Silence on the biggest outrage ever perpetrated in the UK is truly terrifying

[What follows is an item posted on this blog on this date in 2007:]

Lockerbie's indelible stain

What follows is a letter published in The Scotsman from Iain McKie, father of one of Scotland's recent miscarriage of justice victims. The comments at

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1655982007

are also well worth reading. [RB: Regrettably, the comments no longer appear on the newspaper's website.]

"As Lockerbie is once again thrust into the public conscience, I challenge everyone who aspires to a true and just Scotland to ensure that this tragedy is constantly at the forefront of his or her mind. 

“The dissembling dishonesty that cast a shadow over every aspect of the Lockerbie investigation has left an indelible stain on Scottish justice and remains an insult to the memory of the 270 souls who perished over 18 years ago. 

“It has corrupted a once respected system of jurisprudence forged over the centuries from the Scottish Enlightenment and demeans the worldwide legacy of Scots like David Hume and Robert Burns.

“We now live in a culture that favours political expediency, lying and mediocrity, over openness and accountability. As governments at home and abroad pledge to fight terrorism at every turn, their silence on the biggest outrage ever perpetrated in the UK is truly terrifying. 

"As Burns put it, 'There's nane ever fear'd that the truth should be heard, but they whom the truth would indite.' As a Scot, I believe it is my duty to fight for the truth about Lockerbie to be heard because that single injustice encapsulates everything that I loathe and despise about our otherwise great country."

The tortuous path towards a Lockerbie trial

[What follows is the text of a report published on this date in 1998 by The Associated Press news agency:]

Britain said Friday it would not negotiate Libya's demand that two suspects, if convicted in the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Scotland, serve their prison terms in Libya or the Netherlands.

A US-British proposal to try the men in the Netherlands under Scottish law calls for any sentences to be served in Britain.

“We are not in discussion with the Libyans about this and we are not negotiating on it,'' said Britain's UN ambassador, Jeremy Greenstock.

Two Libyan intelligence agents, Abdel Basset Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, are accused of planting the suitcase bomb that ripped apart the New York-bound Pan Am jet on Dec 21, 1988, killing 270 people in the air and on the ground at Lockerbie.

Aside from Britain's refusal to negotiate with Libya over jail sites, Greenstock assured that the suspects' religious rights would be respected and pledged that any witnesses brought in to testify would be immune from any charges related to the bombing while they were in the Netherlands.

“They have a guarantee of immunity in that sense,'' Greenstock said.

He spoke to reporters after briefing the Security Council on Britain's efforts to clarify certain legal and technical questions that have been posed by Libya regarding the US-British plan.

Greenstock said he had passed along to the UN chief a “full set of clarifications,'' earlier this week regarding various aspects of the proposed trial and procedures surrounding it.

For years, Britain and the United States demanded that the trial take place in the United States or Britain. Libya refused to hand the men over, fearing they would never get a fair trial in either country.

The United States and Britain agreed in August to hold the trial in the Netherlands, using Scottish judges and Scottish law, in an attempt to achieve justice in the 10-year-old case.

The Security Council backed the proposal by agreeing to suspend an international travel ban on Libya once the two suspects arrived in the Netherlands for trial. While giving its qualified acceptance of the proposal, Libya has sought several clarifications, one of which is the demand that any sentences be served in Dutch or Libyan prisons.

A Libyan legal team was in New York recently to discuss details of the proposal with the UN legal team.

