Showing posts sorted by date for query "Rev Dr John Cameron". Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query "Rev Dr John Cameron". Sort by relevance Show all posts

Wednesday 30 March 2022

Wrongful conviction with falsified evidence

[What follows is taken from the Very Rev Prof Iain Torrance's obituary of the Rev Dr John Cameron in today's edition of The Scotsman:]

In retirement, desperate to maintain an active brain, he turned to the newspapers. Over the years he took pleasure in being able to reach more people through his letters than he ever did from the pulpit and built a loyal following. He used to send these to me, always with the email heading, ‘Warblings’ or ‘More Warblings’. He was particularly proud to have supported his friend Margo Macdonald in her efforts to legalise Assisted Dying in this country, as well as Abdul Basset Ali al-Megrahi and his wrongful conviction of the Lockerbie bombing with falsified evidence. And I know that Abdul Basset Ali al-Megrahi used to send John Christmas cards from Barlinnie in gratitude for his kindness.

Tuesday 4 January 2022

Explain guilty verdict at Lockerbie trial

[This is the headline over a letter by Rev Dr John Cameron published today on the website of The Courier and Advertiser. It reads as follows:]

The guilty verdict issued on January 31 2001 by the three Scottish judges – Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and Maclean – at the conclusion of the Pan Am 103 trial was unsound by all normal legal criteria. After 84 days of controversy, questionable evidence as well as weeks of adjournments, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was found guilty of the atrocity while his sole alleged accomplice, Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted on all charges.

In their 82-page verdict, the three law lords – who had acted not only as judge and jury but all too often as prosecutor – exposed the weakness of the prosecution case and how they ignored a mass of contradictory forensic and circumstantial evidence when it suited them to bring a guilty verdict against Megrahi. Significantly they rejected out of hand the defence argument that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) was responsible.

Initial police investigations suspected it was a reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian plane with 290 civilians on board by the US warship Vincennes six months before Lockerbie. There was a money trail between Iran and the Syrian-backed PFLP-GC however, in 1990, then-US president George H Bush placed huge pressure on Margaret Thatcher to drop this line of inquiry.

Mrs Thatcher later refused a public inquiry on the grounds that it was against the “national interest”.

The question remains as to why there was such a discrepancy between the standards applied to defence arguments implicating Iran, Syria et al and those employed by the prosecution against the two Libyans. The latter’s case was just as circumstantial and unconvincing, a fact acknowledged in part by the acquittal of Fhimah.

I suspect an explanation as to why a guilty verdict was delivered lies far in the future and should be sought in the political rather than the judicial arena.

Wednesday 2 December 2020

The real perpetrators of Lockerbie bombing still to be brought to book

[This is the headline over a letter by Rev Dr John Cameron published on the website of the Belfast Telegraph on 1 December 2020. It reads as follows:]

In 1994 Nelson Mandela offered South Africa as a neutral venue for the Pan Am atrocity trial, but this was turned down by John Major.

His offer was also rejected by Tony Blair at the 1997 Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Edinburgh.

In words that still haunt our judiciary, Mandela warned “no one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge” in the Lockerbie case.

A life-long friend, the late Graham Cox, was Sheriff Principal of South Strathclyde, Dumfries and Galloway when Fhimah and Megrahi were arrested.

They appeared before him on April 6, 1999 at a makeshift Scottish court at Kamp Van Zeist in Holland.

In spite of his suspicion that the prosecution had arrested the wrong men, this court appearance starting off the subsequent legal proceedings.

Cox had no doubt the bombing resulted from the shooting down of Iran Air 655 by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, or that the Iranians recruited the PFLP-General Command.

Later, when Mandela asked the Kirk to intervene in a “serious miscarriage of justice”, Cox pointed me to the unsafe forensics, the unlikely use of a long-range timer and the fact that the bomb entered the system at Heathrow.

My report for the Kirk was used by Al Jazeera in a documentary which left no doubt of Megrahi’s innocence. [RB: Dr Cameron's report and the Al Jazeera documentary are referred to here, at the text accompanying footnote 46.]

Sadly, Cox warned against any hope that the verdict might be reversed.

Lord Fraser, then our senior law officer, had admitted the key witness Tony Gauci wasn’t “the full shilling”, had been paid $3m by the US and that the trial was a farce, but “nobody wants this can of worms opened”.

Saturday 28 January 2017

On the side of the angels

[What follows is the text of a letter from the Rev Dr John Cameron published in today’s edition of The Herald:]

For a dyed-in-the-wool old Tory like me, Tam Dalyell represented the Labour Party at its very best and he was an asset not only to his own party but to the nation as a whole. His importance as a voice crying in the wilderness of Westminster was beyond measure for so often he was spot on – Scottish devolution, Suez, Iraq, Porton Down, Diego Garcia, etc.
I treasured his phone call when I was being rubbished for having produced a highly critical report for the Kirk on the forensic evidence presented at the Lockerbie trial. He told me to "hang in there"; that he too believed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was innocent and that I was “on the side of such angels as Nelson Mandela, Jim Swire and the UN observer”.

