Second anniversary of death of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

[Today marks the second anniversary of the death in Tripoli of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. A statement issued by Justice for Megrahi at the time can be read here. Tam Dalyell’s obituary of Megrahi, published two days later in The Independent, reads as follows:]

Acres of newsprint have appeared in recent years, covering various rather separate theories about the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber.

If I thought for one moment that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty as charged in the mass murder of 270 innocent people in the crash of the Pan Am airliner "Maid of the Seas" at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, I would not have agreed to pen an obituary – let alone an affectionate one.

My settled conviction, as a "Professor of Lockerbie Studies" over a 22-year period, is that neither Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103. The Libyans were cynically scapegoated in 1990, two years after the crash, by a US government which had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of the terrible deed.

Libya and its "operatives", Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, only came into the frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, Megrahi has been the victim of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in history. The assertion of innocence is confirmed in the 497 pages of John Ashton's scholarly and remarkable book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, published by Birlinn.

This is an opinion shared by the senior and experienced solicitor Eddie McKechnie, who successfully represented Fhimah at Zeist in Holland, where a Scottish court was assembled to try the two accused under rules conducted by the jurisdiction of the laws of Scotland, and who took on Megrahi's case following his conviction; by Tony Kelly, the immensely thorough solicitor who has represented him for the past six years; by the bereaved relatives Dr Jim Swire and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost daughters and attended the entire Zeist trial; by Professor Robert Black, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, and Lockerbie-born; and by many others in legal Edinburgh.

Furthermore, the Scottish Criminal Review Commission, in the course of its 800-page report, says (paragraph 24, page 708): "The Crown deprived the defence of the opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary – so the defence's case was damaged." It concluded: "The commission's view is that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred."

Megrahi was not in Malta on the date the clothing, so crucial in the whole Lockerbie saga, was bought from the shopkeeper Tony Gauci. The proprietor of Mary's House identified a number of different people, including Abu Talb, who appeared at the trial to deny his part in the bombing.

Talb was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command and is now serving a life sentence in Sweden for the 1985 bombings in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. These discrepancies were part of the reason why the Scottish criminal review commission concluded that there could have been a miscarriage of justice; another was the unexplained payment of $10m from Iranian sources into the coffers of the Popular Front.

The testimony of Lesley Atkinson, who knew Megrahi well in Tripoli, is interesting. She is the wife of Neville Atkinson, who, in 1972, left a career as a night-fighter pilot in the Royal Navy to take up a position as personal pilot to the president of Libya, Colonel Gadaffi, until 1982. "Megrahi was polite and friendly and worked for Libyan Arab Airlines," Mrs Atkinson told me. "Of course, lots of people who worked for LAA were connected to the security services and I do not doubt that he was one of them. We knew him both at work and at the Beach Club – he was a normal, nice guy. I cannot imagine that he would ever have dreamt of planting a bomb on an airliner. He just would not have done that to passengers."

Eddie McKechnie described Megrahi as a cultured man doing a job for his country, and certainly not a mass-murderer. Had he not been given extremely bad advice not to appear in the witness box Megrahi would have revealed the truth – that he was a sanctions-buster, travelling the world to find spare parts for the Libyan oil industry and Libyan Arab Airlines. This role was confirmed to me by Colonel Gadaffi, when, as leader of the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to Libya in March 2001, I saw him in his tent outside Sirte. Gaddafi's own knowledge or involvement in Lockerbie is a different matter.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was born in 1952 and educated in Tripoli and in the Engineering Faculty of Benghazi University. He became involved in the Ministry of Trade, and like many other officials, certainly did so in the intelligence services. He served as the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and as director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. A genuine believer in what the young Gaddafi was trying to achieve, and in the Great Jamariyah, Megrahi was happy to put his talents at the service of the state. Where else in Africa is there no hint of personal corruption among the leadership, he asked me! He had good relations with engineers at Brown and Root, I was told by their chairman and managing director, Sir Richard Morris (1980-90). Brown and Root was the contractor for the huge irrigation projects in Cyrenerica, south of Benghazi, the man-made river bringing water to desert areas that had been fertile in Roman times.

He was understandably proud of the traditional skills associated with his people. On one occasion, when I visited him in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow and told him that I had been to Leptis Magna, he responded: "You know that my Tripolitanian ancestors were the artists in stone, responsible for work throughout the Empire, not least in Rome itself!" Had the judges had the opportunity to get to know Megrahi, as I knew him, they could never have arrived at the verdict of "guilty" – at most, the good Scots legal term "not proven".

After Zeist, Fhimah, represented by the aggressively formidable barrister Richard Keen QC, was cleared and returned to a hero's welcome in Tripoli. Fhimah talked with knowledge and pride, as did Megrahi, about the wonderful sight of Sabbratah and the glories of the Greek colonial city at Cyrene.

