SCCRC petitions court for advice on whether victims' relatives have legitimate interest

[What follows is the text of a press release issued today by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission:]

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has confirmed that it has lodged a Petition at the High Court in Edinburgh, under s194D(3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, seeking the opinion of the High Court in relation to a matter arising from the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi.

On 5 June 2014, the Commission received an application for a further review of Mr Megrahi’s conviction from Messrs Aamer Anwar & Co, solicitors. This application was lodged on behalf of two separate groups, the family members of the deceased victims of the Lockerbie bombing and members of Mr Megrahi’s family.

The aim of the Petition is to seek the advice of the court on the meaning of the phrase “legitimate interest” where it occurs in s303A(4) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.

Gerard Sinclair, the Chief Executive of the SCCRC, said today: “As we indicated in our news release of 6 May 2014 prior to receipt of the current application, there are a number of preliminary matters that the Commission needs to determine before it can decide whether or not to accept the case for a full review. One of these is the need for the Commission to be satisfied that, in the event of a referral, someone with the right to do so will be willing and able to pursue the appeal.

The Commission has, since June, proceeded on the basis that Mr Megrahi’s family are involved in the present application. However, despite the Commission’s repeated requests, the members of the Megrahi family have failed to provide appropriate evidence to support this position.

The Commission has now reached the conclusion that the current application is being actively supported only by the members of the victims’ families, who would no doubt be prepared to pursue an appeal if allowed to do so.

The aim of the Petition is to seek the advice of the court on whether members of the victims` families would be entitled to pursue an appeal on behalf of Mr Megrahi if the Commission ultimately decided to refer the current application, as previous court decisions have restricted this role to executors and the “next of kin” of the convicted person”.

No further comment will be made by the Commission at this time.

[RB: This is extremely disappointing. A document signed by six immediate members of the family of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (including the executor of his estate) indicating that they wished to be conjoined in the SCCRC application along with 24 relatives of victims of the Lockerbie disaster was submitted to the SCCRC in June. The same six family members gave written instructions to Aamer Anwar & Co to represent them in pursuing the application. Apparently this is not good enough for the Commission. Since June, it has proved extremely difficult, given the current situation in Libya, to make contact with the Megrahi family. So now the SCCRC is proposing to treat the application as if it were on behalf of the victims’ relatives alone. The question is (and has always been recognised to be) whether such persons would be regarded by the High Court of Justiciary as having a legitimate interest to conduct any appeal seeking to overturn Megrahi’s conviction.

It is devoutly to be hoped that contact can soon be re-established with the Megrahi family and their wish to participate duly confirmed, whereupon this “legitimate interest” problem should disappear.]

“Well, he would say that wouldn’t he?”

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in today’s edition of The Times:]

Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC, said “. . . not one Crown Office investigator or prosecutor has raised a concern about the evidence in this case” (“Lockerbie conspiracy theory is dismissed”, Dec 20). To quote the late Mandy Rice-Davies, “Well, he would say that wouldn’t he?” The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission carefully reinvestigated the case while Mr Megrahi was still alive and found no less than six reasons why the case should be the subject of a further appeal.

That appeal, as Lord [Advocate] Mulholland will remember, was cut short by the return of Megrahi to his homeland, just before crucial questions over the Crown’s case, such as the anachronistic fragment of circuit board, could be re-examined in court.

Lockerbie prosecutors "afflicted by wilful blindness"

[What follows is an article by Mark Hirst published today on the Russian Sputnik News website:]

Scottish prosecutors involved in the investigation of Lockerbie bombing in 1988 are “afflicted by wilful blindness” by ignoring concerns from distinguished UK lawyers, Robert Black QC, a Professor of Scots law has told Sputnik.

Scottish state prosecutors involved in the investigation of the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie in 1988 are “afflicted by wilful blindness” by ignoring concerns from distinguished UK lawyers about the safety of the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Robert Black QC, a Professor of Scots law has told Sputnik.

