UN observer Hans Köchler at Camp Zeist

[What follows is the rext of a press release issued on this date in 2000 by the International Progress Organisation:]

14 May 2000/P/K/16818c-is

Professor Dr Hans Koechler, in his capacity as international observer nominated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the basis of Security Council resolution 1192 (1998), attended last week’s sessions of  the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. The High Court of Justiciary consists of three Scottish judges. As result of a compromise reached in the Security Council, the Court was set up to try the two suspects of the Lockerbie bombing disaster in a neutral venue.

Professor Koechler was briefed by the Registrar (the Head of the Scottish Court Service in the Netherlands) on the arrangements and procedures of the Court. He was also briefed by the Site Police Commander and the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Prison. He further met with representatives of the victims’ families. By arrangement of the Scottish prison authorities, Professor Koechler made an inspection tour of HM Prison Zeist and met in private with the two accused Libyan nationals who had given their consent prior to the meeting.

Professor Koechler is one of five international observers nominated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He represents the Vienna-based International Progress Organization, an NGO in consultative status with the United Nations. The other observers are Mr Robert Thabit, also representing the International Progress Organization, Mr M H Baerenboom of the European Commission, Ms Hairat A. Balogun, representing the OAU and the Non-Aligned Movement, and Dr Nabil El-Araby of the Arab League.

The observers of the International Progress Organization will follow the trial in the Netherlands and will report regularly to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Their main focus will be due process of law, fair trial and respect of United Nations resolutions and international legal instruments.

Normalising relations

[What follows is excerpted from an item on the ITN Source website:]

A flag raising ceremony on Wednesday May 13 [2009] has symbolically marked the return of the US to Libya after a 30 year absence.

The ceremony, held before foreign diplomats, officials and media, took place in the new US Embassy compound, still being completed, in Tripoli.

The new US ambassador to Libya, Gene A Cretz, said that he was continuing the daily work of normalising relations with the Libyan government, and creating new ties with the Libyan people. An American visa section opened in Tripoli in April.

The return of the US to Libya and of improving diplomatic relations between Washington and Tripoli comes three decades after ties were severed. In November 1972, the US withdrew its ambassador from Tripoli after it accused Libya of supporting international terrorism. US-Libyan relations have dramatically improved since December 2003 after Tripoli's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction programs.

"I've been here over four months and I have found nothing but courtesy on the part of the Libyan officials with whom I have dealt with. I have found nothing but warmth and welcoming spirit from the Libyans who I have met on the street or visiting or whatever. I think we have come a long way even just since the time I have been here in terms of establishing a working relationship with the Libyan government," Cretz said to waiting media.

He said in the short time he had been in Tripoli, he thought the two countries had made much progress in building a new relationship.

"I would say on an official level we have made progress in several different areas and we look forward to even more progress and I think that today's ceremony in which we raised our flag here is just another building block on the way to what we consider to be a normalisation of relationships with the Libyan government and the Libyan people."

Since relations between the two have improved, the United States has ended its major economic sanctions on Libya and has dropped it from a State Department blacklist for "state sponsors of terrorism".

[RB: Less than two-and-a-half years later the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was saying “We came, we saw, he died” on hearing that Muammar Gaddafi had been brutally killed.]

Discovery of circuit board fragment PT35B

It was (apparently) on this date in 1989 that Dr Thomas Hayes of the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) discovered amongst Lockerbie debris a fragment of circuit board embedded in a shirt collar. This became PT35(b) -- the notorious dodgy timer fragment. The story of the discovery and how it was recorded is narrated an article headed Page 51 and its Environs on Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide. The dialogue between Caustic Logic and Rolfe in the comments following the blogpost is also a mine of information. Another useful source of enlightenment is Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s PT35B website.

Real questions raised but no reliable answers

[What follows is the text of a review by Tom Sutcliffe on the website of The Independent on this date in 1995 of the version of Allan Francovich’s The Maltese Double Cross broadcast on Channel Four that day:]

All disasters provoke in us a hunger for explanation and these days you're never at a loss for someone prepared to feed you, to appease your pangs with conspiracy theories - that intellectual junk food. In more faithful times blame was less complex. Writing about the Titanic, Thomas Hardy mused on the separate creation of ship and iceberg: "No mortal eye could see/ The intimate welding of their later history,/ Or sign that they were bent/ By paths coincident/ On being anon twin halves of one august event./ Till the Spinner of the Years/ Said 'Now!' And each one hears,/ And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres."

