It is time to cut the puppeteer’s strings

[In the Scottish edition of the Sunday Express today, the main article on the leader page (p 36) comes from the pen of Robert Forrester, secretary of Justice for Megrahi. As far as I can discover, the article does not (yet) appear on the newspaper’s website.  Here is the text as submitted:]

On Tuesday morning the Justice Committee at Holyrood will reach a decision which could colour Scotland’s perception of our elected representatives in terms of their relationship with the Crown for generations to come. It is a simple matter. Namely, whether or not to throw out the Justice for Megrahi petition calling for an independent inquiry into the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Those who argue that it ought to be shut down, like the Crown Office, will doubtless say that the issue is a matter exclusively for the courts. Justice campaigners, however, feel that the courts have proven incapable of resolution and the Crown downright obstructive.

It is important to understand the facts of this case in order to appreciate its potential as a massive miscarriage of justice.

At the Kamp van Zeist trial, the first time ever that the Scottish High Court had operated on neutral, international territory, the Crown, acting as prosecutor, judge and jury offered a simple scenario.

Mr al-Megrahi contrived to place an unaccompanied and unaccounted for bronze coloured, hard shell Samsonite suitcase containing a bomb operated by a simple count-down timer on to a flight from Luqa airport on Malta destined for Frankfurt. At Frankfurt, the bomb suitcase was transferred to a feeder flight bound for Heathrow. Once there, the suitcase, still unaccompanied and unaccounted for, was loaded on to Pan Am 103 resulting in the tragic deaths of 270 souls in Lockerbie.

No direct evidence, of any nature whatsoever, was presented at Zeist or has ever been found to support these allegations. Importantly since the trial a mass of evidence has transpired to undermine the Crown case.

Indisputable eye witness and documentary evidence does exist which says that Heathrow Terminal 3 airside was broken into only hours before the departure of Pan Am 103, thus providing access to the  loading area. Vitally  before the arrival of the Frankfurt flight, an unaccounted for suitcase, which investigators eventually concluded answered to the description of the bomb suitcase, was observed in the luggage container in which the explosion took place.

Of the prosecution’s star eye witnesses the first, Abdul Majid Giaka, was dismissed as a ‘fantasist’ by their Lordships, and the second, Tony Gauci, has been tainted by allegations of having accepted bribes from the US justice Department.

Nothing in the Crown case passes the test of credibility let alone guilt beyond reasonable doubt, which is, of course, partly why the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) supported the need for a second appeal.

Zeist is as uncomplicated and incredible as that.

Following the application for the second appeal, a Public Interest Immunity Certificate was placed over part of the evidence by the last UK Labour government. Scotland’s High Court, in the full knowledge of Mr al-Megrahi’s terminal medical condition, took an unreasonably long period deciding how to go about hearing the appeal. As the appeal was progressing to a point where it was looking as if it might be successful, Mr al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds and the appeal was dropped. Yet again clouds of suspicion masked the truth.

As things stand members of the al-Megrahi family could apply to resurrect the appeal. However, Libya is riven with murderous political factionalism where not even the US ambassador is immune. What hope then does this family stand of receiving justice with all the internal and external political pressures against them?

Even the efforts of the Crown to locate new evidence in the shambles of today’s new Libya, in order to resuscitate flagging public confidence in the verdict back in Scotland, have turned out to be fruitless.  Now in desperation they appear to have given up and turned their attentions to Malta a country that has always denied guilt for involvement in Lockerbie.

Quite exceptionally an application for a third appeal could be left to families of the victims of the atrocity but it is far from clear how successful such an appeal would be given the miserable state of Scotland’s criminal justice system.

The question is: Will Scottish parliamentarians show courage and vision and support our call for an inquiry or will they act against the interests of justice and the truth and support the Crown’s continuing defence of the indefensible?

Last month’s damning report into the Hillsborough Disaster revealed double dealing and cover up on a massive scale. Lies and deceit came before truth and understanding and justice to the victims.

Such are the echoes of Lockerbie.

It is time to cut the puppeteer’s strings.

Lockerbie probe is ‘live’ – prosecutors

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of the Maltese newspaper The Sunday Times.  It reads as follows:] 

Malta Court hears fresh evidence of 1988 case

Scottish prosecutors have stressed the investigation into the 1988 Lockerbie atrocity is still “live” but would not confirm a request has been made for the Maltese courts to gather fresh evidence.

