Libya may compensate Lockerbie families

[This is the headline over a report published on the website of The Guardian on this date in 2001, the day after the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi and the acquittal of Lamin Fhimah. It reads as follows:]

The Libyan government is today considering compensation payments to the families of victims of the Lockerbie bombing, as a group representing the British families of those who died in the tragedy gathered in London to press for an independent public inquiry.

The Libyan ambassador to London, Mohammed al-Zwai, said today that his government will consider both compensation payments and agreements reached with the UN security council if Abdel Baset al-Megrahi's appeal against his conviction for the bombing fails. The security council agreements include the requirement that Libya offer compensation and accept responsibility for the bombing.

Megrahi, a Libyan citizen, was sentenced yesterday to life imprisonment for the murder of 270 people in the 1988 bomb attack on Pan Am flight 103. Scottish judges accepted that he was a special agent for the Libyan government, thereby implicating Tripoli in the attack. According to Libyan television reports, Megrahi will lodge an appeal against his conviction within 14 days.

Mr Zwai's comments seem to contradict statements out of Tripoli that the Libyan government bears no responsibility for the bombing. Libyan foreign minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam has insisted that Tripoli will never accept responsibility for the attack.

Colonel Muammar Gadafy's government has not been indicted in the bombing, but the Lockerbie blast was alleged to have been committed to "further the purposes" of Libyan intelligence. The prosecution has charged that the attack was carried out to avenge the US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986.

Following the verdict, Libya called for an end to the UN sanctions imposed after the Lockerbie bombing.

"The sanctions imposed on Libya must be lifted completely because the Lockerbie case was used as a pretext to delay their lifting," foreign ministry spokesman Hassouna Chiouch told a news conference. "Now that the court has ended the case, the sanctions must be lifted completely."

"We extend our hand to the United States to build relations based on mutual respect and benefit for the two parties," Chiouch said. "Now that the Lockerbie case is behind, we look forward with interest to improving our relations with the United States in the interests of both countries and of peace worldwide."

Foreign secretary Robin Cook said Britain and the United States both agreed Libya "must" fulfil the UN security council resolutions before the sanctions will be lifted. Mr Cook stressed that Libya is barred from offering "no fault" compensation.

"Libya has in the past said it would pay compensation if there was a guilty verdict. There has been a guilty verdict, and a guilty verdict against a very senior official of Libyan intelligence," said Mr Cook.

"Libya can't walk away from their responsibility for the act of their official," he added.

In Washington, President George Bush praised the conviction and said the Libyan government must take responsibility for the attack. After less than two weeks in office, the Bush administration faces a major foreign policy decision on how hard to squeeze Libya.

State department spokesman Richard Boucher laid down four demands with which the United States said Libya must comply.

"That means revealing everything they know about the Lockerbie bombing, paying reparations, a clear declaration acknowledging responsibility for the actions of the Libyan officials and clear unambiguous actions which demonstrate the Libyan government understands its responsibilities," Mr Boucher said.

Meanwhile, the British families of those who died in the Lockerbie bombing are gathering in London today to press for further inquiries into the disaster. The group, which includes high profile campaigners Dr Jim Swire and the Rev John Mosey, will call for an independent public inquiry into unanswered questions surrounding the circumstances of the bombing.

The families have always maintained they want a public inquiry into issues not fully explored in the Fatal Accident Inquiry which was completed in 1991 or in the criminal trial which ended yesterday.

Most crucially, they want the failure of the intelligence services and the aviation authorities to stop the bomb getting on board to come under the spotlight.

Several bomb warnings were circulating at the time of the disaster including the so-called 'Toshiba warning' which advised that a bomb hidden inside a radio cassette recorder could be smuggled on to a plane. The bomb which blew up the Pan Am flight was hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette recorder.

Previous calls for a public inquiry have been rejected on the grounds that such a move would prejudice the long-awaited criminal trial. Now that the trial is finally over, the families will argue that there are no grounds for rejecting a public inquiry.

Scotland's top law officer said today that insufficient evidence exists at this time for more prosecutions over the Lockerbie bombing. Colin Boyd QC, the Lord Advocate, added that it is clear that the man convicted yesterday for the outrage was not acting alone.

Following the announcement of the verdict yesterday, Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah, Megrahi's co-accused who was acquitted, left the court at Camp Zeist, a former US military base in the Netherlands, a free man.

Taken to a safe house last night, he was expected to leave the Netherlands for home today. The time and place of his departure are closely guarded secrets. Megrahi remained in the specially built prison where he and Fhimah had been held since Tripoli handed them over in April 1999.