Alan Francovich's film about the Lockerbie disaster, The Maltese Double Cross (Channel 4), opened with a similarly baleful sense of ineluctable collision - a suitcase and a plane full of people, fated to meet. But where Hardy lays the blame on the Spinner of the Years (current whereabouts unknown) Francovich has more earthly agencies in mind. That terrible explosion was entirely eluctable, he suggests, so much so that several potential victims changed their travel plans after specific warnings from intelligence sources. Worse, he alleges, the bomb was actually placed on the plane with the assistance of DEA officials, protecting a drugs-for-intelligence operation in the Lebanon. The Libyan connection is simply a front, a cynical attempt to turn a political profit from the disaster and to conceal the murky dealings of American intelligence.

This is airport novel stuff, a convoluted story traced through a swamp of mendacity and impure motive. It might even be true - after all, Iran- Contra sounded like a Hollywood fantasy. But it doesn't greatly help your confidence that Francovich's film almost immediately adopted the conspiracist's unshakeable conviction that nothing is quite what it seems. "Americans" were on the scene very quickly, noted various witnesses, hinting darkly at foreknowledge. The CIA was there and the FBI, interfering with the work of Scottish policemen, combing those low hills for evidence. This seems "odd" to Tam Dalyell - but it doesn't seem very odd to me. It's explicable in a number of ways - management panic, jurisdictional squabbles, even the sick crowd instinct generated by such an event. Intelligence officers aren't immune from the impulse that makes people pull over to stare at traffic accidents and they have much better excuse at hand.

It was clear too that Francovich wasn't exactly a dispassionate seeker after truth. At times the script buckled beneath the weight of sarcastic insinuation. What about this, read over footage of night-time Tripoli? "Oliver North. Lieutenant-Colonel US Marine Corps. His commander-in-chief the Honourable Ronald Reagan and still sleeping the sleep of the just, as he had in cabinet meetings, had his three presidential obsessions - hostages, Contra and Gaddafi." Come again? Scorning the official explanation that a fragment of microchip proved Libyan guilt, Francovich showed you the pine forest where it was notionally found and "where it is as dark as it must have been before time began, with the first big bang". I guess the searchers needed torches. Later we travelled to Zurich - "Where money grows in banks. Where the hand that steals is not cut off, just grows other hands."

This sort of portentous nonsense is all very well, but it is not a good idea to stoke up such a generalised sense of double-dealing if your own film has been partly financed by Libyan money and if one of your principal witnesses was also employed by Pan-Am lawyers, hoping to stave off huge payments in damages. Francovich's film raises some real questions about the official account, about its political convenience and expedient omissions. But it didn't replace it with any reliable truth of its own. You switched off, thinking you couldn't trust anything but the continuing grief of the bereaved.

Judges’ conclusions from Frankfurt printout unwarranted

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in the Maltese newspaper The Sunday Times on this date in 2009:]

A German expert has raised fresh controversy on a crucial piece of evidence in the conviction of Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi as the Lockerbie bomber.

The verdict relied heavily on the judges' acceptance of a brief computer printout of the baggage movements at Frankfurt airport. The prosecution had argued it proved an unaccompanied bag containing the bomb was transferred from Air Malta flight KM180 to the Pan Am flight 103 to London on December 21, 1988.

The expert who helped design the baggage system in place at Frankfurt airport in 1988 and familiar with the operating software has now said: "The Lockerbie judges got it wrong, they simply got it wrong."

In the original trial, the Crown could offer no evidence of how the bag got aboard the Air Malta flight in the first place. Malta had presented records showing that no unaccompanied baggage was on the Air Malta flight in question.

The baggage reconciliation system at Malta's airport did not only rely on computer lists. Personnel also counted all pieces of baggage, manually checking them off against passenger records. Maltese baggage loaders had been prepared to testify, yet they were never called as witnesses.

In spite of a lack of evidence that the baggage containing the bomb actually left Malta, the judges concluded that it must have been the case, based on an interpretation of the computer print out from Frankfurt.

The hotly disputed computer printout was saved by Bogomira Erac, a technician at Frankfurt airport. She testified at the original trial under the pseudonym Madame X. One of the reasons this computer printout was so controversial was that although Ms Erac thought it important to save, she then tossed it in her locker and went on holiday.