“This is a live investigation to bring to justice the others involved in this act of state-sponsored terrorism,” the Crown Office in Scotland told The Sunday Times.

It added that police of the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary – which is responsible for the town of Lockerbie – were working with US law enforcement “in pursuit of lines of enquiry”.

The statement was a reaction to a story by The Times on Monday that reported evidence-gathering hearings have been taking place behind closed doors before Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit.

The Crown Office would not comment further “to preserve the integrity of the investigation”.

However, multiple sources have confirmed that several witnesses were heard in relation to travel logistics – a salient point that connects Malta to the atrocity. The established thesis, which underpinned the conviction of Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi, the only person ever jailed for the bombing, hinges on the notion that the explosive that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie left Malta and was later transferred to London through Frankfurt.

The evidence of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci was pivotal in pinning the blame on Al-Megrahi and securing the Malta connection to the bombing.

However, it later emerged that Mr Gauci had been coached and promised compensation by the CIA, undermining the credibility of his testimony.

Similarly, key elements of the evidence presented in the 2001 Camp Zeist trial in The Netherlands have been undermined.

Writing in the Scottish legal magazine The Firm, Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the terrorist attack with another 269 victims, set out a series of outstanding questions about the established theory.

Among other things, Dr Swire pressed the point that a break-in at Heathrow Airport – from where Pan Am 103 took off – only 16 hours before the bomb exploded “remained hidden from view and from the Camp Zeist court” until after the verdict.

He also highlighted evidence uncovered by Al-Megrahi’s defence team after his conviction, showing that a key electronics fragment from the bomb found at the crash site could not have come from similar timer circuit boards that were bought in bulk by the Libyan Government in the 1980s.

Together with Mr Gauci’s identification of the former Libyan Intelligence officer, the circuit board evidence cemented the theory that the Libyan Government was behind the bombing and that Luqa airport was the original source of the bomb.

Mr Swire and a group of campaigners seeking the truth on the Lockerbie case are preparing to make a case before the Scottish Parliament next week for an inquiry to be held.

An inquiry could be the last avenue to answer the outstanding questions on the case, after Al-Megrahi withdrew his right to challenge his 27-year prison sentence in 2009, in return for an early release on compassionate grounds. He suffered from terminal cancer and died in May.

Lockerbie: New hope for justice

[This is the headline over an article published on 20 September in the Malta Independent.  It reads as follows:]

Irrespective of which side of the Lockerbie divides one stands, it is beyond argument that the case that convicted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the atrocity has more than a few gaping holes in it. And with a furtive request by Scottish prosecutors for the Maltese courts to gather more evidence in the case, the chances of those holes being filled once and for all have seen a new light of day.

This fresh push for evidence raises hopes that justice and the answers to the many pending questions could at long last be delivered to the Lockerbie attack’s victims, al-Megrahi’s family and to Malta as well, which many believe had been erroneously labelled as the bomb’s point of departure.

This week, a Maltese court began hearing evidence from several witnesses behind closed doors with even the courtroom’s peepholes blocked from prying eyes. Both the Maltese and Scottish judicial authorities have been reticent about revealing details of the new line of inquiry. All the Scottish authorities would say, according to press reports, was that they were working in conjunction with American law enforcement on yet to be disclosed lines of inquiry and that ‘this is a live investigation to bring to justice the others involved in this act of state-sponsored terrorism’.

Authorities in the post-Gaddafi Libya have said they have in their possession previously top secret documents related to the case, while the capture last month and ensuing interrogation of Gaddafi’s intelligence chief Adbullah al-Senussi, it is hoped, could also shed further light on what many still believe to be an unsolved mystery.

The new lines of inquiry also come as Justice for Megrahi

campaigners prepare to repeat their arguments for the case to be re-examined in an inquiry. They are expected to appear before the Scottish Parliament later this month.

Malta’s name has been much maligned over the years for its connection to the case in which Megrahi was convicted of placing the bomb on a plane leaving Malta International Airport, where its fateful journey to the skies over Lockerbie was said to have begun.

With his death last May, al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, the victims’ families and the world runs the risk of the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing going to the grave with him, but this new inquiry could finally clear Malta’s, and al-Megrahi’s names.

