Growing opposition to US Libya sanctions

[This is the headline over an article published in Green Left Weekly on this date in 1997. It reads as follows:]

In response to US State Department criticism of his visit to Libya on October 23, South African President Nelson Mandela has accused the US administration of racism and condemned itsarrogance to dictate where South African leaders should go.

US officials had attempted to pressure Mandela into cancelling the visit, arguing that governments should have the lowest possible diplomatic contact with the government of Libya and proclaiming that they would be disappointed by any ratcheting up of South African-Libyan relations.

Mandela said his visit fulfilled a moral commitment to Libya, which supported us during our struggle when others were working with the apartheid regime. The US government said Mandela’s response to its warnings was unfortunate.

This is just the latest attempt by the US to force South Africa to cede to US policy in relation to governments it considers troublesome. Libya, along with Cuba, Iran and Syria, is top of that list.

In 1995, a proposed deal involving the storage of Iranian oil in South Africa was scrapped under pressure from the US. Soon afterwards, concerns were raised in the US Congress about South Africa’s relations with Cuba. The following year, discussions about a possible arms deal between South Africa and Syria were cancelled after strong condemnation and threats from the US.

The US campaign against Libya began when the September 1, 1969, revolution overthrew the US puppet King Idris, refused to renew foreign base agreements and nationalised US, French and British oil interests. Since then, the US and its allies have waged a covert and overt war against Libya, including a series of CIA-orchestrated assassination attempts, provocative incursions into Libyan territorial waters and the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986.

In 1992, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Libya which prohibit arms sales and flights to and from the country. These sanctions were ostensibly to punish Libya for so-called terrorist activities and to force it to extradite two Libyan agents accused by Britain and the US of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland, which killed 270 people.

Libya, supported by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), has proposed that the Lockerbie trial be held in a neutral country, conducted under Scottish law. In the words of Mandela, who has been mandated by the OAU to mediate between Britain and Libya on the issue: You can’t have a country like Britain, which is the complainant, the prosecutor and the judge at the same time. For a country to combine the three roles, there can be no justice there.

The British families of those killed in the Lockerbie disaster have welcomed Mandela’s call and endorsed South Africa as a suitable venue for a trial.

The South African government has further angered the US by supporting the OAU’s demand that the UN lift the sanctions against Libya.

Last month the Arab states voted to permit planes carrying Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi to land on their territory and to permit other flights for religious and humanitarian purposes.

Steps on the path towards a neutral venue trial

[The following are two snippets published on this date in 1997 on the Libya: News and Views website:]

The head of the Arab League said on Sunday that Libya would never extradite two of its citizens to Britain or the United States for trial on charges of bombing a US airliner in 1988. Esmat Abdel-Meguid told a news conference on the sidelines of a symposium on the future of the Arab world [in Abu Dhabi] that Libya maintained its offer to let the two men stand trial in a neutral country but with Scottish judges. “Libya would not turn over its citizens because, under international law, it is not possible for one country to surrender its citizens to another country unless the two are bound by a mutual extradition agreement,” Abdel-Meguid said. [Reuter]

Libya has said it is impossible for two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing to get a fair trial in Scotland although the Scottish justice system is fair. The Libyan Foreign Ministry said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's invitation to the United Nations to send observers to Scotland to evaluate the Scottish legal system in action was a ploy to undermine other initiatives to solve the problem. “Libya does not doubt the fairness of the Scottish judiciary or its equity,” the Libyan Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued at the weekend and obtained from the official Libyan news agency JANA on Monday. “But...the campaign through the press and statements by officials in Britain and the United States has led to a prior condemnation of the two suspects, ruling out any possibility of a fair and just trial for them in Scotland,” it added. [Reuter]

Stand up for justice, not just for the Scottish legal system

[This is the headline over a group of three letters published in today’s edition of The Herald. They read as follows:]

Kenny MacAskill, not for the first time, has demonstrated his ignorance of some of the basic facts of the Lockerbie case (“Gauci and the benefit of doubt on Lockerbie”, The Herald, November 2). His article starts by getting Tony Gauci’s age wrong and goes downhill from there.

