World waits for Lockerbie verdict

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2001. It reads as follows:]

The Lockerbie trial has been adjourned until Tuesday 30 January while the judges consider their verdict after hearing 84 days of evidence.

They will not deliver a verdict on that date but will indicate when their decision might be announced.

At the end of closing arguments on Friday 19 January, the presiding judge, Lord Sutherland, told the court: "It is quite apparent that there is a great deal of material to consider which will take a lot of time.

"In the normal course of events a jury would have to sit every day and readjourn.

"It appears to us that this would be a waste of everyone's time and so we shall adjourn until a week on Tuesday.

"We will not deliver a verdict that day.

"If we are in a position, and I have to say it is unlikely, if we are by any chance in a position to be ready to deliver a verdict what we will do is indicate that it will be delivered on the Wednesday.

"What's more likely is I think that, when we come back a week on Tuesday, we might be in a position to indicate a date on which the verdict will be delivered or a further progress report."

The trial itself lasted eight months but was persistently held up by procedural problems.

Defence counsel for the two Libyans accused of the bombing in which 270 died completed their closing arguments on Thursday and called on the judges to deliver not guilty verdicts.

They urged the three judges - Lord Sutherland, Lord Coulsfield and Lord Maclean - to find their clients not guilty of the murder of 270 people in December 1988.

The trial is taking place at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands and is thought to have cost about £50m.

On the last day of evidence they heard Richard Keen, QC, representing Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, systematically atttempt to dismiss the Crown's claims by challenging the quality of the testimony.

He said: "We have inference upon inference upon inference, leading to an inference."

Mr Keen said the fact that Mr Fhimah had been, prior to the bombing, station chief for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta did not mean he had the know-how to slip an unaccompanied suitcase bomb onto an outgoing flight.

"Even if Al-Amin Fhimah had possessed the expertise that the Crown attributes to him," Mr Keen said, "the evidence does not suggest that Libyan intelligence services would have looked to him for the furtherance of their alleged plot."

Mr Keen suggested Fhimah could have been duped into supplying baggage tags, and that an entry in his diary about "getting tags - OK" proved nothing.

He added that Libya's JSO intelligence agency had its own agent at the airport, Abdul Majid Giaka, who later defected to the United States and, in September, testified as the prosecution's star witness.

Like William Taylor, QC, who is representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, Mr Keen challenged Mr Giaka's evidence in an attempt to convince the bench that the case against the accused is not watertight.

On several points, Mr Keen said, Giaka was "unreliable, and at some times simply incredible".

He urged the judges to look back at his testimony with "conspicuous care".

Britain cracks down on airport security

[What follows is the text of a report issued by The Associated Press news agency on this date in 1989:]

The government yesterday tightened security procedures for airport workers after two journalists posing as cleaners exposed major lapses at London's Heathrow Airport after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Earlier, the Sunday Post newspaper in Scotland quoted a former high-ranking Israeli intelligence agent as saying he believes Abu Ibrahim, head of a Palestinian group, planned the Dec 21 bombing, which killed 270 people.

ABC News, citing unidentified US and Western intelligence sources, reported yesterday that several dozen intelligence agents from the Palestine Liberation Organization are working with Pan Am on the investigation of the bombing. PLO leader Yasser Arafat had pledged his group's help in the investigation, and ABC quoted its sources as saying the PLO's help has been exceedingly valuable.

Transport Secretary Paul Channon said passes will be issued only to airport employees or to outside companies "which the airport manager is satisfied are reliable and reputable."

"Clearly, some of the firms in this field in the past have been far from reliable," he said in a statement.

Channon said cleaners and other airport workers now will have to have held security passes for at least six months before being allowed unsupervised access to aircraft and checked-in baggage.

He also praised the "swift action" of the British Airports Authority in withdrawing access to airplanes from two privately owned cleaning companies at Heathrow. Graham Dudman of the Daily Express and Stewart Norris of London Weekend Television, working independently, told Friday how they got jobs as airplane cleaners at Heathrow using fake applications.

