Showing posts sorted by date for query John Mosey. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query John Mosey. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Tuesday 18 December 2018

What is at stake is the reputation of the Scottish justice system

[Today's edition of The Scotsman carries an article by James Robertson under the headline Lockerbie anniversary: ‘One terrible injustice cannot be cancelled out’. It reads as follows:]

Like many other people, I remember exactly where I was on the night of 21st December 1988. I was a bookseller in what was then the only Edinburgh branch of Waterstones, on George Street, and that evening the shop was crowded with customers choosing Christmas presents. Popular titles included Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and the paperback of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent. The phones were ringing constantly as people called to ask what time we closed or whether we had a copy of this or that book.

At about eight o’clock I answered the telephone and recognised the voice of a friend, another bookseller, on the line. He had just heard a radio report that a plane had crashed onto the town of Lockerbie. It sounded like a major incident and since, mistakenly, he thought I was from that part of the country he wanted to let me know. I thanked him and went back to work.

By the time I got home and switched on the television it was the only news story. Pan Am flight 103, a Boeing 747 passenger jet en route from London to New York, had fallen out of the sky and, as would be quite quickly established, all 259 passengers and crew, and a further eleven people on the ground, had been killed. A few days later, everybody’s worst fears were confirmed: this was not the result of bad weather or mechanical failure, but of a bomb having been placed on the plane.

That night is now half my lifetime away, and belongs to a world in which there was no internet, and in which news in the UK was accessed entirely via newspapers, radio and four TV channels. Through all the subsequent years of political, social and cultural change, the story of the Lockerbie bombing has never faded. In part this is because of the sheer scale of it: an event like no other in recent Scottish history − except perhaps the Piper Alpha disaster of the same year, which claimed the lives of 167 oil platform workers. But Piper Alpha was an accident, whereas the destruction of Pan Am 103 was an act of mass murder. It led to the biggest ever Scottish criminal investigation and, after more than twelve years, to the conviction of one Libyan man, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

The response to the bombing brought out some of the very best in human behaviour − kindness, care, courage and dignity. It also left deep emotional wounds that for some will never fully heal. It is completely understandable that many relatives of the victims, people of Lockerbie, police and other emergency workers involved in the traumatic aftermath have long wanted the story to be over, or as ‘over’ as it ever can be. But after the long investigation, then the trial of Megrahi and his co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, and finally the conviction of Megrahi alone in 2001, too many questions were left unanswered for this to be possible.

Well-founded doubts about aspects of the investigation have existed almost since the night the plane came down. It is, for example, highly questionable whether the bomb was ingested into the air traffic system at Malta, as the prosecution case against Megrahi and Fhimah contended, rather than at Heathrow. There were serious shortcomings in the identification by Tony Gauci, a key witness, of Megrahi as the purchaser of clothes packed into the bomb suitcase. Likewise, there were clear failings in the metallurgical analysis of the timer used to trigger the bomb. The prosecution failed to disclose vital evidence to the defence. And the indictments against Megrahi and Fhimah, without which no case against them could have been brought, were based on information supplied by a witness found to have been completely unreliable and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, the juryless court acquitted Fhimah and, almost entirely on the basis of circumstantial evidence, found Megrahi guilty. The United Nations-nominated observer Professor Hans Köchler immediately condemned aspects of the judgement as ‘arbitrary’, ‘inconsistent’ and ‘irrational’ and said that the trial as a whole was ‘not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.’

Concerns that the conviction might be a gross miscarriage of justice were reinforced over the years as new information emerged that had not been considered during either the trial or at Megrahi’s first appeal. The report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) on his conviction, made public by the Herald newspaper in March 2012, found six grounds which might have warranted referring the case to the Court of Appeal.

But by that time Megrahi was back home in Libya with terminal cancer, having dropped his second appeal at the time of his controversial release from prison, on compassionate grounds, in 2009. Even his death in May 2012 did not draw a line under the whole affair.

The campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM), to which I belong, was founded in 2008. Its signatories include some of those who lost loved ones in the disaster, such as Jim Swire and John Mosey, the ‘architect’ of the Kamp Zeist court arrangements Professor Robert Black, and various journalists, writers, lawyers, politicians, former police officers and other citizens who independently reached the conclusion that something had gone very wrong in the Lockerbie investigation and the subsequent prosecution of Mr Megrahi. In September 2012 the committee of JfM drew up six − later increased to nine − allegations of criminality in connection with the Lockerbie investigation and trial, relating to possible malpractice by Crown Office personnel, police and other prosecution witnesses. The allegations were submitted to the then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill in strict confidence. They were passed nonetheless to the Crown Office, which at once publicly denounced them as ‘without exception, defamatory and entirely unfounded’ even before the dossier of detailed evidence had been examined by the police.

This intervention, we felt, represented both prejudice and an intolerable conflict of interest since the Crown Office would ultimately decide whether or not the allegations had any validity. Furthermore, JfM’s allegations would be dealt with by Dumfries and Galloway Police, the force which had carried out the original investigation. None of this gave us confidence that these matters would be treated systematically, objectively and fairly. Indeed, one of the most important outcomes of the Lockerbie saga has been to expose serious faults in the mechanism and procedures of Scottish justice.

However, in 2013 Police Scotland came into being, and the treatment of our allegations changed substantially. ‘Operation Sandwood’ was established, which at its conclusion was described by the police as ‘a methodical and rigorous inquiry using our major investigation framework under the direction of an experienced senior investigating officer.’ We have no argument with that description. Regular liaison meetings took place between JfM and Police Scotland, who engaged a QC completely independent of Crown Office to review the findings of Operation Sandwood. These were unprecedented arrangements. The current Chief Constable, Iain Livingstone, had oversight of the entire investigation, which was completed on 21st November this year.

The Sandwood report has now been submitted to Crown Office. The police concluded that there was ‘no evidence of criminality and therefore no basis to submit a standard prosecution report’. Crucially, however, Police Scotland’s statement goes on to say, ‘The material collated during the inquiry and the findings and conclusions reached have relevance to … the potential appeal against conviction lodged on behalf of the late Mr Megrahi.’

JfM does not, of course, have any knowledge of the details of what the Sandwood report contains, but we are confident that the police have indeed been ‘methodical and rigorous’. We know from the amount of time and resources spent on Operation Sandwood that the police did not deem our allegations either vexatious or without substance. And when the report is received, as it must be, by the SCCRC -- the body currently considering whether to recommend that Mr Megrahi’s family be allowed to make a fresh appeal against his conviction -- we firmly believe that its contents will contain enough information to make that recommendation inevitable.

Such a development, long overdue, would enable all material relevant to the case to be reviewed in the Court of Appeal. JfM believes that in the absence of a public inquiry, which the Scottish Government has consistently refused to establish, this is the only way to have all the evidence examined and to bring some kind of finality to this aspect, at least, of the Lockerbie story.

What is at stake is not just whether there was a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi’s conviction but the reputation of the Scottish justice system. None of this will lessen the pain and grief felt by the families of the dead. But the terrible injustice perpetrated on that December night thirty years ago is not cancelled by another injustice: it is compounded.

The full truth about the Lockerbie bombing is not yet known, but gradually we are moving towards it.

We must hope that some of those, now elderly, who have sought that truth for so long, are still here when it is brought into the light.

Saturday 1 December 2018

Further claims by Lockerbie figures of monitoring of communications

[A report in today's edition of The Times carries the headline Lockerbie professor says secret service agents snooped on him. It reads in part:]

A senior legal figure who masterminded the Lockerbie trial believes that he was put under surveillance by the security services.

Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, is convinced that his emails and telephone calls were intercepted at home and his campus office.

Professor Black spoke out after The Times published extracts from Foreign Office documents, circulated to Margaret Thatcher in 1989 when she was prime minister, which warned that relatives of the bomb victims were becoming increasingly vocal and required “careful watching”. (...)

Professor Black was the key architect of the arrangement that allowed Abdul Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, to stand trial under Scots law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2000.

After the trial, which ended with Megrahi being found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, the academic became convinced that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.

Professor Black believes that he and Jim Swire, a former GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, attracted the attention of the intelligence services. Mr Swire’s daughter Flora was killed in the bombing.

“I had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office,” Professor Black said.

“In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information. On other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say: ‘Hi guys’.”

Professor Black, who was born and brought up in Lockerbie, added: “This was at a time when I had put forward my proposal for a non-jury Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands after getting Libyan agreement to it. Opposition to it was virulent and those pressing the scheme, including Dr Swire and myself, were very unpopular in government circles.”

