[This is part of the headline over a report published today in The Times. It reads in part:]
Malta’s longest-serving prime minister has claimed it was “impossible” for the Lockerbie bomb to have left the island and suggested that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.
Eddie Fenech Adami, who led the country at the time of the atrocity 30 years ago, also raised doubts about the reliability of the witness whose evidence led to the conviction of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi.
A panel of Scottish judges heard evidence that a bomb was loaded onto Air Malta flight KM-180, which left the island for Frankfurt on December 21, 1988, before being taken to London and transferred on to Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie — with the loss of 270 lives — the next day.
Testimony by Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper, was central to linking al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, to the case and securing his conviction.
However, Mr Fenech Adami, who served as prime minister between 1987 and 1996 and from 1998 to 2004, has challenged the verdict reached by a Scottish court in the Netherlands.
He wrote in his memoirs: “The evidence against al-Megrahi purported to show he had wrapped a bomb in clothing bought from a shop in Sliema and placed it in a suitcase that made its way to Heathrow from Malta via Germany.
“We have never accepted this theory and no one has ever proved us wrong.
“My opinion is that it was technically impossible for the bomb to have taken such a complicated route. It would have been a very haphazard method of executing this act of terrorism.”
He added: “The only evidence against al-Megrahi was the testimony of Tony Gauci. I have always considered Gauci, who was paid by the Americans, to be a very unreliable witness.”
Air Malta insisted that no passengers or luggage had transferred from its Frankfurt flight to Pan Am 103. Its 1989 internal investigation concluded: “All 55 pieces of baggage have been accounted for and every one of the 39 passengers has been identified.”
Mr Gauci had described his customer as 6ft and aged about 50, while al-Megrahi was 36 and 5ft 8in. (...)
Unconfirmed reports have suggested that Mr Gauci, who died in 2016, was paid £1.6 million by the FBI through its “rewards for justice” programme. [RB: It is odd to describe the reports as unconfirmed. There is no doubt that payments were made to both Tony and Paul Gauci: Lockerbie reward payouts ‘above board’.]
Guido de Marco, Malta’s justice minister at the time of the bombing [RB: and later President of Malta], wrote before his death in 2010: “It seemed unrealistic that a timing device could have been put inside unaccompanied baggage that took such a complicated route to get on the Pan Am plane, since there was so much room for error.”
He also clashed with the UK authorities. He wrote: “I learnt that the British secret service was tapping the telephones of people in Malta without consulting the authorities. I ordered the investigating team to stop any activity in Malta.” Mr Fenech Adami is unable to comment further due to ill health.
[RB: Today's edition of The Times also contains an article by Magnus Linklater headlined Lockerbie conspiracy theories that challenge al‑Megrahi’s conviction. As an antidote to Mr Linklater's notorious hostility to any criticism of the Megrahi conviction, read this piece by John Ashton: Lockerbie, and the mangled logic of Magnus Linklater.
A further article by Magnus Linklater headlined Lockerbie bombing prosecutors close in on Libyan suspects contains the following:]
Scottish prosecutors are closing in on two Libyans suspected of planning the Lockerbie bombing.
Using diplomatic contacts that led to an agreement to extradite the brother of the Manchester bomber, US and Scottish investigators are hopeful they will be given permission to interview Abdullah al-Senussi, said to have been the Lockerbie mastermind, and Abu Agila Mas’ud, the bomb maker.
Both are held in a Libyan prison. (...)
So far, 30 years after the terrorist attack, only one suspect, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, has been convicted for the bombing. He died in May 2012.
Some campaigners claim the conviction of al-Megrahi was a miscarriage of justice, but the Crown Office is certain that the original verdict was correct.
Inquiries by The Times have revealed that the Crown Office commissioned an independent report into allegations that there had been a deliberate plan to steer evidence away from Palestinian terrorists and towards Libya. Investigators were asked to “double and triple check” every aspect of the case.
They concluded that the original conviction was sound, and that allegations that evidence had been tampered with, or deliberately withheld could not be substantiated.
A Crown Office official said: “An independent evidence review did not find any evidence to support claims al-Megrahi, the only man jailed for the bombing, was wrongly convicted.”
Wednesday 19 December 2018
Tuesday 18 December 2018
What is at stake is the reputation of the Scottish justice system
[Today's edition of The Scotsman carries an article by James Robertson under the headline Lockerbie anniversary: ‘One terrible injustice cannot be cancelled out’. It reads as follows:]
Like many other people, I remember exactly where I was on the night of 21st December 1988. I was a bookseller in what was then the only Edinburgh branch of Waterstones, on George Street, and that evening the shop was crowded with customers choosing Christmas presents. Popular titles included Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and the paperback of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent. The phones were ringing constantly as people called to ask what time we closed or whether we had a copy of this or that book.
At about eight o’clock I answered the telephone and recognised the voice of a friend, another bookseller, on the line. He had just heard a radio report that a plane had crashed onto the town of Lockerbie. It sounded like a major incident and since, mistakenly, he thought I was from that part of the country he wanted to let me know. I thanked him and went back to work.
By the time I got home and switched on the television it was the only news story. Pan Am flight 103, a Boeing 747 passenger jet en route from London to New York, had fallen out of the sky and, as would be quite quickly established, all 259 passengers and crew, and a further eleven people on the ground, had been killed. A few days later, everybody’s worst fears were confirmed: this was not the result of bad weather or mechanical failure, but of a bomb having been placed on the plane.
That night is now half my lifetime away, and belongs to a world in which there was no internet, and in which news in the UK was accessed entirely via newspapers, radio and four TV channels. Through all the subsequent years of political, social and cultural change, the story of the Lockerbie bombing has never faded. In part this is because of the sheer scale of it: an event like no other in recent Scottish history − except perhaps the Piper Alpha disaster of the same year, which claimed the lives of 167 oil platform workers. But Piper Alpha was an accident, whereas the destruction of Pan Am 103 was an act of mass murder. It led to the biggest ever Scottish criminal investigation and, after more than twelve years, to the conviction of one Libyan man, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
The response to the bombing brought out some of the very best in human behaviour − kindness, care, courage and dignity. It also left deep emotional wounds that for some will never fully heal. It is completely understandable that many relatives of the victims, people of Lockerbie, police and other emergency workers involved in the traumatic aftermath have long wanted the story to be over, or as ‘over’ as it ever can be. But after the long investigation, then the trial of Megrahi and his co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, and finally the conviction of Megrahi alone in 2001, too many questions were left unanswered for this to be possible.
Well-founded doubts about aspects of the investigation have existed almost since the night the plane came down. It is, for example, highly questionable whether the bomb was ingested into the air traffic system at Malta, as the prosecution case against Megrahi and Fhimah contended, rather than at Heathrow. There were serious shortcomings in the identification by Tony Gauci, a key witness, of Megrahi as the purchaser of clothes packed into the bomb suitcase. Likewise, there were clear failings in the metallurgical analysis of the timer used to trigger the bomb. The prosecution failed to disclose vital evidence to the defence. And the indictments against Megrahi and Fhimah, without which no case against them could have been brought, were based on information supplied by a witness found to have been completely unreliable and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, the juryless court acquitted Fhimah and, almost entirely on the basis of circumstantial evidence, found Megrahi guilty. The United Nations-nominated observer Professor Hans Köchler immediately condemned aspects of the judgement as ‘arbitrary’, ‘inconsistent’ and ‘irrational’ and said that the trial as a whole was ‘not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.’
Concerns that the conviction might be a gross miscarriage of justice were reinforced over the years as new information emerged that had not been considered during either the trial or at Megrahi’s first appeal. The report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) on his conviction, made public by the Herald newspaper in March 2012, found six grounds which might have warranted referring the case to the Court of Appeal.
But by that time Megrahi was back home in Libya with terminal cancer, having dropped his second appeal at the time of his controversial release from prison, on compassionate grounds, in 2009. Even his death in May 2012 did not draw a line under the whole affair.
The campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM), to which I belong, was founded in 2008. Its signatories include some of those who lost loved ones in the disaster, such as Jim Swire and John Mosey, the ‘architect’ of the Kamp Zeist court arrangements Professor Robert Black, and various journalists, writers, lawyers, politicians, former police officers and other citizens who independently reached the conclusion that something had gone very wrong in the Lockerbie investigation and the subsequent prosecution of Mr Megrahi. In September 2012 the committee of JfM drew up six − later increased to nine − allegations of criminality in connection with the Lockerbie investigation and trial, relating to possible malpractice by Crown Office personnel, police and other prosecution witnesses. The allegations were submitted to the then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill in strict confidence. They were passed nonetheless to the Crown Office, which at once publicly denounced them as ‘without exception, defamatory and entirely unfounded’ even before the dossier of detailed evidence had been examined by the police.
This intervention, we felt, represented both prejudice and an intolerable conflict of interest since the Crown Office would ultimately decide whether or not the allegations had any validity. Furthermore, JfM’s allegations would be dealt with by Dumfries and Galloway Police, the force which had carried out the original investigation. None of this gave us confidence that these matters would be treated systematically, objectively and fairly. Indeed, one of the most important outcomes of the Lockerbie saga has been to expose serious faults in the mechanism and procedures of Scottish justice.
However, in 2013 Police Scotland came into being, and the treatment of our allegations changed substantially. ‘Operation Sandwood’ was established, which at its conclusion was described by the police as ‘a methodical and rigorous inquiry using our major investigation framework under the direction of an experienced senior investigating officer.’ We have no argument with that description. Regular liaison meetings took place between JfM and Police Scotland, who engaged a QC completely independent of Crown Office to review the findings of Operation Sandwood. These were unprecedented arrangements. The current Chief Constable, Iain Livingstone, had oversight of the entire investigation, which was completed on 21st November this year.
The Sandwood report has now been submitted to Crown Office. The police concluded that there was ‘no evidence of criminality and therefore no basis to submit a standard prosecution report’. Crucially, however, Police Scotland’s statement goes on to say, ‘The material collated during the inquiry and the findings and conclusions reached have relevance to … the potential appeal against conviction lodged on behalf of the late Mr Megrahi.’
