Letter from Edwin Bollier to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

[What follows is the text of an open letter sent today to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:]

Zurich / Switzerland, 11th November 2014

Reference: The Scottish 'Lockerbie Fraud'

Your Excellency,

With this orientation letter I would like to ask you to recall the 270 victims of the Lockerbie tragedy (1988) before the coming 26th anniversary and help to clarify the demonstrably false decision of Scottish Justice by means of a supplementary investigation. As you surely know, UN Commissioner for Namibia Bernt CARLSSON was also among the 270 victims.

The UN, as an involved party in the “Lockerbie saga” - or alternatively in connection with the 8-year, fatally affected UN sanctions against the State of Libya - has the obligation to help clarify an obviously politically motivated fraud perpetrated against the then Gaddafi regime in Libya and other aggrieved parties.

My name is Edwin Bollier. I am owner of MEBO AG in Zurich, Switzerland. After a trial in the years 2000/01 under Scottish jurisdiction, Edwin Bollier and MEBO AG were specified in the “Lockerbie trial” as the supplier of a MST-13 timer.

According to a legally valid decision, to this day it is said that an MST-13 timer activated the explosive charge (IED) so that the aircraft (Pan Am 103) crashed over Lockerbie. Accordingly, a Libyan official, Mr al-Megrahi, and Libya were held responsible for the attack, and Mr al-Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment. Mr al- Megrahi died on 20 May 2012.

According to a statement by Professor Dr Hans Köchler, international observer appointed by the United Nations to the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands (2000-2002), Prof Köchler also condemned during a conference at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo: “the Lockerbie process of that Scottish trial as inconsistent, irrational and politically motivated”.

After an appeal to the 'Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission' (SCCRC), on 28 June 2007 the SCCRC granted a new appeal due to potential miscarriage of justice in 6 points.

Unfortunately, the appeal was suspended under duress for obviously politically motivated reasons. Due to new forensic and technical evidence and investigations, today it can be 100% clarified whether the decisive piece of evidence stemmed from an MST-13 timer fragment of a timer delivered to Libya or not. For 3 years, Edwin Bollier and MEBO AG have been demanding an explanation in this matter from the Swiss justice system after a criminal complaint against a known and unknown government employee.

Due to a legal delay and other questionable opportunities, a criminal investigation which would be relevant for ascertaining the truth remains suspended...

Due to a court decision by the Swiss Federal Tribunal, a claim for damages submitted by Edwin Bollier and MEBO AG was rejected on 1 May 2014 as forfeited [RB: time-barred]; therefore the decision was appealed to the European Court of Justice on 11 November 2014.

It is incomprehensible that in one of the greatest criminal cases in history, the Swiss and Scottish justice system want to block pieces of evidence through a clarifying forensic investigation of the central MST-13 timer according to the latest methods by all possible means! Should the truth not be desired due to anticipated claims for damages, amounting to billions of US dollars, due to potential evidence of fraud?

It would be in the interest of the surviving dependants of the victims of Pan Am 103, the financially damaged parties and the UN’s world public reputation that you, Mr. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN, would stand up for ascertaining the truth by means of new facts and the UN would thereby call on its two members, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, to implement the forensic investigation.

Your Excellency,

We trust that you will use your authority to protect the UN and its integrity against conceivable evidence of fraud and to act in such a manner that the truth and only the truth comes to light. Thank you very much!

Yours respectfully,

Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier & MEBO AG >>> Webpage: www.lockerbie.ch

His guilt is doubted by ... experts who must be taken seriously

[What follows is the text beneath one of the photographs (number 21 out of 25) accompanying an article published yesterday on the Swiss Bluewin news website:]

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi aus Libyen wurde 2001 wegen des Bombenanschlags auf Pan Am Flug 103 über Lockerbie, Schottland, zu lebenslanger Haft verurteilt. 2009 wurde unheilbarer Prostatakrebs bei ihm diagnostiziert und er wurde in seine Heimat entlassen. Dort starb er drei Jahre später. Seine Schuld wird bis heute von vielen, auch ernst zu nehmenden Experten, bezweifelt.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi from Libya was sentenced in 2001 to life imprisonment for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In 2009 he was was diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer and he was discharged to his home. He died there three years later. To this day his guilt is doubted by many, including experts who must be taken seriously.

