It was on this date in 1989 that Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci was first interviewed in connection with the Lockerbie investigation. His witness statement, taken by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Bell, can be read here. An item on this blog contributed by Dr Kevin Bannon entitled Tony Gauci’s Lockerbie testimony can be read here. The comments that follow the item are also very valuable.
The first of September 1989. And the day Tony was describing was in late autumn or early winter of 1988. Nine months previously. He described the sale of some clothes to a purchaser, which had stuck in his mind.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the rate of accurate identification of a stranger, seen once for about half an hour, in circumstances where there is no particular expectation of ever having to recognise the man again? It's very low. Under about 20% as far as I know. And it's even worse when the stranger is of a different race, as was the case here.
Even without Tony's subsequent shilly-shallying, changes of mind and picking out various people as "resembling" the purchaser, an identification made after a nine-month hiatus like that would be pretty suspect. Tony was sure he'd seen the man in a bar in Malta, in the early months of 1990. But whoever it was he saw then, it wasn't Megrahi. It probably wasn't the actual clothes purchaser either.
But wait. Tony didn't actually pick out that blurry, poor-quality, almost unrecognisable photo of Megrahi until 15th February 1991. That's not nine months after the clothes purchase, that's two years and two months later.
Why on earth would anyone in their right mind imagine that was a reliable identification?