Documents to accompany Dr Swire's EIBF contribution

The following documents accompany Dr Jim Swire’s contribution to today’s Edinburgh International Book Festival session Megrahi: A spectacular miscarriage of justice?

1.  Foreword by Tam Dalyell MP to Cover-up of Convenience by John Ashton and Ian Ferguson (2001)

Seldom can an act of terrorism have had so many layers of sinister intrigue as the Lockerbie bombing. It was ten days after the disaster, on the evening of 31 December 1988 – Hogmanay – that I first became aware something very odd was afoot. A constituent, who I knew was an off-duty Lothian and Borders Police officer, pulled me aside at a function. He told me in confidence about disturbing events he had witnessed in the preceding days, while assigned to the Lockerbie crash site helping the Dumfries and Galloway force search the site. He described how American agents were swarming around the area, openly removing items of debris. He was concerned, not only because they appeared to be riding roughshod over the rules of evidence gathering required of a criminal investigation, but also because the police were doing nothing to stop them. My initial reaction was, ‘Well, one can hardly deny the Americans, since they’ve lost 175 citizens.’ During the following weeks I talked to more officers, some of whom had been left seething by similar experiences with the mysterious Americans.

Five years later, because I had repeatedly raised Lockerbie issues in the Commons, I was introduced to Allan Francovich, a remarkable American film-maker who had just begun to make his landmark Lockerbie documentary The Maltese Double Cross. His dogged investigation suggested that the ‘official version’ of the bombing (which insisted it was, in the words of one US official, a ‘Libyan government operation from start to finish’) was a sham and that the real culprits lay outside of Libya. More worryingly, he presented compelling evidence that the CIA was complicit in the disaster and, in so doing, made sense of the troubling accounts of my police sources.  Although not the first investigator to advance this ‘alternative version’, he did so with a degree of detail that was too great to be ignored. The British and American governments’ extraordinary joint campaign to discredit the film was both an indicator of how close Francovich had got to the truth and a disturbing reminder of the lengths to which some of those in authority would go to keep the lid on the affair.

Francovich’s sudden death in 1997 came as a massive blow, but
thankfully his deputy John Ashton has kept alive his spirit of inquiry.

In 1999 I became aware of another earnest seeker after the truth, Ian Ferguson, who was at the time producing a documentary for US National Public Radio. He is one of those rare individuals who, like Francovich and Ashton, is prepared to ask the awkward questions and devote many long hours to the search for answers. His reporting of the events surrounding the trial, for Scotland’s Sunday Herald newspaper and on his website thelockerbietrial.com, has been unsurpassed and has frequently rattled the cages of authority. I was delighted to learn that he and Ashton had collaborated to produce this book.

As an MP, I have seen it as my role to complement the efforts of the various investigators and the equally remarkable work of the British Lockerbie victims’ relatives, by raising questions in Parliament, and to that end I have so far initiated 16 adjournment debates. The sixth of these, held on 1 February 1995, was answered by the then Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. I am told it was the only occasion since the war that a senior cabinet minister had replied to a backbencher’s adjournment debate. I am a creature of instinct and I sensed that he and the other ministers who have replied over the years were uncomfortable with having to peddle the official line. Later that day, Douglas spotted me talking to his then shadow and eventual successor Robin Cook MP. My diary entry for the day reads:

“Douglas [Hurd] swooped down on Robin and myself in the corridor by the window opposite the clerk’s assistant’s office. He said, ‘I really do ask you two to believe that as Foreign Secretary I cannot tell the [Scottish] Crown Office [which was in charge of the Lockerbie case] what to do, nor does the Foreign Office have detailed access to evidence which they say they have. You must understand that law officers really are a law unto themselves.’ Robin and I agreed that Douglas Hurd was not unfriendly towards us, and was probably correct in outlining the rules. Robin said that he guessed that Hurd was being honest with us and did not know the full story. I shrugged my shoulders, and told Robin he was probably right.”

