"A freak show extension of foreign policy"?

[What follows is excerpted from an article by William Paul published in Scotland on Sunday on 12 December 1999:]

So it begins. The two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing have appeared before the special Scottish court in the Netherlands and the process of justice according to Scots law must run its course in all its ponderous panoply.

If doubters still regard the whole affair as some kind of international cover-up, the sight of Lord Sutherland in his cream and crimson robes following the mace-bearer to a high-backed leather chair at a makeshift bench in the corner of an old American gymnasium should have clearly demonstrated that the politicians and diplomats are no longer in control. Any covert agreement brokered by the United Nations to limit the scope of evidence or ignore the more embarrassing past behaviour of a country’s security services is worthless. If it exists, as has been suggested, the signatories are fooling themselves. Now that the law has taken over, unpredictability reigns and there can be no guarantees.

Last week in the Netherlands, the defence QCs at a preliminary hearing acknowledged they were "not arguing about points of fact, but points of law" as they attempted to have the first charge of conspiracy to murder dropped from the indictment.  (...)

If the conspiracy happened abroad then the Scottish court, despite being deliberately set up outside Scotland for the purposes of neutrality, would not have jurisdiction. 

Lord Sutherland dismissed the argument as "illogical" but was also mindful that it was not the affront to common sense it seemed, but contained its own compelling brand of legal logic. He therefore allowed an appeal against his judgment where the issues will once again be rehearsed in open court. The whole trial, when it actually gets under way in May, more than a year after the Libyans surrendered to answer the charges against them, will be like this; a self-conscious display of scrupulous fairness and attention to detail, an obsessive desire to appreciate opposing points of view, and a firm insistence that justice will be seen to be done. 

Scotland has already settled in well to the little part of foreign land it has been allocated Kamp van Zeist, a former American military base that is now an outdoor museum – for the approaching trial. With the courtroom proper still under construction, Kamp van Zeist’s gymnasium was pressed into service last week as temporary accommodation for preliminary legal skirmishes. No sooner had the QCs crossed the line with Dutch politie on one side and Scots police on the other, than they donned their wigs and gowns and paired off to pace up and down just as they traditionally do in Parliament Hall at the Supreme Courts in Edinburgh to prevent their conversations being overheard. In another part, where US airmen had whiled away the Cold War playing basketball, academics from Glasgow University patiently explained the legal system to a knowledge-hungry international media, including a couple of Russians who nodded knowingly at the motto to the lion and unicorn coat-of-arms, Nemo Me Impune Lacessit. 

Beyond the partition wall in the bottom quarter of the gym, the press were divided from the legal teams by the kind of red-twisted rope that usually guards antique furniture in stately homes, and the lawyers were divided from the accused by bullet-proof screens on wheels. 

The Libyans, always immaculately groomed, were led in and out from the underground detention area to the dock by Scottish police officers holding their wrists. Interpreters sat beside them whispering translations of arcane legal terms and Latin phrases in their ears, occasionally gesticulating with a dramatic wave of an arm or the raising of eyebrows at apparently unimportant moments. Megrahi, the older of the two accused, sat throughout wearing an overcoat as if the winter cold was somehow penetrating the windowless walls surrounding him. 

It will be much like this in the courtroom for the duration of the trial – six months or two years, no-one really knows – as the prosecution evidence is presented and the past is recreated in a hundred small cameo episodes that build, it will be claimed, into the worst terrorist outrage of an era when the world was ordered very differently. 

The framework for what is to come is contained in the narrative of the indictment which sets out the course of events that the Crown will seek to prove, in particular that the two accused were agents of the Libyan Intelligence Service, acting in concert with others and travelling around to gather electronic timers and components for the bomb that was eventually to be loaded into the hold of Flight 103. Colin Boyd QC, Solicitor General, last week gave a hint of what will be claimed by briefly describing an agent, using a false passport, embarking on a ‘dry run’ on the route from Libya to Malta to Germany one month before the bombing in December 1988. 

It promises to be compelling stuff, related to the outside world principally by newspaper reports since the only television coverage so far agreed will be closed-circuit links to Syracuse University in the US for American victims’ families, and a location in London for British relatives.