Monday 2 April 2012

A full inquiry into conduct of Crown Office is essential

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


"Some of the material which is now disclosed goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just issues of credibility and reliability, but beyond."


This was the verdict of Richard Keen, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, on the recent revelations of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission's Lockerbie report.


His bravura performance as Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah's defence counsel was the highlight of the trial and it is still not clear why the Law Lords convicted Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on such risible witness testimony.


It was, however, disappointing that the commission ignored the "canteen culture" of the forensic evidence and the notorious insecurity of Heathrow's inter-line baggage area.


The Scottish Government should initiate a full inquiry into the conduct of the Crown Office and not hide behind Westminster as it did over the release of the SCCRC report.

Wednesday 15 February 2012

... a prosecution which should never have been brought ...


[What follows is the text of a letter from Rev Dr John Cameron published in today’s edition of The Herald:]
We should be grateful that Joe Beltrami, the legendary Scottish criminal lawyer, took the time to comment on the direction in which Scots law is heading.
I was appalled by the Lockerbie trial and remember how Richard Keen, now Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, shredded a prosecution which should never have been brought. That farrago was not as disturbing as the trend being followed in rape trials where the mere word of the complainant is rapidly becoming sufficient for conviction.

Friday 21 October 2011

'That's for Lockerbie': Press cheers Kadhafi demise

[This is the headline over a report on the UK press's treatment of the death of Gaddafi published by the Agence France Presse news agency. It reads in part:]

The death of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi is a triumph which serves as a warning to other Middle East dictators, but concerns linger over the embattled nation's future, media said Friday.

Newspapers also lauded Britain's role in bringing about the long-serving ruler's downfall, but public opinion appeared to be more muted.

"That's for Lockerbie", populist tabloid The Sun ran as its headline, above a picture of Kadhafi's dead body, in reference to the 1988 bombing of a US passenger jet over a Scottish town which killed 270 people.

The Times' editorial praised the "bravery of the Libyan people" and the "equally honourable" actions of Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for the "swift and timely aid offered in their struggle."

The Rupert Murdoch-owned title also recognised the "bravery, restraint and determination" of Britain's armed forces, who helped avert a massacre "on the scale of Srebrenica" in the once-besieged town of Benghazi.

However, only 42 percent of Guardian readers who took part in an online poll said they were proud of Britain's involvement in Kadhafi's fall from grace.

Uncertainties remain over the circumstances of Kadhafi's demise, but The Times reasoned his death was the preferable outcome as a trial "would probably have revealed little that the world did not already know".

Fellow broadsheet The Daily Telegraph suggested the death had helped redraw the political map of the restive region.

Kadhafi's ousting, along with those of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, had "undeniably transformed the politics of the Arab world, and we will need to adjust accordingly," its editorial said.

"For those despots still clinging to power in the region, notably Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the bloodied corpse of Kadhafi should serve as a chilling incentive to political reform," it added.

The left-leaning Guardian agreed that "there could have been no more prophetic sight for the tyrants who remain" than that of Kadhafi's body being carried away on a truck.

"This may well be the fate that awaits Assad or Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, and they must now know it," the paper's editorial continued.

Looking to the future, the paper urged Libya's new leaders "to remake a future which guarantees both human rights at home and independence from foreign interference.

"This is a tall order in a country with no democratic tradition and lots of oil," it cautioned. "The next chapter in the history of Libya has now begun."

The Times advised Britain to "offer the hand of friendship to the National Transitional Council (NTC)", the republic's provisional government.

It also called for perseverance in the face of the "squalls of conflicting ambitions, exaggerated popular expectations and Islamist manoeuvrings" which now appear inevitable.

[A summary of international media reaction can be found on the website of The Tripoli Post.

One of the reports in today's edition of The Herald contains the following:]

David Cameron described it as a “momentous day” in which all of the dictator’s victims should be remembered, including those killed in the Lockerbie bombing, PC Yvonne Fletcher, gunned down outside the Libyan embassy in London, and all those killed by the IRA using Libyan Semtex explosives.

For its part Libya’s interim government, the National Transitional Council (NTC), claimed Gaddafi’s death had “drawn a curtain” over his crimes.


But it faced immediate pressure from victims to disclose all the evidence it has on his involvement in atrocities, including the Lockerbie bombing.


Despite a claim earlier this year from the head of the NTC he had proof of Gaddafi’s guilt over Lockerbie, that information has never been disclosed to families, said Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing.