Meanwhile, Megrahi was incarcerated in Barlinnie Prison. I was not his only visitor there and in Greenock who came away with a favourable opinion. Dr Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, a medical student at the University of Nottingham, told me: "On meeting Abdelbaset in Greenock prison, I found him charming, rational, not given to anger or bluster. He made it obvious that his first priority was to clear his name before returning to his much-loved family in Tripoli.

"I saw him [in Scotland] for the last time just before Christmas 2008, when, he, a devout Muslim, gave me a Christmas card in which he asked me and my family to pray for him and his family. That card is one of my most precious possessions.

"This meeting was before he could have known just how closely death loomed. I cannot criticise his apparently voluntary decision to spend his last months on earth with his family, above the priority of clearing his name."

I know that in some uninformed quarters, Dr Swire's views are regarded as eccentric. But it is the other British relatives who have studied the position in depth, such as Martin Cadman, who lost his son Bill; Pamela Dix, who lost her brother; and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost a daughter, have arrived at precisely the same conclusions about Megrahi's innocence. Unlike some American relatives, they have bothered to make exhaustive studies of the detail.

In my opinion, whatever Gordon Brown, Kenny MacAskill, Alec Salmond and Jack Straw – all fundamentally decent human beings – may feel they have to say in public due to pressure, and wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh, which, above all, did not want their misdeeds exposed by the truth, they all knew that they were acquiescing in the release of an innocent man. I am not quite so sure that Fhimah did not have an inkling about potentially explosive material on its way to the Bekaa valley.

Even in his final hours, controversy never deserted Megrahi. The Libyan authorities were absolutely justified in declining to extradite him, both for reasons of international law and more importantly, that he was not guilty as charged of the Lockerbie crime – also the considered opinion of Dr Hans Koechler, who attended Megrahi's trial as an official UN observer and has examined his appeal process in Scotland.

As James Cusick, who has followed the twists and turns of the Lockerbie saga for many years as a highly informed journalist, wrote in The Independent on Tuesday 30 August, "The truth behind the Lockerbie bombing remains enmeshed in diplomatic gains."

My last sight of Abdelbaset was on TV on 3 October, attended by Mrs Megrahi, with tubes galore, thanking Dr Swire in gentle tones for trying to furnish necessary drugs and hissing out that there were many liars at Zeist. So there were.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, intelligence officer: born Tripoli, Libya 1 April 1952; married Aisha (four sons, one daughter); died 20 May 2012

[It is to be hoped, even if it cannot be confidently expected, that before the third anniversary of Megrahi's death his conviction may again be before the High Court of Justiciary for review.]

Wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh

[ Tam Dalyell’s obituary of Abdelbaset Megrahi  in The Independent reads as follows:]

Acres of newsprint have appeared in recent years, covering various rather separate theories about the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber.

If I thought for one moment that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was guilty as charged in the mass murder of 270 innocent people in the crash of the Pan Am airliner "Maid of the Seas" at Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, I would not have agreed to pen an obituary – let alone an affectionate one.

My settled conviction, as a "Professor of Lockerbie Studies" over a 22-year period, is that neither Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103. The Libyans were cynically scapegoated in 1990, two years after the crash, by a US government which had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of the terrible deed.

Libya and its "operatives", Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, only came into the frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, Megrahi has been the victim of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in history. The assertion of innocence is confirmed in the 497 pages of John Ashton's scholarly and remarkable book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, published by Birlinn.

This is an opinion shared by the senior and experienced solicitor Eddie McKechnie, who successfully represented Fhimah at Zeist in Holland, where a Scottish court was assembled to try the two accused under rules conducted by the jurisdiction of the laws of Scotland, and who took on Megrahi's case following his conviction; by Tony Kelly, the immensely thorough solicitor who has represented him for the past six years; by the bereaved relatives Dr Jim Swire and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost daughters and attended the entire Zeist trial; by Professor Robert Black, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, and Lockerbie-born; and by many others in legal Edinburgh.

Furthermore, the Scottish Criminal Review Commission, in the course of its 800-page report, says (paragraph 24, page 708): "The Crown deprived the defence of the opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary – so the defence's case was damaged." It concluded: "The commission's view is that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred."

Megrahi was not in Malta on the date the clothing, so crucial in the whole Lockerbie saga, was bought from the shopkeeper Tony Gauci. The proprietor of Mary's House identified a number of different people, including Abu Talb, who appeared at the trial to deny his part in the bombing.

Talb was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command and is now serving a life sentence in Sweden for the 1985 bombings in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. These discrepancies were part of the reason why the Scottish criminal review commission concluded that there could have been a miscarriage of justice; another was the unexplained payment of $10m from Iranian sources into the coffers of the Popular Front.