The effectiveness of Scots law will be as much under test as the guilt or innocence of the two Libyans. The international understanding, replete with secret meetings and nudge-nudge assurances, was crucial in bringing about this unprecedented trial, but if the Libyan government thought its intelligence service would be above criticism, and if the US government thought its intelligence agents would not be required to account for their actions, they will very soon be disabused of the notion. The law, once set in motion, can be relentless in drawing out a infinite number of competing strands in its attempts to find the truth, and what is said in court can be reported without restraint 

Juries are regarded as the ‘masters of the facts’ compared with the judges’ role as ‘master of the law’. Since there is to be no jury in this case, the burden is on Lord Sutherland and his two colleagues to be masters of both and ensure that all doubts are dispelled before a verdict is reached. 

There were many people who believed a Lockerbie trial would never happen because powerful vested interests did not want it. There are still sceptics who see the whole thing as a freak show extension of foreign policy, a forum for political manipulation rather than honest disclosure. The former were proved wrong, and so will the latter be. Open court is a very dangerous place for those who prefer to inhabit the shadows. The simple principle of ‘having their day in court’ is not confined to the Libyan accused who hope to prove their innocence. It is also there for the bereaved families who, four days before Christmas, must endure the 11th anniversary of the bombing hoping they will soon know the real story of what happened to Flight 103. 

The outcome is, of course, entirely unpredictable whatever expert authorities may say. Whether the truth will be uncovered is unknowable because, as was argued last week, it is as much to do with the law as it is to do with the facts. The Scottish court in the Netherlands can only do its best, according to the rules of law, by examining the strength of the evidence put in front of it. In the final analysis, whatever the verdict at the end of it all, people will make up their own minds.

[RB: Like the author, I too in 1999 would have said: “There were many people who believed a Lockerbie trial would never happen because powerful vested interests did not want it. There are still sceptics who see the whole thing as a freak show extension of foreign policy, a forum for political manipulation rather than honest disclosure. The former were proved wrong, and so will the latter be.”  To the immense discredit of the Scottish criminal justice system, William Paul and I have been shown to be both wrong and naive. Honest disclosure (by the prosecution) did not happen. Was there political manipulation? Possibly. What there certainly was, were findings on the evidence -- and hence a conviction -- that no reasonable court could have arrived at.]

Torture, rendition and UK Government hypocrisy

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Derek Bateman headed Why Britain shares America's torture shame published yesterday on the Newsnet Scotland website:]

The trouble is that witness after witness has averred that British officials were associated with their kidnap, rendition and torture, sometimes intimately so. At first officially, there was ‘no British involvement’. Then there was a stopover at Diego Garcia. Then we heard of refuelling at Prestwick.

Liberty says: ‘We now know that during the War on Terror many people were unlawfully transferred from one territory to another in circumstances where they were subjected to torture, horrendous conditions of imprisonment and ill-treatment…in 2008 officials stated they were unsure how many other times such flights had passed through British airspace. This is despite previously consistent denials by the government of any such use of UK airspace.’ (...)

If you imagine the detainees all to be committed jihadist killers, it seems that as many as 26 were ‘wrongly held’, notoriously among them the al-Saadi family. They were rendered en masse (or en famille) to Libya in 2004 - Sami, an anti-Gaddafi dissident, his wife Karima and their four children, the eldest 12 and the youngest just six.

A pregnant woman was also rendered. She was Fatima Bouchard and she provides another link with the Labour government because after her forced return to Libya along with her husband where they were jailed, Britain was proud of its efforts in helping. So much so, that MI6 agent Mark Allen sent a letter to the Libyan regime to congratulate them on the arrival of their ‘air cargo’ (the Libyan couple).

The letter was addressed to the head of security in Libya Musa Kusa. He arrived in London after defecting and was set free, presumably because he had been an asset to Britain who couldn’t be allowed to talk about the nature of UK contacts with Gaddafi.

He was also the key figure who would have known the truth about any Libyan involvement in the Lockerbie Bombing. But while Megrahi was pursued and jailed, the security chief was released.

This convoluted snakes and ladders is the stuff of what passes for modern diplomacy and it shows that ‘national interest’ is a shifting and sinewy creature wriggling wherever the dark is to be found.

We only discovered after the release, courtesy of Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary, that it had been British policy to aid the release of Megrahi all along. This had been made known to the Cabinet which at the time included Jim Murphy as Scottish Secretary. But no one made this information public. Meanwhile Iain Gray was roundly lambasting the SNP government for letting Megrahi go apparently unaware that his Labour colleague Murphy already knew it was government policy. (When I tried to get Murphy to admit this, he failed three times to respond.)

