The Crown Office - cause for serious concern?

[This is the heading over a message circulated today by Justice for Megrahi’s secretary, Robert Forrester, to Scottish political, legal, media and academic groups and individuals. It reads as follows:]

I am writing as Secretary of ‘Justice for Megrahi,’ (JfM), a single purpose group which campaigns for the truth to be revealed about the Lockerbie Pan Am disaster in 1988.

As the 27th anniversary approaches on 21st December we are contacting as many individuals and organisations as we can who are engaged with and interested in the Scottish Justice system alerting them to a situation which we believe is unparalleled in our legal history and to enlist their support.

In 2012 JfM made 9 criminal allegations in connection with the Lockerbie investigation and trial which, if supported, not only throw serious doubt on Mr Megrahi’s conviction but also point to possible malpractice by Crown Office personnel, police and other prosecution witnesses involved in this investigation and trial.

In April 2013 the initial police enquiry was upgraded by Police Scotland when they launched a major criminal investigation codenamed ‘Operation Sandwood’ which will report on our allegations to the Crown Office early next year.

We believe that by their continuing actions the Lord Advocate and Crown Office have totally disqualified themselves from considering this report.

We cite two main reasons:

• Some of the allegations relate to Crown Office personnel and thus they cannot be judge and jury in their own cause.

• The Lord Advocate and Crown Office have already come to a view on these allegations in that they have publicly described the JfM complainers as ‘conspiracy theorists’, and dismissed the allegations as, ‘defamatory and entirely unfounded … deliberately false and misleading’ .

These views were first expressed before the police initiated their investigations and subsequently while they were in progress and were clearly intended to undermine the credibility of the allegations and those who made them.

We would also draw your attention to the repeated public statements by the Lord Advocate and Crown Office that their whole focus is on tracing Mr Megrahi’s accomplices in Libya and elsewhere.

Should the ongoing ‘Operation Sandwood’ investigations substantiate any of our allegations then these very authorities will be forced to consider conclusions that they have consistently publicly decried.

It is this very public bias and prejudice evinced by the Crown authorities that convinces us they cannot be allowed to be the final arbiters of the ‘Operation Sandwood’ report.

Our request for the police report to be considered by a prosecutor totally independent of the Crown has been dismissed by the Lord Advocate.

A plea to the Scottish Government to intervene and ensure an open and accountable consideration of the police report has also been peremptorily dismissed.

If you share our concerns, we would urge you to support our efforts to obtain an independent consideration of the police report by responding to this e-mail with your views. If you wish any further information, please contact me: Email: forrester.robert@gmail.com

The best source of information on Lockerbie and JfM’s ongoing campaign can be found on The Lockerbie Case blog run by Professor Bob Black, QC, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law, Edinburgh University, at: http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk.

We need to know the whole truth

[What follows is the text of a letter from Martin Cadman published in The Independent on this date in 1998. I cannot trace the letter of 7 December to which it is a response:]

Mervyn Benford is mistaken (letter, 7 December). As a signatory of the Montreal Convention, which it has not denounced, Britain is evidently content with the Libyan system and legally obliged to accept that Libya should try the two men accused of the Lockerbie bombing in Libya.

Under Article 7 of the Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation 1971, signed by Britain, Libya and the USA, a contracting state in whose territory an alleged offender is found shall, if it does not extradite him, be obliged without exception whatsoever and whether or not the offence was committed in its territory to submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution. That is the legal position. Morally and ethically Britain may take a different view.

As the father of a Lockerbie victim, my concern is not whether the two men, acting on their own or as agents for the Libyan state, contrived to get a bomb through all the checks in Malta, Frankfurt and Heathrow with or without assistance by others. My concerns are: why Pan Am 103 was blown up; how it was blown up given the intelligence services and aviation security systems, and how terrorism can be prevented by enabling people or countries with grievances, real or imagined, to get a fair hearing so that they are not driven to terrorism.

I hope that the present moves to get a trial in The Hague succeed. But the trial, whatever its outcome, would not alleviate by one little bit our pain. We need to know the whole truth and perhaps could then find some grain of comfort from that knowledge contributing to preventing acts of terrorism.