“[Prosecutors] must be afflicted by wilful blindness or by unquestioning loyalty to the Crown Office party line,” Black told Sputnik Sunday.

“Among the distinguished lawyers who have expressed grave concerns about the evidence are Sir Gerald Gordon QC -- who was in charge of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) investigation in 2003 to 2007 -- Michael Mansfield QC, Anthony Lester QC, Gareth Peirce, Benedict Birnberg and Jock Thomson QC,” Black added.

At a service in Washington to mark the 26th anniversary since the bombing that claimed 270 lives, the worst single terrorist attack in British history, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, who heads Scotland’s prosecution, known as the Crown Office, told American relatives, “During the 26-year long inquiry not one Crown Office investigator or prosecutor has raised a concern about the evidence in this case.

“We remain committed to this investigation and our focus remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition,” Mulholland added.

Black, along with many UK relatives of victims, has long claimed the prosecution of Megrahi was a miscarriage of justice. The Professor is currently campaigning to have a public inquiry established that would review all the evidence, including new information that, campaigners believe, throws fresh doubt over prosecution claims that Libya was responsible for the attack.

But Black told Sputnik the first step would be to overturn Megrahi’s guilty verdict.

“I think we may get there eventually,” Black told Sputnik referring to the prospects of securing an independent public inquiry. “But realistically the conviction will have to be overturned first – hopefully as a result of the current SCCRC application culminating in a reference back to the High Court.”

Megrahi, who was suffering from terminal cancer, was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government in 2009 and returned to Libya where he died in 2012. In June this year the Libyan’s relatives instructed a Scottish lawyer, Aamer Anwar, to start the process that they hope will lead to an appeal being heard in the Scottish High Court.

But Black told Sputnik that although a posthumous appeal was allowed under Scots law the process was not straightforward.

“The main obstacles are firstly the High Court's power to refuse to hear an appeal even when allowed by the SCCRC,” Black told Sputnik.

“The second obstacle is the tactic of delay. This was the Crown's principal tactic in the last Megrahi appeal, exercised so successfully that a case that should have been concluded before Megrahi’s illness was diagnosed had only just started when he had to apply for compassionate release. I have no doubt that [prosecutors] will use it again. Dragging things out adds to the expenses of the appellants – who will not this time be subsidised by the Libyan government – and the Crown will hope that they run out of money,” Black said.

In 2007 the SCCRC, following a four-year investigation into the case, concluded there were six grounds to refer the case back to the court of appeal, concluding that there may have been a miscarriage of justice. Shortly after the UK Government secured a Public Interest Immunity order preventing key evidence from being given to the defence that might assist in Megrahi’s defence.

“They will again assert Public Interest Immunity in respect of the document relating to timers that formed the basis of two of the SCCRC's grounds of referral in 2007,” Black told Sputnik. “This, of course, will contribute to delay and expense.”

Lockerbie lies

[This is the headline over an article in today’s edition of the Morning Star.  It reads as follows:]

On the 25th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on British territory, Steven Walker looks at the evidence that the wrong person was convicted of the crime.

December 21 1988 is a date etched into the memory of the people of Lockerbie and Scotland more generally as the night all hell rained down from the skies above them.

What followed was a criminal investigation which quickly became mired in rumour, suspicion and evidence that the wrong people were blamed for the terrorist outrage that blew a Pan American airliner to pieces.

It is widely believed that the truth is yet to come out about who was responsible.

Relatives of those killed in the disaster, together with the family of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who is widely believed to have been innocent of the crime for which he served a prison sentence and died two-and-a-half years after being released, are still awaiting justice.

There is a new bid to get a Scottish court to review the original court proceedings, which were suspected of being part of a cover-up involving the CIA and the British government.

The relatives lodged an application in June with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), a body that reviews alleged miscarriages of justice in criminal cases and has the power to refer a case back to the High Court.

Megrahi was the sole person found guilty of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in 1988, in which 270 people were killed.