JfM does not, of course, have any knowledge of the details of what the Sandwood report contains, but we are confident that the police have indeed been ‘methodical and rigorous’. We know from the amount of time and resources spent on Operation Sandwood that the police did not deem our allegations either vexatious or without substance. And when the report is received, as it must be, by the SCCRC -- the body currently considering whether to recommend that Mr Megrahi’s family be allowed to make a fresh appeal against his conviction -- we firmly believe that its contents will contain enough information to make that recommendation inevitable.
Such a development, long overdue, would enable all material relevant to the case to be reviewed in the Court of Appeal. JfM believes that in the absence of a public inquiry, which the Scottish Government has consistently refused to establish, this is the only way to have all the evidence examined and to bring some kind of finality to this aspect, at least, of the Lockerbie story.
What is at stake is not just whether there was a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi’s conviction but the reputation of the Scottish justice system. None of this will lessen the pain and grief felt by the families of the dead. But the terrible injustice perpetrated on that December night thirty years ago is not cancelled by another injustice: it is compounded.
The full truth about the Lockerbie bombing is not yet known, but gradually we are moving towards it.
We must hope that some of those, now elderly, who have sought that truth for so long, are still here when it is brought into the light.
Like many other people, I remember exactly where I was on the night of 21st December 1988. I was a bookseller in what was then the only Edinburgh branch of Waterstones, on George Street, and that evening the shop was crowded with customers choosing Christmas presents. Popular titles included Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and the paperback of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent. The phones were ringing constantly as people called to ask what time we closed or whether we had a copy of this or that book.
At about eight o’clock I answered the telephone and recognised the voice of a friend, another bookseller, on the line. He had just heard a radio report that a plane had crashed onto the town of Lockerbie. It sounded like a major incident and since, mistakenly, he thought I was from that part of the country he wanted to let me know. I thanked him and went back to work.
By the time I got home and switched on the television it was the only news story. Pan Am flight 103, a Boeing 747 passenger jet en route from London to New York, had fallen out of the sky and, as would be quite quickly established, all 259 passengers and crew, and a further eleven people on the ground, had been killed. A few days later, everybody’s worst fears were confirmed: this was not the result of bad weather or mechanical failure, but of a bomb having been placed on the plane.
That night is now half my lifetime away, and belongs to a world in which there was no internet, and in which news in the UK was accessed entirely via newspapers, radio and four TV channels. Through all the subsequent years of political, social and cultural change, the story of the Lockerbie bombing has never faded. In part this is because of the sheer scale of it: an event like no other in recent Scottish history − except perhaps the Piper Alpha disaster of the same year, which claimed the lives of 167 oil platform workers. But Piper Alpha was an accident, whereas the destruction of Pan Am 103 was an act of mass murder. It led to the biggest ever Scottish criminal investigation and, after more than twelve years, to the conviction of one Libyan man, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
The response to the bombing brought out some of the very best in human behaviour − kindness, care, courage and dignity. It also left deep emotional wounds that for some will never fully heal. It is completely understandable that many relatives of the victims, people of Lockerbie, police and other emergency workers involved in the traumatic aftermath have long wanted the story to be over, or as ‘over’ as it ever can be. But after the long investigation, then the trial of Megrahi and his co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, and finally the conviction of Megrahi alone in 2001, too many questions were left unanswered for this to be possible.
Well-founded doubts about aspects of the investigation have existed almost since the night the plane came down. It is, for example, highly questionable whether the bomb was ingested into the air traffic system at Malta, as the prosecution case against Megrahi and Fhimah contended, rather than at Heathrow. There were serious shortcomings in the identification by Tony Gauci, a key witness, of Megrahi as the purchaser of clothes packed into the bomb suitcase. Likewise, there were clear failings in the metallurgical analysis of the timer used to trigger the bomb. The prosecution failed to disclose vital evidence to the defence. And the indictments against Megrahi and Fhimah, without which no case against them could have been brought, were based on information supplied by a witness found to have been completely unreliable and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, the juryless court acquitted Fhimah and, almost entirely on the basis of circumstantial evidence, found Megrahi guilty. The United Nations-nominated observer Professor Hans Köchler immediately condemned aspects of the judgement as ‘arbitrary’, ‘inconsistent’ and ‘irrational’ and said that the trial as a whole was ‘not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner.’
Concerns that the conviction might be a gross miscarriage of justice were reinforced over the years as new information emerged that had not been considered during either the trial or at Megrahi’s first appeal. The report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) on his conviction, made public by the Herald newspaper in March 2012, found six grounds which might have warranted referring the case to the Court of Appeal.
But by that time Megrahi was back home in Libya with terminal cancer, having dropped his second appeal at the time of his controversial release from prison, on compassionate grounds, in 2009. Even his death in May 2012 did not draw a line under the whole affair.
The campaign group Justice for Megrahi (JfM), to which I belong, was founded in 2008. Its signatories include some of those who lost loved ones in the disaster, such as Jim Swire and John Mosey, the ‘architect’ of the Kamp Zeist court arrangements Professor Robert Black, and various journalists, writers, lawyers, politicians, former police officers and other citizens who independently reached the conclusion that something had gone very wrong in the Lockerbie investigation and the subsequent prosecution of Mr Megrahi. In September 2012 the committee of JfM drew up six − later increased to nine − allegations of criminality in connection with the Lockerbie investigation and trial, relating to possible malpractice by Crown Office personnel, police and other prosecution witnesses. The allegations were submitted to the then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill in strict confidence. They were passed nonetheless to the Crown Office, which at once publicly denounced them as ‘without exception, defamatory and entirely unfounded’ even before the dossier of detailed evidence had been examined by the police.
This intervention, we felt, represented both prejudice and an intolerable conflict of interest since the Crown Office would ultimately decide whether or not the allegations had any validity. Furthermore, JfM’s allegations would be dealt with by Dumfries and Galloway Police, the force which had carried out the original investigation. None of this gave us confidence that these matters would be treated systematically, objectively and fairly. Indeed, one of the most important outcomes of the Lockerbie saga has been to expose serious faults in the mechanism and procedures of Scottish justice.
However, in 2013 Police Scotland came into being, and the treatment of our allegations changed substantially. ‘Operation Sandwood’ was established, which at its conclusion was described by the police as ‘a methodical and rigorous inquiry using our major investigation framework under the direction of an experienced senior investigating officer.’ We have no argument with that description. Regular liaison meetings took place between JfM and Police Scotland, who engaged a QC completely independent of Crown Office to review the findings of Operation Sandwood. These were unprecedented arrangements. The current Chief Constable, Iain Livingstone, had oversight of the entire investigation, which was completed on 21st November this year.
The Sandwood report has now been submitted to Crown Office. The police concluded that there was ‘no evidence of criminality and therefore no basis to submit a standard prosecution report’. Crucially, however, Police Scotland’s statement goes on to say, ‘The material collated during the inquiry and the findings and conclusions reached have relevance to … the potential appeal against conviction lodged on behalf of the late Mr Megrahi.’
JfM does not, of course, have any knowledge of the details of what the Sandwood report contains, but we are confident that the police have indeed been ‘methodical and rigorous’. We know from the amount of time and resources spent on Operation Sandwood that the police did not deem our allegations either vexatious or without substance. And when the report is received, as it must be, by the SCCRC -- the body currently considering whether to recommend that Mr Megrahi’s family be allowed to make a fresh appeal against his conviction -- we firmly believe that its contents will contain enough information to make that recommendation inevitable.
Such a development, long overdue, would enable all material relevant to the case to be reviewed in the Court of Appeal. JfM believes that in the absence of a public inquiry, which the Scottish Government has consistently refused to establish, this is the only way to have all the evidence examined and to bring some kind of finality to this aspect, at least, of the Lockerbie story.
What is at stake is not just whether there was a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi’s conviction but the reputation of the Scottish justice system. None of this will lessen the pain and grief felt by the families of the dead. But the terrible injustice perpetrated on that December night thirty years ago is not cancelled by another injustice: it is compounded.
The full truth about the Lockerbie bombing is not yet known, but gradually we are moving towards it.
We must hope that some of those, now elderly, who have sought that truth for so long, are still here when it is brought into the light.
Monday 17 December 2018
Three decades on and so many questions remain
[This is part of the headline over a long report by Chris Marshall in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]
Thirty years on since the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, there remains as many questions as there have been answers about what took place that night.
From the bombing itself – the deadliest terrorist atrocity ever carried out in Britain – to the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands and the jailing and subsequent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the night of 21 December, 1988 has come to define much that has happened since.
And while there are those satisfied of Megrahi’s guilt, there are others convinced of his innocence, and others still who believe the full truth of what took place may never be known. (...)
The youngest victim onboard the plane was two-month-old Brittany Williams, of New York; the oldest, Ibolya Gabor, 79, from Budapest, Hungary, who had survived two world wars and was travelling to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with her family. Other passengers included Bernt Carlsson, 50, the UN Commissioner for Namibia and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut.
There were a number of claims of responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, some far more credible than others.
A painstaking investigation carried out by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) set about reconstructing the plane from fragments of wreckage scattered across more than 2,000 square kilometres.
The murder inquiry would see officers travel to 23 different countries, identifying victims, speaking to witnesses and gathering evidence.
From the wreckage, fragments of a Samsonite suitcase were recovered which it was thought had been used to conceal the bomb.
Clothing from the same suitcase was found to have come from a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci, who later would controversially identify Megrahi as the man who had bought the items.
Megrahi, an intelligence officer, had a role as chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, allowing him regular travel to Malta where the company had an office. It was here, prosecutors would later argue, that Megrahi bought the clothing used to help hide the bomb which was to bring down Pan Am Flight 103. Using fake passports [RB "coded" not "fake"], he was also able to travel to Zurich where the timer for the bomb was made. [RB: The only evidence at the trial that Megrahi was an intelligence officer came from Majid Giaka, whose evidence on every other issue was dismissed by the court as utterly unworthy of credit. The court gave no reason for accepting his testimony on this one point.]
The police investigation, which had taken around 15,000 witness statements, eventually led to Libya, and both Megrahi and his compatriot, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted for the bombing by the Lord Advocate and US attorney-general in 1991.
It was to be a further eight years, however, amid heavy pressure in the form of UN sanctions, before Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to hand over the two men for trial. [RB: The Libyan Government had never objected to the suspects standing trial in Scotland. It was the lawyers for the suspects -- Libyan and international, including Scottish -- who objected. The true story of how the Zeist trial came about can be read here.]
