Very little of the evidence now fits with the Crown case

[What follows is the text of a contribution by John Ashton in The Café section of today’s edition of the Scottish Review:]

Does Magnus Linklater run his Lockerbie articles through reverse fact-checking software before submitting them? How else I wonder could almost every one he writes contain so many basic errors?

His latest piece accuses me of failing to address new evidence concerning Mr Megrahi's relationship with alleged bomber Abouagela Masud. No one reading my recent articles could have failed to miss the fact that I acknowledged the evidence's potential significance and expressed my wish that it be put before the court. I also set out the reasons to treat it with scepticism, which I suspect is Mr Linklater’s real beef. Being sceptical is not the same as failing to address, but maybe his software conflates the two.

Mr Linklater acknowledges that he hasn't looked in detail at the evidence assembled by Dr Morag Kerr, which demonstrates that the bomb originated from Heathrow, rather than Malta (the latter being where Megrahi and Masud flew from to Tripoli on the morning of the bombing). He doesn't need to, he says, because the evidence was considered and dismissed by the appeal court and Megrahi’s trial lawyers. Except it wasn’t. Dr Kerr has in fact gone far further than anyone else in considering the bomb’s origin. If Mr Linklater doesn’t believe me, I’ll be happy to send him the defence paperwork and copies of the appeal court transcripts. I challenge Mr Linklater to read Dr Kerr's book and tell us why it doesn't stand up.

Mr Linklater also asserts that '[for] a long time those who argued for the Heathrow theory placed a lot of weight on the evidence that there had been a break-in: a padlock had been cut, allowing access to a potential bomb-carrier. That theory, I believe, has now been abandoned, because the timing is not right'. Wrong again. The break-in may or may not be significant, but the evidence of Heathrow ingestion stands separately to it and has never been considered as reliant upon it. Furthermore, Dr Kerr, who is the most prominent proponent of Heathrow, has always said that the break-in was likely irrelevant.

Mr Linklater goes on to tell us: 'When you have a large and complex circumstantial case, everything has to to fit into a coherent picture. Picking one part and analysing it in detail is unconvincing if what you come up with ignores other contradictory evidence'. The trouble is, very little of the evidence now fits with the Crown case that he is so keen to defend. Mr Megrahi allegedly bought the clothes from a Maltese shop that were placed in the bomb suitcase, yet the evidence shows that he looked nothing like the purchaser and that the clothes were bought when he was not on the island. The Crown claimed that a fragment of circuit board found among the clothes matched ones in timers supplied exclusively to Libya, but we now know that it did not. Most importantly, the Crown’s central claim that the bomb originated from Malta has been destroyed by Dr Kerr. Take Malta out of the equation and Megrahi's presence there, his lies and his shady associations are irrelevant.

None of this has been properly addressed by Mr Linklater in any of his numerous articles on Lockerbie. Apparently it's okay to ignore contradictory evidence when it's the Crown case that is contradicted.

‘I’ve proved Lockerbie bomb not from Malta’

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday afternoon on the website of The Times of Malta.  It reads as follows:]

New book’s author says explosive device was planted on plane at Heathrow

The bomb that blew up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie originated at Heathrow and not Malta, a new book “proves” 25 years after the deadly explosion.

“I have proved the bomb originated at Heathrow,” said author Morag Kerr, who has been given access to statements, reports and photographs, some of which have not been publicly available until now.

The book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? – Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies comprehensively destroys the official account of what happened on December 21, 1988.

In 2001 Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of placing the bomb in a brown Samsonite suitcase and loading it on to an Air Malta aircraft at Luqa. It was then purportedly transferred to a feeder flight at Frankfurt before reaching the doomed aircraft at Heathrow. Minutes later it exploded over Scotland, killing 270 people, 11 on the ground.

The book by Dr Kerr, deputy secretary of the Justice for Megrahi committee, deals specifically with the detail of the transfer baggage evidence.

It exposes deficiencies in both the police enquiry and the forensic investigation which led the hunt in entirely the wrong direction.

