Lockerbie suspects head for trial

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 1999. It reads as follows:]

The two men suspected of the Lockerbie airline bombing more than 10 years ago have arrived in the Netherlands to face trial.

As a result the UN Security Council has suspended sanctions against Libya.

The men were finally handed over into the custody of United Nations officials at Tripoli airport on Monday morning.

During the handover ceremony, suspected bomber Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi told Libyan television that he and his co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were going to prove their innocence to the world.

The two men gestured with victory signs as they boarded the plane bound for the Netherlands, escorted by the UN's chief legal adviser, Hans Corell.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has welcomed the surrender of the suspects.

"I am looking forward to the earliest possible resumption of Libya's relations with the rest of the international community," Mr Annan told a news conference in New York.

The UN imposed sanctions on Libya for its refusal to surrender the two men.

United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Robin Cook described the handover of the suspects as "an historic moment".

"It is the end of a 10-year diplomatic stalemate, and it justifies the initiative we launched last year for a trial in a third country."

The US described the handover as a "positive step."

"This is clearly welcome news, although long overdue," White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said.

The two suspects are expected to be tried before Scottish judges, in a specially-convened court at the Camp Zeist airbase near Utrecht.

Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in 1988, and a large piece of the fuselage fell onto the Scottish town.

The crash killed 259 people on board the plane, and another 11 on the ground.

The handover of the two men is the culmination of a decade of diplomatic efforts to find a solution which would satisfy the governments of Libya, the UK and the United States.

Western governments and the families of those killed in the bombing have maintained that a Libyan trial would not ensure a fair hearing.

Tripoli did not want the suspects to be sent to the UK.

Setting up a temporary Scottish court on the soil of a third country was put forward as a compromise solution.

The deal was eventually clinched with the intervention of leaders from South Africa, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Jane Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the bombing, said she was "very relieved" at the news of the handover.

"Obviously nothing can bring back the precious people that we have lost and that still hurts," Mrs Swire said.

"At least this is a good message for the world. People who are accused of wicked crimes like this are brought to justice."

The trial arrangements are said to be unprecedented in legal history, since they involve the establishment of a temporary court under the jurisdiction of one country, within the borders of another country.

After the suspects arrive in the Netherlands, they will have to be extradited from Dutch to Scottish custody, and the Zeist airbase has temporarily been declared Scottish territory.

The suspects must face a preliminary hearing within two days.

The trial should begin within 110 days, but given the complexities of the case, the defence is bound to request a postponement meaning the trial may not start for many months.

[RB: The above report was accompanied by another, headlined Analysis: Legal firsts for Lockerbie trial.]

Police officer recalls Lockerbie bomber arrest

[What follows is taken from a report just published on the BBC News website:]

A senior police officer has spoken of the moment he arrested the man later convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

Mike Leslie, who has retired after 30 years service, said Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was "bewildered and dazed".

It took five hours to read the arrest warrant to the Libyan intelligence officer - but he gave no reaction. (...)

He was tried at a specially convened Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

After serving eight years in prison, he was controversially released on compassionate grounds following a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Mr Leslie was one of three officers from Dumfries and Galloway who were at Camp Zeist when Al-Megrahi arrived there in 1999.

He said: "I think he was pretty bewildered, dazed by the events that were unfolding in front of him.

"I don't think ultimately he ever anticipated... that he would be handed over by Gaddafi.

"I actually read the warrant over to him.

"It took approximately five hours because you had to read the warrant over a line at a time, it went through an interpreter and also as part of that process, the 270 names of the victims had to be read over as well."

The former chief superintendent added: "There was never any reaction from him. It was very much staid and what you would expect from someone, I would imagine, that's been trained to give no reaction.

"But I think it boils down to the fact that he was pretty well bewildered by the fact that his country had handed him over."

Three years later, after Al-Megrahi lost an appeal against his conviction, Mr Leslie escorted him to a helicopter that was to fly him from the Netherlands to Scotland.

Mr Leslie said: "The most satisfying aspect for me was the fact that having been at Lockerbie on the night it happened, the aftermath and then arresting him, reading the warrant over to him and getting the opportunity to look him in the eyes when he was sitting there in front of me.