They said that with passes issued by the two cleaning companies involved, they were able to wander on and off a dozen jets where they said they could easily have planted a bomb.

New York-bound Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb over the Scottish village of Lockerbie, killing 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground.

The flight originated in Frankfurt, West Germany, and baggage and passengers were transferred to the Boeing 747 at Heathrow.

In Glasgow, the Sunday Post newspaper quoted former Mossad officer Raphael Eitan as saving he had "no doubt" the bombers were Ibrahim's May 15 Palestinian group, based in Baghdad, Iraq, and that the bomb was made there and probably carried on board the plane by an unwitting accomplice.

"They are led by Abu Ibrahim, a qualified engineer. In the early days Ibrahim received all his financial support from Iraqi intelligence, who continue to provide him with cash and premises," Eitan was quoted as saying.

Charges against Susan Lindauer dropped

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Michael Collins published on the Scoop website:]

(Jan 16, Wash DC) The Department of Justice entered a motion to drop all charges against Susan Lindauer yesterday morning, Jan 15, 2009. The filing (...) at the federal district court in lower Manhattan ends the government's attempt to prosecute her for allegedly acting as an "unregistered agent" for Iraq. Since her arrest in early 2004, she has repeatedly asked for a trial to present evidence that she had been a United States intelligence asset since the early 1990s.

By filing this order, the government surrendered forever its ability to prosecute Lindauer as an "Iraqi foreign agent" and for lesser charges contained in the indictment, including a one week trip to Baghdad in March, 2002.

Lindauer made the following statement today, Jan 16, 2009: "I am disgusted by this case. They think that they have defeated me by denying my day in court. It could not be more wrong. If we can't have a criminal trial, we're going to have a civil trial for damages."

Lindauer was arrested in March, 2004 shortly after offering to testify before a Bush appointed blue ribbon commission evaluating US pre-war intelligence on Iraq. In late February, she informed the offices of two commission members, Sen McCain (R-AZ) and Trent Lott (R-MS), that she could testify that US pre-war intelligence was proactive and effective, not a popular view at that time.

Lindauer has adamantly maintained her innocence of all charges since her arrest. In addition to the "unregistered agent" charge, the government alleged that she had taken an unauthorized trip to Baghdad, and attended meetings with Iraqi intelligence agents at the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations. Lindauer planned an aggressive defense with evidence that showed both government knowledge and authorization of her activities plus a history of activity on behalf of US intelligence.

Lindauer offered an affidavit concerning the Lockerbie bombing in 1998. Her statement was based on her discussions with Dr Richard Fuisz, whom she named as her CIA handler. Dr Fuisz was said to be "a major operative in the Middle East in the 1980s." Since then the Scottish Criminal Cases [Review] Commission has since uncovered irregularities in the evidence against the two Libyans convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

[RB: The Susan Lindauer saga can be followed here.]

Compensation for IRA Semtex victims never raised in Lockerbie negotiations

[What follows is taken from a report headlined Tony Blair declines to appear before inquiry into Libya-backed IRA terrorism published on The Guardian website this afternoon:]

Tony Blair has declined to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into IRA terrorism sponsored by Libya.

The former prime minister has written to the chairman of the Northern Ireland affairs committee to refuse his invitation to give oral evidence, saying he has already supplied written material that presents all the information he can offer.

The inquiry is examining the role of the UK government in seeking compensation for victims of IRA attacks that were made possible by the provision of Semtex and other weapons by the former Gaddafi regime. (...)

[A] spokeswoman for Blair’s office said he did not believe that appearing before the committee simply to repeat what he had already said would do anything to further the cause of the victims and their families.

In his written evidence, Blair denied he at any time tried to halt compensation for IRA victims at a time when the US was negotiating on behalf of victims of the Lockerbie bombing.

He defended his need to deepen relations with the Gaddafi regime in 2004, as he claimed the country had begun to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction programme and cooperate with the UK on fighting terrorism.