After protracted negotiations, it was decided the two Libyans would be tried under Scots law, but at a neutral location. Nelson Mandela met with Jim Swire, who became a spokesman for the UK families, and helped broker the deal. A former US Air Force base at Camp Zeist near Utrecht in the Netherlands was chosen and the trial got under way on 3 May, 2000 – nearly 12 years after the bombing.
On 31 January the following year, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Fhimah was acquitted. But if observers thought that was to be the end of the legal case, they were wrong – it was only just beginning. (...)
An initial legal appeal was refused, but in September 2003 Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) asking for a review of his conviction. Nearly four years later, the SCCRC announced it would be referring the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal after it found Megrahi “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice”.
The Libyan applied to have the appeal dropped, however, shortly before it emerged he was to be controversially released on compassionate grounds by then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Despite a doctor’s assessment that Megrahi, who had terminal prostate cancer, had only three months to live, he would survive for a further three years after his return to Libyan, his life reportedly extended by a drug which at that point was not available to Scottish cancer sufferers on the NHS.
Despite Megrahi’s death, attempts continue to overturn his conviction. Earlier this year, the SCCRC began reviewing his conviction for a second time, saying it believed Megrahi had abandoned his earlier appeal because he thought it would result in him being released from prison and allowed to return home to Libya.
Back in Lockerbie, only the memorials to the dead remain as visible signs of the terror that came from the skies one December night 30 years ago. But while the houses of Sherwood Crescent have been rebuilt and life has gone on, the story appears far from finished.
Thirty years on since the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, there remains as many questions as there have been answers about what took place that night.
From the bombing itself – the deadliest terrorist atrocity ever carried out in Britain – to the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands and the jailing and subsequent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the night of 21 December, 1988 has come to define much that has happened since.
And while there are those satisfied of Megrahi’s guilt, there are others convinced of his innocence, and others still who believe the full truth of what took place may never be known. (...)
The youngest victim onboard the plane was two-month-old Brittany Williams, of New York; the oldest, Ibolya Gabor, 79, from Budapest, Hungary, who had survived two world wars and was travelling to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with her family. Other passengers included Bernt Carlsson, 50, the UN Commissioner for Namibia and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut.
There were a number of claims of responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, some far more credible than others.
A painstaking investigation carried out by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) set about reconstructing the plane from fragments of wreckage scattered across more than 2,000 square kilometres.
The murder inquiry would see officers travel to 23 different countries, identifying victims, speaking to witnesses and gathering evidence.
From the wreckage, fragments of a Samsonite suitcase were recovered which it was thought had been used to conceal the bomb.
Clothing from the same suitcase was found to have come from a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci, who later would controversially identify Megrahi as the man who had bought the items.
Megrahi, an intelligence officer, had a role as chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, allowing him regular travel to Malta where the company had an office. It was here, prosecutors would later argue, that Megrahi bought the clothing used to help hide the bomb which was to bring down Pan Am Flight 103. Using fake passports [RB "coded" not "fake"], he was also able to travel to Zurich where the timer for the bomb was made. [RB: The only evidence at the trial that Megrahi was an intelligence officer came from Majid Giaka, whose evidence on every other issue was dismissed by the court as utterly unworthy of credit. The court gave no reason for accepting his testimony on this one point.]
The police investigation, which had taken around 15,000 witness statements, eventually led to Libya, and both Megrahi and his compatriot, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted for the bombing by the Lord Advocate and US attorney-general in 1991.
It was to be a further eight years, however, amid heavy pressure in the form of UN sanctions, before Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to hand over the two men for trial. [RB: The Libyan Government had never objected to the suspects standing trial in Scotland. It was the lawyers for the suspects -- Libyan and international, including Scottish -- who objected. The true story of how the Zeist trial came about can be read here.]
After protracted negotiations, it was decided the two Libyans would be tried under Scots law, but at a neutral location. Nelson Mandela met with Jim Swire, who became a spokesman for the UK families, and helped broker the deal. A former US Air Force base at Camp Zeist near Utrecht in the Netherlands was chosen and the trial got under way on 3 May, 2000 – nearly 12 years after the bombing.
On 31 January the following year, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Fhimah was acquitted. But if observers thought that was to be the end of the legal case, they were wrong – it was only just beginning. (...)
An initial legal appeal was refused, but in September 2003 Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) asking for a review of his conviction. Nearly four years later, the SCCRC announced it would be referring the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal after it found Megrahi “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice”.
The Libyan applied to have the appeal dropped, however, shortly before it emerged he was to be controversially released on compassionate grounds by then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Despite a doctor’s assessment that Megrahi, who had terminal prostate cancer, had only three months to live, he would survive for a further three years after his return to Libyan, his life reportedly extended by a drug which at that point was not available to Scottish cancer sufferers on the NHS.
Despite Megrahi’s death, attempts continue to overturn his conviction. Earlier this year, the SCCRC began reviewing his conviction for a second time, saying it believed Megrahi had abandoned his earlier appeal because he thought it would result in him being released from prison and allowed to return home to Libya.
Back in Lockerbie, only the memorials to the dead remain as visible signs of the terror that came from the skies one December night 30 years ago. But while the houses of Sherwood Crescent have been rebuilt and life has gone on, the story appears far from finished.
Vital Lockerbie evidence ‘was made AFTER the doomed flight crashed’
[This is part of the headline over a report in today's edition of the Daily Mail. The following are excerpts:]
Evidence used in the trial of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is unconnected to the case, it has been claimed.
A circuit board used in the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi was probably made after the atrocity, investigators say.
The claims are backed by testimony from a British expert and by tests at a police forensics lab in Zurich.
Documentary-maker Bill Cran and his lead investigator George Thomson, a former Scottish police officer, are re-examining the 1988 bombing and later court case for a forthcoming film. (...)
The circuit board was linked to Swiss electronics firm Mebo, but it is claimed fresh forensic scrutiny has established the fragment did not match the Mebo boards.
It also appears the fragment was from a type of circuit-board not patented until 1991.
The British expert, who has asked not to be named but was interviewed for Cran’s film, said the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the older Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.
He said the technique of adding foil coating to circuit boards only emerged at the end of the 1980s and was not patented until 1991.
The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made my Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986. (...)
Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the UK relatives among the 270 who died on December 21, 1988, said: ‘This evidence underlines that PT35b did not come from boards made by Mebo and sold to Libya.
'We need a full public inquiry to explore this and to deliver truth and justice before it’s too late for those of us who have the right to know why our loved ones died.’
[RB: An article headlined Doubts over Lockerbie bomb timer fragment appears in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
A fragment of circuit board linked to Mebo, a Swiss electronics company, used to convict the late Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi for the bombing, does not match the relevant Mebo boards and was probably made after the tragedy on December 21, 1988. (...)
Since the trial verdict in 2001 and a failed first appeal, fresh scrutiny has established that, contrary to what the court was told, the fragment did not match the Mebo boards sold to Libya.
A British expert claims that the fragment also appeared to be from a type of board that was not patented until 1991. The expert, who we have been asked not to name but who has recorded an interview for the documentary [by film maker Bill Cran], said that the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.
The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made by Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986.
Edwin Bollier, Mebo’s co-founder, has also secured new evidence after winning the legal right to obtain government files on his company. They suggest that a named member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in 1989 and took away a modern circuit board he passed on to US investigators.
The fragment, known as PT35b, was entered as evidence in October 1990, and later that month the CIA went to Mebo and secured a packet of circuit boards of the type sold to Libya.
Mr Thomson said: “Somehow, the Americans knew 16 months or so before the fragment was found to send a local agent to Mebo to secure a circuit board. You have to wonder whether the investigation was already following a prepared script.”
The Swiss documents also confirmed that the police forensic lab in Zurich had concluded: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial does not match the timers made by Mebo.”
Evidence used in the trial of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is unconnected to the case, it has been claimed.
A circuit board used in the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi was probably made after the atrocity, investigators say.
The claims are backed by testimony from a British expert and by tests at a police forensics lab in Zurich.
Documentary-maker Bill Cran and his lead investigator George Thomson, a former Scottish police officer, are re-examining the 1988 bombing and later court case for a forthcoming film. (...)
The circuit board was linked to Swiss electronics firm Mebo, but it is claimed fresh forensic scrutiny has established the fragment did not match the Mebo boards.
It also appears the fragment was from a type of circuit-board not patented until 1991.
The British expert, who has asked not to be named but was interviewed for Cran’s film, said the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the older Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.
He said the technique of adding foil coating to circuit boards only emerged at the end of the 1980s and was not patented until 1991.
The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made my Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986. (...)
Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the UK relatives among the 270 who died on December 21, 1988, said: ‘This evidence underlines that PT35b did not come from boards made by Mebo and sold to Libya.
'We need a full public inquiry to explore this and to deliver truth and justice before it’s too late for those of us who have the right to know why our loved ones died.’
[RB: An article headlined Doubts over Lockerbie bomb timer fragment appears in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
A fragment of circuit board linked to Mebo, a Swiss electronics company, used to convict the late Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi for the bombing, does not match the relevant Mebo boards and was probably made after the tragedy on December 21, 1988. (...)
Since the trial verdict in 2001 and a failed first appeal, fresh scrutiny has established that, contrary to what the court was told, the fragment did not match the Mebo boards sold to Libya.
A British expert claims that the fragment also appeared to be from a type of board that was not patented until 1991. The expert, who we have been asked not to name but who has recorded an interview for the documentary [by film maker Bill Cran], said that the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.
The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made by Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986.
Edwin Bollier, Mebo’s co-founder, has also secured new evidence after winning the legal right to obtain government files on his company. They suggest that a named member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in 1989 and took away a modern circuit board he passed on to US investigators.
The fragment, known as PT35b, was entered as evidence in October 1990, and later that month the CIA went to Mebo and secured a packet of circuit boards of the type sold to Libya.
Mr Thomson said: “Somehow, the Americans knew 16 months or so before the fragment was found to send a local agent to Mebo to secure a circuit board. You have to wonder whether the investigation was already following a prepared script.”
The Swiss documents also confirmed that the police forensic lab in Zurich had concluded: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial does not match the timers made by Mebo.”