"I got a lot of satisfaction out of that and I got a lot of satisfaction for the families, I think - the fact that justice was being brought to him.

Mr Leslie recently retired as divisional commander of Police Scotland in Dumfries and Galloway.

[RB: Further versions of this story can be read here and here.]

Dignitaries invited to Libya to witness handover of suspects

[What follows is the text of a report (based on material from The Associated Press news agency) published on the CNN website on this date in 1999:]

Arab dignitaries have been invited by Libya to witness the handover of two suspects in the 1988 Pan Am bombing, a further sign their promised extradition is imminent, an Arab League official said Sunday.

However, in Libya, secrecy has surrounded the operation and officials contacted by telephone have refused to divulge details about the much anticipated handover.

Arab diplomats said on Saturday that Libyan leader Col Moammar Gadhafi has ordered the passports of the two suspects returned to them.

Ahmed Ben Heli, the Arab League's Assistant Secretary-General said his delegation would fly later Sunday to the Tunisian airport of Jerba, from where they would be driven to the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Representatives from six Arab countries also would attend the handover to a United Nations representative, he said.

"It is good news for the Libyans -- indeed, for all Arabs -- that this quandary is finally over," Ben Heli told The Associated Press before leaving Cairo, site of the League's headquarters.

The move followed reports that the chief UN legal counsel, Hans Corell, had left for Europe on Friday on his way to Libya to arrange for the handover.

Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi are to be tried under Scottish law in the Netherlands.

The December 21, 1988, bombing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people -- mostly Americans and Britons -- in the air and on the ground.

The two Libyans, allegedly former intelligence agents, were suspected of planting a suitcase bomb on the plane.

Ben Heli said he would represent the League's secretary-general, Esmat Abdel-Meguid, who could not make the trip because of other commitments.

The Algerian diplomat said the Libyan government also has invited foreign ministers of six Arab countries that formed a contact group set up by the League in 1992 to help negotiate an end to the crisis with the United States and Britain.

Egypt, a member of the group, has announced it is sending a senior minister. The other countries expected to send high-ranking officials were Syria, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Mauritania.

Arab diplomats in Cairo said that Libya also has asked South Africa and the Organization of African Unity to send representatives.

After a decade of insistence that Fhimah, 42, and al-Megrahi, 46, be extradited to the United States or Britain for trial, the United States agreed in August to a trial in the Netherlands.

Libya said last month it would turn the men over on or before Tuesday.

Terms of the deal call for the UN Security Council to suspend sanctions imposed in 1992, including an air embargo, as soon as the suspects arrive in the Netherlands.

The neutral venue solution: variations on a theme

[What follows is the text of a report that was published in The Herald on this date in 1995:]

Doubts over the feasibility of arranging for a Scottish court and jury to sit abroad are likely to prevent Labour from supporting an amendment to the new Criminal Justice Bill which could bring about a trial for the Lockerbie bombing.

The amendment, tabled by former Scottish Office minister Allan Stewart, would allow a Scottish court and jury to sit abroad for the trial of the two Libyans charged with carrying out the attack.

Libya has refused to hand over the men, who are accused of murdering the 270 people who died when Pan Am flight 103 exploded above Lockerbie in 1988, claiming they would not receive a fair trial in Scotland, or the United States.

Mr Stewart's amendment offers a potential solution by keeping the case

within the jurisdiction of the Scottish legal system while satisfying Libyan demands that the trial be held in a neutral third county, possibly The Hague in the Netherlands.

The amendment will be opposed by the Government when it comes up in the Commons Committee considering the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill. With a Government majority of one on the committee, Labour's support for Mr Stewart could force a defeat.

However, although the Scottish Labour leadership is sympathetic to the demands of those campaigning for a solution to the impasse, it is understood to be concerned about the feasibility of having a Scottish court sit abroad.

Sources suggest there are ''fundamental problems'' including the need to alter Scots law to fit in with European law which could result in a ''mongrel court''. However, Labour is not yet prepared to dismiss Mr Stewart's clause, and will wait for the committee debate, expected after Easter.

Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who sits on the committee and who will support the amendment, said yesterday he would fight to secure his party's backing. He said he had received assurances from Deputy Shadow Scottish Secretary John McFall that Labour would back the amendment. ''I would be astonished if we didn't,'' he said.

Yesterday Mr McFall, who leads for Labour on the committee, said his side would wait ''with interest'' to hear Mr Stewart explain his idea.

Mr Stewart proposes to visit Libya from next Friday, to meet Libyan government officials with the aim of persuading them to accept his idea.

The former minister, who will announce details of his trip today, will write to all the MPs on the committee explaining the reasoning behind the new clause. He does not accept the argument that procedural difficulties would make it impossible for a Scottish court to sit in a third country.

Meanwhile, the British authorities yesterday refused to comment on a newspaper report which named an Arab businessman as the mastermind behind the Lockerbie bombing.

It claimed that Dr Ihsan Barbouti, who had offices in London and Malta, planned the attack, and received £3.2m from a Libyan account. Officially, Dr Barbouti died in 1990 after suffering a heart attack, but the newspaper suggests he may have faked his own death to avoid capture and trial.

[RB: A fuller account of the Ihsan Barbouti story can be read here.

Eventually, in summer 1998, a neutral venue solution to the Lockerbie impasse -- based on my January 1994 proposal -- was accepted by the United Kingdom and the United States.]

Cleaning up Hillary’s Libyan mess

[This is the headline over a long article by US investigative journalist Robert Parry that was published yesterday on the Consortium News website. The following are a few paragraphs from the beginning and the end, along with a passing reference to Lockerbie:]

Hillary Clinton’s signature project as Secretary of State – the “regime change” in Libya – is now sliding from the tragic to the tragicomic as her successors in the Obama administration adopt increasingly desperate strategies for imposing some kind of order on the once-prosperous North African country torn by civil war since Clinton pushed for the overthrow and murder of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The problem that Clinton did much to create has grown more dangerous since Islamic State terrorists have gained a foothold in Sirte and begun their characteristic beheading of “infidels” as well as their plotting for terror attacks in nearby Europe.

There is also desperation among some Obama administration officials because the worsening Libyan fiasco threatens to undermine not only President Barack Obama’s legacy but Clinton’s drive for the Democratic presidential nomination and then the White House. So, the officials felt they had no choice but to throw caution to the wind or — to mix metaphors — some Hail Mary passes.

The latest daring move was a sea landing in Tripoli by the US/UN-formulated “unity government,” which was cobbled together by Western officials in hotel rooms in Morocco and Tunisia. But instead of “unity,” the arrival by sea threatened to bring more disunity and war by seeking to muscle aside two rival governments.

The sea landing at a naval base in Tripoli became necessary because one of those rival governments refused to let the “unity” officials fly into Libya’s capital. So, instead, the “unity” leaders entered Libya by boat from Tunisia and are currently operating from the naval base where they landed.

With this unusual move, the Obama administration is reminding longtime national security analysts of other fiascos in which Washington sought to decide the futures of other countries by shaping a government externally, as with the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s and the Iraqi National Congress in 2003, and then imposing those chosen leaders on the locals. (...)

Though Clinton and other “liberal interventionists” around Obama insisted that the goal was simply to protect Libyans from a possible slaughter, the U.S.-backed airstrikes inside Libya quickly expanded into a “regime change” operation, slaughtering much of the Libyan army.

Clinton’s State Department email exchanges revealed that her aides saw the Libyan war as a chance to pronounce a “Clinton doctrine,” bragging about how Clinton’s clever use of “smart power” could get rid of demonized foreign leaders like Gaddafi. But the Clinton team was thwarted when President Obama seized the spotlight when Gaddafi’s government fell.

But Clinton didn’t miss a second chance to take credit on Oct 20, 2011, after militants captured Gaddafi, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him. Appearing on a TV interview, Clinton celebrated Gaddafi’s demise with the quip, “we came; we saw; he died.”

However, with Gaddafi and his largely secular regime out of the way, Islamic militants expanded their power over the country. Some were terrorists, just as Gaddafi had warned. (...)