“From the outset, the issue of Lockerbie was treated as a separate issue by both the British and the American governments,” he wrote. “Libya had made a number of admissions regarding the extent of their links with IRA terrorism from 1992 to 1995. The issue of compensation for the victims of IRA terrorism made possible by the provision of material by the Gaddafi regime was not an issue raised with me, as far as I am aware. (...)

He said he understood why the victims of IRA terrorism should have wanted their claims raised at the same time as the settlement of the Lockerbie compensation in 2008, but “for the Americans this was never going to be made part of this settlement since they were focused on US citizens affected by Lockerbie and the Berlin discotheque bombing.”

He added: “I believe in any event they were precluded legally from such an action. I never tried to get the Americans to exclude the claims of IRA victims. I did not raise this issue with President Bush.” (...)

He stressed he was not prime minister in 2008 and therefore was not in a position to have raised the issue of IRA victims when Lockerbie compensation was agreed by the US at that time.

Megrahi legal success leads to change in law

[On this date in 2008 the Evening Standard published a report headlined Legal victory for Lockerbie bomber. It reads as follows:]

Judges ruled that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's appeal could have a wide-ranging focus, looking beyond the issues raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) when it suggested he might have suffered a miscarriage of justice.

The decision came after the Libyan's lawyers lodged full grounds of appeal earlier this year and argued that the full appeal should include all the points pertinent to the case.

The Crown had opposed the move, arguing that it would be "absurd", "illogical" and incompetent in law for Al Megrahi to be granted a hearing with such a broad focus.

Three judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh have now rejected the Crown's position.

Lord Hamilton, sitting with Lords Kingarth and Eassie, said the court "holds that the appellant (Al Megrahi) is entitled to have his stated grounds of appeal decided by the court on their respective merits".

Al Megrahi's lawyer welcomed the "important victory" for his client.

Solicitor Tony Kelly said afterwards: "It is a complete victory for the appellant's position before the court and a complete rejection of the Crown's argument.

"The Crown employed lots of resources to try to restrict the court and they have been stopped in their tracks. It is an important victory for Mr Al Megrahi."

Al Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, is serving a minimum of 27 years in prison after being convicted of bombing Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, killing 270 people. He lost an appeal in 2002, but was given a fresh chance to clear his name in June last year when the SCCRC referred his case back to appeal judges for a second time.

[RB: The Crown does not take such judicial defeats lying down. Less than three years later the Scottish Government’s Justice Department induced the Scottish Parliament to pass legislation restricting any future SCCRC appeals to the reasons specified by the Commission in its report into an alleged miscarriage of justice (unless leave to argue additional grounds is granted by the court): see Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, section 194D (4A) and (4B), as inserted by Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 (asp 13), s. 83.]

Upbeat assessment of Lockerbie trial prospects

[What follows is the text of a report published in The Guardian on this date in 1999:]

Two Libyans wanted for the Lockerbie bombing will be handed over for trial within weeks, a South African envoy predicted last night after Britain piled on the pressure.

'We have a feeling we are pretty close to a solution,' Jakes Gerwel, President Nelson Mandela's emissary, said after talks with Colonel Muammar Gadafy. 'We would hope that it is not a matter of months but weeks.'

Mr Gerwel, joined by Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, said problems still remained, especially over the question of where the suspects would be imprisoned if convicted. But his upbeat assessment gave new hope that a trial would go ahead.

Earlier Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, used a visit to the site of a proposed trial in the Netherlands to urge Col Gadafy to surrender Abdel-Basset al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, who are accused of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people, in December 1988.

As Tripoli reported 'headway' in talks with the emissaries from Pretoria and Riyadh, Mr Cook, seeking to assuage Libyan fears of an Anglo-American trick, said United Nations sanctions against Libya would be suspended the moment the two alleged intelligence agents landed in the Netherlands as 'a first step towards permanently lifting sanctions'.