The man died protesting his innocence, despite having dropped a planned appeal against his conviction so as to clear the way for his release and return to Libya under Scottish law, which grants compassionate release for the terminally ill.

That, were it to come to pass, would also be a gross injustice to Malta, whose good name has been tarnished over these last 23 years as the point of departure of the lethal luggage that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people.

Evidence presented during the trial that the bomb, it has been said time and time again, had originated at Luqa Airport was some of the weakest of the entire proceedings. Al-Megrahi, a former employee with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta and the only person to have been found guilty of the terrorist attack, was convicted largely on the basis of evidence supplied by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci – of the now infamous Mary’s House on Tower Road, Sliema.

In his evidence, Mr Gauci identified Mr al-Megrahi as the purchaser of articles of clothing and an umbrella found in the suitcase containing the bomb – placed on an Air Malta flight and transferred to the ill-fated Pan Am flight in Frankfurt.

It is not known whether Mr Gauci himself gave evidence in the Maltese courts this week. But he certainly should: in reviewing Megrahi’s request for an appeal, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had clearly found “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgement for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988” – the very argument that had sealed the indictment against Mr al-Megrahi.

In fact, this week’s testimony is believed to have centred on matters related to travel logistics.

In recommending that the appeal be heard, the Commission had ruled that although it had been proven that al-Megrahi had been in Malta on several occasions during the month in question, it was determined through the new evidence submitted that 7 December 1988 was the only date on which he would have had the opportunity to make the purchases from Mary’s House.

The evidence that was not heard at the trial concerned the date on which Christmas lights had been illuminated in Sliema near Mary’s House which, taken together with Mr Gauci’s evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, indicates the purchase of the incriminating items had taken place before 6 December 1988 – when no evidence had been presented at trial to the effect that al-Megrahi was in Malta before 6 December.

Yet more new evidence indicated that, four days before the identification parade at which he picked out Mr al-Megrahi, Mr Gauci had seen a photograph of al-Megrahi in a magazine article linking him to the bombing.

The Commission found Mr Gauci’s exposure to the photograph, so close to the date of the identity parade, “undermines the reliability of his identification of the applicant at that time and at the trial itself”.

Al-Megrahi’s lawyers have also claimed that Mr Gauci had given contradictory evidence, including differing dates of purchase and his account of the sale itself, and that, on one occasion, he had even identified Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Talb as the purchaser.

And then there are the other allegations made by Mr al-Megrahi’s defence team that Scottish detectives had coached Mr Gauci on at least 23 occasions, sometimes over alleged fishing trips on the Scottish lochs, and that he also received up to US$2 million in return for his testimony.

There are so many questions about the case that are still lingering or, rather, festering, that one questions whether the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing will ever be known, new lines of inquiry or not. Real justice, however, will never be served until those questions are answered once and for all and this new line of inquiry, however vague it may be at the moment, offers a new ray of hope.

Please do not let us down

This is the last sentence of a document submitted by the committee of Justice for Meghrahi to the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee in advance of its meeting on Tuesday, 25 September 2012 at 10.00am in Holyrood’s Committee Room 4, when it will consider how to proceed with JFM’s petition (PE1370) calling for an independent inquiry into the prosecution and conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The committee clerk has suggested that the options open to the Justice Committee are as follows:

(a)  keep the petition open;
(b)  take a view on whether there should be an independent inquiry as proposed by the petitioners;
(c) take any other action the Committee considers to be appropriate (e.g. seek views or take evidence from any appropriate person/body); or
(d) close the petition.

JFM’s submission to the Committee ends with the following two paragraphs:

“The outcome of the Hillsborough enquiry has undoubtedly shone a light on the inner workings of a justice system that purported to keep its citizens safe and secure. Now we can see that protection of the system and the wrongdoers within it took  precedence over protection of the individual citizen. Indeed efforts were made to transfer blame to innocent third parties. If Hillsborough was England’s shame then  Lockerbie is Scotland’s, and much of the indifference and arrogance identified within the former can be identified in the latter. We applaud the openminded approach of  the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and hope to see a similar scrutiny of the Lockerbie investigation, without fear or favour.

“The Justice Committee and through them the Scottish Government presents the best and perhaps only chance that the families who lost loved ones will ever have of uncovering the real truth behind Lockerbie. Please do not let us down.” 

