Lockerbie reward claim

[This is the headline over an article by Lucy Adams in today’s edition of The Herald, in which she expands upon the “Lockerbie reward” revelations made yesterday in John Ashton’s article in the Scottish Review. It reads as follows:]

A letter, seen for the first time, claims the Crown Office was aware of an application for reward money paid out to key Lockerbie witnesses.

The letter, from Detective Chief Superintendent Tom McCulloch – the senior investigating officer in the later stages of the case – to the US Justice Department, asks for a reward of $2 million for Tony Gauci and $1m for his brother Paul.

Most significantly, though, it states the Crown Office was aware of the plan to pay two of its key witnesses and had been consulted about it.

The revelation comes after an official biography of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi alleged Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill encouraged the Libyan to drop his appeal.

Mr MacAskill has denied the claims and will today mount a strong rebuttal before MSPs at Holyrood.

The letter was sent on April 19, 2002, after Megrahi's unsuccessful first appeal, but documents unearthed by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission discovered financial rewards had been discussed with the Gauci brothers even before they gave their first statements. [RB: my italics]

However, the Crown Office has denied that they were complicit in any payments to witnesses.

Paying witnesses is not considered acceptable practice in Scotland – although it is common in the US.

If a witness was paid for giving evidence, the Crown would be expected to disclose the fact to allow for cross-examination by the defence.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission report says Mr Gauci's "alleged interest in financial payment" was capable of "affecting the course of the evidence and the eventual outcome of the trial".

The Crown denies payments were made before the outcome of the appeal, but arguably any information on Mr Gauci's alleged interest in financial payment should have been made available to the defence.

In the letter, Mr McCulloch states: "I am writing to confirm the submission by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary for payment of a reward to Anthony and Paul Gauci.

"At the meeting on April 9, I proposed that $2m should be paid to Anthony Gauci and $1m to his brother Paul.

"Given the exceptional circumstances of this case, which involved the destruction of a United States aircraft with the loss of 270 innocent lives and the subsequent conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for this crime, I would invite those charged with approving the reward to ensure the payments made to Anthony and Paul Gauci properly reflect not only the importance of their evidence, but also their integrity and courage.

"I have consulted with Crown Office about this application for payment of a reward.

"The prosecution in Scotland cannot become involved in such an application.

"It would therefore be improper for the Crown Office to offer a view on the application, although they fully recognise the importance of the evidence of Tony and Paul Gauci to the case."

A spokesman for the Crown Office said: "It is nonsense to suggest the Crown was complicit in the payment of rewards to witnesses or that it turned a blind eye to such matters.

"The letter from DCS McCulloch was sent to the US authorities after the conclusion of appeal process in 2002 and sets out clearly the Crown's position. No witness was offered any inducement by the Crown or the Scottish police before and during the trial and there is no evidence that any other law enforcement agency offered such an inducement."

A Government spokesman said Mr MacAskill was "extremely happy" to make a parliamentary statement to MSPs. 


[In an article headlined Big question that needs answered on Abdalbaset al-Megrahi in today's edition of The Scotsman, columnist Brian Wilson writes:]

What everyone should be seeking in this matter is the truth and not its concealment. Elected parliamentarians should be the spearhead of that ambition, rather than acting as a political shield against it.

As a society, we owe it to the victims of Lockerbie to get as close to that truth as possible – an obligation that is not diminished by the passage of time. The Court of Appeal would have been by far the best place for the completion of that process. We were denied that outcome. The questions are – why and by whom?

Why was Megrahi's defence team kept in dark about vital evidence?

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

I hope the launch of the book Megrahi: You Are My Jury will make a lot of people aware of just how compromised the Lockerbie case at Camp Zeist was, and what the implications are ("MacAskill under pressure over Megrahi appeal claim", The Herald, February 28).

The question of whether or not Muammar Gaddafi's awful clique was involved should now be seen as a tactic by those powerful entities who wished to divert attention from the awful truth; a tactic which the unfortunate Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi found himself involved in.