[Yet another sign perhaps that Justice for Megrahi is getting somewhere, internationally at least.]

A bizarre trial ... which did inestimable harm to the reputation of Scottish justice

[What follows is a letter from Dr Jim Swire published today on the website of The Telegraph and presumably due to appear in tomorrow’s print edition:]

The fascinating release today of recorded conversations between Margaret Thatcher while prime minister and President Ronald Reagan, dating from the 1983 American invasion of Grenada, may give hope of future penetration of the mysteries which still obscure the truth over Britain’s biggest ever loss of life to terrorism: the Lockerbie disaster of December 1988, when 270 innocent lives were lost, including that of my daughter Flora, aged 23.

Lady Thatcher recorded in The Downing Street Years (1993) that Reagan’s precipitate action over Grenada made Britain look impotent, and her references to previous exchanges between No 10 and the White House confirm this impotence.

In the case of Lockerbie, the target had been specifically American, but the plane had been loaded with the bomb at our Heathrow airport. The majority of deaths were American citizens, but upwards of 30 were British.

As the “management” of the Lockerbie disaster unfolded, there were again rumours of telephone exchanges between Downing Street and Washington, apparently agreeing to downplay the origins and implications of the disaster.

A bizarre trial of two accused Libyans followed in Holland, which did inestimable harm to the reputation of Scottish justice, through the gymnastics required to achieve a guilty verdict in the absence of trustworthy evidence.

To this has been added a sorry tale of buck-passing and foot-dragging between the English, the Scots and the US authorities, through all the intervening years. This involved the repeated use of public-interest immunity certificates denying documents to the Libyans’ defence team, and of course to us, the British relatives of the dead.

In The Downing Street Years Lady Thatcher dealt with the fall-out that followed her assistance to President Reagan in arranging the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. She wrote: “The much vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place.” Who then was really responsible for Lockerbie?

Her book was published two years after the Libyans had simultaneously been indicted by Britain and America over the execution of the Lockerbie atrocity. I wrote to ask Lady Thatcher for an explanation, and a reply dated December 3 1993 said:

“Thank you for your letter about the Libyan raid. As you know in the book I went into some detail on this matter and I have tried to indicate the nature of the decision which took place. I don’t think I can add anything useful to that account.

“May I say how much I have thought of the parents and relatives of all those killed in the Lockerbie disaster. The fact that the terrorists responsible have not been brought to justice has added to your unhappiness and anxiety. It is a cause of great concern to me too.

“I most earnestly hope that the matter will be resolved and soon.”

Such are the emollients from the secret world. Her wish for prompt resolution could have been met at any time by her successors in office, all of whom have refused a full inquiry.

We understand that, despite current moves to reduce the influence of the European Convention on Human Rights currently enshrined in UK law, citizens still have the right to share the Government’s knowledge concerning who really killed their families and why those families were not protected.

We now know that Heathrow airside was broken into 16 hours before Lockerbie, but that, far from stopping all outgoing flights after that discovery till airside had been thoroughly searched, the airport took no action. This break-in was known to the Metropolitan Police within days and to the Scots within a month, but was concealed entirely from us, and from the court in Holland 10 years later.

The disaster appears to have been eminently preventable. Why did that prevention so spectacularly fail?

Protection of citizens against terrorism is still trumpeted as one of Government’s prime responsibilities. We are not alone in wondering just why the Lockerbie flight simply was not protected despite all the warnings received beforehand.

[The first comment published beneath the letter reads as follows:]

I am sorry to say that I think it unlikely this country will ever conduct a full and open enquiry into that dreadful event.

However, in passing I'm sure I'm not alone in admiring, and saluting, Dr Swire's tireless efforts to get at the truth. He is a shining example to us all in that he has turned a tragic loss into a worthwhile crusade to uncover the truth. May he find it soon.

The progress of Justice for Megrahi's Scottish Parliament petition

What follows is taken from an item posted on this blog on this date in 2010:

Media coverage of Justice for Megrahi petition hearing

[The best coverage of yesterday's hearing before the Holyrood Public Petitions Committee is to be found in The Times. It can be read -- but only by subscribers -- here. The report reads in part:]

The Scottish legal establishment was accused at a Holyrood committee yesterday of putting obstacles in the way of an independent inquiry into the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber.