This story is picked up in Saturday's edition of The Herald in a report headlined Lockerbie campaigners call for inquiry.

Lockerbie legislation to be introduced into US Congress

[What follows is the text of a report published today on the website of The Daily Orange, the newspaper of Syracuse University, New York:]

Congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle [Republican, New York] has announced she will introduce two pieces of legislation regarding the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.

The legislation will call for further investigation into the bombing and just compensation for the families of the victims, according to a Sept 19 press release.

The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people, including 35 Syracuse University students returning from study abroad programs in London and Florence, Italy.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only individual ever convicted in the bombings, died in Tripoli in May. He served eight years in prison, but was released in August 2009 after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. Doctors gave him only three months to live, but the former Libyan intelligence officer lived for nearly three years after his release.

Moammar al Gadhafi, the former Libyan dictator who many suspect orchestrated the attack, was killed last October.

With Libya in the news for crimes against Americans, now is a good time to remember those who suffered under the Gadhafi regime, as well as the victims of the bombings, Buerkle said in the press release.

“Sadly, all these years later, the families of American victims are still awaiting justice. Until now, there has yet to be a complete investigation of those implicated in the crimes,” she said. “The families of the victims continue to hope for proper compensation for the crimes they have endured, as only some have received compensation.”

Buerkle has been working with the organization Families of Pan Am 103/Lockerbie and its president, Paul Hudson, on the legislation for several months.

Said Buerkle: “It is very little to ask that those who were responsible for the attack be brought to justice and that the families of the victims receive fair compensation.”

Independent inquiry versus SCCRC application and appeal

A contributor to the Friends of Justice for Megrahi page on Facebook commented earlier today:  “If Megrahi's family aren't interested in pursuing an appeal then that's an end to it. Question is... why not?”

I replied: “If the family isn't interested in pursuing an appeal (and I do not believe this to be the case) the reason might well be lack of support (indeed hostility) on the part of the current regime in the country in which they have to make their lives. Anyway, exposing and fixing what this case demonstrates has gone dreadfully wrong in the criminal justice system in Scotland is not something that should rest on the shoulders of a Libyan family. It is a matter for Scots. That is why the pressure on our politicians to establish an independent inquiry must be maintained. Those politicians want to place the whole onus on the Megrahi family, well knowing the problems that they would encounter (some of them created by legislation enacted by those very same politicians). We, the people of Scotland, must not allow them to get away with it.”

Maltese court hears from witnesses in Lockerbie case

[This is the headline over a report (behind the paywall) in today’s edition of The Times, which has at last caught up with the rest of the UK media. The report reads as follows:]

A Maltese court has heard fresh testimony from witnesses called as part of the continuing Crown investigation into the Lockerbie bombing.

Several local witnesses gave evidence at the hearing last week before Claire Stafrace Zammit, a magistrate.

The court reviewed evidence connected to travel logistics, The Times of Malta reported.

Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the atrocity, died in May, but the Scottish investigation into the 1988 terrorist attack continues. The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people, remains the biggest single act of terrorism in Britain.

Robert Black, QC, who designed al-Megrahi’s trial at Camp Zeist, in which a Scottish Court sat in the Netherlands in 2000, said that all the evidence in the case should now be reviewed.

“They are not investigating the doubts about whether Megrahi was the culprit — that they take as a given,” said Professor Black, Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh.

A spokesman for the Crown Office and Dumfries & Galloway Constabulary said: “This is a live investigation to bring to justice the others involved in this act of State sponsored terrorism.”

The British media on the Malta court story

Following yesterday’s report in the Maltese newspaper The Times about a closed-doors Lockerbie court hearing before a magistrate on the island, pursuant to a request for judicial assistance from Scotland (which was first revealed in the UK on this blog) some of the British media have picked up the story. Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm has an article which can be read here; the BBC News website has a report here; the STV News website here; The Scotsman’s coverage can be read here; The Herald's here; The Press and Journal’s here; and the Daily Record’s here. These reports add little, if anything, to the Maltese newspaper article, apart from a statement from the Crown Office: “Dumfries and Galloway Police are working with US law enforcement in lines of inquiry. It would not be appropriate to offer further comment.”