“Al-Megrahi was nowhere near the place at the time and could not possibly have had anything to do with it. The Lockerbie investigation was horrifically bungled thanks to stupidity, carelessness and tunnel vision,” the author says.

The police made a fatal error in 1989 and eliminated Heathrow on a false assumption.

“The biggest mystery of the entire saga is why the police persisted in their absolute conviction that the bomb had travelled on that flight from Malta. All luggage loaded on to the aircraft in question was accounted for and there were no unaccompanied bags,” Dr Kerr says.

Within weeks of the disaster, the investigation had very strong evidence indicating the bomb had actually been smuggled into a baggage container at Heathrow Airport.

In early January 1989, a Heathrow baggage handler said he had seen a brown Samsonite suitcase which had mysteriously appeared in the baggage container on his return from a tea break. This container held luggage that was to be loaded on to Pan Am 103 and that precise corner of the container was known by investigators to be where the explosion had happened.

Rather than pursuing this vital lead vigorously, the police more or less ignored it, the author insists.

By scrutinising baggage records, witness statements, police memos, forensic reports and original case photographs, Dr Kerr has pinpointed the precise location of the blast-damaged suitcases. The author said her detailed findings have been in the hands of the Scottish police for over a year now.

Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed at Lockerbie, said when contacted yesterday that Dr Kerr’s book was compatible with his own probe into the matter.

Despite the new evidence, Dr Swire said the US and British governments will remain determined to sell the theory that al-Megrahi planted the bomb in Malta.

“Sadly they are determined to obstruct the truth. But we have long been convinced that al-Megrahi was not the Lockerbie bomber,” Dr Swire told Times of Malta.

As the world marks the 25th anniversary of the Lockerbie tragedy, a number of new facts and theories are emerging. A documentary to be released by Al Jazeera on Sunday will look into who could have really been the Lockerbie bomber.

Speaking on Times Talk recently, Maltese Foreign Affairs Minister George Vella said he was sure al-Megrahi was innocent.

Dr Morag Kerr speaking on Lockerbie case in Moffat tonight

A reminder that Dr Morag Kerr will be speaking on the subject Lockerbie, luggage and lies at 7pm today in Moffat Town Hall. What follows is an article that appears in Moffat News.

Dropping appeal against the conviction of Megrahi does not make the doubts go away

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

Serious concerns have been expressed regarding Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi’s conviction since the verdict was announced in 2001, with many of those who attended the trial describing it as perverse (“Cardinal backs call for independent inquiry into conviction of Megrahi”, The Herald October 27). Prominent among the critics was Dr Hans Köchler, official UN observer to the trial, who described the verdict as “arbitrary, even irrational”, declaring that “the trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner” .

The case was the subject of a three-and-a-half-year in-depth investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, at a cost of £1,108,536 to the public purse. The Commission produced an 800-page report together with 13 volumes of appendices, resulting in the conclusion (announced in 2007) that there were six grounds for believing the conviction to be a possible miscarriage of justice. The dropping of the appeal by Megrahi does not make these doubts go away; nor does it transform the verdict into a sound one.

[I an grateful to Morag Kerr for allowing me to reproduce here the letter as it was submitted and before it was edited:]

The statement by a Scottish government spokesman that “there [is] no doubt about the safety of Megrahi’s conviction” (...) is incomprehensible.

Serious concerns have been expressed regarding the safety of that conviction since the verdict was announced in 2001, with many of those who attended the trial describing it as perverse. Prominent among the critics was Dr. Hans Köchler, official UN observer to the trial, who published a blistering attack on the judicial process, describing the verdict as “arbitrary, even irrational”, further declaring that “the trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.” Indeed, simply reading through the 81-page Opinion of the Court reveals so much reasonable doubt surrounding the evidence that the pronouncement of the guilty verdict comes as a bolt from the blue.

The case was the subject of a three-and-a-half-year in-depth investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, at a cost of £1,108,536 to the public purse. The Commission produced an 800-page report together with 13 volumes of appendices, resulting in the conclusion (announced in 2007) that there were no less than six grounds for believing the conviction to be a possible miscarriage of justice.

