Monday 25 August 2014

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.

Sunday 24 August 2014

Lockerbie insurers to sue US government

[This is the headline over a report (tagged “Exclusive”) on page 27 of today’s Scottish Sunday Express. It picks up an item that I published on this blog on 12 August. Today’s Express article, which does not appear on the newspaper’s website, reads as follows:]

Insurers who paid compensation to the families of Lockerbie victims are suing the US government for almost £60million, the Sunday Express can reveal.

Equitas, linked to Lloyd’s of London, and Aviation & General Insurance, have launched a joint action after being blocked from seeking payment from Libya for its involvement in the bombing.

Lloyd’s and Aviation & General paid out £33million to families of those killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town in December 1988.

They, along with New York Marine & General, also parted with £25million over claims related to another Libyan terror attack which destroyed an EgyptAir flight in 1985.

According to papers filed with the US Court of Federal Claims on July 31, the two insurers say Colonel Gaddafi’s Libyan regime supported both attacks by providing weapons, funds, airline tickets, fake passports and explosives.

However, in 2008, President George Bush blocked any further litigation over the incidents, preventing insurance firms recouping any losses from Libya.

Equitas, which holds all of Lloyd’s pre-1993 liabilities, and Aviation & General are now suing the US administration for £58million.

The court papers read: “Plaintiffs regret being forced to seek compensation from the United States, but they have no other means of redress.

“But for the intervention of the United States, Plaintiffs would have two judgements from the US Federal courts against Libya. Plaintiffs primary objective is to hold Libya accountable for the actions of its former government.”

Libyan spy Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was the only man to be convicted of the atrocity, which claimed 270 lives.

He was released from jail on compassionate grounds in 2009 and protested his innocence right up until he died of cancer in [2012].

Former lawyer Robert Black QC, who is a member of Justice For Megrahi - a campaign group which believes the Libyan was innocent - said he did not believe the law suit “had much hope of success”. [RB: I am still a lawyer. I have not (yet) been disbarred.]

He added: “The action looks to me like a try-on, probably hoping for a ‘nuisance value’ settlement from the US Government.”

A spokesman for Lloyd’s said that the company is no longer linked with Equitas and said that they have “no dealings” with the law suit.

Equitas is now controlled by Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway, while Aviation and General is owned by Ruxley, in London.

The US government, Equitas and Aviation & General Insurance all refused to comment.

[Here’s the full text of what I said in an e-mail to the journalist: “I don't think the action has much hope of success.  Even if the US Presidential Order barred Equitas from suing Libya in the United States, there was nothing to prevent it doing so in Scotland (as it already had done, of course, in relation to compensation paid by Pan Am to Lockerbie victims' families: see http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/pan-am-insurer-suing-us-government-over.html). And in any event there was nothing to prevent Equitas suing in the US courts before the Presidential Order in 2008.  That they were caught by that Order can be argued to be their own fault for delaying so long: after all, Pan Am 103 was destroyed in 1988 and Megrahi was convicted in 2001. The present action looks to me like a try-on, probably hoping for a "nuisance value" settlement from the US government.”]

Saturday 23 August 2014

A case so thin only concoctions could save it

What follows is taken from an item published on this blog on this date three years ago:

Stand by for dodgy evidence to emerge
[This is the headline over an article by John Ashton in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]

So, it seems Gaddafi is, at last, vanquished. The welcome exit of Libya’s dictator could have some unwelcome consequences, not least for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi whom I, and many others, believe was wrongly convicted.

President Barack Obama has reportedly asked Libya’s rebel leaders to capture the terminally ill 59 year-old so he can be sent to face justice in the US. This would be as illegal as it would be inhumane – not that legality has been a pre-condition of recent US foreign policy.

It’s far more likely that he will become the victim of disinformation.

It will not be the first time. On February 22, 2011, I posed the following rhetorical question on Professor Robert Black’s Lockerbie blog: “What’s the betting that, sometime in the next few weeks, the following happens: 1) In the burned-out ruins of a Libyan Government building, someone finds definitive documentary ‘proof’ that Libya and Megrahi were responsible for Lockerbie and/or 2) A Libyan official reveals ‘we did it’.”

I pointed out that the case against Megrahi was now so thin that only such concoctions could save it.

Within 24 hours the country’s newly defected Justice Minister, and now leader of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, told a Swedish newspaper: “I have proof that Gaddafi gave the order on Lockerbie.”

Gaddafi may be an appalling tyrant, but there is no more reliable evidence that he was behind the Lockerbie attack than there was that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

Mr Jalil knew the claim would help distance him from his old boss and win him friends in Washington and Whitehall.

