English barrister demolishes Crown's Lockerbie Megrahi evidence

The indefatigable David Wolchover, barrister and Head of Chambers Emeritus at 7 Bell Yard, has recently returned to the charge over Lockerbie and the Megrahi conviction in three articles in the Criminal Law & Justice Weekly.  Synopses of the articles can be found here and here and here. 

Mr Wolchover has also produced a magnificent 26,000 word, 24-page, monograph entitled Culprits of Lockerbie: Gaddafi or the Extemists of Palestine in which he dissects the evidence led at Zeist against Megrahi and Libya and explores (a) the evidence for Heathrow (rather than Malta-Frankfurt) insertion of the bomb suitcase and (b) the evidence pointing towards PFLP-GC responsibility. The monograph can be read here. It has now been revised and expanded (see especially pages 6 and 7) to take account of comments by baz on this blog.

Previous Lockerbie articles by David Wolchover are referred to on this blog here.

BBC Scotland and the Maltese mistress

[This is the headline over an article in today’s edition of the Scottish Review by the editor, Kenneth Roy.  It reads in part:]

I woke up on Monday morning to the exciting headline on the BBC:  Lockerbie bomber Megrahi 'visited Malta for sex'

It has taken 23 years for sex and Lockerbie to become strange bedfellows. We have had the deaths of 270 people, the life sentence imposed on the families of the victims (grief, without parole), the trial in the Netherlands, the disputed conviction, the visit of Kenny MacAskill to Greenock prison, compassionate release, the long campaign to prove Megrahi's innocence, Jim Swire's heroic stoicism, Megrahi's refusal to die. Heaven sakes, the story has everything – except sex. But now it's got that too.

Lockerbie bomber Megrahi 'visited Malta for sex'

What was anyone supposed to make of this? Before reading the text, I assumed that Megrahi must have gone there in search of prostitutes. It is conceivable that Malta runs to one or two. 

It wasn't like this. It seems that Megrahi had an extra-marital relationship with a woman on the island, a woman whom the BBC describes as his mistress. How does BBC Scotland know about all this? Ah. It has now 'seen previously secret documents' – a reference to the 800-page unpublished report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in which Megrahi makes a frank confession of his infidelity by way of explanation for his visits to Malta.

But just how secret are these documents? They are all over the place. Indeed they form the basis of John Ashton's book, 'Megrahi: You Are My Jury'. In response to a comment in this column, Mr Ashton has written to me to clarify how he acquired access to the SCCRC report: 'I got to see it with Megrahi’s approval, when I worked alongside his legal team. He allowed me to keep it and gave me his authority to present its contents in the book'. Well, that's clear enough. (...)

Of course there is a bit more innuendo to the story than Baset in bed. There is the suggestion that, since he was allowed to visit the island without a passport, a fact previously known to students of the case, he could have been slipping in and out, able to visit Tony Gauci's shop on any number of occasions to buy the clothes to wrap round the explosive device to blow up the aircraft. On the other hand – always a hand worth inspecting in the Lockerbie case – it could be argued that the existence of the mistress removes any hint of a dark ulterior motive for Megrahi's visits to Malta. 

The recent pattern of events has been fascinating. Mr Ashton's book reveals a huge evidential base pointing to Megrahi's innocence. SR then publishes an article by Mr Ashton disclosing for the first time the heavy involvement of the Scottish police in negotiating three million dollar payouts to Gauci and his brother, negotiations with which the Crown Office was familiar but chose to do nothing about. I wouldn't have called it implicit approval of the deals, but it came close. The Scottish media fail to pick up on Mr Ashton's story. Mr Ashton himself confesses to be mystified by the lack of interest. But the Scottish media still can't see past the terms of the compassionate release and the role of the fall guy, Scotland's justice secretary. The huge evidential base is anyway too boring to examine in detail. Let's just have another go at Kenny. Oh, and here's Megrahi in bed with a woman. Fabulous.

It is now clear that the selective unofficial publication of the SCCRC report is taking this case nowhere. It is a dreadful way for any mature democracy, far less one making such grand claims for the future as Scotland's, to conduct itself. The report must be published in full and be available for scrutiny by fair-minded people of all instincts and persuasions so that an intelligent judgement can be formed. The alternative is the present recriprocal bad-mouthing. 

