Questions that demand an answer

[What follows is the text of an item posted on this blog on this date in 2008:]

Lockerbie questions demand an answer

This is the headline over an article in today's issue of The Times by Magnus Linklater, the newspaper's Scotland Editor (and the editor of The Scotsman in the bygone days when that title was still a serious and responsible journal).

The article reads in part:

'You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise that nagging questions have gnawed away at the Lockerbie case since the first investigations began. The veteran campaigner, Tam Dalyell, who describes himself as a “professor of Lockerbie studies”, is convinced that neither al-Megrahi nor the Libyan Government had any involvement. He, along with the Rev John Mosey and Dr Jim Swire, who both lost daughters in the atrocity, believe that there has been a spectacular miscarriage of justice.

'They have raised questions about basic evidence in the original case. They have challenged eyewitness accounts offered by the chief prosecution witness, the Maltese shopowner who originally identified Megrahi as a suspect. They have raised doubts about the forensic evidence, and have pointed out that al-Megrahi, a civilised and intelligent man, is a most unlikely terrorist.

'Last weekend, their campaign was given fresh impetus when Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent, reported that Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist responsible for some of the worst attacks of the 1970s and 1980s, may have been working for the Americans before the invasion of Iraq. Secret documents - the very phrase is a conspiracy idiom - written by Saddam Hussein's security services state that he had been colluding with the Americans trying to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda. Abu Nidal's alleged suicide in 2002 may have been an execution by the Iraqis for his betrayal.

'From this tenuous connection stems the idea that the US security services may have had previous contacts within Abu Nidal's terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which many experts have long believed was the real perpetrator of Lockerbie.

'Mr Dalyell, who thinks there may be some weight to this theory, points to incidents such as notices that went up in the US Embassy in Moscow in the days before the bombing, warning diplomats not to travel on PanAm flights, and how senior South African figures were hauled off the plane before the flight, almost as if there had been advance warning.

'For me, this kind of evidence strays into the territory of “the second gunman theory” that bedevilled the Kennedy assassination. But there is one aspect of the case that I have never understood: why was it that, for the first 18 months of the investigation, Scottish police, US investigators and European security agents were convinced that the perpetrators were Abu Nidal's PFLP? And why was it that, in the run-up to the Gulf War, when good relations with Syria and Iran were important to Western interests, attention switched abruptly from Abu Nidal's terrorists, and on to Libya?

'These matters have never satisfactorily been explained, and in the interests of common justice they should be addressed. For the sake of the Flight 103 victims, for the wider interests of Western security, and for the man now dying in a Scottish prison, there is a need for a proper inquiry. It does not have to be as wideranging as the Warren Commission that examined the Kennedy case, but it does need to be international, and to have US backing. The appeal in Edinburgh next year will examine legal aspects of the case, but it cannot extend to the wider issues that demand resolution.

'Just possibly a new president taking office next January will find in his in-tray persuasive evidence pointing to a reopening of the case. There are powerful moral reasons for dusting it off and asking a basic question: who was responsible for Britain's worst terrorist outrage?'

[RB: Although this article is mentioned on Mr Linklater’s page on journalisted, it no longer appears on the website of The Times. The most recent article by Magnus Linklater in The Times can be read here. A very different stance is adopted. What has changed over the past seven years? Certainly no new evidence has emerged supporting Megrahi’s guilt. And much evidence has surfaced that further undermines the conviction. What is it, then, that has changed Mr Linklater’s mind? It’s a mystery.]

Profoundly and wilfully mistaken

Following Magnus Linklater’s most recent Lockerbie article in The Times, James Robertson (in my view Scotland’s most distinguished living novelist, and a Justice for Megrahi stalwart) was moved to pen a letter to the editor. Since The Times has not published the letter, I reproduce it here, with James Robertson’s permission:]

21 October 2015

Sir

Magnus Linklater asserts, once again, that those who believe the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to be unsound are ‘conspiracy theorists’, and that they should ‘accept that the evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya rather than the myriad of misty theories and unsupported allegations on which their case has rested’. It is Mr Linklater who is, once again, profoundly and wilfully mistaken.