One of the most remarkable, but least reported, revelations in the recent trial of the two Libyans was that even the Crown Office did not know the ‘full story’ when it indicted the pair in 1991. Indeed, it was not until the trial was underway that it learned that its star witness was highly unreliable. The CIA had known this for well over a decade, yet had not seen fit to make available the crucial paperwork documenting this man’s failings. Evidence heard at the trial also confirmed the long-held suspicion that CIA agents were involved in the highly irregular activities at the crash site witnessed by my police sources.

In my view, these facts alone warrant the public inquiry that has always been the demand of the British victims’ relatives. I have no doubt that there is much else in this book that will add weight to that demand. My government colleagues promised such an inquiry when in opposition and I trust that, as men of honour, they will make good that pledge.


2.  Letter  to Jim Swire from Chief Constable, Dumfries & Galloway Police

Dear Dr Swire,                                                   2 April 2012                           

I refer to your recent correspondence headed ‘Apparent Suppression of Evidence’. This letter seeks to fulfil the undertaking I gave you to provide you with an unambiguous response to concerns you raised regarding the handling of statements and evidence in connection with the insecurity detected at Heathrow.

I can confirm the following:

1.    In January 1989 BAA security notified the Metropolitan police that an insecurity had been detected within terminal 3 at Heathrow during the early hours of 21 December 1988.

2.    The Metropolitan police passed this evidence to the Police Incident Room at Lockerbie and Actions were raised to investigate this matter.

3.    During the course of this investigation Mr Manly, the BAA Security Team Leader who discovered the insecurity, was interviewed by an officer from the Metropolitan Police and a statement was obtained from him. The interview took place on 31 January 1989. A number of other witnesses were also traced and interviewed regarding the insecurity.

4.    Mr Manly’s statement was passed to the police incident room at Lockerbie and was registered on the HOLMES system on 2 February 1989. This statement and those from other witnesses identified At Heathrow were considered by enquiry officers at the time in the context of a range of emerging strands of evidence.

5.    In 1991 the police report outlining the evidence against Mr Megrahi and Mr Fhima was submitted to the Crown Office. This report did not contain a reference to the insecurity at Heathrow and made no mention of Mr Manly's statement.

6.    The surrender of Mr Megrahi and Mr Fhima for trial in the Netherlands prompted a massive preparation exercise during the course of which over 14,000 witness statements were provided to Crown Office in 1999. Mr Manly's statement was included in the material supplied to Crown though again the police made no reference to it.

7.    In 2001, as a result of Mr Manly contacting defence representatives, the insecurity at Heathrow was subject to a fresh investigation, the Crown disclosed the relevant statements to the defence and as you know the matter was considered during Mr Megrahi's first appeal. The appeal judges, in rejecting the appeal, made it clear that their assessment of the significance of this additional evidence must be conducted in the context of the whole circumstantial evidence laid before the trial court and concluded that "it cannot be said that the verdict falls to be regarded as a miscarriage of justice on account of having been reached in ignorance of the additional evidence" As the Lord Advocate explained at the meeting in London it is not for the appeal court to look at the case "afresh", it has to consider the new evidence in the context of the whole case that the trial court had before it.

In summary I can categorically state that no suppression of evidence took place and I hope this information alleviates your concerns in that regard.

(Signed) Patrick Shearer, Chief Constable.


3.  The place of Lockerbie in world events, a review by Neil Berry of John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury

Published by the plucky Scottish press Birlinn, John Ashton’s new book Megrahi: You are my Jury: The Lockerbie Evidence casts grave doubt on the validity of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi’s conviction as the Libyan terrorist responsible for blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 and murdering 259 mostly American people in December 1988. At the same time, it raises deeply disturbing questions about the United States and United Kingdom’s boasted commitment to truth and justice.

It is perhaps no surprise that the mainstream British media are fighting shy of according this bulky volume the attention it deserves. For to discuss its contents would mean re-visiting a vastly acrimonious episode that threatened to poison relations between Britain and the US: The early release in August 2009 from his Scottish prison — on grounds that he was dying of cancer — of a Muslim convict who was seen by many as the personification of evil.