Lockerbie and Hillsborough: the deliberate diversion of blame

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire published today on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  It reads as follows:]

Dr Jim Swire writes exclusively for The Firm, following the revelations in the Hillsborough papers, and sees the thread linking the common behaviour of the legal and political institutions that bind the Pan Am 103 affair with the tragic deaths at Hillsborough.

In the world confrontation between the terrorists and the developed communities of the West, the complex structures that regulate our societies have intelligence, high technology, well orchestrated military might and the precepts and respect of our peoples for the rule of law as their main resources.

From the nature of terrorism and the front line responses of Western intelligence springs a great temptation: to use the innately secretive culture of intelligence to react to terrorism in ways which their defended populations might denounce, were they only privy to them. 'Extraordinary rendition' is a good example of this. Yet reliance upon secrecy from their own populations can only ever be a temporary protection for those who overstep the line and use that privileged secrecy in ways that defy the rule of law, which they ostensibly support.

To cross that line and use our State resources in ways that are illegal is in the end to hand a moral victory to the terrorists. To divert blame away from the actual perpetrators is to protect them and to increase the chances of them striking again. The American response to terrorism has been profoundly different from the British. America has turned to intelligence/military responses in 'the war on terror'. Britain has striven to use intelligence/criminal law. Except where our leaders have got carried away by enthusiasm for the 'special relationship' with the US and dragged us, the people protesting, into military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But State pressure upon our law to produce politically desired convictions has produced terrible distortions of that law such as detention without trial and the warped trials of alleged terrorists such as the Maguire and other IRA related cases.

It is my belief that in the case of Lockerbie the law of Scotland has been subsumed into the priorities of American foreign policy.

Douglas Hurd, a man deserving of great respect for his personal intelligence and integrity has said to Tam Dalyell and Robin Cook, referring to Lockerbie: "I do ask you two to believe that as Foreign secretary I cannot tell the Scottish Crown Office (which was in charge of the Lockerbie case) what to do, nor does the Foreign Office have detailed access to evidence which they say they have. You must understand that law officers really are a law unto themselves."

Yet I have come to believe over the past 25 years that not only did the US manipulate the Scottish criminal legal process, but that the Scottish Crown Office has ever since, fought a battle to maintain the fiction that it acted with integrity throughout the legal prosecution process.

In so doing they are in effect protecting the perpetrators of the dreadful terrorist massacre of the innocents that was Lockerbie in 1988, and damaging positive responses to better protect the future (such as making it a criminal offence for an airport not to report and take immediate appropriate action over break-ins perhaps?). I believe that in the long run it will be less damaging to the reputation of the West, and certainly for my favourite country, Scotland, to address these issues, and to take corrective action ourselves for the future, rather than allow our failures to be eventually exposed at the bar of history.

In a democratic society the more citizens who assess such matters for themselves, the greater is likely to be the integrity of the decisions which their politicians must eventually take to resolve the issues.

[An email sent to me by Dr Swire, in addition to the text reproduced above, contains the following:]

25 years ago my elder daughter, Flora walked the aisles of Heathrow airport, traversed the security check points, left the departure lounge on an exciting trip to board Pan Am 103 in order to spend Christmas with her American boyfriend.

38 minutes later this beautiful, brilliant and innocent 23 year old, along with 269 others was slain by a bomb loaded at Heathrow and exploding aboard her plane high above the heads of the unsuspecting people of Lockerbie as they innocently prepared their homes for Christmas.

I have always been determined that the truth should come out about who did this dreadful thing, our search has been always and resolutely for truth and justice.

Those who oppose that protect the real perpetrators.

We relatives also have a right to know why she and all those who died with her were not protected.

Why was it that as she and all the others walked those long Heathrow corridors neither they nor anyone outside the airport knew that there had been a break-in there 16 hours before PA103 was blown up and that despite raised worries about impending terror attacks, no appropriate steps had been taken there to identify the intruder, nor his motive? Maybe the lurking terrorist even heard their happy voices.

Why was it that during the ensuing trial of Baset al-Megrahi evidence was led, but rejected, of the availability of Syrian-made IEDs to mid East terrorists which were obligated always to explode between 35 and 45 minutes after take off, and for the use of which money appeared to have been paid by Iran, the State having the most pressing need for revenge against the US?

Why was it that although we now know the investigating Scottish police were fully aware of the Heathrow break-in, it remained hidden from view and from the Zeist court until after the verdict?