The claim was made by Canon Patrick Keegans, who was the local Catholic priest in Lockerbie at the time of the disaster in December 1988.

He was giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s petitions committee in support of a 1600-signature petition organised by the Justice for Megrahi (JFM) campaign calling on the Scottish government to set up an inquiry.

Members of the group told MSPs a full independent inquiry was the only way to restore the reputation of the Scottish legal system. (...)

Canon Keegans told MSPs on the committee: “People have never found a full answer to Lockerbie and this will always be a source of distress.”

Canon Keegans, who lived in Sherwood Crescent, part of which was obliterated by falling debris from the aircraft said the case was about the “redemption of the Scottish justice system”.

He added: “We have been denied justice from the very beginning. I am very doubtful about the conviction of al-Megrahi. While doubt remains the victims are denied justice. What we need is the truth about Lockerbie.

He added: “Obstacles have been put in our way by the Crown Office and by the judiciary. There seems to be a desire to put a lid on this and keep it there.

“We need truth and we need justice to be at peace. Otherwise we are back in December 1988 in the darkness.”

Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, said the reputation of Scottish justice had been “shot to pieces”.

He said only an impartial inquiry could rebuild that reputation. Swire said the original criminal investigation was run by Scottish police forces and involved Scottish lawyers.

They were, he added, two obvious groups who might be interested in protecting their reputations.

“Speaking as a relative who has been looking for the truth for 22 years I think it would be vital that any inquiry is seen to be led impartially. Such an inquiry would be of little value if it was deemed to be in any way limited by groups involved in the trial.”

Mr Swire said an inquiry was the only way “we will be able to heal the terrible wounds done to our justice system”.

Professor Robert Black, emeritus professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University, said: “The fact of the conviction is being used as an excuse for not holding a wide ranging inquiry.”

He added: “We are asking the Scottish government to set up an inquiry. The government cannot deny there is domestic and international concern. We are asking them to investigate these concerns.”

Both First Minister Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, have said they have confidence in the conviction of al-Megrahi.

After hearing from the campaigners, the committee agreed to write to the Scottish government asking them to respond to the request for an independent inquiry.

The petition has already attracted the support of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The progress of Justice for Megrahi’s petition to the Scottish Parliament from summer 2010 up to the present day can be followed here.

The question of guilt has never been resolved

[What follows are excerpts from an article headlined Wat kunnen resten MH17 vertellen? (“What can the remains of MH17 disclose?”) published yesterday on the Dutch website Nieuwsuur website:]

Bijna vier maanden na de ramp liggen de brokstukken van rampvlucht MH17 nog verspreid op de crashsite in Oost-Oekraïne. De Onderzoeksraad voor Veiligheid wil op korte termijn met de berging beginnen en in Nederland een reconstructie maken van het vliegtuigwrak. Wat kan zo'n reconstructie zeggen over de oorzaak? (...)

Het is de vraag of een reconstructie nieuw licht kan schijnen op de oorzaak van het neerstorten van MH17. In het verleden zijn twee keer eerder reconstructies van vliegrampen gemaakt: de Lockerbie-ramp en het ongeluk met TWA-vlucht 800. Die konden in beide gevallen uitsluitsel geven over de oorzaak.

Bij het Schotse plaatsje Lockerbie kwam in 1988 een toestel van de Amerikaanse luchtvaartmaatschappij PanAm neer. Uit de reconstructie van het ongeluk bleek dat een bom in het bagageruim de oorzaak van de crash was. Maar de schuldvraag is nooit opgelost. De enige die voor de aanslag is veroordeeld is de Libische oud-spion Megrahi. Hij had geregeld dat er een koffer met een bom aan boord kwam.

Almost four months after the disaster the debris of disaster flight MH17 is still scattered at the crash site in eastern Ukraine. The [Dutch] Investigation Safety Board wants to start the recovery in the short term and make a reconstruction in the Netherlands of the wreck. What can such a reconstruction say about the cause? (...)

The question is whether a reconstruction can shed new light on the cause of the crash of MH17. Twice in the past reconstructions of aviation disasters have been made: the Lockerbie disaster and the accident involving TWA flight 800. In both cases they provided information about the cause.