And, as part of an effort to convince Col Gadafy that the damage to his regime can be limited and that senior security chiefs will not be implicated, he said explicitly that under Scottish law the men would have the right to refuse to be interviewed by police or intelligence agencies.

'We have no reason and no intention of interviewing the suspects on any other issue,' Mr Cook insisted. 'We have no hidden agenda.' Speaking after touring Camp Zeist, a former Dutch and Nato air force base being converted for the trial, Mr Cook elaborated on his message in an interview with MBC, an Arabic-language television channel seen all over the Middle East. 'It is a criminal court and it is not possible for it to start investigating regimes,' he said. 'These are the only individuals we are accusing.'

Expectations of a handover have risen and fallen since last August when London and Washington dropped their demand for a trial in Scotland or the United States.

Last month the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, reported progress but no breakthrough. Hopes rose when the Libyan General People's Congress approved a trial, but fell when Col Gadafy again demanded an international tribunal.

Reports from Tripoli yesterday said that Prince Bandar and Mr Gerwel had agreed what were described as 'important practical step... toward solving this case'.

Libya's Jana news agency, citing a Libyan foreign ministry official, reported 'major headway' in the efforts to resolve the impasse.

Libya has insisted that the men, if convicted, must serve their prison sentences in a third country, but Britain says only Scotland is acceptable. Prince Bandar, quoted in the London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, denied suggestions that he was carrying proposals to jail them in Saudi prisons if convicted.

'We are close to a solution on lifting an embargo on our Libyan brothers,' Prince Bandar said. 'We can say we are in the final stages.'

'We feel we are close to a solution. We hope that it is a matter of weeks.'

[RB: Megrahi and Fhimah arrived at Zeist for trial less than three months later, on 5 April 1999.]

Are we just bored with Lockerbie now?

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Jonathan Brocklebank headlined A box-set binge or a genuine murder mystery? published today in the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail:]

Sixteen years ago I sat with a notebook and listened as witnesses told a courtroom what it was like to have a bombed Boeing 747 drop out of the sky in flames onto their town.

A wall of bullet-proof glass separated me from the people giving evidence and from the two Libyan men being tried for the atrocity. It afforded no protection from the searing images haunting the memories of those who watched Pan Am 103’s hellish descent.

These were painted so vividly, so matter-of-factly, that it felt rather like watching Lockerbie happen through binoculars. One man saw a ‘clean wing’, silhouetted against the clouds by the town lights, plunging vertically towards people’s houses.

Amidst a ‘rolling ball of fire’ descending from the sky, he saw much smaller black objects plunging earthward. Were these passengers? He did not say. I guessed so.

The testimony of the Lockerbie residents who travelled to the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands took up most of a day and I will never forget it. Nothing they had to say about the night of December 21, 1988, may have shed any light on the guilt or innocence of the two Libyan men sitting feet away from them in the dock, betraying no emotion.

But their graphic narration left no doubt about the monstrous scale of the crime being tried before three Scottish judges in 2000.  

With a death toll of 270 people, it remains Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity. And, if you’re into that kind of thing, it remains something of a murder mystery.

Even if you believe Adbelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi planted the bomb that blew up Pan Am 103 – and I am not convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that I do – then you almost certainly do not believe that he acted in isolation. Who were his co-conspirators? Are they still alive? How many more years must their victims’ families wait before they are brought to justice?

Alternatively, could it be credible that an innocent man was tried and convicted of carrying out the most heinous act in Scottish criminal history? Can the most crucial trial ever conducted in Scots Law truly have returned the wrong verdict? Alternatively, could it be credible that an innocent man was tried and convicted of carrying out the most heinous act in Scottish criminal history? Can the most crucial trial ever conducted in Scots Law truly have returned the wrong verdict?

This is not simply the belief of a few conspiracy theorists with Sellotape holding their spectacles together. Some highly respected legal and investigative experts believe so, too – not to mention figures such as Dr Jim Swire, a former GP who has spent more than 25 years in pursuit of the truth about his daughter Flora’s killers.

