AAIB and Lockerbie

On this date in 1990, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) submitted its report on the destruction of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie to the Secretary of State for Transport, Cecil Parkinson. The 58-page report was prepared by a team headed by M M Charles and can be read here. Also worth reading is a detailed article by K P R Smart, AAIB Chief Inspector of Air Accidents, entitled The Lockerbie Investigation: Understanding of the Effects of the Detonation of ‘Improvised Explosive Devices’ on Aircraft Pressure Cabins that was published in September 1997.

Sacrificed in the interest of international realpolitik

[On this date in 2009 The Independent carried two articles by its Defence Correspondent, Kim Sengupta. What follows is an extract from the first, Lockerbie prisoner awaits news on Libya return and the full text of the second, Lockerbie: a miscarriage of justice?:]

A decision is expected in the near future on whether the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will be sent back to his home country after he met the Scottish Justice Secretary in prison.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who is suffering from advanced terminal prostate cancer, has applied for compassionate release while the Libyan government has requested that he is moved to their custody under a recent prisoner transfer agreement with the UK.

Both Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and Al Megrahi’s lawyer Tony Kelly refused to make any comments following the one hour meeting at Greenock prison. However, according to legal and diplomatic sources, there is domestic and international pressure for a ruling on the matter.

Mr MacAskill cannot grant Al Megrahi a transfer while his appeal against his conviction and life sentence for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988, which left 270 people dead, goes through the courts.

However, the Justice Secretary can still consider the application from Libya if he is returned there on compassionate grounds.

Mr MacAskill has said that political and economic factors will not influence his decision. He has spoken to the US Attorney General and the British and American families of the Lockerbie bomb victims.

Al Megrahi, who was convicted over the bombing under highly controversial circumstances, granted the right to a fresh appeal last October by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, after a three year review, amid growing concern that he may have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

However, the appeal has been delayed at least until the Autumn after one of the judges sitting on the case had to withdraw to undergo heart surgery and the prisoner’s rapidly deteriorating condition meant that he may not be able to survive for much longer.

MSP Christine Grahame who has already met al Megrahi in jail, maintains that there had been a miscarriage of justice, and he should be given compassionate release.

Ms Grahame, SNP member for South of Scotland, added: "The trouble with a prisoner transfer is it will never be resolved through the Scottish courts. The appeal must proceed, and justice be done and seen to be done. I think it's appropriate that when someone's considering what's to happen to someone who's terminally ill and in prison that all aspects are examined."

Some of the bereaved, including Dr Jim Swire whose daugthter Flora was among those who died, have backed moves to free Al Megrahi. Opposition MSP’s, however, were critical of an early release.

oooOOooo

The Lockerbie bombing, the mass slaughter of 270 people over Scotland, has been mired in controversy with charges that justice for the victims was sacrificed in the interest of international realpolitik.

Both British and American officials originally claimed that Iran commissioned the attack on the Pan Am flight using the Palestinian guerrilla group PFLP (GC), based in Damascus, in retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the US. That changed, however, after the first Gulf War when Syria joined the US sponsored coalition against Saddam Hussein and the same officials now held that Libya was the culprit state.

Col Gadaffi’s regime eventually paid out £1.4 million in compensation to the families of the victims but that was seen by those sceptical of the new theory as one just of the deals which brought him back into the international fold and Al Megrahi was sacrificed for the same end.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was one of those killed, said after the trial into the bombing "I went into that court thinking I was going to see the trial of those who were responsible for the murder of my daughter. I came out thinking he had been framed. I am very afraid that we saw steps taken to ensure that a politically desired result was obtained.”

Last October Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission identified six grounds where it believed " a miscarriage of justice may have occurred" at the original trial into the Lockerbie bombing, at Camp Zeist, in Holland, six years ago.