Dr Swire and the Rev John Mosey, who lost his daughter Helga in the tragedy, also claimed that their phone calls were often disrupted and their computer equipment interfered with after they spoke publicly about the case.

Peter Biddulph, a researcher and author who has spent years investigating the bombing, is also convinced that he was put under surveillance,

He said: “Around two weeks after I had interviewed Jim [Swire] I sat down and found every one of the files in my computer folder had been accessed that morning.

“It was a bit of a shock and I was in a flat panic. I ended up in my solicitor’s office swearing an affidavit, which is still in his safe. After that I got a second computer and made sure it wasn’t connected to the internet.”

The claims were corroborated by Hans Köchler, an Austrian academic, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the Camp Zeist trial.

He told The Times: “I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial in 2001 and the following years, in terms of intrusion into the computer systems in my office in two different locations, leading to data loss and destruction of the operating system.”

A spokesman for the Crown Office said that Lockerbie remained a live criminal investigation.

The Foreign Office declined to comment.

Friday 30 November 2018

Lockerbie families: we were spied on by state

[This is the headline over a report published in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]

Relatives of the Lockerbie bomb victims said yesterday that they have been repeatedly bugged by the security services as it emerged that secret government documents suggested the families needed “careful watching”.

Previously classified government files, seen by The Times, reveal that Margaret Thatcher, when she was prime minister, had been warned that the families were becoming increasingly organised and it was suggested to her that they be put under observation.

Speaking about alleged state surveillance for the first time, the Rev John Mosey, a church minister who lost his teenage daughter, Helga, in the bombing, said that after speaking publicly his phone calls were often disrupted and documents relating to the bombing had gone missing from his computer.

Jim Swire, a GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, reported similar intrusions and claims that he was grilled by people he now believes were from the security services. (...)

Their stories were corroborated by Hans Koechler, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the trial of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted for the worst act of terrorism in Britain. The academic and humanitarian, based in Vienna, revealed that his computers had been accessed and data removed after he compiled reports into the case.

Dr Swire and Mr Mosey believe that crucial evidence was withheld from Megrahi’s trial and that his conviction may have been wrongful.

The latest Lockerbie files have been released by the British government and sourced from the National Archives.

One of the documents is a letter sent from the Foreign Office on August 10, 1989, to Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Scotland’s most senior law officer, and circulated to Thatcher, which raises concerns about the families. It said: “Another aspect which will need careful watching is the activities of relatives of Pan Am 103 victims. The US relatives have for some time been well organised and vocal. More recently the UK relatives have formed the group ‘UK Families Flight 103’ and have written to various ministers. We must be totally consistent in our responses to them.”

Later documents suggest that the relatives were regarded as a nuisance by the government. Lord Fraser, then lord advocate, wrote: “I have recently received a letter from the UK families expressing a wish for a public inquiry. I have sought to head off this demand of relatives here and in the United States.”

Relatives believe the files finally confirm their long-standing belief that they were spied on.

Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed, said: “I cannot believe that a supposedly decent country could behave in such a way towards grieving people whose only crime was to seek the truth. It is unethical, improper and totally unjustifiable.”

He claimed that his communications had been interfered with for decades after he spoke to two men in 1989 who claimed to be journalists.

“These two guys asked to meet me in the countryside near Cambridge,” he said. “They turned up in a high powered foreign sports car and made me feel quite uneasy, almost scared. They seemed satisfied with what I said, almost as if they discovered I didn’t know as much as they feared I might.”

Dr Swire claims that he deliberately included false information in private correspondence, only for it to appear in the press days later, adding: “It made me suspicious that Cheltenham [home of the spy agency GCHQ] made sure that everything I was doing was known beforehand.”

Mr Mosey, who is based in Lancaster, said: “I could hear little clicks and clunks when I was on the phone and documents regarding Lockerbie were disappearing from my computer.”

Dr Koechler said that the documents and the allegations of surveillance were a cause for deep concern.

“I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial,” he said. “The state should respect the privacy of communication and should not interfere into lawful activities of civil society. These documents further confirm my doubts about the integrity of the investigation.” (...)

The Foreign Office said: “We will not be commenting on the contents of our archive files.”

[RB: For what it is worth, I also had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office. In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information and on other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say "Hi, guys!"]