The dropping of the appeal by Mr. al-Megrahi, whether coerced or not, does not make these doubts go away, nor does it magically transform a perverse verdict into a sound one.

Adequately explained by stupidity?

This is the title of an article by Morag Kerr published yesterday on the Wings Over Scotland website.  It contains a masterly analysis of the evidence in favour of Heathrow ingestion of the bomb suitcase, and effectively demolishes the case for Malta ingestion.  An interesting discussion by readers follows the text of the article.

Morag Kerr’s booklet Lockerbie: Fact and Fiction can be read here.

The Scottish injustice

[This is the headline over an article by Neil Berry published today in the Kuwait newspaper the Khaleej Times:]

Megrahi apparently suffered a monstrous miscarriage of justice

Scotland’s former first minister, Alex Salmond, has often voiced contempt for the manner in which former British prime minister, Tony Blair, led Britain into war in Iraq on the basis of manipulated intelligence and secretive deliberations. Salmond’s boast is that, in contrast to the Machiavellian political establishment in London, his nation’s political culture stands for openness and democratic accountability.

But would Scottish public life have become a model of transparency if Scotland had voted to quit the United Kingdom in this year’s referendum on independence? Does candour really come more readily to Scotland’s devolved government than it does to the UK government in London? Signs are not wanting that Scottish power is capable of being every bit as opaque and arbitrary as power in the British capital.

This December Scotland’s chief law officer, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, has brushed aside the multiple reasons for suspecting that the Scottish judiciary wrongfully convicted the late Libyan, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, and killing 270 passengers, many of them Americans. There is, he bullishly declared, no evidence to cast doubt on Megrahi’s conviction.

In truth, there is an abundance of such evidence. The Scottish writers John Ashton and Morag Kerr have between them written three books that furnish solid grounds for believing that Megrahi suffered a monstrous miscarriage of justice when in 2001 he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands.

Ashton has demolished the credibility of the key prosecution witness, the Malta shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, who supposedly sold clothes to Megrahi that were wrapped round the bomb alleged to have been loaded onto a feeder flight from Malta to London via Frankfurt. Considered by one of the very trial judges to be in doubtful possession of his faculties, Gauci gave details of Megrahi’s age and appearance that were wildly at variance with the facts. Moreover, it was to transpire that Gauci and his brother Paul were paid $3 million by the US Department of Justice – an item of vital information damagingly withheld from Megrahi’s defence.

On top of all this, it has emerged that the bomb timer found at Lockerbie did not belong the batch of such devices sold to Libya by a Swiss firm and held by the prosecution to confirm Libyan culpability. There are also grounds for scepticism about whether the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb originated in Malta.

In a compelling review of the evidence, Morag Kerr concluded that it was planted at London Heathrow where, not long before Pan Am 103 took off, there was a breach of airport security that has never yet been explained.

What above all makes Frank Mulholland’s re-affirmation of Megrahi’s guilt ring hollow is that in 2007, five years before the Libyan’s death, Scotland’s Criminal Cases Review Commission accepted that the issue deserved to be re-visited. Megrahi’s sentence was ready to be appealed when in 2009 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and allowed, on compassionate grounds, to go home to his family in Libya. Almost certainly the verdict would have been that the case against him came nowhere near to satisfying the fundamental requirement of Western justice that guilt be established ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.

It is far from being of mere incidental interest that Frank Mulholland formally re-affirmed Scottish belief in Megrahi’s guilt while attending a 26th Lockerbie anniversary memorial service in Washington. The suspicion is hard to escape that the enduring official resistance to re-opening the Megrahi case is bound up with fear in Scottish high places of re-kindling the venomous US outrage that was ignited in 2009 when Scotland freed a ‘terrorist’ who looms large in American demonology.