He claims that Mr Gauci was not aware that he might be rewarded for his evidence until after he made a partial identification of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi as the man who bought from him the clothes that were used in the bomb suitcase. In fact, declassified police documents show that when he made the identification he was not only aware that reward money was offer, but had also expressed an interest in receiving it.

Like Mr MacAskill, I don’t believe that Mr Gauci lied for money, nevertheless, as the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission noted (but Mr MacAskill fails to), his trial testimony was significantly more helpful to the prosecution than his earlier police statements.

Nowhere does Mr MacAskill mention his own reluctant admission that the holes in Mr Gauci’s evidence meant that Megrahi’s conviction was “probably unsafe”. Nor does he express concern that the Crown withheld numerous items of significant evidence from the defence.

Mr MacAskill asserts that the Scottish prosecutors “acted diligently and honourably”. Yet, as he knows full well, key aspects of their conduct have drawn international [criticism].

Standing up for the Scottish criminal justice system is not the same as standing up for justice. If Mr MacAskill is truly concerned for justice, he should temper his patriotism with a recognition that Megrahi, like Mr Gauci, was also entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

John Ashton (biographer of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi)


Kenny MacAskill reiterates one of the main themes of his book, The Lockerbie Bombing, published earlier this year: that the performance of the Scottish criminal justice system, during the investigation into the destruction of Pan Am 103 and the subsequent trial of two Libyans for the crime, was “outstanding”, but was itself overshadowed and undermined by international “commercial and security deals involving the UK, the United States and Libya.

If ever there were an example of somebody crying “It wisnae us” this is it. Innumerable authoritative observers have concluded that the Camp Zeist trial was a travesty of justice. Mr MacAskill himself, in his book, states unequivocally that Megrahi was not the purchaser of clothes, later found to have been packed in the bomb suitcase, from the late Tony Gauci’s shop in Malta. Yet this completely contradicts not only the verdict of the court but also the position Mr MacAskill maintained while Cabinet Secretary for Justice, that he “did not doubt the safety of the conviction”.

In his article Mr MacAskill refers to Tony Gauci both as “a crucial witness for the prosecution” and yet as being only “a small part of the Lockerbie trial”. How can he have been both? Mr MacAskill knows (and concedes in his book) that without Megrahi having been identified by Mr Gauci as the purchaser of the clothes the case against him would have collapsed. He writes that the issues with Gauci’s evidence were less with the actual content of that evidence than that “it was the interpretation put upon it by the court that was critical”.’ How on earth does this square with the idea that the Scottish justice system performed well, and that those of us who think otherwise are somehow traducing it?

James Robertson


I’m afraid I find former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s comments on some aspects of the Megrahi case far from convincing. The one person who certainly did not get the benefit of all the doubts that surrounded the trial is Megrahi.

Mr MacAskill does not even comment on how Mr Gauci was able to identify a casual customer to his shop for a few minutes several years earlier. Could that be because he has an incredible memory for faces and details of every sale, or perhaps it was because he was shown a photograph of Megrahi in advance of the trial, by a person or persons unknown (and perhaps with an American accent)?

After the trial, did it come as a complete surprise to Mr Gauci when he found himself in possession of two million US dollars and a supported move to a new home and comfortable life in Australia? Mr MacAskill’s only comment is that “it appears he wasn’t aware of that or any potential personal gain until considerably later”. Aye, that’ll be right.

Mr MacAskill also says that “the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Board was right to home in on both of these aspects”. Yet for various reasons a formal appeal and re-trial was constantly denied or delayed, until Megrahi’s fatal illness provided the welcome excuse to ship him off home.

Mr MacAskill’s article also goes into much detail about subsequent relationships between the Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and the United States and UK over trade deals and military support. But he doesn’t even address the question of why Libya should have wanted to destroy an American private airliner in mid-flight. The most obvious reason for such action might have been the shooting down several months earlier of an Iranian civil plane carrying more than 200 passengers by the reckless action of a US warship commander. But strangely that never seemed to occur to anyone in the political or legal hierarchies on either side of the Atlantic.

Much easier to blame a minor Libyan official than risk a major conflict with a real power in the Middle East, and then put pressure on a Scottish court to produce a politically acceptable answer, just because Flight 103 happened to explode just over the Scottish Border instead of in mid-Atlantic. I think Mr MacAskill secretly suspects just that.