Why was the unlikely story of Megrahi having used a long running and fully adjustable timer in Malta to arrange for his bomb to traverse Frankfurt and a change of planes at Heathrow only to have it explode a mere 38 minutes into the flight rather than over the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, accepted by the court?

Why on earth would he take such a risk of delays to the take-off time?

The court did hear how an available type of air pressure sensitive IED made by a Syrian terror group, if put aboard a target aircraft at the airport of take-off would always explode between 35 and 45 minutes following take off. Why did the court decide that this cock and bull story about Malta and Megrahi should take precedence over the so simple concept that one of the Syrian IEDs might in fact have been put aboard at Heathrow?

Why did the Crown Office and their investigators withhold the information from the court about the Heathrow break-in until after the verdict?

Why was it that the court was not made fully aware of the known excitement between the Maltese Gauci brothers who claimed to identify Megrahi, over the prospects of multi million dollar rewards if they would only identify him?

Why was the court not made fully aware of the police methodology used to 'encourage' those brothers to identify Megrahi, contrary to the accepted police identification processes?

Why was it that the Crown Office failed to listen even to the warnings of their own forensic expert Feraday that a fragment of circuit board (allegedly originating from the wreckage) simply did not match the Libyan bomb timer board allegedly used?

Why was it that this fragment was found within the only police evidence bag which showed signs of having had its label tampered with, in such a way as to draw attention to debris such as the fragment, rather than simply cloth within the bag's contents?

Who changed that label?

What was his motive?

What else might have been done to the contents of the bag?

Since it is now known, courtesy of a book Megrahi: You are my Jury that the famous fragment could not have come from a Libyan timer circuit board as believed in the court, where might it have originated?

The sole justification for the acceptance of the fragment as genuine evidence was that it was found inside the police evidence bag (with its corrupted label) and the ensuing (now known to be erroneous) belief that the fragment had been part of a Libyan timer. Now that we know that the scientific evidence shows irrefutably that it could not have come from a batch of Libyan timers sold to Libya by the Swiss firm MEBO, where could it have come from?

The fragment contains evidence of the use of a most unusual plating process, provably not available to the Swiss firm which made the Libyan timers. There was not a scrap of evidence of any other possible origin for this fragment, such as other electronic equipment among the wreckage. So where did it originate and how did it get into that evidence bag?

Why was it that the police notebooks of some of the officers involved in the searches of the crash site were destroyed?

Who ordered that?

What was their motive for doing so?

Now that we know that PT35b, the fragment, did not come from a Libyan timer in the bomb, we find that we know of no other origin in the wreckage for it. If it really was recovered from the crash site, a full search of all police notebooks relevant to the search at the wreckage field, and to the transactions occurring over the sorting of wreckage taken into hangers etc would be mandatory if the fragment's point of origin is to be established. Yet key police notebooks appear to have been destroyed.

How can today's Lord Advocate expect us to believe that everything is being done to reach the truth through an active ongoing criminal investigation, when his Department, the Crown Office appears to have allowed the destruction of substantial tranches of what might have been key evidence, in addition to appearing to have allowed illegal changes to have been made to at least one police evidence bag label?

Frankly, on the basis of common sense it looks as though the role of 'fall-guy', prepared by the police at Hillsborough for the fans in the crowd was replaced in this case by the Libyan Megrahi. It seems the available evidence has been selectively massaged in such a way as to make the verdict against him possible.

Who could have wanted such an outcome?

Where in the world was the extraordinary plating process used on the 'famous fragment' available before Lockerbie?

In whose interest would it be to divert blame to a Libyan individual?

We have fought for nearly 25 years for our right to see the truth about how our lovely families came to be murdered.

Personally I would still wish to avoid attacking those who made mistakes, but I would also want to see the truth about Lockerbie used to enhance the protection that we have against future terror attacks partly through the protection we afford in future to our legal systems against insidious and improper infiltration.

There is a warning in Christian faith against seeking revenge against our enemies, and until now I have tried politely to request a full and objective inquiry into all these and many other aspects of this dreadful business, believing that the judicial process should supplant the human lust for revenge.