[Here is something that I wrote a few years ago about the Montreal Convention:]

On 27 November 1991 the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States each issued a statement calling upon the Libyan government to hand over the two accused to either the Scottish or the American authorities for trial in Scotland or the United States.  Requests for their extradition were transmitted to the government of Libya through diplomatic channels.  No extradition treaties are in force between Libya on the one hand and United Kingdom and the United States on the other.

Libyan internal law, in common with the laws of many countries in the world, does not permit the extradition of its own nationals for trial overseas.  The government of Libya accordingly contended that the affair should be resolved through the application of the provisions of a 1971 civil aviation Convention concluded in Montreal to which all three relevant governments are signatories.  That Convention provides that a state in whose territory persons accused of terrorist offences against aircraft are resident has a choice aut dedere aut judicare, either to hand over the accused for trial in the courts of the state bringing the accusation or to take the necessary steps to have the accused brought to trial in its own domestic courts.  In purported compliance with the second of these options, the Libyan authorities arrested the two accused and appointed a Supreme Court judge as examining magistrate to consider the evidence and prepare the case against them.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, the UK and US governments refused to make available to the examining magistrate the evidence that they claimed to have amassed against the accused, who remained under house arrest in Libya until they were eventually handed over in April 1999 for trial at Camp Zeist.

Priest claims police interference in aftermath of Lockerbie bomb

[This is the headline over a report published in The Herald on this date in 2008. It reads as follows:]

A new campaign for compassionate release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing comes with a claim of police interference at the start of the investigation.

As the Justice For Megrahi campaign was launched yesterday, Father Patrick Keegans, the priest in Lockerbie at the time, revealed that he had been visited by police during the inquiry and asked to keep to the official line - that Libya was responsible.

Fr Keegans and Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy that killed 270 people on December 21, 1988, yesterday launched the campaign calling for the people of Scotland to show compassion towards the man convicted of the bombing and allow his release on bail.

Speaking yesterday to launch the campaign, they revealed that they will be writing to MSPs and heads of all religious groups to garner support.

The launch comes just days after The Herald published the first interview with the wife and family of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan serving a life sentence in HMP Greenock for the bombing.

Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, Aisha Megrahi said: "Please release him so he can spend what few days he has left at home with his family."

Just two weeks before the 20th anniversary of the UK's deadliest terrorist attack, she described her heartbreak at discovering that her husband is suffering from terminal cancer and of being able to see him for only 30 minutes a week, in line with prison rules.

Last month, appeal court judges ruled that Megrahi should not be let out on bail while his lengthy appeal continues, provoking fears that he will die in jail before his case can be heard. Lawyers are now expected to apply to Scottish ministers to seek his release from prison on compassionate grounds.

The campaign team, which includes Professor Robert Black, one of the architects of the original trial at Camp Zeist, hopes to influence public opinion to aid such a move.

Fr Keegans, who witnessed the aftermath of the bombing, spoke yesterday of his conviction that Megrahi is innocent and said he was moved to speak out after reading of the family's suffering in The Herald.

"My conscience has moved so much over the past two days that I wrote to Mr Megrahi offering him my support, telling him that I was convinced he is innocent and that I would willingly offer support to him and his family," said the priest.

"I can only imagine what his wife and family go through when visiting him for just half an hour a week and the constant wondering whether when they say goodbye - whether it will be the last.

"I really became convinced of his innocence when the whole thrust of the case shifted from Syria and Iran to Libya alone. Interference in my own life by the investigation team convinced me.

"A police officer asked to come along and speak to me. I listened to him for quite a while and then I said: Have you come here to ask me to be silent?' He said that the point was that when you speak people listen and we would appreciate it if you could follow our line of Libya alone'.

"I complained to the Lord Advocate about it at the time and got a very bland response. The very fact that they interfered and took the trouble to come to talk to me made up my mind that I was on the right track. Other people had similar experiences."

Dr Swire, who yesterday visited Megrahi in prison for the second time, said he noticed a change in the Libyan's appearance.