His knowledge that the prosecution case was beyond repair probably accounts for why he later told a newspaper that Megrahi “was not the man who carried out the planning and execution of the bombing”, but was “nevertheless involved in facilitating things for those who did”.

Any credibility that this gained him was, however, destroyed by his claim that Megrahi had blackmailed Gaddafi into securing his release from prison by threatening to expose the dictator’s role in the bombing, and had “vowed to exact revenge’” unless his demand was met.

The notion that Megrahi held any power over Gaddafi was ludicrous: he was reliant on Gaddafi’s Government to fund his appeal and to shelter his family in Tripoli, so would have been insane to attempt blackmail.

Other senior defectors’ “Gaddafi did it” claims are equally dubious.

One of them, Abdel Fattah Younes, was so distrusted by some of the rebels that they killed him, while another, the ex-ambassador to the UN, Abdul Rahman al Shalgham, has previously denied Libya’s guilt.

So too has the mysterious Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s supposed terrorist godfather, who was reported to have helped the Scottish police with their inquiries.

If the official account of Lockerbie is true, this was like Radovan Karadzic helping the Srebrenica massacre investigation.

But it’s almost certainly not true, which is probably why Mr Koussa remains free.

And it’s why we should expect more dodgy evidence to emerge from newly liberated Tripoli, in particular, stories that patch over the gaping holes in the prosecution case.

I once said to Megrahi that I expected to read that he had made a deathbed confession. I was joking, but I’m not now.

*John Ashton is the author of Megrahi: You are my Jury, which will be published later this year.

[An editorial in the same newspaper reads in part:]

It will be a Herculean task to ensure that victory is not followed by revenge and reprisal but, if anarchy and mayhem are to be avoided in a post-Gaddafi Libya, justice must be seen to be done. Such even-handedness should also be applied to the internationally sensitive position of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing by a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands. Far too many questions about that terrorist atrocity remain unanswered.

However, Megrahi was released from custody in Scotland by the Scottish Justice Minister and allowed to return to Libya on compassionate grounds because he was suffering from terminal cancer and was expected to live for only a few months. Since that was two years ago and Megrahi remains alive, the anger that accompanied his release in some quarters has intensified. That is understandable, particularly on the part of relatives of those who were killed. Nevertheless, the calls for him to be extradited for imprisonment or retrial in the US should be resisted by Western powers who preach the importance of transparent application of the law.

Yesterday’s statement from David Cameron’s office that the Prime Minister believes Megrahi “should be behind bars” amounted at best to muddying the waters. Lest Mr Cameron needs reminded, he has no jurisdiction over a prisoner released under the Scottish justice system. What purpose would be served by sending him back to Scotland now that the Scottish Government is planning legislation to enable the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to publish the six grounds for a possible miscarriage of justice?

The priority should be to establish the truth about who was responsible for plotting and carrying out the attack on PanAm 103 and why. The best hope lies with the capture and questioning of Col Gaddafi. However unlikely he is to reveal the murky secrets of his four-decade dictatorship, he should nevertheless answer for his actions to the ICC. It will be the test of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) and the rebel forces to deliver the despot to international justice.

Friday 22 August 2014

Why so little pressure from British and American public on their governments to investigate Lockerbie properly?

[Five years ago, the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi on 20 August 2009 was still reverberating in the media. Professor Hans Koechler, an international observer appointed by the United Nations at the Lockerbie trial, issued a statement approving of the release, and contributed an article to The Independent. The latter, as reproduced at the time on this blog, reads as follows:]

I am always surprised when people refer to Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi as the Lockerbie bomber. Even if he is guilty – something which, personally, I do not believe – he would only be a Lockerbie bomber, just one of many people who carried out a crime which would have taken a large network of people and lots of money to carry out. It amazes me that the British and American governments act as if the investigation into the bombing is somehow complete.

But I welcome the release of Megrahi, because I firmly believe that he is innocent of the charges made against him. Believe me, if I thought he was guilty I would not be pleased to see him released from jail.

His decision to drop his appeal, however, is deeply suspicious – I believe Megrahi made that decision under duress. Under Scottish law he did not need to abandon his appeal in order to be released on compassionate grounds. So why did he do it? It makes no sense that he would suddenly let it go.

In my time as the UN's observer at Megrahi's trial, I watched a case unfold that was based on circumstantial evidence. The indictment against him and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah went to great lengths to explain how they supposedly planted a bomb on Flight 103, and yet Fhimah was acquitted of all the charges against him. It made no sense that Megrahi was guilty when Fhimah was acquitted.

