The date of the Malta clothes purchase

[What follows is part of a statement taken by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Bell from Paul Gauci (Tony’s brother) on this date in 1989:]

“On Thursday 19 October 1989 Mr Bell called at my shop at 63 Tower Road where I was shown a list of European football matches I know as UEFA. I checked all the games and dates. I am of the opinion that the game I watched on TV was on 23 November, 1988: SC Dynamo Dresden v AS Roma. On checking the 7th December 1988, I can say that I watched AS Roma v Dynamo Dresden in the afternoon. All the other games were played in the evening. I can say for certain I watched the Dresden v Roma game. On the basis that there were two games played during the afternoon of 23 November and only one on the afternoon of 7th December, I would say that the 23rd November 1988 was the date in question.” 

[RB: It was crucial to the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi that the purchases from Mary’s House in Sliema should have taken place on 7 December 1989. On the basis of Tony Gauci’s evidence (and notwithstanding convincing meteorological evidence that supported 23 November) the court accepted 7 December as being the date. Paul Gauci was not called as a witness. In its report in June 2007, one of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s six reasons for holding that Megrahi’s conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice was that, on the evidence, no reasonable court could have found that 7 December was the date of purchase.]

Lockerbie bomb suspect ‘close to being indicted’

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of Scotland on Sunday. It reads as follows:]

One of the new suspects in the Lockerbie bombing was “very close” to being indicted at the original trial along with Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, according to the former FBI agent who headed up the US investigation.

Dick Marquise said prosecutors decided against the move to pursue Abu Agila Mas’ud because they didn’t believe the case was strong enough.

Scottish prosecutors last week announced that are seeking permission to interview two new suspects, later confirmed as Mas’ud and Libya’s ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi.

Both are currently incarcerated in the strife-torn North African state with Senussi facing the death sentence and Mas’ud jailed for ten years.

Marquise is a former FBI agent and was head of the US government’s investigation of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which killed 270 people in 1988. He said both men were on the radar in the original investigation.

“Senussi was [former Libyan leader Muammar] Gaddafi’s intelligence chief as I recall,” he said.

“We had him as a possible suspect only because of his rank in the government and what he did there. We didn’t have any evidence against him, but he was someone we were well aware of and we had heard stories that he was involved deeply in terrorist plots, but nothing specific in regard to Lockerbie.

“Mas’ud on the other hand, he was very close to being indicted back when Megrahi was. We were aware of his travels with Megrahi in and out of Malta, a number of times. The last time that we were aware of was the morning that the bomb bag left. He and Megrahi were on the same plane.

“So we were aware of him. He was, we believed he was, a technician of some kind – a bomb builder. However, there was no real evidence against him other than that he was a bomb technician and he was on a flight with Megrahi. So prosecutors decided back in 1991 not to indict him.

“I think the prosecutors erred on the side of caution to say there’s no real concrete evidence. Nobody told us, well he came here and armed the bomb or put the timer together. There’s no real proof of that.”

A US documentary made by Ken Dorstein, whose brother David was on board Pan Am Flight 103, presented evidence last month which suggested that Mas’ud was the Lockerbie bomb-maker. It tracked down a former Libyan operative Musbah Eter, who had confessed to the 1986 bombing of Berlin’s La Belle disco which left three dead. Eter said Mas’ud brought the bomb into Berlin’s Libyan Embassy and showed him how to arm it.

Mas’ud did feature in Marquise’s book about Lockerbie, but he was asked to change it by the FBI when it went through the approval process, because it was believed that he could be indicted in future.

Senussi has been condemned to death by firing squad and Mas’ud has been jailed for ten years over charges of bomb-making.

Dr Noel Guckian, a former chargé d’affaires of the UK embassy in Libya, has warned that prosecutors face a legal and diplomatic minefield in securing access to the pair.

“The problem with Libya is that Libya has collapsed,” he said. “There are something like 1,700 militias and that can be just a group of people, to the extremist Islamic State. Some are tribal, some are pro-Gaddafi.”