Monday 19 November 2018

A long journey in the pursuit for truth and justice

[What follows is excerpted from a report published today on the Coventry Live website, based on an article originally posted there in August 2017:]

The twisted remains of Pan Am flight 103 lie in a forgotten heap – nearly 30 years after a terrorist bomb sent it crashing into the town of Lockerbie.

The 325 tons of aluminium alloy, including part of the fuselage bearing the identification number N739PA, are fenced off in a scrapyard next to a go-kart track, and cannot be moved until all investigations into the atrocity have been concluded. (...)

The mid section, where the bomb exploded, remains under wraps at the HQ of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough, Hants.

But the rest of the wreckage, including parts of the engines and pieces of the distinctive nose cone of the Boeing 747, was transported to Windleys Salvage in Tattershall, near Boston, Lincs, where it has remained ever since.

In August 2017, the family of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi lodged a new bid to appeal against his conviction, five years after his death.

Lawyer Aamer Anwar joined family members and supporters to hand files to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in Glasgow. (...)

The commission will now decide whether there are grounds to refer the case to the appeal court.

According to a BBC report in May 2018, a review of al-Megrahi's conviction was to be carried out by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

The commission said it would examine the case to decide whether it would be appropriate to refer the matter for a fresh appeal.

The move has the support of Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and Rev John Mosey, whose daughter Helga also died.

It is believed the new appeal bid is based on concerns over the evidence that convicted the Libyan, including that given by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who died last year. (...)

Mr Anwar said: “It has been a long journey in the pursuit for truth and justice.

"When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, killing 271 people from 21 countries - including al-Megrahi, it still remains the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the UK - 28 years later the truth remains elusive.

“The reputation of Scottish law has suffered both at home and internationally because of widespread doubts about the conviction of Mr al-Megrahi.

“It is in the interests of justice and restoring confidence in our criminal justice system that these doubts can be addressed.

“However the only place to determine whether a miscarriage of justice did occur is in the appeal court, where the evidence can be subjected to rigorous scrutiny.”

The son of al-Megrahi has said he is “100% certain” his father was innocent.

Ali Megrahi, 22, said: “When my father returned to Libya, I spent most of my time next to him and had the opportunity to talk to him as much as possible before he passed away.

"I am 100% certain that he was innocent and not the so-called Lockerbie bomber.”

Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, Rev John Mosey, whose daughter Helga was killed, and Geoff and Ann Mann, who lost her brother John, his wife and their two children, joined Mr Anwar.

Dr Swire said: “As the father of Flora, I still ache for her, what might have been, the grandchildren she would have had, the love she always gave us and the glowing medical career.

“It has always been and remains my intent to see those responsible for her death brought to justice.

“I feel encouraged and optimistic that this may mark the start of another step towards discovering the truth about our families, why they were murdered and in particular why their lives were not protected in all the circumstances.”

Friday 1 June 2018

Arguments for a Lockerbie inquiry

representatives of UK Families Flight 103 had a meeting with the
Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, with a view
to pressing the case for an inquiry into Lockerbie. The Rev’d John
Mosey, a member of the group, has recently found amongst his papers
a briefing note that I wrote for the group before that meeting
containing suggestions for points that should be made to Mr MacAskill.
It reads as follows:]

1. The SCCRC findings are there. [RB: The Scottish Criminal Cases
Review Commission found in June 2007 that there were six grounds on
which Megrahi’s conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of
justice.] They cannot simply be ignored or swept under the carpet.

2. The SCCRC is not a body composed of conspiracy theorists. Nor are
those who have, like it, questioned the justifiability of the Zeist verdict.
Apart from a number of UK relatives, they include the UN observer
Dr Hans Koechler, Kate Adie, Ian Bell, Ian Hislop, Michael Mansfield QC,
Gareth Peirce, John Pilger, Kenneth Roy, and Desmond Tutu.

3. There is widespread public concern within Scotland regarding the
Megrahi conviction. Look at the letters that have been published, and
the readers' online comments that have followed articles, in eg The
Herald, The Scotsman and Newsnet Scotland. Public confidence in the
Scottish prosecution system and the Scottish criminal justice system
has been severely dented.