The picture that now emerges is that neither Megrahi nor Malta was involved, there was no evidence of the use of a long-running timer from Malta and that the real improvised explosive device (IED) was probably delivered through a break-in at Heathrow and triggered by falling air pressure in the aircraft. The IED was one of a series manufactured in Damascus and (West) Germany by bomb-maker Marwhan Khreesat, a Jordanian probably in the pay of the Americans, but ostensibly working within the Palestinian terror group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril, a relative of Basher al Assad's father. All Khreesat's IEDs in 1988 exploded after about 38 minutes in the air. It was 38 minutes from the Heathrow tarmac when Pan Am flight 103 was over Lockerbie.

This was avoidable. Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate, told me last Thursday that the Crown Office had tried all it could to discover why it was that evidence about the Heathrow break-in "disappeared" until after the verdict against Megrahi had been reached. It tried but it failed.

Since the Khreesat-type bombs could not be flown into Heathrow (they would explode en route) the question of the break-in looks rather central to the question of how this atrocity was perpetrated.

This Heathrow material would probably have stopped the trial had it been available, yet despite staff at Heathrow having been interviewed by the Metropolitan police in January 1989 about the break-in, the Lord Advocate accepts he is unable to discover why the Met files "disappeared".

It is time for a fully empowered inquiry in which the investigating Scottish police and the Crown Office should be required to answer as to why so much vital material, on both the alleged timer fragment and the Heathrow break-in, was not provided for the defence's use at appropriate times.

[In the same newspaper is a letter from Iain A D Mann which contains the following:]

Your leader article ("Lockerbie and the pursuit of truth", February 28) is right to conclude that an independent public inquiry is the only way of finally getting the whole truth and bringing an end to this long drawn out affair which has caused so much heartache to relatives of the victims.

Have Mr MacAskill's department, the Crown Office and the legal establishment closed ranks, in a misguided attempt to protect the reputation of the Scottish justice system and the Camp Zeist trial process? I am afraid that reputations have already been badly tarnished by the public perception of secrecy, delay and obfuscation.

MacAskill’s statement to parliament – the key issues

[This is the heading over an item posted today by John Ashton on his website Megrahi: You are my Jury.  It reads as follows:]

The Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, will later today (29 February) make a statement to the Scottish Parliament. [RB: Mr MacAskill's statement is due very shortly after the commencement of today's session at 1430 GMT.]  The move is in response to – or, more accurately, in response to media reports and political statements relating to – the following passage of Megrahi: You are my Jury (which appears on p354):

On 10 August, MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Minister Al-Obedi, the Libyan Supreme Court Judge Azzam Eddeeb, and the London Chargé d’Affaires Omar Jelban. By this time I was desperate. The 90-day limit for considering the prisoner transfer application had passed and, although I had some vocal public supporters, MacAskill was coming under considerable pressure to reject both applications. After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obedi said that towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, he stated that MacAskill gave him to understand that it would be easier to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice.

It’s clear from this passage that Abdelbaset does NOT allege either that MacAskill said anything along those lines to him directly, or that MacAskill offered to grant compassionate release in return for Abdelbaset dropping his appeal.  It’s a common trick of politicians to deny allegations that have not been made. Let’s hope that MacAskill’s statement doesn’t.

MacAskill will also be facing questions from MSPs. There is only one question that he must answer: did he at any point indicate to Obedi that it would be easier for him to grant Abdelbaset’s compassionate release application if he dropped his appeal?

If the answer is a categorical no, then it is Obedi’s word against his and there, perhaps, the matter will rest. If it is anything less than a flat denial, then the question is unlikely to go away.

The Scottish Government has, of course, already made a statement about the matter.  Yesterday a spokesman claimed that the book is “third-hand hearsay” and stated:

These claims are wrong – and officials were present at all meetings the Justice Secretary had on this matter at all times. The minutes of this meeting and indeed all other meetings, including with Mr Megrahi in Greenock Prison, were published by the Scottish Government and have been in the public domain since September 2009.  We can say categorically that neither did the Scottish Government have any involvement of any kind in Mr Megrahi dropping his appeal, or indeed any interest in it. That was entirely a matter for Mr Megrahi and his legal team.

