MacAskill demolishes findings of Zeist court

[What follows is the text of a review by James Robertson of Kenny MacAskill’s The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice that appears in today’s edition of The Herald:]

In May 2000, two Libyan citizens, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, went on trial before a specially convened Scottish court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. They were accused of acting in concert to place a suitcase containing a bomb on a plane flying from Malta to Frankfurt; it was transferred as unaccompanied luggage to another flight going to London Heathrow, and there transferred again to Pan Am flight 103, the target, which was blown up, en route to New York, over Lockerbie on the evening of 21 December 1988. All 259 passengers and crew, and 11 people on the ground, were killed.

In January 2001, Fhimah was acquitted, but Megrahi found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. To many people, the verdict made no sense. Subsequent revelations have only reinforced a widespread belief that Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

This book is former Cabinet Secretary for Justice (and Herald columnist) Kenny MacAskill’s account of the crime, investigation and trial, and his own part in what followed. In 2009, it was his decision to grant Megrahi, by then suffering from terminal prostate cancer, compassionate release from prison. That decision forms the centrepiece, but not the most revealing part, of Mr MacAskill’s narrative.

The book suffers from Mr MacAskill’s inflated and syntactically-challenged writing style: "The investigation, meanwhile, marched meticulously on. The dynamics of both tension and camaraderie between various agencies continued, though in the main all well worked with each other." The narrative is scattered with words like "literally" (bodies were "literally destroyed, smashed to smithereens"), and "doubtless"’ (a prop for assertions unsupported by any evidence). Mr MacAskill deprives many of his sentences of verbs, and fattens others with clichés. Readers who might reasonably expect a full set of references to back up his account will be disappointed: there is no index, no bibliography and, of the 93 footnotes, 67 come from just four sources.

None of this would matter if Mr MacAskill were writing about UFOs or his favourite movies. His subject, however, is the biggest criminal case in Scottish legal history. It matters greatly that a trained lawyer should use imprecise and careless language to discuss complicated questions of evidence.

The most astonishing passages occur when Mr MacAskill offers his opinion as to who planted the bomb. Syntax purists, look away now: "Megrahi had been to Malta the month before, which was probably preparatory for the scheme and involved discussions on the logistics of clothes, the suitcase and the bomb equipment. He may even have brought the timers in with him." Here Mr MacAskill ratchets up his use of the conditional tense – always a handy tool when indulging in pure speculation: "He [Megrahi] would meet with others in the [Libyan] embassy…he would not be the bomb maker. That would have been prepared in the Libyan People’s Bureau…" There is no attempt to substantiate these wild surmises.

Mr MacAskill proceeds to demolish the findings of the Camp Zeist court. Of the items bought in Tony Gauci’s shop in Malta which were packed in the bomb suitcase, he writes: "The clothes were acquired in Malta, though not by Megrahi." Correctly describing as "rather implausible" the evidence produced by the prosecution that Megrahi was the purchaser, MacAskill continues, "But, if Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes, he was certainly involved." Really? How?

Megrahi’s role, it seems, was to fly from Tripoli into Luqa Airport in Malta on 20 December 1988 bringing with him the brown Samsonite suitcase that was to transport the bomb. This claim relies solely on the testimony of a CIA-paid informer, whom the judges dismissed as an utterly unreliable witness. "There is no evidence," they concluded, ‘that either [Megrahi or Fhimah] had any luggage, let alone a brown Samsonite suitcase.’

Further undermining the Camp Zeist judgement, Mr MacAskill writes that, on the morning of 21 December, Megrahi took the suitcase (now apparently loaded with the bomb) to the airport, but it was Fhimah, as station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines, who would "get it airside and beyond security.…Placing a bag behind and into the system was a relatively simple task given the accreditation and access Fhimah had." The trial judges determined that this proposition was, at best, in the realm of speculation. "Furthermore," they said, "there is the formidable objection that there is no evidence at all to suggest that the second accused was even at Luqa airport on 21 December." Fhimah was consequently acquitted.