He states that last week the Crown Office announced that it had ‘identified two further suspects, and was asking the government in Tripoli to allow it access to them in prison’. This identification appears to have come, not from any ‘long and dogged investigation’ by the Scottish police or Crown Office, but from information contained in the recent American television documentary made by Ken Dornstein, whose brother David was killed at Lockerbie. Mr Dornstein’s motivation in wanting to find out who murdered his brother cannot be questioned, but whether he has uncovered any significant new evidence remains to be seen.

There remain, too, the difficulties of interviewing these men given the current chaotic situation in Libya. The Crown Office has requested the Attorney General of Libya to allow it access to them, but they are held, not by the administration based in Tobruk and recognised by the UK, but by the National Salvation administration based in Tripoli. Those of us who seek justice for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as well as for the families of the victims of Lockerbie would welcome the case being re-opened in a court of law: the prospects of this happening as a result of these latest developments are remote indeed.

Elsewhere, Mr Dornstein has been quoted as saying of one of the suspects, Mohammed Abouajela Masud, that, ‘figuring out simply that he existed would solve many of the unanswered questions to the bombing because he was attached to Megrahi according to the best information there was, including at the airport in Malta on the day that the bomb was said to have been infiltrated into the baggage system and ultimately on to Flight 103.’ If this is representative of the quality of the ‘new’ evidence, it is deeply disappointing. It simply reinforces an already discredited line of reasoning, albeit one which the court at Camp Zeist accepted,which insists – despite compelling evidence to the contrary – that the bomb began its journey in Malta and not at Heathrow, that the timer used to detonate the bomb was ‘similar in all respects’ to timers in Libyan hands, that there was no dubiety about the identification of Megrahi as purchaser, in a Malta shop, of clothes later retrieved from the bomb suitcase, and so on.

Despite what Mr Linklater avers, the arguments which oppose this version of events have ‘followed the evidence’ and are indeed based on ‘hard facts’. To dismiss the serious concerns about the way in which the case against Megrahi was prosecuted is to accept that the Scottish justice system operated impeccably throughout, and is beyond reproach. The ‘hard facts’ suggest the very opposite.

It is time, Mr Linklater writes, to ‘extinguish the last embers of controversy that have heated the Lockerbie case for so long.’ There is a straightforward way of doing that: allow all the evidence to be heard by an appeal court or by a properly constituted inquiry.

James Robertson

More Lockerbie errors by Magnus Linklater

[This is the headline over an article posted today by John Ashton on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website.  It reads as follows:]

The following article by Magnus Linklater appears in the Scottish edition of The Times under the headline Lockerbie evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with Mr Linklater’s writing on Lockerbie, it contains numerous distortions and factual errors.

The article follows in italics, interspersed with my comments.

It is time to extinguish the last embers of controversy that have heated the Lockerbie case for so long. For more than two decades critics have argued that Scottish police got the wrong man and that the prosecution of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was — perhaps deliberately — a botched job.

Yet last week, after a long and dogged investigation, the Crown Office announced that it had identified two further suspects, and was asking the government in Tripoli to allow it access to them in prison.

The investigation of the two new suspects was done primarily by Ken Dornstein. The key fact that Ken uncovered (the fact that Megrahi’s alleged associate Abu Agila Mas’ud was a suspect in the La Belle Disco bombing) was missed by the Crown Office for 18 years.

It may not succeed — Libya is in chaos at the moment — but it is clear that enough prima facie evidence has now emerged to perhaps home in on those who planned and helped execute a terrorist attack that killed 270 innocent people 27 years ago.

I agree that there is a prima facie case against Mas’ud, just as there was against Megrahi, and I hope he can be brought to trial. However, the case against him will rely on much of the discredited evidence that convicted Megrahi.

Those who have argued down the years that this line of inquiry is misguided, and that Libya was not responsible, have some hard questions to answer.

No one that I know of has argued that the Crown should not pursue lines of inquiry that point to Libya. Our criticism of the Crown is that it has failed to pursue exculpatory evidence.