[This report illustrates the problems that were encountered in the process of securing a Lockerbie trial. The United Kingdom government refused to negotiate directly with the Libyan government or the Libyan defence lawyers over the fine print of the US-UK proposal for a trial in the Netherlands. Matters that could have been clarified or settled within minutes if the parties had only sat round a table took weeks through an intermediary (Hans Corell, UN Under-Secretary-General and Legal Counsel). Here is what I have said before about the process:]

Although the British proposal was announced in late August 1998, it was not until 5 April 1999 that the two suspects actually arrived in the Netherlands for trial before the Scottish court.  Why the delay? The answer is that some of the fine print in the two documents was capable of being interpreted, and was in fact interpreted, by the Libyan defence team and the Libyan government as having been deliberately designed to create pitfalls to entrap them.  And since the governments of the United Kingdom and United States resolutely refused to have any direct contact with either the Libyan government or the Libyan defence lawyers, these concerns could be dealt with only through an intermediary, namely the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The Gauci brothers and reward money

[On this date in 2007, an item headed Now, there's a surprise! was published on this blog.  It reads as follows:]

Lucy Adams in The Herald of 15 October has a story to the effect that Richard Marquise, the FBI special agent who led the US joint task force on Lockerbie (and author of the book Scotbom: Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation, 2006, ISBN-13: 978-0875864495) remains of the view that Megrahi was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103 and regrets only that the will is lacking to bring other more senior Libyans to trial.

He confirms that there were discussions about about monetary payments to the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, but is unable to say whether any money was in fact paid over.

See "Ex-FBI agent: no will to keep up Lockerbie investigation".

[What Mr Marquise is quoted as saying in the report in The Herald is this:]

He said he was unaware of any financial discussions between the CIA and the Gaucis but confirmed the US government ran a rewards programme for information at the time. "I know that when PanAm 103 went down, the State Department had a new programme called rewards for justice," he said.

It was well advertised in the Middle East, but the Scottish legal system has no mechanisms whatsoever for paying people and no comparative witness protection programme.

"We talked about it and we talked about the Gaucis and whether they needed to be protected," said Mr Marquise. "I think someone spoke to them in 1991 and said if you feel threatened we will relocate you, but as far as I am aware no-one offered them millions of dollars. Tony Gauci told someone that Australia would be the only place he might like to go, but he was happy in Malta and did not want to leave his pigeons so the subject was dropped. Instead extra security, including a panic button, was added to his shop."

[This should be compared with what we now know from Inspector Harry Bell’s diary of his dealings with the Gauci brothers, Tony and Paul.  The following is from a report in the Maltese newspaper, The Times:]

A document seen by the Scottish [Criminal Cases] Review Commission which reviewed the Lockerbie trial proceedings shows that star witness Tony Gauci had shown an interest in receiving money. (...)

The document was a memorandum dated February 21, 1991, titled Security of Witness Anthony Gauci, Malta, that consisted of a report sent by investigator Harry Bell to Supt Gilchrist just after Mr Gauci identified Mr Megrahi from a photo-spread six days earlier.

The memorandum was never disclosed by the prosecution during the trial.

Mr Bell discusses the possibility of Mr Gauci’s inclusion in a witness protection programme. The final paragraph, however, makes reference to a different matter: “During recent meetings with Tony he has expressed an interest in receiving money. It would appear that he is aware of the US reward monies which have been reported in the press.” (...)

But the review commission also had access to a confidential report dated June 10, 1999 by British police officers drawing up an assessment for the possible inclusion of Tony Gauci in a witness protection programme administered by Strathclyde Police.

In the report Mr Gauci is described as being “somewhat frustrated that he will not be compensated in any financial way for his contribution to the case”.

Mr Gauci is described in the report as a “humble man who leads a very simple life which is firmly built on a strong sense of honesty and decency”.

But the officers also interviewed Mr Gauci’s brother Paul, in connection with his inclusion in the programme.

The following passage in the report details their conclusions in this respect: “It is apparent from speaking to him for any length of time that he has a clear desire to gain financial benefit from the position he and his brother are in relative to the case. As a consequence he exaggerates his own importance as a witness and clearly inflates the fears that he and his brother have...  Although demanding, Paul Gauci remains an asset to the case but will continue to explore any means he can to identify where financial advantage can be gained.”

The report makes it clear that until then the Gaucis had not received any money.

