Lockerbie priest to retire

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

The Catholic priest who found himself at the centre of the Lockerbie disaster has been ordered by doctors to step down from the pulpit or permanently lose his voice.

Canon Patrick Keegans was the parish priest in the town in 1988 and lived on Sherwood Crescent, which was destroyed as sections of Pan Am flight 103 fell from the sky killing 11 people in the street, as well as all those in the plane.

His house was the only property on the street to be left largely unscathed. He later campaigned against the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. But in recent days the administrator of St Margaret’s cathedral in Ayr has been told by his consultant to rest his voice completely with immediate effect.

A statement on the cathedral website states: “The Canon’s vocal cords are damaged and he will lose his voice permanently if he does not follow the doctor’s advice. With rest his voice will heal, but it will not recover enough for him to engage in any public speaking. Canon Keegans, therefore, will be retiring from parish ministry.”

[What follows is taken from a report published this afternoon on the website of The Press and Journal:]

The Catholic priest of Lockerbie who survived when 11 neighbours were killed in the Pan Am 103 atrocity has been ordered by doctors to step down from the pulpit – or permanently lose his voice due to a throat problem.

Canon Patrick Keegans, 70, was widely praised for the tireless help he gave bereaved families in the aftermath of the disaster but is sadly now having to retire on health grounds. (...)

Canon Keegans was at home with his mother when the wreckage of the bombed flight obliterated nearly every other property in the Sherwood Crescent area of Lockerbie in December 1988. (...)

As Lockerbie’s then newly-appointed parish priest, the young Canon Keegans had the grim task of helping police to identify the bodies of dead parishioners in the days after the disaster.

In an act of defiance, he soon moved back into his home in the street to show that the people of Lockerbie could cope with the effects of the tragedy.

Like many of the families of those on board the flight, he later opposed the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi for carrying out the attack and believed him to be an innocent scapegoat.

Canon Keegans is still in regular touch with the families affected by the disaster.

He said: “Lockerbie has always been and will remain part of my life forever. I’m still involved with the families both here and in America.

“I was very keen to see justice done but I think the authorities were so desperate to convict Megrahi and were too quick to dismiss other avenues of investigation.

“I love Lockerbie but I couldn’t live there forever, the disaster would have controlled my life and I couldn’t allow it to do that.”

Feraday’s legacy

[On this date in 2005 Hassan Assali’s explosives conviction was quashed by the English Court of Appeal. His conviction in 1985 was founded on evidence given by Allen Feraday. What follows is a comment that appeared during the Zeist trial on the website edited by Ian Ferguson and me:]

As one of the Crown's key witnesses gave his testimony this week in Camp Zeist at the trial of the two Libyans accused of the bombing of Pan Am 103, one man, Hassan Assali watched news reports with interest as Allen Feraday took the witness stand.

Assali, 48, born in Libya but who has lived in the United Kingdom since 1965, was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to nine years. He was charged under the 1883 Explosives Substances Act, namely making electronic timers.

The Crown's case against Assali depended largely on the evidence of one man, Allen Feraday. Feraday concluded that the timers in question had only one purpose, to trigger bombs.

While in Prison Assali, met John Berry, who had also been convicted of selling timers and the man responsible for leading the Crown evidence against Berry was once again, Feraday. Again Feraday contended that the timers sold by Berry could have only one use, terrorist bombs.

With Assali's help Berry successfully appealed his conviction, using the services of a leading forensic expert and former British Army electronic warfare officer, Owen Lewis.

Assali's case is currently before the [English] Criminal Cases Review Commission, the CCRC. It has been there since 1997. Assali believes that his case might be delayed deliberately, as he stated to the Home Secretary, Jack Straw in a fax in February 1999: "I feel that my case is being neglected or put on the back burner for political reasons."

Assali believes that if his case is overturned on appeal during the Lockerbie trial it will be a further huge blow to Feraday's credibility and ultimately the Crown's case against the Libyans.

There is no doubt that a number of highly qualified forensic scientists do not care for the highly "opinionated" type of testimony, which is a hall mark of many of Feraday's cases.

He has been known, especially in cases involving timers to state in one case that the absence of a safety device makes it suitable for terrorists and then in another claim that the presence of a safety device proves the same, granted that the devices were different, but it is the most emphatic way in which he testifies that his opinions are "facts", that worries forensic scientists and defence lawyers.

