A deliberate perversion of justice

What follows is an item first published on this blog seven years ago on this date:

Rewards for Justice

The Sunday Post, the Scottish Sunday newspaper with the largest readership, published the following article by Adam Docherty about payment to witnesses in the Lockerbie trial on 13 January 2008:

'The US justice department paid for evidence that helped convict Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing.

'With the next hearing in Megrahi's High Court Appeal due to take place next month, the admission casts a dark shadow over testimony at the original trial -- and the safety of the conviction.

'The Washington DC-based 'Rewards for Justice' organisation boasts that it has paid out more than 72 million dollars to over 50 people who have provided information that prevented international terrorist attacks or have brought to justice those involved in prior acts. Included on its website, in a list of those brought to justice, is Megrahi. Due to a strict policy of confidentiality Rewards for Justice will not name the witnesses nor divulge the exact amount paid to them.

'In June last year the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi's case back to the Court of Appeal after a three-year inquiry. They found six areas of concern and are believed to have uncovered a £2-million reward paid by the CIA to key witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci.

'Gauci was the only witness to link Megrahi directly to the bomb, and was therefore instrumental in convicting him on 31 January 2001. Gauci told the trial that Megrahi bought clothes in his shop, which were later used to wrap the bomb.

'At the trial, Gauci appeared uncertain about the exact date he sold the clothes in question, and was not entirely sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold. Nonetheless, Megrahi's appeal against conviction was rejected by the Scottish Court in the Netherlands in March 2002. Five years after the trial, former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, publicly described Gauci as being "an apple short of a picnic" and "not quite the full shilling".

'Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the 1988 bombing, is convinced that Megrahi is innocent. Yesterday he said that such huge sums offered to witnesses could encourage them to perjury.

'"Many jurists would consider that promises of money to secure 'evidence' from any individual do not accord with the principles of justice," he explained.

'"It is the timing of such promises rather the payments themselves that determine whether the 'evidence' is likely to be degraded. To many such witnesses such sums would alter their lives.

'"And such promises of money, if concealed from court -- or perhaps divulged only to prosecution -- could be considered a deliberate perversion of justice.

'"Witnesses are supposed to serve the truth. But the old Scots adage holds firm here - 'He who pays the piper calls the tune'.

'"This document gives some idea of the scale of the payments. It also removes any doubt as to whether payments were, indeed, made in this case."

The newspaper also published an article containing Dr Swire's detailed reactions to the revelations. These included the following:

'I entered the Zeist trial believing (as the British Foreign secretary had told us) that there was conclusive evidence of Libya's guilt, and none concerning the guilt of any other nation.

'This was the reason that we, the UK relatives, had made every conceivable effort, including three visits to Colonel Gaddafi, to persuade him to allow his citizens to undergo trial under Scottish criminal justice.

'Within days of the start of the trial at Zeist it became clear that fundamental requirements for the collection of evidence for a criminal trial had been breached, when the court was told that a suitcase, belonging to one of the US passengers had been removed from the crash site, by persons unknown, cut open, and then returned for the Scottish searchers to find, with some of its contents put back and even labelled with the name of the owner.

'The court accepted that the rectangular cutting into that suitcase could not have been a result of the explosion, but appeared unfazed by the possible implications for other items allegedly recovered as evidence. This had intense relevance later in the case to the question of a fragment of timer circuit board, the key forensic 'link' to the credibility of the bomb ever having started from Malta.

'There was evidence of the presence of numerous unidentified US agents roaming the site at a very early stage - a situation which the resources of the Scottish police could never have been expected to anticipate or control.

'From this unhappy start, the picture grew of how certain intelligence agencies had contributed to the assembly of much of the evidence. Intelligence services act in support of the perceived advantage of the countries for which they work: this may or may not be consistent with seeking the truth.

'Remember that for this trial there was no jury.

'Now, as you report, we have the proud exhibition by 'Rewards for Justice' in Washington DC of their use of 'more than 72 million dollars' in persuading witnesses to give evidence in terror-related cases. Former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie's, post trial assessment of the key witness, Mr Gauci, as being 'one apple short of a picnic' was not vouchsafed to the court, but can only serve now to emphasize the possibility that an offer of cash might have affected the evidence that Mr Gauci was willing to give.