4. At the very least there must be an inquiry covering the six issues on
which the SCCRC found that there might have been a miscarriage of
justice. All of the material on the basis of which that conclusion was
reached is already in the hands of the SCCRC in Scotland. There is
therefore no justification for contending that a purely Scottish inquiry
would not be meaningful, and the UK relatives may soon be compelled
to begin saying so very publicly. In respect of some of the SCCRC
evidence the previous Foreign Secretary [David Miliband] asserted
public interest immunity. If the new Foreign Secretary [William Hague]
refused to allow that material to be laid before an independent Scottish
inquiry, he would open himself to public excoriation. And even an
inquiry limited to the mass of SCCRC material in respect of which no
PII issue arises would still be valuable.

5. If, as a spokesman for the First Minister has asserted, "the Scottish
Government does not doubt the safety of the conviction of Megrahi"
will the Scottish Government disband the Scottish Criminal Cases Review
Commission? This expert body has stated that on six grounds there are
reasons for believing that Megrahi may have been the victim of a
miscarriage of justice. On what grounds and on the basis of what
evidence does the Scottish Government expect the people of Scotland
and elsewhere to prefer its satisfaction with the conviction over the
SCCRC's doubts? If the Scottish Government has evidence that
establishes that the SCCRC's concerns are unjustified, laying it before
an independent inquiry would be the best way of getting it before the
public at home and abroad and allaying their concerns about the safety
of the Megrahi conviction.

6. At present the SNP, unlike the Labour and Conservative parties, has
clean hands over the Megrahi conviction. But unless it moves soon, the
opprobrium over that conviction will begin to attach to the SNP as well.

7. Moreover, establishing an inquiry, as the UK relatives wish, is
morally the right thing to do. Surely the Scottish Government wishes to
occupy the moral high ground?

8. It took 19 years for Scottish politicians and the Scottish criminal
justice system to rectify the miscarriage of justice suffered by Oscar
Slater. Does the Scottish Government really want to break that dismal
record in relation to the Megrahi case?

9. Until the Megrahi conviction is removed from the picture, it can be
used -- and is being used -- by governments and politicians as a reason
for denying relatives an independent inquiry into the whole Pan Am 103
affair. By establishing an inquiry covering the SCCRC concerns only, the
Scottish Government would deprive the UK Government of this very
convenient excuse.

10. It was Voltaire who said that the best is the enemy of the good. Of
course an inquiry convened under international auspices, or an inquiry
convened by the UK Government which has foreign relations powers,
would be better than one which would of necessity be limited to such
aspects of Lockerbie -- eg the police investigation, the prosecution, the
trial, the conviction, the SCCRC investigation and findings, the
applications for prisoner transfer and compassionate release -- as are
within the competence of the Scottish Government. But the argument
that a good and useful thing should not be done because somebody
else could, if so minded, do a better and more useful thing is always
a bad argument. It is sad to see the Scottish Government resorting to it.

11. There are skeletons in the cupboard of Scottish and UK Labour
Governments in relation to the Lockerbie case. If the Scottish
Government falls in May 2011 into the hands of the Labour Party,
there is no prospect whatsoever of a serious investigation. They have
too much to hide. Our only hope is for the SNP Government to do the
right thing.

Tuesday 29 May 2018

Chancellor Kohl denies Lockerbie bomb passed through Frankfurt

[What follows is a statement from the Rev’d John Mosey which is
published here with his consent. The letters referred to in it are in Mr
Mosey’s possession.]

My wife is a German citizen and our nineteen year old daughter, Helga, was also
a passenger on board Pan Am Flight 103. Dr Jim Swire and I shared an apartment
in Zeist for the duration of the Lockerbie trial process.

On the 4th February 1996 my wife wrote to the German Federal Chancellor,
Helmut Kohl, asking what investigation was being carried out regarding the alleged
passage of the bomb through Frankfurt airport. I would like to know how the official
position, which is being so tenaciously and desperately clung to by the Westminster
and Holyrood politicians and the Scottish legal system, can be reconciled with
his reply on the 6th March 1996 (below). Who stands to lose should the truth ever
come out?

“Now that the Federal Ministry of Justice has made its position known, I return to
your letter of 4th February 1996. But first I want again to express to you my deep
sympathy at the loss of your daughter which you suffered through the attack on
Pan Am flight 103.