Is this really how we want Scottish justice to be conducted – by leak and smear?


[The following comes from Justice for Megrahi's secretary, Robert Forrester:]


Congratulations to the BBC, they have finally discovered a sex angle to Lockerbie! That certainly ought to be the clincher which proves once and for all that Megrahi did it. Whatever next? It has taken them till now to publicise the fact that Libyans could go back and forth to Malta without passports. This information was freely available to anyone reading John Ashton's book, 'Megrahi: You are my Jury', a week ago. Think too what it says about DCI Bell's detective skills when he was conducting his investigations on Malta all those years ago and failed to discover this. Perhaps if he and his colleagues hadn't been spending so much time getting "pissed" in celebrations and looking after "wee" Toni Gauci to keep him sweet, they might have, but it's doubtful. The facts remain that there is no evidence for the primary suitcase at either Luqa or Frankfurt, the forensics are shot to hell, anything connected with Gauci is like taking a funfair ride on the ghost train, none of the much trumpeted 'new evidence' has been forthcoming from the NTC (with the exception of Abdel-Jalil's spectacular April Fools' Day joke on Newsnight last year) and the Crown is rapidly recutting its cloth with the BBC chipping. This is a very cheap move on their part. And the biggest problem of all? Any member of a paramilitary/terrorist organisation suggesting such a method as the Crown maintain was used to bring down 103 would be quietly shot as a potential liability. Hoping that an unaccompanied item of luggage could evade detection at 3 international airports and end up in exactly the right location in the hold of 103 so that that a 1lb Semtex charge, detonated by the most primitive of timing devices (which has now been established not to have been employed anyway) would destroy the plane is, frankly, bonkers. These people have been watching far too many Mission Impossible films. While the Crown is chasing its tail, perhaps our esteemed media would serve us better by focusing on the reams of evidential problems surrounding the investigation and the prosecution case against Mr al-Megrahi.

Lockerbie witness to sue

[This is the headline over a report by Lucy Adams in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads in part:]

A key witness at the Lockerbie trial has revealed he plans to sue the Crown Office and Scottish Police for £33.75 million after new revelations about critical evidence in the case.

Edwin Bollier, the former head of Swiss company Mebo, which the Crown Office claimed made the timer for the Lockerbie bomb, has consulted lawyers in Switzerland and is looking for UK legal representation to take the case.

The move, which comes as Libya reveals it may stop UK police from entering the country to further investigate the bombing, follows new evidence about a tiny piece of electrical circuit board found at the Lockerbie crash site.

During the trial at Camp Zeist, it was agreed the fragment came from an MST-13 timer manufactured by Mebo.

The firm revealed it had sold 20 such timers to the Libyans in 1985, and this became a hugely significant part of the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the atrocity that killed 270 people.

After the trial Mebo was forced into bankruptcy after facing a lawsuit from Pan Am, which itself went bankrupt in 1991. Mebo had also lost major clients, such as the German federal police to which it supplied communications equipment.

Mr Bollier claims he lost millions as a result.

However, Megrahi's official biography by John Ashton claims new evidence shows the fragment of circuit board found at Lockerbie was 100% covered in tin and did not match those in the timers sent to Libya. It also alleges the Crown's forensic expert at trial, Allen Feraday, was aware of the disparity but failed to disclose it.

Documents from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment, disclosed by the Crown just before Megrahi's appeal was dropped, revealed contradictory notes from Mr Feraday saying the coating was pure tin and then "70/30 SN/Pb" (70% tin and 30% lead).

Mr Bollier said: "It is now absolutely clear this fragment was not from a timer we delivered to Libya. We told the police in 1999 this was the case but they would not believe us. We lost our company and had to pay a big damages claim. I have instructed lawyers in Switzerland and I am looking for a lawyer in the UK. The counter claim we would have against the Crown and Scottish police is for $53m. This is for the money lost plus interest."

A Crown Office spokesman said: "Prior to the original trial the defence instructed its own independent analysis of the timer fragment, which necessitated a review of the examinations carried out by those consulted and instructed by the Crown. In respect of the timer fragment the defence experts were satisfied it had suffered damage consistent with it having been closely associated with an explosion and that it had come from an MST-13 timer."