The testimony of Lesley Atkinson, who knew Megrahi well in Tripoli, is interesting. She is the wife of Neville Atkinson, who, in 1972, left a career as a night-fighter pilot in the Royal Navy to take up a position as personal pilot to the president of Libya, Colonel Gadaffi, until 1982. "Megrahi was polite and friendly and worked for Libyan Arab Airlines," Mrs Atkinson told me. "Of course, lots of people who worked for LAA were connected to the security services and I do not doubt that he was one of them. We knew him both at work and at the Beach Club – he was a normal, nice guy. I cannot imagine that he would ever have dreamt of planting a bomb on an airliner. He just would not have done that to passengers."

Eddie McKechnie described Megrahi as a cultured man doing a job for his country, and certainly not a mass-murderer. Had he not been given extremely bad advice not to appear in the witness box Megrahi would have revealed the truth – that he was a sanctions-buster, travelling the world to find spare parts for the Libyan oil industry and Libyan Arab Airlines. This role was confirmed to me by Colonel Gadaffi, when, as leader of the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to Libya in March 2001, I saw him in his tent outside Sirte. Gaddafi's own knowledge or involvement in Lockerbie is a different matter.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was born in 1952 and educated in Tripoli and in the Engineering Faculty of Benghazi University. He became involved in the Ministry of Trade, and like many other officials, certainly did so in the intelligence services. He served as the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and as director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. A genuine believer in what the young Gaddafi was trying to achieve, and in the Great Jamariyah, Megrahi was happy to put his talents at the service of the state. Where else in Africa is there no hint of personal corruption among the leadership, he asked me! He had good relations with engineers at Brown and Root, I was told by their chairman and managing director, Sir Richard Morris (1980-90). Brown and Root was the contractor for the huge irrigation projects in Cyrenerica, south of Benghazi, the man-made river bringing water to desert areas that had been fertile in Roman times.

He was understandably proud of the traditional skills associated with his people. On one occasion, when I visited him in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow and told him that I had been to Leptis Magna, he responded: "You know that my Tripolitanian ancestors were the artists in stone, responsible for work throughout the Empire, not least in Rome itself!" Had the judges had the opportunity to get to know Megrahi, as I knew him, they could never have arrived at the verdict of "guilty" – at most, the good Scots legal term "not proven".

After Zeist, Fhimah, represented by the aggressively formidable barrister Richard Keen QC, was cleared and returned to a hero's welcome in Tripoli. Fhimah talked with knowledge and pride, as did Megrahi, about the wonderful sight of Sabbratah and the glories of the Greek colonial city at Cyrene.

Meanwhile, Megrahi was incarcerated in Barlinnie Prison. I was not his only visitor there and in Greenock who came away with a favourable opinion. Dr Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, a medical student at the University of Nottingham, told me: "On meeting Abdelbaset in Greenock prison, I found him charming, rational, not given to anger or bluster. He made it obvious that his first priority was to clear his name before returning to his much-loved family in Tripoli.

"I saw him for the last time just before Christmas 2008, when, he, a devout Muslim, gave me a Christmas card in which he asked me and my family to pray for him and his family. That card is one of my most precious possessions.

"This meeting was before he could have known just how closely death loomed. I cannot criticise his apparently voluntary decision to spend his last months on earth with his family, above the priority of clearing his name."

I know that in some uninformed quarters, Dr Swire's views are regarded as eccentric. But it is the other British relatives who have studied the position in depth, such as Martin Cadman, who lost his son Bill; Pamela Dix, who lost her brother; and the Reverend John Mosey, who lost a daughter, have arrived at precisely the same conclusions about Megrahi's innocence. Unlike some American relatives, they have bothered to make exhaustive studies of the detail.

In my opinion, whatever Gordon Brown, Kenny MacAskill, Alec Salmond and Jack Straw – all fundamentally decent human beings – may feel they have to say in public due to pressure, and wickedness in Washington and in the Crown Office in Edinburgh, which, above all, did not want their misdeeds exposed by the truth, they all knew that they were acquiescing in the release of an innocent man. I am not quite so sure that Fhimah did not have an inkling about potentially explosive material on its way to the Bekaa valley.

Even in his final hours, controversy never deserted Megrahi. The Libyan authorities were absolutely justified in declining to extradite him, both for reasons of international law and more importantly, that he was not guilty as charged of the Lockerbie crime – also the considered opinion of Dr Hans Koechler, who attended Megrahi's trial as an official UN observer and has examined his appeal process in Scotland.

As James Cusick, who has followed the twists and turns of the Lockerbie saga for many years as a highly informed journalist, wrote in The Independent on Tuesday 30 August, "The truth behind the Lockerbie bombing remains enmeshed in diplomatic gains."