Mulholland assured his American audience that Scottish justice has ‘no sell-by date’ and that despite current turbulence in Libya the Scottish authorities would continue to pursue Megrahi’s accomplices. Yet what could be more grotesque than for a senior law officer to speak of justice in the language of the supermarket! Mulholland’s choice of expression is all the more crass considering that in this instance, far from having no sell-by date, Scottish justice appears to have been sold with indecent haste.

A conversation with Dr Morag Kerr

Tomorrow evening (Thursday, 12 February) from 19.00 to 20.00 GMT David McGowran will speaking with Dr Morag Kerr, author of Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies, to consider her assertion that the bomb that killed 270 people in 1988 was undoubtedly put aboard Pan Am 103 at London Heathrow Airport. You will be able to listen to the programme on Livestream here.

Controversy remains 25 years after Lockerbie

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

Lockerbie was one of the most infamous attacks of the modern age, a crime that claimed hundreds of innocent lives and thrust a sleepy little town into the full glare of the world's media and watching public.

That crime was the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and Saturday marks 25-years since the American-bound airliner fell out of the skies above Lockerbie, Scotland. Killing all 259 passengers and crew on board and 11 others on the ground, the December 21, 1988 bombing lead to the largest criminal investigation in Scottish legal history.

For the victims' families especially, the anniversary is a chance to remember loved ones who lost their lives that terrible winter's night. But, divisions between those who vigorously endorse the guilty verdict handed down to the only person convicted of the bombing, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, and others who gravely doubt the safety of his conviction and are pressing for the real "truth" behind Lockerbie remain as entrenched as ever. The Libyan himself proclaimed his innocence up until his last breath when, nearly three years after his compassionate release from a Scottish jail, he died from prostate cancer at his Tripoli home in May last year - yet his death did little to unite what has become an ever-increasing divide.

'Red herring'?

"What definitely happened over the course of the Lockerbie investigation is that the police and the forensics people missed a shed load of evidence showing that the bomb was actually introduced at (London) Heathrow," says Morag Kerr, author of the new book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? - Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies, who contends that the bomb was not, as the prosecution successfully argued at Megrahi's trial at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, loaded onto an Air Malta flight at the island's Luqa airport by the Libyan.

"Whether that was pure incompetence or whether they were being prodded - it may have actually been a combination of both."

Kerr told Al Jazeera that one of the golden threads of evidence against the man who was convicted in 2001 - the clothes, which were said to have been wrapped around the bomb and which were traced to a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci who testified to selling them to Megrahi - was "a red herring".

"Once the police saw Malta it was a lost cause," says Kerr, who is also secretary-deputy of the UK-based Justice for Megrahi campaign. "The coincidence of the red herring that led them to Malta I think convinced them that they got the right guy. And, at that point I think it was a lost cause that they were ever going to go back and investigate Heathrow."

Strong 'circumstantial evidence'

While the likes of Kerr are adamant that both the direction of the investigation and Megrahi's guilt were grave errors - others take the opposite view. Richard Marquise led the FBI's task force on Lockerbie and refuses to be swayed by any notion that the investigation was flawed or that Megrahi suffered a miscarriage of justice, though he does lament the acquittal of Megrahi's co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah.

"When we did the investigation, we collected all the evidence that was available… and when it was all said and done the evidence we collected pointed to Megrahi, Fhimah and Libya," says the retired special agent, speaking to Al Jazeera. "We always hoped that we would get, through the years, more information that would substantiate that in greater fashion, but unfortunately we didn't get a lot. But, the circumstantial case was as strong as I've seen in my career, and I think the judges got it half right - I think Fhimah was involved although the circumstantial evidence was not quite as strong as it was against Megrahi. But, I'm convinced of [Megrahi's] guilt."

Stephanie Bernstein lost her husband on Pan Am Flight 103. Like Marquise, the American is emphatic that all the evidence points towards Megrahi.

"He did not wake up one morning, along with Fhimah, and say 'we've got nothing better to do, lets put a bomb on a plane,' they were agents of the Libyan intelligence service so they were of that part of (Muammar) Gaddafi's Libyan regime," Bernstein told Al Jazeera. "So they absolutely did not act alone - but I've got absolutely no doubt about [Megrahi's] guilt in terms of what he was convicted of."