'As a layman, I emerged from the Zeist hearings convinced that the verdict should never have been reached.'

Rewards for Justice

The Sunday Post, the Scottish Sunday newspaper with the largest readership, published the following article by Adam Docherty about payment to witnesses in the Lockerbie trial on 13 January 2008:

'THE US justice department paid for evidence that helped convict Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing.

'With the next hearing in Megrahi's High Court Appeal due to take place next month, the admission casts a dark shadow over testimony at the original trial -- and the safety of the conviction.

'The Washington DC-based 'Rewards for Justice' organisation boasts that it has paid out more than 72 million dollars to over 50 people who have provided information that prevented international terrorist attacks or have brought to justice those involved in prior acts. Included on its website, in a list of those brought to justice, is Megrahi. Due to a strict policy of confidentiality Rewards for Justice will not name the witnesses nor divulge the exact amount paid to them.

'In June last year the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi's case back to the Court of Appeal after a three-year inquiry. They found six areas of concern and are believed to have uncovered a £2-million reward paid by the CIA to key witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci.

'Gauci was the only witness to link Megrahi directly to the bomb, and was therefore instrumental in convicting him on 31 January 2001. Gauci told the trial that Megrahi bought clothes in his shop, which were later used to wrap the bomb.

'At the trial, Gauci appeared uncertain about the exact date he sold the clothes in question, and was not entirely sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold. Nonetheless, Megrahi's appeal against conviction was rejected by the Scottish Court in the Netherlands in March 2002. Five years after the trial, former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, publicly described Gauci as being "an apple short of a picnic" and "not quite the full shilling".

'Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the 1988 bombing, is convinced that Megrahi is innocent. Yesterday he said that such huge sums offered to witnesses could encourage them to perjury.

'"Many jurists would consider that promises of money to secure 'evidence' from any individual do not accord with the principles of justice," he explained.

'"It is the timing of such promises rather the payments themselves that determine whether the 'evidence' is likely to be degraded. To many such witnesses such sums would alter their lives.

'"And such promises of money, if concealed from court -- or perhaps divulged only to prosecution -- could be considered a deliberate perversion of justice.

'"Witnesses are supposed to serve the truth. But the old Scots adage holds firm here - 'He who pays the piper calls the tune'.

'"This document gives some idea of the scale of the payments. It also removes any doubt as to whether payments were, indeed, made in this case."

The newspaper also published an article containing Dr Swire's detailed reactions to the revelations. These included the following:

'I entered the Zeist trial believing (as the British Foreign secretary had told us) that there was conclusive evidence of Libya's guilt, and none concerning the guilt of any other nation.

'This was the reason that we, the UK relatives, had made every conceivable effort, including three visits to Colonel Gaddafi, to persuade him to allow his citizens to undergo trial under Scottish criminal justice.

'Within days of the start of the trial at Zeist it became clear that fundamental requirements for the collection of evidence for a criminal trial had been breached, when the court was told that a suitcase, belonging to one of the US passengers had been removed from the crash site, by persons unknown, cut open, and then returned for the Scottish searchers to find, with some of its contents put back and even labelled with the name of the owner.

'The court accepted that the rectangular cutting into that suitcase could not have been a result of the explosion, but appeared unfazed by the possible implications for other items allegedly recovered as evidence. This had intense relevance later in the case to the question of a fragment of timer circuit board, the key forensic 'link' to the credibility of the bomb ever having started from Malta.

'There was evidence of the presence of numerous unidentified US agents roaming the site at a very early stage - a situation which the resources of the Scottish police could never have been expected to anticipate or control.

'From this unhappy start, the picture grew of how certain intelligence agencies had contributed to the assembly of much of the evidence. Intelligence services act in support of the perceived advantage of the countries for which they work: this may or may not be consistent with seeking the truth.

'Remember that for this trial there was no jury.

'Now, as you report, we have the proud exhibition by 'Rewards for Justice' in Washington DC of their use of 'more than 72 million dollars' in persuading witnesses to give evidence in terror-related cases. Former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie's, post trial assessment of the key witness, Mr Gauci, as being 'one apple short of a picnic' was not vouchsafed to the court, but can only serve now to emphasize the possibility that an offer of cash might have affected the evidence that Mr Gauci was willing to give.