Libya is divided between the internationally recognised government in Tobruk and the rival non-extremist Islamist regime which is also vying to be seen as the country’s government. It is the latter which the Scottish authorities have approached with a view to interviewing the new suspects.

Guckian, who spent five years in the North African country, warned of Foreign Office advice not to travel to Libya and added: “It’s going to be a hugely difficult operation to get people to talk to these two people and to do it in Libya.”

What Megrahi told Senussi about Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an item published yesterday on John Ashton’s website Megrahi: You are my Jury. It reads as follows:]

As everyone who follows the Lockerbie knows, two new suspects have been named: alleged bomb-maker Abu Agila Mas’ud and former Libyan security chief Abdullah Senussi. In truth, neither name is new, both have been suspects for almost 25 years. (I mistakenly said in a BBC interview on 15 October that both were named in the indictment against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, which was issued in November 1991. They were not. Rather Senussi was named in a US State Department fact sheet that accompanied the indictment and Scottish police statements show that Mas’ud became a suspect in early 1991.)

It seems that the Crown Office’s decision to announce that it is pursuing new suspects is a response to Ken Dornstein’s film My Brother’s Bomber, which has just been broadcast as a three-part series on PBS Frontline in the US.

I have written about the substantial flaws in the case against Mas’ud here and shall be writing more.

As far as I know, there is no significant new evidence to implicate Senussi. The case against him would appear to rest on the fact that he was one of Gaddafi’s most powerful thugs and was a friend and relative of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s. In view of the two men’s closeness, the private communications between them should be a focus for the Lockerbie investigation. I don’t know how much evidence of this survived the Libyan revolution, but one letter certainly did. It was reported by The Wall Street Journal on 30 August 2011, shortly after the fall of Tripoli, under the headline In Letter to Tripoli, Bomber States His Case. The salient extracts follow:

Convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi maintained his innocence in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 throughout his trial and appeals—and did so in a private letter to Libya’s intelligence chief, discovered on Monday in intelligence headquarters in Tripoli.

“I am an innocent man,” Mr Megrahi wrote to Abdullah al-Senussi, a powerful official who was regarded as one of Col Moammar Gadhafi’s closest aides, in a letter found by The Wall Street Journal. The letter, in blue ink on a piece of ordinary binder paper, was apparently written while Mr. Megrahi was serving a life sentence in the UK…

The letter to Mr Senussi was found in a steel, four-drawer filing cabinet in the intelligence chief’s office in Tripoli. The cabinet had been forced open, apparently by rebels who shot holes in the lock. The office lay in shambles, but many of Mr Senussi’s personal papers appeared untouched. There was no way to immediately confirm the authenticity of the letter…

It is unclear why he would have had reason to profess his innocence to Mr Senussi, who was in a position to already know details about the bombing. It is possible that the inmate expected Scottish prison officials to read his letter before delivering it to the Libyan government.

Mr Megrahi insisted he was innocent throughout his original trial and subsequent appeals. Even after his conviction, mystery and unanswered questions about who else may have been involved have surrounded the case.

In the letter, addressed to “My dear brother Abdullah,” Mr Megrahi blamed his conviction on “fraudulent information that was relayed to investigators by Libyan collaborators.”

He blamed “the immoral British and American investigators” who he writes “knew there was foul play and irregularities in the investigation of the 1980s.”

He described in detail his latest legal maneuvering, focusing on the testimony by a Maltese clothes merchant that was critical to his conviction. The Maltese clothes merchant in question testified that Mr Megrahi had purchased clothes from him that were later found in the suitcase that contained the bomb that brought down Flight 103.

“You my brother know very well that they were making false claims against me and that I didn’t buy any clothes at all from any store owner in Malta,” Mr Megrahi wrote to Mr. Senussi.