An official source said Megrahi's mother had been taken to a Tripoli hospital after collapsing, overwhelmed by news that her son had been jailed for life.

An appeal would be heard at Camp Zeist, except in the highly unlikely event Megrahi chose not to be present - in which case it would be held in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh.

And under the terms of the groundbreaking deal under which the Libyans were brought for trial, Megrahi stays at the camp until the entire legal process is complete.

Any appeal would take months to get under way, legal experts say. There is no automatic right of appeal in Scottish law, and that alone complicates and delays the process significantly.

Megrahi injustice unrectified after fifteen years

Fifteen years ago today the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist convicted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi of the murder of 270 people in the Lockerbie disaster (and acquitted Lamin Fhimah). The unjustness of the Megrahi conviction has been demonstrated in two of the earliest postings on this blog: see Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result and The SCCRC Decision. The conviction has also since then been fatally undermined by John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury and Dr Morag Kerr’s Adequately Explained by Stupidity?

Maltese Lockerbie witness involved in unfolding scandal

[This is the headline over a report published in The Malta Financial & Business Times on this date in 2002. It reads as follows:]

Shopkeeper Tony Gauci certainly got more than he had bargained for when he made a sale to a certain Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi back in 1988. Now, UK papers are claiming, he might be the downfall of the Lockerbie trial prosecution’s case.

The Maltese Lockerbie key witness, whose evidence had helped to convict the Lockerbie bomber, is under a bright spotlight after having disclosed he had enjoyed lavish trips to Scotland with top notch hospitality organised by police officers.

Secret tape recordings obtained by the UK’s The Mail on Sunday, reveal witness Tony Gauci boasting about being taken from his home in Malta to Scotland by police for fishing, hill walking and bird-watching trips.

The Mail on Sunday had been given the tapes by a Scottish undercover investigator who was recently in Malta and secretly taped conversations with Gauci, owner of now famous Mary's House clothes shop in Sliema, and a Strathclyde Police officer apparently based in Malta.

On the tapes Gauci claimed he had been taken to Scotland by police on five or six occasions since the bombing.

Some weeks after the plane fell on the small Scottish town, he says he was taken there to be shown the devastation - a highly unusual move as the Scottish justice system frowns upon taking a witness to a crime scene before a trial.

Gauci also said that the hospitality of the Scottish police was also extended to four other members of his family and on the tapes he talks of being taken into the mountains, visiting the Aviemore ski resort, fly-fishing for salmon and bird-watching.

Furthermore, on at least one occasion he has stayed at the luxury GBP150 a night Hilton Hotel in Glasgow.

Speaking to this newspaper on Monday, The Mail on Sunday said it believes that Gauci is currently in Scotland under an assumed name, as a trip was being prepared for him when the investigator, a former detective, left Malta two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, MP Tam Dalyell, said yesterday he wanted the government to respond to reports that police had organised holidays for Gauci in Scotland.

Robert Black, professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University, said the matter of Gauci's trips would now have to be fully investigated during Megrahi's appeal.

Gauci's contribution to the trial was central to Megrahi's conviction. His co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, walked free while Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum recommendation of 20 years.

The key difference was that in Fhimah's case, no credible witness existed to give a firsthand account of incriminating conduct.

The remains of clothes bought from Gauci's shop were found in the suitcase containing the bomb and the shopkeeper is the only person to have positively identified Megrahi, linking him directly to the outrage.

FBI document shows Lockerbie case flaws

[This is the headline over a report that appeared on the website of The Independent on this date in 1995 and in the print edition of the newspaper the following day. It reads as follows:]

The case against two alleged Libyan bombers is ‘crumbling to dust’ John Arlidge reports

A secret FBI document has demolished a key part of the case against the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing. The internal US Government document was leaked to The Independent on the eve of a House of Commons debate on claims that Iran, not Libya, ordered the terrorist attack.

The five-page official briefing paper, marked "Director FBI/Priority", reveals that vital prosecution evidence that the airline bomb began its fatal journey in Malta is flawed. Its release, which follows the disclosure last week that American intelligence sources blamed Iran, not Libya, for the terrorist attack, will increase the pressure on investigating authorities to re-open the case against Tehran.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, will call on the Government to establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate Iranian links with the atrocity. He will also urge Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, to approve a trial of the Libyan suspects in an international court.

