Lockerbie bombing victims' relatives
have urged the Scottish government to stage a public inquiry into allegations
that "vital" evidence about the bombing was suppressed.
Jim
Swire, whose daughter Flora was among 270 people killed in the bombing, said
the withheld evidence raised profound doubts about the conviction of Abdelbaset
al-Megrahi, the Libyan man released from jail on compassionate
grounds in August 2009.
Documents given to Megrahi's defence lawyers a month
before he dropped his appeal show that government scientists had found
significant differences between a bomb timer fragment allegedly found after the
attack and the type supplied to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's former regime, Swire
said.
A
new account of the bombing and Megrahi's conviction, Megrahi:
You Are My Jury, published in Edinburgh on Monday, alleges that the
Crown Office, the police and Ministry of Defence scientists failed to disclose
numerous pieces of evidence that damaged their case against the Libyan.
Speaking at the book's launch with [Rev] John [Mosey], a fellow campaigner,
Swire, chairman of UK Families Flight 103, said there were "mountains of
evidence that doesn't seem to be right and that needs to be examined".
The
timer evidence was "a vital clue", he said. "It's an anomaly
that stands out plain for all to see." He said he had also pressed Frank
Mulholland, the lord advocate and Scotland's
chief prosecutor, to investigate evidence that the bomb could have been put on
Pan Am Flight 103 after an undisclosed break-in at Heathrow airport and not in
Malta as claimed, when they met last Thursday.
Opposition leaders quickly intensified the pressure by
demanding that Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice secretary who released
Megrahi, make an "urgent" statement to the Scottish parliament after
the book alleged he had privately urged Megrahi to drop his appeal.
The book, written in close collaboration with Megrahi by a
former member of his defence team, John Ashton, said MacAskill had made the
suggestion in a private conversation with Libya's
then foreign minister, Abdulati al-Obedi, after a formal meeting between the
two governments on 10 August 2009 in Edinburgh. Quoting Obedi, Megrahi said
MacAskill had asked to speak to the minister alone. "Once the others had
withdrawn, [Obedi] stated that MacAskill gave him to understand that it would
be easier to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He said he was
not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was
legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so."
Although significant doubts about his conviction had been
raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, the next day Megrahi
told his lawyer Tony Kelly that he was dropping his appeal "with huge
reluctance and sadness".
Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, said "these
grave allegations" suggested the justice secretary wanted Megrahi released
to avoid a potentially embarrassing appeal. (…)
A Scottish government spokesman
dismissed the allegations about the conversation between MacAskill and Obedi as
wrong and based on "third hand hearsay". He added: "We can say
categorically that neither the Scottish government had any involvement of any
kind in Mr Al-Megrahi dropping his appeal, or indeed any interest in it."
He continued: "The Scottish government do not doubt
the safety of Mr Al-Megrahi's conviction, who was found guilty of an act of
state-sponsored terrorism and did not act alone."
New interviews with Megrahi to be broadcast by the BBC and
Al-Jazeera on Monday suggest the Libyan, who is in the final stages of advanced
terminal prostate cancer, is extremely weak. Swire said he expected Megrahi to
die soon. They last met in December. "He is so sick that he can't say more
than a few phrases" and is "wracked with pain", Swire said.
The book, originally intended to be the Libyan's
autobiography, includes the most detailed testimony from Megrahi so far about
the trial and his campaign against his conviction. A journalist specialising in
the Lockerbie bombing, Ashton was a researcher retained to help prepare
Megrahi's appeal and paid indirectly by the then Libyan regime.
Ashton discloses that in the months leading up to
Megrahi's incomplete appeal, the defence team was given large volumes of
prosecution material on the forensic reports, the chief witness against Megrahi
and the police's behaviour, which was not disclosed at Megrahi's trial in Camp
Zeist in the Netherlands.
Claiming there was an "industrial-level failure to
disclose", Ashton said the new material, which was not given to the
defence or at the trial, included:
• Documentary evidence that scientists at the Royal
Armament Research and Development Establishment, now part of the Defence
Science and Technology Laboratory, discovered there were key differences in the
metal coatings used in a timer fragment allegedly used in Lockerbie and a
control sample from the type supplied to the Libyans. One used a coating made
wholly of tin; the control sample used a tin/lead alloy.
• Evidence that the timer fragment had several differences
from the Swiss-built devices sold to Gaddafi's regime, including the type of
circuit board it used.
• That Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who claimed
Megrahi had bought clothes allegedly used in the bombing from his shop, was
offered a US reward of $2m or more, while Gauci's brother Paul could have
received $1m, with the help of Dumfries and Galloway police.
• That Gauci met Scottish detectives as many as 50 times
while the prosecution case was being prepared; while making 23 formal
statements. Four of the statements were not disclosed.
Gauci repeatedly changed his account, including
identifying people who looked like known Middle Eastern terrorists and giving
different dates on which the clothes were bought, seriously undermining the
prosecution case against Megrahi.
The book quotes Megrahi insisting he was framed for the
attack. He does not blame Dumfries and Galloway police, saying they were only
doing their jobs, but accuses the Crown Office of a blatant breach of its
obligation to disclose all the evidence in the case. "If I was a
terrorist, then I was an exceptionally stupid one," Megrahi said.
If the prosecution was right, he carried out the attack at
times using his own passport, stayed in his regular hotel, bought the clothes
in a small shop rather than a large one, used normal scheduled flights to and
from Malta, planted the bomb on two feeder flights before Pan Am 103, and used
a timer the Libyans believed was exclusively made for them. Officials for
MacAskill and the lord advocate are studying the new allegations but have not
yet responded.
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