'As a layman, I emerged from the Zeist hearings convinced that the verdict should never have been reached.'

Rewards for Justice and the Gauci brothers

[An Agence France Presse news agency report on the ABS-CBN News website on 4 April contains the following sentences:]

Since its launch in 1984, the Rewards for Justice program run by the Diplomatic Security bureau of the State Department has paid out $125 million in rewards to 80 people for information leading to the capture of terrorists. (...)

The program is also still seeking information on cases in which the trail appears to have gone cold, including the 1983 attack on a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

[The report does not mention the payments made to the Gauci brothers in the Lockerbie case, nor does the Rewards for Justice website.  This blog’s posts on the issue can be accessed here.]

Addendum

[I am grateful to Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer for supplying the link to a page about the Lockerbie case on the Rewards for Justice website.  It reads as follows:]

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, a US registered Boeing 747 en route from London, Heathrow Airport, to JFK Airport in New York, was destroyed when an improvised explosive device, concealed in an item of luggage, detonated in the cargo hold of the aircraft. This explosion resulted in the deaths of all 259 passengers and crew aboard, including 189 Americans, as well as 11 residents of the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

On November 13, 1991, agents of the Libyan government, Abdel Basset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalfia Fhimah, "together with others unknown to the Grand Jury", were indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for Conspiracy to Destroy a Civil Aircraft of the United States, Kill Nationals of the United States, and on related substantive explosives charges. The following day, the Lord Advocate announced that al-Megrahi and Fhimah had been charged in Scotland with conspiracy and murder offenses.

On January 31, 2001, al-Megrahi was found guilty of the murder of all 270 victims on Pan Am Flight 103, in the air and on the ground in Lockerbie, by a panel of three High Court judges. He received the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment and was required to serve 27 years before becoming eligible to apply for parole. His co-accused, Fhimah was found not guilty and was flown to Tripoli, Libya. On March 14, 2002, al-Megrahi's conviction was affirmed by a panel of five different Scottish High Court judges, and he was moved to Scotland to begin service of his sentence.

Following an application to the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC), in June 2007, al-Megrahi was permitted to file a new appeal. While that appeal was pending, in September, 2008 al-Megrahi was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. On August 20, 2009, based upon the advice of the Scottish Prison Medical Service that he had less than three months to live, and after al-Megrahi withdrew his appeal before the Court could rule, al-Megrahi's application for compassionate release was granted by the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice. Including credit for time served in pre-trial detention, al-Megrahi had served slightly more than 10 years of his life sentence when he was released. As of this date, both al-Megrahi and Fhimah are believed to still be in Tripoli.

Believing that al-Megrahi and Fhimah did not act alone in causing a bomb to be loaded onto Pan Am Flight 103, the US Department of State has authorized a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of those responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and the murders of the 270 victims.

[Note that absolutely no mention is made here of the large sums already paid to the Gauci brothers, payments confirmed by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission during its investigation of the Megrahi conviction.]

Rewards for Justice ... again

A lengthy posting on the unbossed.com website contains the following passage on the Lockerbie case:
‘An article in yesterday's Canada Free Press points out that rewards, no matter how large, are pretty ineffective in bringing terrorist suspects to justice. “The U.S. Department of Justice, even after posting rewards, setting up hotlines, and issuing BOLOs (“Be-on-the-Lookout” alerts) has failed to issue criminal warrants for their arrest...”
‘The State Department's Rewards for Justice program website includes a curious request for tips related to those responsible for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. It doesn't explain why it's still looking for suspects. After all, Abdel Baset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was sentenced to 27 years in prison after witnesses were offered money by the U.S. government to provide testimony needed for conviction.
‘A witness in the Lockerbie case has claimed he was offered $4 million (£2 million) by American investigators to lie to the trial judges.
‘Edwin Bollier, head of the Swiss company MEBO that was said to have manufactured the timer used to detonate the Pan Am bomb, claims he was offered the money by the FBI at its Washington HQ in exchange for making a statement that supported the main line of inquiry - that Libya was responsible for the bombing. "I rejected this and said this could not possibly be the case," he said. He added that there was a "loud dispute" after he rejected the offer. (The Scotsman)
‘Reportedly, the courts are poised to acknowledge that the conviction of Abdel Basit Ali Megrahi was a "miscarriage of justice," due in part to yet another offer of money - $2 million from the CIA - to a witness whose testimony was critical to the conviction of Megrahi, who maintains he is innocent.
‘Assuming that what appear to be the present facts are true and Megrahi is indeed freed means that Libya, which agreed to pay $10 million to each of the families of the Pan Am crash victims, is not guilty. That opens the possibility of a serious look for the real culprit who so criminally snuffed out 270 lives. Somebody is guilty of a heinous crime. But who? (WRMEA)
‘Who, indeed? Are Americans and others around the world safer because our government helps convict people who had little or nothing to do with terrorist attacks? Of course not. We are less safe because our watchdogs, under weak oversight, have grown fat and inept, unable to catch anything but the easiest prey. But, catch something they must. So, out come the checkbooks.
‘Whether the money buys truth or lies seemingly is irrelevant, and most Americans are never the wiser until another attack occurs. When one does, the bureaucrats and their enablers in Congress label it an "extraordinary" event; something that could happen to any mortal being, don't you know? And, then, it's business as usual until the next "failure of imagination" occurs. Are we a gullible people, or what?’
See http://unbossed.com/?p=1764