As a dissenting voice to those of Bernstein, few are more high profile than Jim Swire. The Brit lost his daughter in the bombing and has consistently rejected the trial's outcome, arguing that the wrong man was convicted for the atrocity, and that two crucial points remain unanswered, both of which he and involved members of the British relatives are intending to officially challenge through an application for a further appeal against Megrahi's conviction or another route.

"Our position is that we've always wanted to know the truth about why the plane wasn't protected and who it really was that killed our loved ones," Swire told Al Jazeera. "And, we're not just going to go away because the (Scottish and British governments) are refusing our reasonable requests to give us that information… I've taken steps to organise the British relatives - and we are having a series of meetings with lawyers, but there won't be a satisfying statement about what the British relatives are going to do until the third week of January at the earliest."

Megrahi: A scapegoat?

Yet, as to searching out other avenues of blame for the Lockerbie disaster and giving credence to the claims made by Kerr and others who, by way of published works, have cast doubt on the eyewitness account of Gauci selling the clothes, Malta airport being the starting point for the bomb and other aspects of the evidence, Bernstein remains unmoved.

"These are old recycled stories - none of these are new," says Bernstein, who argues "the real story of Lockerbie is the dogged determination of the Scottish police and the FBI and Scottish law enforcement in general who covered every single inch of that territory (of debris) by foot". "If you said to me a couple of months ago, what would you predict about what would happen about press coverage around the 25th anniversary, I think we all would have predicted this."

But, why the widely-reported difference between the conviction of the US families who believe in Megrahi's guilt and many of their UK counterparts who have expressed grave doubt? Swire claims that the stateside relatives "seem to be ready to accept what their government tells them much more readily than many of us do".

"When the trial was ongoing, it was two British relatives, one of whom was me, who were there and watched the trial unfold - and became convinced to their horror that they were seeing a scapegoating of Megrahi," adds the retired GP, who contends that the American families likely "wish I would just go away and forget it all".

But, even for many of those on the other side of the Atlantic who are themselves yet to be convinced of Megrahi's innocence, there is a belief that efforts to clear his name must be directly confronted if only to lift a shadow from one of Scotland's most revered national institutions.

"Lockerbie is a huge cloud hanging over the Scottish justice system," Magnus Linklater, a leading Scottish political commentator, told Al Jazeera. "It's almost as if the allegation that Megrahi is innocent is the default position. But, that in its turn has not been tested and it's been allowed to go unchallenged and it's high time that it was properly challenged."

Lockerbie: Morag Kerr hits back at Magnus Linklater

[This is the headline over a letter from Dr Morag Kerr in The Café section of the issue of the Scottish Review published on 17 February:]

How dare Magnus Linklater (10 February) repeatedly traduce in print a book he hasn’t even had the courtesy to read! The false assumptions and downright fabrications in his latest sally make it all too clear that this is the case, despite his assurance to me two years ago that he had – even going so far as to call the unread text 'a remarkable piece of work'.

Does Mr Linklater seriously believe that I wrote a book in 2013 based entirely on premises the appeal court rejected in 2002? Of course I didn’t. Does he believe that the book merely points out (for about the ten-thousandth time) that the suitcase John Bedford saw in the baggage container an hour before the connecting flight from Frankfurt landed looks suspiciously like the bomb? There is much more to it than that. Does he imagine that I examined the Heathrow evidence in isolation from the rest of the case? The book would hardly be 220-pages long if that were so.

The break-in into Heathrow Terminal 3 the night before the disaster is irrelevant. It was freely acknowledged in court that airside security in 1988 was abysmal, and it would have been child’s play for anyone to walk in any time they liked. No midnight cutting of padlocks would have been necessary. The break-in happened, but whether it was related to the introduction of the bomb into the baggage container 17 hours later is an entirely moot point. I make this perfectly clear in the book, and I would take it very kindly if Mr Linklater would cease and desist from dragging up this irrelevancy at every turn, as if it somehow discredits my thesis.