If the judicial process has indeed failed, then it needs to be improved. If the outcome of the trial was achieved by deliberate manipulation of the evidence with destruction of parts hostile to the desired outcome, then criminal charges will be mandatory.Those individuals through whom it failed should certainly be identified and the nature of and motives for their failures analysed, the better to prevent recurrence, but the overall aim should be to ensure that such manipulation of our justice system can never occur again, rather than the hounding of individuals.

For years now, ever since I heard the description of the Syrian bombs with their obligated 35-45 minute flight times revealed in the Zeist court, I have been convinced that justice got it wrong over Lockerbie and that other interests than justice and truth were allowed to intrude. Much has come to light since to reinforce that view, to the point where serious study of the evidence is incompatible with an objective belief in the propriety of the court's findings

There is also a special case for compassion for the majority of the US relatives. They have suffered every bit as much as we have, yet they believe they have 'closure' in the blaming of Megrahi.

Together with one other UK relative I was present throughout the trial of Megrahi. There was a capacious lounge set aside for the relatives who came to watch the trial. The US Department of Justice offered each American family an 'all expenses paid' fortnight. As those families trooped through the relatives' lounge they (and we) were treated to evening reviews by  a mixed group of Scottish prosecution lawyers and US lawyers invited to sit on the prosecution bench in court. The content was choreographed to convey, right from the start the message 'these are the bastards who murdered your families, we got them they are going to go down for a very very long time'. The defence side was not represented.

This was grooming writ large and official, and our Scottish prosecution lawyers were an integral part of it.

It now transpires that a similar campaign of propaganda has continued ever since, culminating in disgraceful attempts by US Secretary Clinton with the full backing of some US relatives, to extradite Megrahi from his family and from Libya in his last few dying days, to face a new sentencing in the US.

Whilst we cannot blame US relatives for believing what their country and our justice system were telling them, this looks to me like the very thirst for revenge that Christ warned us against.  It has long been a worry to me that insistence on trying to unravel the real facts about Lockerbie was making bereavement more difficult for those who thought they found closure over the Megrahi case.

Three events this year have triggered my belief that there is evil stalking the corridors of power over this case.

1. In February the current Lord Advocate explained to us that he was puzzled as to why the Heathrow evidence had not been available to Megrahi's defence during his trial. Here the evil might simply be complacency and sloth. Surely twelve years is long enough for the Crown Office to find the answer to that one.
Consequent to this meeting I asked for help and received a reply from the current Chief Constable of the D & G police. I then wrote to the Crown Office about  the D & G letter writing that:- 'It (the letter) shows that despite prompt investigations  at Heathrow by the Met. and the passing of their findings to the Lockerbie incident control centre certainly by February 1989, a decision must have been taken not to follow the implications of this information, and to assume that the bomb had come to Heathrow from Frankfurt via Pan Am 103A.'

I have now received a reply to that letter in which the head of Serious and Organised Crime Division of the Crown Office,on behalf of the Lord Advocate, writes:

'In relation to the insecurity at Heathrow, you suggest that "a decision must have been taken not to follow the implications of this information and to assume that the bomb had come from Frankfurt to Heathrow via Pan Am 103 A." No such decision was taken and no such assumption was made.'

Really? I feel no match for the skill of the Crown Office in using words in this way. Why then did this information not get passed to Megrahi's defence team till after the verdict?

2. In May John Ashton's book Megrahi: you are my Jury was launched in Edinburgh by the doughty publishing company Birlinn. The book tells of sound scientific evidence that the 'famous timer fragment' simply could not have originated from one of the Libyan timers as alleged in court.

That very May morning, before they had had time to review the book, Downing Street issued a statement alleging that 'The book is an insult to the Lockerbie relatives'. Since I had written to [Prime Minister David] Cameron long before to ask him to review the Lockerbie case and received no help whatsoever for such a suggestion, he was presumably intending to speak for the US relatives.

In fact the book adds very significantly to what is now known about the truth, that is no insult. What is the full fear that Westminster seems to harbour over the exposure of truth in this case?

It is not the job of a British Prime Minister to speak for US relatives and ignore his own citizens. Surely it was his predecessors' job to protect our families on board an aircraft at Heathrow. It is not alleged even by the Crown Office that the bomb was loaded aboard PA103 itself anywhere other than at London Heathrow.

No help for British relatives there then...