At a time when much of the nation is glued to a documentary series on Netflix called Making a Murderer, concerning a man from Wisconsin whose name meant nothing to us a month ago, these seem questions worth asking... together with this one: are we just bored with Lockerbie now?

Six weeks before the story of convicted US murderer Steven Avery became the most obsessed-over topic at office water coolers across the land, another true crime TV documentary surfaced on BBC4 to little fanfare. It was not the full, three-part investigative film which Ken Dornstein made about the Lockerbie bombing following half a lifetime of research into the atrocity that killed his brother David.

It seems that was too much TV for a feature of global significance about an atrocity in Scotland. Instead, the three utterly compelling hour-long programmes in which Mr Dornstein identifies two possible further suspects for the bombing were chopped into one 90-minute film and broadcast on one of the Beeb’s out-ofthe-way channels on a rainy November night. (...)

As a direct result of his investigative odyssey across three continents, the Crown Office formally announced in October that there were now two new Lockerbie bombing suspects, Abu Agila Mas’ud and Abdullah Al Senussi.

I wonder how Mr Dornstein’s viewing figures on the BBC compared to those on Netflix for Making a Murderer, a tenpart, 607-minute splurge of true crime programming in which viewers are supposed to decide what kind of a man Steven Avery is. (...)

Me, I gave Making a Murderer an hour and no more. By contrast, who placed the bomb on board Pan Am 103, how and why, matters far more to my country, to the US and many other nations whose citizens died.

There are critical questions concerning the compassionate release of Megrahi in 2009 after little more than eight years in prison. Was he really freed by then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill because of his prostate cancer – and, if so, why three full years before the cancer took his life?

Or was Megrahi packed off home purely to ensure that his appeal against conviction went away, for it was an appeal which might result in an unthinkably embarrassing quashed verdict?

I don’t know the answers to these questions any more than I know who killed Teresa Halbach. But, in the land of Lockerbie, it would be nice to think they were more pressing.

The genesis of the dodgy circuit board fragment

[According to the official version of events, the debris that contained the fragment of circuit board that became PT35b and which linked the bomb to Libya was retrieved from the Pan Am 103 crash site on this date in 1989. What follows is taken from paragraph 13 of the Opinion that accompanied the Lockerbie trial court’s verdict:]