The potential lawsuit comes as Libyan Interior Minister Fawzi Abdel A'al warned there is no agreement in place to allow British police access to the country.

[Any legal action against the Scottish investigating and prosecuting authorities would have very significant legal hurdles to surmount. If I were Mr Bollier's Scottish lawyer, I would not be expressing optimism.]

Libya may bar UK police from visiting to investigate Lockerbie bombing

[This is the headline over a report just published on the website of The Guardian.  It reads in part:]

Interior minister says Britain should answer questions about its relationship with Gaddafi before UK police are allowed to visit

Libya has all but closed the door on allowing British police to travel to the country to investigate the Lockerbie bombing and the killing of the police officer Yvonne Fletcher.

The interior minister, Fawzi Abdel A'al, said there was no treaty allowing UK police to visit Libya, and any agreement at some future date might depend on whether Britain answered questions about its past involvement with Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

"There is no treaty between Britain and Libya to allow such a thing," he said in an interview with The Guardian and Agence France Presse. (…) [RB : The AFP report can be read here.]

Discussing Lockerbie and the release of the convicted bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, he said: "Didn't America and Britain accept millions of dollars from Gaddafi as the price to end this case? Who let Abdelbaset al-Megrahi go? Did we? (…)

He said Britain needed to explain the reasons for the rapprochement between Britain and the Gaddafi regime in 2004, sealed when the former prime minister Tony Blair visited Libya.

"Why did the British government improve its relations with Gaddafi? Something happened in this case between the former Libyan regime and the British government to end this dispute. Didn't the former British prime minister Tony Blair visit Libya more than one time? Saif al-Islam [Gaddafi's son] came out one time in a statement to say that Blair was an adviser to his father. Blair was an adviser to Gaddafi after he left the government."

Abdel A'al, a former Misratan district attorney who is seen by diplomats as a high flier in Libya's cabinet, was appointed to the job in November and has access to tens of thousands of files detailing the Gaddafi regime's dealings with foreign powers.

He said he might consent to an investigation by Libyan authorities without the involvement of UK police.

"We see that the best way to solve this now is that the British government ask the Libyan authorities to open an investigation inside Libya, and for the Libyan side to hand in all the information they have on this case so the Libyan authorities can start investigations."

His statement is likely to be viewed as a setback to both the Metropolitan police, investigating the 1984 killing of Fletcher by shots fired from the London Libyan embassy, and Scottish police wanting to pursue the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in 1988.

In December the minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, met Abdel A'al in Tripoli and announced that Libya had agreed to allow UK investigators to visit Libya.

Instead, Libya's authorities seem to have decided against it, although the governing National Transitional Council is due to hand over to an elected government in elections expected in June.

"Show me where it says Scots Law must be logical and fair."

[This is the heading over a review on amazon.co.uk of John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury by physicist and Church of Scotland minister Dr John Cameron.  It reads as follows:]

I read John Ashton's 500 page tour de force Megrahi: You Are My Jury at a sitting and though I would not expect anyone else to do so it is an invaluable `source' for the public. His dissection of the trial in general and the 80 page judgement of Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacLean in particular make compelling if disturbing reading. The British public, media and politicians have a spectacularly poor knowledge of science and technology as debates over such things as windfarms and GM crops makes clear. It would be unreasonable to expect our Law Lords, classically educated at public schools where the teaching of science was bad and technology non-existent, to be any better. It was therefore only to be expected they would struggle to comprehend the weakness of the forensic evidence or to understand the operation of Frankfurt airport's X-ray security. Yet, as the UN observer wrote, that does not excuse their reliance on the partial evidence from wholly unreliable witnesses to reach a verdict `beyond any reasonable doubt'. The Crown's case was that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, acting together, smuggled the bomb on board a feeder flight from Malta in unaccompanied baggage. The Prosecution insisted they were either both innocent or both guilty however the only evidence linking Fhimah to this scenario depended on the evidence on one witness. This was Majid Giaka, a CIA informant, and by the time Fhimah's counsel, Richard Keen, had finished with him it was clear Giaka was both a liar and a fantasist. I thought the trial was over and though it still dragged on with increasing absurdity I was not surprised when the Crown closed that Keen submitted Fhimah had no case to answer. However, I had not counted on Alastair Campbell, who led the Crown's case, informing the court he was dropping the conspiracy charge i.e. separating al-Megrahi and Fhimah. This was allowed but conspiracy was the basis of the case so I asked a leading figure in our judiciary if they could do that and he said the Law Lords could do what they liked. When I replied that was illogical and unfair he archly responded, "Show me where it says Scots Law must be logical and fair" and an historic miscarriage of justice was inevitable.