The possibility that the bomb might have been in the case John Bedford saw was explored in the original trial, with the defence obviously keen to suggest that it was. What is remarkable is that no evidence was presented of any specific investigation into the provenance of that suitcase by the original inquiry. Apparently, it was merely assumed that it wasn’t the bomb.

The 'meat' of my book is a thorough investigation into the provenance of the case Bedford saw; the investigation which should have been done in 1989 but wasn’t. In the course of this I examine witness statements, passenger and baggage transfer records and detailed photographs of the blast-damaged luggage – evidence that was for the most part not presented either at the original trial or the appeal. The results of this analysis are clear-cut. That was indeed the bomb suitcase, beyond any reasonable doubt. Once again I challenge Mr Linklater, and indeed anyone who has read the book, to explain why they don’t accept this analysis – based on evidence and logic, not dismissive sneers.

Mr Linklater implies that I am ignoring separate evidence of 'an unaccompanied bag coming from Malta that morning'. If he were to read my book he would discover that I pick apart the evidence for the existence of this bag in exhaustive detail, and come down firmly on the side of the German policeman who was originally assigned this task and whose report concludes: 'Throughout the inquiries into the baggage for PA103A there was no evidence that the bomb suitcase had been transferred with the luggage either from or via Frankfurt Main to London'.

Indeed, some clothing packed with the bomb was purchased on Malta, but as that purchase took place several weeks before the disaster it in no way precludes the bomb itself having been introduced at Heathrow. Again I deal with this point in great detail in the book, and in particular with the contention that Megrahi was the man who made that purchase. Clearly he was not, and the SCCRC report of 2007 underlined that pretty effectively.

Far from picking at one small point and ignoring the bigger picture, putting this point in context is exactly what the book is about. Not simply the compelling evidence that the bomb was already in the baggage container an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed, but the extremely tight and well-documented security at Malta airport that shows no sign whatsoever of an illegitimate item of luggage on Air Malta flight 180. In this context I would refer Mr Linklater to the words of Lord Osborne at the first appeal in 2002. 'There is considerable and quite convincing evidence that that could not have happened.'

Mr Linklater, as always, sets great store by what the various judges concluded. In the context of a reasoned argument showing that these conclusions were wrong, this is an unhelpful begging of the question. The evidence I have analysed was not presented in court. Mine is an entirely new and more detailed dissection of the forensics than anything previously attempted.

I ask once again, although with fading hopes, that Mr Linklater go away and read my book, and then explain exactly where he takes issue with my reasoning or my conclusions. Or else refrain from commenting on something he clearly knows nothing about.

Important forthcoming Lockerbie books

[What follows is the text of a message sent today to Justice for Megrahi supporters by JFM’s secretary, Robert Forrester:]

By now, I am sure that very few of you will not already be aware of the fact that preparations for the quarter century anniversary of the Lockerbie atrocity are in hand.

To accompany this event, I wish to draw your attention to two publications which will soon be released to coincide with this commemoration: both courtesy of members of our organisation, namely: John Ashton and our Secretary Depute, Dr Morag Kerr.

You will be aware that John co-authored Cover Up of Convenience: the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie with Ian Ferguson (one of our original members), and also wrote Megrahi: You are my Jury, which, amongst other things, revealed the forensic flaws and misdemeanours surrounding the infamous shard of PCB claimed to have originated from the timing trigger for the detonator, which COPFS have chosen to blithely ignore for nigh on eighteen months now. Additionally, John was part of the research team working on Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's defence. On 3rd October his latest Lockerbie/Ziest related publication, Scotland's Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters will be released by Birlinn. For details, see: http://www.birlinn.co.uk/Scotland-s-Shame.html.

Whilst John and I unstintingly make a point of meeting up when I make my annual summer pilgrimage to Brighton, and clearly, we always discuss matters Lockerbie related, normally, our conversation circulates around the activities of JFM with respect to how matters are advancing regarding the general campaign.