In his report on Feraday's evidence in the Assali case, Owen Lewis states, "It is my view that Mr. Feraday's firm and unwavering assertion that the timing devices in the Assali case were made for and could have no other purpose than the triggering of IED's is most seriously flawed, to the point that a conviction which relied on such testimony must be open to grave doubt."

A host of other scientists, all with vastly more qualifications than Feraday concurred with Owen Lewis.

A report by Michael Moyes, a highly qualified electronics engineer and former Squadron Leader in the RAF, concluded that "there is no evidence that we are aware that the timers of this type have ever been found to be used for terrorist purposes. Moreover the design is not suited to that application."

Moyes was also struck by the similarity in the Berry and Assali case, in terms of the Feraday evidence.

In setting aside Berry's conviction in the appeal Court, Lord Justice Taylor described Feraday's evidence as "dogmatic".

This week in the Lockerbie trial, Feraday exhibited that same attitude when questioned by Richard Keen QC.

Keen asked Feraday about Lord Justice Taylor's remarks on his evidence, but Feraday, dogmatically, said he stands by his evidence in the Berry case.

He was further challenged over making contemporaneous notes on items of evidence he examined. Asked if he was certain that he had made those notes at the time, he said yes. When shown the official police log book which showed that some of the items Feraday had claimed to have examined had in actual fact been destroyed or returned to their owner before he claimed to examined them, his response, true to his dogmatic evidence was the police logs were wrong.

Under cross-examination though, it did become clear that Feraday completed a report for John Orr who was leading the police Lockerbie investigation and in that report he stated he was,  "Completely satisfied that the Lockerbie bomb had been contained inside a white Toshiba RT 8016 or 8026 radio-cassette player", and not, as he now testifies, "inside a black Toshiba RT SF 16 model."

As recently as May [2000], the leading civil liberties solicitor, Ms Gareth Peirce, told the Irish Times that the Lockerbie trial should be viewed with a questioning eye as lessons learned from other cases showed that scientific conclusions were not always what they seemed.

Speaking in Dublin Castle at an international conference on forensic science, Ms Peirce said she observed with interest the opening of the Lockerbie trial and some of the circumstances which, she said, had in the view of the prosecution dramatically affected the case.

She asked herself questions particularly relating to circuit boards which featured in the Lockerbie case and also in a case that she took on behalf of Mr. Danny McNamee, whose conviction for conspiracy to cause explosions in connection with the Hyde Park bombings (another case in which Feraday testified) was eventually quashed. She asked herself whether the same procedures were involved.

Danny McNamee may be the most recent Feraday case to be overturned, Hassan Assali believes his case will be the next.

[RB: As mentioned above, Assali’s conviction was quashed on 19 July 2005. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, stated that Allen Feraday “should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics”.]

Ulrich Lumpert’s recantation

[It was on this date in 2007 that Ulrich Lumpert, a former employee of Mebo Ltd in Zürich who had given evidence at the Zeist trial about MST-13 timers, swore an affidavit to the effect that his evidence had been false. An English translation of the affidavit can be read here. What follows is a comment that I made at the time:]

Ulrich Lumpert, an engineer at one time employed by MEBO in Zürich, gave evidence at the Lockerbie trial that a fragment of circuit board allegedly found amongst the aircraft debris (and which was absolutely crucial to the prosecution contention that the bomb which destroyed Pan Am 103 was linked to Libya) was part of an operative MST-13 timer manufactured by MEBO. In an affidavit sworn in Switzerland in July 2007 (available on the website www.lockerbie.ch) Lumpert now states that the fragment produced in court was in fact part of a non-operational demonstration circuit board that he himself had removed from the premises of MEBO and had handed over to a Lockerbie investigator on 22 June 1989 (six months AFTER the destruction of Pan Am 103).

If this is true, then it totally demolishes the prosecution version of how the aircraft was destroyed, as well, of course, as demonstrating deliberate fabrication of evidence laid before the court.

Every delaying tactic in the book

[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2008:]

Justice delayed...

More than a year has passed since the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Abdelbaset Megrahi’s case back to the Criminal Appeal Court on the basis that his conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice. More than nine months have passed since the first procedural hearing in the new appeal was held. More than six months have passed since the appellant’s full written grounds of appeal were lodged with the court.