The FBI paper challenges prosecution evidence that the bomb, which destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988 and killed 270 people, was loaded on to the aircraft in Frankfurt after arriving in Germany on a flight from Malta.

During the Lockerbie investigation, detectives from Britain, the United States and Germany examined computer records at Frankfurt airport which, they said, revealed that an unaccompanied suitcase, thought to have contained the bomb, arrived on 21 December on Air Malta Flight KM 180 before being transferred on to Flight 103. The evidence led Britain and the US to charge two Libyan Arab Airlines employees who worked in Malta, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi, with putting the suitcase on Flight KM 180.

The Frankfurt airport baggage records are vital to the prosecution case because they provide the only direct link between Malta and Germany and, therefore, between the suspects and the unaccompanied bag.

But the FBI briefing paper discloses that there is no documentary evidence that the suitcase was on Flight KM 180. The only link with the Maltese flight was that some transfer baggage from KM 180 had been unloaded at the luggage processing point where the suitcase was first sighted. It says: "There is no concrete indication that any piece of luggage was unloaded from Air Malta 180, sent through the luggage routing system at Frankfurt airport, and then loaded on board Pan Am 103."

The document says the baggage records are "misleading" and that the bomb suitcase could have come from another flight or was simply a "rogue bag inserted into the system".

Last week, BBC Radio's File on Four and The Independent revealed that vital prosecution eye-witness evidence from a Maltese shop-owner, which links one of the Libyan suspects to the bomb bag, was unreliable.

Lawyers for the pair said yesterday that the latest revelations, coupled with the American intelligence leak, called into question the prosecution case. One solicitor said: "The eye-witness statements in Malta and the documentary evidence from Frankfurt are absolutely crucial to the case against the two accused. We know that the eye-witness evidence is flawed. We now also know that the same is true of the documentary evidence. This case is crumbling to dust - raising fundamental questions as to why it was brought in the first place."

Fhimah, 38, and Al-Megrahi, 42, who deny the charges against them, have refused to surrender for trial in the UK or the US, but have offered to go to court in the Netherlands. The Government has rejected the offer.

Lockerbie: A Sour Pill for Libya

[This is the headline over an article by Ashur Shamis originally published on the BBC News website on this date in 2002 and reproduced on the libya-watanona.com website. It reads as follows:]

The official Libyan media is paying only cursory attention to the Lockerbie appeal currently being heard at camp Zeist.

At best reports on the appeal come fourth on the news bulletins.

Considering how outspoken he has been in the past about Lockerbie, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's current silence is startling.

This could be because the regime is not confident of a favourable outcome in the appeal against the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

Libya is hoping to draw the whole Lockerbie affair to a close. Tripoli is reported to have offered to pay billions of dollars in compensation to the families of the victims of the bombing, in return for closure on the issue.

United States and British officials, reported to be negotiating a settlement with representatives of the Libyan regime, are said to be pressing Libya for a settlement before the appeal is concluded.

Whichever way the appeal goes, Libya stands to lose financially and politically, or both.

'Ordinary Libyans powerless'

Like the government, most Libyans just want to see the Lockerbie affair concluded.

Libyans are well accustomed to the whimsical changes of direction of their leader, and to being powerless in the face of this whimsy.

Most Libyans are more likely to complain about the hardship of the dry season and traffic chaos in the cities.

Colonel Gaddafi's supporters still insist he is the arch-enemy of American imperialism and international Zionism.

However, most Libyans sympathise with al-Megrahi and his family, seeing them as hapless victims of a regime, which, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, adopted terrorism as a state policy.

The bombing of the Pan Am and French UTA flights, and the bombing of a Berlin discotheque - all acts in which the Gaddafi regime is at least implicated - are widely seen as elements of the Libyan leader's past coming back to haunt him.

But Libyans do worry about the billions of dollars their country will have to pay out in compensation.

Eventually, it is they who will end up suffering lower currency exchanged rates, reduced government salaries, higher prices and taxes, and run-down public services.

'Premature claims of victory'

Back in 1998, when Mr Gaddafi declared that he was ready to hand over the two Libyans suspected of the Lockerbie bombing for trial in the Netherlands, he sounded triumphant.

It took the Libyan leader eight years to reach this point - a period during which Libya came under an international air embargo and punitive US economic sanctions.

The country's economy was set back 10 years, its infrastructure deteriorated, and it became more and more isolated internationally.

When he finally did hand over the suspects in 1999, Colonel Gaddafi claimed credit domestically for defying the US by not handing over al-Megrahi and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah for eight years, and he claimed credit internationally for allowing a trial to proceed by handing them over.

