years later.

In the book he writes: "On 10 August (2009), MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Minister [Abdel Ati] Al-Obeidi. By this time I was desperate.

"After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obeidi said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He [MacAskill] said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice."

The Herald has previously reported diplomatic meetings at which it was revealed that Megrahi would have to drop his appeal to allow the controversial Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) brokered by Westminster after Tony Blair's infamous deal in the desert to ensure UK-Libyan trade links were restored.

Ultimately, Mr MacAskill turned down the application under the PTA signed by the UK Government and Libya, but granted compassionate release instead, for which the status of Megrahi's appeal should have been irrelevant.

Neither Mr MacAskill nor the Scottish Government has been contacted in advance of the book's publication, but the Justice Secretary has previously denied any interference with the legal process. In 2009, Mr MacAskill said Megrahi’s decision to withdraw his second appeal against conviction was "a matter for him and the courts", adding: "My decisions were predicated on the fact that he was properly investigated, a lawful conviction passed and a life sentence imposed."

However, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, the new book by John Ashton, a former member of the defence team, suggests a direct link between compassionate release and Megrahi dropping his appeal, apparently to protect the reputation of the Scottish justice system after a verdict seen by many as deeply flawed.

Mr Ashton told heraldscotland: "The Justice Secretary and his officials should, at all times, have made it clear to Mr Megrahi and his representatives that, if he chose to continue his appeal, it would have had no bearing on the justice secretary’s decision on whether or not to grant compassionate release.

"Furthermore, they should have been aware that, given Mr Megrahi's desperate position, even the slightest pressure that was applied would have caused him to abandon the appeal, even though he was not legally obliged to do so. Of course, by dropping the appeal he spared the Scottish criminal justice system a colossal embarrassment."

The book contains a number of revelations pertaining to new evidence and previously unseen documents and information. It is based on interviews with Megrahi and the full report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which referred the case back for a fresh appeal in June 2007 on six different grounds. The commission's full report has never been published.

Although the appeal was granted in 2007, its start was significantly delayed. The defence team, and the new book, claim that the delays could be blamed on the Crown Office, and that many of them were unnecessary. The Crown denied such claims at the time.

However, it was widely agreed that for the appeal to go ahead and for Megrahi to be acquitted of the worst terrorist atrocity to have taken place on mainland Britain would have been a devastating and embarrassing blow to the Scottish legal system, the police investigation, the Crown and judiciary.

What the new book lays bare is just how much new evidence there was to secure Megrahi’s acquittal and just how likely it was if the appeal had gone ahead.

One of the most significant revelations the defence team learned just before he dropped the appeal concerned a fundamental part of the prosecution’s case against Megrahi: that a fragment of circuit board supposed to confirm that the timer used to detonate the Lockerbie bomb came from a Swiss company linked to Megrahi and which allegedly sold 20 such timers only to Libya did not, in fact, match the circuit boards made by this company.

The book also raises serious questions about the reliability of the Crown’s key witnesses and reveals major inconsistencies in statements and forensics evidence.

Megrahi describes his decision to drop the appeal as a "terrible choice to have to make". He writes: "I never doubted that, if they considered the evidence objectively, the appeal judges would overturn the conviction. From that moment I made that decision, I was determined that, if I could not be judged in a court of law, then I should be judged in the court of public opinion. This book presents the case for both the prosecution and the defence.”

Libyan newspaper report on Lockerbie compensation trial

[What follows is the text of a report published on the website of the Libya Herald:]

Libyan prosecutor says payout to Lockerbie victims “a waste of public money”

The trial of Mohamed Zway, the former secretary of the General People’s Congress, and Abdul-Ati Al-Obeidi, the secretary of the People’s Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation, opened in Tripoli on Monday.

The two, who have been held in  jail since they were arrested 14 months ago, are accused of poor performance of their duties while in office and of maladministration, specifically wasting of public funds in respect of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The prosecution claims that it was wrong to organise a compensation deal of $2.7 billion to the victims’ families in return for getting Libya removed from the list of the states that sponsor terrorism.The judge said that the deal “was a waste of public money especially when there was no guarantee the charges in the Lockerbie case would be dropped if the compensation was made”.

The charges have surprised many observers as they imply that the two should have been more effective in serving the Qaddafi regime and that the Lockerbie deal should not have happened.

Both men denied the charges in court.