"As a doctor I am certain that if he were out and with his family rather than in custody, then he would be able to live much longer," he said. "He is clearly a man who is not physically well."

He paid tribute to Megrahi's family for their loyalty, which had extended to the Libyan's daughter Ghada deciding to get married in Barlinnie prison when her father was held there.

A spokesman for the Crown Office said: "While the appeal is ongoing all that is appropriate for us to do is comment in court on the evidence."

The campaign group plan to mark the 20th anniversary of the disaster later this month with a service in the chapel of Heathrow Airport.

Seven years' hard

[It was on this date in 2008 that the Justice for Megrahi campaign was launched. What follows is taken from an item posted on this blog that day:]

Justice for Megrahi campaign

A campaign to free the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing will be launched today.

The "Justice for Megrahi" campaign will seek to generate support for the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi from prison on grounds of compassion.

The 56-year-old, who was convicted in 2001 of the bombing of Pan Am 103, which killed 259 passengers and crew, and 11 residents of Lockerbie, on 21 December 1988, was diagnosed with "advanced state" prostate cancer in September.

A bid by his lawyers to release the Libyan on bail pending an appeal hearing was rejected by judges last month.

Robert Black, a professor of law at Edinburgh University who was instrumental in setting up Megrahi's trial under Scots Law at a specially-constructed court in the Netherlands, and Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, are among those behind the new campaign.

[From today's edition of The Scotsman. Steven Raeburn [editor of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm], has this to say:]

"There is one problem that requires moral conscience, not resources, to tackle. Not only does Scotland imprison children to a disproportionate degree, we have also this month condemned a man - who has been officially adjudged to be the possible victim of a miscarriage of justice - to rot in a foreign jail until he dies. A literal death sentence.

"Hopefully compassion and morality are not being sacrificed on the altar of vengeance, or worse, to defer something as inconsequential as shame and embarrassment. It is in our own control to act with more nobility than this."

Holding the scales of justice

[This is the headline over an article published in Scotland on Sunday on this date in 1999. It reads as follows:]

Scots law is in the dock with Lockerbie accused, but fears are unfounded, argues William Paul

So it begins. The two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing have appeared before the special Scottish court in the Netherlands and the process of justice according to Scots law must run its course in all its ponderous panoply.

If doubters still regard the whole affair as some kind of international cover-up, the sight of Lord Sutherland in his cream and crimson robes following the mace-bearer to a high-backed leather chair at a makeshift bench in the corner of an old American gymnasium should have clearly demonstrated that the politicians and diplomats are no longer in control. Any covert agreement brokered by the United Nations to limit the scope of evidence or ignore the more embarrassing past behaviour of a country’s security services is worthless. If it exists, as has been suggested, the signatories are fooling  themselves. Now that the law has taken over, unpredictability reigns and there can be no guarantees.

Last week in the Netherlands, the defence QCs at a preliminary hearing acknowledged they were "not arguing about points of fact, but points of law" as they attempted to have the first charge of conspiracy to murder dropped from the indictment. To support their argument and establish a definition for conspiracy they cited two cases – one was the man who threw his wife off Salisbury Crags before trying to collect the insurance money, the other was the sale of some dodgy Harris Tweed. To a layman in the court, the impression was slightly surreal as the accents of educated Scotland earnestly debated whether the alleged crime of conspiracy was complete when conspirators first conceived it, or when it reached its climax in the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 and the deaths of 270 people at Lockerbie. If the conspiracy happened abroad then the Scottish court, despite being deliberately set up outside Scotland for the purposes of neutrality, would not have jurisdiction.

Lord Sutherland dismissed the argument as "illogical" but was also mindful that it was not the affront to common sense it seemed, but contained its own compelling brand of legal logic. He therefore allowed an appeal against his judgment where the issues will once again be rehearsed in open court. The whole trial, when it actually gets under way in May, more than a year after the Libyans surrendered to answer the charges against them, will be like this; a self-conscious display of scrupulous fairness and attention to detail, an obsessive desire to appreciate opposing points of view, and a firm insistence that justice will be seen to be done.