MacAskill himself said: It was always a decision for Mr al-Megrahi whether he maintained or abandoned his appeal, the decision I made was not predicated in any case on that, but that was a matter for him and his legal team.

I’ll deal with these points in turn.

Third-hand hearsay. Abdelbaset is clear in this section of the book that the conversation was hearsay, albeit not third-hand.

These claims are wrong. It’s not clear exactly what claims the Government was responding to. It’s very unlikely that they had a copy of the book, so it’s probable that the spokesman was responding to a report – possibly an inaccurate one – of its contents. (A number of media reports claimed, wrongly, that the book alleges that a deal was done.)

 … officials were present at all meetings the Justice Secretary had on this matter at all times” If this is true, the question remains: did Mr MacAskill at any point, whether out of the earshot of others or not, say to Mr Obedi that it would be easier for him to grant Abdelbaset compassionate release if Abdelbaset dropped his appeal?

The minutes of this meeting and indeed all other meetings, including with Mr Megrahi in Greenock Prison, were published by the Scottish Government and have been in the public domain since September 2009. This is hardly relevant. If MacAskill asked to have a conversation in private, we might infer that he meant, inter alia, that it would not be minuted. It also raises the question, were the minutes contemporaneous?

We can say categorically that neither did the Scottish Government have any involvement of any kind in Mr Megrahi dropping his appeal, or indeed any interest in it.  This falls well short of a denial that the conversation reported by Obedi took place. It is disingenuous to claim that the Government had no interest in Abdelbaset’s decision. Had the appeal gone ahead, it would have cast the Scottish criminal justice, and the Crown Office in particular, in a very poor light.

That was entirely a matter for Mr Megrahi and his legal team. In fact it was entirely a matter for Abdelbaset. His legal team made clear to him that he was under no obligation to drop his appeal and did not advise him that it might help his application for compassionate release.

It was always a decision for Mr al-Megrahi whether he maintained or abandoned his appeal No one has claimed otherwise.

 … the decision I made was not predicated in any case on that, but that was a matter for him and his legal team. Abdelbaset quite clearly does not claim that MacAskill’s decision was predicated on whether or not he dropped the appeal.

Aljazeera's "Lockerbie: Case closed"

The final broadcast of this documentary is on Aljazeera English tomorrow (Thursday, 1 March) at 0600 GMT. However, it can now also be seen here on You Tube.

Kenny MacAskill to make statement on claims he advised Megrahi to drop appeal

[This is the headline over a report published this evening on the STV News website.  It reads in part:]

Kenny MacAskill is to make a statement to Holyrood in the wake of claims he advised the Lockerbie bomber to drop his appeal to smooth the way for his release.

The allegations, strongly denied by the Scottish Government, are contained in a new book about the bomber which was published on Monday.

In the wake of the allegations, the Justice Secretary, who controversially freed Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in August 2009 on compassionate grounds, faced calls from opposition politicians to make a statement to Holyrood.

He will now do that, and answer questions from MSPs on the matter, on Wednesday afternoon.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Scottish Government categorically denied that it "had any involvement of any kind in Mr Al-Megrahi dropping his appeal".

The spokesman insisted that had been "entirely a matter for Mr Al-Megrahi and his legal team".

He also branded the book Megrahi: You Are My Jury, by writer, researcher and TV producer John Ashton, as being "third-hand hearsay".

Mr MacAskill decided to free the Libyan - the only person convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988 which killed 270 people - on compassionate grounds. (…)

Mr Ashton's book claims Mr MacAskill met a delegation of Libyan officials ten days before announcing his decision, including foreign minister Abdulati al-Obedi.

In the book, Megrahi said: "Obedi said that towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, he stated that MacAskill gave him to understand that it would be easier to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal."