Why has no date yet been fixed for the hearing of the appeal? Why does it now seem impossible that the appeal can be heard and a judgement delivered by the twentieth anniversary of the disaster on 21 December 2008?

The answer is simple: because the Crown, in the person of the Lord Advocate, and the United Kingdom Government, in the person of the Advocate General for Scotland, have been resorting to every delaying tactic in the book (and where a particular obstructionist wheeze isn’t in the book, have been asking the court to rewrite the book to insert it). The judges on a number of occasions have expressed disquiet at the Crown’s dilatoriness; but have so far done nothing meaningful to curb it. This must end. The delay is becoming scandalous. The reputation of Scotland’s criminal justice system is being further tarnished in the eyes of the world.

And all the while a man languishes in Greenock Prison. I have never made any bones about my view that the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi on the evidence led at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands is the worst Scottish miscarriage of justice in the past one hundred years, indeed since the conviction of Oscar Slater. But even those who do not share my views, or who are neutral on the issue, would surely accept that the delay in bringing the new appeal to a hearing on the merits is beginning to look cruel and unconscionable.

It is up to the judges to start cracking the whip. The words of Francis Bacon in his essay “Of Judicature” are perhaps worth recalling:

“A judge ought to prepare his way to a just sentence, as God useth to prepare his way, by raising valleys and taking down hills: so when there appeareth on either side an high hand, … cunning advantages taken, combination, power, … then is the virtue of a judge seen, to make inequality equal; that he may plant his judgment as upon an even ground.”

[RB: Had the mills of the Scottish criminal justice system not ground so outrageously slowly, Abdelbaset Megrahi’s appeal could have been heard and his conviction quashed before his prostate cancer was diagnosed. The Crown Office, the UK Government and the High Court of Justiciary have much to be ashamed of over this aspect of the Lockerbie fiasco as over many others.]

"Sent to lie abroad for the good of his country"

[The following is excerpted from an item posted on this blog on this date in 2010:]

Sheinwald: mistake to free Lockerbie bomber

[What follows is an Agence France Presse news agency report:]

The government believes that the decision by Scotland to free the Lockerbie bomber was a mistake, London's envoy to the United States said Thursday.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi is the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US Pan Am jumbo jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which left 270 people dead.

"The new British government is clear that Megrahi's release was a mistake," ambassador Nigel Sheinwald said, stressing that under the country's laws power over justice issues have been devolved to Scotland.

Megrahi was released from jail in Scottish prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was said to be suffering from terminal cancer and had only three months to live. Reports have now emerged that he could live at least another 10 years.

On Tuesday, four US senators also called for an inquiry into allegations that energy giant BP lobbied the British government to free Megrahi in order to protect a lucrative oil deal with Libya.

[The ambassador to Washington DC, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, was Foreign Policy and Defence Adviser to the prime minister, Tony Blair, from 2003 to 2007. It is a matter for mild cynical amusement that Sheinwald was present at, and intimately involved in, the negotiation of the deal in the desert which was intended to pave the way for Abdelbaset Megrahi's early repatriation under a prisoner transfer agreement. The UK negotiators did not realise that the power to allow transfer would rest, not with the UK but with the Scottish, Government. Or if the negotiators did realise this, they signally failed to inform their Libyan counterparts, to the disgust of the latter when they discovered [RB: from me] what the true position was.]

A domestic and international embarrassment

[What follows is the text of a letter written to Kenny MacAskill, Cabinet Secretary for Justice, on this date in 2009 by Steven Raeburn, editor of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm:]

The Firm magazine recently ran a poll of its readers, which found that 86% of respondents supported a public inquiry into the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie.

A copy of the news story which ran in the July issue of the magazine is appended below for your reference, and a copy of the magazine is enclosed.

I can add that solicitors and advocates, in addition to the general public, have frequently and consistently expressed to me their despair at the damage that has been inflicted upon the law of Scotland by this case. No doubt you are already aware that the Scots legal system was once rightly regarded as among the best and most effective in the world. Regardless of its present efficacy, it is now regarded both domestically and (especially) internationally as an embarrassment, principally because of the damning reflection cast upon it by the passage of the Lockerbie case through it.