Sunday 16 December 2018
"It happened to Lockerbie but it wasn't about Lockerbie"
[What follows is excerpted from an article published this afternoon on the website of The Sun:]
Residents of Lockerbie hope this year's anniversary will mark the moment when the town can finally move on.
Since the tragedy, locals have walked a fine line between commemorating the victims and trying to heal and go forward with their lives.
The disaster that struck 30 years ago made the name of their small town known around the world — and guaranteed it will never be forgotten.
But residents, community leaders and politicians hope this month's milestone will see the horror that happened that night start to slowly fade into the past.
Retired teacher David Wilson, 75, said: "The word Lockerbie will always have this atrocity attached to it — we're not known for anything else.
"I'm hopeful that this year moves Lockerbie from modern studies to history, but it will never be forgotten."
Controversy over the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi — the only person to be convicted of the bombing — has kept the attack in the news over the decades.
But while the families of those who were on board Flight 103 continue their quest for the truth, Lockerbie has opted out of the bid because it won't bring back the people they lost.
David said: "Lockerbie is like a jigsaw with pieces missing. It happened to Lockerbie but it wasn't about Lockerbie.
"The Americans have one view on Megrahi, Jim Swire — who lost his daughter, Flora — and his supporters have another and Lockerbie has been caught in between.
"The focus has always been in the US because most of the victims were from there. Lockerbie never really joined in with the international dimensions because we worked out pretty quickly we didn't have much useful input.
"Instead, we welcomed people from all over the world who came to our town and took care of them.
"But even if everyone involved in the murder had been caught, it won't bring our people back. A lot of people in Lockerbie just wish it would stop." (...)
John Gair lives yards from Sherwood Crescent where 11 people died when the fuel-packed wings of the Pan Am jet crashed into their home.
He has seen the town gradually learn to cope after the disaster — but believes the row over who was responsible for the atrocity has hindered their recovery.
He said: "In most respects the town has healed — life has to go on. We got into a cycle of coping and relative normality eventually.
"Although there are some people who may never fully get over it, we all have unpleasant memories. (...)
"I think people would be glad if there was some finality with the Megrahi situation.
"But who did it is like a wound that won't heal — some finality one way or another would help.
"I think Lockerbie would have faded into the 'historic event' category had there been no controversy over guilt." (...)
Local councillor Adam Wilson wasn't born when the disaster happened but has witnessed the dignified silence of residents who lived through the horror.
Adam said: "Most people in Lockerbie don't want to talk about it, living through it was enough.
"Everyone has their own story but they keep it to themselves. (...)
"I wasn't born when it happened but I had family who lived through it.
"My great gran lived on one street that was partly destroyed. It's important we mark it but we must also respect locals who don't want to be reminded."
Residents of Lockerbie hope this year's anniversary will mark the moment when the town can finally move on.
Since the tragedy, locals have walked a fine line between commemorating the victims and trying to heal and go forward with their lives.
The disaster that struck 30 years ago made the name of their small town known around the world — and guaranteed it will never be forgotten.
But residents, community leaders and politicians hope this month's milestone will see the horror that happened that night start to slowly fade into the past.
Retired teacher David Wilson, 75, said: "The word Lockerbie will always have this atrocity attached to it — we're not known for anything else.
"I'm hopeful that this year moves Lockerbie from modern studies to history, but it will never be forgotten."
Controversy over the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi — the only person to be convicted of the bombing — has kept the attack in the news over the decades.
But while the families of those who were on board Flight 103 continue their quest for the truth, Lockerbie has opted out of the bid because it won't bring back the people they lost.
David said: "Lockerbie is like a jigsaw with pieces missing. It happened to Lockerbie but it wasn't about Lockerbie.
"The Americans have one view on Megrahi, Jim Swire — who lost his daughter, Flora — and his supporters have another and Lockerbie has been caught in between.
"The focus has always been in the US because most of the victims were from there. Lockerbie never really joined in with the international dimensions because we worked out pretty quickly we didn't have much useful input.
"Instead, we welcomed people from all over the world who came to our town and took care of them.
"But even if everyone involved in the murder had been caught, it won't bring our people back. A lot of people in Lockerbie just wish it would stop." (...)
John Gair lives yards from Sherwood Crescent where 11 people died when the fuel-packed wings of the Pan Am jet crashed into their home.
He has seen the town gradually learn to cope after the disaster — but believes the row over who was responsible for the atrocity has hindered their recovery.
He said: "In most respects the town has healed — life has to go on. We got into a cycle of coping and relative normality eventually.
"Although there are some people who may never fully get over it, we all have unpleasant memories. (...)
"I think people would be glad if there was some finality with the Megrahi situation.
"But who did it is like a wound that won't heal — some finality one way or another would help.
"I think Lockerbie would have faded into the 'historic event' category had there been no controversy over guilt." (...)
Local councillor Adam Wilson wasn't born when the disaster happened but has witnessed the dignified silence of residents who lived through the horror.
Adam said: "Most people in Lockerbie don't want to talk about it, living through it was enough.
"Everyone has their own story but they keep it to themselves. (...)
"I wasn't born when it happened but I had family who lived through it.
"My great gran lived on one street that was partly destroyed. It's important we mark it but we must also respect locals who don't want to be reminded."
Lockerbie: Campaigners fight to clear bomber's name
[This is the headline over an article published today on the STV News website. It reads in part:]
It's been three decades since Pan Am flight 103 blew up over the town of Lockerbie.
Only one man has ever been brought to justice for the attack, which claimed 270 lives. (...)
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was jailed for 27 years in 2001 before being released in 2009 on compassionate grounds as he battled cancer, shortly after abandoning his appeal.
His supporters, though, to continue to contest his conviction and hope he will one day be cleared.
They include relatives of Lockerbie victims, including Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Fiona died in the bombing.
Al Megrahi's conviction is currently being studied by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).
His family filed an application to have his conviction overturned in July last year.
In May this year, the SCCRC announced that it would carry out a full review and decide whether an appeal against the conviction could be made.
Speaking at the time, the family's solicitor Aamer Anwar said: "When Mr Megrahi abandoned his appeal it simply didn't make sense.
"He had maintained his innocence until his dying breath, so nobody could understand why all of sudden he would drop it.
"There have always been allegations that the UK Government applied pressure to him and others, including the Libyan government, over the appeal.
"That is a matter that will be addressed at a later stage.
"But the commission has accepted there was a genuine and reasonable belief by Mr Megrahi that unless he dropped his appeal then he would simply die in prison in Scotland."
They're expected to make their ruling early in 2019.
In November, a four-year Police Scotland probe, known as Operation Sandwood, into the handling of the bombing investigation and prosecution found no evidence of criminality.
It came after nine allegations were made by the Justice for Megrahi campaign group.
They welcomed the police report and said the findings will be of importance to many of the issues being considered by the SCCRC
The group said: "The Operation Sandwood investigation has resulted in a seminal report which has examined many of the controversies which have arisen over the past 30 years.
"We believe that Police Scotland conducted their enquiry with thoroughness and integrity and we thank them for the work they have carried out."
Materials gathered during Operation Sandwood have now been handed over to the Crown Office.
A Crown Office spokesman said: "The Lord Advocate has been informed by the chief constable of the findings of the Operation Sandwood investigation and of the chief constable's conclusion, informed by the advice of independent senior counsel, that no evidence of any criminality was found.
"The findings contain material relevant to the live investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and to the SCCRC consideration of the case.
"On that basis, the documents have been passed to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service team dealing with the live investigation so that they can be given appropriate consideration."
[RB : The article continues with a useful timeline on the Lockerbie criminal case. The headline is, of course, in need of improvement. In an article like this, Megrahi should rather be referred to as "the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" as, for example, The Herald always does.]
It's been three decades since Pan Am flight 103 blew up over the town of Lockerbie.
Only one man has ever been brought to justice for the attack, which claimed 270 lives. (...)
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was jailed for 27 years in 2001 before being released in 2009 on compassionate grounds as he battled cancer, shortly after abandoning his appeal.
His supporters, though, to continue to contest his conviction and hope he will one day be cleared.
They include relatives of Lockerbie victims, including Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Fiona died in the bombing.
Al Megrahi's conviction is currently being studied by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).
His family filed an application to have his conviction overturned in July last year.
In May this year, the SCCRC announced that it would carry out a full review and decide whether an appeal against the conviction could be made.
Speaking at the time, the family's solicitor Aamer Anwar said: "When Mr Megrahi abandoned his appeal it simply didn't make sense.
"He had maintained his innocence until his dying breath, so nobody could understand why all of sudden he would drop it.
"There have always been allegations that the UK Government applied pressure to him and others, including the Libyan government, over the appeal.
"That is a matter that will be addressed at a later stage.
"But the commission has accepted there was a genuine and reasonable belief by Mr Megrahi that unless he dropped his appeal then he would simply die in prison in Scotland."
They're expected to make their ruling early in 2019.
In November, a four-year Police Scotland probe, known as Operation Sandwood, into the handling of the bombing investigation and prosecution found no evidence of criminality.
It came after nine allegations were made by the Justice for Megrahi campaign group.
They welcomed the police report and said the findings will be of importance to many of the issues being considered by the SCCRC
The group said: "The Operation Sandwood investigation has resulted in a seminal report which has examined many of the controversies which have arisen over the past 30 years.
"We believe that Police Scotland conducted their enquiry with thoroughness and integrity and we thank them for the work they have carried out."
Materials gathered during Operation Sandwood have now been handed over to the Crown Office.
A Crown Office spokesman said: "The Lord Advocate has been informed by the chief constable of the findings of the Operation Sandwood investigation and of the chief constable's conclusion, informed by the advice of independent senior counsel, that no evidence of any criminality was found.
"The findings contain material relevant to the live investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and to the SCCRC consideration of the case.
"On that basis, the documents have been passed to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service team dealing with the live investigation so that they can be given appropriate consideration."
[RB : The article continues with a useful timeline on the Lockerbie criminal case. The headline is, of course, in need of improvement. In an article like this, Megrahi should rather be referred to as "the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" as, for example, The Herald always does.]