Their lawyer made several requests, the most important of which was a postponement of proceedings in order to give the defence time to examine all the documentary evidence. He also asked to see his clients in private and, pending a postponement, requested the court to release them on bail.

Bail was refused but the court permitted the lawyer to meet the defendents in private. It accepted the request to photocopy some of the evidence but none of the classified documents.

The trial was adjourned to 15 October 2012.

At a press conference on Sunday, former Justice Minister Mohamed Al-Alagy claimed that this trial and and those of other Qaddafi officials were “invalid” because the law was not being properly implemented.  He said that the prosecution was sidestepping due process whereby such cases must first go the Indictment Court to be processed.

[When I first met Mr Zway (or Zwai or al-Zwai) in 1994, he was himself Libya’s Minister of Justice.  He was one of the army officers who, with Muammar Gaddafi, mounted the 1969 coup against the king, Idris al-Senussi, and the only one still holding high office in the regime. Abdel Ati al-Obeidi was then Libyan ambassador to Morocco but subsequently held many other offices, including ambassador to Italy, Deputy Foreign Minister with responsibility for European relations, head of Gaddafi’s private office and Foreign Minister.  In all of these incarnations he remained as chairman of the Libyan Government committee on Lockerbie.]

Libya's judges confront the past

[This is the headline over an interesting article by Mohamed Eljarh published yesterday in the Transitions blog on the website of the influential Foreign Policy magazine.  It reads in part:]

Ever since the revolution, Libyans have been waiting to see how the court system is going to settle accounts with Qaddafi-era officials. Now the first verdict has finally arrived -- but it clearly wasn't what a lot of people were expecting.

A Libyan court in Tripoli has acquitted two former officials in Colonel Qaddafi's regime of wasting public money by spending $2.7 billion on payments to the families of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Ex-Foreign Minister Abdul Ati al-Obeidi and Mohamed al-Zwai, the former head of Qaddafi's legislature, stood accused of arranging compensation for the families of victims of the attack. The two men were trying to persuade the survivors to drop their claims against Libya. The prosecution had charged that Obeidi and Zwai were responsible for negotiating settlements with the Lockerbie families and had paid out double the amount originally planned.

This would be the first verdict in a number of cases against key figures in the old Qaddafi regime by the new Libyan government following his killing in 2011. Despite being acquitted in this case, both men will remain in custody while further investigations take place ahead of a wider trial in August, where allegations of war crimes, including mass killings and incitement to rape, will be put to the court, according to state prosecutor al-Seddik al-Sur. Qaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi are among the defendants in this wider trial.

While the families of the two officials celebrated the innocent verdict and expressed their happiness with the Libyan judiciary, the public prosecutor was quick to announce a new trial and took measures to ensure that the two officials will in custody, emphasizing that the Lockerbie-related charges are a "side case." The judge gave no reasons for his verdict after the trial, which lasted seven months. The two officials were tried under Qaddafi-era laws.

Many Libyans are cautiously celebrating what they claim to be "the independence of the judiciary." However, after the court's verdict some prominent Facebook pages and groups (mainly pro-isolation law and pro-militias) started calling for the cleansing of the judiciary, claiming that the revolution has yet to happen within the judicial establishment in Libya. They claim that the current judicial establishment will find Saif al-Islam and Abdullah al-Senussi innocent, and that the judges affected by the isolation process will hamper the implementation of the isolation law. The fear of attacks on the judiciary and the justice system could explain the quick announcement by the country's public prosecutor that the two acquitted officials will remain in custody as his office prepares for these broader proceedings.

However, many in Libya called the trial a "waste of time." Claiming that the Saif al-Islam and al-Senussi have yet to stand trial, and that these "side cases" are just used by the authorities to buy them time as they keep delaying the trials of the key crimes committed by the former regime. The general sentiment between Libyans is that the authorities have failed to facilitate or build any substantial cases against many of the ex-regime officials, and that the evidence required to convict them is not available. (...)

Lawyers for Justice in Libya expressed concern at the increase in attacks on judges and lawyers in Libya. Most recently, a senior judge from the eastern city of Albaida was shot dead in a drive-by shooting in front of the local courthouse in Derna last Sunday.