My last sight of Abdelbaset was on TV on 3 October, attended by Mrs Megrahi, with tubes galore, thanking Dr Swire in gentle tones for trying to furnish necessary drugs and hissing out that there were many liars at Zeist. So there were.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, intelligence officer: born Tripoli, Libya 1 April 1952; married Aisha (four sons, one daughter); died 20 May 2012

Urgent questions posed to SCCRC by John Ashton

[What follows is the text of an email sent this morning to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission by John Ashton. It is reproduced here with Mr Ashton’s approval:]

I am the biographer of Mr Megrahi and from 2006 until his return to Libya in 2009 worked as a researcher with his legal team.

I have a number of urgent questions, which are listed below, about the statement issued by SCCRC yesterday, in particular, the following passages:

The Commission received the current application from Messrs Aamer Anwar & Co., solicitors, in June 2014. At the time it was clear that the application was made on behalf of the “Justice for Megrahi” group, in the form of Dr Jim Swire, the Rev'd John Mosey and a number of other family members of the victims of the bombing. The application also appeared to be supported by the members of the family of the late Mr Megrahi…

...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 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.

Points to note

1. The application, which the SCCRC yesterday rejected, was not made of behalf of the Justice for Megrahi group but on behalf of a number of the UK Lockerbie victims’ relatives and members of Mr Megrahi’s family.

2. The application stated, in schedule 3:

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 eghttp://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2011/12/these-are-my-last-words-i-am-innocent.html.

3. The application was accompanied by an affidavit by me, which provided a detailed account of why, according to Mr Megrahi, he abandoned his previous appeal. It named three Libyan witnesses who could verify this account.

4. Mr Megrahi gave me access to all his legal appeal papers, which I still have.

5. In response to the SCCRC’s statement, Taylor & Kelly solicitors yesterday issued the following statement:

It is with some surprise that we learn today that the Commission have come to the view that papers have not been forthcoming from us as Mr Megrahi’s appeal representatives. As soon as a request was made from the commission we asked to be advised of the basis of the request – the power of the commission to ask for access to material. Despite making clear that we were anxious to assist, we have not as yet been told of the Commission’s authority to have access to amongst other things private communications. As solicitors we cannot deliver up papers in our possession simply upon request, even to a body such as the Commission.

No indication was given to us until today that the Commission were interested in the part of our actings relating to Mr Megrahi’s appeal being abandoned. The Commission have very wide powers indeed. They could have made application to the Court for access to materials. In any such application, they would clearly have been required to state the basis of the request, and the basis for any court to order us as solicitors to have to part with confidential papers. We prefaced that in communications with them and asked them to provide authority for any application. We remain in the dark on this important point.

As solicitors we are bound by professional obligations which are the subject of regulation by the Law Society of Scotland. In the event that we have in some way not met our professional obligations the Law Society could have been consulted.

As it was, at the conclusion of our actings in this case we sought and obtained our own legal advice about the custody of the papers.

No further enquiry was made of our solicitors individually or any others who formed part of the legal team. The Commission in its previous consideration of Mr Megrahi’s case interviewed each member of Mr Megrahi’s team about decisions made in the course of the trial. If focus had centred on the abandonment of the appeal then that could have been pursued by seeking to interview those involved in that aspect of the case.

Questions

1. Why did the commission state that the application had been brought on behalf of the Justice for Megrahi group, when it was in fact brought on behalf on some of the Lockerbie victims’ relatives and members of Mr Megrahi’s family?

2. Why did the commission not approach me to request access to the paperwork that I hold?

3. Why did the commission not interview me about the reasons that Mr Megrahi gave for abandoning his appeal?

4. Why did the commission not attempt to speak to the Libyan witnesses named in my affidavit?

5. Why did the commission not advise Taylor & Kelly solicitors of the legal basis of its request for documentation?

6. Why did the commission not seek to interview solicitor Tony Kelly about Mr Megrahi’s abandonment of his appeal?

I look forward to your early response.

Lockerbie families: we were spied on by state

[This is the headline over a report published in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]

Relatives of the Lockerbie bomb victims said yesterday that they have been repeatedly bugged by the security services as it emerged that secret government documents suggested the families needed “careful watching”.

Previously classified government files, seen by The Times, reveal that Margaret Thatcher, when she was prime minister, had been warned that the families were becoming increasingly organised and it was suggested to her that they be put under observation.

Speaking about alleged state surveillance for the first time, the Rev John Mosey, a church minister who lost his teenage daughter, Helga, in the bombing, said that after speaking publicly his phone calls were often disrupted and documents relating to the bombing had gone missing from his computer.

Jim Swire, a GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, reported similar intrusions and claims that he was grilled by people he now believes were from the security services. (...)

Their stories were corroborated by Hans Koechler, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the trial of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted for the worst act of terrorism in Britain. The academic and humanitarian, based in Vienna, revealed that his computers had been accessed and data removed after he compiled reports into the case.