But the commission established that some time after the conclusion of Mr Megrahi’s appeal, Tony and Paul Gauci were each paid sums of money under the Rewards or Justice programme administered by the US State Department.

Of particular note is an entry in Mr Bell’s diary for September 28, 1989: “He (Agent Murray of the FBI) had authority to arrange unlimited money for Tony Gauci and relocation is available. Murray states that he could arrange $10,000 immediately.”

When interviewed by the commission, Mr Bell was asked if Agent Murray had ever met Mr Gauci, to which he replied “I cannot say that he did not do so”.

However, the commission also noted that FBI Agent Hosinski had met with Mr Gauci alone on October 2, 1989 but Mr Bell said he would “seriously doubt that any offer of money was made to Tony during that meeting”.

Minister sacked after promising Megrahi pressure investigation

[What follows is part of an item posted on this blog five years ago on this date. It follows on from the item that I posted yesterday:]

“Farcical scenes” as Baroness Kinnock axed from Lords post immediately after pledging to investigate Megrahi pressure

[This is the headline over a report on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads as follows.]

Labour Peer Baroness Kinnock has been unexpectedly replaced in her post as Europe minister, only hours after pledging to investigate whether Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was pressured into dropping his ongoing appeal against conviction before being transferred to Libya. 

The Scottish Government had denied any pressure had been applied, but the coincidental timing of the dropping of the appeal has been widely perceived as being linked to Megrahi’s transfer. 

In a debate in the House of Lords on Monday Lord Lester of Herne Hill said he was “very concerned about the circumstances in which Megrahi was persuaded to drop his appeal and to go and die in Libya.” 

“I saw him in Barlinnie myself. I would like to know, and I would like the Government to find out whether, when he was visited in prison, it was made clear to him that if he dropped his appeal he would be allowed to go and die in Libya, so that there would then be no appeal and the relatives—Dr Swire and the others—would never know the truth,” he said. 

“I would therefore like an assurance that there was no quid pro quo and no pressure put upon him. The Government may not know the answer, but they should find out. Was any pressure put on Megrahi that he would be sent to die in Libya only if he dropped the appeal?” 

Baroness Kinnock said in response that she was “not aware of what the answer might be,” but would ask for advice and respond. 

Within hours, Kinnock had been replaced amid what the Daily Mail described as “farcical scenes” as her replacement, junior minister Chris Bryant “broke with protocol and announced his new role on the Twitter website before Downing Street or the Foreign Office had a chance to issue a statement.” 

The Firm has asked the Prime Minister’s office to confirm whether Kinnock’s sacking is connected to responses to questions raised about Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. So far Baroness Kinnock’s removal has been dismissed as “housekeeping” by the Prime Minister’s spokesman.

[Later today I begin my trek to Middelpos and Gannaga Lodge (via Cape Town and Stellenbosch). For the next five-and-a-half months the blog will be updated, perhaps somewhat more intermittently, from South Africa.]

A denial of justice and Megrahi not proved to be guilty, says English QC

[The following are extracts from an item headed Megrahi release and the House of Lords which was posted on this blog on this date five years ago:]

Two short debates were held yesterday in the House of Lords on matters related to the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Megrahi.

The first arose out of a question asked by Lord Pannick QC: "To ask Her Majesty’s Government why they did not make representations to the Scottish Secretary for Justice on whether Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi should be released from prison on compassionate grounds." The answer and the ensuing interchanges can be read here. One exchange reads as follows:

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, I should declare a professional interest as the former co-counsel for Mr al-Megrahi in his unsuccessful application to the European Court of Human Rights. In the interests of justice and for the sake of the Lockerbie families, would the Government now seek to persuade the Scottish Executive to set up a full judicial inquiry into the matters raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and the UN observer, Professor Köchler, about a possible miscarriage of justice and abuses in the investigation, prosecution and trial?