BP executive "helped to release Megrahi"

[What follows is excerpted from the obituary of Sir Richard Paniguian published in The Times today:]

BP executive who worked with the Intelligence services and helped to release the ‘Lockerbie bomber’

As an oil industry executive turned spy, Sir Richard Paniguian helped to negotiate the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, who had been convicted in 2001 of organising the bombing of the Pan Am plane that exploded over Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people.

Megrahi was released in 2009 after widespread criticism of his conviction. While the British government denied any involvement in Megrahi’s release, confidential documents suggest that it was prompted by pressure from the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in return for BP oil contracts and counterterrorism assistance.

BP admitted pushing for a prisoner transfer deal. The month after Megrahi returned home, Paniguian gave a speech in which he said that “high-level political interventions” had enhanced the prospect of arms sales to Libya.

Sir Richard Paniguian, CBE, oil industry executive and security chief, was born on July 28, 1949. He died of a heart attack on June 25, 2017 aged 67

[RB: I confess that this is the first time I have encountered this particular name in connection with Lockerbie. It is perhaps worth emphasising that it is the British Government, not the Scottish Government, that is referred to.]

Immunity ruled out in Lockerbie row

[This is the headline over a report published in The Herald on this date in 1995. It reads as follows:]

The Lord Advocate yesterday effectively rejected the possibility of a disgraced former American intelligence agent being granted diplomatic immunity to allow him to give evidence on the Lockerbie bombing.

Mr Lester Coleman, a former US intelligence agent, has said he is willing to come to Scotland to give evidence on the outrage provided he was offered immunity from extradition to the United States.

However, Scotland's senior law officer said yesterday that neither the Crown Office nor the Scottish Office had any role or authority in relation to the extradition of Mr Coleman to the US, where warrants have been issued for his arrest. That was a matter for the Home Office and the English courts.

The comments by the Lord Advocate, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, made in a reply to Mr Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow, came on the same day that former Scottish Office Minister Allan Stewart called for the former American intelligence agent to be granted immunity from extradition to allow him to give evidence on the PanAm bombing to a Scottish court.

Mr Stewart, Conservative MP for Eastwood, speaking on Radio Scotland's Newsdrive programme yesterday, said: ''I think unquestionably he (Lester Coleman) should be granted immunity from extradition.

''There are very many questions about the Lockerbie tragedy. He says he has got very substantial evidence to offer. I cannot see why we in Britain have anything at all to lose by giving Lester Coleman the opportunity to put forward that evidence.''

He added: ''The Crown Prosecution Service appears to have decided who is guilty. I cannot understand why they seem to have this single-track approach and to be ruling out any other.''

Asked if he believed that the Lockerbie investigation was being hampered by a cover-up, Mr Stewart said: ''I think it is extremely odd ... that other possible avenues of exploration to get at the truth about Lockerbie simply appear not to be being explored. That cannot be right.''

Mr Stewart's plea came just a few days after Mr Dalyell urged the Lord Advocate to give diplomatic immunity to Mr Coleman to uncover the part he claimed the US played in the Lockerbie tragedy.

Mr Dalyell said Mr Coleman was willing to speak to Scottish police about an alleged security loophole set up by the US which resulted in a bomb being placed on PanAm flight 103 at Frankfurt airport.

Mr Coleman's theory of a link with a drugs run from Lebanon through Cyprus and Germany was the conclusion of a book about him by Mr Donald Goddard, called The Trail of the Octopus. The book is now the subject of a libel action by another US agent.

Mr Coleman believes the bomb got on to the jet because US intelligence agents in Beirut in 1988 agreed with Lebanese terrorists to facilitate a route for drugs from Lebanon to the US in exchange for information about Western hostages.

Luggage containing drugs was protected by US intelligence, with normal security restrictions on baggage at airports removed. However, he alleges, the terrorists exploited the loophole by exchanging a bag of drugs with a bag containing a bomb at Frankfurt airport.

Mr Coleman was based in Beirut at the time and often travelled to Cyprus, where he had dealings with the American Drug Enforcement Agency.

Shortly after the book was published in 1993, Mr Coleman was indicted on charges of perjury and travelling on a false passport. He fled the US and is now in hiding.