Although the WSJ was unable to verify the authenticity of the letter, it was almost certainly genuine. It reflected what Megrahi told everyone who knew him and the idea that someone would have planted a fake is nonsensical. The speculation that Megrahi expected the prison authorities to read his mail is incorrect, as he was free to pass letters directly to his lawyers and the Libyan consular staff who regularly visited him.

Let’s hope the Lockerbie investigators have asked The Wall Street Journal’s reporters for a copy of the letter.  

Abu Talb and Lockerbie

[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009:]

Lockerbie "suspect" freed

[This is the headline over a short report (which does not seem to feature on the newspaper's website) in today's Scottish edition of The Mail on Sunday. It reads as follows:]

A terrorist who many believe carried out the Lockerbie bombing has been freed from jail in Sweden.

Mohammed Abu Talb ... was released less than three weeks after Addelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the atrocity, was released from prison in Scotland.

Talb has served 20 years of a life term in his adopted country for a series of bombings in Amsterdam and Copenhagen in 1985, which killed one and injured dozens.

The Palestinian terrorist is thought to have had the backing, finance, equipment and contacts to have downed the Pan Am jet in 1988.

As he was a key witness in the trial of Megrahi, the Crown Office says Talb has immunity from prosecution.

[If the Crown Office did indeed say this, it is -- once again -- in error as to the law of Scotland. A Crown witness gains immunity from prosecution only if he is called as an accomplice to give evidence against those involved with him in the crime charged. Talb was not called by the Crown in this capacity. He had been named by the two Libyan accused as the person who, acting for a Palestinian group, was really responsible for the destruction of Pan Am 103. The Crown called him to obtain a denial of this. He was not called as an accomplice of the Libyans.

The law on the subject of the extent and limits of the immunity from prosecution of Crown witnesses is clearly set out in the 5-judge case of O'Neill v Wilson 1983 SCCR 265.]

Review all the Megrahi evidence

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

If it can be shown that there is any objective evidence linking the two new suspects to the Lockerbie atrocity we would wish Godspeed to the Crown Office and the FBI in establishing that.

The problem of course is that the evidence used in the Zeist court against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi (and that concealed from it) seems to many to be full of holes.

It would be well to review all the evidence against him publicly in a fair court, before alleging that these two may have colluded with him in some way in an atrocity in which he may not have been involved himself.

I think it is a tragedy and a setback for perceived transparency by the Scottish legal authorities that the application by myself and a couple of dozen other UK relatives was refused by Lord Carloway and two other judges recently.

While we relatives may be quite wrong in our belief that the evidence against Megrahi used at Zeist was fatally flawed and that further evidence accruing since the trial would make overturning of the verdict mandatory if calmly examined, why should anyone listen to a small but determined group of relatives without recourse to a further appeal, retrial or meaningful inquiry?

I believe that Lord Carloway, no doubt for reasons already enshrined in Scots law, believed that he was acting in the interests of Scots justice.

However, the longer this tale of Megrahi's guilt unsupported by further review continues, the greater will be the damage to our reputation in Scotland for a magnificent judicial prosecutorial system, and the greater will seem the risks of continuing so opaque and unchallenged a system.

New suspects in the Lockerbie bombing might actually want extradition

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on the PRI website. It reads as follows:]

Scottish and American authorities want to question two suspects in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, and they may be in Libya.

If this is true, it will be hard to get the okay from the country, where numerous people cling to power.

"Libya has more than one authority," says BBC North Africa Correspondent Rana Jawad. "They have four to be precise. Two parliaments and two cabinets."

News reports have identified the two suspects as Abu Agila Mas'ud and Abdullah al-Senussi. Abu Agila Mas'ud is currently being held as prisoner in Tripoli. As for Abullah al-Senussi, Jawad says his location is unknown. [RB: But it is known that he is in Libya under sentence of death.]

If they wish to pursue these two suspects, Scottish and American investigators have their work cut out for them. And don't hold out any hope the men will leave Libya.