On behalf of the readers of The Firm – including over 10,000 solicitors and 500 or so advocates who wish to see the reputation of Scots law restored and be certain the legal system they work for and within is a source of pride to them, and not of shame- I am duty bound to ask for you to address their wishes for a public inquiry. Like them, it is my fervent wish that the legal system of Scotland, and those who work within it, can be certain that the law which is applied in their name is done so honourably and with full accountability, devoid of the stains and shadows that this case has thrown upon it.

The reason this case refuses to go away is simply because the answers provided by the judicial process have failed to satisfy the public interest on one hand, and those directly affected by these events on the other. Whilst one bad case cannot be fairly described as representative of all that goes on in Scots law, that one bad case is nevertheless a valid reflection of what our legal system is capable of achieving, and there is a large constituency of the public who are not satisfied with that conclusion.

For my own part, I will simply state that the first step to repairing any damage is to understand how it was caused. A full inquiry may begin to shed the necessary light that will allow repairs to be effected. In the interests of accountability, and on behalf of the readers of The Firm, I ask you to let me have your response and proposals for action.

As a journalist, I constantly remind myself of the words of the great Edward R Murrow, who noted that just because my voice is amplified to the degree that it reaches from one end of the country to the other, it does not confer upon me greater wisdom or understanding than I possessed when it reached only from one end of the bar to the other. What my journalistic reach does impose upon me however, is a correspondingly amplified duty to use my free speech responsibly, and I therefore cannot in good conscience offer any voice to the readers of The Firm if I do not take forward their legitimate concerns and, where necessary, act upon them. If I felt otherwise, I should simply publish cartoons instead. Justice must be done, even tho’ the heavens may fall. If you and I cannot do our best to achieve that, then both of us are in the wrong jobs.

I, and those 86%, look forward to hearing from you.

Mandela meets UK Lockerbie families

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on the website of The Independent on this date in 2002:]

Both Egypt and Tunisia have agreed to accept the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing to serve his sentence, if the Government is willing to transfer him from his Scottish prison, Nelson Mandela said yesterday.

The former South African president added that the bereaved families of Lockerbie victims he met yesterday did not oppose Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi being moved from Glasgow's Barlinnie prison. Mr Mandela has called for Megrahi to be allowed a fresh appeal and for him to be permitted to serve his jail term in a Muslim country in the meantime. Mr Mandela has discussed the matter with presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia.

"I told the relatives [of the Lockerbie victims] that he would go to a country trusted by Britain and the United States to serve his sentence, and the length of the sentence would be determined by the Scottish authorities," he said.

"Nobody opposed it, and I was very happy with their response. They appear to be open-minded, not withstanding the wounds and the scars they have suffered."

Tony Blair had dismissed the idea of Megrahi, a member of Colonel Gaddafi's secret service, being moved to another country. But Mr Mandela said he would try to change the Prime Minister's mind. Mr Mandela was speaking to journalists in London after he had met the Lockerbie families. (...)

Mr Mandela played a key role in persuading Colonel Gaddafi to hand over Megrahi and his co-defendant, Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah, for trial at the specially constituted Scottish court at Zeist, in the Netherlands.

But he has expressed grave disquiet over the subsequent conviction of Megrahi for smuggling a bomb on board the Pan Am jet in 1988, killing 270 people. Megrahi, 49, is serving a life sentence after losing an appeal.

Mr Mandela said he had told the relatives how a UN representative and judges from the Organisation of African Unity had criticised the evidence against Megrahi.

[RB: A report on Mandela’s meeting with the UK Lockerbie relatives published on the BBC News website can be read here.]

False evidence

[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in today’s edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]

MI6 and Sir Richard Dearlove are not alone in contributing to misleading their politicians (“Intelligence source was a proven liar”, July 8).

During the trial of the so called Lockerbie bomber, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, in 2000-01, the CIA trumpeted its “star witness” under the moniker of “Jiaka”. He had been on its payroll for years.

He was a Libyan informer who claimed to have seen the accused transiting Luqa airport in Malta, carrying a suitcase similar to that known to have housed the Lockerbie bomb. The judges at Zeist, in the Netherlands, insisted on access to CIA cables which exposed Jiaka as a fantasist and liar.

National intelligence structures may feel obligated to support their paymasters’ projects rather than the actual truth.

Is the Lockerbie bomber still out here?