Yet, on the campaign trail, Clinton continues to defend her judgment in instigating the Libyan war. She claims that Gaddafi had “American blood on his hands,” although she doesn’t spell out exactly what she’s referring to. There remain serious questions about the two primary incidents blamed on Libya in which Americans died – the 1986 La Belle bombing in Berlin and the bombing of Pan Am 107 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. (...)

The aftermath of the Clinton-instigated “regime change” in Libya also shows how little Clinton and other U.S. officials learned from the Iraq War disaster. Clinton has rejected any comparisons between her vote for the Iraq War in 2002 and her orchestration of the Libyan war in 2011, saying that “conflating” them is wrong. She also has sought to shift blame onto European allies who also pushed for the war.

Though her Democratic rival, Sen Bernie Sanders, hasn’t highlighted her key role in the Libya fiasco, Clinton can expect a tougher approach from the Republicans if she wins the nomination. The problem with the Republicans, however, is that they have obsessed over the details of the Benghazi incident, spinning all sorts of conspiracy theories, missing the forest for the trees.

Clinton’s ultimate vulnerability on Libya is that she was a principal author of another disastrous “regime change” that has spread chaos not only across the Middle East and North Africa but into Europe, where the entire European Union project, a major post-World War II accomplishment, is now in danger.

Clinton may claim she has lots of foreign policy experience, but the hard truth is that much of her experience has involved making grievous mistakes and bloody miscalculations.

A conclusion no reasonable tribunal could have reached on the evidence

[The following are excerpts from an article headlined Lockerbie mystery will remain, based on an interview with me, that was published in Lockerbie’s local weekly newspaper The Annandale Herald on this date in 2009:]

Q. You are credited with being one of the “architects” of the first trial at Camp Zeist. What was your involvement at that time?

A. My personal involvement in the aftermath of the destruction of Pan Am 103 began in early 1993. I was approached by representatives of a group of British businessmen whose desire to participate in major engineering works in Libya was being impeded by the UN sanctions that had been imposed on Libya in an attempt to compel the surrender for trial in Scotland or the United States of America of their two accused citizens. They asked if I would be prepared to provide independent advice to Libya with a view (it was hoped) to persuading them their citizens would obtain a fair trial if they were to surrender to the Scottish authorities. I submitted material setting out the essentials of Scottish solemn criminal procedure and the various protections embodied in it for accused persons. It was indicated to me that the Libyan government was satisfied regarding the fairness of a criminal trial in Scotland but, since Libyan law prevented the extradition of nationals for trial overseas, the ultimate decision would have to be one taken voluntarily by the accused persons themselves.

For this purpose a meeting was convened in Tripoli in October 1993 of the international team of lawyers appointed to represent the accused. I am able personally to testify to how much of a surprise and embarrassment it was to the Libyan government when the outcome of the meeting of the defence team was an announcement that the accused were not prepared to surrender themselves for trial in Scotland. At a private meeting I had in Tripoli a day later it was explained to me the primary reason for the unwillingness of the accused to stand trial in Scotland was their belief that, because of unprecedented pre-trial publicity over the years, a Scottish jury could not possibly bring to their consideration of the evidence the impartiality and open-mindedness accused persons are entitled to expect and that a fair trial demands.

I returned to Tripoli and in 1994 and presented a detailed proposal that a trial be held outside Scotland, ideally in the Netherlands, in which the governing law and procedure would be that followed in Scottish criminal trials on indictment but with the jury of 15 persons replaced by a panel of judges. In a letter to me it was stated the suspects would voluntarily surrender themselves for trial before a tribunal so constituted. The Deputy Foreign Minister of Libya stated his government approved of the proposal. I submitted the relevant documents to the Foreign Office in London and the Crown Office in Edinburgh. Their immediate response was that this scheme was impossible, impracticable and inherently undesirable, with the clear implication that I had taken leave of what few senses nature had endowed me with. However, from about late July 1998, following interventions supporting my “neutral venue” scheme from, amongst others, President Nelson Mandela, there began to be leaks from UK government sources to the effect that a policy change over Lockerbie was imminent; and on 24 August 1998 the governments of the United Kingdom and United States announced they had reversed their stance on the matter of a “neutral venue” trial. And after a number pitfalls were avoided, the suspects surrendered themselves for trial.