Lockerbie and the senators

[In the context of tomorrow's session of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the release of Mr Megrahi, I think it worthwhile to share the contents of a letter sent by Dr Jim Swire on 28 July 2010 to The Herald but never published.]

In April 1991, before Mr Megrahi had even been indicted, Detective Chief Inspector Harry Bell of the investigating Scottish police was on Malta, and went to interview Vincent Vassallo, manager of the airport cafe at Luqa airport (Malta).

On page 7642 of the publicly available trial transcripts, in giving his evidence Vassallo says:

"What I remember is that when they came to my office, Harry Bell asked me -- he said 'Try to remember well. You know there is a large reward, and if you wish to have more money, perhaps go abroad somewhere, you can do so.'"

So potential monetary rewards seem to have figured in the process from before even the issue of the indictments against Fhima and Megrahi which occurred at the end of 1991, and of course long before the actual trial.

Harry Bell was keeping a diary, but its contents were not divulged to the court, since he had 'left it in Glasgow', though its existence was known to the court, nor was the above allegation from Vassallo taken up by the defence nor the judges.

The contents of the Bell diaries are now in the public domain on the web. They show that DCI Bell was aware of the US reward offers of $10,000 dollars 'up front' with $2,000,000 to follow, and that Gauci, the key Maltese shopkeeper witness had become increasingly aware that money was on offer. The FBI officers involved in the case, according to Bell, did not record what role, if any, they had played in the reward scenario. The US organisation 'Rewards for Justice' however records Mr Megrahi's name as someone brought to 'justice' by their payments.

I had hoped to persuade Senator Kerry [Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has, however, delegated the role in relation to the Megrahi issue to Senator Robert Menendez] to raise his sights to the question of whether Megrahi really was guilty or not. That sadly has not happened, but seems rather more important than attempting to link BP to Megrahi's compassionate release.

However perhaps the senators could re-ignite their inquiry by arranging to pay each of those they wish to interview a similar amount for flying over to give evidence to them, though for senior British poIiticians or BP CEOs they might have to request a good deal more money from their 'Rewards for Justice' source, than was on offer to a humble Maltese shopkeeper.

Man, think of the deep-fried Mars bars you could get for that sort of money.

According to my father's edition (1933) of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, one definition of a bribe is " A reward given to pervert the judgment or corrupt the conduct (1535)", but then I don't think there were any senators around in 1535 were there?

Seriously, the situation is that whether the senators wish to address the issue of guilt or not, someone must do so and Scotland has a problem.

Our SCCRC found that the trial might have been a miscarriage of justice, yet by withdrawing the second appeal, which had been authorised by the SCCRC's findings, Mr Megrahi has effectively blocked the obvious route to a full and honest re-examination of the whole case, since the defence materials remain his property.

We must find a route to re-assess the validity of the verdict, that route must depend on a rigorous reappraisal, under the highest standards of Scots law, but on neither politicians nor bribery.

Justice and truth are beyond price.

Lockerbie victims' relatives join with Megrahi family in seeking review of conviction

[What follows is the text of a press briefing issued by Aamer Anwar following this morning’s press conference:]

When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, 270 people from 21 countries perished and it remains the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed in the UK.

