Friday 30 January 2015

Megrahi petition on Justice Committee agenda

Consideration of Justice for Megrahi’s petition calling for an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and conviction (PE1370) forms part of agenda item 2 for the meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee to be held on Tuesday, 3 February 2015 at 10am in Holyrood Committee Room 2. The agenda and supporting documents can be accessed here. They include a report on a meeting between representatives of Justice for Megrahi and Police Scotland held on 24 November 2014 (Annexe B) and a letter from the JFM Committee to the Convener of the Justice Committee dated 24 December 2014 (Annexe C). The latter reads as follows:

We refer to previous Justice Committee decisions to keep the above petition open until the ongoing Police Scotland major enquiry into JFM’s 9 criminal allegations, made in October 2012, are investigated and reported on. 

We have no doubt that you and the committee members are aware of last weekend’s public interventions by the Crown Office and Lord Advocate in relation to their Lockerbie investigations. These comments are comprehensively reviewed in Professor Robert Black’s Lockerbie blog at http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk and across the media. 

You will recollect JFM’s earlier submissions where we voiced our serious concerns in relation to the Crown Office/Lord Advocate‘s public rejection of our criminal allegations in 2012 before the police investigation had even started. 

It is quite clear that yet again these authorities, despite being aware of the ongoing police enquiry, are publicly stating that they have no doubts about the guilt of Mr Megrahi and that any who do not share that view are conspiracy theorists. 

In making these statements it seems to JFM that the Crown Office and Lord Advocate have effectively prejudged the police enquiry, dismissed the criminal investigation as irrelevant and severely compromised that investigation. 

Given that this is the Crown’s second public rejection of our allegations we cannot see how we, the Justice Committee or public can have any confidence that when the police report is delivered to the Crown Office and Lord Advocate it will be dealt with in a fair and objective manner. 

The Lord Advocate, as Scotland’s independent prosecutor in the public interest and a member of the Scottish Government, has severely compromised his constitutional position by making these comments when the enquiry is going on. 

We would value your observations and hope that your committee takes steps to clarify the Lord Advocate’s position in relation to these matters. 

It is important to underline that we value the excellent working relationship that we have forged with Police Scotland and have confidence in the integrity and thoroughness of their enquiry. 

Sadly these latest public comments by the Lord Advocate only serve to undermine this cooperation and trust and insult those who honestly believe that a public enquiry is needed into all the circumstances surrounding the Lockerbie disaster.

1 comment:

  1. Frank Mulholland is betting very heavily on one side of this dispute. He must realise by now it's the side where truth isn't. He's upped the stakes to the point where I wonder what his fall-back position could be.

    It's no skin off my nose, or more importantly my career and professional reputation, if it turns out that through some strange circumstance I can't quite imagine that the bomb suitcase really did come off the feeder flight. I'm really only interested in finding out what truly happened, and if the only way to do that is to assert my conclusions and so galvanise someone else to prove me wrong, so be it. And it's a hobby. If I'm wrong, that will have precisely zero impact on my professional work.

    Mulholland increasingly gives the impression of someone painting himself desperately into a corner. And the bad part of that is that cornered animals can be extremely dangerous.

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