The prosecution produced key witnesses that lacked credibility or had incentives to bear false witness against Megrahi. Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who supposedly sold him the clothes that went around the bomb, had been fêted by the Scottish police who took him fishing. The Americans paid him cash following his testimony. The weakness of that testimony would have been a key component of Megrahi's appeal.

We will probably never really know who caused the Lockerbie bombing. So much key information was withheld from the trial. A luggage storage room used by Pan Am at Heathrow was broken into on the night of the bombing, and yet this information was withheld. The British have yet satisfactorily to explain why.

I want to know when the bomb was placed on the plane and by whom. We have to look more closely into the "London theory" – that the bomb was placed on the plane at Heathrow and not in Malta.

It would be childish to be satisfied with the conviction of just one person for a crime that clearly involved a large number of people. I find it very difficult to understand why there seems to be so little pressure from the British and American public on their governments to investigate the bombing properly.

The UK regularly talks of the need to pursue all terrorist atrocities. Yet how can the Government assure the public they really believe that, when they have virtually abandoned their investigation into the worst terrorist attack in the country's history?

We have to know what happened and the only way is a full public inquiry, either mandated by the House of Commons or by an investigative commission voted for by the UN's General Assembly. Time is of the essence. This crime is already 21 years old. To find out the truth we must act now.

Thursday 21 August 2014

Scottish Government shirking responsibilities by expecting foreign authorities to pick up gauntlet

What follows is taken from an item posted on this blog four years ago today:

Call for public inquiry into bombing

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

Dignitaries and campaigners including Desmond Tutu have called for the Scottish Government to launch a public inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing.

In an open letter, some 24 signatories including relatives of the victims, such as Dr Jim Swire and Jean Berkley, today call for a full and open inquiry.

The letter questions recent moves by the Scottish Government “to abrogate its responsibility and pass the buck to London” in relation to calls for a public inquiry.

First Minister Alex Salmond and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill have said that Scotland has neither the power nor the resources to hold an investigation.

The letter states: “When it came to granting compassionate release to Mr Megrahi, the Scottish Government was adamant that the matter fell under Scottish jurisdiction and would brook no interference in the nation’s affairs.

“When it comes to the establishment of an inquiry, why does Edinburgh appear so keen to abrogate its responsibility and pass the buck?

“One cannot have one’s cake and eat it. The excuse frequently offered is that a Scottish inquiry would not possess the requisite power of subpoena when it comes to requiring evidence to be produced.

“This same argument not only applies to Westminster but to the General Assembly of the United Nations Organisation also. In fact, the only body with the powers that Mr Salmond is looking for is the Security Council of the UN.

“In other words, given this, and the fact that the General Assembly appears to be reluctant to take the bull by the horns, it is down to individual nation states.

“The Scottish Government should not be allowed to shirk its duties and responsibilities to the bereaved and its electorate by expecting other, foreign, authorities to pick up the gauntlet.”

The letter, sent to ministers to coincide with the anniversary of Megrahi’s release, makes the point that Holyrood should be fully able to assess the details of what happened because the case was investigated by Scottish police, the trial was conducted under Scots law, and Megrahi was held in a Scottish prison and released on compassionate grounds by a Scottish minister.

Wednesday 20 August 2014

A murky web of lies

[Today marks the fifth anniversary of the release from HMP Greenock of Abdelbaset Megrahi.  

On this date three years ago he was still alive, to the annoyance of much of the media. However, The Scottish Sun published a long article by Marcello Mega headlined The dossier of doubt over Lockerbie. The following are excerpts from the article, as reproduced on this blog:]

The Scottish Sun today lifts the lid on a top-secret dossier that accuses Scots cops and prosecutors of suppressing seven key areas of evidence that cast doubt on the Lockerbie bomber's conviction.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission looked into the evidence against Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi - and found a murky web of lies.

The SCCRC's explosive report suspects the Scots authorities are behind a deliberate cover-up over the trial that saw Megrahi jailed for killing 270 people in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Dumfriesshire town.

Now on the second anniversary of cancer-stricken Megrahi's controversial release from a Scots jail, we can reveal the commission has grave concerns over the evidence against the 59-year-old following a multi-million-pound, four-year investigation.

In the dossier - seen by The Scottish Sun - Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who helped finger Megrahi as the bomber, is described as an "unreliable" witness.

Police are also accused of lying in court while prosecutors - including then Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC - are suspected of suppressing bombshell evidence that would likely have seen Megrahi walk free.