A member of Megrahi’s legal team, John Ashton is liable to the charge that his familiarity with the Libyan has clouded his judgment, but his book — which intersperses an exhaustive examination of the evidence that led to his conviction with Megrahi’s own testimony — collates the work of several hands and is a model of forensic rigor. It is indeed hard to believe that any fair-minded person could read it without being persuaded that Megrahi was the victim of a grotesque miscarriage of justice. The powerful impression left by the book is that Megrahi, who had run security for Libyan Arab Airlines while engaging in clandestine trading, had the ill-luck to be in Malta, the putative point of origin of the Lockerbie bomb, at the wrong time, and that he was framed because the US found it convenient to point the finger of blame at Libya.

What has never been widely recognized is that the blowing up of Pan Am 103 over the Scottish town ofLockerbie took place six months after the shooting down of an Iranian airbus over the Persian Gulf in July 1988 by the American battle cruiser, the USS Vincennes, with the deaths of 290 Iranians. It was an outrage Iran immediately vowed to avenge, and all the indications were that it was Iran, acting through the shadowy terrorist splinter group, the Palestine Popular Struggle Front, that mandated the Lockerbie operation. If, in the aftermath of Lockerbie, the US shrank from confrontation with Tehran, it was because, on top of seeking to negotiate the release of American hostages held by Iranian-backed terrorists, it was concerned to have a free hand in repelling Saddam Hussein’s attempt to annex Kuwait to Iraq.

Yet a scapegoat for Lockerbie was imperative and Libya, with an egregious leader, Col Qaddafi, whose image in the West was that of a deranged tribal savage, figured as the ideal candidate. John Ashton’s book underlines how readily the Western public accepted the case for imposing crippling sanctions on Libya as the culprit for Lockerbie. Few demurred when — even before he was sentenced by 3 Scottish judges at a special court in the Netherlands in 2001 — US President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright repeatedly described Megrahi not as a suspect but as a mass murderer.

All this would be chilling enough — even if the case against Megrahi were a more compelling one. In truth, his conviction relied on the testimony of a shopkeeper in Malta who had but the sketchiest memory of selling clothes to an Arab customer around the time when a suitcase containing the bomb was supposedly put on a feeder flight to London, there to be loaded onto Pan Am 103. It relied, too, on a circuit board, alleged to have been part of the bomb and to have derived from a batch of Swiss timing devices sold to Libya, though it was to transpire that this item of evidence — found far from the Lockerbie crash site — had nothing to do with the timers in question. What is particularly shocking is how much material evidence was withheld from Megrahi’s trial — including the striking circumstance that the night before Pan Am 103 flew from London Heathrow, the airport was broken into.

The assumption that the Lockerbie bomb originated in Malta may well have deflected attention from a far more productive line of inquiry.

Megrahi endured his 8-year Scottish incarceration in the bitter knowledge that he had been convicted on a basis that came nowhere near to satisfying the principle that guilt should be proved “beyond reasonable doubt.” Following 9/11, however, he felt that his chances of ever clearing his name had all but vanished. Certainly, the belief that he was the “Lockerbie bomber,” a malevolent Muslim who had carried out Britain’s worst ever terrorist atrocity, lodged deep in the public mind — so deep that when he was diagnosed as having only months to live and Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MackAskill, decreed he should be allowed to return to Libya to die, there was widespread outrage, not least in the United States.

In Britain and the US, many were of the opinion that Megrahi was the beneficiary of a squalid oil deal struck with Qaddafi by Britain’s sometime Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and that British and Scottish politicians were not only colluding with a vile regime but insulting the dead.

Outrage about the commutation of his sentence grew as Megrahi confounded Scottish medical expectations regarding his survival prospects, living on in Tripoli until May of this year. And though he remained desperately ill, there were to be vindictive demands, following the toppling of Col Qaddafi in 2011, that he be made to face justice in the United States.