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead: My Lords, as yet the British Government have made no decisions on these matters. The Lockerbie investigation took place and the result was that al-Megrahi was imprisoned in Scotland under that legal system. That remains the case and nothing can change in terms of what is possible from the investigation. The Libyans paid substantial compensation to the Lockerbie victims, but we accept that that is no justification.

The second debate arose out of the repetition in the Lords of the statement that had earlier been made in the Commons by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The statement and the debate to which it gave rise can be read here. One exchange reads as follows:

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, as I mentioned at Questions, I disclose my professional interest in having acted as co-counsel in the claim by Mr Megrahi to the European Court of Human Rights, which got nowhere. Since then I have had no professional interest in the case. However, in the work that I did on it, which lasted several weeks, I went through the whole of the transcripts and read the appellate judgment, and I have to say that I came to the conclusion, entirely objectively and working with Scottish counsel, that there had been a denial of justice and that Mr Megrahi had not been proved to be guilty. When I then read the summary of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission report, which my noble friend referred to just now, and realised that it had come to the same conclusion, I was very disturbed.

I shall deal with a couple of points in addition to those that have been made by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. First, will the Government please give an assurance that they will consent to the publication of the whole report? The commission does not have the power to do so itself. If the Scottish Executive or Scottish Parliament ask them to, will the Government consent to the publication of all the report so that we can see what its grounds are for believing that there may have been a miscarriage of justice?

Secondly, I am very concerned about the circumstances in which Megrahi was persuaded to drop his appeal and to go and die in Libya. I saw him in Barlinnie myself. I would like to know, and I would like the Government to find out whether, when he was visited in prison, it was made clear to him that if he dropped his appeal he would be allowed to go and die in Libya, so that there would then be no appeal and the relatives—Dr Swire and the others—would never know the truth. That is very important to them, and they have written to me about it. I would therefore like an assurance that there was no quid pro quo and no pressure put upon him. The Government may not know the answer, but they should find out. Was any pressure put on Megrahi that he would be sent to die in Libya only if he dropped the appeal?

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead: On the last point, I am not aware of what the answer might be. We will ask for some advice on whether anyone has been asking those questions and, if so, I will respond to the question that the noble Lord raises.

On the issue of an independent inquiry, I have to keep repeating that is not really for us to say whether that will happen.

The run-up to Megrahi's first appeal

[On this date in 2001, various news agencies were reporting on the preliminary hearing due to be held later that week at Camp Zeist in connection with Abdelbaset Megrahi’s appeal against his conviction in January that year. What follows is a digest of these reports, taken from The Pan Am 103 Crash Website which was run by Safia Aoude:]

Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi is due to appear before a Scottish appeals court in the Netherlands Monday to try to overturn a life sentence for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The preliminary hearing at Camp Zeist in the central Netherlands will deal solely with administrative matters before the actual start of the appeal in January or February. "It is a hearing to tie up loose ends before trial," said Paul Geoghan, a spokesman for the court. Megrahi, who has insisted throughout the trial he had nothing to do with the attack, logdged his appeal in February and a Scottish high court accepted the appeal in August. The grounds on which Megrahi is appealing are not known and will not be dealt with at Monday's hearing, according to legal experts at the university of Glasgow school of law.

Defence lawyer Alistair Duff told AFP his client would be present at the preliminary hearing but also said it would be purely procedural. "The judges may ask for written submissions because they may want to know which piece of evidence we intend to direct to in our arguments," he said. In Scottish court, submissions are usually done orally. The appeals chamber will consist of five judges. Although Duff would not comment on the grounds of the appeal, it is believed the defence will challenge evidence which came from Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper in Malta, who identified Megrahi as a man who bought clothes from his store shortly before the bombing. The reliability of Gauci's evidence was called into question during the trial.