Previous official inquiries have raised more questions than answers about who was really responsible for the atrocity.

The Lockerbie case has been mired in controversy almost from day one of the investigation.

Critics have long wondered what the truth is.

Despite unreasonable pressure from a variety of sources, investigative journalists have established that many issues are still not resolved.

For example, a local Cumbrian GP who was brought in to recover and label bodies scattered over a wide area tagged 59 corpses but discovered that in the official records later published the total had dropped to 58.

His personal credibility and professional competence were questioned at the inquest but he remains adamant that one of the bodies had “disappeared” with no explanation.

Testimony from an eyewitness, a local farmer, was ridiculed by police when he saw a large tarpaulin covering an item in a field being guarded by an armed soldier while an unmarked helicopter hovered overhead.

The official inquiry contained no mention of the mysterious item under cover or reference to a helicopter on site.

Another farmer at Tundergarth Mains, Jim Wilson, found his fields were littered with bodies and debris from the airliner. The mess included a suitcase, neatly packed with a powdery substance that looked like drugs.

Wilson was one of the first witnesses to give evidence when the fatal accident inquiry started in October 1990. Yet no-one asked him about the drugs suitcase.

Two senior CIA agents were aboard Pan Am 103. The fact that Major McKee and his CIA associate Matthew Gannon, formerly deputy CIA station chief in Beirut, were among the dead passengers has raised suspicions that the US and British authorities interfered in the initial investigation of the crash site in order to ascertain whether national security might be compromised by a Scottish police investigation.

Up until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 the received view among Western media fed by government sources was that Iran or Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.

After Saddam Hussein had finished his war with Iran in 1988, his regime was sold weapons by US, French and British arms manufacturers eager to re-equip his massive army and make huge profits on arms sales. Suddenly, with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the West needed Iran’s support and the story changed to suggest that Libya alone was behind the bombing.

In August 1997, the German magazine Der Spiegel published a long article about Lockerbie. It cited a new credible witness named as Abolghasem Mesbahi. What he was saying contradicted “the Anglo-American thesis of the sole involvement of Libya.”

Mesbahi’s story suggested that the bomb had been loaded in single pieces at Frankfurt airport into an aeroplane to London. The head of Iran Air at Frankfurt at that time, a secret service man, had smuggled them past the airport controls. They had then been assembled in London and put on Pan Am 103 at Heathrow airport.

Some of the British relatives argue that the wrong man was put behind bars and that the truth about who murdered their loved ones remains elusive. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty of mass murder following a trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001 and jailed for life.

He lost his first appeal in 2002. The following year, he applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for a review of his conviction. An investigation costing £1.1m by the body led to a finding in June 2007 of six grounds on which it believed a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

But perhaps one of the most compelling facts which receives little mention in all the confusing theories, missing evidence and attempts to thwart the legal process by the US and British governments, is that an Iran Air A-300 Airbus was shot down over the Gulf in July 1988 by the US warship Vincennes, which wrongly identified it as an attacking fighter. All 290 people on board were killed.

There are credible reports that the Iranians hired freelance operatives to deliver an act of revenge against a US civilian airliner. Pan Am 103 was downed five months later.

At the time Iran was being targeted as the new threat to Middle East security. Iraq had been supplied with arms by the US to prolong its war with Iran, despite Iran being cynically used by President Ronald Reagan to fund illegal payments to the anti-Nicaraguan right-wing contras in exchange for selling the Iranians arms.

It is not unreasonable to suppose the Iranians were not best pleased at being betrayed in the war with Iraq and then have their civilian airliner shot down, and thus subsequently decided to exact revenge.

Of course Libya paid $2.5 billion in compensation for the Lockerbie bombing, which strongly suggests Colonel Gadaffi accepted guilt for the atrocity.

But this ignores the fact that Libya was desperate to have sanctions lifted and admitting guilt for Lockerbie was the price to be accepted back into the fold to do business with the West.