Swiss forensic lab: Lockerbie circuit board fragment does not match timers supplied to Libya
[What follows is excerpted from a report by Marcello Mega today in the Scottish edition of The Sun:]
A key piece of evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial had no link to the atrocity, it has been alleged.
The shock claim emerged as relatives prepare to mark the disaster’s 30th anniversary.
Investigators suggest an electronics fragment that helped to convict Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was made after the jet blast which killed 270 on December 21, 1988.
The fresh revelations emerged in a probe by documentary filmmaker Bill Cran and ex-cop George Thomson, 73.
The tiny circuit board piece, given the court tag PT35b, was said to be part of the bomb that blew up Pam Am flight 103 over the Dumfriesshire town.
Prosecutors claimed it was made by Swiss firm Mebo and sold to Libya in the 1980s.
But a British expert told Cran the piece of board contained traces of copper foil — a technique that was not patented until 1991.
And a Swiss police forensic lab stated: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial doesn’t match the timers made by Mebo.”
The findings will be included in a new film about Lockerbie that Cran hopes to broadcast next year.
His lead investigator Thomson, of Kirkcaldy, was part of Megrahi’s 2009 appeal defence team.
Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the relatives of the UK victims, has said: “We need a public inquiry to explore this.”
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is considering an appeal for the family of Megrahi, who died in 2012, aged 60.
[RB: Another report by Marcello Mega appears in today's edition of The Sunday Times under the headline New evidence ‘undermines’ Lockerbie bomber trial. The subheading over the story reads "Circuit board fragment used to convict Megrahi was likely made after the atrocity, scientists say". The following are two paragraphs from the story:]
Other evidence that appears to undermine the case against Megrahi has come from Mebo’s co-founder Edwin Bollier, who recently won the right through the Swiss Federal Court to obtain government files relating to his firm.
The documents reveal that a member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in June 1989 and took away a circuit board made with copper foil. It was passed on to US investigators. The PT35b circuit board fragment entered the chain of evidence in the Lockerbie case in October 1990.
A key piece of evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial had no link to the atrocity, it has been alleged.
The shock claim emerged as relatives prepare to mark the disaster’s 30th anniversary.
Investigators suggest an electronics fragment that helped to convict Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was made after the jet blast which killed 270 on December 21, 1988.
The fresh revelations emerged in a probe by documentary filmmaker Bill Cran and ex-cop George Thomson, 73.
The tiny circuit board piece, given the court tag PT35b, was said to be part of the bomb that blew up Pam Am flight 103 over the Dumfriesshire town.
Prosecutors claimed it was made by Swiss firm Mebo and sold to Libya in the 1980s.
But a British expert told Cran the piece of board contained traces of copper foil — a technique that was not patented until 1991.
And a Swiss police forensic lab stated: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial doesn’t match the timers made by Mebo.”
The findings will be included in a new film about Lockerbie that Cran hopes to broadcast next year.
His lead investigator Thomson, of Kirkcaldy, was part of Megrahi’s 2009 appeal defence team.
Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the relatives of the UK victims, has said: “We need a public inquiry to explore this.”
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is considering an appeal for the family of Megrahi, who died in 2012, aged 60.
[RB: Another report by Marcello Mega appears in today's edition of The Sunday Times under the headline New evidence ‘undermines’ Lockerbie bomber trial. The subheading over the story reads "Circuit board fragment used to convict Megrahi was likely made after the atrocity, scientists say". The following are two paragraphs from the story:]
Other evidence that appears to undermine the case against Megrahi has come from Mebo’s co-founder Edwin Bollier, who recently won the right through the Swiss Federal Court to obtain government files relating to his firm.
The documents reveal that a member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in June 1989 and took away a circuit board made with copper foil. It was passed on to US investigators. The PT35b circuit board fragment entered the chain of evidence in the Lockerbie case in October 1990.
Friday 14 December 2018
Lockerbie truth campaigner dies 30 years on
[This is the headline over an article published yesterday on the website of the Hexham Courant. It reads as follows:]
Barrie Berkley, a driving force in the fight to discover the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing, has died at the age of 91.
The retired oil executive and his wife, Jean, had spent 30 years since that day in December 1988 seeking justice for the 270 people, including their 29-year-old son Alistair, who died when Pam Am Flight 103 was brought down over the town.
The Sandhoe couple helped run the UK Families Flight 103 pressure group, which represented the families of the 31 British people who died. Members believe the only person ever convicted of the crime, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was set up as a fall guy.
The Berkleys used their Libyan compensation money to launch the Alistair Berkley Charitable Trust.
[RB: Examples of interventions by Barrie and Jean Berkley in the Lockerbie saga can be found on this blog here.]
Barrie Berkley, a driving force in the fight to discover the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing, has died at the age of 91.
The retired oil executive and his wife, Jean, had spent 30 years since that day in December 1988 seeking justice for the 270 people, including their 29-year-old son Alistair, who died when Pam Am Flight 103 was brought down over the town.
The Sandhoe couple helped run the UK Families Flight 103 pressure group, which represented the families of the 31 British people who died. Members believe the only person ever convicted of the crime, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was set up as a fall guy.
The Berkleys used their Libyan compensation money to launch the Alistair Berkley Charitable Trust.
[RB: Examples of interventions by Barrie and Jean Berkley in the Lockerbie saga can be found on this blog here.]
Wednesday 12 December 2018
William Blum, 6 March 1933 - 9 December 2018
The death has been announced of William Blum, US author, historian and longtime critic of his country's foreign policy. Mr Blum wrote extensively about the Lockerbie case and was unconvinced of the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi or of the involvement of Libya. Links to his Lockerbie writings can be found here.
Saturday 8 December 2018
Thirty years is a long time to grieve…without answers
[What follows is excerpted from an article by Marcello Mega published in today's edition of the Daily Express:]
Flight PanAm 103 was only 38 minutes into its flight from London to New York in December 1988 when a bomb hidden in a Toshiba cassette recorder and smuggled into its hold exploded.
The force of the blast punched a 20-inch hole in the left hand side of the fuselage of the jumbo jet and a subsequent investigation concluded that the nose of the plane was blown off within three seconds of the bomb’s detonation.
Victims and debris were flung over an 81-mile corridor covering 845 square miles. One wing section hit number 13 Sherwood Crescent in the Scottish border town of Lockerbie at 500 miles per hour. Its occupants Doris and Maurice Henry were killed instantly and nine other residents of the street also died.
Disputes over who planted the bomb have raged ever since and, on this side of the Atlantic, Dr Jim Swire – who lost his daughter Flora in the disaster – has been the most prominent campaigner against the official version of events. Now aged 82 he fears he might not live to see justice done for his daughter.
Swire is always dignified and articulate despite the quiet fury that has burned within him since Flora was murdered, on the eve of her 24th birthday, along with 258 others on the plane.
On December 21, he and other relatives who lost loved ones will mark the 30th anniversary of Europe’s most devastating terrorist atrocity but Swire notes pointedly that their numbers are dwindling.
“Thirty years is a long time to grieve, especially without answers,” he says. “We are beginning to die out in this group of relatives. Justice has been slow and inconsiderate. We above all deserve to know who murdered our loved ones and why it was not prevented.”
Swire and the other UK relatives have never believed in the guilt of the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the bombing by a specially-created Scottish court in the Netherlands in 2001.
Three Scottish judges sat without a jury and concluded that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was guilty, while his co-accused, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was not.
Swire sat through every minute of evidence over many months firmly believing he would see and hear the proof of Libyan guilt but he was so sure after hearing all the witnesses that both men were innocent that he fainted on hearing the guilty verdict.
Those close to him in the court feared he had dropped dead from the shock as he was out cold for several minutes.
In the years between the verdict and Megrahi’s death from cancer aged 60 in 2012, having been released from prison on compassionate grounds in 2009, Swire befriended the “bomber” and visited him in jail and later at his home in Tripoli, even apologising for the injustice he had suffered.
“When I met Baset, I had no problem shaking his hand because I sat in court every day and listened to all the evidence and I knew his hands had not been involved in the murder of my daughter,” he says.
“There was a natural warmth between us and each could sympathise with the other. He understood how I might feel having lost my much-loved daughter in the most atrocious way and I understood the pain he and his family must feel at their separation. I could also imagine how devastating it must be to be labelled a mass murderer unfairly.
“We became friends. He comforted me over the loss of my daughter and I apologised to him for what he and his family were being put through by the Scottish justice system and most of the time we talked about how we could get to the truth.”
Totally convinced that Megrahi’s conviction had been engineered for political reasons after the West’s relationships with Middle-Eastern states changed because of the first Gulf War – when Iran allowed the US and UK to attack Iraq from its air bases – Swire has played his part in trying to discover the truth.
Five years ago, he travelled to Sweden to confront Mohammed Abo Talb, a convicted terrorist then recently released from a 20-year sentence in that country, hoping to question him over his suspected role in the bombing.
The terrorist hid from the then 77-year-old behind his wife, refusing even to talk through an open second-floor window.
In Scotland and in the US, the authorities continue to maintain that Megrahi was guilty and that the bombing was planned and paid for by Libya, though the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to refer Megrahi’s case for a posthumous appeal shortly.
In 2007, the commission referred the case for appeal, stating there may have been a miscarriage of justice on six grounds, among them the fact that no reasonable court could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence presented, a damning condemnation of the verdict.
In 2009, Megrahi, by then diagnosed with terminal cancer, abandoned his appeal to secure a transfer home. Swire is certain that the SCCRC cannot ignore the evidence it had unearthed more than a decade earlier.
“I am certain there will be another appeal, and that the conviction cannot be maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence that points away from my friend,” he says. “But the authorities are in no hurry.
“They like to delay. They create the delays, and I wonder whether I will even see the conviction quashed, never mind the investigation that must follow into who really did it.”
Swire, like many informed Lockerbie watchers, believes the terror group, the PFLP-GC, the first suspects in the case, were the culprits, and that the bombing was ordered and paid for by Iran.
When an Iran Airbus carrying pilgrims to Mecca was shot down over the Gulf by the US vessel Vincennes five months before Lockerbie, killing all 290 on board, the Iranians said the skies would run with the blood of Americans.
Rather than offer an apology, the Americans further provoked the Iranians by giving William C Rogers III, the captain of the Vincennes, an award for “bravery”.