So there is a history of the Cabinet having knowledge of security issues and keeping quiet, which is what I believe happened over torture rendition -  the British State knowingly staged kidnappings and illegal transport of victims for a torture regime and, in the spirit of outsourcing, gave questions to the torturers to ask…that’s our government…our LABOUR government. That is as shameful as water-boarding and cattle prods and puts us side by side with the torturers themselves. Labour – ‘Britain’s democratic socialist party…’

“We need truth and we need justice to be at peace"

What follows is an item posted on this blog on this date four years ago:

It is imperative for the survivors of Lockerbie that we continue to search for the truth

[This is the heading over a letter from Ruth Marr in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

Professor James Mitchell is correct to praise the Scottish Government for refusing to be bullied and by taking the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds, but he is perhaps understandably pessimistic regarding getting answers to the questions which, almost 22 years later, continue to haunt the Lockerbie tragedy (“WikiLeaks proves Scotland was right on Megrahi release”, The Herald, December 10).

However, it is absolutely imperative for the sake of the families of the victims, for the town of Lockerbie, for all who care about the Scottish justice system and, indeed, for Megrahi, that we probe to get the relevant answers, because until we do, all those whose lives were changed for ever by that horrific crime cannot hope to try to move on.

Father Pat Keegans, who narrowly escaped death at Lockerbie, has concisely and poignantly summed up the situation when he said: “We need truth and we need justice to be at peace. Otherwise we are back in December 1988 in the darkness.” It is for those reasons that a full, independent public inquiry must be held to determine all the facts, and answer the many troubling questions surrounding the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, and the conviction of Megrahi for the crime.

All those lost at Lockerbie, and those they left behind, deserve nothing less than truth and justice, and we must not fail them now.

[A further letter in the same newspaper from John Scott Roy reads as follows:]

What a refreshing article by Professor James Mitchell in which he summarises many of the reasons for people to distrust politicians as a group. Their cynical behaviour is well exposed by the examples he provides.

The SNP Government is praised, to some extent. It has not been in power long enough for the infection to have taken full root.

Old habits die hard: Washington, Gaddafi and Lockerbie

[The following is an excerpt from the fifth and final part of an interesting and instructive article A message from Tripoli: How Libya gave up its WMD by William Tobey published earlier this week on the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:]

In the immediate aftermath, Libya benefited from its decision to give up its WMD capabilities, although perhaps not as much or as quickly as Qaddafi had hoped. On May 15, 2006, the United States announced it would restore full diplomatic relations with Tripoli. After Libya agreed to provide $2.7 billion in reparations to the families of victims of Pan Am flight 103, Bush removed Libya from his list of state sponsors of terrorism and dropped all economic sanctions. Before the rebellion, foreign investment, particularly in the oil sector, flooded into Libya. In October 2007, Libya was elected to a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council.

Old habits, however, die hard. Washington was furious after learning in 2004, for example, that Qaddafi’s had attempted the previous year to assassinate Saudi King Abdullah. In August 2009, the release from Scottish prison of a dying former Libyan intelligence agent convicted in the Pan Am 103 case, his enthusiastic welcome in Tripoli, and recriminations over a possible quid pro quo involving British investment in Libya’s oil industry re-opened diplomatic wounds that had barely begun to heal. Qaddafi’s rambling diatribe at the United Nations General Assembly in September, 2009—so long that it caused his interpreter to collapse—suggested that the brother-leader remained as eccentric as ever, even if he was now only conventionally armed.

On October 20, 2011, Muammar Qaddafi was pulled from a ditch during the battle for Sirte and killed by rebels supported by the United States, Britain, and France.

Tony Blair's "assurances" of independent Lockerbie inquiry

[What follows is taken from an item posted on Safia Aoude’s The Pan Am 103 Crash Website on 10 December 1998 based on Reuters news agency reports:]

The father of one of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing said on Thursday the 10th of December 1998 he felt certain Libya would hand over two suspects in the case for trial soon, probably within weeks. Jim Swire, whose daughter was among 270 people who died when Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, said he had spoken by telephone to a Libyan official earlier on Thursday.

"I've had an encouraging phone call from Libya's permanent representative to the United Nations only today," Swire told BBC television.  "And I see nothing on the horizon that would make me alter my opinion, which is that the handover will definitely occur, and that it will occur within the next few weeks." (...)

Swire, who was scheduled to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair later on Thursday, said he would urge that any new leads arising from the trial be followed up. "The two accused, even if they were found guilty, could only be small minnows in a very large pond," he said. 