An MP also claimed last night the death of the Libyan leader paved the way for the settlement of legal claims by IRA victims.

[A report in The Scotsman contains the following:]

Family members of those who died in the 1988 bombing, described the former dictator’s death as a “missed opportunity” to hold him to account.

Reverend John Mosey, who lost his 19-year-old daughter Helga in the attack, said: “I would much rather that Gaddafi had remained alive so that he could be tried, because I am a great believer in the law. Had he remained alive, we might also have been able to get some answers to the many questions that still remain over Lockerbie.” 

Rev Mosey believes Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the man convicted over the Lockerbie bombing – is innocent of the crime, and Gaddafi could have shed light on who was responsible.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, is similarly minded.

He said: “I would have loved to have seen Gaddafi appear in front of the International Criminal Court both to answer charges against his gross treatment of his own people and of citizens murdered abroad by his thugs.

“But I would also have loved to have heard about what Gaddafi knew about the Lockerbie atrocity.”

Friday 19 August 2011

The Lockerbie bomber I know

[This is the headline over an article in today's edition of The Guardian. It reads in part:]

Two years ago Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was controversially released on the grounds he was about to die. But this shadowy figure has survived to become a pawn in the Libyan conflict. John Ashton, who has long believed in his innocence, describes the man behind the myth

It's an anniversary that the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, will have long dreaded. Two years ago tomorrow MacAskill granted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, AKA "the Lockerbie bomber", compassionate release from the life sentence he was serving for the murder of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing. MacAskill had been advised that terminal cancer was likely to end the Libyan's life within the following three months: he had, in short, been "sent home to die". As Megrahi's recent appearance at a pro-Gaddafi rally reminded us, he has not stuck to the script.

The anniversary presents sections of the media with another opportunity to splutter its outrage at MacAskill's decision, and to resurrect the theory that it was driven by backroom deals rather than medical evidence. More seriously, for many of the relatives of the Lockerbie dead it adds an appalling insult to their already grievous injury.

But Megrahi's survival, and the Lockerbie case in general, now has far wider significance. For western governments struggling to justify why Libya should be singled out for enforced regime change, the issue has become a godsend. In recent weeks both Barack Obama and William Hague have tried to boost wilting public support for the war by highlighting Gaddafi's responsibility for the 1988 attack.

Libya's government-in-waiting, the National Transitional Council, has weighed in too. Its leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, claimed in February that Gaddafi personally ordered the bombing, and its London PR company, Bell-Pottinger, followed up Hague's comments by circulating a claim by a leading cancer specialist that MacAskill's decision was based on flawed medical advice. [RB: This claim is repeated in an article published today on the BBC News website.]

There is, though, another view that is shared by many who have scrutinised the Lockerbie case. They hold that the true scandal was not Megrahi's release, but his 2001 conviction. The Justice for Megrahi campaign, founded in 2008, counts among its signatories Dr Jim Swire and Rev John Mosey, each of whom lost a daughter in the bombing, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien. Another signatory, Scottish QC Ian Hamilton, last year blogged: "I don't think there's a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr Megrahi was justly convicted."

I go further than those lawyers: I am as certain as I can be that Megrahi is innocent. For three years until his return to Libya I worked as a researcher alongside his legal team and since then have been writing a book with him. I have read all his case files and have visited him many times, both in prison and in Tripoli. I'm one of a handful of people familiar with both the man and the evidence that convicted him.

It requires a book to explain all the flaws in that evidence. In 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) granted Megrahi an appeal, having identified six possible grounds for overturning the conviction. Among these, remarkably, was that the original judgment, delivered by three Scottish judges at a specially constructed court in the Netherlands, was unreasonable. Four of the other grounds concerned the Crown's most important witness, a Maltese shopkeeper called Tony Gauci, in whose shop Megrahi allegedly bought the clothes that ended up in the same suitcase as the bomb. In 1991 he picked out Megrahi from a lineup of photos. The SCCRC discovered that before doing so he had expressed an interest in receiving a reward, and that after Megrahi's conviction the Scottish police secretly approached the US Department of Justice to secure a $2m payment. Gauci's evidence was, in any case, highly unreliable. His descriptions of the clothes purchaser all suggested the man was around 50 years old, 6ft tall and with dark skin, whereas Megrahi was 36, is 5ft 8in and has light skin. (...)

He was born in Tripoli in 1952, into poverty that was typical of the times in Libya. One of eight siblings, his family shared a house with two others, and his mother supplemented his father's customs officer's income by sewing for neighbours. As a young child he was plagued by chest problems, for which he received daily vitamin supplements at his Unesco-administered school. His main passion was football, which continues to absorb him.