My relationship with Dr Kerr, our Secretary Depute, is quite different. We are in constant contact with each other in advancing the cause of justice on this issue. Morag is a highly qualified scientist, and, as such, has applied her talent/training/call it what you will to the forensic shortcomings of the Lockerbie investigation with some not inconsiderable aplomb.

To coincide with the Twenty-fifth Anniversary, her book: Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies will be published on 21st December 2013, by Troubador to precisely coincide with the anniversary, and is, moreover, introduced with a foreword by Terry Waite CBE (another JFM member). For details, see: http://www.troubador.co.uk/image/books/AI9781783062508.pdf.

John's reputation precedes him, need I say more? However, quite obviously, I have a close working relationship with Morag, and, as such, was privy to Adequately Explained by Stupidity as it took form. In my opinion, having had the immense privilege of proofing aspects of this book, it is, without question, nothing less than a work of genius. Amongst many other features studied, it conclusively demonstrates, via a highly detailed and scholarly analysis of the evidence relating to the luggage carried in the hold of Pan Am 103, how horrifically bungled the Lockerbie investigation was. Its implications are truly shocking. It is high time that executive powers in Scotland were brought to bear on the Police, Crown Office and forensic officials responsible for this outrageous scandal. Inaction is leaving Scotland looking weak, corruptible and, frankly just plain downright feart.

I strongly recommend both publications to you. And please spread the word too.

Lockerbie relatives fated never to know truth

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

After the death of Tony Gauci, the chief prosecution witness, those who could shed light on the tragedy are dwindling

One by one, the key players in the Lockerbie drama fade from the scene, taking with them its secrets. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi himself, prime suspect; Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Lord Advocate, who brought the case against him; and now Tony Gauci, the chief prosecution witness, who died last week. As Kenneth Roy, the editor of the Scottish Review, noted in his obituary: “To say that all three left unanswered questions would be one of the under-statements of our time.”

Gauci, who owned a clothes shop in Malta, where, on some disputed day in 1988, a man came in to buy the items of clothing later found burnt and shredded around the bomb in Lockerbie, did not have a good press. An unsure witness at best, his testimony about when and by whom the clothes were bought, seemed to change each time he was questioned; and he was questioned a lot — 17 times by Scottish and Maltese police, many more by prosecuting counsel, and later by journalists. Was the man who ordered such an odd assortment of clothes — shirts, jackets, trousers, baby clothes, without checking on their sizes — tall and dark-skinned, as Gauci seemed to remember, or medium-built and light-skinned as Megrahi turned out to be? Did he come into the shop two weeks before Christmas, or in late November? Was it raining, or merely dripping? Were the Christmas lights on or not? Which football match was his brother watching on the day? Gauci tried and tried to remember, and each time seemed to retreat further and further from the truth.

All that has led his detractors to mock his evidence, and dismiss him as a witness of no worth. Lord Fraser notoriously once described him as “not quite the full shilling,” though he was more generous later on.

Those who believe Megrahi was innocent, and the prosecution a charade, point to Gauci as its weakest link. As chief witness for the prosecution, they claim that if his evidence falls, then the entire case collapses. One member of the defence team, hearing of his death, said that he went to his grave carrying responsibility for Megrahi’s wrongful conviction.

That is a dishonourable epitaph for a decent man. The more one re-reads Gauci’s evidence, the more one warms to him as a character. A simple man, the only things he really cared about were his clothes business, and his pigeons. When, on several occasions, he was taken to Scotland for his safety by police, he worried more about the pigeons, and who was minding the shop, than whether the scenery was beautiful, or his hotel comfortable. The one thing he was sure about was that the clothes found at the bomb site were bought from his shop, and on that he never wavered. Who could forget a man who bought such a strange assortment of clothes without bothering to check on their sizes?