Later that day (10 Dec 1988) Dr Swire finally met the UK prime minister Tony Blair. The meeting came less than two weeks before the 10th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which killed 270 people.  It was the first time a prime minister had agreed to meet  relatives of the disaster. The members of the UK Families Flight 103 Group, led by Dr Jim Swire, spent 50 minutes at Downing Street with Mr Blair and Foreign Office Minister Tony  Lloyd.  Lockerbie's MP, Russell Brown, and another Labour backbencher, Dr George Turner, were also at the meeting.

Dr Jim Swire, spokesman of the UK Families Group, said he wanted to thank Mr Blair for persuading the United States to accept the idea of a trial in a neutral third country. He said it was this concession which had broken the deadlock. Dr Swire and the British relatives have been told by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair he will do everything he can to find out the truth about the disaster.

Dr Swire told BBC News he was "certain" the two prime suspects would be given up by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and he said when the trial began he wanted the government to follow up several news lines of inquiry.  Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora died at Lockerbie, said he also wanted a new inquiry to investigate how the bomb got on board the aircraft.

Dr Swire said he had received assurances from the prime minister that there would be an independent inquiry into the disaster.  He told BBC News 24: "He was very receptive to the idea and we came away much encouraged that there will be a meaningful inquiry at some stage.

"We were left with the impression that there would be the necessary investigation into how this appalling tragedy happened in 1988," said Swire.

"We feel without such an investigation the door is open to this happening again." [RB: Whatever assurances about an inquiry were given by Tony Blair were never honoured.]

Dr Swire said Libya's permanent representative to the United Nations, Omar Dorda, had rung him on Thursday and he said he was confident the two prime suspects would be handed over by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, "within the next few weeks". "The best estimate is a few weeks," said Swire. "Possibly the latter half of January." [RB: In fact the suspects surrendered themselves for trial in April 1999.]

A Downing Street spokesman said: "Mr Blair briefed them on the latest developments on the progress towards a third country trial.

"The families want to discover the whole truth and the prime minister is committed to bring these men to justice and discover the truth."

Megrahi, Fhimah and the Crown Office's "live enquiry"

What follows is taken from an item posted on this blog on this date in 2011:

Scottish police will be invited to Tripoli to question Megrahi

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Scotsman (...) It reads in part:]

Libya will invite Scottish police officers to Tripoli to interview the former Libyan agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, according to Britain’s foreign minister Alastair Burt.

The move, which could see Dumfries and Galloway police travel to Libya shortly to speak with Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi, was welcomed by Scotland’s most senior law officer the Lord Advocate Frank Mullholland QC. (...)

Yesterday Megrahi’s brother Nasser said the former Libyan agent, who is suffering from prostate cancer, was too sick to be interviewed by British investigators. (...)

[A report in today's edition of The Guardian contains the following:]

Libyan suspect Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, cleared of bombing in 2000, could face fresh trial – but victims' families are sceptical

The new Libyan government's undertaking will also hearten Frank Mulholland, the lord advocate and chief prosecutor for Scotland, who announced several months ago he was reopening prosecution files on Lockerbie.

New laws on double jeopardy in Scotland, which will allow previously cleared suspects to be tried again, came into force in late November. That would allow prosecutors to attempt a fresh trial of Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who stood trial with Megrahi in 2000 in the Lockerbie case but was cleared by the court.

In August, Fhimah denied any links to the atrocity and insisted he too was a victim of Gaddafi, but some US relatives have pressed for both men to be handed over to the US for a fresh trial – moves the Libyans have brushed away.

Mulholland said yesterday: "The trial court held that the bombing of Pan Am 103 and the murder of 270 people was an act of state-sponsored terrorism and that Megrahi did not act alone. This is a live inquiry and Scottish police and prosecutors will continue to pursue the evidence to bring the others involved to justice."

Megrahi's family insisted he was too ill to meet British officials. Nasser al Megrahi, his brother, said he was being cared for by relatives. "He is really ill," he said. "He is in his room, I have not seen him today. He's too tired to see anyone, even us, his family."

He also questioned why Scottish police and prosecutors would want to reopen the case or interview his brother, since the UK authorities had previously agreed to release Megrahi, who is terminally ill with advanced prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds. "Why would they want to reopen the case? That doesn't make sense, it was not the Gaddafi government that made the judgment, it was the Scottish [government]." (...)

Jean Berkley, convenor of the UK Families of Flight 103, said she was pleased that there was renewed interest in the case, but she was not optimistic that a police visit to Tripoli would uncover significant new information. But she said: "We would welcome any attempts to find out more of the truth because we feel that there's a lot we don't know."