“The Federal Government is aware that the supposition that the explosive material,
the detonation of which led to the shooting down of the Pan Am aircraft, was
brought from Frankfurt to London, is still voiced from various sides. For that,
however, as the Federal Ministry of Justice has emphatically assured me, there are
no indications at all. The investigations of the State Investigation Authority in
Frankfurt in connection with the crash of the Pan Am aircraft which concentrated
especially on this question, have produced no findings to support this.”

Thursday 3 May 2018

Press briefing on behalf of Megrahi family

[What follows is the text of a press release issued today by Aamer Anwar & Co on behalf of the Megrahi family:]

Statement issued on behalf of the family of Mr Al-Megrahi by solicitor Aamer Anwar

“It has been a long journey in the pursuit for truth and justice. When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on the 21st December 1988 killing 270 people from 21 countries, it remains the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the UK. Nearly 30 years later many believe that Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

An application was lodged by my office in July 2017 with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) seeking to overturn the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for murder.

The application was submitted on behalf of :-

i)                    The immediate family members of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi including his wife Aysha Ali Ahmed and son Ali abdulbasit Al-Megrahi (aged 22)
ii)                  Dr Jim Swire, Rev’d John F Mosey and many other British relatives of passengers who died on board Pan Am Flight 103 continue to support this application.

The Commission had previously determined on the 28th June 2007 that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice in relation to his conviction and identified six grounds for referring the case to the High Court. We have asked the Commission to reconfirm these six grounds.  

Special circumstances
The Commission were asked to address the issue of whether it is in the interests of justice to refer the case to the High Court for a posthumous appeal. The Appeal was commenced but following the diagnosis of terminal cancer it was suddenly abandoned in 2009. The application being lodged dealt with the circumstances that lead to Mr Al-Megrahi abandoning his appeal.

To date both the UK Government and Scottish Government have claimed that they played no role in pressuring Mr  Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. It was alleged that this was fundamentally untrue.

The question for the Commission was whether it regards it as in the interests of justice to refer a case back to the High Court where the convicted person himself had commenced an appeal on a SCCRC reference and then chosen to abandon it.

The answer depended on the precise circumstances in which the appellant came to abandon his appeal. Mr Megrahi's terminal illness; the fact that prisoner transfer was not open while the appeal was ongoing; and whether Mr Megrahi had no way of knowing that Kenny MacAskill would ultimately opt for compassionate release rather than prisoner transfer, or as is alleged that he was led to believe that he would not be released unless he dropped his appeal.

We welcome the news that today that the SCCRC having considered all the available evidence have confirmed that they believe then when Mr Megrahi abandoned his appeal, he did so as he believed he held a genuine and reasonable belief that such a course of action would result in him being able to return home to Libya, at a time when he was suffering from terminal cancer.

The case will now proceed to stage 2 and the Commission will conduct a full review of the conviction for the ‘Lockerbie Bombing’ in order to decide if the case is referred back to the Court of Appeal.

The reputation of the Scottish law has suffered both at home and internationally because of widespread doubts about the conviction of Mr Al-Megrahi. It is in the interests of justice and restoring confidence in our criminal justice system that these doubts can be addressed, however the only place to determine whether a miscarriage of justice did occur is in the appeal court, where the evidence can be subjected to rigorous scrutiny.


ONCE THE APPLICATION LODGED WITH THE SCCRC -WHAT HAPPENS?

1.      The case will be assigned to a case worker at the SCCRC and that worker will consider the case and provide a report to the Board (who sit once a month) The Board will consider whether to refer it back.

2.      The Board normally consider several cases at the same time but it is likely that in this instance the Board will convene specially to hear this application. 