Iain AD Mann

Lockerbie relatives fated never to know truth

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater that appears in today’s edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]

After the death of Tony Gauci, the chief prosecution witness, those who could shed light on the tragedy are dwindling

One by one, the key players in the Lockerbie drama fade from the scene, taking with them its secrets. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi himself, prime suspect; Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Lord Advocate, who brought the case against him; and now Tony Gauci, the chief prosecution witness, who died last week. As Kenneth Roy, the editor of the Scottish Review, noted in his obituary: “To say that all three left unanswered questions would be one of the under-statements of our time.”

Gauci, who owned a clothes shop in Malta, where, on some disputed day in 1988, a man came in to buy the items of clothing later found burnt and shredded around the bomb in Lockerbie, did not have a good press. An unsure witness at best, his testimony about when and by whom the clothes were bought, seemed to change each time he was questioned; and he was questioned a lot — 17 times by Scottish and Maltese police, many more by prosecuting counsel, and later by journalists. Was the man who ordered such an odd assortment of clothes — shirts, jackets, trousers, baby clothes, without checking on their sizes — tall and dark-skinned, as Gauci seemed to remember, or medium-built and light-skinned as Megrahi turned out to be? Did he come into the shop two weeks before Christmas, or in late November? Was it raining, or merely dripping? Were the Christmas lights on or not? Which football match was his brother watching on the day? Gauci tried and tried to remember, and each time seemed to retreat further and further from the truth.

All that has led his detractors to mock his evidence, and dismiss him as a witness of no worth. Lord Fraser notoriously once described him as “not quite the full shilling,” though he was more generous later on.

Those who believe Megrahi was innocent, and the prosecution a charade, point to Gauci as its weakest link. As chief witness for the prosecution, they claim that if his evidence falls, then the entire case collapses. One member of the defence team, hearing of his death, said that he went to his grave carrying responsibility for Megrahi’s wrongful conviction.

That is a dishonourable epitaph for a decent man. The more one re-reads Gauci’s evidence, the more one warms to him as a character. A simple man, the only things he really cared about were his clothes business, and his pigeons. When, on several occasions, he was taken to Scotland for his safety by police, he worried more about the pigeons, and who was minding the shop, than whether the scenery was beautiful, or his hotel comfortable. The one thing he was sure about was that the clothes found at the bomb site were bought from his shop, and on that he never wavered. Who could forget a man who bought such a strange assortment of clothes without bothering to check on their sizes?

Much has been made of the alleged rewards offered to him by police or intelligence agencies. No one, however, has been able to prove that money was a motive for Gauci. [RB: A more accurate account of Tony Gauci’s attitude towards “compensation” is to be found here.] His struggles to remember dates, times and descriptions may sometimes be laughable. But they are honest attempts, not those of a bribed man. Here he is, trying to remember whether or not he had had a row with his girlfriend on the day of the purchase: “We had lots of arguments. I am asked whether I had a girlfriend at the time of the purchase of the clothing. I do not recall having a girlfriend in 1988 but I am always with someone. It is possible that I had an argument with my girlfriend that day. My girlfriend would cause arguments by suggesting a wedding day or suggesting that we buy expensive furniture . . . it is possible that in 1988 I had a girlfriend, but I am not sure.” He is like that with days of the week, or the size of the man who bought the clothes. “I did not have a tape measure to measure the man’s height,” he complains.

For all his confused recollections, the trial judges liked him: “The clear impression that we formed was that he was in the first place entirely credible, that is to say doing his best to tell the truth to the best of his recollection, and indeed no suggestion was made to the contrary,” was their verdict. When the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission later came up with six reasons for suggesting that there were grounds for an appeal, they did not dismiss Gauci himself, but said that some of his evidence, and the circumstances in which it was given, were withheld from the defence. Whether that would have altered the outcome will never now be known.

In the end, what are every bit as important as Gauci’s evidence, are undeniable facts: Megrahi’s presence in Malta on the day before the bomb was loaded; his departure back to Tripoli the morning after; his use of a false passport supplied by Libyan intelligence — one he never used again; the large sums of money in his bank account; and now, the evidence uncovered by Ken Dornstein. [RB: If, as Dr Morag Kerr has conclusively established, the bomb suitcase was ingested at Heathrow, not Luqa Airport, none of this is of the slightest relevance.]