Mr Ashton, who studied the Lockerbie case for 18 years and spent three years as a researcher with the bomber's legal team, said yesterday: "Mr Megrahi makes clear in the book that it was made clear to him by the Libyan official who met with Mr MacAskill that it would help his case for compassionate release if he dropped his appeal."

The author added that Megrahi "felt very strongly that dropping the appeal would help his application for compassionate release".

Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats all called on Mr MacAskill to make a statement to the Scottish Parliament in the wake of the book's allegations.

However the spokesman for the Scottish Government said on Monday the claims in the book were "wrong".

They added: "Officials were present at all meetings the Justice Secretary had on this matter at all times."

[A shorter report can be read here on the BBC News website.

Abdelbaset Megrahi does not claim in the book that Kenny MacAskill directly advised or pressurised him to drop his appeal.  The advice is said to have been conveyed through Abdel Ati al-Obeidi, then the Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister with special responsibility for European relations.  Of all the Libyan officials with whom I had dealings over the years, Obeidi was the most trustworthy and transparent. However, he was very keen indeed to secure the repatriation of Megrahi in time for the fortieth anniversary of the Gaddafi revolution. My suspicion (for which I have no evidence whatsoever) is that Obeidi may have misunderstood something that MacAskill said to him or have interpreted something neutral through the prism of his desire to achieve Megrahi's return to Libya. I also know that Obeidi still had a lingering feeling that repatriation would ultimately be achieved through prisoner transfer, which he was under the impression (not unjustifiably) had been agreed to by Tony Blair in the "deal in the desert". For prisoner transfer, of course, abandonment of the appeal was essential.  I had on several occasions informed Obeidi that Tony Blair was not in a position to secure transfer of a prisoner in a Scottish prison; but I was never wholly confident that he actually got the message. "But Tony told us!" was a frequent refrain.]

Lockerbie: Case closed

[The description of the Lockerbie: Case closed documentary on the Aljazeera website reads as follows:]

Wednesday, December 21, 1988 was the longest night of the year, the night of the winter solstice. At 6.30pm that evening Pan Am Flight 103 took off from London Heathrow airport en route to JFK New York. On board Clipper Maid of the Skies, as it was called, were 16 crew members and 243 passengers, many of whom were carrying Christmas gifts in their luggage for family and friends.

But also in the baggage hold was a brown Samsonite suitcase, packed with new clothes and a Toshiba radio cassette player. Investigators later determined that hidden in the Toshiba were some 450 grammes of high explosive and an electronic timer. At 7.03pm as the plane was 31,000 feet over Scotland, the device exploded. A little under a minute later, 200,000 pounds of Kerosene ignited as the wings and part of the fuselage fell onto the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. All on board were killed, so too were 11 residents of Lockerbie - 270 innocent people murdered by a terrorist bomb.

Twenty-three years later, the scene changes to a small house on the outskirts of Tripoli in Libya, where the only man found guilty of causing those events lies helpless in bed. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, whom the world knows as the Lockerbie bomber, is dying of prostate cancer. For the first, last and only time he is about to give a television interview about his case - and he is to tell Al Jazeera that new evidence will prove that he was wrongly convicted. 

The Lockerbie disaster was Europe's worst terrorist outrage - more civilians died than in any other attack before 9/11. It has also become the most infamous. The events of that night, the painstaking police forensic investigation that followed, the identification of al-Megrahi and Libya as the likely culprits, his eventual trial and conviction in Holland, the overwhelming sense of relief that justice had been done felt by many relatives of the victims, and the controversy surrounding his subsequent return to Libya on compassionate grounds - all of these things have been the subject of intense scrutiny over the years.

As has been the growing concern, felt by some, that al-Megrahi may have been wrongly accused. 

This film, Lockerbie: Case Closed, will give hope to all those who believe that the Libyan is an innocent man and not the mass murderer that the prosecution claimed at his trial.