Dr Swire and Mr Mosey believe that crucial evidence was withheld from Megrahi’s trial and that his conviction may have been wrongful.

The latest Lockerbie files have been released by the British government and sourced from the National Archives.

One of the documents is a letter sent from the Foreign Office on August 10, 1989, to Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Scotland’s most senior law officer, and circulated to Thatcher, which raises concerns about the families. It said: “Another aspect which will need careful watching is the activities of relatives of Pan Am 103 victims. The US relatives have for some time been well organised and vocal. More recently the UK relatives have formed the group ‘UK Families Flight 103’ and have written to various ministers. We must be totally consistent in our responses to them.”

Later documents suggest that the relatives were regarded as a nuisance by the government. Lord Fraser, then lord advocate, wrote: “I have recently received a letter from the UK families expressing a wish for a public inquiry. I have sought to head off this demand of relatives here and in the United States.”

Relatives believe the files finally confirm their long-standing belief that they were spied on.

Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed, said: “I cannot believe that a supposedly decent country could behave in such a way towards grieving people whose only crime was to seek the truth. It is unethical, improper and totally unjustifiable.”

He claimed that his communications had been interfered with for decades after he spoke to two men in 1989 who claimed to be journalists.

“These two guys asked to meet me in the countryside near Cambridge,” he said. “They turned up in a high powered foreign sports car and made me feel quite uneasy, almost scared. They seemed satisfied with what I said, almost as if they discovered I didn’t know as much as they feared I might.”

Dr Swire claims that he deliberately included false information in private correspondence, only for it to appear in the press days later, adding: “It made me suspicious that Cheltenham [home of the spy agency GCHQ] made sure that everything I was doing was known beforehand.”

Mr Mosey, who is based in Lancaster, said: “I could hear little clicks and clunks when I was on the phone and documents regarding Lockerbie were disappearing from my computer.”

Dr Koechler said that the documents and the allegations of surveillance were a cause for deep concern.

“I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial,” he said. “The state should respect the privacy of communication and should not interfere into lawful activities of civil society. These documents further confirm my doubts about the integrity of the investigation.” (...)

The Foreign Office said: “We will not be commenting on the contents of our archive files.”

[RB: For what it is worth, I also had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office. In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information and on other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say "Hi, guys!"]

UK Lockerbie families call US senators to Scotland

[This is the headline over a news agency report from The Associated Press. It reads in part:]

Some families of the British victims of the Lockerbie bombing have challenged four US senators to speak to them about their take on the 1988 terror attack.

Although the American relatives of those who died in the attack have largely focused on the controversy surrounding the release of former Libyan agent Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of playing any role in the atrocity, many here in the UK harbor lingering doubts about his guilt — and want the US to know it.

"The senators should not be asking why Mr. al-Megrahi was released, but why he was convicted in the first place," said Rev. John Mosey, whose daughter Helga, 19, was among those who perished in the attack. "This is not about one man, but about the 270 people who died."

Lawyers for al-Megrahi have long argued that the attack was actually the result of an Iranian-financed Palestinian plot, and that authorities in Britain and the United States tampered with evidence, disregarded witness statements and steered investigators toward the conclusion that Libya, not Iran, was to blame.

Libya accepted responsibility and pay compensation for the Lockerbie bombing, the argument goes, as a quick and easy way to shake off its pariah status.

The theory remains a matter of debate in Scotland. Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson, who helped link al-Megrahi to the bombing, recently told Scottish television that the idea that anyone would attempt to frame al-Megrahi was ridiculous. (...)

Mosey said that US officials needed to change their focus.

"Instead of hounding the doctors and Scottish politicians in the case, I would like them to come over to speak to us, the UK families of Flight 103," he said. "We are not in uniform agreement, but I think they need to hear our voices.

"We have not learned the truth about Lockerbie."

Still, it does have some traction and Mosey and others have called for a public inquiry into the case.

Media reaction to abandonment of appeal

Excerpts from Lucy Adams's report in The Herald:

Megrahi's defence team revealed that he made the decision to drop the case because he believed it would speed up the decision to allow him to return to Libya.

The Herald understands that Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, will allow Megrahi to return to Tripoli later this week on compassionate grounds. Ramadan begins on Friday and there is concern that he would not survive the strict fasting regime involved while in prison.

Seven senior US Senators yesterday wrote to the Justice Secretary to oppose such a move. They include leading Democrats John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.

However, a Libyan judge, who was in court yesterday as an "observer" to the hearing, said he should be allowed to return home to his family.

Honorary Justice Hamdi Fannoush said outside the courtroom that dropping the case was "not in the interests of justice".

Mr Fannoush said: "People want to know what happened but this closes the door on that opportunity.

"Megrahi wanted to clear his name in court but after trying every possible way of getting home to see his family, he felt forced to make this sacrifice.