In the Scottish town of Lockerbie a plane of the US airline Pan Am came down in 1988. The reconstruction of the accident revealed that a bomb in the luggage hold was the cause of the crash. But the question of guilt has never been resolved. The only person convicted of the attack was the Libyan former spy Megrahi. He had arranged that a suitcase with a bomb was on board.

[RB: It is interesting that the article states that the question of guilt has never been resolved. Perhaps Justice for Megrahi is getting somewhere, internationally at least.]

Will justice be served?

[On this date in 2008 the following item from The Tripoli Post appeared on this blog:]

Will Justice be Served? Will Al-Megrahi be Released from Prison Soon?

By Zainab Al-Arabi

Yes I know that this week the eyes and ears of the world are concentrated on America and the new President-elect, Barack Obama; that the United Nations and various human rights organisations are calling for help concerning the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But my thoughts are with Abdul Basit Al-Megarhi, the Libyan man wrongly convicted of mass murder in the Lockerbie case, who has been in prison since 1999.

The news that he has been diagnosed with advanced-stage prostate cancer has stunned many Libyans. For years his appeals for a re-examination of the evidence against him had been refused, and only last year was this even considered a possibility.

The case for a re-trial is strongly put forward by many experts in the field of law, perhaps the most eminent of whom is Professor Robert Black (born and raised in Lockerbie, Scotland). Often referred to as the architect of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, he has been sceptical of the grounds on which the court delivered its sentence for years.

Based on his assessment of the evidence and the witnesses, he is convinced that a gross miscarriage of justice has taken place. This seemed to be more evident when a British court ruled in early 2008, in answer to a request by the Appeals Court in October, 2007, that certain documents deliberately withheld from Al-Megarhi’s defence lawyers by the prosecution, could not be released due to reasons of ‘National Security’.

Finally in October 2008, the defence lawyers request for a hearing was approved. The next hearing in the High Court in Edinburgh is planned to take place on the 21st of November 2008. On the question of whether Al-Megarhi has the right to be released on bail while his case is under review by the Scottish court, Professor Black (on his website) answers,” yes.

What matters is whether the grounds of appeal (1) if successful, would lead to the conviction being quashed and (2) are arguable, ie not on the face of it doomed to failure. These tests are clearly satisfied in cases, such as Abdelbaset Megrahi’s, where an independent expert body (the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) has referred the case to the Criminal Appeal Court on the ground that the conviction may have amounted to a miscarriage of justice.”

Al-Megarhi has requested that the privacy of his family be respected, and that he would prefer to undergo medical treatment in Scotland if exonerated. The Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs has reportedly also informed Libya on the 25th of October that it would welcome Al-Megarhi for medical treatment on his release.

The Swiss company, Mebo Ltd, the makers of the device allegedly used in the Lockerbie bombing, have their own ‘Lockerbie’ website in which they call Al-Megarhi the ‘271st Lockerbie victim’.

Their claim is that the evidence produced by the prosecution was misleading and false.

In his most recent comment on the subject, The Scotsman reported on 7 July 2007 that the United Nations observer Dr Hans Köchler has written to Mr Salmond and Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary of Scotland, calling for experts from countries not involved in the case to investigate the way the investigation was conducted by UK and US authorities.

In his letter, Dr Köchler called for a full and independent public inquiry of the Lockerbie case and its handling by the Scottish judiciary as well as the British and US political and intelligence establishments.

He also called for the SCCRC’s full report to be made public. Although he was included in talks regarding prisoner exchange between Libya and Britain, Al-Megarhi has refused to leave his prison in Scotland until his innocence was proven.

According to Jim Swire, spokesman for the UK Family Group, whose daughter was among the victims of the Lockerbie tragedy, stated that the families of the UK victims agreed that Al-Megarhi should be released for compassionate reasons whatever the outcome of SCCRC hearing.

Even though they might not all be convinced of his innocence, they saw no reason to keep a dying man in prison far from his country and family.

Dr Swire has been to Libya on several occasions and has stated that he is not convinced of the court’s sentencing. He has continued to press the British government for a new investigation. Will justice be served?

The Lumpert affair

[In autumn 2007 the Ulrich Lumpert story was still bubbling quietly away. What follows is an article by Olivier Schmidt published on 7 November 2007 on the Nachrichten Heute website:]

On 21 December 1988, a MST-13 timer-switch manufactured by the Zurich-based company MEBO detonated the cassette bomb which destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people. In mid-August, Ulrich Lumpert, a Swiss engineer and former MEBO employee, walked into a Zurich police station and asked to swear an affidavit before a notary confessing that he had lied about the specific MST-13 timer, fragments of which the prosecution claimed had been found at the Lockerbie crash site. 