Yet on the evidence of John Ashton’s book it is not his truncated sentence that ought to be on British and American consciences. It is the fact that Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was ever convicted at all.

First batch of Lockerbie documents released: The Gauci Files

[At the launch of his book Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, John Ashton promised that over the coming weeks he would be releasing previously-unpublished documents relating to the Megrahi case. The first tranche has been disclosed today.  An accompanying press release reads as follows:]

Released today - the Gauci files

Newly published papers show how key witnesses were tainted by huge financial rewards

Intelligence reports and other previously unpublished papers released today show how the police secretly discussed the payment of large rewards to the most important witness in the Lockerbie case and his brother. The papers describe how Tony Gauci expressed an interest in being rewarded nine years prior to giving evidence against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and before he made the crucial partial identification of Megrahi, which became the cornerstone of the Crown case.

The documents, which are being published by the author of new book Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Matters, John Ashton, also show that:

·         Within weeks of the police finding Gauci, the FBI told the police that ‘unlimited money’ was on offer for the witness.

·         Although the police insisted that he was not motivated by money, he was under the strong influence of his brother Paul, who had ‘a clear desire to gain financial benefit’ from the case and who explored ‘any means he can to identify where financial advantage can be gained.’

·         The police believed that paying the brothers would ensure that they would not embarrass the police or Crown.

·         After Megrahi’s conviction the senior investigating officer lobbied the US Department of Justice to increase the previously discussed rewards of $2 million for Tony and $1 million for Paul.

·         The Crown Office did not object to this reward application, even though such payments were against its own rules.

Mr Ashton said:

‘Tony Gauci’s evidence was central to Mr Megrahi’s conviction. The judges were clearly impressed by him, but were unaware of the rewards issue lurking in the background. No doubt Mr Gauci did his best to tell the truth, but there is also no doubt that honest witnesses can be unconsciously swayed by the expectation of rewards. Some of his evidence to the trial court was notably more helpful to the Crown than his original police statements.’

The documents were among the appendices to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s statement of reasons on Megrahi’s case. The commission referred the case back to the appeal court on six grounds, one of which concerned Mr Gauci’s expectation of being rewarded. The commission established that the brothers received substantial reward payments from the Department of Justice. The statement of reasons was released last year, but the appendices have remained under wraps.

Mr Ashton has promised to publish more documents in the run up to the Lockerbie 25th anniversary in December. He said:

‘I am releasing documents that the court should have seen, which the Crown failed to disclose. Lockerbie is the UK’s worse mass murder and the public has a right to know the truth, not just what the Crown wanted them to know. The Scottish government has consistently denied calls for a public inquiry in to Mr Megrahi’s conviction so it’s left to his supporters to keep the issue on the public agenda.’

Notes to editors

1.      John has provided explanatory notes to the documents at the start of the accompanying pdf.

2.      270 people were killed when Pan Am flight 103 was destroyed over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

3.      In 2001 Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was found guilty of the bombing by a panel of three senior law lords sitting at a specially constructed court at Kamp Zeist in The Netherlands. He remains the only man convicted of the murders. He was released on compassionate grounds by justice secretary Kenny MacAskill on 20 August 2009 and died in Tripoli on 20 May 2012.

4.      John Ashton was the author of Megrahi’s biography Megrahi: You are my Jury, which was published in February 2012. From 2006 to 2009 he worked as a researcher with Megrahi’s legal team on the preparation of his appeal against conviction. He is available for interview (...).

5.      Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters was published by Birlinn Ltd (£7.99pbk) on 3 October 2013.

Why did SCCRC fail to contact John Ashton for Megrahi documentation?

[What follows is the text of an item posted last night by John Ashton on his website Megrahi: You are my Jury:]

The SCCRC say they couldn’t get access to Megrahi’s appeal papers – so why didn’t they ask me for them?

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has today announced that it has rejected the application made by various UK Lockerbie victims’ relatives and members of the Megrahi family for a review of Abdelbaset’s conviction on the grounds that “it is not in the interests of justice”.