The defence is also expected to question wether the trial judges were entitled to decide that Megrahi was the man who bought the clothes. In September, Britain's Daily Mirror reported that the bomb that blew up the Boeing 747 could have been put on board in London. If confirmed, the report would destroy a key plank in the conviction of Megrahi. The prosecution case hinges on the suitcase containing the bomb having been loaded in Frankfurt, Germany after being sent there via an Air Malta flight from Valetta by Megrahi. When Megrahi was convicted [and sentenced to] to life imprisonment in January, the verdict did not lay to rest the many unanswered questions of the families of the Lockerbie victims. The court accepted the prosecution's theory that Libya was behind the bombing, rejecting another scenario put forward that Iran, Syria and the Palestinian group FPLP-CG carried out the attack to avenge an Iranian aircraft accidentally shot down by an American missile in July 1988.

The families of the victims of the bombing have called repeatedly for a full public inquiry by the British government into the case. "What we are after is the whole truth," Jim Swire, a British doctor whose 23-year-old daughter Flora was killed in the tragedy, told GMTV television in August. Relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing are travelling to Holland for the first stage of the appeal of the Libyan convicted of the atrocity. Two British fathers who lost their daughters in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 were today making the journey to Holland to be at the appeal hearing. Dr Jim Swire and the Rev John Mosey were at Camp Zeist for virtually every day of 49-year-old Al Megrahi's trial which began last May and ended in January this year.

Mr Mosey, who lost his 19-year-old daughter Helga in the bombing, said: "We feel it's important that someone from the families is there to see that justice is done." Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora, 23, was killed, said: "We followed the whole of the trial so it makes sense to follow this stage as well." Dr Swire also revealed how he and other members of the UK Families Flight 103 pressed Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for a full inquiry into the tragedy at a recent meeting. He said: "We intimated that in our view it's extremely urgent to have an inquiry because Lockerbie was always an avoidable tragedy."

The hearing tomorrow before five Scottish judges - Lords Cullen, Kirkwood, MacFadyen, Nimmo-Smith and McEwan - will consider various procedural and administrative matters. The hearing is expected to last a day and to set the date for the start of the appeal which is likely to be early next year. The full grounds of Al Megrahi's appeal have not yet been made public.

[The appeal was heard early the following year and dismissed on 14 March 2002. An account of the reasons for the failure of the appeal (primarily the astonishing failure by Megrahi’s legal team to argue the correct grounds) can be read here.]

Former FBI and CIA officers at odds over Lockerbie/Pan Am 103 bombing

[This is the headline over a report published today on the website of the news agency Aurora News. It reads as follows:]

An FBI agent who led the US investigation into the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 has denied claims made by a former CIA officer who told Aurora News that FBI investigators did not read vital US intelligence material related to the attack.

Robert Baer, a retired CIA Officer who was based in the Middle East, had said, “I’ve been having exchanges with the FBI Investigators and they came right out and said they didn’t read the intelligence.

“I just find that extraordinary and then later for them to comment on the intelligence and say it’s no good; it’s amazing,” Baer said.

CIA OFFICER’S COMMENTS DISMISSED

But Richard Marquise, who led the FBI investigation into the attack, dismissed Baer’s claim.

“Mr Baer had no role in the investigation and anything he knows or claims to know is either hearsay or speculation,” Marquise told Aurora News.

“I find [Baer’s claims] interesting because he has previously said that the CIA did not pass us all the information, something I doubt he would be in a position to know,” Marquise added. “I agree that there were a handful of FBI personnel (agents and analysts) who had access to all the intelligence that was passed and it may have been possible that some FBI agents who played a minor role in the case may not have seen it.”

QUESTIONS REMAIN OVER SAFETY OF MEGRAHI CONVICTION

For years controversy has surrounded the case following the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al Megrahi in January 2001. Campaigners, including some relatives of victims of Pan Am 103, believe Megrahi was wrongly convicted and are continuing to call for a public inquiry into the events leading to the bombing.

Baer has previously claimed US intelligence pointed to Iran – not Libya – as the source of the attack and was carried it out in retaliation for the shooting down, five months previously, of Iran Air Flight 655 by the American warship the USS Vincennes. Baer told said that a convincing case implicating Libya was still to be made.