The Lord Advocate, in his written reply to Mr Dalyell, the contents of which were published yesterday, explained that the Crown's position was based on evidence, and that careful consideration was given to any information received and appropriate investigations carried out.

In reply to Mr Dalyell's request that Mr Coleman be allowed to enter the UK with the promise of immunity from extradition to talk with the police, the Lord Advocate, says: ''Neither the Crown Office nor Scottish Office has any role or authority in relation to extradition to the United States.

''The procedures for extradition as between the United Kingdom and the United States are the responsibility of the Home Office and the English Courts.''

Mr Dalyell said he found it ''extraordinarily odd'' that responsibility for extradition in Scotland was a matter for the Home Office and the English courts.

The MP said: ''Two Scottish lawyers have told me that they thought extradition and immunity from extradition north of the Border would be the responsibility of the Crown Office or the Scottish Office.

''The Lord Advocate's statement has certainly raised eyebrows in Scottish legal circles.''

Cover-up, conspiracy and the Lockerbie bomb connection

[This is the headline over a long article that appeared in Scotland on Sunday on 19 February 2006. The following are excerpts. The reason for drawing attention to this article on 3 August 2017 appears in the first paragraph.]

If there is a day when the seemingly inconsequential case involving DC Shirley McKie morphed into the crisis which today is threatening the reputation of Scotland's judicial and political system, it is Thursday, August 3, 2000.

It was already more than three years since McKie had visited a house in Kilmarnock where a woman called Marion Ross had been brutally murdered. Since then McKie had been accused of entering that house unauthorised, and leaving her fingerprint on the crime scene. She had been charged with perjury, after claiming in court she had never set foot in there. She had been humiliated at the hands of her former colleagues.

Now, on that August day, a group set up by the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland (ACPOS) to examine the McKie case, was faced with a stunning report. It had already been established that the fingerprint experts at the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) had got it wrong and that the print was not McKie's. Now, the document in front of the group - an interim update from James Mackay, the man they had asked to investigate the case - claimed the SCRO officers had acted criminally to cover up their mistakes. The consequences were immense: if Scotland's forensic service was both guilty of errors and of attempting to conceal those errors, what confidence could anyone have in the entire justice system?

Last week, Scotland on Sunday revealed the contents of Mackay's final report, which had been kept secret for six years, and which was never acted upon by Scotland's chief prosecutor, Lord Advocate Colin Boyd. This week, we can reveal that it was not just police and prosecutors who knew its contents; the devastating findings of the interim version were passed on to ministers as well.

Mackay, a much respected former Deputy Chief Constable of Tayside police, had been commissioned to investigate the McKie case after a separate report by HM Inspectors of Constabulary had found that - despite the SCRO's claims - McKie's prints had never been at the crime scene. Mackay now probed deeper. As this newspaper revealed last week, his final report found that a mistake had been made, yet had not then been owned up to. "The fact that it was not so dealt with," he reported, "led to 'cover up' and criminality." [RB: See Wikipedia article Fingerprint Inquiry.] (...)

A second theory brings in the shadow of the Lockerbie bombing. Mackay's explosive report into the McKie case that August came three months after Boyd began the prosecution of Libyan suspects Abdelbaset Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. The eyes of the world were focused on Scottish justice. What would it have said of that system if - just as the Crown was trying to convict the bombers - it emerged that fingerprint officials had been involved in "criminality and cover-up"?

Boyd strenuously denies that Lockerbie has any relevance to his judgments regarding the McKie case. When Iain McKie first raised the issue in 2000, Crown Office officials declared that Lockerbie "had not affected in any way the response from this or indeed any other department of the Scottish Executive to the issues raised by you."

But there is clear proof that senior justice chiefs had a stake in both cases; SCRO director Harry Bell, for example - whose agency was coming under such scrutiny - was a central figure in the Lockerbie investigation, having been given the key role in the crucial Maltese wing of the investigation, and given evidence in court.