Moreover, the legitimacy and independence of the judiciary in Libya is compromised by its lack of autonomy and by interference from the General National Congress (Libya's interim legislature). Judges throughout Libya have condemned the recent Political Isolation Law, and some have gone on strike because it targets the judiciary. An appeal by more than 60 judges and lawyers against the law has been submitted to the Supreme Court. They argue that the judiciary should be independent and that the isolation law violates the principle of the separation of powers among the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judiciary). The judges stress that any reform within the judicial establishment should come from within, that it should be based on consultation with the legislative and executive branches of government, and that it should not imposed by one or the other.

In post-revolution Libya, the process of judicial institutionalization is constantly undermined by political instability and the lack of security as well as by the struggle for power between the different factions in the absence of the constitution. Ensuring the independence of the judiciary and security of its personnel is of vital importance for Libya's transition. Ultimately, the absence of security for justice sector personnel has led and will continue to lead to indefinite delays in the processing of the cases of ex-regime officials and conflict-related detainees.

Megrahi: eight key pieces of evidence

[This is the headline over the second batch of material derived from Megrahi: You are my Jury published today on the heraldscotland.com website.  It reads in part:]

Megrahi: You are my Jury, The Lockerbie Evidence is a detailed book, spanning 460 pages, 15 chapters, four appendices, and a six-page glossary. It explores a number of key areas which campaigners will regard as crucial to the case, including eight which relate to previously unseen evidence. Here, chief reporter LUCY ADAMS present extracts from the book and explain why they matter.

1.Why Megrahi dropped the appeal

CONTEXT: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi had two possible routes out of Greenock jail in August 2009: a prisoner transfer application for which he first had to drop his appeal, or compassionate release because of his prostate cancer. The latter route did not demand that he drop his appeal, in contrast to the former. In the event, he ended his appeal, yet the PTA was turned down, and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill instead granted compassionate release. The chain of actions has always been a mystery, leaving those who believe in Megrahi’s guilt to see his decision as confirmation of their views. Why would an innocent man not pursue an appeal against conviction that he had waited years to begin? Now, for the first time, Megrahi claims that he was pressured to drop the appeal by Mr MacAskill personally through diplomatic channels.

EXTRACT: "On 10 August MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Minister [Abdel Ali] Al-Obeidi. By this time I was desperate. The 90-day time limit for considering the prisoner transfer application had passed and, although I had some vocal public supporters, MacAskill was coming under considerable pressure to reject both applications. After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obeidi said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He [MacAskill] said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT:  Mr MacAskill, who was not contacted in advance of today's book publication, has always said he could not interfere in the judicial process. If Megrahi's version of events is true, it will prove very damaging to the minister, who has repeatedly distanced himself from any appeal which, if it had gone ahead, could have been a massive embarrassment to the Scottish legal system. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had already found six grounds on which Megrahi’s conviction was potentially unsafe.

2. The timer fragment

CONTEXT: At Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist, it was agreed that the fragment of electrical circuit board found at the Lockerbie crash site [and referred to as PT/35b] came from an MST-13 board manufactured by the Swiss company Mebo and Thuring, its supplier. Mebo revealed that it had sold 20 such timers to the Libyans, and this became a hugely significant part of the case against Megrahi. However, the book claims that new evidence shows the fragment of circuit board found at Lockerbie, which was 100% covered in tin, did not match those in the timers sent to Libya and alleges that the Crown's forensic expert at trial, Allen Feraday, was aware of the disparity but failed to disclose it.

EXTRACT: "On 23 October 2008, at just after 7pm, a member of [Tony] Kelly's [defence] team finally put the crucial question to Bonfadelli [Urs Bonfadelli was responsible for the manufacture of Mebo’s MST-13 boards]: was the circuitry of the MST-13 boards coated with pure tin or a tin/lead alloy? His answer was clear and devastating: all were coated with an alloy of 70% tin and 30% lead. There could be no mistaking this, he said. It was imminently apparent what this meant: if PT/35b’s coating had not been changed by the explosion, then it could not have been made by Thuring and therefore could not have been one of the 20 timers supplied to Libya."

Mr Kelly subsequently instructed two independent experts to see if the heat of the explosion could have turned the fragment’s tin/lead alloy to tin – Dr Chris McArdle, who had 25 years experience in the electronics industry, and Dr Jess Cawley, a metallurgist with over 35 years experience. The book adds: "..McArdle pointed out there was no way that it would have been hot enough for the lead to have evaporated away… Cawley agreed, pointing out that, although plastic explosives of the type used in the Lockerbie bomb produce a flash of intense heat, lead, like most metals, requires a far longer exposure to high temperatures before it would melt, let alone evaporate."