Only on her return did she hand it to her supervisor who gave it to the Bundeskiminalmt (BKA), the German Federal Police. The BKA did not disclose this printout to Scottish and American investigators for several months.

The German expert has now examined all of the evidence that related to the Frankfurt baggage system placed before the court in the original trial. The expert, who agreed to review this evidence on condition of anonymity, spent six months examining the data.

Although he demanded anonymity, he agreed that if a formal approach was made by Mr Al-Megrahi's lawyers or the Scottish Criminal Cases review commission, he would meet them.

He was puzzled when he saw how short the printout out was and explained that there was no need to print a very small extract from the baggage system traffic, as a full back-up tape was made. This would have shown all the baggage movements at Frankfurt airport that day.

When it was explained that the court heard that the system was purged every few days and that no back-up tape existed, he said: "This is not true."

"Of course it is possible no back-up tape was made for that particular day but that day would have been the first and only day in the history of Frankfurt Airport when not one piece of baggage or cargo was lost, rerouted or misplaced," he added.

He went on to say that FAG, the company that operated Frankfurt Airport, needed these tapes to defend against insurance claims for lost or damaged cargo.

The expert maintains that even with his expert knowledge of the system he could not draw the conclusion reached by the Lockerbie trial judges in 2001.

"They would have needed much more information of the baggage movements, not this very narrow time frame," he said.

Questions are now raised about why Mr Al-Megrahi's legal team at the trial in the Netherlands decided to accept and rely upon a report on the baggage system compiled by a BKA officer and not find an expert on the system. The Scottish police also did not seek to interview those people who designed and installed the system.

Jim Swire, whose daughter lost her life in the bombing and who has been campaigning relentlessly for the truth to emerge, explained there was a break-in at Heathrow airport, early on December 21, 1988, in the relevant area of Terminal 3. This was followed by the sighting (before the flight from Frankfurt had even landed) of an unauthorised bag within the very container where the explosion later occurred.

"What we need now is an equally clear explanation as to why the information about the Heathrow break-in was concealed for 13 years," he said.

Dr Swire added: "At last, the time has come to turn away from Malta and Frankfurt and look a lot closer to home at Heathrow airport for the truth, for that is what we still seek.

"Utterly impossible" to reconstruct where, when and by whom items found

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

Tiny fragments of the suitcase suspected by police to have contained the bomb which destroyed Pan Am 103 were still being found months after the aircraft was blown up.

The fifth day of the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands has heard that thousands of items were sifted through for signs of blast damage.

In the spring and summer of 1989, officers returned to specific search areas and turned up more evidence. (...)

Teams of officers sorted and examined 40,000 pieces for signs of unusual damage. They were labelled and stored according to the search sector in which they were found.

DC McInnes identified items he had discovered from his work inside the hanger in March 1989.

They included blast-damaged fragments of a brown suitcase and burnt pieces of material about an inch square.

He then identified other items he found when further outdoor searches were conducted in Newcastleton forest in the April and May of that year.

They included more tiny pieces of a brown suitcase, possibly Samsonite.

He had labelled one find as "rubber trim, copper-coloured, possibly from the bomb case". (...)

Cross-examined, DC McInnes acknowledged that the sheer volume of wreckage, plus erratic police labelling, meant expert guesswork was sometimes used to locate evidence and date its discovery retroactively.

He told defence counsel Bill Taylor that in the weeks following the disaster, trucks filled with wreckage arrived at a warehouse where an initial reconstruction of the plane was made.

Not every individual piece was labelled by waves of police conducting fingertip "line searches" over vast stretches of open country, forest and farmland, and some paper labels were washed out or dissolved by rain.

The detective agreed that it was now "utterly impossible" to reconstruct where, when and by whom individual pieces were found and admitted a description of another piece was written over type-correcting fluid covering words no longer legible.

Another officer, Thomas Gilchrist, admitted under cross-examination by defence advocate Richard Keen, that a description on one label which was shown magnified on a courtroom imager might possibly have been changed from "clothes" to "debris".

Megrahi “does want matters to proceed”

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

The Lockerbie appeal continued yesterday despite the Libyan Government's request to transfer the man convicted of the bombing back to Tripoli.

Legal experts warned that the deal has not yet been agreed and that, although the Libyan Government has made the application, it cannot go ahead without the agreement of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi.