Q. What is your view of the legal process involving the case since then?

A. The outcome of the trial was a real shock. Since the day of the verdict I have consistently maintained the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi was contrary to the weight of the evidence and that the finding of guilt against him was a conclusion no reasonable tribunal could have reached on that evidence. I am glad to say my view appears to be shared by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, for this is one of the grounds on which it referred Megrahi’s case back to the High Court for a further appeal. As someone who has practised, taught and (as a part-time judge) administered the criminal law of Scotland for 35 years, I can confidently say that, in my opinion, the conviction of Megrahi is the worst and most blatant miscarriage of justice to have occurred in Scotland for a hundred years.

Q. What led to the formation of the Justice for Megrahi campaign?

A. What precipitated the establishment of the campaign was the refusal by the High Court to release Megrahi on bail pending his appeal, even though advanced and incurable prostate cancer had been diagnosed. The campaign is intended to create a climate of opinion in which his release on bail by the court, or his compassionate release by the Scottish Government, can be achieved so he can spend what time remains to him with his family at their house in Newton Mearns.

Q. What is your experience of meeting and working with victims’ families?

A. One of the great privileges accorded to me through my involvement in the Lockerbie case has been meeting, and forming friendships with, relatives of individuals killed aboard Pan Am 103: delightful people like Jim and Jane Swire, John and Lisa Mosey and Marina Larracoechea. My contacts with other relatives, particularly some American ones, have been less pleasurable. For some of them, anyone who expresses anything less than absolutely uncritical acceptance of the trial verdict and of Libyan culpability is a rogue and a scoundrel. How they will cope with the quashing of Megrahi’s conviction (which I believe to be inevitable if the current appeal goes the full distance) I hesitate to think. (...)

Q. The second appeal hearing is due to start at the end of April. What are your expectations of that?

A. If the appeal goes the full distance, I have no doubt whatsoever that Megrahi’s conviction will be quashed. But if his medical condition deteriorates dramatically, he may decide to apply for transfer back to Libya to die there in the bosom of his family. It is a condition of applying for prisoner transfer that there be no live legal proceedings in that prisoner’s case. This means in order to qualify, Megrahi would have to abandon his present appeal. I am cynical enough about Crown Office and Scottish Government Justice Department motives to believe this is the outcome these bodies devoutly wish to achieve. There are those — civil servants and others — whose careers and reputations have been built upon the Lockerbie conviction. For them, the ideal outcome is for the current appeal to be abandoned. If it proceeds the full distance, embarrassment (and perhaps worse) are inevitable.

Q. What is it about the Lockerbie case in general that has kept you so involved over the years?

A. The injustice of it. Abdelbaset Megrahi should never have been convicted. This is so obvious to anyone who looks at the evidence and at the trial court’s judgment that there must be something wrong with a system that has already taken more than eight years to reach a point where it might just be about to be rectified.

Q. Do you think there will ever be a satisfactory conclusion to the Lockerbie case?

A. I think Megrahi’s name will be cleared. I only hope he is alive to see it. Beyond that, I doubt if we will ever now find out who or what actually caused the destruction of Pan Am 103. The political (and indeed journalistic) will to investigate what truly happened seems to me to be lacking. And people like me and like those relatives who have never been convinced by the officially-approved explanation are growing old and tired. Clearing Megrahi is the best that we can hope to achieve, I’m afraid.

Destruction of Lockerbie evidence challenged

[What follows is the text of an article by Steve James published on this date in 2002 on the website WSWS.org:]

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for the Scottish constituency of Linlithgow, used his parliamentary privileges to effectively accuse the British government of destroying evidence relating to the criminal investigation of the 1988 attack on PanAm flight 103, which killed 270 people.

Dalyell is the longest serving MP in Westminster—the so-called “father of the house”. Something of a maverick figure, he has a long record of raising awkward questions for successive British administrations. Dalyell harried Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for years over the circumstances surrounding the sinking of an elderly Argentine warship,General Belgrano, off the Malvinas/Falklands Islands, by a British nuclear submarine during the 1982 war with Argentina.