Its consequences continue to reverberate round the world and yet after a quarter of a century, the truth remains elusive.

The application being lodged later this morning with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) seeks to overturn the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for murder.

The application is submitted on behalf of:-

i)                    Dr Jim Swire, Rev’d John F Mosey and 22 other British relatives of passengers who died on board Pan Am Flight 103.

ii)                  I can also advise that the six immediate family members of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi have also instructed me to make the application.

The Commission has been requested not to release the names of the Megrahi family given serious concerns for their safety in the current highly volatile situation in Libya.

British family members apart from Dr Jim Swire and Rev John F. Mosey have also requested that their details are not released into the public domain.

The Commission determined on the 28th June 2007 that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice in relation to his conviction and identified six grounds for referring the case to the High Court. We have asked the Commission to reconfirm these six grounds.  

We have also requested the Commission add the Grounds of Appeal and supporting documentation already submitted to the High Court in connection with the second appeal (See http://www.megrahimystory.net/)

We have also requested that the Commission consider referring the case:

(a)   On the ground of the Crown’s non-disclosure to the defence of evidence relating to the difference in metallurgical composition between the fragment of circuit board PT35b and the circuit boards in the timers supplied by MEBO to Libya. Put simply the timer claimed by the Crown to be responsible for the bombing cannot be possible.

(b)   On the ground of the evidence uncovered which demonstrates that the bomb suitcase was already in Pan Am 103 luggage container AVE4041 before the feeder flight from Frankfurt arrived at Heathrow with, as the Crown contended and the trial court accepted, a suitcase from Malta which contained the bomb.

Special circumstances

The Commission have been asked to address the issue of whether it is in the interests of justice to refer the case to the High Court for a further appeal.

Despite the hysteria that greeted the release of Mr al-Megrahi many were unaware that the case had been referred back to the Court of Appeal by the SCCRC in 2007.

Its chairman Graham Forbes at the time said:-

"The Commission is of the view, based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the tri al court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice."

The case of Abdelbasset Al- Megrahi has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history.A reversal of the verdict would mean that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for 25 years and having imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for ten years.

The Appeal was commenced but following the diagnosis of terminal cancer it was suddenly abandoned in 2009. The application being lodged this morning deals with the circumstances that lead to Mr Megrahi abandoning his appeal.

i)                    To date both the British Government and Scottish Government have claimed that they played no role in pressuring Mr  Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. However the evidence submitted to the Commission today claims that this is fundamentally untrue.

ii)                  It is submitted that there is evidence which will show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft.

iii)                Mr Megrahi was convicted on the word of a Maltese shop owner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in multiple statements and failed to recognise him in the courtroom.

iv)                New evidence claims that the fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside could not have been responsible for the bombing.

v)                  New evidence claims the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was ‘transferred’ through two airports undetected to Pan Am Flight 103.

vi)                There is a multitude of serious question marks over material evidence, and most worryingly, allegations of the Crown’s non-disclosure of evidence which could have been key to the defence.

vii)              The fundamental question for the Commission is whether it regards it as in the interests of justice to refer a case back to the High Court where the convicted person himself had commenced an appeal on a SCCRC reference and then chosen to abandon it?

The answer might depend on the precise circumstances in which the appellant came to abandon his appeal.

Mr Megrahi's terminal illness; the fact that prisoner transfer was not open while the appeal was ongoing; and whether Mr Megrahi had no way of knowing that Kenny MacAskill would ultimately opt for compassionate release rather than prisoner transfer, or as is alleged that he was led to believe that he would not be released unless he dropped his appeal.

viii)            Documents have claimed that Scottish police officers and FBI agents had discussed as early as September 1989 ‘an offer of unlimited money to the Maltese shop keeper Tony Gauci.

If it is unacceptable to offer bribes, inducements or rewards to any witness in a routine murder trial in Glasgow then it should have been unacceptable to have done it in the biggest case of mass murder ever carried out in Europe.

Gauci was central to Megrahi’s conviction because the clothes recovered from the suitcase that carried the bomb onto Pan Am 103 at Heathrow, bound for New York, were traced back to his shop.

Various reports have claimed that Tony Gauci received more than $2m and his brother more than $1m in reward money.