Why would the Crown Office still be spending public money and using scarce resources to shore up a case that is — as its critics claim — fundamentally flawed?

One reason might be that, it is a way of keeping at bay the tide of scandal that surrounds Megrahi’s prosecution. Another question, which Mr Linklater fails to ask, is: why is the Crown not using its resources to consider the evidence that points away from Libya, such as the forensic evidence, that shows that the fragment of circuit board PT/35b did not, as the Crown alleged at trial, originate from a timer supplied to Libya by the Swiss company Mebo?

The central accusations that have sustained the conspiracy theorists is that evidence was manipulated by the CIA to accuse Libya rather than Syria or Iran; that information was withheld from defence lawyers representing al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the bombing; and that Scottish judges presided over what they call “the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history”.

Wrong. The central allegation, which is in the realm of fact, not conspiracy, is that the Crown withheld exculpatory evidence. We also believe that it was a terrible miscarriage of justice, for which the judges must share the blame. On this point, Mr Linklater fails to report that the SCCRC ruled that the trial court judgment was unreasonable.

Ever since, they argue, the Scottish judicial system has connived in an attempt to prevent the truth coming out. Allowing al-Megrahi back to Libya on condition that he dropped his appeal was part of the strategy.

Wrong. It has never been seriously suggested by Megrahi’s mainstream supporters that the Scottish judicial system pressured Megrahi to drop his appeal. The pressure was purely political and came from the Scottish Government and/or the Libyan government.

Why, then, should that same legal process be obstinately nurturing a case that it must, by now, have conceded is wrong-headed? Perhaps, as one of its accusers has alleged, the explanation is sheer stupidity. Or, as another claims, it is desperately trying to cover its tracks by pursuing an empty investigation.

But perhaps it is simply following the evidence, and doing what every family of every Lockerbie victim wants it to, which is trying to get at the truth. The hard facts are that every countertheory, and every alternative thread of evidence, has been examined to distraction, and has led nowhere.

Wrong. The counter evidence relating to PT/35b (and much else) has not been pursued.

The time has come for those who cling to them to accept that the evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya rather than the myriad of misty theories and unsupported allegations on which their case has rested.

Wrong. The primary claims of Megrahi’s supporters are supported by a wealth of hard evidence, the great majority of which was gathered by the Scottish police.

Lockerbie evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater in today’s edition of The Times (subscription). It reads as follows:]

Every countertheory has been examined and has led nowhere

It is time to extinguish the last embers of controversy that have heated the Lockerbie case for so long. For more than two decades critics have argued that Scottish police got the wrong man and that the prosecution of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was — perhaps deliberately — a botched job.

Yet last week, after a long and dogged investigation, the Crown Office announced that it had identified two further suspects, and was asking the government in Tripoli to allow it access to them in prison. It may not succeed — Libya is in chaos at the moment — but it is clear that enough prima facie evidence has now emerged to perhaps home in on those who planned and helped execute a terrorist attack that killed 270 innocent people 27 years ago.

Those who have argued down the years that this line of inquiry is misguided, and that Libya was not responsible, have some hard questions to answer. Why would the Crown Office still be spending public money and using scarce resources to shore up a case that is — as its critics claim — fundamentally flawed?

The central accusations that have sustained the conspiracy theorists is that evidence was manipulated by the CIA to accuse Libya rather than Syria or Iran; that information was withheld from defence lawyers representing al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the bombing; and that Scottish judges presided over what they call “the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history”.

Ever since, they argue, the Scottish judicial system has connived in an attempt to prevent the truth coming out. Allowing al-Megrahi back to Libya on condition that he dropped his appeal was part of the strategy.

Why, then, should that same legal process be obstinately nurturing a case that it must, by now, have conceded is wrong-headed? Perhaps, as one of its accusers has alleged, the explanation is sheer stupidity. Or, as another claims, it is desperately trying to cover its tracks by pursuing an empty investigation.