“Richard Marquise has taken a moral position on the case,” Baer said. “I can still be convinced the Libyans did it, but I still need to be convinced of that.”

Robert Black, Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, has spent more than two decades studying the case.

“I’d be absolutely amazed if the FBI didn’t consider the intelligence material, if only to reject it as unreliable or unusable as evidence in judicial proceedings,” Black said.

“Indeed, there’s clear evidence that they did make use of it. A key prosecution witness, Majid Giaka, was a CIA asset and was in a Department of Justice witness protection programme,” Black added. “

“The FBI falls under the Department of Justice. And Giaka was a crucial witness in the Washington DC grand jury hearing that led to the US indictment against Megrahi and Fhimah,” Black said.

Confidence that Megrahi appeal would succeed

[Around this time seven years ago, preliminary steps were being taken in court in relation to the appeal that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had ruled should be allowed in the Megrahi case. What follows is the text of an article published in The Jerusalem Post on 10 October 2007 and referred to on this blog:]

The conviction of Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 - the deadliest terrorist attack ever mounted in the UK - will be overturned in an appeals process that begins with a procedural hearing on Thursday and gets under way in earnest next year, several leading experts closely connected to the case have told The Jerusalem Post.

Megrahi, who was jailed for murder in 2001, is the only man ever convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, in which 259 passengers and crew, and 11 people on the ground, lost their lives. A second Libyan defendant, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was acquitted.

Libya, which was held responsible for the attack, has paid compensation to victims' families, but never formally accepted responsibility. Megrahi, who has always denied involvement, lost an appeal against his conviction in 2002, and was only given leave to mount a second appeal in June.

A Scottish legal review commission found six potential grounds for a miscarriage of justice, including flaws in the process by which he was identified and, reportedly, the non-disclosure of a classified report on the timer purportedly used in the bomb. The commission referred the case back to the Scottish courts.

The overturning of Megrahi's conviction could revive the bombing investigators' original theory, widely believed by many of those close to the case, that Lockerbie was not a Libyan plot at all, but was, rather, carried out by Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, on behalf of Iran. Among the leading figures who publicly voiced this assertion was then trade minister Ariel Sharon, who told a press conference in Madrid seven weeks after the bombing, "Israel believes it was Ahmed Jibril."

Investigators initially stated that the Pan Am jumbo jet, which was blown up 38 minutes into its journey from London to New York, was destroyed by a device featuring an air pressure switch similar to several devices seized by German police when they arrested a PFLP-GC cell a few weeks before the bombing. But the subsequent purported linking of Megrahi to items in the suitcase containing the bomb, and the discovery at the crash site of a fragment of a different timing device, purportedly traced to Libya, saw the investigation change course dramatically.

The identification of Megrahi - by a Maltese shopkeeper named Tony Gauci, who testified to having sold Megrahi items found in the suitcase - and the provenance of the "Libyan" timer have been consistently disputed by the defense.

In separate telephone interviews in the last few days, the spokesman for the Lockerbie victims' families, the UN's observer on the case and the Scottish law professor who formulated the legal framework under which Megrahi was tried have all told the Post they are convinced the conviction will be overturned.

The appeals process begins on Thursday with a procedural hearing, at which a timetable will likely be set for the full appeal next year. Megrahi is not expected to attend Thursday's hearing.

Families' spokesman Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, said he was certain that the new evidence would see Megrahi released, but that he feared it would be "convenient" for the appeals court to free the Libyan on "some semi-technical" count - "something along the lines of the prosecution having failed to give the defense access to all the evidence" - without the full truth ever coming out. Swire said he feared this full truth included "the deliberate fabrication of evidence" such as the timer fragment, in order to frame Megrahi and render Libya as the "perfect scapegoat" for Lockerbie.