Swire was appalled by the disregard the US displayed for the victims and remains certain that it contributed to the awful fate endured by his daughter and 269 others.
His anger, however, is not confined to the real culprits, or even to the US and Scottish investigators, who he believes wilfully ignored the evidence against Iran and the PFLP-GC to pursue Libya for political reasons.
He is also angry with successive UK governments for allowing it to happen in the first place and then for failing to deliver truth and justice. He still craves the full public inquiry that would force senior politicians and senior intelligence figures to reveal what they knew.
“When Sheriff Principal John Mowatt QC published his report in October 1990 into the fatal accident inquiry he chaired, he said the bombing had been avoidable,” he says.
“Cecil Parkinson, who became Secretary of State for Transport in 1989, promised the relatives a full public inquiry, then had to let us down because Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t allow it.
“In the lead-up to Labour winning the election in 1997, we met with Robin Cook and Tony Blair and were promised it would be different when they won power. After they won, they stopped returning our calls.
“We know there were warnings to intelligence agencies about a threat to Pan Am flights at this time. We know this plane was only two-thirds full when every other flight from Heathrow to JFK in that week before Christmas flew at least at 95 per cent capacity and we know that some VIPs who were booked on the flight didn’t travel.
“We also believe the three-flights’ theory to be nonsense, and it was never proved in court. The judges said the Crown had failed to prove there was an unaccompanied case on the flight from Malta to Frankfurt and clung to the flimsiest possibility of an unaccompanied case on the flight to Heathrow.
“All the evidence tells us the bomb was loaded at Heathrow. It was our government’s responsibility to keep Flora and all the others safe.
“Any parent who lost a child in these circumstances would be shouting for answers, and 30 years on we are still shouting and we need to be heard.”
Flight PanAm 103 was only 38 minutes into its flight from London to New York in December 1988 when a bomb hidden in a Toshiba cassette recorder and smuggled into its hold exploded.
The force of the blast punched a 20-inch hole in the left hand side of the fuselage of the jumbo jet and a subsequent investigation concluded that the nose of the plane was blown off within three seconds of the bomb’s detonation.
Victims and debris were flung over an 81-mile corridor covering 845 square miles. One wing section hit number 13 Sherwood Crescent in the Scottish border town of Lockerbie at 500 miles per hour. Its occupants Doris and Maurice Henry were killed instantly and nine other residents of the street also died.
Disputes over who planted the bomb have raged ever since and, on this side of the Atlantic, Dr Jim Swire – who lost his daughter Flora in the disaster – has been the most prominent campaigner against the official version of events. Now aged 82 he fears he might not live to see justice done for his daughter.
Swire is always dignified and articulate despite the quiet fury that has burned within him since Flora was murdered, on the eve of her 24th birthday, along with 258 others on the plane.
On December 21, he and other relatives who lost loved ones will mark the 30th anniversary of Europe’s most devastating terrorist atrocity but Swire notes pointedly that their numbers are dwindling.
“Thirty years is a long time to grieve, especially without answers,” he says. “We are beginning to die out in this group of relatives. Justice has been slow and inconsiderate. We above all deserve to know who murdered our loved ones and why it was not prevented.”
Swire and the other UK relatives have never believed in the guilt of the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the bombing by a specially-created Scottish court in the Netherlands in 2001.
Three Scottish judges sat without a jury and concluded that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was guilty, while his co-accused, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was not.
Swire sat through every minute of evidence over many months firmly believing he would see and hear the proof of Libyan guilt but he was so sure after hearing all the witnesses that both men were innocent that he fainted on hearing the guilty verdict.
Those close to him in the court feared he had dropped dead from the shock as he was out cold for several minutes.
In the years between the verdict and Megrahi’s death from cancer aged 60 in 2012, having been released from prison on compassionate grounds in 2009, Swire befriended the “bomber” and visited him in jail and later at his home in Tripoli, even apologising for the injustice he had suffered.
“When I met Baset, I had no problem shaking his hand because I sat in court every day and listened to all the evidence and I knew his hands had not been involved in the murder of my daughter,” he says.
“There was a natural warmth between us and each could sympathise with the other. He understood how I might feel having lost my much-loved daughter in the most atrocious way and I understood the pain he and his family must feel at their separation. I could also imagine how devastating it must be to be labelled a mass murderer unfairly.
“We became friends. He comforted me over the loss of my daughter and I apologised to him for what he and his family were being put through by the Scottish justice system and most of the time we talked about how we could get to the truth.”
Totally convinced that Megrahi’s conviction had been engineered for political reasons after the West’s relationships with Middle-Eastern states changed because of the first Gulf War – when Iran allowed the US and UK to attack Iraq from its air bases – Swire has played his part in trying to discover the truth.
Five years ago, he travelled to Sweden to confront Mohammed Abo Talb, a convicted terrorist then recently released from a 20-year sentence in that country, hoping to question him over his suspected role in the bombing.
The terrorist hid from the then 77-year-old behind his wife, refusing even to talk through an open second-floor window.
In Scotland and in the US, the authorities continue to maintain that Megrahi was guilty and that the bombing was planned and paid for by Libya, though the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to refer Megrahi’s case for a posthumous appeal shortly.
In 2007, the commission referred the case for appeal, stating there may have been a miscarriage of justice on six grounds, among them the fact that no reasonable court could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence presented, a damning condemnation of the verdict.
In 2009, Megrahi, by then diagnosed with terminal cancer, abandoned his appeal to secure a transfer home. Swire is certain that the SCCRC cannot ignore the evidence it had unearthed more than a decade earlier.
“I am certain there will be another appeal, and that the conviction cannot be maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence that points away from my friend,” he says. “But the authorities are in no hurry.
“They like to delay. They create the delays, and I wonder whether I will even see the conviction quashed, never mind the investigation that must follow into who really did it.”
Swire, like many informed Lockerbie watchers, believes the terror group, the PFLP-GC, the first suspects in the case, were the culprits, and that the bombing was ordered and paid for by Iran.
When an Iran Airbus carrying pilgrims to Mecca was shot down over the Gulf by the US vessel Vincennes five months before Lockerbie, killing all 290 on board, the Iranians said the skies would run with the blood of Americans.
Rather than offer an apology, the Americans further provoked the Iranians by giving William C Rogers III, the captain of the Vincennes, an award for “bravery”.
Swire was appalled by the disregard the US displayed for the victims and remains certain that it contributed to the awful fate endured by his daughter and 269 others.
His anger, however, is not confined to the real culprits, or even to the US and Scottish investigators, who he believes wilfully ignored the evidence against Iran and the PFLP-GC to pursue Libya for political reasons.
He is also angry with successive UK governments for allowing it to happen in the first place and then for failing to deliver truth and justice. He still craves the full public inquiry that would force senior politicians and senior intelligence figures to reveal what they knew.
“When Sheriff Principal John Mowatt QC published his report in October 1990 into the fatal accident inquiry he chaired, he said the bombing had been avoidable,” he says.
“Cecil Parkinson, who became Secretary of State for Transport in 1989, promised the relatives a full public inquiry, then had to let us down because Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t allow it.
“In the lead-up to Labour winning the election in 1997, we met with Robin Cook and Tony Blair and were promised it would be different when they won power. After they won, they stopped returning our calls.
“We know there were warnings to intelligence agencies about a threat to Pan Am flights at this time. We know this plane was only two-thirds full when every other flight from Heathrow to JFK in that week before Christmas flew at least at 95 per cent capacity and we know that some VIPs who were booked on the flight didn’t travel.
“We also believe the three-flights’ theory to be nonsense, and it was never proved in court. The judges said the Crown had failed to prove there was an unaccompanied case on the flight from Malta to Frankfurt and clung to the flimsiest possibility of an unaccompanied case on the flight to Heathrow.
“All the evidence tells us the bomb was loaded at Heathrow. It was our government’s responsibility to keep Flora and all the others safe.
“Any parent who lost a child in these circumstances would be shouting for answers, and 30 years on we are still shouting and we need to be heard.”
Friday 7 December 2018
The Lockerbie Legacy
[This is the title of a programme to be broadcast in the Disclosure series on BBC One Scotland on Thursday, 13 December 2018 at 21.00 GMT. The programme description reads in part:]
Rare archive and untold personal testimony combine to reveal how the residents of Lockerbie have been forever changed since the downing of Pan Am flight 103.
Three decades on from the UK's worst terrorist atrocity, residents of Lockerbie reveal untold stories of how they have been affected by the downing of Pan Am flight 103. Piecing together rare archive with personal testimony of those who were there on the night and in the months after, the film charts how the quiet Dumfriesshire market town has been forever changed.
Rare archive and untold personal testimony combine to reveal how the residents of Lockerbie have been forever changed since the downing of Pan Am flight 103.
Three decades on from the UK's worst terrorist atrocity, residents of Lockerbie reveal untold stories of how they have been affected by the downing of Pan Am flight 103. Piecing together rare archive with personal testimony of those who were there on the night and in the months after, the film charts how the quiet Dumfriesshire market town has been forever changed.
Tuesday 4 December 2018
Justice has been devalued
[This is the headline over a letter from Iain Mckie published in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
Congratulations to Kevin McKenna on his perceptive and timely critique of our justice system (“Do not believe the big lie that the British justice system is fair”, The Herald, December 1).
As a former police officer and justice campaigner, I am sad to say that the lessons of the past have not always been learned.
In both capacities, I have witnessed innocent people wrongly condemned to the Kafkaesque nightmare that is prison.
The root causes are much more than a collection of disparate individual failures. They are systemic in our whole approach to justice. The very court system we rely on to deliver justice is often an embarrassing shambles that affects victims and the accused alike and fails to deliver the checks and balances necessary to prevent injustice.
Many accused hand themselves over to a system that is slow, inefficient and increasingly expensive. It is also often overstretched and under resourced.
Real change will only result when there is the political will to re-assess and update our justice system and its institutions in the knowledge that blind faith in the judiciary, courts, law and police is no way to work towards a fairer and more just society. Unfortunately, I suspect Kevin McKenna’s pleas will fall on deaf ears as our justice system so often fails to deliver in these important areas.
We have a system that is rooted in the past with the maintenance of the status quo being of more importance than ensuring everyone is equal before the law.