Maggie Scott, QC, told the court that Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, would be undergoing tests today and next week and that he will not be able to watch but "he wants the matter to proceed".

In order for the transfer to take place, there can be no proceedings active, so Megrahi would have to drop the appeal.

The Crown Office appeal against the length of the 27-year sentence imposed on the Libyan would also have to be dropped. It, too, is currently still live.

Professor Robert Black, one of the architects of the original trial at Camp Zeist, said: "The application is a government-to-government application. The only indication of what Mr Megrahi's attitude towards it is from the mouths of other people. For the transfer to go through, it is Megrahi who would have to agree to drop the appeal."

Megrahi, 57, whose condition is said to have deteriorated considerably, could also re-apply for bail on the basis of his health.

Last year, when three appeal court judges turned down his request for interim liberation, they left it open for him to apply again.

"He is in considerable discomfort," Ms Scott told the court yesterday. "It is anticipated he will be undergoing tests tomorrow and in the course of next week, so it is not anticipated he will be able to witness proceedings over the next series of days. He does, however, want matters to proceed. It is appropriate I point that out to the court."

Dumfries Labour MSP Elaine Murray yesterday expressed concerns that past and current comments made by First Minister Alex Salmond may be considered by the Libyan Government as Scottish ministers having predetermined their application for the transfer of Megrahi to a Libyan jail. She also provided the Libyans with grounds for judicial review should the application be rejected by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

Judges’ Lockerbie opinion “legally threadbare”

[On this date in 2001 an article by Alexander Cockburn headed Justice Scotched in Lockerbie Trial was published in The Nation. It reads as follows:]

There’s a famous passage in Lord Cockburn’s Memorials of His Time where the great Scotch judge and leading Whig stigmatizes some of his Tory predecessors on the bench, including the terrible Lord Braxfield, who presided over what Cockburn called “the indelible iniquity” of the sedition trials of 1793 and 1794. “Let them bring me prisoners, and I’ll find them law,” Cockburn quotes Braxfield as saying privately, also whispering from the bench to a juror he knew, “Come awa, Maister Horner, come awa, and help us to hang ane o’ thae daamned scoondrels.”

Braxfield most certainly has his political disciples on the Scottish bench today, in the persons of the three judges who traveled to the Netherlands to preside over the recent trial of the two Libyans charged with planting the device that prompted the crash of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988. In the first criticism of the verdict, Hans Koechler, a distinguished Austrian philosopher appointed as one of five international observers at the trial in Zeist, Holland, by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, has issued a well-merited denunciation of the judges’ bizarre conclusion. “In my opinion,” Koechler said, “there seemed to be considerable political influence on the judges and the verdict.”

Koechler’s recently released analysis of the proceedings, in which the judges found one of the two accused Libyans, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, guilty while exonerating his alleged co-conspirator, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, is by no means an exercise in legal esoterica. Basically, he points out that the judges found Megrahi guilty even though they themselves admitted that his identification by a Maltese shop owner (summoned by the prosecution to testify that Megrahi bought clothes later deemed to have been packed in the lethal suitcase bomb) was “not absolute” and that there was a “mass of conflicting evidence.”

Furthermore, Koechler queries the active involvement of senior US Justice Department officials as part of the Scotch prosecution team “in a supervisory role.”

Assuming a requisite degree of judicial impartiality, the prosecution’s case absolutely depended on proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Megrahi was the man who bought the clothes, traced by police to a Maltese clothes shop. In nineteen separate statements to police prior to the trial the shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, had failed to make a positive identification of Megrahi. In the witness box Gauci was asked five times if he recognized anyone in the courtroom. No answer. Finally, the exasperated prosecutor pointed to the dock and asked if the man sitting on the left was the customer in question. Even so, the best that Gauci could do was to mumble that “he resembled him.”

Gauci had also told the police that the man who bought the clothes was 6 feet tall and over 50 years of age. Megrahi is 5 feet 8 inches tall, and in late 1988 he was 36. The clothes were bought either on November 23 or December 7, 1988. Megrahi was in Malta on December 7 but not on the November date. The shopkeeper recalled that the man who bought the clothes also bought an umbrella because it was raining heavily outside. Maltese meteorological records introduced by the defense showed clearly that while it did rain all day on November 23, there was almost certainly no rain on December 7. If it did rain on that date, the shower would have been barely enough to wet the pavement. Nevertheless, the judges held it proven that Megrahi had bought the clothes on December 7.