Much has been made of the alleged rewards offered to him by police or intelligence agencies. No one, however, has been able to prove that money was a motive for Gauci. [RB: A more accurate account of Tony Gauci’s attitude towards “compensation” is to be found here.] His struggles to remember dates, times and descriptions may sometimes be laughable. But they are honest attempts, not those of a bribed man. Here he is, trying to remember whether or not he had had a row with his girlfriend on the day of the purchase: “We had lots of arguments. I am asked whether I had a girlfriend at the time of the purchase of the clothing. I do not recall having a girlfriend in 1988 but I am always with someone. It is possible that I had an argument with my girlfriend that day. My girlfriend would cause arguments by suggesting a wedding day or suggesting that we buy expensive furniture . . . it is possible that in 1988 I had a girlfriend, but I am not sure.” He is like that with days of the week, or the size of the man who bought the clothes. “I did not have a tape measure to measure the man’s height,” he complains.

For all his confused recollections, the trial judges liked him: “The clear impression that we formed was that he was in the first place entirely credible, that is to say doing his best to tell the truth to the best of his recollection, and indeed no suggestion was made to the contrary,” was their verdict. When the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission later came up with six reasons for suggesting that there were grounds for an appeal, they did not dismiss Gauci himself, but said that some of his evidence, and the circumstances in which it was given, were withheld from the defence. Whether that would have altered the outcome will never now be known.

In the end, what are every bit as important as Gauci’s evidence, are undeniable facts: Megrahi’s presence in Malta on the day before the bomb was loaded; his departure back to Tripoli the morning after; his use of a false passport supplied by Libyan intelligence — one he never used again; the large sums of money in his bank account; and now, the evidence uncovered by Ken Dornstein. [RB: If, as Dr Morag Kerr has conclusively established, the bomb suitcase was ingested at Heathrow, not Luqa Airport, none of this is of the slightest relevance.]

Mr Dornstein’s brother died at Lockerbie, and, after 15 years of investigations, he discovered that during his trips to Malta in the weeks leading up to the bombing, Megrahi was accompanied by a man called Abu Agila Mas’ud, a convicted terrorist, who today sits in a Libyan jail. Quite what he and Megrahi were doing there, only Mas’ud can reveal, though Abdullah Senussi, the former Libyan intelligence chief who is also languishing in jail, would be able to shed much light on it as well. [RB: Analyses of the revelations in, and omissions from, Ken Dornstein’s film can be found here and here.]

That light, however, is fading. One by one, the witnesses are disappearing. All that remains are the memories of those who lost loved ones at Lockerbie, and who are destined never to know the full truth.

[RB: What follows is extracted from a comment by Morag Kerr on Kenneth Roy’s Scottish Review article:]

It's odd how this type of article keeps resurfacing. Someone has died, who either told everything they possibly knew about it to the authorities years ago and who could not conceivably have remembered anything further, or who knew nothing at all about it in the first place. But now he's dead, oh the secrets he has taken to his grave!

Tony Gauci appears to have served someone connected to the bombing in his shop. His police statements and his evidence at Camp Zeist are in the public record. So too is the diary of Harry Bell, which recounts the (mis)handling of Tony as a witness and the money that was apparently dangled before his eyes. Three separate expert witness reports take this entire sorry episode apart forensically, but even so they only reinforce what common sense tells us - that a shopkeeper cannot possibly be expected to recognise a customer he saw once, for about half an hour, after the extraordinary lengths of time involved in this case.

We don't need Tony to realise that whoever the man was, it was not Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Not only was the day of the transaction (almost certainly 23rd November) one when there is no evidence at all that Megrahi was on the island, the multiple discrepancies between Tony's initial description of the purchaser and Megrahi's actual appearance are glaring.

All this happened almost 28 years ago. Even if we had someone who was now alleged to have been that purchaser, and Tony Gauci was still alive, there is no chance whatsoever that a positive identification could be made. What else could Tony tell us? How much money he was paid? What he did with it? Could he give us any real insight into his thought processes when he repeatedly said Megrahi resembled the purchaser but declined to say he actually WAS the man? I doubt it.

So what has the case lost with the death of Tony Gauci? I'd say nothing at all.