"In Libya everyone is talking about this. They believe he is innocent and cannot understand why he is still not home when he is so ill. Judicially nothing more can be done now other than a public inquiry." (...)

Lord Hamilton, Scotland's most senior judge who was sitting with Lord Eassie and Lady Paton, said it was "of the utmost importance" that the Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini makes an early decision on whether she intends to insist upon the appeal.

The judge said the court urged her to reach a decision on that matter without undue delay. If she has not dropped the appeal against the length of sentence there will be another procedural hearing in three weeks. Ronnie Clancy, QC for the Crown, said she had to consider the public interest.

The Rev John Mosey, whose daughter Helga, 19, died in the bombing, said the outcome was "more or less what we expected". He went on: "It's a sad day really. It's the worst possible decision for the families because we lose the opportunity to hear evidence that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission thought was worth putting forward."

Mr Mosey said none of the big questions about Lockerbie had been answered.

"We are back where we started 21 years ago, asking for a wide-reaching independent inquiry into all aspects of this disaster," he said. (...)

Christine Grahame, a backbench SNP MSP who has visited Megrahi in prison, said outside court it was "extraordinary" that the Crown had not dropped its own appeal against Megrahi's sentence.

"The Crown was not prepared today to say whether they would drop their appeal." she said. "We had the extraordinary thing of the Crown saying they'd not seen the medical evidence."

She went on: "They have known this was coming before the court and I hope that within the next 24 hours they lodge something dropping their appeal."

Excerpts from David Maddox's report in The Scotsman:

Alex Salmond has given the strongest indication yet that the Lockerbie bomber is to be released from prison, by insisting the decision would not be swayed by a show of strength from the United States.

Speaking after the receipt of a letter from several high-profile US senators, including Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, the First Minister said: "There will be no consideration of international power politics or anything else. It will be taken on the evidence in the interest of justice."

In the letter, received on the day Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi formally dropped his appeal, the senators urged justice secretary Kenny MacAskill not to allow the bomber to return to Libya. It followed similar moves from US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former presidential candidate John McCain. Last night in Washington, Mrs Clinton issued a strongly-worded plea to keep al-Megrahi in prison. "I just think it is absolutely wrong to release someone who has been imprisoned based on the evidence about his involvement in such a horrendous crime," she said. "We are still encouraging the Scottish authorities not to do so and we hope that they will not." (...)

Megrahi could be returned to Libya on compassionate grounds or under a prisoner transfer agreement.

Mr Salmond insisted no decision had been made and issued a strong vote of confidence in the justice secretary, who has been under fire over the past week for his handling of the issue, following leaks suggesting Megrahi is to be released.

Mr Salmond said: "I can also say that a final decision has not been taken by the justice secretary – he only received his final advice at the weekend. I'm absolutely confident if there is one person in Scotland I would absolutely trust to make the right decision for the right reasons, it's Kenny MacAskill."

He also tried to quash suggestions that the dropping of Megrahi's appeal had anything to do with a meeting between the convicted bomber and Mr MacAskill.

"What I can say is, the Scottish Government had no interest whatsoever in Mr Megrahi dropping his appeal," he said.

The First Minister's intervention has been widely perceived as an effort to regain some control over an issue on which his administration has been accused of losing its grip.

A leading article in The Guardian headed "Lockerbie case: the fix and the facts":

After a short hearing in Edinburgh yesterday, Scottish judges accepted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's application to drop his appeal against his conviction and life sentence for the Lockerbie bombing. As Lord Hamilton implied in his judgment, the court had little choice once Megrahi had decided to withdraw. The upshot is that, through no fault of their own, the judges gave the impression that justice had been relegated to a walk-on role in a well-orchestrated international political fix. Whatever the intentions of those involved or the requirements of compassion towards a dying man, that outcome leaves the Lockerbie families looking like the neglected victims of a stitch-up and the rule of law looking like an afterthought.

Even now, with the way clearing for Megrahi's early release, the decision that faces Scotland's justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, is not straightforward. He has the authority to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds because of his cancer. Or he has the option of allowing him to be returned to serve out his time in a Libyan jail under the terms of an agreement between the UK and Libyan governments. There are other options too. But the underlying problem about the Lockerbie case is the same as always – the mismatch between the immensity of a crime that resulted in 270 deaths and the imperfections of the search for the truth about what happened. Exactly where Megrahi fits into the elusive story is not absolutely clear. Until yesterday, his lawyers had worked tirelessly to argue that he played no real role. All along, there have been parallel legal and political universes. As the saga has unwound, the facts have become less watertight and a fear has grown both of an injustice against Megrahi and, at least as importantly, the possibility that the outrage against Pan Am flight 103 might have been state-sponsored in a way that remains concealed from the courts.