But whatever the truth, Lockerbie remains a textbook case of a terrible tragedy in which the pain and suffering of relatives whose search for answers about why and how their loved ones died has taken second place to geopolitical manoeuvres and deliberate meddling in legal processes, and the murky world of secret service wheeling and dealing on behalf of governments with no respect for human decency. 

[A further report in today's Morning Star is headlined Megrahi conviction "must be reviewed".]

Fhimah not focus of "ongoing Lockerbie investigation"

[The following are excerpts from an article published today in the Scottish Daily Express:]

Prosecutors still believe former airline manager Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah played a part in the 1988 terror attack and are constantly reviewing the case against him.

Sources within the Scottish legal establishment insist that, if fresh evidence comes to light, he will be brought back in front of a court to face justice. (...)

Recently reformed double jeopardy laws now permit suspects, who have previously been acquitted, to face retrial for the same crime if any new evidence comes to light.

And an insider yesterday suggested the change in the law could put Fhimah back in the dock.

They said: “It has always been believed that Megrahi acted with others and prosecutors obviously thought they had enough evidence to bring Fhimah to court, but he was acquitted.

Their position remains unchanged and the case against Fhimah will probably always be open, always under review.

“He is not the single aspect of the current investigations as there are many different strands to consider.

"However, with double jeopardy now being what it is, if strong new evidence emerged, Fhimah could face another trial.”  (...)

Campaigners, including Dr Jim Swire whose daughter Flora was killed at Lockerbie, do not believe Megrahi was guilty and say the authorities bungled their inquiry. (...)

An official application to review Megrahi’s conviction has been lodged by six of his family members, and 24 British relatives of the victims including Dr Swire.

But solicitor Aamer Anwar, who is co-ordinating the legal bid, said: “The Lord Advocate’s speech in Washington makes for great sound bites with an American audience but lacks analysis of the essential facts.”

He accused the Crown Office of repeating “an age old mantra of the Crown of never doubting the safety of the conviction”, despite “many miscarriages of justice over the years”.

Mr Anwar added: “The case of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi is described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history for a reason.

“A reversal of the verdict would mean that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for 26 years, by imprisoning a man they knew to be innocent.”

A Crown Office spokesman said: “Fhimah is not the focus of the ongoing investigation.

"However, if any further evidence against him comes to light, it will be considered as part of the wider inquiry.”

US and UK living "a monumental lie for 26 years"

[The following are excerpts from a report published yesterday evening on the BBC News website:]

Scotland's top law officer has met the director of the FBI to discuss progress in the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing.

Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC described Friday's talks with James Comey as "very useful".

Mr Mulholland also revealed he recently met the Libyan ambassador to the UK. (...)

On Saturday, Mr Mulholland said he continued to believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty of carrying out the bombing, and pledged to continue tracking down his accomplices. (...)

But his involvement in the bombing of the flight from London to New York has been called into question by campaigners who believe evidence in the case was manipulated to implicate Libya and divert attention away from Iran and Syria. (...)

The Lord Advocate said he was also keeping in close contact with the UK ambassador to Libya, who is currently based in Tunis, to get regular updates on what is happening.

The ambassador has been "able to get information for us which has been helpful in shaping our approach going forward." Mr Mulholland said.

Turning his attention to work with officials in the US, the Lord Advocate added: "I met with Director Comey of the FBI on Friday to discuss progress in the inquiry. It was a very useful meeting and the avenues of enquiry currently under investigation were discussed in detail.

"Despite the difficulties we remain hopeful that progress will be made. We reiterated our commitment to work closely together to make progress in Libya and elsewhere; wherever there is an opportunity we will be there. We will follow the evidence relentlessly."

Details of the ongoing investigation have not and will not be made public, the Lord Advocate said.

But he added: "What I can say however is that in addition to the lines of enquiry in Libya there are other lines currently being pursued outwith Libya.

"We remain cautiously optimistic that these lines of enquiry will bear fruit." (...)

An investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) led to a finding in 2007 of six grounds where it believed a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, paving the way for a second appeal.