Deal struck?

Reports persist that a deal was struck with Colonel Gaddafi, though Western officials deny this.

It is said that he handed over the two Lockerbie suspects on condition that no other Libyan officials, including himself, would be dragged into the investigation or the trial.

At the time, the Libyan media hailed the outcome a victory and praised the virtues of the Scottish judiciary.

However, not only did the Lockerbie trial deliver an unexpected verdict in January 2001, but it also dragged out the conclusion of the affair.

One of the defendants was acquitted while al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence operative in Malta, was convicted of committing the atrocity and sentenced to life imprisonment.

'Ambiguous verdict'

This verdict gave everyone some cause for celebration. The families of the victims and the US and UK governments saw some form of justice being done.

However, the three Scottish judges freely admitted to "uncertainties and qualifications" in the evidence brought before them.

But, having considered the evidence as a whole, they decided it formed a convincing pattern, leaving them with no "reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the first accused".

This ambiguity in the judgement allowed Libya to argue that al-Megrahi was a "political hostage" and a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

The air travel embargo was lifted, but Libya continues to languish under damaging American trade sanctions.

The victory claimed by Colonel Gaddafi in 1999 is now looking very hollow indeed.

Lockerbie and the claims of Magnus Linklater

[On 6 January 2016 an article by Magnus Linklater headlined We can be confident that the Scottish prosecutors got the right man appeared in the Scottish Review. On 23 January John Ashton responded to that article on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website. In The Cafe section of today’s issue of the Scottish Review John Ashton and Dr Morag Kerr reply as follows to the Linklater article:]

Magnus Linklater’s article on the Lockerbie case 'We can be confident that the Scottish prosecutors got the right man’ (6 January) makes a number of inaccurate claims, including the suggestion that, when writing the biography of the alleged bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, I deliberately suppressed evidence that was unfavourable to Mr Megrahi.

This was that on the morning of the bombing, and on a couple of occasions prior, he shared a flight with Libyan Abouagela Masud, who was alleged by a Libyan witness to be the bomb-maker responsible for the La Belle night club bombing in Berlin in 1986. This particular flight was from Malta, which the prosecution alleged was the launchpad for the bomb.

The book examined the evidence used to convict Mr Megrahi. Like the Scottish Police and prosecutors, I was unaware of Mr Masud’s alleged connection to La Belle until told of it by filmmaker Ken Dornstein well over three years after completing that book. Mr Linklater could easily have checked this with me before defaming me, but chose not to. How, I wonder, could I have suppressed something of which I had no knowledge? My book did not dodge the fact that Mr Megrahi was connected to some unsavoury characters within the Gaddafi regime, including the alleged mastermind of La Belle and Said Rashid, yet Mr Linklater fails to mention this, preferring instead to accuse me of burying inconvenient truths.

As anyone who has followed the Megrahi case knows, it is the Crown that suppressed important evidence – lots of it – all of which was helpful to Mr Megrahi. On this scandal Mr Linklater has consistently remained mute.

He also suggests that my claim that Megrahi suffered a miscarriage of justice is based on speculation, rather than hard evidence. Had he read my book properly, he would see that all of its key claims are founded on hard evidence, the bulk of which was from the Crown’s own files. The same goes for Dr Morag Kerr’s book Adequately Explained by Stupidity?, which he breezily dismisses, without naming it, as having 'no concrete evidence’ to back it up.

He implies that I believe Mr Megrahi was the victim of a giant conspiracy in which judges and lawyers knowingly participated in a miscarriage of justice. As I have repeatedly made clear, including to Mr Linklater, I hold no such belief. If there was a conspiracy to frame Mr Megrahi – a big if, but by no means impossible – I don’t believe it would have involved the knowing participation of the Scottish criminal justice system.

Mr Linklater tells us: 'I like the famous Sherlock Holmes quote: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth"', yet applies it selectively. Hard evidence that has emerged since Mr Megrahi was convicted demonstrates the impossibility of the main planks of the prosecution case: that Mr Megrahi bought the clothes for the bomb suitcase from a Maltese shop a fortnight before the attack; that the fragment of bomb timer found at Lockerbie matched timers supplied to Libya by Swiss firm Mebo; and that the bomb began its journey In Malta. In contrast, the only evidence to support the conviction in 15 years is that concerning Abouagela Masud.

Two years ago I wrote an open letter to Mr Linklater, which posed a number of questions. He promised to reply, but never did. Maybe he would like to in the Scottish Review – he has had plenty of time to think of answers.