"It's highly unlikely, no matter who is in power, for Libya to extradite the two suspects," says Jawad. "Particularly, when you look at a figure like al-Senussi — he's no stranger to, I think, a lot of people. He was Chief of Military Intelligence under Colonel Muammar Gaddafi for many decades. He's a controversial and dark figure."

Jawad says that al-Senussi knows about every atrocity, crime and illicit deal the West allegedly made with Gaddafi. Libyans are afraid that if he leaves the country, he'll never return. That means he'll never have to deal with the crimes he allegedly committed on his home soil.

And then there are the reports and video of abuse and torture in the prison where al-Senussi is being held. His lawyers have been trying to transfer him to The Hague, so a prison in The Netherlands, or in Scotland — where he could end up if tried and convicted for the 1988 bombing — sounds a lot better than the prisons in Libya.

As for Libyans, Jawad says they recognize the tragedy of the Lockerbie bombing, yet it's hard for them to care about it.

"I think generally speaking, given what Libya's going through at the moment — the fact that there is a low-level civil war — people have a lot more on their plates and on their minds to think about than 20-some-odd-year-old cases that don't really affect them," she says.

"No Libyan national was involved"

[What follows is an excerpt from an article headlined American Cassandra - Susan Lindauer’s Story which was published on the Scoop website on this date in 2007:]

The Clinton administration was interested in using her as an entrée to communicate with Libya officials, according to Lindauer. Her specific task was to help obtain the hand over of two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing to stand trial for the destruction of the Pan Am flight and deaths of 259 passengers and 11 Lockerbie citizens

Lindauer described playing an instrumental role in negotiating the handover of the two suspected bombers from Libya through her Libyan contacts at the UN mission. She performed the liaison role through the Libyan mission at the UN. As a result of her work and other efforts, she reports that Libya turned over two male suspects, al-Megrahi and Fhimah, to Scottish authorities. They were indicted and tried for the bombing and 270 deaths. Scottish prosecutors convicted Al Megrahi but not Fhimah.

During the lead up to the trial, Lindauer had serious questions about the guilt of the Libyans that she helped secure for trial. She says, “Other Arab contacts told me that Mohammed Abu Talb, Abu Nidal, in addition to Ahmed Jibril were the key to this awful crime.”

In 1998, she provided UN General Secretary Kofi Annan with a deposition containing information that she obtained from Dr Richard Fuisz. This was prior to Annan’s visit to Libya which Lindauer says was for a meeting to discuss the Lockerbie trial with Gadaffi. In the deposition, she offered this: “(Fuisz) says freely that he knows first hand that Libya was not involved in any capacity whatsoever. It's my understanding that he can provide further details regarding his part in the investigation, or details identifying the true criminals in this case.”

However, Fuisz was the subject of a 1990’s gag order and required specific permission from the US in order to give a sealed deposition for the Lockerbie trial.

Lindauer’s statement on Lockerbie caught the attention of the Scotland’s Sunday Herald:

[In 1994] One month before a court order was served on him (Fuisz) by the US government gagging him from speaking on the grounds of national security, he spoke to US congressional aide Susan Lindauer, telling her he knew the identities of the Lockerbie bombers and claiming they were not Libyan. Sunday Herald May 28, 2000

The Herald discussed her role in negotiations with Libya:

Congressional aide Lindauer, who was involved in early negotiations over the Lockerbie trial, claims Fuisz made "unequivocal statements to me that he has first-hand knowledge about the Lockerbie case". In her affidavit, she goes on: "Dr Fuisz has told me that he can identify who orchestrated and executed the bombing. Dr Fuisz has said that he can confirm absolutely that no Libyan national was involved in planning or executing the bombing of Pan Am 103, either in any technical or advisory capacity whatsoever.” Sunday Herald May 28, 2000

Her position was not that different than an analysis offered in Time magazine in 2002. Both she and Time speculate that Ahmed Jibril, a Palestinian resistance leader allied with Syria, was responsible for the bombing. Time magazine even suggested that the terrorist act was a “hit” on a special U.S. military group seeking to free American hostages held in Lebanon.