The accompanying statement contains the following:

The Commission also had to consider the circumstances surrounding the abandonment of Mr Megrahi’s previous appeal. To enable it to do so it was imperative that the Commission be provided with the defence appeal papers. After a period of 14 months, and despite various requests having been made of the Megrahi family and of the late Mr Megrahi’s previous solicitors, Messrs Taylor and Kelly, these have not been forthcoming…

[Quote by SCCRC Chairman Jean Couper:]

It is extremely frustrating that the relevant papers, which the Commission believes are currently with the late Mr Megrahi’s solicitors, Messrs Taylor and Kelly, and with the Megrahi family, have not been forthcoming despite repeated requests from the Commission. Therefore, and with some regret, we have decided to end the current review…

…The Commission has written to the late Mr Megrahi`s solicitors and to his family requesting access to the defence papers in order to allow it to consider the circumstances surrounding the abandonment of Mr Megrahi’s second appeal. No papers were forthcoming despite repeated requests.

Abdelbaset gave me access to all of the defence appeal papers, and I still have them, yet no one from the SCCRC approached me for them. Had they done so, I would have happily handed them over. I also reported on Abdelbaset’s reason for abandoning his appeal in Megrahi: You are my Jury.

The application to the SCCRC stated, in schedule 3, the following:

The circumstances in which Abdelbaset al-Megrahi came to abandon his second appeal are set out in Chapter 14 (pages 346 to 365) and Appendix 4 (pages 420 to 425) of John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury — The Lockerbie Evidence (Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2012, ISBN-13 978 1 78027 015 9) and (much more briefly) on page 119 of John Ashton’s Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters (Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2013, ISBN-13 978 1 78027 167 5) to which the Commission is respectfully referred.

Having been diagnosed as suffering from terminal prostate cancer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was desperate to achieve his repatriation to Libya so that he could die surrounded by his family. In these circumstances he applied for compassionate release on 24 July 2009. The Libyan Government had already submitted an application for prisoner transfer on 5 May 2009. Abandonment of Megrahi’s appeal was not a requirement for compassionate release, but it was a requirement for prisoner transfer; and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice intimated that, although prisoner transfer had been applied for more than two months before application was made for compassionate release, both applications would be dealt with by him simultaneously (see eg http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/07/megrahi-deadline-will-be-missed.html). Accordingly, if both routes to repatriation were to remain open to him, Megrahi had to abandon his appeal.

In a press release issued through his solicitor, Tony Kelly, a short time after his return to Libya, Megrahi stated: “I have returned to Tripoli with my unjust conviction still in place. As a result of the abandonment of my appeal I have been deprived of the opportunity to clear my name through the formal appeal process. I have vowed to continue my attempts to clear my name. I will do everything in my power to persuade the public, and in particular the Scottish public, of my innocence.” (see http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/09/press-release-regarding-publication-of.html). Until the end of his life, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi continued to protest his innocence of the crime of which he had been convicted: see eg http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2011/12/these-are-my-last-words-i-am-innocent.html.

In view of this, the SCCRC cannot have been unaware of my involvement in the case, so why did they not contact me?

Shameful incompetence

[On this date in 2012 the Edinburgh International Book Festival featured a session devoted to John Ashton’s recently-published Megrahi: You are my Jury. The report of the event on the EIBF website reads as follows:]

“Eight senior Scottish judges got it wrong, but the question is why? It is not because of a lack of intellectual skills”, said Hans Köchler this morning at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, suggesting an international government cover up over the conviction of the Libyan bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Speaking at the first keynote event on the opening morning of the Book Festival, Köchler, who was an observer at the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie) bombing trial and subsequent appeal, argued that the verdict was reached for political motives and that the Scottish judges at Camp Zeist passed a ruling which was not logical upon examination of the facts.

Joining Köchler in the event was John Ashton, author of Megrahi: You are My Jury, as well as Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.