It reveals the hitherto secret assessment of the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) - a quasi-public body in Scotland that is independent from the courts and the government - which has examined the case against al-Megrahi in detail. Its report, which has never been published, raises numerous reasons for concern about a possible miscarriage of justice - especially the status of the testimony given by one Tony Gauci, a Maltese shop owner and the prosecution's main witness. He identified al-Megrahi as a man who had bought clothing and an umbrella from him on December 7, 1988 - remnants of which were later recovered from among debris from the disaster scene and which, according to investigators, had been in the same suitcase as the bomb.

As the film shows, the SCCRC found a number of reasons to seriously question this identification and Gauci's account about events on December 7 - the only date that al-Megrahi could have been in Malta to make such purchases. The report also raises concerns about the legitimacy of the formal identification process, in which Gauci picked al-Megrahi out from a line-up. The commission found that Gauci had seen al-Megrahi's photo in a magazine article identifying him as a possible suspect before the parade took place. The SCCRC also found that Scottish police knew that Gauci was interested in financial rewards, despite maintaining that Gauci had shown no such interest. Gauci reportedly picked up a $2m US government reward for his role in the case. Under Scottish law, witnesses cannot be paid for their testimony.

Prior to his return home, al-Megrahi had been seeking an appeal against his conviction. Had that hearing ever taken place then the SCCRC's conclusions and their evidence would have come to light. 

On that basis alone, the Libyan would have almost certainly walked from court a free man. However, the film also reveals the results of new scientific tests that comprehensively undermine the validity of the most crucial piece of forensic evidence linking the bombing to Libya - a fragment of electronic timer found embedded in the shredded remains of a shirt that was supposedly bought from Gauci's shop by al-Megrahi. The timer, said the prosecution, was identical to ones sold to Libyan intelligence by Swiss manufacturers. But as the new tests show, it was not identical and it now seems that British government scientists knew this all along.

John Ashton, who has been investigating the case for nearly 20 years, including time spent as part of al-Megrahi's defence team, has written a book on the affair with al-Megrahi. In the Al Jazeera film he says: "The Lockerbie disaster was Europe's worst terrorist attack. More Americans died in that attack than in any other terrorist event before 9/11. It's also Britain's worst miscarriage of justice, the wrong man was convicted and the real killers are still out there."

Lockerbie: Case Closed was produced and directed by William Cran and Christopher Jeans and is a Network Features production for Al Jazeera. It is narrated by Sean Barrett.

[The Sydney Morning Herald today publishes a report headlined Lockerbie evidence is in doubt; and on the website of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism there appears a long article entitled Lockerbie: was Megrahi innocent?]

The Scottish police - The Crown Office - The payouts

[This is the headline over an article by John Ashton published this afternoon in a special edition of the Scottish Review.  It reads in part:]

The Scottish Government does not doubt the safety of the conviction of Mr Al-Megrahi. Their words, not mine. Their exact words in fact. That, as it happens, is also the position of the lord advocate. You wouldn't think that Megrahi's trial court judgement was described as incomprehensible by the UN trial observer and unreasonable by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), and that numerous informed commentators consider the guilty verdict to be an indelible stain on the reputation of Scotland's judiciary.

Of course, an SNP government will never easily admit that the country's foremost independent institution, its criminal justice system, made an almighty hash of Europe's biggest terrorist case. However, if it continues to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Crown Office, Lockerbie will one day rear up and bite it very hard. Why? Because, as Megrahi: You Are My Jury lays bare, the Crown Office failed to disclose to Megrahi's lawyers, numerous major items of exculpatory evidence. This has the potential to be the biggest scandal of Scotland's post-devolution era. (...)

There were two key witnesses. The first was [Maltese] shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who on three occasions picked out Megrahi as resembling the clothes purchaser: the first, three years after the bombing from a photospread; the second, in 1999 from an ID parade; and the third time in court. The second was forensic expert Allen Feraday, who said that a fragment of circuit board found within a blast-damaged Maltese shirt was 'similar in all respects' to circuit boards used within the 20 Libyan timers.
     