Scotland has already settled in well to the little part of foreign land it has been allocated Kamp van Zeist, a former American military base that is now an outdoor museum – for the approaching trial. With the courtroom proper still under construction, Kamp van Zeist’s gymnasium was pressed into service last week as temporary accommodation for preliminary legal skirmishes. No sooner had the QCs crossed the line with Dutch politie on one side and Scots police on the other, than they donned their wigs and gowns and paired off to pace up and down just as they traditionally do in Parliament Hall at the Supreme Courts in Edinburgh to prevent their conversations being overheard. In another part, where US airmen had whiled away the Cold War playing basketball, academics from Glasgow University patiently explained the legal system to a knowledge-hungry international media, including a couple of Russians who nodded knowingly at the motto to the lion and unicorn coat-of-arms, Nemo Me Impune Lacessit.

Beyond the partition wall in the bottom quarter of the gym, the press were divided from the legal teams by the kind of red-twisted rope that usually guards antique furniture in stately homes, and the lawyers were divided from the accused by bullet-proof screens on wheels.

The Libyans, always immaculately groomed , were led in and out from the underground detention area to the dock by Scottish police officers holding their wrists. Interpreters sat beside them whispering translations of arcane legal terms and Latin phrases in their ears, occasionally gesticulating with a dramatic wave of an arm or the raising of eyebrows at apparently unimportant moments. Megrahi, the older of the two accused, sat throughout wearing an overcoat as if the winter cold was somehow penetrating the windowless walls surrounding him.

It will be much like this in the courtroom for the duration of the trial – six months or two years, no-one really knows – as the prosecution evidence is presented and the past is recreated in a hundred small cameo episodes that build, it will be claimed, into the worst terrorist outrage of an era when the world was ordered very differently.

The framework for what is to come is contained in the narrative of the indictment which sets out the course of events that the Crown will seek to prove, in particular that the two accused were agents of the Libyan Intelligence Service, acting in concert with others and travelling around to gather electronic timers and components for the bomb that was eventually to be loaded into the hold of Flight 103. Colin Boyd QC, Solicitor General, last week gave a hint of what will be claimed by briefly describing an agent, using a false passport, embarking on a ‘dry run’ on the route from Libya to Malta to Germany one month before the bombing in December 1988.

It promises to be compelling stuff, related to the outside world principally by newspaper reports since the only television coverage so far agreed will be closed-circuit links to Syracuse University in the US for American victims’ families, and a location in London for British relatives.

The effectiveness of Scots law will be as much under test as the guilt or innocence of the two Libyans. The international understanding, replete with secret meetings and nudge-nudge assurances, was crucial in bringing about this unprecedented trial, but if the Libyan government thought its intelligence service would be above criticism, and if the US government thought its intelligence agents would not be required to account for their actions, they will very soon be disabused of the notion. The law, once set in motion, can be relentless in drawing out a infinite number of competing strands in its attempts to find the truth, and what is said in court can be reported without restraint.

Juries are regarded as the ‘masters of the facts’ compared with the judges’ role as ‘master of the law’. Since there is to be no jury in this case, the burden is on Lord Sutherland and his two colleagues to be masters of both and ensure that all doubts are dispelled before a verdict is reached.

There were many people who believed a Lockerbie trial would never happen because powerful vested interests did not want it. There are still sceptics who see the whole thing as a freak show extension of foreign policy, a forum for political manipulation rather than honest disclosure. The former were proved wrong, and so will the latter be. Open court is a very dangerous place for those who prefer to inhabit the shadows. The simple principle of ‘having their day in court’ is not confined to the Libyan accused who hope to prove their innocence. It is also there for the bereaved families who, four days before Christmas, must endure the 11th anniversary of the bombing hoping they will soon know the real story of what happened to Flight 103.

The outcome is, of course, entirely unpredictable whatever expert authorities may say. Whether the truth will be uncovered is unknowable because, as was argued last week, it is as much to do with the law as it is to do with the facts. The Scottish court in the Netherlands can only do its best, according to the rules of law, by examining the strength of the evidence put in front of it. In the final analysis, whatever the verdict at the end of it all, people will make up their own minds.