No less vital to the prosecution’s case was its contention that the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 had been loaded as unaccompanied baggage onto an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt, flown on to London, and thence onto the ill-fated flight to New York. In support of this, prosecutors produced a document from Frankfurt airport indicating that a bag had gone from the baggage-handling station at which the Air Malta bags (along with those from other flights) had been unloaded and had been been sent to the handling station for the relevant flight to London. But there was firm evidence from the defense that all the bags on the Air Malta flight were accompanied and were collected at the other end. Nevertheless, the judges held it proven that the lethal suitcase had indeed come from Malta.

The most likely explanation of the judges’ decision to convict Megrahi despite the evidence, or lack of it, must be that either (a) they panicked at the thought of the uproar that would ensue on the US end if they let both the Libyans off, or (b) they were simply given their marching orders by high authority in London. English judges are used to doing their duty in this manner–see, for example, the results of various “impartial” judicial inquiries into British atrocities in Northern Ireland over the years.

In closing arguments, the prosecution stressed the point that Megrahi could not have planted the bomb without the assistance of Fhimah – that both defendants were equally guilty, and should stand or fall together. Nevertheless, the judges elected to find one of the two conspirators guilty and the other one innocent, a split verdict that Koechler finds “incomprehensible.” It is however entirely comprehensible if we accept that the judges knew there was no evidence to convict either man but that it was politically imperative for them to send one of them down for twenty years and thereby pass the buck to the appeals court. Given the legally threadbare nature of the judges’ eighty-two-page “opinion” justifying their actions, many observers are assuming that the five-man panel of judges who will eventually hear Megrahi’s appeal will have to do the right thing. But that is what many of us said about the original trial.

The people of Scotland have a right to know the truth

[The following are two letters originally published in The Herald that were reproduced on the Deep Journal website on this date in 2012:]

I went into the Zeist trial court convinced that I would see two of the murderers of my daughter convicted.

I was but a layman. Having heard the evidence, I emerged believing they had been framed.

It seemed obvious that the prosecution's story of a man (Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi) using a fully adjustable and long-running digital timer and setting it so that, after two changes of aircraft, it still only cleared Heathrow by 38 minutes, was a little unlikely.

During the trial it seemed more likely to me that an air-pressure-sensitive improvised explosive device (IED) perfected by the PFLP-GC terrorist group centred in Damascus and allied to Iran, might have brought the plane down.

We heard the details of these devices in the Zeist courtroom from Crown witness Herr Gobel, a West German forensics expert, how these IEDs were available in the terrorist world in December 1988, and that they had a non-adjustable interval of 35-45 minutes from take-off to explosion if put on an airplane.

The Lockerbie aircraft managed just 38 minutes before the explosion. Herr Gobel's evidence made it plain that such a device could not have been flown from Frankfurt to Heathrow let alone from Malta, unless it was armed at Heathrow airport. Otherwise, it would have had to be introduced at Heathrow to avoid explosion en route. Yet there was no known evidence to support introduction or arming of such a device at Heathrow.

We now know that there was precisely this evidence available but that the police/Crown Office had failed to pass it to the defence team or the court ("Vital evidence on Lockerbie was withheld", The Herald, May 3).

The point at issue is simple: why was this evidence not available to the trial court? The UN's special observer to the trial, Professor Hans Koechler, described the trial as not representing justice because of failures of the prosecution to share information with the defence.

Sooner or later the truth will out, but I fear that the longer it takes, the greater will be the damage to our legal system's reputation. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was correct in eventually deciding that "there may have been a miscarriage of justice". The appeal which followed, held in the knowledge of the plaintiff's progressive illness, seemed to some also to be subject to unwarranted delaying tactics by the Crown Office, though combined with the illness of a judge.

The Scottish Government does have the powers to order an inquiry. The relatives and the people of Scotland have a right to know the truth.

Dr Jim Swire,

Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire.

Your revelations regarding the failure of the Crown Office to provide the defence with the material pertaining to the Heathrow break-in just hours before the Lockerbie bombing seriously undermines the integrity of the prosecution's case and, therefore, the integrity of the Scottish legal system.