Hans Koechler, appointed as an "international observer" to the trial by the UN Security Council on the nomination of then secretary-general Kofi Annan, told the Post: "They'll cancel the judgement. The appeal court will decide that a miscarriage of justice has occurred, because of the unreliability of Tony Gauci's evidence."

And Robert Black, the emeritus professor of law at the University of Edinburgh who formulated the complex legal mechanism that facilitated the original trial before Scottish judges in the Netherlands, said the same thing. "Megrahi will go free. He should never have been convicted. The evidence does not show him to have had anything to do with [the Lockerbie bombing]."

Libya's motivation in ordering the attack is said to have included a desire for revenge on the part of Col. Gaddafi for a series of confrontations with the US, including a military strike in 1986 in which his daughter was killed.

Koechler did not posit an alternative theory, but Swire and Black both said they were convinced that the PFLP-GC was to blame, and that it carried out the attack on behalf of Iran. "The Iranians had told the world that they would seek revenge for the Vincennes attack," said Swire, a reference to the shooting down by the US Navy's guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes of an Iran Air civilian flight in July 1988, in which 290 passengers and crew were killed. Iran said the attack was deliberate; the US said it had mistaken the plane for a fighter jet.

The Iranians "had colluded in the past with the PFLP-GC under Jibril, and now they colluded again," said Swire, adding: "The PFLP-GC was the 'sensible choice' because, as has been established, it maintained a workshop on the outskirts of Damascus that manufactured timing devices" involving an air-pressure switch for bombs to detonate aboard airplanes.

Both Swire and Black said the case had been skewed because of the timing of the Lockerbie investigation, which played out as the first Gulf War was developing. The US-led coalition, gearing up to take on Saddam Hussein, needed Syria to stay out of the conflict, said Swire, and also did not want to face "hordes of Iranian foot soldiers swarming across the border to attack it. So it was not worth irritating Iran and Syria."

Added Black: "The PFLP-GC was funded and protected by Syria... And with the unfolding of Operation Desert Storm... the coalition needed at least the benevolent neutrality of Syria."

Black added: "It was never anticipated that Libya would surrender the two suspects for trial. The thinking was, 'We'll just generally blame the Libyans.'"

Black said he was scandalized by the cover-up. It was terrible that "national governments would get up to this kind of thing," he said. But as a "parochial Scottish lawyer," he went on, he was most pained "that the criminal justice system in my country lent itself to this."

Koechler is calling for a new investigation into the bombing, without the involvement of the US, UK or Libya, but he said he feared "it will not happen."

MacAskill damaging record at Justice and Policing but right on Megrahi

[This is the headline over an article published today on the For Argyll website.  It reads in part:]

Beleaguered Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, has made an almighty mess of too much at the Justice department to survive – although the concentrated attack on his performance has not come when it should – at the point where he persisted against all reason and evidence in trying to remove from Scots law the requirement for prosecution to present corroboratory evidence. (...)

Some dimwit MSPs even did what they were told and voted for this proposal in the Scottish parliament, while simultaneously throwing up their hands in public at the irresponsible horror of if. It was only the outrage of the public that gave pause to the rampant Justice Secretary, anxious to do his bit for the independence vote in attracting women voters who were said to favour the move. The matter is not necessarily concluded either, simply postponed until people stop watching. (...)

It is unfair though, that Mr MacAskill, is vilified for releasing the dubiously convicted and cancer striken Lockerbie bomber, Ali Al Megrahi, to return to die with his family in Libya.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the bombing of the Pan Am plane and has been a doughty campaigner for those guilty to be brought to justice. He came to find Megrahi an innocent man and finally regarded him as a friend.

What MacAskill had to confront was the fact of Megrahi’s conviction.

He chose to act on the basis of growing uncertainty on the rightness of that conviction and on the grounds of common humanity. Whatever political chicanery was behind all of this and whatever its origin, we may never know – but the right decision was made and this is one for which the Justice Secretary ought not to be hounded.