Ian Bell's Lockerbie-related writings

I am deeply saddened to learn of the death at the age of 59 of Ian Bell, perhaps Scotland’s finest political columnist. Here, in chronological order, are links to some of his Lockerbie-related columns: 

1. Trust no-one, believe nothing; 2. Justice is the casualty in this Britain of secrets; 3. The demand for truth is more than rhetoric; 4. He’s dying: does it matter where?; 5. Caught in the middle of a transatlantic storm; 6. Tales of torture prove US has no right to moral leadership; 7. What do US cops know about justice?; 8. Too much heat and not enough light on Lockerbie; 9. Why do we still cling to mythical link with US?; 10. So many questions still unanswered on Megrahi; 11. Can Ian Bell be cloned, please?; 12. Truth lies hidden beneath the blather about Megrahi; 13. Lockerbie: some shrapnel; 14. Lockerbie: Scoundrel Time; 15. Lockerbie, Guilt & Gaddafi; 16. Libya & Lockerbie: secrets for sale; 17. Lockerbie: lawyers, guns & money; 18. We need truth about absurdity of unsafe Lockerbie conviction; 19. Lockerbie and Libya: hide & seek; and 20. Contempt shown to Scotland's legal system during Lockerbie shambles.

New appeal 'may risk Megrahi lives'

[This is the headline over a report published in the Daily Express on this date in 2012. It reads as follows:]

The family of the Lockerbie bomber could be risking their lives if they raise the prospect of launching a fresh appeal against conviction, according to a leading figure in the campaign for a new inquiry into the court's decision.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the bombing in December 1988, said the new Libyan regime wants nothing to do with links to Colonel Gaddafi. He sounded the warning as it emerged that Tony Kelly, the lawyer who represented Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, is seeking a visa to visit family members in the capital, Tripoli.

Dr Swire, who was in the Scottish Parliament to hear MSPs keep alive a petition for an inquiry, said expert advice suggests the Megrahi family would be first in line to make any appeal, with relatives of the bombing "second on the list".

After Holyrood's Justice Committee met, he said: "The situation as regards the Megrahi family is that Tony Kelly, the lead figure for the defence of the Megrahi case, is seeking a visa to go to Libya for talks with the family. The situation in Libya is very difficult indeed. I can hardly see how the family will be able to make a decision whether to ask for a further appeal or not.

"It's hard to see where they would get any funding from to do it and, indeed, they might be risking their lives to do it because the subsequent regime following Colonel Gaddafi have been hell-bent on passing all blame to the Gaddafi regime. They have a position where they say that everything they did wrong was Gaddafi's fault, not Libya's fault.

"If the Megrahi family put their heads above the parapet and say 'although our dad was, before he died, a member of the Gaddafi regime, he wasn't guilty and we're going to contest the issue in Scotland again', it would be, to say the least, extremely unpopular.

"Having been to Libya fairly recently, where you can hear the stutter of AK-47s in the back streets at night still, if I were the Megrahi family I'd be very, very nervous about raising the issue of an appeal."

Mr Kelly confirmed he is seeking a visa to visit Megrahi's relatives but would not comment on the purpose of the visit and said any link to an appeal would be speculation. "I'd arranged a visa but there were problems picking it up from the embassy, so I'm trying to secure another and visit Libya," he said.

MSPs of all parties on the committee agreed to keep the Justice for Megrahi petition open. It calls for the Scottish Government to open an independent inquiry into the conviction of Megrahi at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands in 2001.

Megrahi, who had cancer, died in May this year. He was sentenced to life in prison for the bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie in 1988, which claimed 270 lives.

[RB: The real risk that the Megrahi family took in making an application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in May 2014 makes it especially galling that the Commission in November 2015 refused to proceed with the consideration of that application. The same risk would attend any further application.]

