At the start of the trial

[What follows is the text of an article by Steve James which was published on this date in 2000:]

On May 3, the trial began of the two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988.

Abdelbaset Ali Muhammad Al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah are charged with planting a Semtex-packed cassette recorder on board the Boeing 747, which destroyed the plane killing its 259 passengers and crew, as well as 11 Lockerbie residents.

For years it was assumed that no legal proceedings into the Lockerbie tragedy would ever be held, as Libya would be unlikely to give up the accused individuals. That the case has come to court is the outcome of a significant shift in political and economic relations internationally. The European Union (EU) has led efforts to normalise relations with Libya in order to gain access to the country's considerable oil resources.

The accession of Blair's Labour government to office in 1997 provided a means for Britain—concerned that French and Italian oil companies were reaping the benefits of the USA-UK embargo on Libya—to develop its interests in the country. After protracted negotiations with South Africa's Nelson Mandela and UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, Libyan leader Colonel Gadhaffi agreed to hand over Al-Megrahi and Fhimah last year—provided they would not be tried on US or British soil. They have been held in the Netherlands ever since.

Once the suspects were handed over, the EU lifted its sanctions against Libya, and a considerable trade in oil, natural gas, and machinery has opened up, from which the US remains largely excluded. A steady stream of EU ministers have also visited the Libyan capital Tripoli. Only the awkward business of Flight 103 remained to be resolved for business as usual to be resumed.

For the purposes of the trial, Camp Zeist, a former US military base in the Netherlands, was designated as Scottish territory. The proceedings, expected to last many months, are being held in accordance with Scottish law and will involve hearing thousands of witnesses. It is the first time that a British court has sat outside British territory. This arrangement was agreed after protracted negotiations between the Libyan, British, US and Dutch governments, and also involved Scottish legal officials and the families and friends of those killed in the crash. Four Scottish judges, sitting without a jury, are hearing the case. The prosecutor is Scotland's Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd.

The trial began with the indictment against the two men being read out. They are charged with murder, conspiracy to murder, and a breach of the 1982 Aviation Security Act. The two pleaded not guilty and the clerk to the court read out a list of Arabic names of people he said the defence would allege were the real Lockerbie bombers. This included members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) and the Palestine Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) — the two groups originally suspected of the bombing.

The Pan Am jumbo Maid of the Seas blew up on December 21, 1988, shortly after taking off from London's Heathrow airport. The plane disintegrated in mid-air, shedding debris over a wide area. The bulk of the wreckage impacted on and around the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, also killing 11 local residents.

Early investigations into the atrocity by Dumfries and Galloway police pointed to the bomb having been a reprisal for the US navy's shooting down of an Iranian Airbus in the Persian Gulf six months earlier. On July 3, 1988 the US warship the Vincennes was operating within Iranian waters, providing military support for Iraq in the ongoing Iran/Iraq war. During a one-sided battle against a small number of lightly armed Iranian gunboats, the Vincennes fired two missiles at the Airbus, which was on a routine civilian flight. All 290 civilians onboard were killed.

This act of mass murder by the US has never resulted in any court case. The captain and crew of the Vincennes were militarily decorated. Attempts by relatives of the victims to bring legal action against the American government were rejected by the US Supreme Court in 1993. Despite the fact that the vast majority of victims were Iranian, the US paid $2.9 million in compensation only to non-Iranian victims of the shooting.

The Iranian government promised revenge attacks at the time and it is alleged that it reached an agreement with the PFLP[-GC] to this end, which was led by ex-Syrian army captain, Ahmed Jibril and had links with the Syrian government.

Discussion between Dumfries and Galloway police and the West German police revealed that members of the PFLP had already been arrested in West Germany in possession of a bomb similar to the one blown up over Lockerbie. It was also discovered that four other bombs, disguised in cassette players, had been made but were unaccounted for. The suspicion grew that the PFLP had planted the bomb on Flight 103, or arranged for it to be planted, and that it was intended to blow up over Atlantic.