Al-Megrahi sexcapades ‘distract’ from the truth

[This is the headline over an article by Kurt Sansone published today in the Maltese newspaper The Times.  It reads as follows:]

It may seem like a revelation but a UK news report that Libyan Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, travelled to Malta regularly to have sex was well documented 12 years ago.

The information, including the names of two women alleged to have been Mr al-Megrahi’s and co-accused Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah’s mistresses, formed part of the Libyan men’s defence arsenal but was never used during the Camp Zeist trial.

The link between the two Libyan men and the Maltese women was well-documented in the book Lockerbie: Qabel il-Verdett [“Before the Verdict”] by investigative journalist Joe Mifsud more than a decade ago. [RB: Incidentally, I contributed a chapter – in English – to this book.]

Referring to documents in the hands of defence lawyers, the book highlighted the fact that the two Libyan men used to “meet” the women at the now defunct Central Hotel in Mosta. Mr al-Megrahi was the only one convicted of the Pan-Am flight bombing on December 21, 1988 that killed 270 people over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. He continues to claim innocence.

But Jim Swire, the father of Flora, one of the Lockerbie victims, believes the most recent attempt to dig out salacious information about Mr al-Megrahi is nothing more than “a spoiler” to detract attention from a book showing how “fatally flawed” the prosecution’s case against the Libyan was.

Talking to The Times yesterday, Dr Swire, who has long believed in Mr al-Megrahi’s innocence, said the recently published book Megrahi: You Are My Jury by John Ashton revealed how detailed metallurgy tests of the fragment of a circuit board believed to have formed part of the bomb “never could have matched” the bomb timer circuit boards.

The BBC, the UK’s public broadcaster, reported that previously secret documents, seen by BBC Scotland, gave details of Mr al-Megrahi’s explanations for being in Malta.

Scottish investigators who interviewed the Libyan in Greenock Prison, where he was jailed for life before being released on compassionate grounds in 2009 – he is suffering from cancer – discovered he had a mistress in Malta.

Mr al-Megrahi may have visited her twice in December, 1988, including the night before the bombing. He told investigators he could not have sex with his wife and the clandestine relationship lasted several years until 1989 or 1990. “It was possible therefore that the reason for his visit to Malta on December 20 was to meet a woman for this purpose,” the investigators’ report said.

The same woman was the one he had suggested he might have met during his visit to Malta on December 7.

Mr al-Megrahi and Mr Fhimah were Libyan secret service agents, doubling up as employees of Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta, at the time of the Lockerbie tragedy. [RB: So the fantasist Abdul Majid Giaka said.  There was no other evidence at Zeist that supported this.] The women also worked at the Libyan Arab Airline offices in Malta.

But these news reports have done nothing to change Dr Swire’s friendship with Mr al-Megrahi.

“Megrahi was an aspiring entrepreneur with business interests in Malta. He was a seeker after sanction-busting spare parts for his country and it now seems he was deceiving his wife as to what he was up to abroad. Does any of that justify what we did to him?” Investigators had concluded the suitcase containing the bomb that exploded over Scotland was loaded in an unaccompanied luggage on an Air Malta flight to Germany before making its way to London. Malta has always denied any link with the case.

The luggage was traced back to Mr al-Megrahi and the crucial evidence to convict him was provided by a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, from Sliema, who identified him as the person who bought the clothes that were found in the luggage.

However, serious doubts have been shed on the credibility of the Maltese shopkeeper. Mr Al-Megrahi’s defence team contended that the Maltese witness was paid “in excess of $2 million”, while his brother was paid “in excess of $1 million” for cooperating. Neither has ever denied receiving payment.

"... spoilers being fed to us by those who wish to continue to support the fatally-flawed prosecution case"

[Today’s edition of The Herald contains a letter from Dr Jim Swire.  It reads as follows:]

Over the years I have felt that the man who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, has become my friend.