Mr Dornstein’s brother died at Lockerbie, and, after 15 years of investigations, he discovered that during his trips to Malta in the weeks leading up to the bombing, Megrahi was accompanied by a man called Abu Agila Mas’ud, a convicted terrorist, who today sits in a Libyan jail. Quite what he and Megrahi were doing there, only Mas’ud can reveal, though Abdullah Senussi, the former Libyan intelligence chief who is also languishing in jail, would be able to shed much light on it as well. [RB: Analyses of the revelations in, and omissions from, Ken Dornstein’s film can be found here and here.]

That light, however, is fading. One by one, the witnesses are disappearing. All that remains are the memories of those who lost loved ones at Lockerbie, and who are destined never to know the full truth.

[RB: What follows is extracted from a comment by Morag Kerr on Kenneth Roy’s Scottish Review article:]

It's odd how this type of article keeps resurfacing. Someone has died, who either told everything they possibly knew about it to the authorities years ago and who could not conceivably have remembered anything further, or who knew nothing at all about it in the first place. But now he's dead, oh the secrets he has taken to his grave!

Tony Gauci appears to have served someone connected to the bombing in his shop. His police statements and his evidence at Camp Zeist are in the public record. So too is the diary of Harry Bell, which recounts the (mis)handling of Tony as a witness and the money that was apparently dangled before his eyes. Three separate expert witness reports take this entire sorry episode apart forensically, but even so they only reinforce what common sense tells us - that a shopkeeper cannot possibly be expected to recognise a customer he saw once, for about half an hour, after the extraordinary lengths of time involved in this case.

We don't need Tony to realise that whoever the man was, it was not Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Not only was the day of the transaction (almost certainly 23rd November) one when there is no evidence at all that Megrahi was on the island, the multiple discrepancies between Tony's initial description of the purchaser and Megrahi's actual appearance are glaring.

All this happened almost 28 years ago. Even if we had someone who was now alleged to have been that purchaser, and Tony Gauci was still alive, there is no chance whatsoever that a positive identification could be made. What else could Tony tell us? How much money he was paid? What he did with it? Could he give us any real insight into his thought processes when he repeatedly said Megrahi resembled the purchaser but declined to say he actually WAS the man? I doubt it.

So what has the case lost with the death of Tony Gauci? I'd say nothing at all.

Piled stones to mark a covenant

[What follows is the text of the speech delivered by President Bill Clinton at the dedication of the Lockerbie memorial cairn at Arlington National Cemetery on this date in 1995:]

Sir Hector, Jane Schultz, George Williams, Reverend Keegans, Reverend Miller, Reverend Neal, Rabbi Goldberg; to Members of Congress and the administration, the diplomatic corps; to our honored friends from Scotland; most of all, to the members of the family of Pan Am 103. Thank you, Sir Hector, for your good words. And thank you and the Lockerbie Trust for this beautiful cairn which I accept on behalf of the people of the United States.

This simple monument speaks with a powerful voice. Each of its 270 Lockerbie stones tells of the loss beyond measure, a child or a parent, a brother or a sister stolen away through an act of unspeakable barbarism. Almost 7 years have now passed since that bomb cut short the lives of all 250 passengers of Pan Am 103 and the 11 villagers below. I know that I can speak for all the American people when I say that we have not forgotten and the families of the victims are still not alone in your sorrow.

Since Pan Am 103, there have been other attacks of terrorism on our own soil, the bombing of the World Trade Center, the tragedy in Oklahoma City. After each, our Nation has drawn closer, and some of the families here of the victims at Lockerbie have helped in that process. I thank all of you who reached out to those who were grieving most recently in Oklahoma City.

Despite the passage of time, nothing has dimmed our recollection of that day when death commanded the heavens. Nothing has diminished our outrage at that evil deed. Today the people of the United States understand terrorism better. We know it can strike anyone, anywhere. We know that each act of terrorism is a terrible assault on every person in the world who prizes freedom, on the values we share, on our Nation and every nation that respects human rights.