On 13 January 1989 DC Gilchrist and DC McColm were engaged together in line searches in an area near Newcastleton. A piece of charred material was found by them which was given the police number PI/995 and which subsequently became label 168. The original inscription on the label, which we are satisfied was written by DC Gilchrist, was "Cloth (charred)". The word 'cloth' has been overwritten by the word 'debris'. There was no satisfactory explanation as to why this was done, and DC Gilchrist's attempts to explain it were at worst evasive and at best confusing. We are, however, satisfied that this item was indeed found in the area described, and DC McColm who corroborated DC Gilchrist on the finding of the item was not cross-examined about the detail of the finding of this item. This item was logged into the property store at Dextar on 17 January 1989. It was suggested by the defence that there was some sinister connotation both in the alteration of the original label and in the delay between the finding of the item and its being logged in to Dextar. As we have indicated, there does not appear to be any particular reason for the alteration of the label, but we are satisfied that there was no sinister reason for it and that it was not tampered with by the finders. As far as the late logging is concerned, at that period there was a vast amount of debris being recovered, and the log shows that many other items were only logged in some days after they had been picked up. Again therefore we see no sinister connotation in this. Because it was a piece of charred material, it was sent for forensic examination. According to his notes, this item was examined, initially on 12 May 1989, by Dr Hayes. His notes show that it was found to be part of the neckband of a grey shirt, and when the control sample was obtained it appeared similar in all respects to the neckband of a Slalom shirt. It was severely explosion damaged with localised penetration holes and blackening consistent with explosive involvement. Embedded within some of the penetration holes there were found nine fragments of black plastic, a small fragment of metal, a small fragment of wire, and a multi-layered fragment of white paper (subsequently ascertained to be fragments from a Toshiba RT-SF 16 and its manual). There was also found embedded a fragment of green coloured circuit board. The next reference to that last fragment occurs in a memorandum sent by Mr Feraday to CI Williamson on 15 September 1989 enclosing a Polaroid photograph of it and asking for assistance in trying to identify it. Again the defence sought to cast doubt on the provenance of this fragment of circuit board, for three reasons. In the first place, Dr Hayes' note of his examination was numbered as page 51. The subsequent pages had originally been numbered 51 to 55, but these numbers had been overwritten to read 52 to 56. The suggestion was put to Dr Hayes that the original pages 51 to 55 had been renumbered, the original page 56 had been removed, and that thus space was made for the insertion of a new page 51. Dr Hayes' explanation was that originally his notes had not been paginated at all. When he came to prepare his report based on his original notes, he put his notes into more or less chronological order and added page numbers at the top. He assumed that he had inadvertently numbered two consecutive pages as page 51, and after numbering a few more pages had noticed his error and had overwritten with the correct numbers. Pagination was of no materiality, because each item that was examined had the date of examination incorporated into the notes. The second reason for doubt was said to be that in most cases when a fragment of something like a circuit board was found in a piece of clothing, Dr Hayes' practice was to make a drawing of that fragment and give it a separate reference number. There was no drawing of this fragment on page 51, and the designation of the fragment as PT/35(b) was not done until a later date. Finally it was said that it was inexplicable that if this fragment had been found in May 1989 and presumably photographed at the time, his colleague Mr Feraday should be sending a memorandum in September 1989 enclosing a Polaroid photograph as being "the best I can do in such a short time". Dr Hayes could not explain this, and suggested that the person to ask about it would be the author of the memorandum, Mr Feraday, but this was not done. While it is unfortunate that this particular item which turned out to be of major significance to this enquiry despite its miniscule size may not initially have been given the same meticulous treatment as most other items, we are nevertheless satisfied that the fragment was extracted by Dr Hayes in May l989 from the remnant of the Slalom shirt found by DC Gilchrist and DC McColm.

[RB: Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s website devoted to PT35b can be accessed here.]

‘I did not receive a fair trial’

[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2008, recording an interview conducted with Abdelbaset Megrahi a few days earlier by Al-Quds al-Arabi:]