The judges also observed that "the absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [at Luqa] is a major difficulty for the Crown case." In just a few bold sentences, Mr MacAskill has completely overcome this difficulty.

Mr MacAskill finds it "hard to imagine how there could have been any other verdict in the circumstances", and continues: "In many ways, as with Megrahi and Fhimah, Scots law and its judges were simply actors in the theatre that had been created to circumvent and solve both a diplomatic impasse and political problem. Scots law convened the trial, and yet found itself on trial."

Read those sentences carefully: the former Justice Secretary is effectively saying that, at Camp Zeist, diplomacy and politics trumped justice. For how many years have critics of the proceedings been saying this, while Mr MacAskill, the Scottish Government and the Crown Office have maintained that justice prevailed?

By ‘solving’ the problem of how the bomb was placed on flight KM180 Mr MacAskill relieves himself of the need to address with any seriousness the post-trial discrediting of the infamous timer circuit-board fragment linking Libya to the bomb; the accumulated mass of evidence pointing to the more convincing explanation that the bomb was loaded directly onto Pan Am flight 103 at Heathrow; or the most comprehensive analysis of the Lockerbie saga to date, John Ashton’s 2012 book Megrahi: You Are My Jury. He skims so lightly over the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s 2007 report, which indicated six grounds on which Megrahi’s conviction might be unsafe, that one suspects he sees the thin ice beneath him.

To summarise: Mr MacAskill asserts that Fhimah, acquitted by the court, planted the bomb, and that Megrahi, found guilty by the court, did not buy the clothes from Tony Gauci’s shop. Yet, as he also acknowledges, without Gauci’s identification of Megrahi as the purchaser, the case would have collapsed. This, then, is the new position of the Cabinet Secretary for Justice who, while in office, repeatedly articulated the Scottish Government’s view that it "did not doubt the safety of Megrahi’s conviction"’. So, too, did the then First Minister Alex Salmond, who nevertheless endorses Mr MacAskill’s book as "the most credible explanation yet published of who was really responsible for the downing of Pan Am flight 103". They cannot have it both ways: either they think the judges got it right, or they think they got it wrong.

Mr MacAskill admits that, had Megrahi’s second appeal reached court, his conviction might well have been overturned. He then makes this shameful comment: "But, this account of how the bombing was carried out and by whom is based on information gathered meticulously by police and prosecutors from the US, Scotland and elsewhere. It’s also founded on intelligence and sources not available for a court or that have only come to light thereafter."

So, Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes, the grounds of his conviction were shaky at best, but we know from other sources that he was involved and anyway he’s dead now, and that’s good enough for Scottish justice.

If Mr MacAskill does have information pertinent to the case, he should share it with Police Scotland, who are currently concluding a major investigation, Operation Sandwood, into allegations of possible criminality on the part of police officers and Crown representatives during the original investigation and trial. These allegations were made by the organisation Justice for Megrahi (of which I am a member) and were first drawn directly to Mr MacAskill’s attention, in strict confidence, on September 13, 2012. Some of them relate to the very aspects of the case that Mr MacAskill now says the court got wrong.

The Lockerbie case has long been a stain on the Scottish justice system. Kenny MacAskill rubs and rubs at that stain. Whatever his intent, the effect is not to make it vanish but to make it look far worse.

CIA witness gagged by US government

[This is the headline over a report published in the Sunday Herald on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

A former CIA agent who claims Libya is not responsible for the Lockerbie bombing is being gagged by the US government under state secrecy laws and faces 10 years in prison if he reveals any information about the terrorist attack.

United Nations diplomats are outraged that the US government is apparently suppressing a potential key trial witness. Diplomats are now demanding that the CIA agent, Dr Richard Fuisz, be released from the gagging order. Fuisz, a multi-millionaire businessman and pharmaceutical researcher, was, according to US intelligence sources, the CIA's key operative in the Syrian capital Damascus during the 1980s where he also had business interests.

One month before a court order was served on him by the US government gagging him from speaking on the grounds of national security, he spoke to US congressional aide Susan Lindauer, telling her he knew the identities of the Lockerbie bombers and claiming they were not Libyan.