Lumpert's testimony was crucial to implicating Libya in the conspiracy, which is exactly what the intelligence and military establishment in Washington wanted. Gray-suited officials speaking on behalf of various branches of the Reagan administration claimed Lockerbie was "an act of revenge" for the USAF bombing of Tripoli two years earlier. And former Libyan agent Abdulbaset al-Megrahi was the "scapegoat", sentenced to life by a Scottish court during the 2001 trial at Camp Zeist in Holland. He is currently serving his sentence at Greenock Prison, near Glasgow, in Scotland.

Mr Lumpert's former boss, Swiss businessman Edwin Bollier, supports the allegation. He has admitted that his company, MEBO, had sold a batch of twenty MST-13 timers to Libya in 1986. When FBI and Scottish detectives showed him a "fuzzy photograph" of the timer, which they claimed was found on the hillside and used to detonate the bomb in the forward luggage hold of Flight 103 from Heathrow to JFK, he confirmed that the fragments "looked as though they came from one of our timers". 

Ten years after the incident, he travelled to Dumfries, in Scotland, after finally being given permission to actually see the pieces of the badly burned brown circuit board, which matched MEBO's prototype. However, when the MST-13 went into production, the color of the circuit boards was changed to green, and the batch sold to the Libyans had green circuit boards, not brown, according to Mr Bollier.

At the trial in Camp Zeist, the 70-year-old businessman appeared for the defense, and claims the details about the circuit-board were ignored. [RB: Mr Bollier was in fact a prosecution witness.] The pieces which he asked to see again in court "were practically carbonized [and] they had been tampered with" since he had visited Dumfries. 

The pieces had been in the possession of FBI forensic laboratories which were later thoroughly discredited. Last June, this and other information resulted in the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) ruling that there was enough "new" evidence -- not including Lumpert's confession -- to suggest there had been a miscarriage of justice. Later this month, the Scottish Court of Appeal in Edinburgh will hear al-Megrahi's appeal against what is now regarded as a "deeply flawed" verdict.

MEBO went bankrupt after the Lockerbie incident. Threatened with a multi-million lawsuit by Pan Am, the company rapidly lost business, including a major contract to supply the German Kriminalpolizei (CID) and the Bundesgrenzshutz (Federal Border Police) with communications equipment.

COMMENT

It may finally be shown that the Libyan connection was part of a US/UK plot to demonize Kadaffi, which Intelligence has always maintained; see chapter 5, "The Trumped-Up Proof of Libyan Terrorism", in Olivier Schmidt, The Intelligence Files, 2005, Clarity Press. 

If this can be shown along with the fact that those responsible for the bombing were closer to the Syrian regime than Tripoli, Mr Bollier will expect to be financial compensated for the international, state-sponsored conspiracy. Unlike the financial compensation and apologies Abdulbaset al-Megrahi can expect if his appeal is successful, an unpublicized out-of-court settlement is likely in Mr Bollier's case. And he'll be satisfied with having cleared his name and that of the company he founded.

UKIP, Libya and Gaddafi

[The following are excerpts from a report published in today’s edition of the Daily Mail:]

Colonel Gaddafi was good for immigration control as he helped stop North Africans coming to Britain, Ukip candidate Mark Reckless has said.

The former MP, who defected from the Tories triggering the by-election in Rochester, said the former Libyan leader had stopped boats taking migrants across the Mediterranean to Italy.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage agreed with the comments and said the dictator, accused of killing hundreds of his own people, brought ‘stability’ to the country. He claimed helping remove Gaddafi was one of David Cameron’s biggest mistakes.

At a rally in the Kent constituency, Mr Reckless said: ‘Whatever people say about Gaddafi, one thing is he didn’t allow those boats to come across.

‘He had an agreement with Italy that stopped it. Since he’s gone we’ve no idea what’s going on in Libya, it’s too dangerous for anyone to go there.’