It is important to note that this is the first time in legal history in the UK that relatives of murdered victims have united with the relatives of a ‘convicted’ deceased to seek justice by means of a referral to the Appeal Court.

I also wish to quote the following:-

“We the family of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi will keep fighting for justice to find out who was responsible for 271 victims of the Lockerbie disaster.” (They of course include Mr Megrahi as its 271st victim)

The Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill has said that “Scotland's Criminal Justice system is a cornerstone of our society, and it is paramount that there is total public confidence in it.”

Fine words indeed but the reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system has suffered badly both at home and internationally because of widespread doubts about the justifiability of the conviction of Mr Al-Megrahi.

It is in the interests of justice and of restoring confidence in our criminal justice system and its administration that these doubts be addressed. This can best be done by allowing the Appeal Court to consider the SCCRC's reasons for believing that there may have been a miscarriage of justice in a fresh appeal challenging the original verdict.

END OF STATEMENT - AAMER ANWAR

PARTS OF STATEMENT ISSUED THIS MORNING TO THE SCCRC BY DR JIM SWIRE

I am Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora Swire who, one day before her 24th birthday, was brutally murdered along with 269 others in the Lockerbie disaster. It has always been and remains my intent to see those responsible for her death brought to justice and steps taken to ensure a coherent preventive system against terrorism in the future.(...)

So by 1990 I was appalled by what I already knew concerning what appeared to me to be the betrayal of the trust which we should be able to place in our Government to protect us. Moreover there is no denying that the policies of Governments largely decide the targets which international terrorism is likely to choose. In no sphere nowadays is Government responsibility more important than in the protection of citizens against such attacks.(...)

As for me Jim Swire, father of Flora, I still ache for her, what might have been the grandchildren she would have had, the love she always gave us and the glowing medical career ? For me this case is about two families, mine and Baset’s, but behind them now are seen to lie the needs of 25 other families in applying for a further appeal 25 years after the event itself. (...) We need the truth and Scotland’s management of this case produced a verdict perfectly tailored for use by those who would seek to ensure that the full truth remains hidden.

If it is true that this man, Baset, and his country were not the perpetrators, then who really were? If the verdict is unjustified then the extraordinary delay experienced thus far in redressing it has protected the real perpetrators from the probing of international justice. (...) It has also protected the systems which failed to protect our families. The review of the evidence and verdict still lie with us in Scotland. We still have the option of re-examining this case in Scotland, if we do not do so it will pass to others to examine, and Scotland, her people and her law would be the losers.

Redeeming Scotland's reputation for justice and humanity

What follows is taken from an item posted on this blog four years ago on this date:

Doubts remain over Megrahi’s guilt because of payments made to ‘star’ witnesses

[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

There has been widespread condemnation from the United States, in particular, of Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s decision to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds.

This condemnation must presuppose that the man was, indeed, guilty of playing a part in the Lockerbie atrocity, yet America is silent concerning the findings of Scotland’s Criminal Cases Review Commission, which indicated that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.

It may be an uncomfortable exercise for the senators, but perhaps they should don their reading glasses and look a lot closer to home. If they will examine the website of their own Rewards for Justice Program in Washington DC, they will find Megrahi’s name among those brought to “justice” by disbursement of RfJ funds.

If they will then look at the website set up on behalf of Megrahi by his defence team, they will find extracts from a policeman’s diary kept during the investigations into Lockerbie on the island of Malta.

These extracts show that the policeman knew that the shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who later claimed haltingly to identify Megrahi in court as the buyer of the clothes, (remains of which were found at the crash site), was increasingly aware of, and excited by, the offer of substantial reward for him if he would give evidence leading to the conviction of Megrahi. All this, of course, long before Mr Gauci actually did give his evidence in court.

If the proprietor of a small Glasgow clothing store, struggling to feed his family, were to be told that if he gave evidence that he had seen a certain individual buy clothes from his shop some years before, he would receive a gift of $2m, would you trust his evidence? The senators might also like to look at the material surrounding a witness known as Giaka, alleged, in the run up to the trial, to be a “star” witness, but who was shown in court to have been on the payroll of the CIA from before Lockerbie and whose evidence was, therefore, seen as suspect by the court. They might also demand a sight of the suite of CIA cables surrounding this man.