An interview with Megrahi

“On February 27, a Scottish court is expected to re-examine the Lockerbie case and hear the appeal submitted by Abd-al-Basit al-Miqrahi, the Libyan national convicted of involvement in the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over this Scottish district. Al-Miqrahi has been serving a life sentence in a prison in Glasgow - the largest city in Scotland - since being convicted of the bombing by an international court that was set up in the Netherlands. “Many observers believe that Al-Miqrahi could soon leave prison and return to Libya now that Britain and Libya have signed an extradition treaty by which he would serve the rest of his sentence in his country. This is a known practice between countries, with the most prominent example being Chad's consent to allow the French nationals convicted of abducting some 100 children from Chad and Darfur to return to Paris and serve the rest of their sentences in a French prison. “Al-Quds al-Arabi visited Al-Miqrahi in his Scottish prison, located 40 kilometres from Glasgow. Entry procedures to the prison were normal and the guards were extremely gentle - we were not even physically searched. We were accompanied by Abd-al-Rahman al-Suwaysi, Libyan general consul in Scotland, and Algerian attorney Sa'd Jabbar. Al-Miqrahi entered the visitation room wearing a thick wool hat, jeans trousers, and a wool jersey, and he had clearly gained weight due to lack of activity. “The words Al-Miqrahi kept repeating all the time were: ‘I did not receive a fair trial’ and that ‘several documents were withheld from the court.’ He laid out on the counter a file filled with paragraphs that had been suppressed, rather, entire pages had been blackened out to conceal information from the judge under the pretext of security considerations. “Anyone visiting Al-Miqrahi will note his extremely high spirits, his unusual sturdiness, and his strong belief in his innocence of all the charges he was convicted of. He would smile every now an then, especially when talking about the letters he had received from Scots who wished him happy holidays, believed in his innocence, and expressed solidarity with him. Al-Miqrahi said: ‘A victim's family wrote to me, saying that on behalf of the citizens of Scotland, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.’ “I asked Al-Miqrahi: ‘What about the Arabs?’ He replied sadly: ‘I have not received a single letter from an Arab, but I have received 27 letters from Scots …’ “He went on to say that Dr Swire, dean of the families of the victims, visited him in prison, as did Reverend John Reef [sic; probably means Rev John Mosey, father of one of the victims] and a number of other people, not to mention the Libyan consul, who visits him on a regular basis. Al-Miqrahi follows events in the Arab world through the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya channels, which he has been allowed to watch in his small cell, measuring no more than 2 by 1.5 meters. One day, a Scottish inmate visited him as he watched Opposite Direction in which the argument was in full swing; the inmate asked if he could understand what was being said, to which Al-Miqrahi said: ‘I can if you can.’ “Al-Miqrahi said that what touched him the most was the martyrdom of child Muhammad al-Durah and his father's desperate attempts to protect him, and added that the image of Muhammad and his father never leave him. Asked about his own children, he said that what pains him the most is that the Scottish Government refused to let them reside near his prison. He went on to say that he longs for them, and that he is especially saddened when his young son asks: ‘When are you coming back dad? You promised us many times that you would return soon.’ “He spoke affectionately and admiringly of South African leader Nelson Mandela, who had visited him in prison, saying that Mandela refused to be accompanied by any British official when he visited him in his prison in Scotland. He added that Mandela also called him when he was visiting the Netherlands because his Dutch hosts had told him that he cannot visit him in prison as it would be a breach of protocol. Al-Miqrahi said that he wrote to many Arab leaders telling them that he wants a free trial, but that none of them replied, not even to humour him. “We asked Consul Abd-al-Rahman if he would remain in his post if Al-Miqrahi is transferred to Libya as expected, to which he said that he would not stay a single day because the consulate was originally opened in order to care for Al-Miqrahi and provide him with all means of comfort. For his part, attorney Sa'd Jabbar, who sat in on the visit, said that the Libyan Government exerted immense pressures on the British Government to retry or deport Al-Miqrahi - pressures that included a suspension of trade agreements. He expected Al-Miqrahi to return very soon. “Al-Miqrahi said that he would return to Libya because he misses his homeland and family, but that he wants to return an innocent man, not a convicted one, adding that he is confident that any free trial would exonerate him of the charges brought against him. His eyes filled with tears of anguish. Asked about food and whether he misses Bazin, Mabkakah, Isban, and Kuskusi, and he said: ‘I miss a lot of these foods even though the consulate supplied me with daily meals throughout the month of Ramadan, but food is not important, freedom and innocence, however, are.’

Labour ex-justice spokesman stands down from Scottish Parliament

Richard Baker MSP, who was for some time the Labour Party’s justice spokesman in the Scottish Parliament, has today stood down from the parliament. His contributions to debate on the Lockerbie case were far from distinguished. Here is what I wrote about him in a blogpost on 15 May 2011 when he was calling for Abdelbaset Megrahi’s medical records to be published:

“Every time Richard Baker MSP opens his mouth about Lockerbie and, it has to be said, many other justice-related subjects, one's views on the abysmal calibre of most Scottish Labour MSPs are resoundingly confirmed. Prisoners (and ex-prisoners) share the same rights in respect of medical confidentiality as any other inhabitant of Scotland. For Kenny MacAskill to release the medical reports relating to Abdelbaset Megrahi would, quite simply, be illegal. If Mr Baker does not know this, he should not be Labour's Justice spokesman in the Scottish Parliament. When reports on an accused (or convicted) person's medical condition are referred to in court, these reports are not released to the general public, but are for the use solely of those professionally engaged in the proceedings.”