3.      The SCCRC review and investigation process is described as thorough, robust, impartial and independent.

4.      On receipt of an application the Chief Executive of the Commission allocates the application to a legal officer. They obtain the court papers.
5.      The legal officer obtains any other further information he or she considers to be necessary so that the Board of the Commission can take a decision about whether to accept the application for review. 
6.      If the Board does not accept the application for review, the Chief Executive writes to the applicant and his or her representative to inform them of the Board's decision and the file is closed.
7.      If the Board accepts the application for review, they will write to all the relevant parties - e.g. The Crown, the Police and the Defence - to notify them that the application has been accepted for review and to request that they preserve for the duration of our review all documents and productions they hold relative to the case.
8.      They obtain then relevant papers from the Crown, the Police and the Defence. 
9.      Under normal circumstances the Legal Officer will conduct a review of the papers and issues in the case and will arrange to interview the applicant. 
10.  The Legal Officer prepares a case plan document setting out information relating to the evidence led at trial, the appeal, the grounds of review and his or her recommendations to take forward the review of the case.
11.  Within two months from the date of the acceptance of the application for review, the case plan is submitted to a Committee of two or three Board Members and the Chief Executive. The Committee consider the case plan and agree a course of action with the Legal Officer for the review of the case.
12.  The Legal Officer proceeds with the investigation and review, updating the Committee on the progress of the review every month or so and seeking guidance from the Committee and/or the Chief Executive where necessary.
13.  The review process should take no longer than nine months for conviction cases.
14.  After the review of the case is completed, the Committee take a view about whether or not the case should be referred to the High Court.
15.  The legal officer then prepares a draft statement of reasons for referral or non-referral for the Committee’s consideration. Once the Committee is content with the draft statement of reasons, the case is submitted to the Board of the Commission for a decision. 
16.  If the Board recommends a referral then the application will go back to the Appeal Court.
BACKGROUND TO THE CONVICTION AND SENTENCE

Mr Megrahi was convicted on the 31st January 2001 of the charge of murder following trial at the High Court of Justiciary sitting at Kamp van Zeist in the Netherlands. His co-accused Al-amin Khalifa Fimah was acquitted following trial. Mr Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 27 years.

Appeal
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s first appeal was dismissed on the 14th March 2002.

The next appeal was mounted in consequence of the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission’s reference dated 28 June 2007.

Grounds of Appeal 1 and 2 were argued before the Court in full at a public hearing which took place between 28 April and 19 May 2009. On 7th July 2009 the Court indicated that one of its numbers, Lord Wheatley, had been hospitalised. It continued consideration of the grounds of appeal.

On 18th August 2009 Mr Megrahi with leave of the court, abandoned his appeal. No judgement or opinion has therefore been handed down by the Court upon these submissions.

BACKGROUND TO THE CONVICTION  

Pan Am flight 103 (“PA103”)
1.5 At 7.03pm on Wednesday 21 December 1988, shortly after taking off from Heathrow airport, PA103 was flying at an altitude of 31,000 feet en route to John F Kennedy airport, New York, when an explosion caused the aircraft to disintegrate and fall out of the sky. 243 passengers and 16 crew on board were killed. The victims came from 21 countries, the vast majority being from the United States.

1.6 The resulting debris was spread over a very wide area in Scotland and the North of England, but principally it landed in and around the town of Lockerbie causing the deaths of a further 11 people. In all 270 people were killed in the disaster.

1.7 A massive police operation was mounted to recover the bodies of the victims and as much of the debris as possible. The local police force, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary (“D&G”), was assisted in the search operation by numerous officers from other forces in Scotland and England, as well as by military personnel and members of voluntary organisations.

Fatal Accident Inquiry
1.8 On 1 October 1990 a fatal accident inquiry was conducted by Sheriff Principal John Mowat QC. In his findings in fact, Sheriff Principal Mowat found that a Samsonite suitcase (“the primary suitcase”) containing a Toshiba radio cassette recorder loaded with a Semtex-type plastic explosive had been placed on board Pan Am flight 103A (“PA103A”) from Frankfurt to London Heathrow before being transferred to PA103; that the suitcase had probably arrived at Frankfurt on another airline and been transferred to PA103A without being identified as an unaccompanied bag; that the baggage had not been reconciled with passengers travelling on PA103, nor had it been x-rayed at Heathrow; and that the cause of all the deaths was the  detonation of the explosive device in luggage container AVE 4041 which had been situated on the left side of the forward hold of the aircraft.

1.9 Sheriff Principal Mowat concluded that the primary cause of the deaths was a criminal act of murder.

The police investigation
 1.10 It had been concluded very soon after the disaster that the likely cause had been the detonation of an improvised explosive device. From the date of the explosion and throughout the course of 1989-1991, an extensive international police investigation was carried out, principally involving the British and American investigating authorities, but also including the police forces of the former Federal Republic of Germany (“the BKA”) and of Malta.