Nor need Westminster feel virtuous. Why did the Metropolitan Police investigation into the break-in at Heathrow the night before Lockerbie remain hidden until after the verdict had been reached? The Crown Office has told me it knew nothing about this until after the verdict.

Why did Lady Thatcher write in 1993 in her memoirs, The Downing Street Years, that, following her support for the USAF bombing of Tripoli and Bengazi in 1986 (two years before Lockerbie) “… there was a marked decline in Libyan-sponsored terrorism in succeeding years”.

We see that Scotland, to whom the solemn task of trying the accused was passed, was on the receiving end of external political interference in what should have been a purely criminal case.

If the senators want to know the truth about this appalling atrocity, let them throw their weight behind the need for a process to be set up within Scotland, objectively to review the case against Megrahi.

Only we ourselves, in the absence of Megrahi’s appeal, can redeem our country’s reputation for justice and humanity, and ensure that our own citizens are protected by a wise and independent judicial system.

Malta urged to clear its name on Lockerbie disaster

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday afternoon on the website of the Maltese newspaper The Independent.  It reads in part:]

Malta should seek to clear its name over the Lockerbie bombing victims by seeking a revocation of the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man to have been found guilty of the attack, according to the father of one of the victims.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was one of the 270 people that died when Pan Am Flight 103 crashed over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, and Robert Forrester, the secretary of the Justice for Megrahi Committee, are in Malta in connection with the play The Lockerbie Bomber, which delves into the potential miscarriage of justice that followed.

On Friday, the two men met Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Foreign Minister George Vella to discuss the case, in a bid to persuade the Maltese government to seek a review of Mr al-Megrahi’s conviction.

Mr al-Megrahi was one of two people accused of being involved in the bombing; his co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was acquitted by a Scottish court specially convened in Camp Zeist, a disused US Air Force base in The Netherlands, due to extradition issues.

The two men were employed with Libyan Arab Airlines – Mr Fhimah was the station manager at Luqa airport while Mr al-Megrahi was head of security – when the bombing took place. The aircraft had left Malta for Frankfurt on its flight to Detroit, with planned stopovers at London Heathrow and JFK Airport in New York. [RB: Air Malta’s flight KM 180 terminated at Frankfurt. The prosecution case was that an unaccompanied bag was offloaded from it onto feeder flight Pan Am 103A to Heathrow and then onto Pan Am 103 bound for JFK and Detroit.]

According to the prosecution, the bomb had been planted in Malta, a claim based on the discovery of Malta-made (...) clothing which was believed to have come from the same suitcase. The owner of the shop they were purchased from, Tony Gauci, proved to be a key witness, and he identified Mr al-Megrahi as a Libyan who had indiscriminately purchased (...) clothes from his shop a couple of weeks before the bombing took place.

Mr al-Megrahi was ultimately jailed for life in January 2001, and a first appeal was refused in 2002. In 2007, after he applied for a review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission granted him permission to appeal against his conviction due to evidence that a miscarriage of justice may have taken place.

But the appeal was withdrawn days before Mr al-Megrahi was granted a release from detention on compassionate grounds due to terminal prostate cancer. He returned to Tripoli, and while he outlived the three-month prognosis that led to his release, he ultimately died on May 2012.

Verdict ‘used to deny us the truth’

But many relatives of Lockerbie victims remain unconvinced about Mr al-Megrahi’s guilt, and Dr Swire, a retired family doctor from Windsor, has been their most prominent representative. His daughter, a medical student, was one day shy of her 24th birthday when she died: she was travelling to the US to spend Christmas with her American boyfriend.

At St James’ Cavalier, Dr Swire said that he had gone to the trial believing that he would see those who murdered his daughter brought to justice, but left feeling that Mr al-Megrahi was a scapegoat. He ultimately befriended the only man convicted of killing his daughter, convinced that the true perpetrators are yet to face justice.

Mr al-Megrahi may have died, but this has not stopped Dr Swire and the Justice for Megrahi group he co-founded from seeking to overturn his conviction, as the verdict has implications beyond the injustice they are convinced the Libyan had suffered.

“The verdict is used ruthlessly to deny us access to the truth,” Dr Swire maintains. And by doing so, he adds, the Scottish justice system was protecting the ones who actually did it.