After finishing school in 1970, he briefly trained as a marine engineer at Rumney Technical College in Cardiff, hoping to become a ship's captain or navigator. When his eyesight proved too poor, he dropped out and returned to Tripoli, where he trained as a flight dispatcher for the state-owned Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA). Having completed his training and gained his dispatcher's licence in the US, he was gradually promoted to head of operations at Tripoli airport. Keen to improve his education, he studied geography at the University of Benghazi. He came top in his year and was invited to join the teaching staff on the promise that he could study for a master's degree in climatology in the US. When the promise proved hollow, he opted to boost his salary by returning to LAA.

In 1986 he became a partner in a small company called ABH and was temporarily appointed LAA's head of airline security. The following year he became part-time coordinator of the Libyan Centre for Strategic Studies. His Scottish prosecutors aimed to prove that these roles were cover for his activities as a senior agent for the Libyan intelligence service, the JSO.

Megrahi maintains that his only involvement with the JSO came during his 12-month tenure as head of airline security when he was seconded to the organisation to oversee the training of some of its personnel for security positions within the airline. There is ample documentary evidence to support his claim that ABH was a legitimate trading company whose main business was the purchase of spares for LAA aircraft, often in breach of US sanctions. He admits that he sometimes travelled on a false passport, but insists that it was issued to give him cover for his sanctions-busting activities; unlike his true passport, it did not betray his airline background.

Megrahi says that it came as a complete surprise when, in November 1991, he and his former LAA colleague Lamin Fhimah were charged with the bombing (Fhimah was found not guilty). Megrahi also maintains that it was their decision to stand trial and that they were not ordered to by their government. He was repeatedly warned that he was unlikely to receive a fair trial, but believed he would be acquitted.

During his decade in prison his good manners and cooperative behaviour earned him the respect of the officers. (...)

He was cheered by visits from well-known figures, most notably Nelson Mandela, and by hundreds of letters of support. In 2005 he was transferred to a low-security wing of HMP Gateside in Greenock, where he was placed among long-term prisoners nearing the end of their sentences. He was soon accepted by both inmates and officers, one of whom volunteered to me: "We all know he didn't do it." (...)

We were optimistic that his appeal would succeed, but its progress was glacial. In autumn 2008, with the first hearing still six months away, he was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He had always dreamed of clearing his name and returning to his family, but eventually felt compelled to choose between the two. Although the compassionate release decision carried no legal preconditions, he knew that abandoning the appeal would smooth the process. No longer able to make his case in court, he asked me to write his story so he could make it to the public.

Writing the book required numerous visits to Tripoli, where he received me warmly in the home he shares with his wife and four sons in a middle-class suburb. His illness limited our sessions to a couple of hours. He would check every word I'd written for accuracy and was insistent that I include the case for both sides and not shy away from awkward facts. He repeatedly told me: "I understand that people will judge me with their hearts, but I ask them to please also judge me with their heads."

His reception, on his return to Tripoli, was portrayed as a triumphant official welcome, but, as a WikiLeaks cable revealed, the Libyan authorities limited the crowd to 200, with thousands of supporters and the international media kept away. A few months later the Sunday Times reported that, at the time he was convicted, he had $1.8m in a Swiss bank account. In fact the account had been dormant since 1993, when it had a balance of $23,000. This year the same paper reported a claim by NTC leader Abdel-Jalil that Megrahi had blackmailed Gaddafi to secure his release from prison "by threatening to expose the dictator's role" in the bombing. Had he done so he would have severely jeopardised both his chance of freedom and the safety of his family in Libya. Although he responded to such misreporting with a faint smile and a roll of the eyes, it hurt him deeply that anyone could believe him guilty of murder. (...)

When I last saw him, in September 2010, he visited me at my hotel. It was the only time I saw him among ordinary Libyans. Again we were repeatedly interrupted, this time by strangers thanking him, not for an act of terrorism, but for sacrificing his liberty for the good of the nation. His decision to stand trial helped free the country from UN sanctions that imposed 12 years of collective punishment on the assumption of his guilt. We now know that that assumption was based on evidence that was, at best, flimsy and, at worst, fabricated.

His appearance at the rally in a wheelchair probably won't silence the conspiracy theorists who claim he is living the life of Riley. The fact that he has made it this far is partly down to the superior medical care he receives. But I believe it's as much to do with his will to live and the knowledge that every day survived is a fragment of justice reclaimed.

[Today's edition of The Independent contains a report headlined Lockerbie release milestone nears which records the varying views of Lockerbie relatives and commentators on Megrahi and his release. There is a similar article in The Scotsman. An article in The Times, behind the paywall, contains, apart from reactions to Megrahi's release and survival, the latest information on the state of his health. An article on The Telegraph website attributes his survival to Abiraterone, a drug developed in the UK but not yet approved for use here. A letter from Rev Dr John Cameron supportive of the release decision appears in today's edition of The Herald.]