The suitcase containing the explosive device had been loaded at the Frankfurt airport. The bomb's timing mechanism was pressure activated and set to explode four hours after it first reached 8,000 feet. [RB: I have no idea where the author picked up this egregious error.] But Flight 103 was delayed at Heathrow before embarking on its transatlantic journey. As a result, the plane blew up over Lockerbie.

Several warnings were forwarded to American embassies and intelligence staff that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to New York would be attacked in December 1988. US intelligence staff based in Moscow and elsewhere scheduled to fly on Pan Am flights over that period cancelled their seats due to the warning. Many students took advantage of the cheap flights this made available. Flight 103 was only two-thirds full a mere four days before Christmas.

Crash investigators subsequently found more evidence indicating a possible link between the explosion and the PFLP. Clothing found in the case that had contained the bomb was identified as having been bought in Malta. A PFLP associate, Abu Talb, recently returned from Malta was later identified in the shop where the clothes were bought. By 1990, Dumfries and Galloway police announced they were on the brink of arrests. Talb is one of the individuals named by the Libyans' defence team.

Allegations have been made that what happened subsequently points to an attempt by the US government to divert police investigations away from Iran and Syria. According to the British journalist Paul Foot, in March 1989 US President George Bush rang the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to ask her to "cool it" on the Lockerbie case. Foot, in a 1994 review of the book Trail of the Octopus by Donald Goddard and ex-US intelligence agent Lester Coleman, noted that Paul Channon, the British Transport Minister, had briefed journalists that arrests were imminent just hours before Bush's call. Channon was sacked shortly after and no arrests were made. A US commission of inquiry into Lockerbie did not mention the PFLP.

In 1990, a timer fragment was belatedly recovered from the wreckage by US investigators. They identified this as coming from a batch of timers sold by the Swiss makers MEBO to Libya. MEBO subsequently insisted that the timer in question was part of a batch, which had never been electrically connected, sold to the East German secret police, the Stasi.

Goddard and Coleman's book outlined a scenario in which the US government was not only politically responsible for the Lockerbie bomb, vis-à-vis the Vincennes incident and their long-standing domination of the region, but were practically responsible for it having been placed on Flight 103.

According to Coleman, America's Defence Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and Drug Enforcement Agency were all active around the region looking for information on Middle Eastern factions, drug trafficking, and spying on each other. Coleman suggests that the CIA, on the assumption that it contained heroin, identified the bag with the bomb as being safe for transit. Goddard and Coleman suggest that PFLP members, who switched some drugs for the bomb, had infiltrated the drug-running operation.

Coleman and others, including an investigator Juval Aviv employed by the now defunct Pan Am, have subsequently been vilified, framed for petty misdemeanours, and/or generally harassed by the US state.

Coleman's allegations were repeated in a 1994 British TV programme, The Maltese Double Cross, produced by Channel 4. In 1997, the Libyan government showed the Channel 4 film at a hearing it had won before the UN International Court of Justice to protest against the sanctions imposed by the US in 1992. The impact of sanctions on Libya between 1992 and 1995 had been drastic, causing many deaths through lack of medical supplies and costing the country $6 billion in lost agricultural exports alone.

It is alleged that blame for the bombing was pinned on Libya in order to turn attention away from the Iranian regime, which the US was now developing as its ally in the Middle East as a counterweight to Iraq. By the late 1980s, longstanding US plans for a major escalation of their military involvement in the Persian Gulf, the world's leading oil-producing area, were coming to fruition. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 gave the US the pretext it required. The US and NATO were able to assemble a broad coalition of support for the intervention—from the Soviet Union, Europe and most of the bourgeois nationalist regimes in the Middle East.

Libya opposed the bombardment of Iraq and was defined by the US as a "pariah" state. The US had bombed Tripoli in 1986, killing Libyan leader Gadhaffi's daughter, and had severed diplomatic relations with the country, accusing it of sponsoring international terrorism.