He points out that a judge actually remarked that it was unfortunate that the prosecution had no evidence of how Mr al-Megrahi loaded the bomb in Malta.

“You bet it’s unfortunate, because he didn’t put it on a plane,” he adds.

Dr Swire maintains that the evidence pointed towards an attack by Iran, which swore revenge after a US missile cruiser – the USS Vincennes – shot down an Iranian passenger jet over the Persian Gulf, in Iranian airspace, on 3 July 1988, killing all 290 civilians on board.

The likely perpetrators, he argues, are a Syria-based Palestinian militant organisation – the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) – as the bomb used to down the Pan Am Flight was of a type they had developed. The PFLP-GC had initially been blamed for the attack, before the two Libyans were indicted.

Dr Swire, who had been taught how to use explosives when he served in the Royal Engineers, explains that the bomb used a mechanism triggered by a drop in air pressure, which would occur as the aircraft gained elevation. He insists that the crude timer utilised could not be set for longer than 30 minutes.

As a result, he maintains, it would have been impossible for the bomb to have been loaded at Luqa airport, since it would have gone off before the aircraft reached Frankfurt. The bomb could not even have been loaded in Frankfurt itself, he adds.

While Mr Forrester notes that the Justice for Megrahi group itself is solely concerned with clearing Mr al-Megrahi’s name – and not with finding who the perpetrators may be – he points out that the group is concerned at the way investigations were diverted from the PFLP-GC in favour of the “fantasy yellow-brick road to Tripoli”.

Dr Swire questions the reliability of Mr Gauci’s testimony, noting that he and his brother Paul clearly had expectations of a financial reward for their role. The SCCRC ultimately revealed, when it granted approval for a second appeal, that the US Department of Justice had been asked to pay Tony Gauci $2 million and his brother $1 million under the US government’s Rewards for Justice anti-terrorism programme, although the amount the brothers received could not be determined.

Mr al-Megrahi was found to possess multiple false passports, but Dr Swire insists that this was related to his job with the Libyan airline, noting that he also had to procure spare parts for the Boeing aircrafts the airline used – easier said than done given the economic sanctions imposed on Libya at the time.

Ultimately, Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi did agree to acknowledge responsibility for the attack, and even paid compensation to the victims’ families.

But Dr Swire insists that this was simply a political ploy to ensure that economic sanctions were lifted, noting that a repressive dictator would have needed an economy that was doing well to remain in power. He adds that he also evaded a direct admission of guilt, as his lawyers drafted a “clever” letter in which he claimed responsibility on the basis of the conviction of a Libyan citizen.

Nevertheless, Dr Swire does not rule out that Col Gaddafi or his regime was aware of – or even involved in – the bombing. He only categorically rules out the involvement of Mr al-Megrahi who, he points out, did not exactly act as a terrorist would when he visited Malta by choosing to stay at a hotel where he was well known.

Clearing Malta’s name

Dr Swire met Mr al-Megrahi for a final time in January 2012, and he notes that the Libyan man was keen to pass on documents to him after his death, in a bid to clear his family’s name. Given the situation in Libya, however, he is not keeping in touch with the family, fearing for their safety.

He points out that the SCCRC allows any parties who have a direct interest to seek a review of a court case: in this case, the list would include him as the relative of a victim, and Mr al-Megrahi’s family.

It would also include Malta, if it felt that its reputation was tarnished by being linked to the bombing, despite what Dr Swire describes to be one of the most secure airports on earth. In 1990, to prove airport security left much to be desired, Dr Swire took a fake bomb – with marzipan used as a substitute for Semtex – on a flight from London Heathrow to New York JFK, and subsequently from New York JFK to Boston.

Both Dr Swire and Mr Forrester said that it would be highly inappropriate for them to divulge details of their meeting with Dr Muscat and Dr Vella, but Mr Forrester did point out that the meeting was “absolutely superb” and very constructive. Dr Swire noted that they had been greeted in a friendly manner they were not accustomed to when meeting western politicians.

The tragedy’s 25th anniversary falls in December, and their campaign has not yet achieved any measurable success.

But both men are convinced that eventually it will, although Dr Swire, who is in his late seventies, wonders whether he will live to see it. But he notes that there are others, younger people, who are willing to continue the work they have started.