Documents from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment, disclosed by the Crown just before Megrahi's appeal was dropped, revealed contradictory notes from Mr Feraday saying the coating was pure tin and then "70/30 SN/Pb" (70% tin and 30% lead). The book states: "Had these documents been disclosed to the defence team, they would have provided the basis for a vigorous cross-examination of Feraday."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: This was one of the most important components of the prosecution case against Megrahi. As the book admits, this was the "golden thread". However, shortly before Megrahi dropped his appeal, his defence team found proof that the timer was not one of those supplied by Mebo to the Libyans. If anything author John Ashton suggests – based on expert opinion – that the circuit board was likely to have been "DIY" rather than commercially manufactured. With this information, the golden thread falls.

3. The Iranian connection

CONTEXT: In the book's preface, Megrahi says he does not want to "point the finger of blame at anyone else", but much of the material drawn together will lead readers to believe that Iran funded the PFLP-GC [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command] to carry out the bombing, in retaliation for the American warship the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian passenger jet and killing all 300 people on board in 1988. The US apparently mistook it for an F-14 fighter.

EXTRACT: "The most difficult witness [for the defence team] to get to was the PFLP-GC bomb-maker and double agent Marwen Khreesat. Asked about the aim of his October 1988 mission to West Germany, Khreesat was unambiguous: 'It was made very clear to us by Ahmed Jibril [leader of the PFLPC-GC] that he wanted to blow up an aeroplane. This was the whole purpose of being there. Dalkamoni and I travelled to Frankfurt in order to go to the offices of Pan Am to get information about their flight schedules. We did this. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Jibril wanted a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt blown up.' Although Khreesat remained adamant that his bombs were not of the twin-speaker type used for the Lockerbie bomb, he revealed that Dalkamoni had at least one other radio cassette bomb. If Khreesat was right, here at last was confirmation that the PFLP-GC had at least one twin speaker device in West Germany."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: The initial investigation into Lockerbie in 1989 all pointed towards the culpability of a German cell of the PFLP-GC. There is much within the book, including the above statement by bomb-maker Marwen Khreesat which appears to confirm this view. There are also notes showing that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher blocked a public inquiry in the bombing and an explanation that politically it was not expedient to fall out with Iran – whose oil was relied upon - in the run-up to the Gulf War against Iraq. A great deal of the evidence incriminating the PFLPC-GC was not disclosed at the original trial or appeal. The heavily referenced allegations in the book make it seem more likely that they were behind the Lockerbie bombing than Libya. To have dismissed the evidence against them at the time raises questions about the role and potential bias of some of the security agencies involved, and the murkiness of the international politics which has always shrouded the Lockerbie case.

4. Reward money and the reliability of witnesses

CONTEXT: In the UK witnesses cannot be paid for their information. However, the book describes in detail how both Tony and Paul Gauci were offered reward money by the American Justice Department. And, we learn for the first time, that this was discussed even before Tony Gauci's first statement. The book also reveals that Edwin Bollier, who ran Mebo and testified against Megrahi, was very interested in "the reward money".

EXTRACT: "The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) concluded 'In referring the case on this ground the Commission is conscious of the potential impact of its decision on Mr Gauci who may well have given entirely credible evidence notwithstanding an alleged interest in financial payment. On the other hand there are sound reasons to believe that the information in question would have been used by the defence as a means of challenging its credibility. Such a challenge may well have been justified, and in the Commission’s view was capable of affecting the course of the evidence and the eventual outcome of the trial.'"

The book also reveals that several other witnesses had the possibility of reward money dangled before them: "Lamin [Fhimah's – Megrahi's co-accused, cleared at Camp Zeist] former business partner Vincent Vassalo whom Abdelbaset and Lamin had visited the evening before the bombing. He confirmed that it was his first meeting with Abdelbaset, who had introduced himself by his real name, rather than the one on his coded passport. He described Lamin's shock on learning of the police investigation and his willingness to allow them to search the Medtours office and take his diary. Once the search was finished he said DCI [Harry] Bell [who was in charge of the police investigation in Malta] reminded him that a 'big reward' was on offer for any helpful information he could provide."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: The fact that Tony Gauci, the Crown's key witness who testified that he saw Megrahi buy specific clothes in his shop which were later identified as having been near the bomb, was even offered a reward raised the concerns of the SCCRC. It undermines his witness statements, which we now know were far more inconsistent and numerous than previously disclosed. The revelation that Bollier and others were offered the possibility of reward money also goes some way towards discrediting the integrity of the investigation itself.