[On this date in 2013, the doyenne of psychologists of memory and identification, Professor Elizabeth F Loftus, published an article about the evidence at the Zeist trial that was treated by the court as amounting to “identification” of Abdelbaset Megrahi as the purchaser of the goods fron Tony Gauci’s shop in Malta. The published article can be read here and the submitted manuscript here. What follows is the final section:]

My analysis identified a number of areas in which Gauci changed his testimony from one point in time to another. More specifically, the statements he gave relatively early on (nine months after the crime) before Al-Megrahi was a suspect differed in many respects from what Gauci would recall later after Al-Megrahi was a suspect. While the defense attorney did, at trial, point out some of the changes, it might have been useful to compile them and show the entire collection. Since of the major reasons why someone’s testimony changes from one point in time to another is that they have been supplied with new details, it would have been important to try to discover the new details that Gauci had been exposed to. After investigators began to look for Libyans, and began to suspect Al-Megrahi, what kind of information did Gauci receive, either deliberately or inadvertently?

This information, and more, was presented to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, a Commission that reviews cases post-conviction, and did so in this case. The Commission is an independent, public body, which was established in 1999, and bears the responsibility for reviewing alleged miscarriages of justice in Scotland. The Commission has the power to refer to the High Court of Justiciary any conviction regardless of whether appeals of that conviction have been heard previously. The Commission refers cases when it believes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. In Al-Megrahi’s case, the Commission expressed deep reservations about the conviction and concluded that it may have been a miscarriage of justice. Much of the world knows less about this turn of events, but much more about a different turn, namely that al-Megrahi was released from prison in 2009 and sent back to Libya on Compassionate grounds because of advancing cancer. That turn sparked outrage. Al-Megrahi lived with his cancer for a few years, and, as noted earlier, died in 2012. One can’t help but wonder whether the outrage over his release might be tempered if those angry individuals were to seriously examine the suspicious eyewitness testimony that led to Al-Megrahi’s conviction in the first place My examination has led me to wonder: Is the Lockerbie bomber still out here?

Kenny MacAskill’s prison visit

[On this date in 2009 The Sunday Times disclosed that Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Justice proposed to have a meeting with Abdelbaset Megrahi in the context of his application for compassionate release and the Libyan Government’s application for prisoner transfer. The article reads as follows:]

Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, is to become the first British government minister to meet the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

MacAskill has agreed to visit Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in prison before deciding if the Libyan should be allowed to serve the rest of his sentence in his home country.

The minister will announce later this month whether he will grant Libya's request for Megrahi to be placed in its custody under a transfer deal between London and Tripoli.

A condition of the treaty is that prisoners cannot leave the country while criminal proceedings are ongoing. Megrahi, 57, who has terminal prostate cancer, is believed to be prepared to drop his appeal against his conviction in order to spend the rest of his life close to his family in Libya. MacAskill also has the power to free him on compassionate grounds.

His decision to meet a convicted terrorist has provoked a backlash among American relatives of those who died in the 1988 bombing which killed 270 people. The justice secretary has said he wants to talk to all parties affected by the tragedy before deciding Megrahi's fate.

Bob Monetti, from New Jersey, whose 20-year-old son Rick was among the victims, accused MacAskill of giving the convicted murderer preferential treatment. "I don't understand why they would treat this man as special compared to everyone else who has been convicted of murder," he said.

[Commentary on the MacAskill visit to Megrahi can be found here.]

Tony Gauci in the witness box

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000:]

The Lockerbie trial has heard that fragments of a baby romper suit recovered from the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 were traced back to a clothes shop in Malta.

The blue Babygro was said to have been in the suitcase carrying the bomb which blew the plane apart above Lockerbie.

All the items were bought by a Libyan man who went into Tony Gauci's outfitters in the Maltese town of Sliema just days earlier, the trial judges heard.

Mr Gauci picked out one of the accused - Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - as being someone who "resembled" the man who visited his shop, although he could not positively identify him.

The prosecution says the two Libyan suspects went to the shop in Sliema on 7 December, 1988, and bought clothes and an umbrella.

The charred remains of the items were later recovered from the bomb debris in and around Lockerbie.

Mr Gauci told the Scottish Court in the Netherlands that a Libyan man came into his shop - Mary's House, Tower Road, Sliema - about a fortnight before Christmas 1988.

The man looked around and when Mr Gauci invited him to try on some trousers he said they were for someone else.