Today, America is more determined than ever to stand against terrorism, to fight it, to bring terrorists to answer for their crimes. We continue to tighten those sanctions on states that sponsor terrorism, and we ask other nations to help us in that endeavor.

We are strengthening our ability to act at home and around the world. Recently, we have been successful in apprehending terrorists abroad and in preventing planned terrorist attacks here in the United States. We are redoubling our efforts against those who target our liberties and our lives. And just a few days ago in the United Nations, I asked the nations of the world to join me in common cause against terrorism.

In the case of Pan Am 103, we continue to press for the extradition of the two Libyan suspects. We want to maintain and tighten the enforcement of our sanctions, and we want to increase the pressure on Libya. This cairn reminds us that we must never, never relax our efforts until the criminals are brought to justice.

I thank those who have spoken before for their reference to this hallowed ground. It is fitting that this memorial to the citizens of 21 nations has been erected here in the sacred place of our Nation, surrounded by so many who fell fighting for our freedom. It is fitting, too, that this cairn was chosen as the embodiment of our common concern, not only because of the strong bonds that have grown up between the people of Scotland and America out of this tragedy but because this cairn was built stone by stone.

From the time of the Bible, men and women have piled stones to mark a covenant between them as the patriarch Jacob did with Laban. So let us take this cairn as the sign of our bond with the victims of Pan Am 103 to remember the life they brought into so many lives, to work to bring justice down on those who committed the murders, to keep our own people safe, and to rid the world of terrorism and never to forget until this job is done.

We must all labor for the day, my fellow Americans and citizens of the world, when, in the words of the Psalm, "we shall not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday."

The days are now shortening, and December 21st approaches once again. I hope, to those of you who are members of the families, that the honor done your loved ones here today brings you some solace. And I pray that when this anniversary day comes again you will have a measure of peace. Your country men and women are with you in spirit and in determination.

God bless you. God bless Scotland. And God bless the United States of America.

---

NOTE: The President spoke at 2:37 pm at Arlington National Cemetery. In his remarks, he referred to Sir Hector Monro, who presented the memorial cairn; Jane Schultz, chief organizer of the memorial; George H Williams, president, Victims of Pan Am Flight 103; Rev Patrick Keegans, Rev John Miller, and Rev Alan Neal, who gave the blessing; and Rabbi Jacob Goldberg, who gave the benediction.

Gauci and the benefit of doubt on Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article by Kenny MacAskill that appears in today’s edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

Next month brings the 28th anniversary of the Lockerbie atrocity. Last weekend saw the death of a key witness in the trial that followed. Tony Gauci died at home in Malta at the age of 75, apparently from natural causes.

He had been a crucial witness for the prosecution at the trial in Camp Zeist that saw Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi become the only man convicted of the bombing. Gauci’s evidence has been criticised by many who dispute that outcome. Some accused him of lying for personal gain.

I’ve met many involved in the Lockerbie bombing, though I didn’t encounter Gauci. However, I know many who did. He ran a shop along with his brother and was,by all accounts, a relatively simple man. Like the Scottish justice system itself, Gauci didn’t choose to become involved but, in many ways, found himself on trial.

Diligent detective work by the Scottish police had traced clothing located near the seat of the bomb to sales from his shop. Officers initially came across his brother who had no knowledge of it.

Overhearing the conversation from the back of the store, Gauci was able to confirm that a large order had been made, and by a Libyan man. Malta was a haven in many ways for the North African state and being able to identify someone as from there seemed perfectly normal. The issues with Gauci’s evidence did not come in many ways from what he said or did both then and at subsequent interviews. He was always far from certain in identification of the man who bought the clothing. It was the interpretation put upon it by the court that was critical.

Yet his trying to assist in the identification of a mass murderer is perfectly understandable. Moreover, he did subsequently receive significant sums from the American authorities. However, it appears he wasn’t aware of that or of any potential personal gain until considerably later in the case. [RB: This is a somewhat sanitised account of Tony Gauci’s interest in obtaining “monetary compensation”. A more accurate version can be found here.]

That said, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was right to home in on both of those aspects. The first was rather construed and there was doubt about the date. With the second, there had been extensive criticism by the Scottish court of another witness who had received significant sums from the CIA. His evidence was damned. Having done so for a testimony payment became a factor when it was subsequently realised Gauci had been rewarded.