Ashton, who worked on Megrahi’s legal team and has written the biography of Megrahi on his request, agreed with Köchler, arguing that the Crown Office withheld evidence in the initial trial, “their incompetence was shameful” he said.

Following a meeting with the Lord Advocate in February of this year, Jim Swire spoke of his fury that the Lord Advocate did not know why evidence was withheld by the Crown Office in the original trial, specifically the evidence surrounding a break in to Heathrow airport around the time Pan Am Flight 103 took off from London.

Megrahi, who died in May this year, was released on compassionate grounds from Scottish prison in 2009 – a decision that was deeply divisive. “Megrahi’s cancer was a gift from God for everyone involved in this case. It was a tragedy for Megrahi but everyone else was punching the air”, said Ashton, suggesting that the release allowed for improved relations between the UK, Libya and the United States, having earlier said it was “plain as daylight” there was a deal between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi.

[RB: Magnus Linklater was present at the session and was most unhappy about the warm reception given by the packed audience to the speakers’ contention that the Megrahi conviction was a disgrace. His column in The Times two days later can be read here; responses by John Ashton and Steven Raeburn can be read here.]

John Ashton responds to Magnus Linklater's latest article

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. John Ashton has now responded to that article on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website. Mr Ashton’s response gives the full text of the Linklater piece, interspersed with Ashton’s comments and corrections. John Ashton’s article can be read here.

New evidence casts doubt in Lockerbie case

[This is the headline over a report published today on the Aljazeera News website.  It reads as follows:]

Fresh scientific evidence unearthed by a Scottish legal review undermines the case against the man convicted of being responsible for the Lockerbie aircraft bombing, an investigation for Al Jazeera has found.

The Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) report details evidence that would likely have resulted in the verdict against Abdel Baset al-Meghrahi, a Libyan man convicted of carrying out the bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 in 1988, being overturned.

'Lockerbie: Case Closed', an hour-long documentary to be aired on Al Jazeera on Monday, examines the evidence uncovered by the SCCRC as well as revealing fresh scientific evidence which is unknown to the commission but which comprehensively undermines a crucial part of the case against the man known as the Lockerbie bomber.

Among the evidence examined by the SCCRC was the testimony of Tony Gauci, a shop owner from Malta, and the most important prosecution witness in the case.

Gauci identified Megrahi as a man who had bought clothing and an umbrella from him on December 7, 1988 - remnants of which were later recovered from among debris recovered from the disaster scene. 

The SCCRC found a number of reasons to seriously question this identification and Gauci’s account of events on that date, which was also the only day on which Megrahi could have been present in Malta to make such purchases.

The report also raises concerns about the legitimacy of the formal identification process, in which Gauci picked Megrahi out from a line-up. The commission found that Gauci had seen Megrahi’s photo in a magazine article identifying him as a possible suspect many weeks before the parade took place.

The SCCRC also found that Scottish police knew that Gauci was interested in financial rewards, despite maintaining that the shopkeeper had shown no such interest.

Gauci reportedly picked up a $2 million US government reward for his role in the case. Under Scottish law, witnesses cannot be paid for their testimony.

Most significantly, the documentary will reveal the dramatic results of new scientific tests that destroy the most crucial piece of forensic evidence linking the bombing to Libya.

The new revelations were put to the terminally sick Megrahi in Libya, and his comments on the case will be heard for the first time in these films.

Of Gauci, he maintains that he never visited his shop.

"If I have a chance to see him [Gauci] I am forgiving him. I would tell him that I have never in my entire life been in his shop. I have never bought any clothing from him. And I tell him that he dealt with me very wrongly. This man – I have never seen him in my entire life except when he came to the court. I find him a very simple man," Meghrahi told Al Jazeera.

John Ashton, who has been investigating the case for nearly 20 years, including time spent as part of Megrahi’s defence team, said: "The Lockerbie disaster was Europe’s worst terrorist attack. More Americans died in that attack than in any other terrorist event before 9/11. It's also Britain’s worst miscarriage of justice, the wrong man was convicted and the real killers are still out there."