Disclosures about what might once have been his private life cannot destroy that friendship. I feel yet more sad now for the dying Baset and his lovely wife Aisha, and for all his children. A new layer of what should rightly be a family's private distress is now made public.

Does this affect the case against him? I think it does. It gives a deeply intimate further motivation for his obtaining a false passport in a false name.

The links between Libya and Malta were so lax in those days that many Libyans travelled between the two at will without even using a normal passport, let alone a false one. Such trips could be undertaken without leaving any paper trail.

It would be interesting to know how it came about that this spicy tale of Megrahi's private life became public so soon after publication of John Ashton's book Megrahi: You Are My [Jury]. Readers may feel that what it reveals would justify spoilers being fed to us by those who wish to continue to support the fatally-flawed prosecution case at all costs.

The prosecution claimed that Megrahi, in Malta, used a bomb with a long-running programmable timer to get his device from Malta to the skies over Lockerbie. In support of this they produced a fragment of timer circuit board purporting to come from a series of timers supplied exclusively to Libya before Lockerbie. The book reveals that the detailed metallurgy of that fragment does not match that of the timer circuit boards of which it was supposed to have once been a part. The difference was known to the prosecution before the trial even started, yet did not emerge in court.

The implications could not be more serious.

The prosecution case was indeed unsupported by reliable evidence.

Someone allegedly chose to manufacture a fragment of circuit board in order to make it look as though the bomb could have started from Malta and included a timer provided by Libya.

The Crown Office, though warned about the fragment by their own forensic team before the trial, failed to share this with the defence.

The questions we need to ask now are:

* Who could have faked the fragment and why?

* Why did the Crown Office withhold vital information from the defence and then introduce unprecedented delays during the second appeal?

Perhaps a full inquiry as petitioned by the Justice for Megrahi group would be the fastest and best route.

Yes, Megrahi was an aspiring entrepreneur with business interests through Malta. Yes, he was a seeker after sanction-busting spare parts for his country. Yes, it now seems he was deceiving his wife as to what he was up to abroad. Does any of that justify what we did to him?

We are supposed to be a Christian country. Christ told us to forgive even our enemies and not to judge others as we are all guilty. Our justice has been deliberately perverted.

Who could have done such a thing? He must have had access to the real circuit board to copy it and considerable technical facilities to make such a clever copy.

I want the people who made that phoney circuit board identified because I cannot forgive them so long as I do not know who they are. I think I have no friends who have led blameless lives. Megrahi will remain my friend.

[A report in the same newspaper headlined "Mistress claim 'backs case for Megrahi being innocent'" can be read here. A similar article in today's edition of The Scotsman can be read here.]

John Ashton's response to BBC "Malta for sex" story

[What follows is the full text of John Ashton's response on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website to yesterday's BBC"revelations":]

The BBC has today run a story, by home affairs correspondent Reevel Alderson, based on the SCCRC’s statement of reasons. I don’t intend, at this point, to comment upon those aspects of the story that concern Abdelbaset’s private life, other than to say that: 1) they have no bearing upon the safety, or otherwise, of his conviction; and 2) I’m appalled that the BBC could be so insensitive towards his family.

The more significant element of the story is the ‘revelation’ that Abdelbaset could have travelled to Malta without using his passport. This has made its way into a number of newspapers, including the Scotsman, whose report can be read here.

Alderson attributes the revelation to ‘Previously secret documents, seen by BBC Scotland’. If he had bothered to read Megrahi: You are my Jury, he would have known that the story was in fact first told on page 114, in which Abdelbaset states: Had I wished to enter Malta [on 20 December 1988] without a written record of my visit, I would not have bothered with a passport, as my flight dispatcher’s identification was still valid. This would have enabled me to travel as part of an LAA flight crew and thus bypass Passport Control and avoid having to fill out a disembarkation card. As it was, we flew by Air Malta, rather than LAA. In reality, even if there was no paper record of my entry, I couldn’t hope to enter Malta anonymously, as I had spend a lot of time at the airport over the previous four years and was therefore known by sight to plenty of Air Malta staff.

Alderson’s article reports:  … defence lawyers realised if the original trial had known how easily Megrahi could travel undetected to Malta it could have strengthened the prosecution case. The SCCRC document says: “If the applicant (Megrahi) had spoken to this in evidence it would have removed the need for the Crown to establish the date of purchase of the items from Mary’s House as 7 December 1988.”