Lindauer, shocked by Fuisz's claims, immediately compiled notes on the meeting which formed the basis of a later sworn affidavit detailing Fuisz's claims. One month after their conversation, in October 1994, a court in Washington DC issued an order barring him from revealing any information on the grounds of "military and state secrets privilege".

When contacted by the Sunday Herald last night, Fuisz said when asked if he was a CIA agent in Syria in the 1980s: "That is not an issue I can confirm or deny. I am not allowed to speak about these issues. In fact, I can't even explain to you why I can't speak about these issues." Fuisz did, however, say that he would not take any action against a newspaper which named him as a CIA agent.

Congressional aide Lindauer, who was involved in early negotiations over the Lockerbie trial, claims Fuisz made "unequivocal statements to me that he has first-hand knowledge about the Lockerbie case". In her affidavit, she goes on: "Dr Fuisz has told me that he can identify who orchestrated and executed the bombing. Dr Fuisz has said that he can confirm absolutely that no Libyan national was involved in planning or executing the bombing of Pan Am 103, either in any technical or advisory capacity whatsoever."

Fuisz's statements to Lindauer support the claims of the two Libyan accused who are to incriminate a number of terrorist organisations, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which had strong links to Syria and Iran.

Lindauer said Fuisz told her he could provide information on Middle Eastern terrorists, and referred to Lockerbie as an “example of an unsolved bombing case that he said he has the immediate capability to resolve”.

Lindauer says Fuisz told her CIA staff had destroyed reports he sent them on Lockerbie. Lindauer also refers in her affidavit to speculation that the USA shifted any connection to Lockerbie away from Syria to Libya in return for its support during the Gulf war.

She added that Fuisz told her: “If the [US] government would let me, I could identify the men behind this attack today. I could do the right thing … I could go into any crowded restaurant and pick out these men … I can tell you their home addresses … You won’t find [them] anywhere in Libya. You will only find [them] in Damascus. I was investigating on the ground and I know.”

The 1994 gagging order was issued following disclosures by Fuisz during other legal proceedings about alleged illegal exports of military equipment to Iraq. The order claims that the information held by Fuisz is vital to the “nation’s security or diplomatic relations” and can not be revealed “no matter how compelling the need for, and relevance of, the information”. The submission also makes clear that the government is empowered to “protect its interests in this case in the future”, thereby gagging Fuisz permanently.

Details of Fuisz’s gagging have been passed to the United Nations, including UN secretary general Kofi Annan, Russia’s UN ambassador Sergey Lavrov and the Libyan UN ambassador, as well as representatives of France and China. The report on the Fuisz gagging, containing Lindauer’s affidavit, refers to “the history of US interference … [and] … sabotage by the United States”.

One senior UN diplomat said: “In the interests of natural justice, Dr Fuisz should be released from any order which prevents him telling what he knows of the Pan Am bombing.” With Fuisz prohibited from speaking, neither the defence nor prosecution can call him as a witness.

A legal source close to Fuisz said: “We want the truth out. The naming of knowledgeable witnesses who can’t be called would utterly change the face of this trial. Dr Fuisz obviously cannot claim he has any knowledge because of national security issues and he could face 10 years in jail. However, if he is not allowed to talk the entire case should be dropped.

“Apart from the US government freeing him from the gag, the only way to allow him to speak would be to subpoena him to the Scottish Court, but the court has no power of subpoena in America.”

The Sunday Herald will make the Lindauer affadvit and Fuisz gagging order available to both the Crown and defence if they require the documents.

Lockerbie: The bid to suppress evidence

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

It would have been an action unheard of in the Scottish press - the UK Government pulling an entire edition of a newspaper in a bid to suppress a secret document.

But that's exactly what the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) threatened to do to The Herald in 2012 when it sought to publish details of a report implicating a Palestinian terror group in the Lockerbie bombing.

The full details of what happened were published yesterday in Kenny MacAskill's new book on the atrocity - and the FCO is again taking action.