Last night Robert Black QC, retired Professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University and the architect of the Lockerbie trial, told how he believes Megrahi is innocent.

Mr Black said: "Megrahi is not the Lockerbie bomber and these revelations further underline that.

"I said after reading the daily transcripts of the evidence at the trial and before the judges delivered their verdict that there was no way Megrahi could be convicted on the evidence presented.

"That the judges did convict him on the flimsiest of evidence, which required several leaps of faith on a number of crucial matters that had not been proven by the Crown, remains a matter of profound concern for all of us."

Mr Black said it was now vital that a top-level public inquiry is held to get to the truth.

He said: "We need strong leadership now. We need to admit publicly that we got it wrong, and set about putting right that injustice." (...)

Seven key flaws
Denied fair trial
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission says Megrahi WAS denied a fair trial in their damning report.

They said the Crown suppressed from Megrahi's defence team statements showing how much key witness Tony Gauci changed his mind about crucial details over the years.

Maltese shopkeeper Gauci's evidence fingered Megrahi as the man who bought clothes in his shop on the Mediterranean isle that were linked to the suitcase carrying the bomb that blew up Pan Am flight 103.

The SCCRC report says Gauci was an "unreliable" witness but this was not shown to be the case in court.

They said: "The effect of all of these inconsistencies is powerful. The court was left with a distorted and different impression of the witness. In this way Megrahi was denied a fair trial."

Cop lies
The SCCRC found that police said in evidence they first showed Gauci photos of Megrahi on September 14, 1989 - when he had in fact also been shown them on September 8.

The report said: "This was not disclosed to the defence. There is no statement from Gauci produced, no police witness statements produced."

The SCCRC said if Gauci had been shown Megrahi's pic six days before he picked him out as resembling the buyer at his shop, then that ID was totally undermined.

Diary dispute
In its report, the SCCRC challenges the integrity of evidence given by retired Strathclyde DCI Harry Bell, who had a close bond with Gauci.

The commission found that events recorded in Bell's diaries didn't always match what he said in evidence.

The commission noted that Bell claimed the Megrahi photo shown to Gauci on September 14, 1989, was the first one. This was not true.

It also reveals Bell, DC John Crawford, a retired Lothian and Borders cop, and an FBI agent all made statements claiming that Gauci had talked of a "striking similarity" between Megrahi and the buyer.

But Maltese officers revealed Gauci was unsure, was coached and told to age the photos by ten to 15 years.

The report says: "This is different to DCI Bell's evidence at trial. It also implies the witness is unclear."

Cash for answers
The commission obtained evidence from police memos that Gauci was made aware from his first contact with investigators that his testimony could be worth MILLIONS.

This contradicted evidence given by Scots and US investigators at Megrahi's trial.

One undisclosed memo reveals the FBI discussed with Scots cops an offer of unlimited cash to Gauci - with "$10,000 available immediately".

If a judge was made aware of this in another case, they'd tell a jury to discount the evidence.

Xmas lights lies
In court Gauci was vague about the exact date on which the clothes were bought.

The date was narrowed to either November 23, 1988, when Megrahi was not on Malta, or December 7, 1988, when he was.

Gauci said Christmas lights were NOT on yet in his hometown Sliema when the suspect visited his shop.

Cops said they could not find out when the lights were switched on.

But the SCCRC easily established it was December 6 - a day too early for Megrahi to have been the buyer.

The commission's report says: "It is clear that the police were in no doubt that Gauci was clear in his recollection." It adds "no reasonable court" could have concluded Megrahi bought the clothes from Gauci's shop.

Defence in the dark
It appears efforts were made to cover up key evidence that would have been useful for Megrahi's defence team.

The commission noted that early uncertainty on the part of Gauci was never passed over to the defence, nor was the fact that Scots detectives feared he was trying too hard to please them.

The fact a senior Maltese detective also considered Gauci to be an unreliable witness was never disclosed to lawyers representing Megrahi.

Evidence supressed
The SCCRC claims Colin Boyd QC, who was Lord Advocate at the time of Megrahi's trial and conviction in 2001, suppressed key evidence.

The trial judges maintained Gauci was "entirely reliable" on the list of clothing he claimed the buyer suspect purchased.

Yet a statement he made in 1999, and discovered by the SCCRC, saw him produce "a wholly different list of items and prices". This, along with many other files that could damage the Crown case, was suppressed. The report says Mr Boyd failed in his duty of disclosure to the defence.