3. The Hillsborough disaster has revealed the lengths to which the police there were prepared to go to divert blame from the failure to provide for the safety of citizens by their own and other organs of state.

In the case of the D & G police and Crown Office over Lockerbie diversion of blame was to the Libyan Megrahi. I don't know why the Scottish Crown Office allowed themselves to divert the blame from Iran/Syria and the criminal negligence of the security at Heathrow airport. Perhaps it was all down to human error, but consider these two paragraphs below from Tam Dalyell's foreword to a previous book from John Ashton [and Ian Ferguson] titled Cover-up of Convenience written in 2001 and published by Mainstream also of Edinburgh.

   a) Tam was told by an off duty Scottish police officer that....'American agents were swarming around the (crash) area openly removing items of debris.....the police were doing nothing to stop them'.

   b) “Douglas (Hurd) swooped down on Robin (Cook) and myself (Tam). He said 'I  do ask you two to believe that as Foreign secretary I cannot tell the Scottish Crown Office (which was in charge of the Lockerbie case) what to do, nor does the Foreign Office have detailed access to evidence which they say they have. You must understand that law officers really are a law unto themselves.’”

So it is indeed from 'the Scottish Crown Office' and their agents the D & G police that answers must come. They may be a 'law unto themselves' yet they must abide by the parameters of the justice system which they are supposed to serve.

In previous years the Chinook and McKie (fingerprint) cases north of the border have shown similar police failings. With the blatant diversion of blame over Chinook, diverting it away from the Ministry of Defence to the pilots, and in the McKie case, away from the Scottish fingerprint service onto his innocent daughter Shirley McKie.

I doubt that those seeking to protect their own reputations understand the anguish that such deceit adds to the burden of families. The need for the truth does not fade for the families, and deceit achieves nothing in the long run, except to add to their suffering and to undermine public confidence in the blindfold against becoming partial which justice should always wear.

Never ever should the families be denied the truth.

There are lessons to be taken from Hillsborough, the magnificent persistence and determination of the families and the fallibility of inadequate inquiries which actually increased the anguish of those families.

I dread seeing other families traumatised in the future by failure to learn the lessons of Lockerbie.

At Lockerbie the majority of the deaths were Americans and what happened? The US groomed the relatives to 'help' them to believe they were seeing justice at Zeist.

John Mosey and I were there throughout we saw it all but were too naive and too polite to tell them to go away and let us make up our own minds.

The result? Those relatives mostly still believe that the Megrahi story was true, despite all that has come out since.

I think both John and I have felt restrained by the US relatives whose pain and loss is just as great as ours, and we have tried not to cause additional distress to them by directly challenging their 'closure'. We have even watched silently as Hillary Clinton and others, in the last days of Megrahi's life, and egged on by those very relatives, made efforts to extract him from Libya to be 'retried'. That was difficult.

Thus many of the US relatives unwittingly have been forged into a useful tool in the hands of those who want the wickedness of the trial to remain in position.

The 'police wickedness' over Lockerbie is very real and very Scottish. Not for nothing did I use Tam Dalyell's foreword to John Ashton's previous book at the [Edinburgh International] Book Festival meeting. His words describe how the D & G police were allowing Americans to run freely all over the crash site doing what they liked and making no effort to prevent them from doing so. From day one that became the pattern, and thus the dictates of US foreign policy have been enabled to become the overriding guide for how the prosecution was designed to work out.

During Megrahi's second appeal the Advocate General was sent scuttling to Westminster to ask permission for a revealing document to be released to the defence. The result was the imposition of a Public Interest Immunity (PII) Certificate by the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband blocking the document's release. In a radio four programme in August 2009, David Miliband was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Great Lives. He had stated that he believed there are circumstances in which terrorism is "justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective" – though he added that "it is never effective on its own".

The ability of terrorism to inflict damage on its target State and that State's citizens is hugely amplified if that State allows the normal parameters of its legal system to be blunted in order to transfer the attribution of blame to an innocent third party. The impartial rule of law is arguably the strongest weapon we have against the anarchy of terrorism. To restrict the freedom of our law in favour of such anarchy by the deliberate transfer of blame away from the real perpetrators is indeed to make terrorism more effective.

In the case of Lockerbie the terrible damage that terrorism inflicted on its targets at the time has been amplified by the actions of its target states themselves in distorting their own justice systems.