Just recently, Time ran another article on findings by investigators raising factual questions that cast doubt on the guilty verdict of the one suspect actually convicted in the case.

On June 28, 2007, Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) made a referral of the al Megrahi conviction for further review due to a critical flaw in the case. Evidence from a Maltese shopkeeper that helped convict al Megrahi was accepted by trial judges without a “reasonable basis”. The SCCRC is empowered to refer flawed decisions to Scotland’s Supreme Court, which must hear the case.

Just recently, October 2, 2007, The Scotsman reported that “Fresh doubt has been cast over the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber after it emerged a document containing vital evidence about the bomb timer has never been shown to the defense.”

In addition, The Scotsman, Oct 6, 2007, reported that two key witnesses, the Maltese shopkeeper and the head of the company that manufactured the timing devise for the bomb, were offered $2 million and $4 million respectively by US officials to tilt their testimony for a conviction of al Megrahi.

Lindauer said that her work on Lockerbie started in 1995, “I was being used aggressively at this point for positive things.” She didn’t see any inconsistency between her activism and her work with the intelligence community. She opposed both sanctions by the United States and violence by terrorist states.

Tripoli confirms new Lockerbie suspects include Gaddafi spy chief

[This is the headline over a report published today by Reuters news agency.  It reads in part:]

Tripoli's government on Friday named the two new Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing investigation as Abdullah al-Senussi, the former spy chief of ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi, and a second man, Mohammed Abu Ejaila.

Senussi is currently being held in a jail in Tripoli after he was sentenced for his role in the deaths of protesters during the 2011 uprising against Gaddafi.

No details were immediately available on the second suspect in the 1988 airline bombing that killed 270 people. But one person familiar with the case said Ejaila may also be known as Mohammed Abouajela Masud, a known bomb maker.

Jamal Zubia, director of the media office of the Tripoli government, sent a message to journalists confirming the names but saying the Libyan attorney general's office had not been officially informed about the two suspects.

Scottish and US investigators said on Thursday they had identified two new Libyan suspects in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 which was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on Dec 21, 1988, en route from London to New York.

Scottish and US authorities said they had informed Libya they wanted to send investigators to the North African country where rival governments and their armed backers are battling for control, four years after the revolt that ousted Gaddafi. (...)

A Scottish Crown Office spokesman did not name the two new suspects, but said they are now suspected of being involved with Megrahi in carrying out the attack.

Masud, the bomb maker, was named in the original charge sheet against Megrahi, according to a person familiar with the case.

"The Lord Advocate (Scotland's chief prosecutor) and the U.S. Attorney General are seeking the assistance of the Libyan judicial authorities for Scottish police officers and the FBI to interview the two named suspects in Tripoli," the spokesman said. (...)

Megrahi, who protested his innocence, died in Libya in 2012. He was released three years earlier by Scotland's government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. His family and some relatives of the Scottish victims believe he was wrongly convicted.

[A report from Fox News contains the following:]

A former British ambassador to Libya, Oliver Miles, said Friday that Libyan authorities would not hand over al-Senoussi, who is imprisoned there for crimes unrelated to Lockerbie. Miles said: "He is too hot in Libya. He's the biggest fish in the pond."

“Great – but let’s see what the evidence is"

[What follows is the text of an article published in today’s edition of The National:]

Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire last night called on investigators to reveal the evidence levelled at two new suspects.

Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the 1988 bombing, has repeatedly criticised the handling of the enquiry over the years, maintaining the innocence of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and insisting that Scottish authorities bungled the investigation.

Last night he welcomed the news that two new suspects had been identified as Scottish police and the FBI requested permission from Libyan authorities to conduct formal interviews in Tripoli.

However, he said the failure of judges to allow the families of victims of the atrocity to pursue an appeal on behalf of Megrahi had created a “difficult situation”.

The Libyan was released from Greenock Prison on compassionate grounds and died of cancer in May 2012 after serving eight-and-a-half years of a life sentence.