John Ashton

I’m getting more than slightly tired of Magnus Linklater’s repeated attacks on me and my Lockerbie book (Adequately Explained by Stupidity?, Matador 2013). He uses his entrée as a journalist to disparage and dismiss my work over multiple platforms, without at any point addressing the substance of what I have written. His latest sally is perhaps the weakest to date: '...suggestions that Heathrow Airport was where the bomb was loaded again have no concrete evidence to back them; an entire book has been written on the Heathrow connection, but nothing has emerged to give it the kind of validity which would stand up in court'. (In a supreme discourtesy he doesn’t even cite my book by name to allow readers to access it and judge for themselves.)

My book is stuffed to the eyeballs with concrete evidence that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow. I have repeatedly begged proponents of Megrahi’s guilt to explain to me in what way I am mistaken or what inferences I have missed that might admit of any plausible scenario whatsoever whereby the bomb suitcase might have flown in on the feeder flight. Nobody has answered me. I have specifically begged Mr Linklater in person to address this point, but he has ignored me in favour of yet another sally in the press denouncing 'conspiracy theorists'.

He repeatedly states that no evidence has emerged that would stand up in court. I am quite certain that the analysis I present would stand up in court, as would other evidence being highlighted by other interested parties. The problem is that it has not come before any court. Attempts to bring it to court have been mounted and indeed are ongoing, but so far these have been thwarted by procedural obstacles.

It is not enough simply to hand-wave away a detailed, evidence-based and non-conspiratorial dissection of the Lockerbie evidence with vague platitudes about 'nothing has emerged to give it ... validity'. What does he expect to emerge, from where and from whom, before he will do me the courtesy of actually addressing the substance of my thesis? One might imagine that it would be of some interest to a journalist who repeatedly invokes the name of the respected Sunday Times Insight series, but apparently not.

If, as I contend, detailed and logical analysis of the evidence gathered at Lockerbie (with no allegations of fabrication, substitution, evidence-planting, corruption, conspiracy or deliberate malpractice) demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, not Malta, this flips the entire 'was Megrahi guilty?' conundrum on its head. Rather than placing him at the scene of the crime, it provides him with a rock-solid alibi.

Ken Dornstein’s work, which impresses Mr Linklater so profoundly, relies absolutely and fundamentally on the unexamined assumption that the Lockerbie bomb was introduced at Malta. If it wasn’t, then he might as well produce eye-witness evidence that Elvis was checking in for a flight at Luqa airport that morning for all the relevance it would have. It doesn’t matter if Megrahi knew, or travelled with, or was related to any number of rank bad guys implicated in unrelated atrocities – if the scene of the crime that day was a thousand miles away, he didn’t do it. Worse still, the entire multi-million-pound Lockerbie investigation was up a gum tree from its earliest weeks, and due to its failure to investigate the real scene of the crime we simply have no idea who carried out the atrocity.

I challenge Mr Linklater to put up or shut up. To explain in detail where he thinks the mistakes or omissions are in my analysis that invalidate my conclusion that the bomb suitcase was already in the container an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed, or to refrain from disparaging my work and myself in print.

Morag Kerr

Treats for testimony

[On this date in 2002 the Scottish edition of the Mail on Sunday published a long report on the “treats” provided to the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci in connection with his evidence at the Lockerbie trial. That report is no longer available online, but the story was immediately followed up by other news media. What follows is the text of the article that appeared in The Guardian:]

An investigation has been demanded following a claim that a witness in the Lockerbie trial enjoyed police hospitality in Scotland.

Evidence given by Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopowner, helped to convict the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. It is alleged that Mr Gauci was brought to Scotland five or six times, taken salmon fishing and hill walking, and put up in an expensive hotel.

He is also said to have been taken to Lockerbie, to see where the wreckage of the bombed Pan Am airliner landed in 1988, before last year's trial got under way.

Yesterday the Labour MP Tam Dalyell said he would raise the issue as a matter of urgency with the prime minister and foreign secretary.

The claim comes days after the start of al-Megrahi's appeal. Last January the Libyan former intelligence officer was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the bombing, which killed 259 on flight 103 and 11 on the ground.

Last week his legal team said a rebuttal of Mr Gauci's evidence would form a plank of its case.

Mr Gauci was the sole witness to link al-Megrahi directly to the bombing of Pan Am 103. He told the trial that al-Megrahi "resembled a lot" a man who bought clothes from Mr Gauci's shop that were later discovered to have been packed around the bomb.