The government department has said it is "considering the contents" of the book, The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice, amid claims it may breach of Official Secrets Act.

Mr MacAskill reveals that at the time the Herald was seeking to publish the information, he took a call from Tory MP Alistair Burt, who was working with the FCO.

"He threatened not just to pull The Herald's story, but to pull the whole edition of the newspaper," he said.

"I was incredulous. I told him that the people of Scotland would definitely notice if there was no Herald the next day.

"It really showed the extremes the UK Government was prepared to go to to stop the publication of something fundamental to Scotland's leading criminal case."

The document was subject to Public Interest Immunity, which prevented its release to the defence in the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing.

After taking legal advice, The Herald ran the story detailing the main points of the document, including that it came from Jordan and implicated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) in the December 1988 attack.

Certain information was not available to The Herald at that time, however it has all now been revealed in Mr MacAskill's book.

It is understood that the FCO requested a copy of the book on Sunday ahead of Thursday's publication, but were not provided with one as officials refused to rule out seeking an injunction.

The PFLP-GC were the original suspects in the investigation into Lockerbie, however by 1991 police and prosecutors were entirely focused on Libya.

This document naming the terror group was repeatedly suppressed at a high-level, despite sources claiming it presented little risk to national security.

In 2012, a source told The Herald: "The contents are very important but what makes them so much more significant is the lengths the UK Government and others have gone to in order to prevent anyone from seeing the document.

"This is the most remarkable piece of evidence. It does not rule out the Libyans but it does indicate that others were involved."

Mr MacAskill, who claimed the suppression of the document had more to with keeping the Jordanians happy so that radical cleric Abu Qatada could be deported from the UK, admits in his book that he believes the PFLP-GC were involved in the plot which killed 270 people.

The former politician, who made the controversial decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009, also raises doubts over the identification of Megrahi buying clothes from a shop in Malta that were found wrapped around the bomb.

However, he is now facing claims it is "dumbfounding" and "hypocritical" for a former justice minister to make such assertions that the case against Megrahi was flawed.

Robert Black QC, one of the architects behind Megrahi's trial who now heads up the Justice for Megrahi campaign, said: "Many of the things that Kenny is saying are the things that we've been saying for years.

"He said on the radio that there should be a new inquiry into Lockerbie - we've been asking for that for years, and it was him we were asking.

"It's only now that he doesn't actually have any power to do something that he's agreeing with us."

Mr Black added that it could be open to the FCO to try to secure a prosecution against Mr MacAskill for breaching the Officials Secrets Act, but he believes it would be highly unlikely.

He said: "Given that The Herald already published much of the detail in 2012, and they got away with it, I can't see how a case could be brought against him."

[RB: The above should be read along with the immediately preceding blogpost.]

Lockerbie documents security plea

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2008. It reads as follows:]

A plea has been made to Lockerbie bombing appeal judges to hold a hearing to discuss a confidential document behind closed doors.

The Advocate General has suggested a security-vetted advocate could represent Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi in place of his usual legal team.

The UK Government claims releasing the document would harm national security.

However, Al Megrahi's lawyers have said it could assist his appeal against his conviction for the 1988 atrocity.

The Advocate General - who represents the UK Government - has lodged a public interest immunity plea to keep the document secret.

A three-day procedural hearing at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh is now meeting to decide how to address the issue.

The court previously heard Foreign Secretary David Miliband had signed the public interest immunity certificate.

Judges were told he believes releasing the secret document would cause "real harm" to the national interest.

Advocate General Lord Davidson QC told the court there should be a public interest immunity hearing, and he suggested judges should have access to the document in advance of that hearing.

He said a special representative, if appointed, would be able to represent Al Megrahi's interests.

The Libyan's defence team have not yet given their views in the hearing but Lord Davidson said it appeared that they contest the use of a special representative in this case.

Al Megrahi was not present at the hearing in Edinburgh.

[RB: This is the document referred to in Kenny MacAskill’s book and in respect of which it has been suggested that Mr MacAskill may have contravened the Official Secrets Act.]