5.Undisclosed evidence

CONTEXT: The SCCRC unearthed numerous statements, police reports and other documents which had never been shared with the defence team. Part of the reason the case was referred back for a fresh appeal was the non-disclosure of evidence. A fascinating part of the book talks about the James Bond-like tales of attempted coups, spying and double agents going on across the world. In particular, it makes reference to an attempted coup in Togo in which timers matching those thought to have been used in the Lockerbie bombing were discovered, and hints at subterfuge and espionage by the American security services and others and details the confusion caused. The prosecution had claimed that there were only 20 Mebo MST-13 timers and that they were sold only to the Libyans.

EXTRACT: "The Commission unearthed potentially significant information about the MST-13 timers found in West Africa. Two timers were recovered from Togo in 1986. Among the documents disclosed to the Commission was a previously confidential memo, produced by [Senior Investigating Officer] Stuart Henderson the month after the interview of Jean Baptiste Collin [the official in charge in Togo], which provided a lengthy overview of the investigation. As the following passage made clear, the West Africa investigations were causing considerable concern. [SIO Henderson wrote]: 'After the recent interview of Collin, it is now more clear than ever that the circumstances surrounding the recovery of the 'boxed MST-13 timer' in Senegal must be clarified beyond doubt. The whole essence of the 'MST-13 timers' is the sole manufacture by the Mebo company in world terms and the explicit distribution to the Libyan ESO. Unless we can consolidate the precise number of MST-13 timers circuit boards manufactured to fit the ‘boxed timers’ and confirm the fact they were distributed, solely to the Libyans, then we have serious problems with our direct evidence. [Collin] inferred that the Americans knew the whole story... Crucially the notes [by DI William Williamson] went on to record that Collin said the timer had been given to an 'intelligence agency'."

To date, at least two documents not disclosed to the defence still remain a secret because the UK Government claims publicising them would be a threat to national security. The book states: "The last of the Commission's Statement of Reasons... was certainly the strangest of the six. It concerned two secret documents, supplied by another country, which members of the Commission’s team had been allowed to view at Dumfries police station in September 2006. They were forbidden from copying them. On 27 April 2007, the Crown Office confirmed to the Commission that they had carefully considered whether or not the documents required to be disclosed to the defence and had concluded they did not. The Statement of Reasons gave only two clues to the documents' contents. The first was an extract from the Crown's 27 April 2007 letter which read 'it has never been the Crown's position in this case that the MST-13 timers were not supplied by the Libyan intelligence services to any other party or that only Libyan intelligence services were in possession of the timers'. The second came in paragraph 25.6 of the Statement which read 'In the Commission's view the Crown's decision not to disclose one of the documents to the defence indicates that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.'"

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: Since the trial at Zeist, Scots law has been challenged at the Supreme Court and the policy of non-disclosure has had to be changed. A number of appeals have been won on the grounds that important evidence was not shared with defence lawyers. We now know that numerous documents were not disclosed to the Lockerbie defence team. Some were sent to them after the second appeal was dropped. Others may never be shared. Advocates in the past have described the unfairness of partial disclosure as "playing with a stacked deck". This alone could have seen Megrahi acquitted if his appeal had proceeded.

6. Forensics anomalies

CONTEXT The forensics case against Megrahi was critical. The book reveals anomalies, contradictions, and arguments between police, the forensics team, the CIA, and the FBI. It also claims that information was withheld by the CIA and says anomalies later found in the forensic evidence from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment "cast doubt on the overall reliability" of some of the forensic reports.

EXTRACT: "Six years after [Dr Thomas] Hayes [of RARDE] testified, a previously secret police memo came to light that contradicted his evidence and stated that a residue test had, in fact, been conducted...Most of the contradictory accounts about how PT/35b was linked to the MST-13 timer were only revealed seven years later, when the Crown’s precognition statements of Feraday, Williamson, Thurman and Orkin were released by the SCCRC. Had the defence known about them at trial, they would have provided the basis for vigorous cross-examinations of the relevant witnesses...

"Viewed in isolation, the individual anomalies surrounding the fragment may have appeared trivial, but together they formed a shroud of suspicion that could not be dislodged. Had they concerned a less important item, they could, perhaps, have been overlooked, but the fragment was easily the most crucial physical evidence in the entire case – the golden thread that linked Abdelbaset to the bomb."

