Lucy Adams has two further stories about Lockerbie in today's issue of The Herald. They concern Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who was treated by the trial court as having identified Megrahi as the person who bought the clothes that were in the Samsonite suitcase along with the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103, and who was described by the trial judges as a credible and highly important witness. (In fact, the most that Gauci was ever prepared to say was that Megrahi "resembled a lot" the person who bought the clothes, a phrase that he also used in relation to Abu Talb, a convicted terrorist bomber, who was alleged by the defence to have been the purchaser.)
Today's stories allege that before he gave evidence at the Lockerbie trial, Tony Gauci was offered 2m US dollars, and participation in a US witness protection scheme, by the CIA. This was apparently known to the Scottish police investigating Lockerbie and, hence, presumably also to the prosecutors, but was never disclosed to the defence though its relevance to the judges' assessment of the witness's credibility is surely undeniable.
See
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1730667.0.0.php
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/focus/display.var.1730562.0.0.php
The same newspaper publishes a comment on these matters by Ian Ferguson, whose knowledge of the Lockerbie case is encyclopaedic:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/focus/display.var.1730572.0.0.php
The Guardian also has a short article on the subject. See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2182329,00.html
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