"The most credible explanation yet"

Today is the official publication date of Kenny MacAskill’s The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search For Justice. Here is how the book is described on website of the publisher, Biteback:]

On 21 December 1988, Pan Am flight 103 departed London Heathrow for New York. Shortly after take-off, a bomb detonated, killing all aboard and devastating the small Scottish town of Lockerbie below. Only one man has ever been convicted of the crime: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, though few believe that he acted alone.

In 2009, a request was made by Libya for al-Megrahi’s release from prison on compassionate grounds after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The decision to grant or deny that request fell squarely and exclusively on the shoulders of one man: Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary from 2007 to 2014.

Detailing the build-up to the atrocity and the carnage left in its wake, MacAskill narrates the international investigation that followed and the diplomatic intrigue that saw a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands. He describes the controversial release of al-Megrahi, explains the international dimensions involved and lays bare the commercial and security interests that ran in the background throughout the investigation and trial. Finally, he answers how and why it happened – and who was really responsible for the worst terrorist attack to have occurred on British soil before or since.

“Kenny MacAskill was a hero of principle surrounding the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, who was then dying of cancer. Now he has written a gripping and revealing account of the bombing, telling the whole story with honesty and compassion, as well as a forensic attention to detail. Essential reading for anyone with unanswered questions about the worst terrorist attack ever to be perpetrated in Britain.” Clive Stafford Smith

“This book details the duplicity of UK and US governments who condemned the release while negotiating commercial deals with the Gaddafi regime. It tells of the pressures on the judicial system of Scotland from the global controversy and a Justice Secretary’s search for justice. It ends with the most credible explanation yet published of who was really responsible for the downing of Pan Am flight 103. A must-read book by the man in the eye of the storm.”    Alex Salmond

Secretary of State for Scotland rules out foreign trial over Lockerbie

[What follows is the text of a report published in The Herald on this date in 1994:]

Scottish Secretary Ian Lang yesterday rejected a plea by Tory MP Sir

Teddy Taylor for the law to be changed to enable two Libyans suspected

of carrying out the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to be tried abroad.

Sir Teddy (Southend East -- Con) said leading and respected Scottish

advocates had stated clearly and publicly that a fair trial before a

Scottish jury was simply not possible because of recent press coverage.

He added that the Libyan Government had said it willingly would send

the two accused to any other country.

Sir Teddy urged: ''In fairness to the relatives of the victims of this

appalling disaster, it would be better for the Government to consider

legislation, for example for a trial in The Hague, so the truth on this

dreadful issue could at last come forward, rather than the present

situation where nothing is happening for years.''

Mr Lang replied: ''But the investigation took place under Scots law

and the charges are being brought on that basis.''

He insisted there was no evidence to support the contention the Libyan

Government would be any more amenable to holding a trial in any other

country, even if that were possible, ''which would be extremely

difficult in the circumstances''.

Mr Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow -- Lab) claimed the Lord Advocate had not

taken account of all the evidence in the case, and accused the Crown

Office of being ''a bit lazy''.

Mr Lang retorted: ''You persist in setting yourself up as some kind of

amateur sleuth in this matter.''

He pressed Mr Dalyell to support the Lord Advocate and the Government

''in seeking to enable this trial to take place''.

"He cannot have it both ways"

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in today’s edition of The National:

Lockerbie campaigners who believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was innocent of the 1988 atrocity have accused former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill of concealing the truth behind the investigation into the bombing.

In a statement, Justice for Megrahi (JfM) said that in his book The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice, MacAskill had hung out the UK, US and international bodies out to dry for their “hypocrisy” in pursuing their self-interest agenda. But, said JfM: “In reality, it is the Scottish justice system and people like himself and the Crown Office who have facilitated these self-interest agendas by conducting a flawed investigation and trial and by concealing the true facts behind Mr Megrahi’s conviction.”