As the 30th anniversary of Lockerbie approaches on December 22, we would do well to remember the words of Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
It is Scotland’s disgrace that, for nearly three decades, the truth about the UK’s worst terrorist atrocity has been sacrificed at the altar of expediency.
Time and time again political spin and vested interests have prevailed while our justice system has sat in denial with its collective head stuck firmly in the sand.
Where are the visionary voices offering escape from the old systems and self-serving values that have suffocated dissent and devalued justice?
Congratulations to Kevin McKenna on his perceptive and timely critique of our justice system (“Do not believe the big lie that the British justice system is fair”, The Herald, December 1).
As a former police officer and justice campaigner, I am sad to say that the lessons of the past have not always been learned.
In both capacities, I have witnessed innocent people wrongly condemned to the Kafkaesque nightmare that is prison.
The root causes are much more than a collection of disparate individual failures. They are systemic in our whole approach to justice. The very court system we rely on to deliver justice is often an embarrassing shambles that affects victims and the accused alike and fails to deliver the checks and balances necessary to prevent injustice.
Many accused hand themselves over to a system that is slow, inefficient and increasingly expensive. It is also often overstretched and under resourced.
Real change will only result when there is the political will to re-assess and update our justice system and its institutions in the knowledge that blind faith in the judiciary, courts, law and police is no way to work towards a fairer and more just society. Unfortunately, I suspect Kevin McKenna’s pleas will fall on deaf ears as our justice system so often fails to deliver in these important areas.
We have a system that is rooted in the past with the maintenance of the status quo being of more importance than ensuring everyone is equal before the law.
As the 30th anniversary of Lockerbie approaches on December 22, we would do well to remember the words of Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
It is Scotland’s disgrace that, for nearly three decades, the truth about the UK’s worst terrorist atrocity has been sacrificed at the altar of expediency.
Time and time again political spin and vested interests have prevailed while our justice system has sat in denial with its collective head stuck firmly in the sand.
Where are the visionary voices offering escape from the old systems and self-serving values that have suffocated dissent and devalued justice?
Monday 3 December 2018
Ministers must end the Lockerbie secrecy
[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
Secrecy is the enemy of truth. It suggests the real facts are being withheld, encouraging suspicion, conspiracy theories and fake news. In the case of the Lockerbie bombing, it plays into the hands of those who believe that we have been hoodwinked about the evidence. They are adamant that prosecutors got the wrong man. The latest disclosures make the search for truth more complicated. (...)
It is 30 years since a PanAm plane crashed on to the town, and in that time the idea has grown that governments colluded in pointing the finger at Libya and away from the real perpetrators. According to this, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted, was innocent and the real plotters were Palestinians backed by Iran.
Why else, goes the theory, would British intelligence have been tapping phones and monitoring calls? As Marc Horne revealed in The Times last week, relatives of those who died are convinced that, in the aftermath of the atrocity, their conversations were recorded. They would hear “clinks and clunks” on the line; files disappeared from computers; odd people pretending to be journalists turned up to interview them. [RB: Marc Horne's articles can be read here and here.]
Papers released by the UK government from the national archives show that Lynda Chalker, a Foreign Office minister, wrote to the late Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, then Lord Advocate and in overall charge of the investigation, to express concern about victims’ groups on both sides of the Atlantic. They “will need careful watching”, she wrote.
Not surprisingly, the surviving relatives, or at least those who believe there has been a miscarriage of justice, smell a rat. They think ministers were worried lest they stumble on an inconvenient truth: that intelligence agencies were busy doctoring facts to implicate Libya.
The latest revelations seem to bolster that view. It is not just the sketchy evidence that has been revealed, but the dozens of documents that are being retained, and will not be released for another five years at least. They include, bizarrely, reports brought back from Libya by the late Labour MP Bernie Grant who travelled several times to Tripoli to interview members of Gaddafi’s regime and left his papers to a London college. They have been closed to members of the public by the government until 2025.
If you wanted to encourage the idea that there has been a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, you could hardly do better than that. As Aamer Anwar, the Megrahi family’s lawyer, who hopes to run another appeal, says: “It comes as no surprise that the security services were instructed to spy on those British relatives who to date have never given up in their pursuit of the truth.”
On closer examination, the revelations do little more than muddy the waters. It is intriguing to note, for instance, that the period in 1989 when phones were allegedly being tapped, long precedes the implication of the Libyans. The main suspect was a Palestinian group known as the PFLP-GC, allegedly backed by the Iranian government, seeking revenge for the sabotage of one of its planes. Briefings from Lord Fraser’s office pointed in that direction. Why officials should have wanted to tap the phones of relatives is far from clear.
In May 1989, a fragment of a bomb timer was found in the charred collar of a shirt packed in the suitcase that had held the bomb. The significance of its discovery was not immediately apparent but from it would stem an investigation that eventually pointed to Megrahi and the Libyans.
According to campaigners such as Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the attack, and Robert Black, QC, architect of the Lockerbie trial, that evidence was manufactured, probably by the CIA, because neither UK nor US governments wanted a confrontation with Iran at the time. Libya was a more convenient target, and Megrahi a disposable suspect. They believed their communications continued to be monitored.
Many thousands of words have been published to sustain the case. That does not mean it is true. For all the painstaking work done to cast doubt on the course of the trial and conviction of Megrahi, it takes a massive suspension of disbelief to accept that a decision was made at the highest level to suppress evidence, substitute false information and tilt the Scottish justice system in the direction of a miscarriage of justice. It would have involved hundreds of intelligence agents, criminal investigators and government officials, to say nothing of Scottish lawyers and judges.
Maybe that is what happened, but maybe is not enough. To allow the allegation to hover in the air is to undermine natural justice. It is unfair to the relatives, it casts doubt on the integrity of police and politicians, it clouds understanding of history.
Withholding evidence that might cast light on this matter is no way to resolve it. Many relatives have gone to the grave with uncertainty hanging over them. By 2025, when some or most of the papers are due to be released, others will have followed. There may be an appeal but, in the meantime, the government should come clean over its knowledge on Lockerbie and the investigation. It is hard to believe national security is still at risk 30 years on. Ministers have a responsibility to the dead and to the living. Justice suppressed, they should remember, is justice denied.
[RB: Mr Linklater once again contends that we Lockerbie dissentients are positing a grand conspiracy involving "hundreds of intelligence agents, criminal investigators and government officials, to say nothing of Scottish lawyers and judges". This is just nonsense. Here is what John Ashton wrote on a previous occasion when Mr Linklater made the same allegation:]
According to Mr Linklater's Times column of 13 August 2012, we allege a huge plot to shift the blame from Iran and the PFLP-GC to Libya, which involved: 'the planting or suppression of forensic evidence, the control of witnesses by intelligence services, the approval of senior politicians, the complicity of police officers, a prosecution team prepared to bend every rule to secure a conviction, and a set of senior Scottish judges willing to go along with that'. [RB: Responses to that article can be read here.]
The last sentence is key. It suggests that we claim that everyone from the police to the judges plotted with government and intelligence services to protect the likely bombers and convict those whom they knew to be innocent. The trouble is neither I, nor the great majority of Megrahi's supporters, have ever made such a claim.
To be clear, I believe that two different things happened: firstly, the US government ensured that blame was from Iran and the PFLP-GC to Libya; secondly, the Scottish criminal justice system screwed up massively. The first I consider likely, but unproven, the second I consider a cert. Both are based upon a rational evaluation of the available facts. I do not believe that the second occurred because the Americans told the Scots to exonerate the real culprits and frame innocents, indeed I find such suggestions fanciful.
In an email to me, Mr Linklater wrote: 'I've been in the [journalism] business for more than 40 years, and have learned over that time a simple principle of reporting: that good investigation requires sound proof'. Yet he has failed to produce any evidence that the majority of Megrahi's supporters have posited a grand conspiracy. The Justice for Megrahi campaign committee has formally alleged that some of the failures might have involved criminal conduct by certain Crown servants. They do not, however, claim that it happened at the behest of governments and intelligence services.
The US government was motivated to exonerate Iran, I believe, because the Iranians knew where the Iran-Contra skeletons lay and also held sway over the US hostages held in Lebanon – whose safe return was an obsession of the Reagan-Bush White House. Another obsession was Libya. As Watergate journalist Bob Woodward revealed, CIA director William Casey launched one of the biggest covert programmes in the agency's history, with the clear aim of toppling Gaddafi. Disinformation – that is, lying and fakery – was at its core.
The Lockerbie investigation was supposedly driven by old-fashioned detective work, but, as we have learned over the years, behind the scenes the CIA played a key role. We now know that the timer fragment was not from one of the 20 timers to Libya. Is it really far-fetched to suggest that the CIA planted it in order to conclusively link Libya to the bombing?
I have done many months of my own old-fashioned detective work among the hundreds of people who searched the crash site. They witnessed American officials in Lockerbie within two hours of the crash, CIA agents searching the site without police supervision, and substantial drug and cash finds – all things that have been officially denied. There may well be innocent explanations for these events, in which case the authorities should reveal them. And, instead of writing me off as a conspiracy theorist, perhaps Mr Linklater should do some door knocking of his own.
Secrecy is the enemy of truth. It suggests the real facts are being withheld, encouraging suspicion, conspiracy theories and fake news. In the case of the Lockerbie bombing, it plays into the hands of those who believe that we have been hoodwinked about the evidence. They are adamant that prosecutors got the wrong man. The latest disclosures make the search for truth more complicated. (...)
It is 30 years since a PanAm plane crashed on to the town, and in that time the idea has grown that governments colluded in pointing the finger at Libya and away from the real perpetrators. According to this, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted, was innocent and the real plotters were Palestinians backed by Iran.
Why else, goes the theory, would British intelligence have been tapping phones and monitoring calls? As Marc Horne revealed in The Times last week, relatives of those who died are convinced that, in the aftermath of the atrocity, their conversations were recorded. They would hear “clinks and clunks” on the line; files disappeared from computers; odd people pretending to be journalists turned up to interview them. [RB: Marc Horne's articles can be read here and here.]
Papers released by the UK government from the national archives show that Lynda Chalker, a Foreign Office minister, wrote to the late Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, then Lord Advocate and in overall charge of the investigation, to express concern about victims’ groups on both sides of the Atlantic. They “will need careful watching”, she wrote.