Professor Robert Black, the Scottish lawyer who proposed trying Megrahi and Fhimah on neutral ground in the Netherlands, was sceptical that the initiative would lead to a fresh trial. He said if detectives tried to interview Fhimah as a suspect, they would need to apply new Scottish rules requiring his lawyer to be present.

"If they've now got permission to go and look at Libyan archives to see what they can find, fine, but I'm amazed if they think they can go and interview Megrahi: the position of the Crown Office has been we've got Megrahi, we're now looking for others," he said. "I suspect they'll be talking to people who now head the various ministries in Libya to see whether they can find any archives on Lockerbie when it was under the Gaddafi regime."

[A report in today's edition of The Times (behind the paywall) contains the following:] (...)

Crown Office sources indicated yesterday that they had no plans to speak to al-Megrahi, the only man so far convicted of the outrage. Mr Mulholland added: “The trial court held that the bombing of Pan Am 103 and the murder of 270 people was an act of state-sponsored terrorism and that Megrahi did not act alone. This is a live enquiry and Scottish police and prosecutors will continue to pursue the evidence to bring the others involved to justice.”

The convoluted route towards Zeist

[What follows is a Reuters news agency report issued on 8 December 1998:]

The Netherlands on Tuesday pressed ahead with work to prepare a swatch of British soil on Dutch territory for the anticipated trial of two Libyans accused of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland 10 years ago.

The Dutch chose the windswept military base of Camp Zeist, 10 km (six miles) from the central city of Utrecht, as the venue for the unique trial, which will be conducted under Scottish law on British soil. A special Anglo-Dutch treaty signed in August permits the transfer of the land. Some 2,400 km (1,500 miles) away in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, the General People's Congress, Libya's top legislative body, began meeting on Tuesday.

It is the forum, convened once or twice a year for several days, which will formally endorse any decision by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to surrender Abdel Basset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah to stand trial for the bombing. Camp Zeist's previous claim to fame was that Napoleon once stopped there for the night. German troops occupied the site during World War Two and the US Air Force was stationed there for 40 years until the end of the Cold War with the then Soviet Union in 1991.

If Libya agrees to surrender the two men for trial, the suspects will be housed in a bomb-proof underground complex beneath an American-built hospital. Their transport vehicles will sweep into a covered driveway created for casualties arriving at the emergency department. A barbed-wire fence is all that now keeps unwanted visitors out of Camp Zeist. The hospital is built on a small mound behind a two-metre (six-foot) high wall.

The US and Britain are believed to be stumping up between $100 million and $200 million to pay for the camp's conversion to accommodate several hundred people. Security guards, military personnel, the press and relatives of those that died are all expected to descend en masse on the 10-hectare (25-acre) base. For the present, security is thin-- a white portable cabin manned by a few police officers is the precursor to a much grander operation should the trial go ahead.

So far activity at the site has been low-key. People living nearby say construction work has been kept to a minimum and a thin line of smoke, perhaps from the kitchen, is the only hint of life behind the shuttered windows of the concrete hospital. Behind it, a blue-painted corrugated steel building that was once a sports hall will house the media, officials said.

[Here is what I have written in an as yet unpublished manuscript about this stage in the convoluted route towards a Lockerbie trial:]

It was we [Dr Jim Swire and I, on 21 September 1998] who had to inform the Libyan government that the chosen location in the Netherlands for trial was Kamp van Zeist, a former NATO base to which the air force of the United States still had extant treaty rights of access.  This information was faxed to me (in Dutch, which I can read  -- with difficulty -- through my knowledge of Afrikaans) at my hotel in Tripoli by a Dutch journalist who had developed an interest in Lockerbie and who had heard it from an official at The Hague.  Dr Swire and I discussed whether we should inform our Libyan government contacts of the intended venue and came to the conclusion that we should do so.  One compelling reason for doing so was to preserve the trust that the Libyan government appeared to have developed in us.  Another was our assumption – which may or may not have been justified -- that all our communications in Libya were monitored and that the Libyan authorities would have the information anyway as soon as they could arrange for a copy of the fax to be translated from Dutch into Arabic.