But perhaps it is simply following the evidence, and doing what every family of every Lockerbie victim wants it to, which is trying to get at the truth. The hard facts are that every countertheory, and every alternative thread of evidence, has been examined to distraction, and has led nowhere. The time has come for those who cling to them to accept that the evidence points firmly in the direction of Libya rather than the myriad of misty theories and unsupported allegations on which their case has rested.

[RB: Magnus Linklater is profoundly mistaken. The Justice for Megrahi campaign is not advancing “countertheories”. It is drawing attention to grave flaws in the evidence that resulted in the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi and to credible scientific and other evidence that further undermines the case against him. This evidence has been pointed out to Mr Linklater by John Ashton amongst others and he has been challenged to respond. Although promising to do so, he has not. All that he contributes is the assertion that the conviction was correct (because Scottish judges do not make mistakes, perhaps?) and that those who fail to swallow it hook, line and sinker are purblind conspiracy theorists. For Mr Linklater, as far as the Megrahi conviction is concerned all is for the best in the best of all possible legal systems. When the house of cards crumbles, as it assuredly will, Scotland’s Dr Pangloss will be deservedly left hanging his head in shame at his part in defending the indefensible.]

An untested appeal is a disservice to justice

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater in today’s edition of The Times (behind the paywall). It reads as follows:]

Families of the 7/7 victims at least have resolution but in the case of Lockerbie the truth may now be buried for ever

For the victims of the 7/7 attacks in London, the memorials yesterday may have helped to draw a line under an atrocity that robbed families of those they loved and tore apart their lives. By now they have gathered most of the detail of what happened on that day. They know who did it; they have pieced together the last moments of those who died; the gaps in their knowledge have been steadily filled.

For the families of the Lockerbie victims, 26 years have passed without the same resolution. For some, such as Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, there is the visceral conviction that the wrong man was targeted and that the trail to Libya was a false one. Others, like the redoubtable Tam Dalyell, share that belief. It will stay with them for ever; nothing will convince them otherwise. For others — equally certain that the right man was convicted — there is the frustration of not knowing who ordered the attack. Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, found guilty on the evidence of placing the bomb on board a feeder flight from Luqa airport in Malta, could not, they believe, have acted alone. Who gave the orders remains an unanswered question.

Last week, three appeal judges rejected the final route open to those who wished to bring the Lockerbie case back before the courts. Only the family of a dead man can appeal his conviction, they ruled; campaigners for relatives of the victims have no such legal standing. Since al-Megrahi’s family in Libya were unwilling or unable to back the appeal, that marked the end of a long narrative of rumour, doubts, suspicions and accusations that reach back almost as far as the attack itself.

The story will not, of course, end here. Already campaigners have announced that they intend to pursue their quest “for justice”. Within hours of the decision, Robert Black, QC, a Lockerbie man who was partly responsible for the original trial being held in the Netherlands, criticised the Scottish legal system for being “too rigid” in refusing the appeal and said it was predictable that the judges had rejected it. They “bristled with discomfort”, he wrote, at the prospect of the case being brought back, in case the conviction fell apart. [RB: I have said or written no such thing. What I did do is post on this blog a letter from Thomas Crooks in The Scotsman where such comments are made.]

Actually, the reverse is true. Most lawyers, up to and including several lord advocates who have been involved in the prosecution case or have studied it in detail, would relish seeing it back in court — if only to subject the conspiracy theories to forensic cross-examination and to see them fall apart. Investigators have been labelled corrupt, stupid or simply blinkered for failing to challenge the prosecution case. They would welcome the chance to contest that view.

For all the heated controversy that has surrounded police and lawyers involved in putting together the case against al-Megrahi, none of the counter-theories have stood up to scrutiny. They have been paraded in books, TV programmes and articles, but they have always foundered on an absence of hard evidence. Suggestions, for instance, that the bomb was loaded at Heathrow rather than in Malta remain in the domain of speculation rather than of sustainable proof. The idea that the critical fragment of a timer linking the bomb to the Libyans was planted, altered, or swapped requires a leap that would be thrown out in any serious court of law. The explanations offered as to what al-Megrahi was doing in Malta at precisely the time that the bomb was loaded, and how it came to be wrapped in clothes bought in a local shop, have been as unconvincing as they have been varied.