Yesterday the Scottish Mail on Sunday reported that an undercover investigator had travelled to Malta and secretly taped conversations with Mr Gauci, owner of Mary's House clothes shop in Sliema.

Mr Gauci claimed that police had flown him to Scotland on five or six occasions, and taken him to Lockerbie to be shown the damage. He also claimed that the hospitality of the Scottish police had been extended to four others in his family.

He talked in the tape of being taken into the mountains, visiting Aviemore ski resort, fly-fishing for salmon, and bird-watching. On at least one occasion he stayed at the Hilton in Glasgow.

Dumfries and Galloway police and Strathclyde police refused to discuss the claim yesterday, saying only they could not comment on issues concerning witness protection.

Mr Dalyell said that the reports, if true, would have profound implications for al-Megrahi's appeal. "If Gauci was brought to Scotland before the trial at Zeist, why were the defence and the judges not told? If Gauci came after the trial, what is the purpose of the ongoing relationship?"

Robert Black, professor of law at Edinburgh University, said that Mr Gauci's trips needed to be investigated during al-Megrahi's appeal, adding that he knew of no other Scottish murder trial witness being taken on fishing trips by police.

Megrahi judgment 'full of mistakes'

[This is the headline over a report published in The Herald on this date in 2002. It reads as follows:]

The 82-page judgment that convicted Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi of the Lockerbie bombing is riddled with errors both great and small, the Libyan's counsel claimed yesterday.

William Taylor, QC, told five appeal judges at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands: ''Some of these errors are by themselves gross enough to entitle this court to hold that a miscarriage of justice has occurred.''

Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield, and MacLean jailed Megrahi for life last January after concluding that the evidence against him fitted together to form a ''real and convincing pattern'', but yesterday Mr Taylor used words such as ''flimsy'' and ''unbalanced'' to attack the judges' reasoning.

He accepted that one simple error might not have the effect of causing the appeal court to accept that a miscarriage of justice had taken place, but the combination of a series of errors could persuade the judges there had been a wrongful conviction.

He concentrated his attack yesterday on the way the trial judges dealt with the evidence of Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper whose testimony was instrumental in convicting Megrahi.

The judges decided Megrahi was the man who bought clothes from Mr Gauci's shop in Sliema on December 7, 1988, two weeks before the Lockerbie bombing, and Mr Taylor argued that the date of purchase was crucial to his client's conviction.

He has already told the appeal judges that unless the sale of the clothes - later packed in the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb - could be pinpointed to December 7 the purchaser could not have been Megrahi.

One of the factors used by the trial judges to pick December 7 as the purchase date was Mr Gauci's evidence about whether Christmas decorations were up in Sliema at the time the clothes were bought from his shop.

Asked about Christmas decorations at the trial, Mr Gauci replied: ''I wouldn't know exactly, but I haven't really noticed these things, but I remember, yes there were Christmas lights. They were on already. I'm sure. I can't say exactly.''

Mr Taylor told the appeal court: ''Gauci gave conflicting evidence in the trial about whether or not Christmas decorations were up or in the process of being up. In a statement to the police he had said that no Christmas decorations were up at the time of the sale.

''There are therefore three self-contradictory positions adopted by Gauci on the matter and the court has ignored the difficulty that Gauci told police in September 1989 that there were no decorations up at the time of the sale.

''It is surprising that the court felt able to reach any conclusion at all on the issue of being able to fix the date of purchase by reference to Christmas decorations.

''The court has preferred one version of Gauci's evidence over others in relation to whether decorations were being put up and has ignored an important contradiction in his evidence in order to reach a conclusion.

''The court attempted to reach a conclusion in the face of contradictory evidence which the court failed to explain away. This was a material misdirection adverse to Megrahi.

''It was at the forefront of the defence submissions that Gauci's reliability was undermined by inconsistencies in his evidence. It is Megrahi's contention that the court misdirected itself as to the date on which the purchase (of the clothes) took place.''

Mr Taylor also attacked the court's finding that Mr Gauci's ''qualified identification'' of Megrahi as the clothes buyer was reliable ''so far as it went''.

He pointed out that descriptions of the buyer given by Mr Gauci to the police less than a year after Lockerbie were ''radically different'' in terms of height, age, and skin colour from his later identification in court and at an identification parade at Camp Zeist in 1999 of Megrahi as resembling the purchaser.

He attacked Mr Gauci's identification of Megrahi as ''inherently suspect and flawed''.   

The hearing continues.