In their 80-page opinion, the trial court judges, Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and Maclean described Gauci as a 'careful witness' who: 'applied his mind carefully to the problem of identification whenever he was shown photographs, and did not just pick someone out at random…From his general demeanour and his approach to the difficult problem of identification, we formed the view that when he picked out the first accused at the identification parade and in court, he was doing so not just because it was comparatively easy to do so but because he genuinely felt that he was correct in picking him out as having a close resemblance to the purchaser'.

What the judges didn't know, because the Crown failed to disclose it, was that before picking out Megrahi's photo Gauci had asked the police about being rewarded for his evidence. According to previously secret police reports, he was 'aware of the US reward monies which have been reported in the press' and was strongly under the influence of his brother Paul who 'has a clear desire to gain financial benefit from the position he and his brother are in relative to the case' and 'is anxious to establish what advantage he can gain from the Scottish police'.

The Crown also concealed the fact that, for months prior to the ID parade, Gauci had a copy of a magazine article that not only carried a photo of Megrahi, but also detailed inconsistencies between the Crown case and Gauci's police statements – inconsistencies that his subsequent court testimony went some way towards ironing out.

The judges accepted that Gauci sold the clothes on 7 December 1988, the only date upon which Megrahi could have bought them. What they didn't know, again because the Crown failed to disclose it, was that, in his pre-trial Crown precognition statement, Gauci said that he thought the date was 29 November, because he recalled rowing with his girlfriend that day. Had that evidence been adduced at trial, the judges would have had no choice but to acquit Megrahi.

After the trial the Dumfries and Galloway police sought massive rewards for the Gauci brothers from the US Department of Justice. In a letter to the DoJ, dated 19 April 2002, the senior investigating officer wrote: 'At the meeting on 9 April, I proposed that $2 million should be paid to Anthony Gauci and $1 million to his brother Paul. These figures were based on my understanding that $2 million was the maximum payable to a single individual by the rewards programme. However, following further informal discussions I was encouraged to learn that those responsible for making the final decision retain a large degree of flexibility to increase this figure.’ 

It has never been denied that the brothers received at least $2 million and $1 million. The letter revealed that, at the request of a US official, the senior investigating officer had consulted with the Crown Office about the reward. He reported: 'The prosecution in Scotland cannot become involved in such an application. It would therefore be improper for the Crown Office to offer a view on the application, although they fully recognise the importance of the evidence of Tony and Paul Gauci to the case'. In other words, the Crown Office was prevented by its own rules from seeking a reward, but apparently had no intention of preventing the police from doing so.
     
All this, and more, was uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission during its four-year review of Megrahi's case, following which it referred the conviction back to the appeal court on no fewer than six grounds. Small wonder that the Scottish Government, which claims that it wants the commission's 800-page report to be published, is using legislative ruses to delay publication.

Unfortunately, the Commission failed to properly investigate Feraday's claim about the Lockerbie circuit board fragment. As my book reveals, had it done so, it would have learned that there was forensic evidence that proved the fragment could not have originated from one of the timers supplied to Libya. Tests overseen by Feraday demonstrated that the metallic content of the fragment was different to that of a control sample circuit board of the type used in the Libyan timers. The results were not disclosed to Megrahi's legal team until a month before his return to Libya. Police labels indicated that they had been handed to the police on 8 November 1999, six months before the opening of Megrahi's trial.

All these issues would have been aired in the High Court during Megrahi's second appeal. The Crown Office was no doubt hugely relieved when he abandoned the appeal in order to smooth his application for compassionate release. However, the relief will only be temporary. The scandal will not go away and as the depth of the cover-up is laid bare, sooner or later the government will be forced to distance itself from the Crown Office and abandon the fiction that Megrahi's conviction is safe.