“Mr MacAskill and the Crown Office stand indicted of frustrating the very search for justice that he proclaims to be pursuing in the title of his book. His refusal to allow a Scottish independent enquiry and his support for the Crown Office, who over the years have attempted to hide the paucity of the prosecution case, only serves to highlight his double standards.”

The group said that time after time, MacAskill and the Scottish Government had stated that the only way justice can be done is through the Scottish courts, yet now he was saying that Scotland was “powerless to interfere in the face of international double dealing”.

“It is clear from the information he now reveals in his book that he holds previously undisclosed evidence which is relevant to JfM’s nine criminal allegations being investigated by Police Scotland. We have reported him to this authority as a vital and compellable witness,” they added.

Professor Robert Black QC said: “MacAskill’s book seeks to paint a very rosy picture of the performance of the Scottish justice system in the Lockerbie case. The investigation, prosecution and trial were apparently all exemplary. In fact, there were grave – and perhaps criminal – flaws in all three.”

Author Dr James Robertson added: “Kenny MacAskill stated repeatedly as Cabinet Secretary for Justice that he did not doubt the safety of the guilty verdict against Megrahi.

“In this book he demolishes key parts of the evidence that secured the verdict, while still maintaining Megrahi was involved. He cannot have it both ways.”

Green MSP John Finnie, his party’s justice spokesperson, said: “Lockerbie was Scotland’s largest mass-murder for which a man, many people believe was innocent of that vile crime, spent long years in prison.

“Citizens, and that includes former cabinet secretaries for justice, are obliged to co-operate in the investigation of crime and I hope that’s exactly what Mr MacAskill will do now there has understandably been a further complaint to Police Scotland.”

[James Robertson appeared last night on BBC Two’s Scotland 2016 talking about Kenny MacAskill’s book. The programme can be viewed here for the next month.]

MacAskill ‘has destroyed the Lockerbie conviction’

[This is the headline over a report by Mike Wade published in today’s edition of The Times. It reads in part:]

The eminent lawyer who designed the Lockerbie trial believes that the former Scottish justice secretary has destroyed the case against the only man found guilty of the atrocity.

Robert Black, QC, said that Kenny MacAskill’s contention in his new book that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi had not bought the clothes wrapped around the explosive device that destroyed an airliner amounted to “the end of the conviction”.

[Professor Black said that Mr MacAskill] had in effect accepted a key finding of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which in June 2007 found that “no reasonable court could have drawn the inference that [al-Megrahi] was the purchaser”. [RB: See Chapter 21 of the SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons.]

The SCCRC’s position was to form the substance of al-Megrahi’s second appeal. Before his death in 2012 the Libyan said he had dropped the case as part of a deal to allow him to leave jail in Scotland for his home in Tripoli after he had terminal cancer diagnosed.

“As the SCCRC correctly said, if Megrahi was not held to be the purchaser in Malta then there was insufficient evidence in law to convict him,” Professor Black said. [RB: See para 21.100 of the SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons.] “I wonder if Kenny MacAskill realises he is undermining the whole basis of the conviction.”

Professor Black noted that Mr MacAskill’s belief that the “clothes were purchased in Malta, but not by Megrahi” had recently been endorsed by Alex Salmond, the former first minister.

“If that were now the official Scottish government position, that is the end of the conviction,” Professor Black said. In a statement, the Crown Office said it remained certain of al-Megrahi’s guilt.

Professor Black, emeritus professor of law at the University of Edinburgh, intervened after a series of extraordinary interviews by the former justice secretary. Mr MacAskill’s book, The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search For Justice, is published tomorrow. On Monday, Mr MacAskill told Border Television that al-Megrahi’s conviction was probably “unsafe”. Yesterday he reiterated a claim made in the book that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC) carried out the attack.

Al-Megrahi was a “small cog”, said Mr MacAskill, in a large scheme: “It involved Libya, it involved Iran, it involved no doubt Syria, involved the Palestinian terrorist organisations, they came together and they carried it out.”

In his book, he claims he was told by “several sources” about a document that implicated the PFLP-GC in the bombing. This week, he suggested that Westminster officials had been ready to “close down” a Scottish newspaper that published an article based on the document. Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing 270 people. 

