The Maltese government should petition
the Crown Office in Edinburgh to reopen the Lockerbie investigation in light of
recent findings that “demolished” the current conviction, according to
campaigner Jim Swire.
Dr Swire, who lost his daughter in the 1988 bombing, is
sure of the innocence of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Libyan man
convicted of the crime.
Released on compassionate grounds in 2009, Mr Megrahi is
in Libya, suffering from cancer.
“There is a man dying in Tripoli in terrible pain from his
prostate cancer who is going to die still accused of being the Lockerbie
bomber, when in fact he had nothing to do with it. And that makes me extremely
angry. For 23 years, now, I have been trying to find out who murdered my
daughter. It was not him,” Dr Swire told The
Times yesterday.
An 820-page report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review
Commission released this week lends significant credibility to Dr Swire’s
theory.
But Dr Swire insists there is even more compelling
evidence relating to a “fabricated” metal fragment which was initially used to
trace the bomb to Libya.
Dr Swire says new research has shown the fragment to be
made of a different metal to that used by Libyan circuit boards.
He is sure the fragment was manufactured and planted
deliberately as evidence to mislead the Scottish courts.
This, together with the fact that a break-in at Heathrow
airport was also concealed from the court, shows a deliberate intention to
frame Libya for the crime, he claims.
“There is a desperate need to restart an investigation,
trial and inquiry into this case which was deliberately misled by the
manufacture of a phony piece of circuit board which could not have come from
Libya.”
The only other evidence linking Mr Megrahi to the bombing
was the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, whose testimony Dr Swire
describes as “invalid”, primarily because of claims he was paid dearly as a
witness.
Dr Swire is calling on the Scottish government to open an
inquiry into the way the verdict against Mr Megrahi was reached since he
believes the prosecuting Crown Office was aware of the fabrication of the metal
fragment.
He quotes from a book written by John Ashton, an author
and researcher for Mr Megrahi’s legal team, which makes these allegations about
the “bogus” fragment.
“This completely destroys the case against Megrahi and
also removes Malta from being the starting point for the Lockerbie bomb.”
“The Maltese government should know who made a fragment
that implicated their island and their flag carrier Air Malta when there was no
valid evidence that the Lockerbie bomb set off from your island. There is no
such evidence,” he said, stressing, however, that those who manufactured the
piece of metal had an interest in keeping things quiet.
Meanwhile, the government has not yet said whether it
would seek to reopen the case.
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