Not surprisingly, the surviving relatives, or at least those who believe there has been a miscarriage of justice, smell a rat. They think ministers were worried lest they stumble on an inconvenient truth: that intelligence agencies were busy doctoring facts to implicate Libya.
The latest revelations seem to bolster that view. It is not just the sketchy evidence that has been revealed, but the dozens of documents that are being retained, and will not be released for another five years at least. They include, bizarrely, reports brought back from Libya by the late Labour MP Bernie Grant who travelled several times to Tripoli to interview members of Gaddafi’s regime and left his papers to a London college. They have been closed to members of the public by the government until 2025.
If you wanted to encourage the idea that there has been a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, you could hardly do better than that. As Aamer Anwar, the Megrahi family’s lawyer, who hopes to run another appeal, says: “It comes as no surprise that the security services were instructed to spy on those British relatives who to date have never given up in their pursuit of the truth.”
On closer examination, the revelations do little more than muddy the waters. It is intriguing to note, for instance, that the period in 1989 when phones were allegedly being tapped, long precedes the implication of the Libyans. The main suspect was a Palestinian group known as the PFLP-GC, allegedly backed by the Iranian government, seeking revenge for the sabotage of one of its planes. Briefings from Lord Fraser’s office pointed in that direction. Why officials should have wanted to tap the phones of relatives is far from clear.
In May 1989, a fragment of a bomb timer was found in the charred collar of a shirt packed in the suitcase that had held the bomb. The significance of its discovery was not immediately apparent but from it would stem an investigation that eventually pointed to Megrahi and the Libyans.
According to campaigners such as Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the attack, and Robert Black, QC, architect of the Lockerbie trial, that evidence was manufactured, probably by the CIA, because neither UK nor US governments wanted a confrontation with Iran at the time. Libya was a more convenient target, and Megrahi a disposable suspect. They believed their communications continued to be monitored.
Many thousands of words have been published to sustain the case. That does not mean it is true. For all the painstaking work done to cast doubt on the course of the trial and conviction of Megrahi, it takes a massive suspension of disbelief to accept that a decision was made at the highest level to suppress evidence, substitute false information and tilt the Scottish justice system in the direction of a miscarriage of justice. It would have involved hundreds of intelligence agents, criminal investigators and government officials, to say nothing of Scottish lawyers and judges.
Maybe that is what happened, but maybe is not enough. To allow the allegation to hover in the air is to undermine natural justice. It is unfair to the relatives, it casts doubt on the integrity of police and politicians, it clouds understanding of history.
Withholding evidence that might cast light on this matter is no way to resolve it. Many relatives have gone to the grave with uncertainty hanging over them. By 2025, when some or most of the papers are due to be released, others will have followed. There may be an appeal but, in the meantime, the government should come clean over its knowledge on Lockerbie and the investigation. It is hard to believe national security is still at risk 30 years on. Ministers have a responsibility to the dead and to the living. Justice suppressed, they should remember, is justice denied.
[RB: Mr Linklater once again contends that we Lockerbie dissentients are positing a grand conspiracy involving "hundreds of intelligence agents, criminal investigators and government officials, to say nothing of Scottish lawyers and judges". This is just nonsense. Here is what John Ashton wrote on a previous occasion when Mr Linklater made the same allegation:]
According to Mr Linklater's Times column of 13 August 2012, we allege a huge plot to shift the blame from Iran and the PFLP-GC to Libya, which involved: 'the planting or suppression of forensic evidence, the control of witnesses by intelligence services, the approval of senior politicians, the complicity of police officers, a prosecution team prepared to bend every rule to secure a conviction, and a set of senior Scottish judges willing to go along with that'. [RB: Responses to that article can be read here.]
The last sentence is key. It suggests that we claim that everyone from the police to the judges plotted with government and intelligence services to protect the likely bombers and convict those whom they knew to be innocent. The trouble is neither I, nor the great majority of Megrahi's supporters, have ever made such a claim.
To be clear, I believe that two different things happened: firstly, the US government ensured that blame was from Iran and the PFLP-GC to Libya; secondly, the Scottish criminal justice system screwed up massively. The first I consider likely, but unproven, the second I consider a cert. Both are based upon a rational evaluation of the available facts. I do not believe that the second occurred because the Americans told the Scots to exonerate the real culprits and frame innocents, indeed I find such suggestions fanciful.
In an email to me, Mr Linklater wrote: 'I've been in the [journalism] business for more than 40 years, and have learned over that time a simple principle of reporting: that good investigation requires sound proof'. Yet he has failed to produce any evidence that the majority of Megrahi's supporters have posited a grand conspiracy. The Justice for Megrahi campaign committee has formally alleged that some of the failures might have involved criminal conduct by certain Crown servants. They do not, however, claim that it happened at the behest of governments and intelligence services.
The US government was motivated to exonerate Iran, I believe, because the Iranians knew where the Iran-Contra skeletons lay and also held sway over the US hostages held in Lebanon – whose safe return was an obsession of the Reagan-Bush White House. Another obsession was Libya. As Watergate journalist Bob Woodward revealed, CIA director William Casey launched one of the biggest covert programmes in the agency's history, with the clear aim of toppling Gaddafi. Disinformation – that is, lying and fakery – was at its core.
The Lockerbie investigation was supposedly driven by old-fashioned detective work, but, as we have learned over the years, behind the scenes the CIA played a key role. We now know that the timer fragment was not from one of the 20 timers to Libya. Is it really far-fetched to suggest that the CIA planted it in order to conclusively link Libya to the bombing?
I have done many months of my own old-fashioned detective work among the hundreds of people who searched the crash site. They witnessed American officials in Lockerbie within two hours of the crash, CIA agents searching the site without police supervision, and substantial drug and cash finds – all things that have been officially denied. There may well be innocent explanations for these events, in which case the authorities should reveal them. And, instead of writing me off as a conspiracy theorist, perhaps Mr Linklater should do some door knocking of his own.
Saturday 1 December 2018
Further claims by Lockerbie figures of monitoring of communications
[A report in today's edition of The Times carries the headline Lockerbie professor says secret service agents snooped on him. It reads in part:]
A senior legal figure who masterminded the Lockerbie trial believes that he was put under surveillance by the security services.
Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, is convinced that his emails and telephone calls were intercepted at home and his campus office.
Professor Black spoke out after The Times published extracts from Foreign Office documents, circulated to Margaret Thatcher in 1989 when she was prime minister, which warned that relatives of the bomb victims were becoming increasingly vocal and required “careful watching”. (...)
Professor Black was the key architect of the arrangement that allowed Abdul Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, to stand trial under Scots law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2000.
After the trial, which ended with Megrahi being found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, the academic became convinced that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.
Professor Black believes that he and Jim Swire, a former GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, attracted the attention of the intelligence services. Mr Swire’s daughter Flora was killed in the bombing.
“I had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office,” Professor Black said.
“In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information. On other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say: ‘Hi guys’.”
Professor Black, who was born and brought up in Lockerbie, added: “This was at a time when I had put forward my proposal for a non-jury Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands after getting Libyan agreement to it. Opposition to it was virulent and those pressing the scheme, including Dr Swire and myself, were very unpopular in government circles.”
Dr Swire and the Rev John Mosey, who lost his daughter Helga in the tragedy, also claimed that their phone calls were often disrupted and their computer equipment interfered with after they spoke publicly about the case.
Peter Biddulph, a researcher and author who has spent years investigating the bombing, is also convinced that he was put under surveillance,
He said: “Around two weeks after I had interviewed Jim [Swire] I sat down and found every one of the files in my computer folder had been accessed that morning.
“It was a bit of a shock and I was in a flat panic. I ended up in my solicitor’s office swearing an affidavit, which is still in his safe. After that I got a second computer and made sure it wasn’t connected to the internet.”
The claims were corroborated by Hans Köchler, an Austrian academic, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the Camp Zeist trial.
He told The Times: “I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial in 2001 and the following years, in terms of intrusion into the computer systems in my office in two different locations, leading to data loss and destruction of the operating system.”
A spokesman for the Crown Office said that Lockerbie remained a live criminal investigation.
The Foreign Office declined to comment.
A senior legal figure who masterminded the Lockerbie trial believes that he was put under surveillance by the security services.
Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, is convinced that his emails and telephone calls were intercepted at home and his campus office.
Professor Black spoke out after The Times published extracts from Foreign Office documents, circulated to Margaret Thatcher in 1989 when she was prime minister, which warned that relatives of the bomb victims were becoming increasingly vocal and required “careful watching”. (...)
Professor Black was the key architect of the arrangement that allowed Abdul Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, to stand trial under Scots law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2000.
After the trial, which ended with Megrahi being found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, the academic became convinced that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.
Professor Black believes that he and Jim Swire, a former GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, attracted the attention of the intelligence services. Mr Swire’s daughter Flora was killed in the bombing.
“I had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office,” Professor Black said.
“In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information. On other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say: ‘Hi guys’.”
Professor Black, who was born and brought up in Lockerbie, added: “This was at a time when I had put forward my proposal for a non-jury Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands after getting Libyan agreement to it. Opposition to it was virulent and those pressing the scheme, including Dr Swire and myself, were very unpopular in government circles.”
Dr Swire and the Rev John Mosey, who lost his daughter Helga in the tragedy, also claimed that their phone calls were often disrupted and their computer equipment interfered with after they spoke publicly about the case.
Peter Biddulph, a researcher and author who has spent years investigating the bombing, is also convinced that he was put under surveillance,
He said: “Around two weeks after I had interviewed Jim [Swire] I sat down and found every one of the files in my computer folder had been accessed that morning.
“It was a bit of a shock and I was in a flat panic. I ended up in my solicitor’s office swearing an affidavit, which is still in his safe. After that I got a second computer and made sure it wasn’t connected to the internet.”
The claims were corroborated by Hans Köchler, an Austrian academic, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the Camp Zeist trial.
He told The Times: “I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial in 2001 and the following years, in terms of intrusion into the computer systems in my office in two different locations, leading to data loss and destruction of the operating system.”
A spokesman for the Crown Office said that Lockerbie remained a live criminal investigation.
The Foreign Office declined to comment.
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