The case that exonerates the Libyans, while at the same time attempting to explain away the hard forensic and circumstantial evidence that links them to the bombing, is almost as tortuous as the negotiations that persuaded Colonel Gaddafi to surrender the two men accused of the bombing to face a Scottish trial.

The Justice for Megrahi campaign relies ultimately on the lengthy report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which spent three years on the most detailed examination of the evidence ever carried out; which had the right — and exercised it — to summon every witness cited by those who argued that the conviction was unsafe; and which dismissed each and every counter-theory that came before it.

It did, however, produce six grounds for appeal, and it is on those that al-Megrahi’s defenders rely in arguing that the case was a miscarriage of justice. They centre, largely, on delays by the Crown in producing key pieces of evidence and on details of how the evidence of Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothes used to wrap the bomb, was handled. The campaigners claim that this evidence would have blown the prosecution case out of the water. That is unlikely. Most independent experts who have examined all, rather than part, of the evidence, say that none of the six grounds for appeal would have been sufficient to overturn the prosecution case.

The sad fact is that we will never know. The gulf that separates the sides in the story is too wide to be bridged. The proof may be out there in the turmoil that is Libya today. But even were it now to emerge, who would believe it? Time, in a case like this, does little to heal — it merely cements deep-seated suspicions. If nature abhors a vacuum, then an untested appeal is a disservice to justice. Without that final process, the truth is buried for ever.

[RB: Yet more misrepresentation by Magnus Linklater of the evidential flaws in the Megrahi conviction. His blinkered stance has been exposed time and again by John Ashton, amongst others.  Here is a link to one of Mr Ashton’s pieces demolishing the Linklater arguments: Lockerbie, and the mangled logic of Magnus Linklater.]

"Conspiracy theorist" bites back

One year ago today, John Ashton published his demolition of Magnus Linklater’s Scottish Review article stigmatising Justice for Megrahi campaigners as obsessive conspiracy theorists, impervious to fact or reason. Mr Ashton’s rebuttal appears in the Scottish Review too, with an expanded version on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website. If you haven’t read these pieces you have a treat in store.

Hubris in defence of the indefensible

[What follows is a response from Dr Jim Swire to Magnus Linklater’s articles Lockerbie conviction is upheld by review and Lockerbie review kills conspiracy theories in The Times on 20 December. Dr Swire intended to post the response on the relevant thread on this blog but I thought it should appear as a separate item:]

There were three particular aspects of comments attributed to the Crown Office and thus to Lord Advocate Mulholland, by Mr Linklater in The Times of 20 December 2014 which were intensely irritating to some Lockerbie relatives.

The first was that the Lord Advocate should be involved in such comments at all on that particular date knowing full well that many relatives here, such as myself, can no longer believe the Megrahi verdict to be justified and that therefore the precious memories to be renewed on the following day would be disturbed by his clear attempt to pander to US relatives, most of whom have not yet realised the extraordinary twisting of justice which seems to have occurred at Zeist, through not having reviewed the proceedings and subsequent fallout for themselves.

I am not aware that it is part of the remit of the Crown Office to suckle the American public, rather than objectively to examine evidence in criminal cases on behalf of the people of Scotland.

Those who do care about the human tragedy of this case should remember that the exhibition of such hubris in defence of the indefensible will, when the truth does eventually emerge, only add to the misery of those relatives who never detected the deception for themselves.

The second was the claim that the facts had been re-examined and that there was not a shred of doubt about the integrity of the verdict. In the face of the previous findings by the SCCRC after three years hard work, the Crown Office appears to have insulted their work as well as astonishing many Scots. Perhaps Lord Advocate Mulholland should hang the famous comments of the late Mandy Rice-Davies at the foot of his bed.

The third was the claim by the Lord Advocate that “our focus remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition.” This is supported according to Mr Linklater by the police who are quoted as saying that the evidence (the forensic item PT35b etc) would have to have been planted within 23 days. Linklater writes:

‘Police are adamant, however, that the fragment was under supervision. They point out that the evidence would have to have been planted within 23 days, requiring knowledge of all the evidence to come — including Megrahi, whose existence was then unknown.’