Tuesday 19 August 2014

Highest Bayesian probability of Megrahi guilt 23 per cent

[Two highly important articles have recently been posted on the website Three Sides to Every Story. The first is headed Why the Lockerbie bomb was loaded at Heathrow and Megrahi was innocent. The first two paragraphs and the last paragraph of the lengthy piece read as follows:]

It is slightly shocking that Morag Kerr's book, which gives the first ever convincing, evidence-based reconstruction of the Lockerbie bombing, has not been reviewed in a major UK-wide newspaper since coming out in December.

She completely rebuts the case which was pressed by the Crown and accepted by the Camp Zeist court against the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan agent, who served [8] years in prison in Scotland after conviction.  She also shows how the crime was really committed: not by Megrahi loading the suitcase with the bomb at Malta, to be transferred at Frankfurt onto the plane to Heathrow that was set to go on to New York City, before detonating over Scotland, but rather by persons unknown spiriting the suitcase onto the plane at Heathrow by placing it in a luggage shed ready to go directly on board Pan Am 103 to New York City. (...)

You will have to read the book and judge the forensic complexities for yourself.  For my part, I am convinced that Kerr is the first person to accurately reconstruct the Lockerbie bombing.  It was a crime perpetrated at Heathrow, and an innocent man suffered for it.  It is a textbook case of a miscarriage of justice, featuring leads missed by the police, unfeasible reconstructions of events and incompetent experts, as well as misconstrued, unreliable evidence both material and eye-witness.  The judges constructed a circumstantial case by irrationally explaining away key exculpatory evidence.  Kerr's book is not only a triumph of critical, evidence-based investigation, but also an instructive example of how a miscarriage of justice can occur.

[The second article is headed Bayesian probability analysis of the guilty verdict against Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing. The first two paragraph read as follows:]

In my first post about the Lockerbie bombing, I discussed Morag Kerr's book reconstructing the commission of the Lockerbie bombing and demonstrating the innocence of the convicted man, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.  In common with most humanistic reasoning, neither the verdict that condemned him nor Kerr's argument for his exoneration deployed any arithmetic of probability in analysing the evidence.  I think the widespread lack of arithmetical analysis of evidence is a serious weakness in fields like criminal law and history.

In this, I am following Richard Carrier in his book Proving History.  I am persuaded by him that we ought not just to use adjectives like "possible" and "probable" when we debate which theories best explain the evidence before us on a contentious historical or forensic question.  Additionally, we should use Bayes' Theorem: using numbers to express our opinions, and multiplying and dividing them according to Bayes' formula in order to calculate our reckoning of which theory explains the evidence the best.  The three main virtues of Bayes' Theorem are that it forces the analyst of evidence to specify clearly how good they think a theory is at explaining the evidence; it enables them to put all the evidence together in a mathematically sound way; and, above all, it forces them to look for evidence that supports their theory better than alternative theories, thus helping them to overcome the common failure to give alternatives due consideration.  Of course, different people can have different opinions about probabilities: the virtue of Bayes is that it brings out exactly what people agree and disagree about, and thus focuses their debate productively on crucial areas of disagreement.

[The author then subjects the evidence against Megrahi to Bayesian probability analysis and concludes that the highest probability of guilt that the judges should have arrived at was 23% and concludes:]

The judges failed to use Bayesian reasoning, which would have shown them that, far from a series of improbabilities adding up to a proof of Megrahi's guilt, they should have multiplied them out to a much greater sense of doubt.  They failed to appreciate that the crime was such an unlikely one on principle, that iron-clad evidence of Megrahi's guilt was required to overcome the prior improbability: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  A circumstantial case built on improbabilities does not cut it.

If the judges had applied correct probabilistic reasoning to the facts they did have about an unaccompanied bag from Warsaw, then this would have neutralised the evidence of an unaccompanied bag coming from Malta.

Of course, if we included the evidence explained yesterday, and considered how probable it was, on a hypothesis of Megrahi's guilt, that a mysterious suitcase answering to the description of the bomb-case would be seen by a baggage-handler at Heathrow before the feeder flight from Frankfurt had even arrived, then it would only be fair to divide the 23% we have come to here by maybe 10 times, if not more.  Include all the evidence, and the probability of guilt is minimal.

Moreover, include a more realistic expectation of the probability of getting the bomb into the baggage system at Malta, and the probability drops again to a minuscule number.

In sum, even without the new understanding born of Kerr's investigation, Megrahi should not have been found guilty. With it, his innocence is proven.

Thus the worst mass-murder in British history, the killing of 270 people, should be regarded as an unsolved crime.