It would take 12 years for al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, his co-accused, to come to trial at the specially convened Scottish court devised by Professor Black at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

Only al-Megrahi was found guilty, to the disbelief of Professor Black. [RB: What astonished me was, of course, that Megrahi was found guilty, not that “only Megrahi” was.] Critics of the verdict focused on the testimony of Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who said al-Megrahi “resembled” a man who bought clothes in his store. It later emerged that Mr Gauci had been paid $1 million by the US justice department’s Rewards for Justice programme. Professor Black said that according to Mr MacAskill the investigation, prosecution and trial were apparently all exemplary. He added: “In fact, there were grave — and perhaps criminal — flaws in all three.”

Al-Megrahi’s first appeal was rejected in 2002 but five years later the SCCRC found four grounds to refer the case to the High Court. The SCCRC recommendations were passed to the Crown a month after the SNP came to power in May 2007. (...)

Last night the Crown Office said that Mr MacAskill’s suggestion about PFLP-GC involvement in the Lockerbie bombing was fully considered by the trial court “and does nothing to undermine the Crown’s case that Megrahi acted with others in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103”.

A spokesman added: “All material which met the Crown’s disclosure obligations in relation to the PFLP-GC was properly disclosed to the defence before the trial and this was confirmed by the SCCRC’s investigation.” [RB: But lots of other material was not “properly disclosed”. See SCCRC’s Statement of Reasons, Chapters 22, 23, 24(2) and 25.]

[The same newspaper contains an article by Magnus Linklater headlined Lockerbie book raises doubts about MacAskill. It reads in part:]

His newly published book, The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice, reveals that after al-Megrahi’s release, Mr MacAskill harboured grave doubts about the safety of his conviction, and in particular the identification evidence that led to his life sentence. In the book, he states unequivocally that al-Megrahi was not the man who walked into a Maltese shop and bought the clothes that were later found to have been wrapped around the bomb. “The clothes were acquired in Malta, though not by Megrahi,” he writes. “The identification is suspect.”

Since this was a central part of the prosecution case, it is odd, not to say dumbfounding, that the minister with responsibility for the Scottish prosecution service now says that the case against its prime suspect was flawed.

The theory that Mr MacAskill prefers challenges the conclusions of the department he once ran and the Crown Office he represented. He believes that the bombing was planned by a Palestinian group, the PFLP-GC, led by its founder, Ahmed Jibril, and was later delegated to the Libyans to carry out. What is more, he says that a document held by the UK government would have confirmed this line, but was withheld from the defence.

Warming to his theme in television and radio interviews, Mr MacAskill revealed that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London had tried to prevent The Heraldnewspaper from publishing a Jordanian document implicating the PFLP-GC, on the ground that it might interfere with the British government’s attempts to deport the radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada. Not only that, in order to prevent its publication, the FCO had threatened to suppress an entire edition of the paper — “an action unheard of in my lifetime in Scotland”, as Mr MacAskill put it. (...)

If all this was known to him during his term in office, why was he content to allow the official version of the Lockerbie case to stand unchallenged, and indeed as a member of the Scottish government, to defend the outcome of the Lockerbie trial, when he harboured such grave doubts about it? (...)

Coming from a former justice secretary these theories will, of course, be seized upon gleefully by those who have argued so loud and long that the whole prosecution case was misconceived. Indeed that has already happened, with one member of the pro-al-Megrahi team declaring that Mr MacAskill’s book blows a hole in the prosecution case.

It does nothing of the sort, of course. The PII document and the identification of al-Megrahi by the Maltese shop owner would both have formed part of an appeal, and, if al-Megrahi had not withdrawn from the process, would have been duly tested in court. Few lawyers believe that they would have been enough to overturn the conviction. 

[RB: This is an utterly astonishing assertion by Mr Linklater. Very much closer to the truth is the statement by Ian Hamilton QC: "I don't think there's a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr Megrahi was justly convicted.”]