Perhaps Lord Advocate Mulholland and those representing the police have forgotten the details of the provenance of these items.

They were presented to the court as having been recovered by prosecution forensic scientists from the only police evidence bag found to have had its official label illegally interfered with. The alteration to the label was both criminal and significant. The wording had been changed from the ‘charred cloth’ of the original label to read ‘charred debris’ The other debris of course included PT35b, the mysterious board fragment, mimicking boards belonging to the Libyans, but having a fundamentally different mode of finish simply not available to the firm which had made the Libyan boards prior to December 1988. It could not therefore have been derived from the remains  of a Libyan bomb timer allegedly  found in the innocent fields round Lockerbie.

An explanation from the Crown Office as to what they have done to discover who altered that police label and whether or not that crime was accompanied by any additions to the bag's contents, might, if conducted intensively by a party free of any hubristic attachment to the marvels of Lord Advocate Mulholland's office do more to advance the truth in this dire case than does the police assumption that any interference 'must' have occurred 'within 23 days'. Again the late Mandy applies.

Has the Crown Office had the sanctity of the ‘supervision’ which the police claim protected their evidence bags objectively investigated?

If so, what was found?                 

If not, why not? 

[Other responses to the articles in The Times can be found here.]

We got it right, says Lord Advocate

[Today’s edition of The Times contains a report by Magnus Linklater headed Lockerbie conviction is upheld by review. It reads as follows:]

A review of the Lockerbie bombing case by Scottish investigators has concluded that there is “not a shred of evidence” to support claims that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted.

Not only have investigators confirmed beyond doubt that the Libyan was the man responsible for the deaths of 270 people on December 21, 1988, they believe his fellow accused, Lamin Fhimah, who was acquitted, was almost certainly involved as well.

The findings will come as a blow to those, such as Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of those killed, and Robert Black, QC, who maintain that prosecutors advanced a flawed case and that judges presided over a miscarriage of justice. Ever since Megrahi was convicted in 2001 there have been allegations that evidence was manipulated to implicate Libya, steering suspicion away from Middle Eastern states.

Scottish prosecutors have been accused of deliberately ignoring evidence that the bomb was put aboard Pan Am Flight 103 at Heathrow rather than at Malta, and that the timer fragment, the principal piece of forensic evidence against Libya, was planted or altered.

The claims have been examined in detail in the course of the investigation by the Crown Office and Police Scotland, which have been working on the case with the FBI to identify others who were involved in the bombing.

Sources close to the investigation said there was “not a shred of evidence” to suggest the prosecution got it wrong.

Active pursuit of the case in Libya, they added, has served to confirm rather than undermine the evidence against both Megrahi and Fhimah.

Last night Frank Mulholland, QC, the Lord Advocate, said: “During the 26-year-long inquiry not one Crown Office investigator or prosecutor has raised a concern about the evidence in this case . . . our focus remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition.”

Evidence on the bomb itself, and the crucial timer fragment that linked the attack to Libya, found three weeks after Pan Am 103 exploded, have undermined the conspiracy theory.

Critics say the fragment was either planted at the site, exchanged later for another, or was tampered with to show a link to Libya that was never there.

Police are adamant, however, that the fragment was under supervision. They point out that the evidence would have to have been planted within 23 days, requiring knowledge of all the evidence to come — including Megrahi, whose existence was then unknown.

Set against the speculation are facts that have never been disproved: the presence of Megrahi in Malta, carrying a false passport, on the day the prosecution says the bomb went on board flight KM180 to Frankfurt; Fhimah arriving with him; and their subsequent telephone conversations.