Today's revelation that two American fingerprint experts who savaged the SCRO over the McKie case were asked by the FBI to "back off" suggests that plenty of people were aware of the danger that the case could undermine the Lockerbie trial.

Former MP Tam Dalyell - who has long campaigned on the Lockerbie case - said: "I have always felt that there was something deeply wrong with both the McKie case and the Lockerbie judgment. It is deeply dismaying for those of us who were believers in Scottish justice. The Crown Office regard the Lockerbie case as their flagship case and they will go to any lengths to defend their position."

The pressure for a full public inquiry is now growing day by day.

No economic or commercial motives for Megrahi release decision

[What follows is the text of a press release issued by the Scottish Government on this date in 2010.]

First Minister Alex Salmond has today replied to the letter from Senator Menendez of July 29.

This follows the First Minister's previous letter to Senator Menendez on July 26, which answered five detailed questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and also provided copies of documents.

The First Minister has also previously written to Senator John Kerry on July 21, providing comprehensive information and assistance ahead of the planned hearing which was later postponed. Senator Kerry described this correspondence as "thoughtful and thorough".

The letter is copied below:

Dear Senator Menendez

Thank you for your letter of 29 July.

I have made clear in my letters to you and to Senator Kerry that the Scottish Government's decision to decline your previous invitation for the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Dr Fraser to attend a hearing in the US was based on principle rather than on any issue of practicality.

The most appropriate way for us to assist the Foreign Relations Committee is to provide a statement of the position of the Scottish Government, as I have done, and to answer any questions that the Committee may have in writing, as we have also done.

Scottish Ministers and public officials are properly accountable to the Scottish Parliament and not to other legislatures. It is difficult to envisage circumstances in which serving members of the US Government would agree to appear as witnesses in hearings or inquiries held by the legislature of another country, and there are many high-profile and indeed current examples of the US Government declining such invitations.

Your letter again seeks to link BP with the decision made by the Scottish Government to grant Mr Al-Megrahi compassionate release. No-one has produced any evidence of such a link because there is none. We have said repeatedly that there has never, at any point, been any contact between BP and the Scottish Government in relation to Al-Megrahi. The statements we have made on this issue are entirely clear and consistent.

It was with concern that I watched you attempt to insinuate such a link on BBC Newsnight on 30th July by citing a letter from Conservative Party peer Lord Trefgarne, the chair of the Libyan British Business Council, to Justice Secretary MacAskill last year. This was one of approximately one thousand representations received by the Scottish Government last year, including many from the USA. You have this letter because the Scottish Government published this last year as part of our comprehensive issue of documentation related to the decision. That being the case, you must also have seen the reply from Mr MacAskill, also published, which stated that his decisions would be "based on judicial grounds alone and economic and political considerations have no part in the process". In order to avoid any suggestion of misrepresentation, I trust that you will include that fact in future references.

BP's admitted lobbying on this issue referred to the Prisoner Transfer Agreement (PTA) and with the UK Government. As you must by now be aware, the Scottish Government opposed this agreement from its inception, a position that we have maintained publicly and privately since. Indeed, I revealed the existence of the proposed PTA to the Scottish Parliament in a statement on 7 June 2007. It is perhaps to be regretted that our warnings about the circumstances in which this agreement came into being found no response at that time from the UK Government, the then opposition in the UK Parliament, or indeed from the United States Senate.

Finally, you and some of your Senatorial colleagues, have suggested that the Scottish Government have sought to pass responsibility to others for the release of Al-Megrahi. That is simply not the case. Secretary MacAskill took the decision following the precepts and due process of Scots law and jurisdiction - the same jurisdiction which over a period of some 20 years led Scotland to play the leading role in investigating, trying, convicting and incarcerating Al-Megrahi. We do not resile from our responsibility in making that decision.

The point we make is a different but a quite simple one. Please do not ascribe to the Scottish Government economic or commercial motives for this decision when there is no evidence whatsoever for such a claim.