The Crown Office dismissed the pre-trial significance of the break-in thus: "Even if this evidence had been heard by the trial court, it would not have reached a different verdict." This appears to derive from the wisdom of a Crown Office spokesman who said: "The Appeal Court was satisfied that, having heard direct evidence about the break-in at Heathrow, the verdict of the trial court was not a miscarriage of justice."

Arguably, that conclusion was influenced by the same kind of insular and complacent mindset that persuaded the Crown Office to withhold the Heathrow information from the defence.

The legal establishment in Scotland does not always react with optimum objectivity when confronted with challenges to its authority. When the Supreme Court overturned the unanimous decision of the High Court of Justiciary to dismiss Peter Cadder's appeal against his conviction (the appeal derived from human rights law regarding access to legal representation subsequent to arrest) the reaction of the legal establishment in Scotland was almost hysterical.

An informed bystander might be concerned that the Heathrow break-in should have been the subject of more robust and objective appraisal during Megrahi's first appeal.

Thomas Crooks,

Edinburgh.

Libyan Government requests transfer of Megrahi

[On this date in 2009 the Libyan Government submitted an application to the Scottish Government for Abdelbaset Megrahi to be transferred to Libya to serve the remainder of his sentence. The relevant post on this blog reads as follows:]

The Libyan authorities have applied for the transfer of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, the Scottish government said today.

The move, which could see Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi sent home to Libya to serve out his sentence, follows last week's ratification of a prisoner transfer agreement between the British and Libyan governments.

A Scottish government spokesman said: "The application will be considered by officials who will provide information and advice to Scottish ministers for decision on this matter.

"Under the terms of the agreement this process may take 90 days although it could be longer if further information is required in relation to the application, or for another reason."

[From The Herald's website. The BBC News website's report can be read here. The report on The Scotsman's website can be accessed here. The following are excerpts:]

'[Megrahi's] second appeal against conviction began at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh last week, but this must be dropped if his transfer to a Libyan jail is to take place.

'Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was on board the Pan Am flight 103, welcomed the development.

'He said: "I am not opposed to this simply because I don't believe the man is guilty as charged and I don't think Megrahi should be in prison."

'He said it was only "right" Megrahi, who is dying from cancer, should be allowed home.

'But Dr Swire added: "He has to renounce his appeal before he can go home. Just because the authorities have applied doesn't mean it is going to happen immediately."

'The application to the Scottish Government was made late yesterday, officials said.

'Under terms of Britain's agreement with Libya, a decision on transferring a prisoner cannot be made if there are any outstanding legal proceedings.

'But the fact that legal proceedings are still outstanding does not prevent an application being lodged.

'The prisoner transfer deal was ratified last Wednesday – the day after Megrahi's second appeal began in Edinburgh.

'For a prisoner like Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, the requirement that there can be no legal proceedings outstanding poses an agonising choice.

'He can either drop his appeal – and with it his bid to clear his name – and seek a return to Libya. Or he can persist with an appeal – and possibly die before it is completed.

'Labour's Scottish justice spokesman Richard Baker said: "It is absolutely right that it is Scottish ministers that will be responsible for any decision to transfer Mr Megrahi.

'"The Scottish Justice Minister has responsibility for Scottish prisoners and so it follows that Kenny MacAskill should decide on the issue."

'Barrie Berkley, who lost his son Alistair, said he hoped the appeal would continue.

'Mr Berkley, of Hexham, Northumberland, said: "I would rather the appeal be completed first and I hope the courts would facilitate it going through without any further delay.

'"We want the appeal to go through because it's the main means of us getting further information about how our family members died or why they died.

"We really want to know whether the Libyans were behind this and Megrahi was behind it.

'"Or of course if he was found not guilty that would mean the inquiry would have to reopen and the various agencies of the US and UK would need to find who was behind it if it wasn't Megrahi.

'"Our main motive is to find out whether Megrahi did do it or not."

'He added: "If he is found guilty then the Government has to decide where he serves the remainder of his term. It shouldn't be up to him or the Libyan authorities."'

[RB: The relevant legal provisions governing prisoner transfer are set out here. A prisoner may be transferred only if the judgment against him is final and no other criminal proceedings are pending in the transferring state. This means that Abdelbaset Megrahi's current appeal would have to be abandoned before transfer takes place. But it would seem on the face of it that there is no reason why the appeal should not continue while the Scottish Government is considering the application. Transfer cannot be effected without the consent of the prisoner concerned since it is he alone who can instruct the appeal to be abandoned to allow transfer to take place.]