[RB: The police investigation here referred to is not that which is currently being conducted by Police Scotland (under the supervision of an independent QC) into Justice for Megrahi’s allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial. Progress reports on that investigation can be accessed here. Furthermore, an application (at the joint instance of the Megrahi family and a group of victims’ relatives) for Megrahi’s conviction to be referred back to the High Court for a further appeal is currently under consideration by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. In these circumstances and in the light of the evidence disclosed by John Ashton and Dr Morag Kerr in their respective recent books it seems somewhat rash and premature for the Lord Advocate to be trumpeting his confidence that they got the right man after all. But Mr Mulholland, of course, is not noted for circumspection: he characterised Justice for Megrahi’s criminality allegations as “defamatory and without foundation” before they had even been investigated.

Today’s edition of The Times also contains a long comment piece by Magnus Linklater headlined Lockerbie review kills conspiracy theories. Mr Linklater has long been convinced that concerns about the Megrahi conviction are the province of conspiracy theorists (all too often, of course, a lazy slur). In view of his confident certainty, it does seem a pity that he has never responded to John Ashton’s two open letters to him, having indicated that he would do so.]

No need to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise nagging questions gnawing away at Lockerbie case

What follows is an item first posted on this blog on this date five years ago:

Lockerbie questions demand an answer

This is the headline over an article in today's issue of The Times by Magnus Linklater, the newspaper's Scotland Editor (and the editor of The Scotsman in the bygone days when that title was still a serious and responsible journal).

The article reads in part:

'You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise that nagging questions have gnawed away at the Lockerbie case since the first investigations began. The veteran campaigner, Tam Dalyell, who describes himself as a “professor of Lockerbie studies”, is convinced that neither al-Megrahi nor the Libyan Government had any involvement. He, along with the Rev John Mosey and Dr Jim Swire, who both lost daughters in the atrocity, believe that there has been a spectacular miscarriage of justice.

'They have raised questions about basic evidence in the original case. They have challenged eyewitness accounts offered by the chief prosecution witness, the Maltese shopowner who originally identified Megrahi as a suspect. They have raised doubts about the forensic evidence, and have pointed out that al-Megrahi, a civilised and intelligent man, is a most unlikely terrorist.

'Last weekend, their campaign was given fresh impetus when Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent, reported that Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist responsible for some of the worst attacks of the 1970s and 1980s, may have been working for the Americans before the invasion of Iraq. Secret documents - the very phrase is a conspiracy idiom - written by Saddam Hussein's security services state that he had been colluding with the Americans trying to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda. Abu Nidal's alleged suicide in 2002 may have been an execution by the Iraqis for his betrayal.

'From this tenuous connection stems the idea that the US security services may have had previous contacts within Abu Nidal's terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which many experts have long believed was the real perpetrator of Lockerbie.

'Mr Dalyell, who thinks there may be some weight to this theory, points to incidents such as notices that went up in the US Embassy in Moscow in the days before the bombing, warning diplomats not to travel on Pan Am flights, and how senior South African figures were hauled off the plane before the flight, almost as if there had been advance warning.

'For me, this kind of evidence strays into the territory of “the second gunman theory” that bedevilled the Kennedy assassination. But there is one aspect of the case that I have never understood: why was it that, for the first 18 months of the investigation, Scottish police, US investigators and European security agents were convinced that the perpetrators were Abu Nidal's PFLP? And why was it that, in the run-up to the Gulf War, when good relations with Syria and Iran were important to Western interests, attention switched abruptly from Abu Nidal's terrorists, and on to Libya?

'These matters have never satisfactorily been explained, and in the interests of common justice they should be addressed. For the sake of the Flight 103 victims, for the wider interests of Western security, and for the man now dying in a Scottish prison, there is a need for a proper inquiry. It does not have to be as wideranging as the Warren Commission that examined the Kennedy case, but it does need to be international, and to have US backing. The appeal in Edinburgh next year will examine legal aspects of the case, but it cannot extend to the wider issues that demand resolution.

'Just possibly a new president taking office next January will find in his in-tray persuasive evidence pointing to a reopening of the case. There are powerful moral reasons for dusting it off and asking a basic question: who was responsible for Britain's worst terrorist outrage?'

The full article can be accessed here.

Mr Linklater’s views on the Lockerbie case appear to have changed since he wrote this piece. His contributions over the years can be followed here.