This suggests that the SCCRC concurred with the defence lawyers. In fact the quoted passage was reporting the view of Abdelbaset’s junior counsel, John Beckett, who was interviewed by the SCCRC. The complete sentence, which appears in paragraph 18.50 of the statement of reasons, reads: ‘Mr Beckett considered that if the applicant had spoken to this in evidence it would have removed the need for the Crown to establish the date of purchase of the items from Mary’s House as 7 December 1988.’

Alderson omits to mention that the SCCRC fully considered this issue and concluded, at paragraph 27.108:  In the Commission’s view while such evidence might ultimately have proved unhelpful to the defence it also begs the question as to why the applicant would not have chosen to travel to Malta by this means on the crucial dates in December 1988, assuming these visits were connected to the bombing. In other words, if the applicant did indeed purchase the clothing on 7 December 1988 it is difficult to understand why he travelled to Malta using a passport in his own name when there was an alternative means available to him which would have minimised the possibility of his movements being discovered. Similarly, while the applicant’s use of a coded passport on 20-21 December 1988 went some way to obscuring his presence in Malta during that visit, it still required him to complete embarkation cards, something which he could have avoided had he travelled in uniform.

The SCCRC might have added that Abdelbaset freely volunteered the fact that he could enter Malta without a passport. If he was a terrorist, he would surely have kept schtum.

Deception at heart of Megrahi case

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

Maybe I am just getting too old to relish the challenge, but recent noises from the No 10 direction could hardly be more hostile, with David Cameron claiming that John Ashton’s book Megrahi: You Are My Jury is an insult to “the relatives” of the Lockerbie bomb victims – and that before he could possibly have read it: is he Prime Minister of the UK or the US?

The inquiry route, as that proposed by the Justice For Megrahi campaign group, remains before the Holyrood justice committee. How else can we support JFM? My personal view is that there are sufficient material and powers within Scotland to unseat the Scottish verdict and that until that is done Whitehall, let alone the international arena, will remain obdurate.

But pending the day when the verdict does crash, it is a great idea to have made our underlying needs abundantly clear to Whitehall now.

We must not emulate Bonnie Prince Charlie, in turning back at Derby, even as the English king was panicking and putting his valuables aboard ship in the Thames – particularly now we have been given a fresh supply of ammunition to fight with.

The relatives seek answers to the question of who did carry out the atrocity and why were they not prevented from doing so, rather than the simpler question of “was Megrahi guilty or not?”

But the verdict is the obstruction that bars our progress, and the heavy lifting gear to get rid of that obstruction is within Scotland.The two entities needing to be in the cross-hairs are the Crown Office and the Dumfries and Galloway Police. Ashton’s book puts both of them on the back foot.

Once the court proceedings at Zeist, in the Netherlands, are shown to have been corrupted – no matter by whom – it should be for Scotland to set aside her verdict. There is a scientifically verifiable divide between the fragment PT35b and the Mebo timers. Let us not waste time on wondering where the fragment came from and who made it. It appears the differences between the two types of circuit boards are scientifically irreconcilable. If that’s so and can be made to stand up in court, there is no other evidence of a timer used to enable the long journey from Malta to the skies over Lockerbie.

With full analysis of the proven genuine fragment, the prosecution case collapses. Once that happens, Whitehall and the Americans ought to have to answer for their roles in all this, but that probably won’t happen in my lifetime.

Besides, it is wrong that an innocent man, Megrahi, and his family should remain under such overwhelming and unjustified blame a day longer. That also is evil and it has been done in the name of Scottish justice. Addressing the far greater evil of the murders themselves must follow the destruction of the verdict, surely?

We shall all be guilty of failing to fight both those evils if we do not rise up in Scotland to overturn the verdict now.

We can lighten feelings of guilt by realising that the false fragment’s origin clearly was not within Scotland. The book shows that it was the English forensic guys who first pointed out to the Dumfries and Galloway Police in 1999 that the fragment could not have come from a Mebo board. That makes it unlikely that the origin of the fragment lay within the UK either.