In such circumstances, any release of Megrahi by a politician rather than by a court inevitably causes misgivings – and worse – whatever the motivation and however scrupulous the process. As a rule, ministers should not be asked to do the work of judges. They inevitably concern themselves with issues like raison d'état, party advantage, self-promotion and press reaction as much as dispensing justice or maintaining the rule of law. Mr MacAskill should certainly have kept quiet about his intentions until he had decided what to do. Instead he allowed the different interest groups to bid for his vote. The Lockerbie case has always involved political judgments as well as legal ones. Releasing Megrahi may indeed be compassionate and the least worst option in the current circumstances. But it is a bad outcome to a bad case nonetheless. Justice has not been done.

Excerpts from Charlene Sweeney's report in The Times:

The High Court in Edinburgh helped to clear the way for the Lockerbie bomber to return to Libya yesterday when it granted his application to abandon his appeal against conviction.

The White House responded by declaring that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi should remain in Scotland to serve out his life sentence. Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s spokesman, said: “It’s the policy of this Administration . . . that this individual should serve out his term where he’s serving it right now.”

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, called the Justice Secretary last week to insist that the Libyan serve the rest of his sentence in Scotland, and seven senior US senators, including Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, sent a letter to Mr MacAskill expressing concern over his potential release.

Last night Mrs Clinton made clear her strong views on the matter. “I just think it is absolutely wrong to release someone who has been imprisoned based on the evidence about his involvement in such a horrendous crime,” she said. “We are still enouraging the Scottish authorities not to do so and we hope that they will not.”

Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, broke his silence yesterday on al-Megrahi’s possible release saying he believed that Mr MacAskill would “make the right decision for the right reasons”. He added: “There will be no consideration of international power politics or anything else. It will be taken on the evidence in the interest of justice.”

Britain rejected secret deal to prosecute Lockerbie bomber in Ireland

[This is the headline over a report published in today's edition of The Sunday Times. It reads in part:]

Officials feared Irish courts were ‘soft on terrorism’ and more likely to acquit Libyan agent Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, previously classified papers reveal

Britain rejected a secret deal to put the Lockerbie bomber on trial in Dublin amid suggestions that Ireland was “soft on terrorism” and more likely to acquit him, it has emerged.

Previously classified diplomatic documents disclose that Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator, expressed a willingness to hand over Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi to the Irish authorities.

The US and British governments maintained that al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was responsible for the bombing in December 1988 which led to the deaths of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland.

Gaddafi refused to hand him and fellow suspect Lamin Khalifa Fhimah to the authorities in Washington or Edinburgh, leading to years of sanctions and negotiations.

Albert Reynolds, the Irish prime minister, met John Major, his British counterpart, in an attempt to broker a deal to end the stalemate.

However, Downing Street ruled the proposal was too risky after a senior diplomat claimed Irish courts were prone to making “inexplicable” decisions and raised fears that any hearing would be targeted by terrorists.

Gaddafi, who ruled Libya from 1969 when he seized power until he was overthrown and murdered in 2011, was outspoken in his support for the IRA. (...)

Previously unpublished documents from 1994, seen by The Sunday Times, have been opened and placed at the National Archives at Kew.

One, written by Sir Roderic Lyne, Major’s private secretary, confirms for the first time that a clandestine Anglo-Irish summit took place.

“During the tete-a-tete conversation between the prime minister and the taoiseach on May 26, the latter surfaced a Libyan proposal to hold the Lockerbie trial in Ireland,” he wrote.

A handwritten addendum states: “Ireland would be preferable to Canada. But given the Provisional IRA connection a trial there would be piquant to say the least!”

The following month John Dew, deputy head of mission at the UK embassy in Dublin, said the proposal posed unacceptable risks and raised particular concerns about the possibility of al-Megrahi being cleared by a sympathetic Irish court.

“This should not be taken lightly,” he wrote. “Irrespective of the independence of the Irish judiciary — and we all know of some strange rulings in the past — an acquittal would have major implications for Anglo-Irish relations.

“Our public opinion would inevitably interpret it as confirmation that Ireland was soft on terrorism.

“Her Majesty’s government would face serious questioning about why it had allowed the trial to take place in Ireland in view of inexplicable and unpredictable past rulings.” (...)

A separate memo written in the same month by UK Foreign Office civil servants said Reynolds’s suggestion should be taken seriously.

“A trial in Ireland would have some distinct attractions; it is a compatible legal system, it is nearby and it is not a realm or even in the Commonwealth,” it said.

“A number of Irish citizens were on board flight Pan Am 103. It seems that trial in Ireland might be acceptable, both to the Irish government and Libya.

“However, in view of the Provisional IRA connection it would be a more controversial venue than, for example, Australia.”

The British government ultimately rejected the Irish offer, along with an invitation from Nelson Mandela months later for a trial to take place in South Africa.