But Megrahi dropped that appeal in 2009 before being released from prison by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds in light of his diagnosis with terminal prostate cancer. (...)

But earlier this year, Megrahi's relatives embarked on a legal bid to clear his name amid claims that his case is the "worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history".

Six immediate members of his family joined forces with 24 British relatives of those who died in the atrocity to seek, ultimately, a third appeal against his conviction in the Scottish courts.

They united to submit an application to the SCCRC for a review of the conviction, a move which could see the case referred back to the High Court. (...)

Solicitor Aamer Anwar, who is co-ordinating efforts to quash Mr Megrahi's conviction, said: "The Lord Advocate's speech in Washington makes for great sound bites with an American audience but lacks analysis of the essential facts."

He accused the Crown Office of repeating "an age old mantra of the Crown of never doubting the safety of the conviction", despite "many miscarriages of justice over the years".

Mr Anwar added: "The case of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi is described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history for a reason.

"A reversal of the verdict would mean that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for 26 years, by imprisoning a man they knew to be innocent."

In a statement, the Megrahi family said it would "keep fighting for justice to find out who was responsible for 271 victims of the Lockerbie disaster."

Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the bombing, has also expressed his disappointment at Mr Mulholland's latest comments.

Dr Swire said: "For me this case is about two families, mine and Abdelbaset's, but behind them now are seen to lie the needs of 25 other families in applying for a further appeal 26 years after the event itself.

"We need the truth and Scotland's management of this case produced a verdict perfectly tailored for use by those who would seek to ensure that the full truth remains hidden."

Defence Legal Team rejects Lord Advocate’s claims over ‘Lockerbie Bomber’

[What follows is the text of a press release issued today by Aamer Anwar, head of the Lockerbie Defence Legal Team:]

We reject Lord Advocate’s claims over ‘Lockerbie Bomber’

On the eve of the anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, Scotland’s Lord Advocate has once again rejected claims that Mr Megrahi could be innocent stating that:

“During the 26 year long inquiry not one Crown Office investigator or prosecutor has raised a concern about the evidence in this case. We remain committed to this investigation and our focus remains on the evidence and not speculation and supposition. Our prosecutors and police officers, working with UK government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing to justice those who acted along with al-Megrahi.”

When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, 270 people from 21 countries perished. It remains the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the UK.

But the trial of the “Lockerbie Bomber” remains the UK’s worst miscarriage of justice, whose consequences are still being felt 26 years later whilst the truth remains elusive.

The Lord Advocate’s speech in Washington makes for great sound bites with an American audience but lacks analysis of the essential facts.

In June 2014 we lodged an application with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) seeking to overturn the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for murder. That has absolutely nothing to do with conspiracy theories but is based on a solid assessment of the ‘so called evidence’ against Mr Al-Megrahi.

It is claimed that the Crown Office and Police Scotland have carried out a review of the evidence used to convict Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi which ‘confirms beyond doubt that he was responsible for the killings.’

Such reviews repeat an ‘age old mantra’ of the Crown never doubting the safety of the conviction. It would be better to place such reviews in context, despite many miscarriages of justice over the years it is noticeable that prosecutors have never accepted that they have made mistakes, so why would it be any different now?

The application to the SCCRC was submitted on behalf of :-

i)      Six immediate family members of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

ii)     Dr Jim Swire, Rev’d John F Mosey and 24 other British relatives of passengers who died on board Pan Am Flight 103.

An essential fact missing from the Lord Advocate’s speech is that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) had already determined on the 28th June 2007 that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice in relation to his conviction and identified six grounds for referring the case to the High Court.

The Chairman of the SCCRC Graham Forbes at the time said:

“The Commission is of the view, based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”

Following Mr Al-Megrahi’s death and our subsequent instructions for a posthumous appeal we have asked the Commission to reconfirm these six grounds.