Jim Swire meets Tony Blair

[On this date in 1998 Dr Jim Swire had a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair. The following account, based on news agency reports, is taken from The Pan Am 103 Crash Website:]

The father of one of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing said on Thursday the 10th of December 1998 he felt certain Libya would hand over two suspects in the case for trial soon, probably within weeks. Jim Swire, whose daughter was among 270 people who died when Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, said he had spoken by telephone to a Libyan official earlier on Thursday.

“I've had an encouraging phone call from Libya's permanent representative to the United Nations only today,” Swire told BBC television.  “And I see nothing on the horizon that would make me alter my opinion, which is that the handover will definitely occur, and that it will occur within the next few weeks.”

His optimism appeared to be somewhat at odds with a report from Libya on Thursday, in which the commentator of the official news agency JANA said a decision on whether to hand over the suspects should not be expected soon. Swire acknowledged in his interview with the BBC that “there are complications.” The decision on the handover would probably be referred to the 300 Libyan grassroots committees which JANA said had real authority in Libya, he said.  “How long that will take I don't know,” he added.

Swire, who was scheduled to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair later on Thursday, said he would urge that any new leads arising from the trial be followed up. “The two accused, even if they were found guilty, could only be small minnows in a very large pond,” he said. (...)

Later that day (10/12) Dr Swire finally met the UK prime minister Tony Blair. The meeting came less than two weeks before the 10th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, which killed 270 people.  It was the first time a prime minister had agreed to meet relatives of the disaster. The members of the UK Families Flight 103 Group, led by Dr Jim Swire, spent 50 minutes at Downing Street with Mr Blair and Foreign Office Minister Tony Lloyd.  Lockerbie's MP, Russell Brown, and another Labour backbencher, Dr George Turner, were also at the meeting.

Dr Jim Swire, spokesman of the UK Families Group, said he wanted to thank Mr Blair for persuading the United States to accept the idea of a trial in a neutral third country. He said it was this concession which had broken the deadlock. Dr Swire and the British relatives have been told by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair he will do everything he can to find out the truth about the disaster.

Dr Swire told BBC News he was “certain” the two prime suspects would be given up by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and he said when the trial began he wanted the government to follow up several news lines of inquiry.  Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora died at Lockerbie, said he also wanted a new inquiry to investigate how the bomb got on board the aircraft.

Dr Swire said he had received assurances from the prime minister that there would be an independent inquiry into the disaster.  He told BBC News 24: “He was very receptive to the idea and we came away much encouraged that there will be a meaningful inquiry at some stage. We were left with the impression that there would be the necessary investigation into how this appalling tragedy happened in 1988,” said Swire.

“We feel without such an investigation the door is open to this happening again.”

Dr Swire said Libya's permanent representative to the United Nations, Omar Dorda, had rung him on Thursday and he said he was confident the two prime suspects would be handed over by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, “within the next few weeks”. “The best estimate is a few weeks," said Swire. "Possibly the latter half of January.”

A Downing Street spokesman said: “Mr Blair briefed them on the latest developments on the progress towards a third country trial. The families want to discover the whole truth and the prime minister is committed to bring these men to justice and discover the truth.”

"Finality and certainty" requirement abolished

On 10 September 2015 I posted an item on this blog headed Amendment to limit High Court's power to reject SCCRC references about Christine Grahame MSP’s success in carrying in the Justice Committee an amendment to the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill removing the requirement (a) that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission must have regard to the need for finality and certainty in the determination of criminal proceedings in deciding whether to refer a case to the High Court; and (b) that the High Court itself must have regard to the need for finality and certainty in the determination of criminal proceedings in deciding whether an appeal arising from such a reference should proceed. 

It was feared that the Scottish Government might seek to overturn these amendments during the later parliamentary progress of the Bill. I am delighted to report that the amendments have survived and are to be found as section 82 in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2015, as passed today. Now what is needed is an application, acceptable to the SCCRC, on behalf of the late Mr Megrahi.

“I wonder who killed our relatives?”

[The following are excerpts from an article published on this date in 2000 on the website of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by Ambassador Andrew I Killgore, the magazine’s editor and publisher:]

“I wonder who killed our relatives?”—A middle-aged American man on a BBC-TV program about the Lockerbie trial.