I anticipated that the news about the proposed location would cause the Libyans to renounce the "neutral venue" concept in high dudgeon and complain of the lack of good faith demonstrated by the British Government in selecting, or agreeing to, such a site.  But they did not do so.  When we raised the issue at our next meeting, the Libyan officials were remarkably relaxed about the matter.  This, more than anything else, convinced me that the Libyan government and the Libyan defence lawyers genuinely wished a trial to take place and that the concerns they had expressed regarding details of the scheme now on offer were genuine concerns, not merely a colourable pretext for evading their earlier commitment to such a solution. (...)

I returned to the UK after this visit to Libya reasonably confident that a trial would take place.  It was clear to me that the Libyan authorities at the highest level wanted it to happen and that the accused men wanted their families and themselves to be able to get on with their lives, something that could never happen, even within the boundaries of Libya, while the charges against them remained unresolved and UN sanctions remained in place.  One possible impediment was the hard-line attitude towards surrender for trial overseas that had been taken over the years by the Libyan People’s Congress (the highest legislative and policy-making body under Libya’s idiosyncratic constitution).  However, this potential hurdle was removed on 15 December 2008 when the People’s Congress, at a session held in Sirte, announced that it approved the trial proposal and adjured all three interested governments -- Libya, the United Kingdom and the United States -- to take all necessary steps to remove any remaining obstacles.

Margaret Thatcher "vetoed Lockerbie inquiry"

[What follows is an item from the Memory Lane column of the Bromsgrove Advertiser:]

25 years ago. December 7, 1989

Bromsgrove doctor Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the Lockerbie bombing, travelled to London to hear a public inquiry would not be held.

Dr Swire, along with other relatives of the 270 killed, had a two hour meeting with Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson, who gave them no hope that an inquiry would ever take place.

[Here is what Tam Dalyell has written about this:]

When the relatives went to see the then UK Transport Secretary, Cecil Parkinson, he told them he did agree that there should be a public inquiry. Going out of the door as they were leaving, as an afterthought he said: 'Just one thing. I must clear permission for a public inquiry with colleagues'. Dr Swire, John Mosey and Pamela Dix, the secretary of the Lockerbie relatives, imagined that it was a mere formality. A fortnight later, sheepishly, Parkinson informed them that colleagues had not agreed. At that time there was only one colleague who could possibly have told Parkinson that he was forbidden to do something in his own department. That was the Prime Minister. Only she could have told Parkinson to withdraw his offer, certainly, in my opinion, knowing the man, given in good faith.

Liberty human rights award to UK Families Flight 103

From Jean Berkley:

On 1st December Jean and Barrie Berkley, Jim and Jane Swire and John Mosey attended the Liberty annual Human Rights Awards Ceremony, where the UK Families Flight 103 were given a special award for their persistence over so many years in seeking more of the truth about the Lockerbie disaster and answers to the large number of questions that remain.  We had the opportunity to speak briefly when we were presented with the award and were very well received. Many of those present also approached us later and were very supportive.

First public mention of Lockerbie "star witness" Giaka

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Zeist judges' unreasonable evidential finding

[On this date in 2000 the defence opened its case in the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist. One of the witnesses examined was Major Joseph Mifsud who, between 1979 and 1988, was chief meteorologist at the meteorological office at Luqa Airport in Malta. His evidence can be read here. I have summarised elsewhere his evidence and the background showing its relevance and importance as follows:

“By reference to the dates on which international football matches were broadcast on television on Malta, Tony Gauci was able to narrow down the date of purchase of the items in question [ie the items that accompanied the bomb in the Samsonite suitcase] to either 23 November or 7 December [1988]. [RB: The evidence established that Megrahi had been on Malta on 7 December.] In an attempt to establish just which, the weather conditions in Sliema on these two days were explored. Gauci’s evidence was that when the purchaser left his shop it was raining to such an extent that his customer thought it advisable to buy an umbrella to protect himself while he went in search of a taxi. The unchallenged meteorological evidence led by the defence established that while it had rained on 23 November at the relevant time, it was unlikely that it had rained at all on 7 December; and if there had been any rain, it would have been at most a few drops, insufficient to wet the ground. On this material, the judges found in fact that the clothes were purchased on 7 December.”

[RB: In June 2007, after a three-year investigation, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission came to the conclusion that Megrahi's conviction may have constituted a miscarriage of justice. One of its six reasons for so finding (and by far the most important one, though this went largely unappreciated in the media) was that in respect of absolutely crucial findings in fact by the trial court (the date of purchase of the clothing that surrounded the bomb and, hence, the identity of the purchaser) no reasonable tribunal could have reached the conclusion that the evidence established that it was Megrahi.]