Other items were not contained within the forensic reports – including a small piece of circuit board from the radio cassette bomb found in Dalkamoni's [of the Palestinian PFLPC-GC] car in Germany – something the defence team only learned about years later. The book states: "Whatever lay behind the multiple anomalies, inconsistencies, and omissions, their cumulative effect was to erode the façade of forensic certainty that surrounded the Crown case."

There were other pieces of forensic information not disclosed by the Crown which pointed – again – at the potential involvement of the PFLPC-GC. "Further important forensic information was contained in a Crown precognition statement by Hayes's RARDE colleague Allen Feraday. He revealed that he had been unable to rule out one of the debris items, PI/1588, as being part of a barometric trigger. Given that the PFLP-GC bombs found in Neuss [in the German raid on the PFLPC-GC] were barometric, this was potentially significant."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT This is one of the densest and most complex sections of the book. The details of different dates, reports, and contradictions is confusing but the overall impression is that the scientists and forensics experts involved were working under enormous pressure in very difficult circumstances. There is a sense that the American security services often failed to disclose or delayed disclosure of information to the Scottish police investigating. The overall picture is that non-disclosure of certain forensic information at the trial and the inconsistencies in the forensic reports subsequently seen by the defence team, raise serious questions about aspects of the prosecution's forensic case.

7. The Bedford suitcase

CONTEXT: Ascertaining which suitcase contained the bomb was critical in the initial stages of the police investigation and subsequent forensic work. Much of the investigation focused on where the suitcase was "ingested" – whether it was through the airport at Malta, Frankfurt or Heathrow. Who put it on to the plane and how? According to the Crown, forensic analysis of the fuselage indicated the suitcase containing the bomb was in the second layer of suitcases – indicating it had come from a feeder flight, rather than Heathrow. However, the book reveals that Tony Kelly's review of the evidence focused on a brown hard-sided suitcase seen by baggage loader John Bedford before the Frankfurt feeder flight arrived. At trial, the judges described Bedford as a "clear and impressive witness" but said there were many items of luggage not dealt with in detail in the evidence of the case.

EXTRACT: "Kelly’s team uncovered evidence that, had it been heard at trial, might have denied the judges these get-outs. If the Bedford bag were not the primary suitcase then, since he [Bedford] saw it before the arrival of PA103A [from Frankfurt], it must have been legitimate. By checking the surviving bags and descriptions provided by the victims’ relatives, [Detective Constable Derek] Henderson established the colour and type of all the legitimate Heathrow interline bags. None were brown, hard-sided suitcases...which meant it was almost certainly the primary case."

That information from DC Henderson was not in the list of productions for the original trial. The book states: "Abdelbaset’s draft grounds of appeal claimed that the absence of the Henderson schedules from the trial constituted a 'material irregularity'...'that material evidence supporting the defence was not properly presented and the appellant was denied a fair trial'."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT Subsequent to the trial and appeal, evidence emerged of a break-in at Heathrow the night before the bombing. Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the tragedy, has consistently drawn attention to this break-in and campaigned for a full inquiry into what happened. The Crown case was, in part, based on the assertion that Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, his co-accused, ensured the primary suitcase containing the bomb was on the feeder flight from Malta. The fact the break-in at Heathrow the night before the tragedy only came to light after the trial seems shocking. The fact that UK Governments have refused since 1988 to hold a full public inquiry into the case, even more so.

8.  Why Megrahi used a coded passport when in Malta

CONTEXT: At the trial, the original appeal and indeed in a press release last week, the Crown has always made much of Megrahi’s use in Malta of a false passport under the name Abdusamad.

