Saturday 17 October 2015

Review all the Megrahi evidence

[This is the headline over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in today’s edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

If it can be shown that there is any objective evidence linking the two new suspects to the Lockerbie atrocity we would wish Godspeed to the Crown Office and the FBI in establishing that.
The problem of course is that the evidence used in the Zeist court against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi (and that concealed from it) seems to many to be full of holes.
It would be well to review all the evidence against him publicly in a fair court, before alleging that these two may have colluded with him in some way in an atrocity in which he may not have been involved himself.
I think it is a tragedy and a setback for perceived transparency by the Scottish legal authorities that the application by myself and a couple of dozen other UK relatives was refused by Lord Carloway and two other judges recently.
While we relatives may be quite wrong in our belief that the evidence against Megrahi used at Zeist was fatally flawed and that further evidence accruing since the trial would make overturning of the verdict mandatory if calmly examined, why should anyone listen to a small but determined group of relatives without recourse to a further appeal, retrial or meaningful inquiry?
I believe that Lord Carloway, no doubt for reasons already enshrined in Scots law, believed that he was acting in the interests of Scots justice.
However, the longer this tale of Megrahi's guilt unsupported by further review continues, the greater will be the damage to our reputation in Scotland for a magnificent judicial prosecutorial system, and the greater will seem the risks of continuing so opaque and unchallenged a system.

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