Truth and Lies in Real and Imagined Scotland

Novelist (and Justice for Megrahi stalwart) James Robertson will be speaking on 22 May during The University of Edinburgh’s Spy Week 2015. His contribution is advertised as follows:]

Truth and Lies in Real and Imagined Scotland

Date and time:  May 22 at 5.30pm

Venue:  Informatics Forum

From Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the fiction of Robert Louis Stevenson and John Buchan, literature of or about Scotland has often focused on hidden agendas, double-lives and the deceits of power and authority. James Robertson looks at some aspects of this tradition, and draws examples from his own work, including The Fanatic, And the Land Lay Still and his most recent, Lockerbie Bombing-inspired novel The Professor of Truth.

This event is free and open to all, if you would like to attend please book a place as seats will be limited:

Book a seat for Truth and Lies in Real and Imagined Scotland

James Robertson is one of Scotland’s leading novelists.  His novels are explorations of darker aspects of Scottish character, and political and social history: The Fanatic came out in 2000, and Joseph Knight in 2003, the winner of both the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. The Testament of Gideon Mack appeared in 2006, and And the Land Lay Still in 2010, another winner of the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award.  His most recent novel is The Professor of Truth.

‘One of Britain’s best contemporary novelists’, Irvine Welsh, The Guardian

Libya's prisoner transfer request

[On this date in 2009, while Abdelbaset Megrahi’s second appeal was ongoing, the Libyan Government submitted to the Scottish Government an application for his transfer to Libya under the Prisoner Transfer Agreement between Libya and the United Kingdom that had come into force on 29 April 2009.  A report on the BBC News website can be read here.

What follows is what I wrote on this blog about the law applicable to the transfer of Megrahi back to Libya on the day the PTA was ratified:]

Prisoner transfer: the relevant legal provisions

The relevant provisions of the prisoner transfer agreement between the United Kingdom and Libya which was ratified today are as follows:

“Art 2(2): A person who has received a liberty depriving sentence in the territory of one Party may be transferred to the territory of the other Party, in order to complete the sentence imposed upon him. To that end he may express his interest to the transferring State or to the receiving State in being transferred under this Treaty.

Art 2(3): Transfer may be requested either by the transferring State or the receiving State.

Art 3: A prisoner may be transferred under this Treaty only if the following criteria are met: (...)

(b) the judgment is final and no other criminal proceedings relating to the offence ... are pending in the transferring State; (...)

(e) the transferring and receiving States agree to the transfer.”

The relevant UK legislation, which the Scottish Government would have to apply in the case of Mr Megrahi, used to be the Repatriation of Prisoners Act 1984 (c 47), section 1 of which provided:

“(1) Subject to the following provisions of this section, where—

(a) the United Kingdom is a party to international arrangements providing for the transfer between the United Kingdom and a country of territory outside the British Islands of persons to whom subsection (7) below applies, and

(b) the relevant Minister [defined, in the case of prisoners in Scotland as "the Scottish Ministers"] and the appropriate authority of that country or territory have each agreed to the transfer under those arrangements of a particular person (in this Act referred to as “the prisoner”), and

(c) the prisoner has consented to being transferred in accordance with those arrangements

the relevant Minister shall issue a warrant providing for the transfer of the prisoner into or out of the United Kingdom.”

This provision requiring the prisoner's consent was removed in 2006, but it is abundantly clear that, irrespective of the wishes of the UK, Scottish and Libyan authorities, Megrahi cannot in fact be transferred back to Libya without his consent since he cannot be transferred without his current appeal being abandoned and no-one but Megrahi can instruct the abandonment of that appeal.

"...there is a long way to go"

[The following are excerpts from two reports published in The Guardian on this date in 2000:]

Air controller tells historic court of final minutes of bombed Pan Am flight 103 
The final dramatic moments of Pan Am flight 103 before it exploded over Lockerbie nearly 12 years ago were recreated in a packed court yesterday at the start of the trial of two Libyans accused of murdering 270 people.