EXTRACT: "My numerous absences created difficulties at home. Like most Libyan marriages at the time ours was very traditional... she was understandably unhappy about my frequent foreign trips, and would often become upset on learning that one was imminent. I therefore fell into the habit, on shorter trips, of telling her I was visiting people elsewhere in Libya...The Libyan Government had by then introduced a policy of issuing those involved in the importation of embargoed goods with so-called coded passports which concealed their real names and their connections to state bodies. These passports were in no sense forgeries, but were rather official documents issued by the Secretary of Transport and tightly regulated. A further advantage was that it enabled me to leave my normal passport at home, which made it easier to travel abroad without Aisha knowing."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: Chapter 2 of the book, entitled Before the Nightmare, explains Megrahi’s work importing embargoed cars, soap and cigarettes lighters, and aviation parts. Much of the chapter is in the first person, explaining in detail his course in marine engineering at Cardiff, his first job as a flight dispatcher for Libyan Arab Airlines and his subsequent promotion to controller of operations at Tripoli Airport. It provides a fascinating insight into his life before the indictment but I found it difficult to understand some of his justifications for lying to his wife as he suggest above. It might seem easier to believe if he said he had been having an affair. However, it may be difficult to understand because it is hard to relate to what it must have been like to live in a country under such strict trade sanctions as Libya had at the time.

Gaddafi-era officials kept in jail over Lockerbie case

[This is the heading over a translated transcript on the Link TV website of an item broadcast on the BBC Arabic service.  It reads as follows:]

Presenter, Male #1
Two former Libyan regime officials, Mohammed al-Zwai and Abdulati al-Obeidi, appeared before the Tripoli appeals court where they are being tried on charges of squandering public money in the Lockerbie case, and of treason. The court ordered them to remain in prison pending the outcome of the case, and rejected the defense's request to release them on bail.

Reporter, Male #2
Strict security measures were enforced near the court of appeals in the Libyan capital Tripoli as two former officials from the era of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi, speaker of parliament Mohammed al-Zwai and foreign minister Abdulati al-Obeidi, arrived to appear before the court. They are charged with squandering public funds by granting compensations to the families of the victims in the case of the bombing of Pan American [flight 103] over the Scottish city of Lockerbie, which exceeded USD 2.7 billion, and for treason by betraying the state's trust to negotiate on its behalf abroad.

Reporter, Male #2
During the session, the two defendants denied the accusations directed against them by the judge who refused to release them and ordered to keep them in prison pending the outcome of the case. As soon the session ended, the defense lawyer expressed satisfaction with the course of the trial, despite the rejection of his request to release his clients on bail.

Guest, Male #3
The court granted our requests despite rejecting the request for their release but this is its jurisdiction. I am satisfied because the court heard us, and heard the justifications for the release request, and the justifications to hear the defense witnesses. We hope that the trial will be a fair one.

Reporter, Male #2
The Libyan street seemed to be following this case with great interest, placing their confidence in the Libyan judiciary.

Guest, Male #4
The Libyan judiciary is known for being fair, and it has been in existence for a long time, and we are very confident in the Libyan judiciary. As for the people who are now being tried, the law is the decider. If the law finds them guilty, they will bear the consequences of their acts. And if the law finds them innocent, they are just Libyan citizens, just like all Libyans.

Guest, Male #5
Everything is under the command of the Libyan authorities and the Libyan judiciary, and I am certain that at the end it will be fair, and it will not be unjust again.

Reporter, Male #2
According to the documents of the case against the two defendants, they are not authorized to negotiate all of the provisions of the agreement and its conditions, and they will be tried in accordance with the Economic Crimes Law and the Penal Code.

Trial of Obeidi & Zwai over Lockerbie compensation adjourned

[What follows is an excerpt from a report published yesterday on the website of the Libya Herald:]

Court proceedings against former Foreign Minister Abdulati Ibrahim Al-Obeidi and former Secretary General of the General People’s Congress Mohammed Zwai have been adjourned yet again, for the fourth time.

The two were in court today, Monday, accused in connection with the $2.7 billion in compensation payments for families of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, charges they both deny.  However, after the court heard defense witnesses the judge decided to adjourn the trial until 4 February.

[Previous related blogposts can be found here and here and here.]

Easier to grant compassionate release if appeal dropped

[What follows is taken from an account written by Abdelbaset Megrahi which is to be found on page 354 of John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury:]

On 10 August [2009], [Cabinet Secretary for Justice Kenny] MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Minister [Abdel Ati] al-Obeidi, the Libyan Supreme Court Judge Azzam Eddeeb, and the London Chargé d’Affaires Omar Jelban. By this time I was desperate. The 90-day limit for considering the prisoner transfer application had passed and, although I had some vocal public supporters, MacAskill was coming under considerable pressure to reject both applications. After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obeidi said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, he stated that MacAskill gave him to understand that it would be easier to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He [MacAskill] said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice.

Next day, with huge reluctance and sadness, I broke the news to [solicitor] Tony Kelly that I was dropping the appeal