1.11 Initially, suspicion fell upon Palestinian terrorist groups, in particular the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (“PFLP-GC”). However, in 1990 developments in the investigation turned its focus to Libya, and on 13 November 1991 a warrant was granted by a sheriff at Dumfries for the arrest of the applicant and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah (“the co-accused”), both Libyan nationals. On the following day the Lord Advocate issued an indictment setting out the charges against the two accused. Simultaneously, as a result of a federal grand jury investigation, the US Attorney General published an indictment in substantially similar terms to that issued by the Scottish authorities.

1.12 Following publication of the indictments, the UK and the US sought the handover of the two accused for trial, and throughout 1992 and 1993 the UN Security Council issued a number of resolutions calling upon Libya to do so. It also imposed extensive economic sanctions against that country. Libya denied any involvement in the crime.

Proposals for trial in the Netherlands
1.13 In 1998 the governments of the UK and the US wrote to the Secretary General of the UN indicating that they were prepared to arrange a trial of the two accused before a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands. The trial, it was proposed, would follow Scots law and procedure in every respect except that the jury would be replaced by a panel of three judges. Following Libya’s consent to the initiative, an agreement was entered into between the UK and the Netherlands to put it into effect. On the same date, the High Court of Justiciary (Proceedings in the Netherlands) (United Nations) Order 1998 came into force in the UK, regulating such matters as the constitution of the trial and appeal courts.

1.14 Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacLean were appointed to form the panel of judges. Lord Abernethy was appointed as an additional judge to assume the functions of any member of the panel who died during the proceedings or was absent for a prolonged period. He was not required to carry out that function. The location of the court was chosen as Kamp van Zeist in the Netherlands.

1.15 On 5 April 1999, the applicant and the co-accused travelled to the Netherlands where they were arrested by Scottish police officers. On 14 April 1999 they were fully committed for trial, and were detained at premises within the court precincts. The indictment was served upon them on 29 October 1999.

The trial 
1.16 Preliminary pleas to the competency and relevancy of the charges were raised by both accused and argued on their behalf by counsel at a hearing on 7 December 1999. On 8 December, Lord Sutherland, sitting alone, held the charges to be both competent and relevant (see HMA v Al Megrahi (No 1) 2000 SCCR 177). Leave to appeal the decision was granted but no appeal was taken.

1.17 The trial commenced on 3 May 2000, and the cases for both accused closed on 8 January 2001. Neither the applicant nor the co-accused gave evidence.  Following submissions by the parties on 18 January 2001 the diet was adjourned to allow the judges to deliberate upon their verdicts.

1.19 The court returned its verdict on 31 January 2001. It unanimously found the co-accused not guilty. The verdict in relation to the applicant was recorded in the minutes of trial in the following terms (see also the transcript of proceedings on day 86 of the trial):
“The Court Unanimously found the Accused Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi GUILTY on the Second Alternative Charge but that under deletion of the words ‘and you Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifah [sic] Fhimah  did there and then cause a suitcase to be introduced to Malta’ in lines 4 to 6 of subhead (e) of said charge and under deletion of the words ‘said suitcase, or’ in line 4 of subhead (g) and under deletion of the word ‘similar’ in line [4] of said subhead (g)”.

1.20 The court sentenced the applicant to life imprisonment, backdated to 5 April 1999, and recommended that he serve a minimum period of 20 years before he could be considered for release on licence.

Post-trial developments 
Appeal 
1.21 The applicant lodged grounds of appeal against conviction on 11 June 2001 and leave to appeal was granted on 23 August 2001. The proceedings took place at Kamp van Zeist between 23 January and 14 February 2002, and the opinion of the court, rejecting the appeal, was issued on 14 March 2002.

Application to the European Court of Human Rights 
1.22 On 12 September 2002 the applicant’s defence team lodged an application (number 33955/02) with the European Court of Human Rights in which they argued that the applicant’s right to a fair trial had been infringed by, inter alia, prejudicial pre-trial publicity. On 11 February 2003 the court ruled the application inadmissible on the basis that the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies by raising these issues in the domestic forum.

Diplomatic developments 
1.25 On 12 September 2003, the UN passed a resolution lifting all UN sanctions against Libya.

 “Punishment part” hearing
 1.26 At a hearing at the High Court in Glasgow on 24 November 2003 under the Convention Rights (Compliance) (Scotland) Act 2001, the punishment part of the applicant’s sentence was set at 27 years, again backdated to 5 April 1999. On 18 December 2003 the Lord Advocate appealed against the sentence as being unduly lenient. 

For further background please refer to:-