On the first day of the historic trial, the Scottish court in the Netherlands heard how air traffic controllers watched the radar blip of the doomed Boeing 747 shatter into fragments before it finally disappeared off their screens.

Questioned by Colin Boyd, the Lord Advocate, Alan Topp, descirbed how on the night of December 21 1988 he tracked the path of the aircraft on his radar monitor in the Scottish air traffic control centre at Prestwick, as the plane headed from London Heathrow towards New York.

Mr Topp, 64, of Troon, Ayrshire, said that at about 7pm he made contact with the jumbo as it entered Scottish air space. "Good evening Scottish, Clipper one zero three," he was told by the pilot, according to a transcript introduced in evidence. "We are at level three one zero." Those words were the last ever heard from the plane.

Lord Sutherland, sitting with two other judges, listened as Mr Topp described how at 7.02pm he first noticed a radar abnormality with Pan Am flight 103.

Just a minute later, according to a video recording of the radar screen shown in evidence, flight 103's blip fragmented into first three and then five discrete signals. "I had my radar opened out and you could see that one big bright square is made of up of several squares very close to each other," said Mr Topp.

"I had never seen anything like this happen before. Nobody had."

Several attempts to contact the aircraft were made by the air traffic control centre, but with no success. A KLM aircraft nearby was also unable to make contact with the plane, despite repeated attempts.

The court heard how Mr Topp called over his boss, Adrian Ford, 66, from Ayr, after a British Airways pilot, Robin Chamberlain, told him he had spotted a fire on the ground near Lockerbie. Mr Chamberlain, 52, told the court: "The closest I could put it is that it looked as if a petrol storage tank had blown up. If you imagine the things you see in films, it was like that - like a large explosion or a bomb - something of that nature."

At the air traffic control centre, Mr Ford immediately informed search and rescue teams that the aircraft was missing. "I said to the control there that Clipper 103 has vanished."

Earlier, the two Libyans, described by the prosecution as intelligence agents, pleaded not guilty to murder, conspiracy to murder and contravention of the Aviation Security Act 1982. They also lodged a special defence of incrimination and blamed Palestinian terrorists for the bombing.

In a statement read by the clerk of the court, the defence claimed that members of two Syrian-backed Palestinian groups - one of them a prosecution witness - had planted the bomb on flight 103.

The defence was submitted moments after Lord Sutherland opened proceedings against Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who surrendered for trial last year. They claim to have been employees of Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta.

The defence statement also named Mohammed Abu Talb, a Palestinian, as one of 10 other alleged conspirators. He is serving a life sentence in Sweden for earlier bombings in Denmark and the Netherlands.

Abu Talb was an early suspect in the case, but investigators abandoned that line of inquiry. He is listed as one of more than 1,000 prosecution witnesses.

Seven other named Arab men, whose whereabouts are unknown, were described as formerly directors of a bakery in Malta,where the suitcase containing the bomb was allegedly loaded on to a feeder flight to Frankfurt, and from there to London.

The defence statement referred also to members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and to Parviz Taheri, who is another crown witness.

First to testify was Richard Dawson, a civil aviation air traffic controller who was on duty at Heathrow airport on the night the plane crashed in flames on to the Scottish Borders town.

Mr Dawson, aged 52, described the routine procedures for departures from Heathrow, and radar control technology which allows the controllers to track the aircraft. He confirmed that the doomed flight made its first appearance in traffic control records at 6.18pm on December 21 1988, identified as Clipper 103, and that later it was cleared for takeoff, leaving the airport shortly afterwards.

Watching the trial throughout were the families of the Libyan accused. In total, 17 family members, including the children of the accused, witnessed the first day's proceedings - 10 of Mr Fhimah's relatives and seven of Mr al-Megrahi's. Mr Fhimah's uncle, Milad Fhimah, said: "We are Muslim, we look to Allah, we believe in God. We are not upset, because it is true that they are innocent."

Bruce Smith, a former Pan Am pilot whose wife, Ingrid, was killed in the crash, said: "This is the start of the trial and we welcome it, but there is a long way to go."