Pan American Flight 103 was destroyed by an on-board explosive device over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec 21, 1988. All 259 persons on board, most of them Americans, and 11 people on the ground were killed.

Two Libyans, Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, are on trial for the crime. The trial is being conducted, by Scottish judges under Scottish law, at Camp Zeist, a former US military base near Amsterdam, the Netherlands. According to Scottish law, the three judges may reach a finding of guilty, not guilty or not proven.

The prosecution’s operating theory is that the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was in retaliation for the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986, which itself was in retaliation for Libyan involvement in the bombing of a Berlin disco frequented by American servicemen. As often seems to be the case, however, the US and Libya were not the only countries involved in the ever-ratcheting rounds of retaliation. (...)

The trial of the two accused Libyans has taken some bizarre turns. The most astonishing development is that the prosecution’s highly touted key witness, the pseudonymous Libyan intelligence service defector Abdul Majid Giaka, proved on the witness stand to lack any credibility. Moreover, CIA cables reluctantly made available to the Court depicted Giaka as an unsavory character whom CIA personnel themselves had distrusted.

A BBC television broadcast showed a group of people leaving the courtroom on the day Giaka performed so badly on the witness stand. Many in the group were relatives of Pan Am 103’s victims attending the trial at the expense of the US Department of Justice’s Office of Victim Services. The quote at the beginning of this article, by a member of the group who appeared to be an American, reflected a puzzled doubt of the Libya-did-it scenario.

Even more puzzling, if that is possible, is that CIA agent Harold M Hendershot, brought to the stand to buttress Giaka’s shaky testimony, himself turned out to be vague and not very credible. In view of the fact that Hendershot had been deeply involved in the case from the time of the crash in December 1988, one is left with a growing sense of confusion, rather than answers, about Lockerbie.

The Lockerbie trial recessed at the end of October for several days while the Court considered how to handle a mass of new material on Lockerbie presented by an “unnamed country.” Whether the material in this weird new turn in the trial is helpful to the prosecution or defense is unknown, although University of Edinburgh criminal law professor Robert Black speculates that it must help the defense.

The twists and turns of Lockerbie raise intriguing questions, some of them troubling. If Libya did not bomb Pan Am 103, who did? Why would the United States present a case that didn’t hold up? Was the case ever expected to be brought to trial? Or was it basically a device for keeping Qaddafi in the doghouse with unproven charges?

Perhaps these twists and turns should not be unexpected, however—for the most significant surprise occurred on the day of the crash itself. According to its normal flight plan, Pan Am 103 “should” have blown up over the sea, where evidence of criminality never would have been found. Instead, unusually strong gale force winds that day led the pilot to fly north to get “above” the tempests—and thus to be over Scotland when the bomb exploded. Are the real criminals who blew up Pan Am 103 trembling in fear lest a fluke of nature that left evidence on the ground eventually will point to them?

US government lawyers seek cancellation of Megrahi arrest warrant

[What follows is the text of a message recently sent to the families of those who died in the Lockerbie tragedy:]

The following is a message from the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which is the office responsible for prosecuting the Pan Am 103 case in the United States along with the Counterterrorism Section, National Security Division, of the United States Department of Justice.

As you are probably aware, the United States filed charges against Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 1991 related to the bombing of Pan Am 103.  At that time, the United States government asked the Court to issue an arrest warrant for him.

The Court periodically asks the government whether outstanding arrest warrants should remain open in cases that have been pending before the Court for significant lengths of time.  We wanted to advise you that the Court has requested the government to address whether the warrant for the arrest of Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi should remain open, and the Court has set a status conference for that purpose on December 8, 2015.

Given Al-Megrahi’s death, the government intends to notify the Court that the pending prosecution against Al-Megrahi has ended and, accordingly, request that the warrant for his arrest be cancelled.   As always, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in conjunction with our Police and Crown Office colleagues from Scotland, will continue working to explore every avenue to bring to justice all others responsible for the murder of your loved ones.

[RB: It is almost fifteen years since Abdelbaset Megrahi was convicted (in a trial in which the US Department of Justice participated) and more than three years and six months since he died.]