Lockerbie: Case Closed will be broadcast on Monday 27 February at 20:00 GMT on Al Jazeera English.


[The following is an excerpt from a report in today’s edition of The Herald:]


Today the official biography of the Libyan convicted of the atrocity, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, will be launched and two documentaries will be aired, all of which highlight new evidence and previously unseen documents that experts say would have overturned the conviction.

Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci claimed that Megrahi purchased clothes found packed around the bomb – a claim the Libyan has always denied.

In one of the TV programmes, Megrahi, 59, says: "I have never seen him in my entire life except when he came to the court. I find him a very simple man. But I do forgive him."

The Herald is one of only two newspapers in the world to have had advance access to the book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, by John Ashton, a former member of the defence team.

The Al Jazeera documentary to be broadcast today claims Megrahi's conviction would "almost certainly" have been overturned had previously unseen evidence been used in an appeal.

The programme, Lockerbie: Case Closed, gained access to the investigations of the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) – which referred Megrahi's case for a fresh appeal in June 2007 on six grounds – and also uncovered fresh scientific evidence that it claims is unknown to the commission and "comprehensively undermines" part of the case against Megrahi. (…)

Earlier this month, campaigners fighting on behalf of Megrahi accused politicians, lawyers, civil servants and governments of an "orchestrated desire" to keep details of his case under wraps.

Members of the Justice For Megrahi group, who have called for an inquiry into his conviction, said the Crown Office and civil service would "do anything" to stop disclosure.

The Al Jazeera documentary claims to disclose the "dramatic results" of new scientific tests that undermine forensic evidence used in the case.

John Ashton, the author of the book, has been investigating the case for nearly 20 years.

He said: "The Lockerbie disaster was Europe's worst terrorist attack. More Americans died in that attack than in any other terrorist event before 9/11. It's also Britain's worst miscarriage of justice – the wrong man was convicted and the real killers are still out there."

[A report in today’s edition of The Scotsman contains the following:]

Scottish publisher Birlinn launches into the Lockerbie controversy today with the publication of a book that promises the fullest account yet of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s story in his own words.

Megrahi: You Are My Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, is by John Ashton, who worked with Megrahi’s legal team from 2006 to 2009.

A long-time researcher on the case, he is said to have been working on the 500-page book with Megrahi since the latter’s release from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds following a cancer diagnosis in August 2009.

In its summary, the book promises to present “conclusive new evidence” to prove Megrahi was “an innocent victim of dirty politics, a flawed investigation and judicial folly”. (…)

Details of the book’s contents have been a closely guarded secret. But it has hit the headlines well before its publication, with some parents of those who died denouncing it as “blood money”.

The Rev John Mosey, will be in Edinburgh today for the book’s launch. His daughter died in the atrocity.

He said he respected Mr Ashton’s research, adding: “If the rumours of its contents are well-founded, it could open up the Lockerbie thing in a very serious manner that the legal profession will have to take notice of.” (…)

Nearly half of the latest book is in Megrahi’s own words, a Birlinn spokesperson said yesterday. About a third explores the forensic evidence, and one person who has read it described it as so complicated that “my brain has been stewed”.

The Birlinn spokesperson said: “The book came to us, and the board talked about it long and hard, but decided that this was a book we wanted to publish.

“We published it without serialisation or profiting from the book, just to get Megrahi’s story on the record.

“There is new evidence within the book, and that’s what will be revealed today. It’s also the first time that we have had a wealth of material in Megrahi’s own words.

“He will not receive any form of payment for the book.”

[A further article in The Scotsman, which purports to disclose some of the evidence in the book and contains reactions from Lockerbie relatives, can be read here.  The Times's short report (behind the paywall) can be read here. A report in today’s Daily Mirror can be read here; the report in the Daily Record here; and the report in The Sun here. The Press Association news agency report can be read here. A report on the STV News website can be read here.]