Notwithstanding that, there’s no reason to believe that he lied or did so for gain. In death, as in a court of law, Gauci is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. [RB: Witnesses in a court of law are not entitled to “the benefit of the doubt”. It is the accused who enjoys the right to benefit from any doubt that arises out of a witness’s testimony. In treating Gauci’s evidence as amounting to a positive identification of Megrahi, the Lockerbie judges abjectly failed to accord that right to Megrahi.]

The issue with the continued trial of the Scottish justice system is that it lets the major security and commercial interests off the hook. The Scottish police did outstanding work both at the crash scene and in the subsequent investigation, along with law enforcement colleagues globally. Prosecution and judicial authorities acted diligently and honourably. Yet they have been traduced by some, which is a calumny upon them.

The criminal investigation into Lockerbie was overshadowed by commercial and security deals that were ongoing for decades and in which Scotland had no involvement: an agreement brokered by the UN involving the UK, the United States and Libya which saw Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah stand trial. It gave an assurance of no regime change and a get-out-of-jail card for Muammar Gaddafi and senior henchmen. The deal in the desert between Tony Blair and Gaddafi saw a multi-million pound commercial deal signed the following day and, the day after, MI6 rendering of a Libyan dissident to the CIA for transfer to Gaddafi’s clutches. As Human Rights Watch reported, it was the first of many renditions.

The West got access to Libya’s resources and a bulwark against Islamic terrorism: not just oil but minerals. Libya got dissidents back and military support, as Amnesty International detailed when, in 2009, the Police Service of Northern Ireland was training Gaddafi’s elite brigade. The same year, Hillary Clinton met the Gaddafi family to discuss boosting trade links and Barack Obama publicly shook his hand; deals that continued until the West decided Gaddafi was unstable and overthrew him.

There are doubts about some of the evidence in the Lockerbie investigations and the precise role of Megrahi, understandable given how and where it occurred. But a foot soldier he was, as Lockerbie was state-sponsored terrorism; and he was a Libyan agent in an odious regime. As Gauci was a small part of the Lockerbie trial, Scottish court proceedings were but a minor part of international dealings. Any future investigation must consider the international and security aspects, as much as the criminal investigation.

[RB: In his recent book and in interviews following its publication, Kenny MacAskill concedes that Megrahi was not the purchaser of the clothes and other items from Gauci’s shop. That concession utterly destroys the foundation upon which the Lockerbie court convicted Megrahi. Without that finding the judges would not and could not have convicted him. See John Ashton here and James Robertson here.]

“Abu Nidal confesses to Lockerbie attack”

[This is the translated headline over a report in German published on this date in 2002 on the Austrian News website. My English translation of the piece (assisted by Google Translate) reads as follows:]

Convicted Libyan was innocent according to Weltspiegel

Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al Megrahi, who was sentenced to life imprisonment because of the Lockerbie attack, is innocent according to the terrorist group Abu Nidal. This was reported on Saturday by ARD Weltspiegel, citing the Palestinian Khalid Awad, according to a leader of the terror group.

According to him, the bomb which destroyed the American Pan-Am plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 was planted by the Abu Nidal group and the terrorist group led by Ahmed Jibril.

The Libyan secret agent Megrahi and a colleague, who was also arrested but later acquitted, were in no way the persons responsible for the terrorist attack, reports Weltspiegel according to Awad. The two terrorist groups each received five million dollars (about five million euros) from Libyan authorities after the attack. [RB: It is normally claimed that the money was paid by Iran, not Libya. Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer contends that these payment claims are erroneous.]

In December 1988, 259 passengers and crew and eleven people on the ground were killed. Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2001. In March [2002] of this year a Scottish Court of Appeal confirmed the verdict. In September, lawyers for Megrahi filed a petition with the European Court of Human Rights to review the judgment against their client. [RB: The history of the application to the ECtHR can be read here.]

The “true Lockerbie bomber”

[What follows is an item that was originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009. It prompted a spirited debate in the below-the-line comments:]

Lost CCTV tape 'reveals true Lockerbie bomber'

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Sunday Express. The following are excerpts.]