We have also requested that the Commission consider referring the case:-

i)  On the ground of the Crown’s non-disclosure to the defence of evidence relating to the difference in metallurgical composition between the fragment of circuit board PT35b and the circuit boards in the timers supplied by MEBO to Libya. New evidence claims that the fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, “discovered” in the Scottish countryside could not have been responsible for the bombing.

ii)  On the ground of the evidence uncovered which demonstrates that the bomb suitcase was already in Pan Am 103 luggage container AVE4041 before the feeder flight from Frankfurt arrived at Heathrow with, as the Crown contended and the trial court accepted, a suitcase from Malta which contained the bomb. It was submitted that there is evidence which will show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft.

iii)    New evidence claims the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was ‘transferred’ through two airports undetected to Pan Am Flight 103.

iv)   There is a multitude of serious question marks over material evidence, and most worryingly, allegations of the Crown’s non-disclosure of evidence which could have been key to the defence.

v)     Mr Megrahi was convicted on the word of a Maltese shop owner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and failed to even recognise him in the courtroom.

Documents have claimed that Scottish police officers and FBI agents had discussed as early as September 1989 ‘an offer of unlimited money’ to the Maltese shop keeper Tony Gauci.

Gauci was central to Megrahi’s conviction because the clothes recovered from the suitcase that carried the bomb onto Pan Am 103 at Heathrow, bound for New York, were traced back to his shop.

Various reports have claimed that Tony Gauci received more than $2m and his brother more than $1m in reward money.

This completely contradicted guarantees given by Richard Marquise, of the FBI who led the US wing of the Lockerbie investigation- ‘no witness in this case was ever promised or paid any money in return for their testimony’.

I would submit that if it is unacceptable to offer bribes, inducements or rewards to any witness in a routine murder trial in Glasgow then it should have been unacceptable to have done it in the biggest case of mass murder ever carried out in Europe.

What is unusual about our application is that this is the first time in legal history in the UK that relatives of murdered victims have united with the relatives of a ‘convicted’ deceased to seek justice by means of a referral to the Appeal Court.

The case of Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi is described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history for a reason. A reversal of the verdict would mean that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for 26 years, by imprisoning a man they knew to be innocent.

The Appeal was commenced but following the diagnosis of terminal cancer it was suddenly abandoned in 2009. The application we lodged with the SCCRC deals with the circumstances that led to Mr Megrahi abandoning his appeal.

To date both the British Government and Scottish Government have claimed that they played no role in pressuring Mr  Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release.

The Governments in England and Scotland stand accused of effectively blackmailing a dying man into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release, and the backdrop to all of this was ‘strategic oil interests’.

The reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system has suffered badly both at home and internationally because of widespread doubts about the justifiability of the conviction of Mr Al-Megrahi.

It is in the interests of justice and of restoring confidence in our criminal justice system and its administration that these doubts be addressed.

The Lord Advocate was right when he said that the only place to determine guilt or innocence was in a court of law, where the evidence could be subjected to “great scrutiny, cross examination and testing”.

That is exactly what we intend to do if the SCCRC as a result of our application refers the original conviction back to the Court of Appeal believing that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.

END OF STATEMENT BY SOLICITOR AAMER ANWAR

STATEMENT BY DR JIM SWIRE FATHER OF FLORA SWIRE

“It has always been and remains my intent to see those responsible for her death brought to justice.  So by 1990 I was appalled by what I already knew concerning what appeared to me to be the betrayal of the trust which we should be able to place in our Government to protect us.

For me this case is about two families, mine and Abdel Baset’s, but behind them now are seen to lie the needs of 25 other families in applying for a further appeal 26 years after the event itself.

We need the truth and Scotland’s management of this case produced a verdict perfectly tailored for use by those who would seek to ensure that the full truth remains hidden.”