Asked if he agreed, Mr Farage replied: ‘Of course.’ The Ukip leader insisted that the ‘bad guys’ were being replaced by ‘even worse guys’ and said action in Libya had been Mr Cameron’s biggest mistakes.

He added: ‘We bombed them, that’s what we did. That’s how this government helped Libya. It got rid of somebody, albeit an Arab nationalist dictator, who actually gave a level of stability to the area.’ (...)

Colonel Gaddafi died after the UN security council approved bombing raids led by Britain, France and the U.S. designed to assist rebel militias battling against forces loyal to Gaddafi on the ground.

He was eventually captured and shot dead by the victorious rebels in 2011.

During his rule his government supplied weapons to the IRA and other terrorist groups, was behind the Lockerbie bombing – the biggest act of terrorism in Britain history, which killed 270 people in 1988 – and the 1984 murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher.

Justice for Megrahi secretary's report on Justice Committee meeting

[What follows is a message sent out today by Justice for Megrahi’s secretary, Robert Forrester, to JFM members and supporters:]

Some may well feel frustrated by what might seem to be a lack of progress regarding PE1370, however, bear in mind that it remains open with unanimous cross-party support. It took a matter of seconds, with no discussion or questioning from members of the Justice Committee to deal with our submission and supplement.

JFM has only been in existence for some six years, Others have been slogging away at this for twenty-five years.

I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to keep 1370 on the table before Holyrood's Justice Committee. It is a device which produces results. I may have differences of opinion with some; nevertheless, a man whom I regarded as a foe, David McLetchie MSP, came up trumps in the end and made a difference. That, I respect, as I do other brave supporters of the redemption of the Scottish criminal justice system on the JC.

I must formally say that I apologise for any embarrassment caused by my  spontaneous 'clapping' at the end of the brief hearing. The convener, quite rightfully, reprimanded me. Having said that though, I, in my defence, would like to say that I was applauding all members of the JC, not clapping.

This is going to take time. It's politics. But we are moving in the right direction.

[Robert clearly allowed his well-known enthusiasm to get the better of parliamentary decorum. However, he copied the above message to the Justice Committee clerk and received a response which included this:]

I was about to email you with formal notification that the Committee agreed to monitor the progress being made between JFM and Police Scotland and to consider the petition again at a future meeting.

Apologies that we didn’t have time to chat yesterday. As you saw, the Convener was keen to get through business as timeously as possible.

Regarding your very kind message, I shall show it to the Convener tomorrow and we shall endeavour to convey it to members as well. I can assure you that no embarrassment was caused!

We will be in touch, and every good wish.

A con trick that is still in effect today

[What follows is an article that I wrote for this blog on this date four years ago. It is of continuing relevance because of the new application made in June 2014 to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission jointly by members of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s family and relatives of persons killed on Pan Am 103:]

The section 7 con trick

The Scottish Government has stated that section 7 of the Criminal Procedure (Legal Assistance, Detention and Appeals) (Scotland) Act 2010 (2010 asp 15) was required in order to stem the potential flood of appeals that might have arisen after the Cadder decision through successful applications to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. This is not so. Section 7 goes much further than was necessary to avoid the floodgates opening.

What follows are the relevant provisions of section 7 as enacted by the Scottish Parliament, followed by a redraft showing all that would actually have been required.

What was enacted

In determining whether or not it is in the interests of justice that a reference should be made, the Commission must have regard to the need for finality and certainty in the determination of criminal proceedings.

All that was required

In determining whether a miscarriage of justice may have occurred the Commission shall not take into account the circumstance that the applicant was not allowed access to a solicitor before making to the police a statement subsequently used in evidence against him, provided that statement was made before 26 October 2010.

What was enacted

(1) Where the Commission has referred a case to the High Court under section 194B of this Act [the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995] , the High Court may, despite section 194B(1), reject the reference if the Court considers that it is not in the interests of justice that any appeal arising from the reference should proceed.

(2) In determining whether or not it is in the interests of justice that any appeal arising from the reference should proceed, the High Court must have regard to the need for finality and certainty in the determination of criminal proceedings.

All that was required

Where the Commission has referred a case to the High Court under section 194B of this Act, the High Court may, despite section 194B(1), reject the reference if the only reason given by the Commission for making the reference is that the applicant was not allowed access to a solicitor before making to the police a statement subsequently used in evidence against him and that statement was made before 26 October 2010.