A secret videotape exists of the moment the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 was planted but has been “lost” by the authorities, it emerged yesterday.

The footage was shot by German intelligence at Frankfurt Airport and shows a baggage handler slipping a Samsonite suitcase rigged with explosives onto a luggage trolley.

Investigator Juval Aviv obtained the tape and passed it to the now defunct airline, which placed copies in safe deposit boxes around Europe.

He said the CIA has denied the tape exists as it would reveal the US agency’s role in the bombing and clear the name of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

The BKA, the German equivalent of MI5, which was monitoring the Pan Am terminal, has lost the original tape and the US airline collapsed in 1991.

Mr Aviv said that in 1988 a secret CIA unit was allowing Middle Eastern criminals to smuggle heroin into America via Frankfurt.

The CIA wanted to secure the release of US hostages in Beirut and was also using the profits to buy weapons for operations in Central America.

“The video shows a baggage handler called Roland O’Neill,” said Mr Aviv. “He picks up the suitcase and realises it is heavier than usual. He goes to the phone and makes a call.

“Then he takes the case and puts it on the trolley. All the phones were tapped, so I also had a tape of the phone call.

“O’Neill called the CIA guy at the embassy in Bonn. He said, ‘This is O’Neill, I have the suitcase but it is much heavier than usual’. The CIA guy says, ‘Yes, we know, let it go’.”

The baggage handler, a German who had lived in America, later told Mr Aviv that he was working for the US Government and he thought the suitcase contained drugs. (...)

Mr Aviv, a former Mossad agent who hunted the killers of the Israeli 1972 Olympic team, was hired to investigate the tragedy by Pan Am.

In his confidential report he describes the videotape as “the gem” that proves Iranian-sponsored terrorists carried out the atrocity.

Terror warlord Ahmed Jibril became aware of the CIA-approved drug route and realised he could use it to bomb a Western passenger jet.

Yesterday, Mr Aviv said: “Most of the people involved were scared to pursue it as the CIA were after them. I work with Dr Jim Swire and the families and my dream is that one day we will see the truth come out.”

Three dead men and their secrets

[This is the headline over an article by Kenneth Roy in today’s issue of the Scottish Review. It reads in part:]

Three of the key figures in the tangled politics of Lockerbie have now died within four years of each other: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person ever to have been convicted of the bombing (died 2012), Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the Lord Advocate who initiated the criminal proceedings against al-Megrahi (2013) and Tony Gauci, the chief prosecution witness (a few days ago). To say that all three left unanswered questions would be one of the under-statements of our time.

Gauci was the owner of a clothes shop in Malta called Mary’s House. It was alleged that on 7 December 1988, a fortnight before the atrocity, al-Megrahi bought some clothes and an umbrella from his shop, that the clothes were wrapped round the device which brought down flight 103, and that al-Megrahi, a former head of security at Libyan Arab Airlines, collaborated with an official of the airline to breach the security at Luqa Airport and get the device on the first stage of its journey as an interline bag to Frankfurt.

But how reliable was Gauci? His credibility took a battering four years after the trial in a remarkable newspaper interview with Lord Fraser. The words attributed to Fraser – he never denied using them – were: 'Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say he was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy. I don’t think he was deliberately lying, but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer’.

When his successor as Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, read this assessment of the Crown’s star witness, he asked Fraser to clarify his opinion of Gauci; others, including Tam Dalyell and al-Megrahi’s counsel, William Taylor QC, spoke out more strongly. If Fraser did clarify his opinion, the world was not made aware of it at the time.

Three years later, however, he gave Gauci a friendlier character reference in a television programme about the Lockerbie case: 'I have always been of the view, and I remain of the view, that both children and others who are not trying to rationalise their evidence are probably the most reliable witnesses and for that reason I think that Gauci was an extremely good witness’.

How this statement could be reconciled with his earlier disobliging view of the witness, Fraser did not divulge. But the remarks received little attention, for the story had moved on dramatically: al-Megrahi was now on his way home to Tripoli, released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer, after serving eight years of a life sentence for mass murder.

Fraser’s re-evaluation of Gauci as 'an extremely good witness’ looked ridiculous on close scrutiny. When the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had a detailed look at the case, it concluded that there was 'no reasonable basis’ for the judges’ opinion that the purchase of the clothes from Mary’s House took place on 7 December; the commission decided that they have must have been bought on some unspecified date before then.