If you wish to investigate commercial or indeed other motivations surrounding this case, then call the former UK Ministers and Prime Ministers who were involved in proposing, negotiating and then signing the PTA and, of course, where there is a public record of admission that business and trade, along with other issues, were factors. In this light your decision not to proceed with the draft invitation to offer evidence to former Prime Minister Blair, who actually signed the proposed PTA in May 2007, seems puzzling.

These people, of course, may have had, and indeed in some cases have conceded, motivations other than justice considerations. However, they did not take the decision on Mr Megrahi.

I am copying this letter to Senator Kerry.

The secret graveyard of Lockerbie jumbo

[This is part of the headline over a report published today on the website of the Coventry Telegraph. It reads in part (and with interesting photographs omitted):]

The twisted remains of Pan Am flight 103 lie in a forgotten heap – nearly 30 years after a terrorist bomb sent it crashing into the town of Lockerbie.

The 325 tons of aluminium alloy, including part of the fuselage bearing the identification number N739PA, are fenced off in a scrapyard next to a go-kart track, and cannot be moved until all investigations into the atrocity have been concluded.

Among the 270 people who died when the Boeing 747 exploded over south west Scotland on December 21, 1988, were 25-year-old Clayton Flick, from Binley Woods, near Coventry, and his 19-year-old partner Clare Bacciochi, from Kingsbury, who had got engaged only a month before.

Following the atrocity, parts of the plane were taken for examination to an army base near Carlisle.

The mid section, where the bomb exploded, remains under wraps at the HQ of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough, Hants.

But the rest of the wreckage, including parts of the engines and pieces of the distinctive nose cone of the Boeing 747, was transported to Windleys Salvage in Tattershall, near Boston, Lincs, where it has remained ever since.

Earlier this month, the family of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi lodged a new bid to appeal against his conviction, five years after his death.

Lawyer Aamer Anwar joined family members and supporters to hand files to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in Glasgow. (...)

He lost an appeal against his conviction in 2002, with the review commission recommending in 2007 that he should be granted a second appeal.

He dropped the second attempt to overturn his conviction in 2009, before his return to Libya, but his widow Aisha and son Ali met Mr Anwar late last year to discuss a posthumous appeal to overturn the murder conviction.

The commission will now decide whether there are grounds to refer the case to the appeal court.

The move has the support of Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and Rev John Mosey, whose daughter Helga also died.

It is believed the new appeal bid is based on concerns over the evidence that convicted the Libyan, including that given by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who died last year.

Gauci sold the clothes allegedly wrapped around the improvised explosive device that brought the aircraft down.

He was the only witness to link Abdelbaset al-Megrahi directly to the bomb.

Mr Anwar said: “It has been a long journey in the pursuit for truth and justice.

"When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, killing 271 people from 21 countries - including al-Megrahi, it still remains the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the UK - 28 years later the truth remains elusive.

“The reputation of Scottish law has suffered both at home and internationally because of widespread doubts about the conviction of Mr al-Megrahi.

“It is in the interests of justice and restoring confidence in our criminal justice system that these doubts can be addressed.

“However the only place to determine whether a miscarriage of justice did occur is in the appeal court, where the evidence can be subjected to rigorous scrutiny.”

The son of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has said he is “100% certain” his father was innocent.

Ali Megrahi, 22, said: “When my father returned to Libya, I spent most of my time next to him and had the opportunity to talk to him as much as possible before he passed away.

"I am 100% certain that he was innocent and not the so-called Lockerbie bomber.”

Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, Rev John Mosey, whose daughter Helga was killed, and Geoff and Ann Mann, who lost her brother John, his wife and their two children, joined Mr Anwar.

Dr Swire said: “As the father of Flora, I still ache for her, what might have been, the grandchildren she would have had, the love she always gave us and the glowing medical career.

“It has always been and remains my intent to see those responsible for her death brought to justice.

“I feel encouraged and optimistic that this may mark the start of another step towards discovering the truth about our families, why they were murdered and in particular why their lives were not protected in all the circumstances.”