[In an accompanying sidebar, Scottish Review editor Kenneth Roy makes the following comment:]

We knew that Gauci – a witness so convincing that he was later described by Scotland's lord advocate of the time as 'an apple short of a picnic' – had been paid by the US Department of Justice. There were rumours, too, about his brother Paul, who was motivated by a desire for financial gain but otherwise not directly connected to the events in Malta in December 1988.      What we did not know until today was the extent to which the Scottish authorities were involved.      In this special edition, John Ashton quotes from a letter written by the senior investigating officer in Scotland making plain the police's desire not only to reward the Gauci brothers but to seek the biggest bucks available.

• There is no doubting the authenticity of this letter. Ashton has a copy of it.
• There is also no doubting that without Gauci there was no case: Megrahi would have walked free. 
• Where do these revelations leave the reputation of Scottish justice? 
• Is this really the way we want to conduct our justice system?

Lockerbie and the pursuit of truth

[This is the headline over the first leader in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

The conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, killing 270 people, causes considerable unease among all who care about Scottish justice.

The authorised biography of Megrahi by John Ashton, a researcher for the defence team, brings together a number of claims that have already raised doubts about the handling of the case.

His allegation that Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill personally urged Megrahi, through a private conversation with the Libyan foreign minister, to drop his appeal to assist his release on compassionate grounds, although denied, will re-ignite speculation that the Scottish Government was keen to prevent the appeal being heard. Megrahi was not required to drop the appeal for release on compassionate grounds. That he did so avoided considerable embarrassment for the Scottish justice system.

A number of allegations made by Mr Ashton potentially undermine the safety of the conviction. A key one is that a fragment of circuit board did not match boards linking the timer used to detonate the Lockerbie bomb with Megrahi. It is equally alarming, and already known, that Tony Gauci, the key witness for the Crown who testified Megrahi had bought clothes found near the bomb in his shop, had been offered a reward by the US Justice Department. Such tainted evidence would normally be inadmissible.

Also, the claim that Iran funded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command to carry out the bombing in retaliation for the American warship the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian passenger jet and killing all 300 people on board in 1988 is not new. But it, too, bears further scrutiny.

It is known that a number of documents were withheld from the defence, a practice no longer tenable following successful challenges in the Supreme Court. The most shocking evidential omission, however, concerned the break-in at Heathrow close to baggage to be loaded on to the flight the night before the bombing.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) had already found six grounds on which Megrahi's conviction was potentially unsafe. Permission had been granted to publish the SCCRC's statement of grounds for appeal but this has not happened because the appeal was dropped. Whatever embarrassment would be caused by publication of the Commission's findings, the Scottish Government, which has already said it would publish, should recognise that this case has already called into question the quality of Scottish justice and that now is the time to release the document in the interests of justice.

For the families of those who died, the latest claims reinforce the cruel reality that, 23 years after that fateful night in December 1988, the investigation of the bombing remains unfinished business. Some of the relatives, most notably Dr Jim Swire, have shown extraordinary courage and tenacity in slowly gathering information about evidence not brought before the court. They deserve all the known facts to be brought together and examined in a public arena. Regardless of the difficulties in compelling witnesses to give evidence, an independent public inquiry remains the best hope of uncovering the truth.

The Times on the Megrahi biography revelations

[Like most of today’s print media (with the conspicuous exception of STV News's report) The Times’s main Megrahi story (behind the paywall) There was a deal, insists Lockerbie bomber, deals with the allegation that Kenny MacAskill, via Abdel Ati al-Obeidi, communicated that it would improve Megrahi's chances of repatriation if he dropped his appeal. Another report adverts in addition to some of the evidential issues raised in Megrahi: You are my Jury. It reads in part:]

Then, just eight weeks after the SNP came to power, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission granted al-Megrahi leave to appeal, identifying six grounds for believing that a “miscarriage of justice may have occurred”.

The prospect of an appeal heaped pressure on the Scottish Government. By November 2007, Cabinet Office papers appear to show that Mr MacAskill was ready to include al-Megrahi in a prisoner transfer agreement between the UK Government and Libya, in exchange for concessions from Westminster over firearms legislation and slopping out in prison, where prisoners use pots in their cells for human waste.