This was an encouraging finding for the many defenders of al-Megrahi (myself included) who believed that 7 December was the date of his only visit to Malta. But in 2014, in a documentary for American television, Ken Dornstein, whose brother died at Lockerbie, produced evidence which undermined the case for al-Megrahi’s innocence. During 15 years of patient investigation, Dornstein discovered that al-Megrahi had been in Malta in the weeks leading up to the bombing, and that he had company: a Libyan bomb-maker, Abu Agila Mas’ud, who was among those who greeted him on his return to Libya. (...) [RB: It was never disputed that Megrahi had been in Malta earlier in 1988. What was disputed -- and what has never been proved -- is that he was there on 23 November, the other possible purchase date. On the Dornstein films, see John Ashton here and Kevin Bannon here.]

A number of fascinating secrets now go to the grave and seem destined to stay there. We shall never know what Peter Fraser really thought of the witness who was to prove so vital to his successful prosecution. We shall never know how much Tony Gauci was paid by the American authorities in return for his helpful evidence (or how much the Scottish authorities knew of the deal). And we shall never know what al-Megrahi was doing in Malta with Mas’ud if he was not there to facilitate the planting of the device.

There is a fourth 'we shall never know’ that can be stated with a sense of growing probability: that with the passage of time, and as the important players in the saga continue to fall off their perches, we shall never know the truth about Lockerbie.

Megrahi petition supported by Maltese nationals

[What follows is excerpted from an article that was published in the Maltese newspaper The Sunday Times on this date in 2010. It is particularly relevant following the recent death of Tony Gauci:]

More than 100 Maltese nationals have signed a petition calling on the Scottish government to open an independent inquiry into the only Lockerbie bombing conviction to date.

The petition, signed by nationals from 33 countries, was filed with the Scottish parliament last Tuesday and is piloted by the pressure group Justice for Megrahi. (...)

The online petition attracted 1,649 signatories, a record for any petition ever filed with parliament’s petitions committee, according to Jim Swire, a founder of Justice for Megrahi and the father of Flora, a victim of the worst terrorist act on British soil. (...)

The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish government to open an independent inquiry into the 2001 Kamp van Zeist conviction for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988.

Dr Swire told The Sunday Times the ball is in the petitions committee’s court, adding that campaigners will probably be summoned by Scottish MPs to explain the contents of the petition.

“We believe our cause will find some ears but I can’t say how Scottish MPs will react,” Dr Swire said when asked whether he was hopeful the petition would move forward.

However, he pointed out that with the Scottish election in May [2011] the governing Scottish National Party may be willing “to be seen to do something”.

Campaigners, he added, were comforted by the decision of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2007 that the Libyan “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice”. (...)

Investigators had concluded the suitcase containing the bomb that exploded over Scotland was loaded in an unaccompanied luggage on an Air Malta flight to Germany before making its way to London.

Malta has always denied any link with the case.

The luggage was traced back to Mr Al-Megrahi and another Libyan man who at the time were Libyan secret service agents working with Libyan Arab airlines in Malta.

The crucial evidence to convict Mr Al-Megrahi was provided by a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, from Sliema, who identified him as the person who bought the clothes that were found in the luggage.

However, serious doubts have been shed on the credibility of the Maltese shopkeeper.

Mr Al-Megrahi’s defence team contended that the Maltese witness was paid “in excess of $2 million”, while his brother was paid “in excess of $1 million” for cooperating. Neither has ever denied receiving payment.

Twenty-two years on from the bombing, Dr Swire remains convinced of the Libyan’s innocence, saying he was converted by the evidence he heard in the main trial.

In presenting the petition, the campaigners said the “perverse judgement not only resulted in the conviction of Mr al-Megrahi, but maligned Germany, Libya, Malta and the UK.”

It also quotes Foreign Minister Tonio Borg as saying: “We have no proof that these two Libyan suspects were involved in anything illegal in Malta regarding this case, particularly the placing of this bomb on Air Malta Flight 180.”

[RB: Justice for Megrahi’s petition remains on the current work programme of the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee.]