The man then bought two pairs of trousers, two shirts, two cardigans, two pairs of pyjamas, a blue romper suit and, because it was raining slightly at the time, an umbrella.

"He left the shop to go to the taxi rank to get a taxi. He came back in the taxi to collect the clothing, which I took out to the taxi," said Mr Gauci.

It was not until September 1989 that Scottish and Maltese police officers went to the shop to confirm that the fragments of clothing linked to the suitcase holding the radio-cassette bomb had been purchased at Mary's House.

[RB: A devastating analysis by Dr Kevin Bannon of Tony Gauci’s evidence can be read here.]

Megrahi convicted on evidence designed to prosecute Abu Talb

[What follows is taken from an item posted yesterday on Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s PT35B website:]

George Thomson writes:

Armed with the intelligence on the PFLP-GC’s activities in Neuss in October and the FAA Warning, the Scottish investigators on the ground, assisted by their American friends, were in no doubt that they were looking for the remains of a copper Samsonite suitcase which would contain a semtex-based IED concealed within a Toshiba Radio. The radio would be enclosed in a cardboard box along with an instruction manual. They even knew that the explosives within the radio would be wrapped in Toblerone type wrapping foil.

In no time whatsoever they “found” what they were looking for. […]

AG145 - debris from the identification plate of the luggage container which Feraday was satisfied was from a Toshiba 8016 or 8026 but then he changed his mind later on. [RB: information about AG145 can be found here and here.] At trial however the air accident investigator Claiden testified that the fold in the identification plate which harboured the debris identified as originating from a Toshiba HAD NOT BEEN CAUSED AT THE TIME OF THE EXPLOSION

A black explosion-damaged cardigan with Toblerone foil violently impacted into its fabric was found and initially was described as originating from the bomb suitcase, but later the classification was changed as the emphasis moved away from the PFLP-GC.

Then, impacted into various items of clothing which Gauci later remembered selling to “a suspect”, originally Talb, the scientists found pieces of the cardboard box, the instruction manual and various pieces of plastics and mesh which Hayes claimed was from the IED Radio.

In relation to the detonation device a report was submitted from the Scottish police to the Lord Advocate asking for the detention of various suspects who had been involved with the PFLP-GC in Neuss. In that report the police assert time after time that the bomb had been triggered by a barometric device.

The net was finally closing and by a spectacular piece of detective work a pair of trousers from the bomb suitcase was traced via the manufacturers on Malta to Tony Gauci’s shop where he remarkably remembered selling a variety of clothes to a suspect, which had turned up in the bomb suitcase. To be fair to Tony however he did not make the whole thing up from nothing, he was shown a variety of photographs of items said to originate from the bomb suitcase and he picked them out.

The slight fly in the ointment however is that the police claimed to have been led to Gauci by a manufacturer’s label (Yorkie) attached to the trousers and by a Stamped Number 1705 on a pocket which was an order number for Gauci’s Shop. Unfortunately we now have a police document which indicates that when the trousers first came into the possession of the police there was no such label attached and the number 1705 apparently jumps from one fragment of trousers to another depending on what report or which police statement you chose to read.

Gauci went some way to identifying Talb as the purchaser of the clothing. However Gauci’s identification would have been bolstered by the evidence of a witness with a shop nearby who made a definite identification of Talb being in his own shop at the relevant time. This shopkeeper’s evidence has never been heard.

So sure were the police that Talb was their man, that they even fabricated evidence of a piece of clothing found in his home in Sweden and originally described as a pair of child’s kick-trousers with a size and a manufacturer into being a Babygro with penguins on the front; the same type of course as described in the shipment note lodged at court to prove the evidence of Gauci and his lamb/sheep Babygro he claimed to have sold to the man.

I could go on and on with discrepancies in the case but I want to make the point that Megrahi was in my mind convicted on evidence much of which was designed to prosecute Talb and all they had to do to was change the tentative identification by Gauci of Talb to Megrahi and introduce the small fragment of circuit board, PT35b.

That’s what makes this case so different. Megrahi was convicted on false evidence originally intended to be used against someone else and if any of that evidence was tested in court by a defence team properly briefed by defence investigators then Megrahi’s name would be cleared.

Baset [Megrahi] would be pleased if that were to happen because on his deathbed he asked me to not only try to prove his innocence but prove that he was deliberately convicted on false evidence.