Judges and lawyers
Lord Sutherland, Presiding Judge Ranald Sutherland QC, 68, is one of the most experienced judges on the Scottish legal circuit. He was appointed to the bench in 1985 and has been an advocate, the Scottish equivalent of a barrister, since 1956. He frequently takes charge of the court of criminal appeal in Scotland and is used to high-profile cases.

Lord Coulsfield John Cameron QC, 66, was appointed to the bench in 1987 and first became an advocate in 1960. He took silk in 1973 and has had a long and varied career. He has lectured in law at Edinburgh University and was a judge in the courts of appeal of Jersey and Guernsey.

Lord MacLean Ranald MacLean QC, 61, is the newest of the judges to the Scottish bench. He was appointed to the bench in 1990, although he has been an advocate since 1964. In his advocate days he was most often a prosecutor.

William Taylor QC, Counsel for Al Megrahi Since the early 1980s, Bill Taylor has been one of the most prominent of Scotland's defence QCs. He has won a string of high-profile cases, helped by his good courtroom voice and what is generally regarded to be an extremely agile mind.

Richard Keen QC, Counsel for Fhimah Richard Keen's courtroom gifts are every bit as prominent as those of Bill Taylor. However his relative lack of experience in criminal cases made him, for many, a surprise choice as Fhimah's counsel.

The Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC Since Lord Hardie unexpectedly stepped down at the start of this year, Colin Boyd has led the prosecution team. As the former solicitor general for Scotland, he knows the case well. However, it is widely believed he will hand over the main prosecution role to one of his junior counsel - Alastair Campbell QC and Alan Turnbull QC - when the trial gets under way in earnest.

The beginning of the Camp Zeist fiasco

[On this date fifteen years ago, the trial of Abdelbaset Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah started at Camp Zeist. What follows is an excerpt from an Associated Press news agency report published that day:]

The trial of two alleged Libyan intelligence agents accused of blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 opened today before three Scottish judges at a special court on this former US air base.

A Scottish High Court judge, Lord Ranald Sutherland, opened the proceedings against defendants Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, who surrendered for trial last year following nearly a decade of sanctions against Libya.

Members of the court rose as the judges, wearing white wigs and dressed in flowing ivory robes with embroidered red crosses, were led into the chamber by a sentry bearing a silver mace, the ceremonial staff symbolizing authority in Scottish courts.

The three judges and one reserve judge took their seats on the bench underneath a Scottish royal crest bearing the Latin words: “Nemo me impune lacessit,” which literally means “None dare meddle with me.”

“It is time for justice. We want to hold the government responsible, not these guys,” said Bruce Smith, an American whose British wife, Ingrid, was killed in the crash. “I am convinced that they have a good case against the Libyan government. This should be the start, not the end.”

The trial began with the defendants and lawyers identifying themselves for the judges.

The sleek, state-of-the-art courtroom, built over the past year at a cost of $18 million to British taxpayers, provides computer monitors for all judges, lawyers, defendants, and clerks to view exhibits and follow the court transcript in real time.

Wireless headphones receiving signals from infrared transmitters were available for the defendants to listen to the proceedings via simultaneous translation in Arabic.

For more than 11 years, investigators of the world's worst airliner bombing pursued a trail of evidence across Europe and the Mediterranean to the defendants.

The proceedings, expected to last about a year, follow the largest international murder probe on record, with investigators interviewing 15,000 witnesses in more than 20 countries and sifting through 180,000 pieces of evidence since the midair blast. (...)

Camp Zeist, an old US air base 40 miles southeast of Amsterdam, has been declared Scottish sovereign territory for the duration of the trial.

It was chosen as the venue in a UN-brokered compromise following years of sanctions aimed at forcing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to hand over the suspects, who were indicted in November 1991.

More than 30 American victims' relatives were getting front-row seats in the public gallery, separated from the court by bulletproof glass. Many other family members could watch via closed-circuit television linkups to sites in Washington, New York, London and Dumfries, Scotland.