Eventually, the Libyan suspects went on trial in May 2000 in a Scottish court set up in a former US air base in the Netherlands.

After eight months Lord Cullen, the presiding judge, pronounced a guilty verdict on al-Megrahi. [RB: The presiding judge was actually Lord Sutherland. Lord Cullen presided over the 2001 appeal at Camp Zeist.]

He was sentenced to 27 years in a Scottish prison but released on compassionate grounds while terminally ill in 2009.

He maintained his innocence until his death in 2012 and his family are still fighting to have his conviction overturned.

Fhimah was found not guilty and returned to Libya.

More than three decades on, another man who is suspected of building the bomb that downed Pan Am flight 103 is being prosecuted in the US.

A court in Washington DC fixed a date of May 12, 2025, for the trial of Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, a Libyan citizen who maintains he is not guilty.

In 2018 relatives of Lockerbie victims told The Times that they had been repeatedly bugged by the security services after official documents suggested that they needed “careful watching”.

The Rev John Mosey, a church minister who lost his teenage daughter Helga in the atrocity, said that after speaking publicly his phone calls were often disrupted and documents relating to the bombing had gone missing from his computer.

Jim Swire, an English GP who lost his daughter Flora and became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, reported similar intrusions and deliberately included false information in private correspondence, only for it to appear in the press days later.

The claims were corroborated by Hans Köchler, an Austrian academic appointed by the United Nations to be an independent observer at the Netherlands trial, who alleged that data had been taken from his computers.

Lockerbie film to be produced by Skye-based company

[I am grateful to journalist Bob Smyth, who wrote the piece in yesterday’s Scottish edition of The Sun, for this more detailed account of the forthcoming Lockerbie film:]

The producers of hit comedy The Inbetweeners are making a new movie - about the Lockerbie disaster.

Scots-based Young Films are turning from comedy to tragedy with their plans for a hard-hitting film about the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, which claimed the lives of 270 people.

And it’s understood that top Scottish film-maker Kevin Macdonald will direct the project.  Kevin, brother of Trainspotting producer Andrew Macdonald, made the hit movie The Last King of Scotland.

The project by Isle of Skye-based Young Films is the second movie about Lockerbie in the pipeline.

It was revealed last year that producers were at the Cannes Film Festival trying to get funding for a movie about the horror. More detail about that project emerged recently, with news that it would focus on the story of Dr Jim Swire. Dr Swire lost his daughter Flora in the tragedy and has relentlessly campaigned for answers about the case amid his fears that bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted.

It’s believed key real-life characters in the newly-revealed project will include Dr Swire.

Young Films was set up by Christopher Young, who moved to Skye with his family in the 1990s.  His previous work as a producer includes Scots movies Venus Peter and Gregory’s Two Girls but he hit the big-time with The Inbetweeners TV series and smash movie.

Young Films refused to comment on the Lockerbie movie.

But an insider close to the project said: “They are very motivated to make a good film and have shown a lot of commitment to thoroughly researching this controversial case.”

The source added the project was now moving from the research phase to the script preparation stage. He said the film would feature characters involved in Megrahi's defence as well as Dr Swire.

He added: “It will be sympathetic to the claims by Dr Swire and other campaigners that the details outlined in court about how the crime was committed were inaccurate and the conviction of Megrahi was a miscarriage of justice.

“The writer has learned through his investigation of issues such as Deepcut that the official version of events can’t always be trusted.”

Dr Swire said he was aware of the Young Films project but had not signed a contract with them as he was focusing on the other film. He said: “I have friendly relations with the producers.

“I don’t want to blow my own trumpet but I believe the story may have some focus on the campaigning by me and fellow relative Rev John Mosey.”

Rev Mosey lost his daughter Helga in the atrocity and shares Dr Swire’s view that the true facts of the bombing have been concealed by the authorities.

“Any time ordinary members of the public take on the establishment, as we have, it makes a good story.

“I have no idea if the fact that two films are planned will affect things as I’m not in the business.

“I don’t know when either is due to come out but I would have thought whichever film-maker releases theirs first would steal a march on the other.”

The script is being penned by Holby City writer Philip Ralph, who is an expert in dramatising true-life events.

He wrote a play about Deepcut – the shooting deaths of four young soldiers at an Army barracks - which won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival in 2008 and is now being made into a film. He is currently working on a Channel 4 drama about the 7/7 terror attacks on London. His online biography reveals he is “currently developing a feature film with Kevin Macdonald attached to direct, via Young Films”.

A spokesman for Mr Ralph refused to comment on the Lockerbie project.

It's understood that Megrahi's biographer, John Ashton, has also linked up with the producers to help with research. Mr Ashton became the Libyan's deathbed confidant as he and the bomber co-wrote the book Megrahi: You are my Jury, published last year. He refused to comment.