The eight elements that destroy the Megrahi conviction

[What follows is an article headed Eight inconvenient truths about Lockerbie, which the media and authorities are ignoring posted by John Ashton today on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website:]

Today, the 26th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, the media is full of articles about the case. All report the claims of Scotland’s chief prosecutor, the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC, that a review of the case has confirmed the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man so far convicted of the bombing. However, Mr Mulholland and – with the exception of a couple of Scottish newspapers – the media have barely touched upon key facts that suggest Mr Megrahi was not guilty.

Before I list these, a bit of background for those unfamiliar with the story. The prosecution case, which was accepted by the Scottish judges who convicted Mr Megrahi, was that on the morning of 21 December 1988, while travelling under a false name, he managed to smuggle a brown Samsonite suitcase containing a bomb onto an Air Malta flight from Malta to Frankfurt. An expert in airline security and alleged senior intelligence officer, Megrahi was said to have labelled the case for onward transfer to Pan Am flight 103A from Frankfurt to London Heathrow and Pan Am 103 from Heathrow to New York.

He supposedly bought clothes for the suitcase at a small Maltese shop called Mary’s House on an earlier visit to the island on 7 December. The shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, who was the prosecution’s star witness, told the court that Mr Megrahi resembled the man who had bought the clothes. The Malta link was confirmed by baggage records from Frankfurt airport, which appeared to show that a suitcase from the Air Malta flight had been forwarded to Pan Am 103.

Another key plank of the case was a fragment of electronic circuit board, found embedded within part of a blast damaged, Maltese shirt. A British forensic investigator told the court that the fragment matched boards in timers supplied to Libya by Swiss company Mebo, which shared its offices with a Libyan company called ABH, in which Megrahi was a shareholder.

Surely open and shut case? Er, no. Here are just a few of the reasons why.

1. The guilty verdict was “incomprehensible”

Not my description, but that of Professor Hans Köchler, a UN trial observer. He came to this conclusion because, according to the prosecution, Mr Megrahi coud only have carried out the bombing with the help of another Libyan, Lamin Fhimah, who stood trial with him. However, the judges acquitted Fhimah, which begged the question – as yet unanswered – how could Mr Megrahi acted alone?

2. The clothes buyer was clearly not Megrahi
In his statements to the police, the shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, consistently described the clothes buyer as around 50 years old, six feet tall, dark skinned and with a full head of hair. Mr Megrahi was around 5ft 8 inches tall, light-skinned, had thinning hair and, at the time of the incident, was just 36.

3. It’s official – the court judgment was unreasonable
In 2007, following a four-year review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (the official body responsible for examining alleged miscarriages of justice) referred Mr Megrahi’s conviction to the appeal court on no fewer than six grounds. He abandoned the appeal in 2009 when terminally ill with cancer in the belief that it would help smooth the way for his release from prison on compassionate grounds.

Crucially, one of the SCCRC’s six grounds was that there was no “reasonable foundation” for the crucial finding that he bought the clothes on 7 December 1988, which was his only window of opportunity. Why did the commission reach this conclusion? Because Mr Gauci was clear that, as he was leaving the shop, the clothes purchaser bought an umbrella because it had started to rain. Yet meteorological evidence heard by the court demonstrated that there was no rain on 7 December. If Mr Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes on 7 December, the prosecution case collapses, so the SCCRC had come as close as it legally could to saying that the guilty verdict itself was unreasonable.

4. The prosecution withheld a stack of evidence that was helpful to Megrahi
During their review, the SCCRC found that the prosecution had withheld important documents that cast doubt on their own case. Four out of the commission’s six appeal referral grounds concerned such non-disclosure.

Among the documents were secret police memos noting that Tony Gauci had expressed an interest in receiving a substantial reward, and that he was under the strong influence of his brother Paul, who regularly nagged the police about being rewarded. The SCCRC discovered that Tony was later secretly paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice and Paul $1 million. Among the documents uncovered by the commission was a begging letter from the police’s senior investigating officer to the DoJ, in which in which he acknowledged that the Crown Office was prevented by its own rules from seeking a reward for the brothers, but saw no problem in the police doing so.