For the relatives, the long-awaited start of the trial elicited mixed emotions. It marked a milestone in their crusade for justice for the deaths of their loved ones. But it also raised doubts whether those truly responsible for the crime will be punished.

“I feel a sense of relief and a sense of accomplishment that we pursued it long enough and hard enough,” said Maddy Shapiro, of Stamford, Conn, whose daughter Amy was on Flight 103.

Nevertheless, she expressed concern that even if the men are found guilty, “whatever higher-ups gave the orders” won't be pursued.

“The people who are really responsible are who we are after,” said Kathleen Flynn of Montville, NJ, whose son, John Patrick Flynn, was among the victims.

Relatives believe the bombing plot involved senior figures in the Libyan government as well as other terrorist organizations.

They have also voiced worry over reports that the prosecution case suffered setbacks as a result of contradictory witness statements and inconsistencies in the evidence against the Libyans.

Prosecutors allege that the defendants planted the suitcase rigged with a plastic explosive onto a flight from the Mediterranean island of Malta to Frankfurt, where it was transferred as unaccompanied luggage onto a feeder flight connecting with Pan Am 103 at Heathrow.

According to Scottish legal experts, the prosecution has no eyewitness who can establish incontrovertibly that the defendants planted a suitcase bomb aboard the doomed airliner.

[Contemporaneous reports on the BBC News website can be read here and here; and the detailed report on The Pan Am 103 Crash Website can be read here.

A diary entry by Dr Jim Swire reads as follows:]

Neither of us [Dr Swire and his wife, Jane] slept last night. Today is the first day of the trial and we both tossed and turned, thinking about Flora. I am acutely aware that I have been on the verge of obsession for a long time. When Flora died, I was engulfed in raw pain. But that has turned to determination for justice. I worry about the effect on my family. I have put such pressure on Jane and yet she has shown such strength. I worry, too, about my children, Catherine and William. They loved their sister dearly but there must be times when they have felt frustrated that the family's focus is forever on Flora. Times when they have wanted to scream: "We are still here." But I know they are with me.

It is stiflingly hot, 77F. We had both brought warm clothes but thankfully Jane has found some short-sleeved shirts. We hold hands as we walk into court. Jane tells me later that she was struck by how the defendants have aged. They are greyer, more gaunt. She says she had an overwhelming desire to walk over, bend down and quietly ask: "Did you do it? Did you take Flora from me?"

She is constantly plagued by thoughts of Flora's last moments. Those 30 seconds it took to fall to earth. She has counted them out many times in the kitchen of our home. She cannot get over not being with her firstborn when Flora needed her most.

I gaze at the defendants. Did they do it? I don't know. I have chosen my seat with care - directly behind the witness stand so that the judges are reminded that I am here. I am utterly taken aback when a special defence is launched. The defendants have cited two organisations and 10 individuals whom they say were responsible for the bomb. I had thought that the trial would cut through the conspiracy theories.

I listen to the details of how the bomb was allegedly planted. Again, I wonder if Flora is proud of me. I have prevented your death becoming a mere statistic, I tell her. I think of the last time I saw her. I insisted on seeing her body. I touched the little mole on her toe and cut a lock of her hair. But she was so lifeless. I think of how she would be now had she lived. A glittering career, babies. Anger wells and I clasp Jane's hand.

Outside the court, there is a round of quick-fire questions from reporters. I sat up late last night learning a statement but my bottle goes and I read it instead. I am grateful for their intelligent and gentle questions.

When we get home we eat scrambled eggs and fall onto our mattress from exhaustion. We knew today would be tough. There will be a whole year of this for me.

Found guilty by three Scottish judges who persuaded themselves...

[What follows is an excerpt from a column by Richard Ingrams published in The Independent on this date in 2009:]

There is never enough evidence

We are not looking for anyone else. That is the traditional response of the police when faced with the acquittal of men they are convinced were guilty all along. They were at it again this week when three men accused of assisting the 7 July suicide bombers were found not guilty. Andy Hayman, former commissioner of Special Operations at Scotland Yard, wrote of "a sense of bitter disappointment" at the acquittal of the men. And this he said was probably "the last throw of the dice". The police had done a very thorough investigation but the evidence was "not convincing enough".