Speaking on March 26, in an adjournment debate in which MPs can raise whatever they like, Dalyell insisted that Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, currently jailed for life in Barlinnie prison in Glasgow for the Lockerbie attack, was innocent. Dalyell, who has long followed developments around the Lockerbie disaster, asked what was being done to preserve evidence collected during police enquiries. He went on to ask, “Can an assurance be given that they will not be destroyed in the same way as certain police notebooks have apparently been destroyed?”

Dalyell quoted a statement given by a retired policewoman, Mary Boylan, who had been based at Lockerbie in 1988. In 1999 Boylan was asked to give a statement at Livingston Police Station, presumably relating to the upcoming trial of al-Megrahi and his then co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. She asked for her notebooks from 1988 to refresh her memory. She was told they could not be found and later read in the Scottish press that Lothian and Borders Police had destroyed the notebooks.

Dalyell asked, “Who gave the instruction for the destruction of notebooks? After all, this was the biggest unresolved murder trial in Scottish legal history. The answer to that question is likely to be found not in Edinburgh, but in London.”

Dalyell said he had worked closely with five heads of the police’s “F Division” which covers West Lothian, as well as successive chief constables of Lothian and Borders Police: “I simply do not believe that any one of them, off their own bat, would have allowed, for reasons of routine and storage space, the destruction of notebooks relating to the biggest murder trial in Scottish history.”

Dalyell quoted a subsequent statement from Boylan in which she described how, in 1999, she attended Dumfries police station and was asked to describe a suitcase rim, with a handle attached. Boylan asked the Procurator Fiscal, a local Scottish legal official, about the significance of the case. He would not say, but, “What he did say was that the owner of said suitcase was a Joseph Patrick Curry and that I would be hearing and reading a lot about him at the time of the trial.” Boylan later found out that Curry was a US Army Special Forces Captain.

According to Dalyell, Boylan claims a colleague informed her that Curry’s suitcase contained the bomb that blew up the aircraft. Dalyell said, “I want to know who will verify the statement and show whether it is true or false. If the bomb was in Curry’s suitcase, Mr. Megrahi is hardly likely to be guilty.”

He concluded by asking for “these extremely serious matters [to] be taken on board by the government in London”.

Speaking after the debate Dalyell reiterated his suggestion that “something highly irregular has taken place, apparently with consent.”

Joseph Patrick Curry was one of several members of a US Special Forces team on PanAm 103, whose luggage, and remains at the crash site were the subject of a great deal of well documented US CIA and FBI activity in the hours and days after the disaster. A special forces major, Charles McKee, and the CIA’s Beirut station deputy chief, Matthew Gannon, also died on the plane.

Lord Advocate should issue pledge over report into Lockerbie allegations

[This is the headline over a letter from Iain McKie published in today’s edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

David Leask's glowing appreciation of Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland ("The Lord Advocate 'for all' has stayed true to beliefs", The Herald, March 26) rightly highlights his achievements in this high office once described by Lord McCluskey as Scotland's "watchdog for justice".

I have very positive memories of meeting him in the Crown Office when he graciously apologised to my daughter Shirley following the fingerprint fiasco. I felt that he was someone who listened, reflected and acted with integrity.

Since then however some have accused him of poor judgment in his response to the Andrew Coulson and bin lorry inquiries.

Perhaps more seminally, however,what will history make of a Lord Advocate who has joined the Scottish justice system in its 27 years of collective denial over the Lockerbie Pan Am tragedy which remains an abiding and indelible stain on that system?

How will history judge Scotland’s senior law officer who in 2012 allowed the Crown Office to label those who, in good faith, made nine criminal allegations against that authority and other prosecution witness involved in the investigation and subsequent trail of Abedelbaset al Megrahi as "conspiracy theorists" and the allegations themselves as "defamatory, unfounded, false and misleading"?

As we await the police report on these allegations being submitted to the Crown Office will Mr Mulholland take this opportunity to state publicly that this unprecedented bias and prejudice will not be allowed to influence any decisions that might be made on whether prosecutions should or should not follow?

Can he guarantee to the Scottish people that when the Police Scotland report is submitted neither he nor anyone associated with the Crown Office will have anything to do with the final decision whether to prosecute or not and that any such decisions made by any independent authority will not be open to be changed by the crown?