Lockerbie bomber to stay in Scotland

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2002. It reads in part:]

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will serve his entire sentence in a Scottish jail, the UK Government has confirmed.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has rejected Nelson Mandela's calls for Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to see out the remainder of his life sentence in a Muslim country.

The former South African president suggested the move after meeting the Libyan in Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison in June.

Last month he said after a meeting with the victims' relatives in London that they would not object to such a move.

However, Mr Mandela's calls prompted Dumfries MP Russell Brown to write to Prime Minister Tony Blair urging him to reject any such transfer.

In a letter of reply, Mr Straw said: "I can assure you that there will be no change in policy on the location of Megrahi's imprisonment.

"He will serve his full prison sentence in Scotland."

Mr Mandela had accused the Scottish Prison Service of "psychological persecution" for holding the bomber in solitary confinement at Barlinnie.

He said that the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia had both agreed to accept Megrahi if he was transferred from Glasgow.

However, Mr Straw said UN monitors had found that the prison guards at Barlinnie showed "commendable" sensitivity to cultural and religious conditions.

They described the conditions in the jail as "clearly very good" and said that they met all known national and international standards.

Mr Brown welcomed the promise from Mr Straw.

"Now that Jack Straw has ended speculation over Megrahi, we can now focus our attention on ensuring that the government hold a further inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing," said the Labour MP.

"We know that this won't be a full public inquiry, but there are still many questions that remain unanswered."

He said these included the possible involvement of other countries in the bombing and the issue of airport security.

[RB: Why Mr Brown or Mr Straw thought that the United Kingdom government had any control over where Abdelbaset Megrahi would serve his sentence is a mystery to me. Mr Mandela can be forgiven for not being aware of the details of the division of authority between the Scottish and the United Kingdom governments, but Messrs Brown and Straw cannot.]

US and Libya near deal to compensate terror victims

[What follows is excerpted from a Reuters news agency report published on this date in 2008:]

Libya would pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate US victims of terrorism under a tentative agreement that hinges on action by the US Congress, sources familiar with the accord said on Wednesday.

The United States and Libya worked out the tentative deal to resolve all outstanding cases of what Washington regards as past Libyan terrorist acts that killed or injured Americans.

If carried out, the deal could end the legal liability to Libya stemming from multiple lawsuits by families of the US victims and it could herald a further warming in ties between Tripoli and Washington.

Long estranged, the two nations have dramatically improved relations since Libya's 2003 decision to abandon its pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Under the deal, Libya would set aside $536 million to pay the remaining claims from the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and $283 million to compensate those killed and injured in the bombing of a West Berlin disco in 1986, said attorney Jim Kreindler, whose law firm represents 130 Lockerbie victims.

Two hundred and seventy people died when a bomb destroyed a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988. The Berlin disco bomb killed three and injured 229.

The deal would also set aside additional funds to compensate victims of other incidents blamed on Libya, possibly bringing the total payout to more than $1 billion.

To implement the tentative agreement, however, Congress would have to relieve Libya of the effects of a law enacted this year making it easier for terrorism victims to collect damages by having the assets of target governments frozen.

"It's not locked in," a senior US official said of the tentative agreement. "Congressional action would help us enormously to make sure it happens." (...)

The deal has been structured to respect Libyan sensitivities about making a large payout to compensate victims of incidents for which it has not taken responsibility.

"By careful orchestration of these steps we can ultimately provide that these claimants would receive what are really unprecedented payouts," said the senior official.

"Libya ... doesn't have to accept any responsibility," he added. Making the payments to the victims indirectly, through the designated entity, "provides a way for them to (get some) distance from it."

Asked about the deal, a State Department spokeswoman said negotiations were continuing and the Department was working with Congress on supporting legislation.

"This will provide the best opportunity for American claimants to receive fair compensation in an expedited manner and help turn the page on the last vestige of our contentious past with Libya so that we can focus on the future of our relationship," she said.