All we in Scotland have to answer for is why that information lay hidden within police/Crown Office files from 1999 to 2009, and was never shared with the defence or the Zeist court. Even our careful Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission missed it. Responsibility for that crucial omission lies squarely within Scotland.

Public opinion may be our strongest sword. Though our case as relatives is in some ways less poignant than that of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi as he lies dying, this great deception has meant that all those of us relatives who care to seek the truth have all died a little too, we also carry a life sentence of grief, and it is hard not to be bitter over the way we have been deceived.

Sometimes it is hard also to resist the temptation to seek revenge against those who have misused the trust we placed in them to solve this case, but revenge was the fuel for Lockerbie, and to succumb to it would be to hand a further victory to those who murdered and those who have deceived. That cannot ever be right.

Lockerbie bomber Megrahi 'visited Malta for sex'

[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website.  It reads in part:]

The Libyan jailed for life following the 1988 Lockerbie bombing told investigators he travelled to Malta regularly to have sex.

Prosecutors said the bomb which destroyed Pan-Am Flight 103 was in a suitcase loaded on the island.

Previously secret documents, seen by BBC Scotland, detail the explanations of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, 59, for his presence on Malta.

They also suggest he could travel there without a passport or identification.

The Mediterranean island was key to the case which saw Megrahi convicted, in January 2001, of murdering 270 people in the bombing. (…)

He has always maintained his innocence, and an investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) found he may have suffered from a miscarriage of justice.

Its 821-page report has never been published, but it has now been seen by BBC Scotland. (…)

A Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, identified Megrahi as the man to whom he sold clothes which were later found in a suitcase which had contained the bomb.

He said Megrahi visited his shop, Mary's House, on December 7, 1988.

Controversy has surrounded that date - and was one of the reasons why the SCCRC sent the case back to the Appeal Court.

But defence lawyers realised if the original trial had known how easily Megrahi could travel undetected to Malta it could have strengthened the prosecution case.

The SCCRC document says: "If the applicant (Megrahi) had spoken to this in evidence it would have removed the need for the Crown to establish the date of purchase of the items from Mary's House as 7 December 1988."

SCCRC investigators who interviewed Megrahi in Greenock Prison discovered he had a mistress in Malta whom he may have visited twice in December, 1988 - including the night before the bombing. (…)

"It was possible therefore that the reason for his visit to Malta on 20 December was to meet a woman for this purpose," the SCCRC report said.

"The woman in question was the same one that he had suggested he might have met during his visit to Malta on 7 December.”

[All of this is of relevance only if the bomb started its fatal journey from Malta; and if Megrahi was the purchaser of the clothes from Tony Gauci's shop.  The evidence for each of these is extremely weak. See Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result:

"Commentary. The trial judges held it proved that the bomb was contained in a piece of unaccompanied baggage which was transported on Air Malta flight KM 180 from Luqa to Frankfurt on 21 December 1988, and was then carried on a feeder flight to Heathrow where Pan Am flight 103 was loaded from empty. The evidence supporting the finding that there was such a piece of unaccompanied baggage was a computer printout which could be interpreted to indicate that a piece of baggage went through the particular luggage coding station at Frankfurt Airport used for baggage from KM 180, and was routed towards the feeder flight to Heathrow, at a time consistent with its having been offloaded from KM 180. Against this, the evidence from Luqa Airport in Malta (whose baggage reconciliation and security systems were proven to be, by international standards, very effective) was to the effect that there was no unaccompanied bag on that flight to Frankfurt. All luggage on that flight was accounted for. The number of bags loaded into the hold matched the number of bags checked in (and subsequently collected) by the passengers on the aircraft. The court nevertheless held it proved that there had been a piece of unaccompanied baggage on flight KM 180. (...)

"Commentary. The most that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, would say (either in his evidence in court or at an identification parade before the trial or in a series of nineteen police statements over the years) was that Megrahi “resembled a lot” the purchaser, a phrase which he equally used with reference to Abu Talb, one of those mentioned in the special defence of incrimination lodged on behalf of Megrahi. Gauci had also described his customer to the police as being six feet [183 cms] tall and over fifty years of age. The evidence at the trial established (i) that Megrahi is five feet eight inches [173 cms] tall and (ii) that in late 1988 he was thirty-six years of age. On this material, the judges found in fact that Megrahi was the purchaser."]