According to minuted discussions, Mr MacAskill talked to Jack Straw, then Secretary of State for Justice, about the possibility of a deal. “There was then a conversation when (MacAskill) asked for a deal. He obviously spoke to Salmond,” Mr Straw told The Times last year.

The Scottish Government has angrily denied that it was ready to trade al-Megrahi in late 2007, but has been unable to produce its own minute of the crucial discussions that took place on December 19.

In 2009, al-Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal spared the Scottish Government the potential embarrassment of an acquittal. With a grim irony, it is the British relatives of the victims of the bombing, such as Dr Swire, who are likely to campaign for a public inquiry into al-Megrahi’s conviction, after his death.

Yesterday, Mr Ashton said that the case of al-Megrahi showed Scottish justice in “a very bad light”, and warned the Scottish Government that it risked being dragged “into a huge scandal”. He added: “They (the SNP) has now to stand up and distance themselves from the Crown Office because there is so much that the Crown Office has withheld in this case.”

Mr Ashton said the most compelling piece of new evidence related to a tiny fragment of circuit board, believed to have been from the bomb’s timer. The Crown argued that the circuit board was one of many sold to the Libyan Government by Mebo, a Swiss company. It was found in the remains of a shirt collar, which in turn led to a shop in Malta, owned by Tony Gauci. Though his evidence too is contested, Mr Gauci identified al-Megrahi as the man who bought the clothing contained in the bag that held the bomb.

According to Mr Ashton, the timer was the “golden thread” in the prosecution case, but it was broken. He said that forensic analysis showed that the circuit board was coated in pure tin, and not in a tin-lead alloy, the only kind supplied by Mebo.

Independent scientists, consulted by the Crown, had noticed the difference but maintained that the tin fragment and the tin-lead amalgam were “similar in all respects”.

Worse, said Mr Ashton, the scientists conducted tests that proved that a tin-lead coating would not have been changed to pure tin by the force of a bomb’s explosion.

It was a “mighty scandal”, said Mr Ashton, that the results of the tests were not disclosed by the Crown before the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands and were only passed to alMegrahi’s lawyers a month before he left prison.

In December last year, Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate, said: “The trial court held that . . . Megrahi did not act alone. This is a live enquiry and Scottish police and prosecutors will continue to pursue the evidence.”

A Crown Office spokesman said that the evidence against al-Megrahi had been rigorously tested at his trial.

“In light of his abandonment of his appeal, the conviction for the murder of 270 people and the judicial determination of his guilt stand,” he added. “The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court.”

Detectives are expected to visit Libya soon as part of the continuing Crown Office investigation into the bombing.

[An opinion piece by The Times’s Scotland editor, Magnus Linklater, contains the following:]

If al-Megrahi was so seriously ill, why was he not given the treatment in a Scottish hospital that he immediately received on his return to Libya? Why has the Scottish Government never published the medical advice they were given? Why did they incur the wrath of world opinion in order to allow a convicted terrorist to go home? And was al-Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal one of the conditions under which he was granted release?

It is this last question that is now under scrutiny. The conspiracy theory says that the Government was anxious to avoid an appeal because it might have revealed the unthinkable: that the highest-profile prosecution ever mounted in a Scottish court was based on unsafe evidence, and that a succession of judges and Lords Advocate connived in covering it up.

Like all conspiracy theories, that takes some believing. But now that it has been put forward, a denial from the Scottish Government is not, in itself, enough. There are too many unanswered questions. We now know that, long before his final illness, in December 2007, Mr MacAskill was exploring, with Foreign Office officials, ways of releasing al-Megrahi under the Prisoner Transfer Treaty.

So, release was in the air then, and speculation is rife now. Three things are needed to dispel it: first, Mr MacAskill must publish the medical evidence; second, he must disclose the full extent of his contacts with Libyan and UK officials; and finally he must deliver on the promised legislation which would enable full disclosure of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, on which al-Megrahi’s appeal was allowed to go forward.

Only openness will dispel the accusations. By allowing them to fester, Mr MacAskill is damaging his government and his reputation.