Reacting to the development, Swire, who leads the Justice for Megrahi campaign, said: “Great – but let’s see what the evidence is against them. Of course we want to know who killed our family members – we still believe that no one has been held to account for Lockerbie as we think the conviction against Megrahi is unsound.”

Prosecutors have always maintained Megrahi did not act alone and the two new suspects are said to have aided him in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which claimed 270 lives.

Swire told the BBC: “I think there is a need for evidence to be made available as to why these two are suspects.

“We have recently been refused permission in Scotland to have a further appeal held into Megrahi’s conviction, and many in this country simply don’t believe Megrahi was involved and that this was a miscarriage of justice.

“To try and bolt two more names on top of that is a very difficult situation. It will need to be supported by better evidence than was produced to achieve the conviction of Megrahi.”

The opinions of the families of Lockerbie victims remains split on the issue of Megrahi’s guilt, but both sides have been critical of the authorities in their handling of the investigation.

Yesterday US citizen Susan Cohen, whose daughter Theodora was amongst those killed, said: “I’m delighted that they are doing this. We, the American families, have been pressing and pressing for the bombing to be properly investigated.

“I want to make it clear that I think Megrahi did it but the trial was framed too narrowly.

“The governments have been dragging their feet and they should have been looking for other people involved, because it wasn’t just Megrahi.”

The development follows the US broadcast of a three-part series into the Lockerbie bombing. My Brother’s Bomber followed filmmaker Ken Dornstein’s search for answers into the death of his older brother David, one of 189 Americans killed.

In the series, Dornstein honed in on 10 individuals ranging from dictator Muammar Gaddafi to Edwin Bollier, whose Swiss company, MEBO, made the timer believed to have detonated the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103. Brian Murtaugh, the top US prosecutor in the case against Megrahi, told Dornstein: “The case isn’t finished, because all those responsible for the crime have not been identified and prosecuted, much less convicted.”

Retired FBI agent Richard Marquise, who helped lead the international investigation, said: “Lockerbie is still an open case. If I was writing the novel version, we would have identified not only the people who put the bomb on the plane, but those who ordered it up the chain of command.”

This week Rev John Mosey, whose teenage daughter Helga died in the bombing, spoke to families seeking justice for loved ones killed when the Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down over Ukraine that they face a battle for truth.

He said: “I’ve told them I hope in their countries the politicians can’t control the legal system, which is what happened here [in Britain]. That is what they’ll be up against.”

[An editorial in the same newspaper reads as follows:]

For many the night Pan Am 103 exploded over Lockerbie seems like an age ago. The world has moved so much in the years since then.

Scotland has changed. Libya has changed.

And yet for many that night is still fresh. The sights and sounds still painfully sharp.

And at the heart of those memories, is the fact that we still do not know exactly what happened, why it happened and who was responsible.

There are those who wish al-Megrahi had stayed in prison.

Even though it was widely accepted that he wasn’t guilty, plenty thought we should accept al-Megrahi as a close substitute.

It would have been easy to do just that.

Yet, it is the relatives of the people who died that night who have been unwilling to accept the convenience of al-Megrahi.

Not al-Megrahi’s relatives, lost in the quagmire of Libya in 2015. Scared of what might happen.

But the families of those who were on the plane and who were in Lockerbie are unwilling to accept the compromise. Those families feel let down by the legal system, the government and are, understandably, unwilling to trust what they are told by their political leaders.

Yesterday they have been given another shot of hope as Scottish prosecutors seek to interview two new individuals suspected of being involved, along with al-Megrahi, in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

For the families it seemed as if we have moved one step closer to finding out the truth.

Though with Libya in chaos, this may not be as easy as it seems.

The repercussions of that night are still being felt across the world.

They define Scotland’s relationship with the US. They impact on Daesh.

For the sake of those of died and those who survived them, and the sake of moving on, the truth must come out.

[A report in The Herald can be read here; and a report in The Scotsman here.]