The implication is clear. The men were almost certainly guilty. The police just didn't have the evidence to prove it. At no point was Hayman prepared to admit that they might just have been innocent. As it happened, the acquittal of the three men coincided with the reopening of an appeal case in a terrorist attack far more serious even than that of 7 July – the Lockerbie bombing of 1988 which resulted in the deaths of 270 people.

The Libyan convicted of the bombing, Mr Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, began an appeal in Scotland against his conviction in 2001. Megrahi did not have the benefit of a jury trial but was found guilty by three Scottish judges who persuaded themselves that he had put a bomb in a suitcase in Malta which went unaccompanied to Frankfurt where it was loaded on to another plane to Heathrow before being transferred on to Pan Am Flight 103 to the US and exploding over Scotland.

Should Megrahi's appeal succeed, it will be interesting to see if the Scottish police say that they are not looking for anyone else.

No positive identification of Megrahi

[What follows is a report published in The Herald on this date in 2009:]

Appeal judges were told today there "no positive identification" of a Libyan intelligence officer by a crucial witness at the Lockerbie bombing trial.

A senior counsel said there were "striking discrepancies" in the evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper over the height and age of a man who had bought clothing from him with that of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi.

The clothes were found to have been in a suitcase which housed the bomb that blew Pan Am Flight 103 out of the skies over the Dumfriesshire town in December 1988 killing 270 people.

Margaret Scott QC told the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh that the testimony of shopkeeper Tony Gauci was at best "a looks like resemblance" between the man who made the purchases and Megrahi.

She said: "When one looks at the identification evidence it is incapable of sustaining a finding that the appellant was the purchaser of the clothing."

The finding was one of four critical inferences made by judges at Megrahi's original at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in convicting him of murder in 2001.

Megrahi (57) whose health is "deteriorating" as he suffers from prostate cancer, is appealling against the conviction claiming he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

He was jailed for life following the guilty finding and ordered to serve at least 27 years for the mass murder.

Megrahi has previous unsuccessfully challenged his conviction, but his case has now been referred back to the appeal court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which examines alleged miscarriages of justice.

His counsel, Miss Scott, said that in 1989 Mr Gauci had described the man who bought the clothes as aged about 50 and six feet in height. Megrahi was aged 36 at the time of the purchase and stood five feet eight inches tall.

"The initial description given by the witness at the outset is substantially different to the appellant both in terms of height and age," she said.

She said Mr Gauci had been shown several photospreads by police on different occasions as they sought his help.

Miss Scott said that at the first which featured a photo of Megrahi, supplied by the FBI, there were aspects of procedure clearly different to the others.

She said initially Mr Gauci said the men featured were younger than the purchaser.

The defence counsel said: "In a sense he rejected the photos on the basis they were too young, but quite unlike before the witness was told to look at the photos again carefully and to try to allow for any age difference."

Miss Scott argued it was "a clear message that the witness needs to try again and a message that there is something there to be found".

She said it was only following this that Mr Gauci picked out the photo of Megrahi as being similar to the man who bought the clothing.

"In my submission, that is highly irregular and liable to introduce the risk of significant error in what he subsequently does," she said.

Miss Scott said that an identity parade held at Camp Zeist in 1999 with Mr Gauci in attendance was also flawed.

She said no other Libyans were part of the line-up and four of the participants were in their 30s and one was five feet three inches tall. "Four people were quite unreasonably young and one was unreasonably short," she told the court.

Mr Gauci picked out Megrahi at the parade as a man "who look a little bit like exactly" the clothes buyer.

The defence counsel said: "It is quite clear there has been no positive identification of the appellant as the purchaser. At best the witness makes a form of resemblance identification."

The hearing before five judges continues.