5. The circuit board fragment was not from one of the timers supplied to Libya
Evidence uncovered in 2009 demonstrated that the circuit board fragment could not have originated from one of the Libyan timer boards. The evidence concerned the metallic coating on the fragment’s copper circuitry. Back in 1990, two independent scientists consulted by the police established that the coating was pure tin, but when, two years later, they examined a board from the same batch that was used to make the timers supplied to Libya, they discovered that it was coated with a tin-lead alloy. As neither scientist was an electronics expert, they were unaware of the potential significance of the difference. However, in 2009 Mr Megrahi’s lawyers spoke to the prosecution witness who had made the boards used in the Libyan timers, who was certain that all of them were coated with tin-lead alloy and therefore equally certain that he could not have made the board from which the fragment originated. The lawyers also discovered notes by the prosecution forensic expert who had claimed in court that the fragment matched the boards in the Libyan timers. These demonstrated that he too was aware of the metallurgical disparity, which, as an electronics expert, he should have recognised the significance of.

6. The luggage evidence points to Heathrow rather than Malta
It was not disputed at Mr Megrahi’s trial that the Lockerbie bomb was packed within a brown Samsonite suitcase. Of all the witnesses who were involved in the loading of the three flights on which, according to the prosecution, the bomb was carried were interviewed by the police. Only one of them could recall seeing such a case – a Heathrow baggage handler called John Bedford. Significantly, it was positioned within the luggage container within which the explosion later occurred, very close to the centre of the blast. Crucially, Mr Bedford went off duty BEFORE Pan Am flight 103A arrived from Frankfurt, which means that the suitcase he saw could not have originated on the Air Malta flight

Researcher Dr Morag Kerr, who has exhaustively studied the luggage evidence, has made an extremely compelling case that the Bedford suitcase contained the bomb. Furthermore, records from the Maltese airport suggest that no rogue baggage made it on to the flight to Frankfurt. (For further details see her book Adequately Explained by Stupidity?)

7. There is no reliable evidence that Megrahi was a senior intelligence agent
The claim that Mr Megrahi was a senior intelligent agent originated from a junior colleague in the state-owned Libyan Arab Airlines. At Mr Megrahi’s trial, this witness, Magid Giaka, was revealed to be a CIA informant. Not only that, but the CIA considered him so unreliable that it was on the verge of sacking him before he became useful in the Lockerbie case. Declassified CIA cables examined by the court showed him to be a money-grabbing fantasist. As well as alleging that Mr Megrahi was an intelligence agent, he claimed that colonel Gaddafi was a freemason. The judges rejected most of his evidence, yet chose to believe his unsupported claim about Mr Megrahi.

Mr Megrahi does not deny that travelling on a false passport, which he says was issued to him because he was involved a US sanctions-busting efforts to source spare parts for the airline. Crucially, he kept the passport for eleven years after the bombing and was happy for it to be passed to the prosecution at trial – hardly the actions of a guilty man.

8. No evidence has emerged from Libya since the fall of Gaddafi
A few days after the start of the Libyan revolution, in February 2011, Colonel Gaddafi’s ex-justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who was soon to become head of Libya’s National Transitional Council, told the Swedish newspaper Expressen that he had proof that Gaddafi had ordered the bombing. A few days later, he told the Sunday Times that Mr Megrahi had blackmailed Gaddafi into securing his release from prison by threatening to expose Gaddafi’s role in the bombing, and had ‘vowed to exact revenge’ unless Gaddafi complied. However, when, a few weeks later, he was pushed to reveal his proof, the best he could offer was that the Gaddafi regime had funded Megrahi’s legal case. He later claimed that Expressen had misquoted him. The Scottish police and prosecutors hoped that the regime change would yield more evidence about Mr Megrahi’s and Gaddafi’s role in the bombing, but, nearly four years on, no such evidence has surfaced publicly. The only significant document to emerge was a letter from Megrahi to his relative Abdullah Sennousi, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal. In it he stated: “I am an innocent man”. He wasn’t lying.