Should Mr Mulholland fail to make this undertaking then I suspect, in respect of Lockerbie at least, that history will judge him less than kindly and conclude that as Scotland’s "watchdog for justice" he has failed.

Lockerbie’s dirty secret

[This is the headline over an article by Paul Foot that was published in The Guardian on this date in 2004. It reads as follows:]

As he basks in the success of his controversial visit to Libya, the prime minister has to grapple at once with an awkward letter. It was delivered on Monday by UK Families Flight 103 representing most of the British families bereaved by the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The letter starts by reminding Blair that the families supported his visit to Libya in the expectation that the talks with Colonel Muammar Gadafy would lead to more information about the bombing. Moreover, the letter says, their support for the visit was widely used by ministers to justify the visit to Libya. Yet the visit has not led to any more information about the bombing.

And recent letters to the secretary of the group, Pamela Dix - whose brother died at Lockerbie - from Baroness Symons, minister of state at the Foreign Office, and from the Crown Office in Edinburgh, have argued that any further questions to the Libyans about Lockerbie would not be helpful. In short, ministers took the credit of the families' support without asking a single question about Lockerbie to justify that support. In a sense of deep outrage, the families are asking the prime minister for a meeting to discuss Lockerbie as a matter of urgency.

More people died at Lockerbie than in Madrid, and you would have thought that the government, if only as proof of its horror at terrorism, would be keen to question its new friends in Tripoli about the bombing. Not so, apparently. So the only hard information the families have is that Abdul Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan official, apparently working in intelligence, was convicted in January 2001 of bombing the airliner. How he accomplished this feat is still a mystery. The details of the crime did not emerge at the trial, which was held by Scottish judges sitting without a jury in Holland. It lasted 18 months and cost an estimated £50m.

Megrahi's co-accused was acquitted, so the prosecution's suggestion that the two men conspired to bomb the plane cannot be right. Indeed, the crucial evidence that the bomb was put on a feeder flight at Malta and was transferred twice, at Frankfurt and at Heathrow, was so thin it was derisory.

No one knows whether anyone else took part in this sophisticated crime of terror. One man has been convicted. The Libyan government has forked out many millions in compensation. And that, apparently, is the end of the matter. Many of the bereaved relatives, including Dix, are increasingly disturbed at the behaviour of ministers who talk business and politics to the Gadafy regime, but are not remotely interested in pressing anyone in it to tell the whole story about Lockerbie.

There is, in my opinion (not necessarily shared by the families), an explanation for all this, an explanation so shocking that no one in high places can contemplate it. It is that the Lockerbie bombing was carried out not by Libyans at all but by terrorists based in Syria and hired by Iran to avenge the shooting down in the summer of 1988 of an Iranian civil airliner by a US warship. This was the line followed by both British and US police and intelligence investigators after Lockerbie. Through favoured newspapers like the Sunday Times, the investigators named the suspects - some of whom had been found with home-made bombs similar to the one used at Lockerbie.

This line of inquiry persisted until April 1989, when a phone call from President Bush senior to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned her not to proceed with it. A year later, British and US armed forces prepared for an attack on Saddam Hussein's occupying forces in Kuwait. Their coalition desperately needed troops from an Arab country. These were supplied by Syria, which promptly dropped out of the frame of Lockerbie suspects. Libya, not Syria or Iran, mysteriously became the suspect country, and in 1991 the US drew up an indictment against two Libyan suspects. The indictment was based on the "evidence" of a Libyan "defector", handsomely paid by the CIA. His story was such a fantastic farrago of lies and fantasies that it was thrown out by the Scottish judges.

In Britain, meanwhile, Thatcher, John Major and Blair obstinately turned down the bereaved families' requests for a full public inquiry into the worst mass murder in British history.

It follows from this explanation that Megrahi is innocent of the Lockerbie bombing and his conviction is the last in the long line of British judges' miscarriages of criminal justice. This explanation is also a terrible indictment of the cynicism, hypocrisy and deceit of the British and US governments and their intelligence services. Which is probably why it has been so consistently and haughtily ignored.

[RB: This was Paul Foot’s last piece on Lockerbie. He died less than four months later.]