Thursday 22 March 2012

We must lift the burden of false incrimination against a dying man

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

In a villa, within a high walled garden in Tripoli, Libya, there lies a man wracked by the pain of widespread cancer, living out the last days of his life, cared for by his wife and children.
His name is known around the world as Megrahi, "the Lockerbie bomber".
He is what we would call middle class. His work was as a part-time international entrepreneur, part time employee of his State's airline, where his role involved the unusual task of trying to obtain spares for that airline's Boeing airliners in the face of international sanctions against his state. His work took him often to Malta where he may have had a mistress. It also took him from time to time to Zurich.
Yes, he also had a state-issued passport in a false name, to facilitate and conceal his journeyings and no doubt his trysts. Later when both Abdelbasel Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, pictured, and his family were confined to Tripoli, awaiting trial, (which he had volunteered to attend, in order as he believed to clear his name), he arranged for two of his children also to be issued with false passports so that they could attend a children's festival in another country. Such were the mores of his country, such were the uses of false passports.
The Scottish court at Camp Zeist was told that an investigating Scottish policeman had kept a diary but he was not told to go and get it from Glasgow. Yet we now know it contained contemporaneous evidence that the Scottish investigators knew the Americans were offering multi million dollar rewards "with $10,000 up front" and that those who falsely identified Megrahi were also aware of rewards long before they gave their evidence ("Six key points that cast doubt on Megrahi's guilt", The Herald, March 13).
We now know through the foresight of Megrahi's latter-day defence solicitor (now Professor) Tony Kelly of Glasgow,that it is not possible that the fragment found after the bombing could have come from a genuine Zurich timer board. That is unassailable scientific fact.
I hope that anyone reading this letter will consider the responsibility which Scotland carries for the failures that emerged in the delivery of justice at Zeist. We were responsible for failing to analyse "the fragment" fully, to discover whether it was genuine or not. We seem also to have been responsible for failing to produce evidence of the break-in at Heathrow which may have indicated a much simpler solution than the premeditated, contrived, cruel and criminal perversion of justice reached at Zeist.
It is time to lobby MSPs, to see if we can lift the terrible burden of false incrimination against this individual and his family, for which our court was in part responsible, before he dies. We may only have days or weeks to do so if he is to be alive to hear of it. Surely we owe that to him and to his family, currently cast as pariahs throughout the world. We also owe the truth about all that is known about the real killers, to the relatives of the victims.
We should remember the words of Nelson Mandela when the Zeist trial was announced: "No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge." 
[The letter as published is an edited version of two letters that Dr Swire submitted to the newspaper.  With his permission I reproduce here the full text of both.]
Letter 1
In a villa, within a high walled garden in Tripoli, Libya, there lies a man wracked by the pain of widespread cancer, living out the last days of his life, cared for by his still devoted wife and children.

His name is known around the world as Megrahi, 'the Lockerbie bomber'.

He is what we would call middle class, his work was as part time international entrepreneur, part time employee of his State's airline, where his work involved the unusual task of trying to obtain spares for that airline's Boeing airliners in the face of international sanctions against his State. His work took him often to Malta where he had a mistress, it also took him from time to time to Zurich.

Ah yes, he also had a State issued passport in a false name, to facilitate and conceal his journeyings and no doubt his trysts. Later when both he and his family were confined to Tripoli, awaiting trial, (which he had volunteered to attend, in order as he believed to clear his name), he arranged for two of his children also to be issued with false passports so that they could attend a children's festival in another country. Such were the mores of his country, such were the uses of false passports.

Feeling guilty over his Maltese mistress, he admitted that he had lied to at least one prominent international journalist as to the reasons for his own visits to Malta.  But the judges at his trial recorded that 'it was a serious problem for the prosecution' that there was no evidence of any sinister action by this man as he passed through Luqa airport on the day of the Lockerbie disaster,on his way back to Tripoli.

Upon his eventual release from a Scottish prison after ten years and the gathering intrusion of his fatal illness, he recorded that he had no grudge against the people of our country, still less against those who had cared for him in prison. Nor did he rail against those who may really have been responsible for the terrible crime of which he had been falsely accused for fear such accusations might themselves turn out to be false..

For those who had deliberately contrived his false conviction or born false witness against him for money, he warned of the judgement they must one day face at least at the bar of history if they believe they have no God.

But it was by means of the innate provision for compassion built into our justice system that we in Scotland were able to free him to die at home. This element of compassion was rightly praised, compared with the judicial systems of America, with their death sentences, and their brooding 'culture of vengeance' by the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal O'Brien, immediately following Megrahi's release to Tripoli.

I had the privilege of begging Kenny MacAskill to free Megrahi, who I was sure by then had played no part in the atrocity. Megrahi was dying, segregated from his family and innocent of this dreadful crime. Kenny on the other hand had at least to maintain that he still did believe Megrahi guilty, but we can now no longer hold such a belief with integrity.

We have known for years that those who identified this man as the buyer of objects from a Maltese shop were offered at least two million American dollars, if they would give evidence identifying Megrahi as the buyer. The Scottish court at Zeist was told that an investigating Scottish policeman had kept a diary, he was never told to go and get it from Glasgow. Yet we now know it contained contemporaneous  evidence that the Scottish investigators knew the Americans were offering multi million dollar rewards 'with $10,000 up front' and that those who falsely identified Megrahi were also aware of rewards long before they gave their evidence.

The faltering giver of the 'identification' evidence, one apple short of a picnic or not, had been bribed.

A central item of forensic 'evidence' found inside a Scottish police evidence bag, where the label had been deliberately altered so as to alert the searching forensic officers to contents other than just 'cloth', was a tiny piece of circuit board, carefully crafted to mimic a piece of a timer supplied by a Zurich firm to Libya. But there is now scientific confirmation that this key item could never have been part of a Zurich/Libyan bomb timer. The patterns traced on the fragment were near perfect copies of the real thing, but  a human error had allowed the fragment copy to be coated with  pure tin, by a process never ever used by Thuring, the Swiss manufacturers of the genuine boards, who always used a tin/lead eutectic solder alloy instead.

With the demise of the authenticity of this fragment the last shreds of support for the verdict against Megrahi and the Malta story also died. A long running digital timer was necessary if the bomb was to survive the time from Malta to Lockerbie.

The prosecution was warned by its forensic officers, before the trial, of the difference between the circuit board fragment 'PT35b' and the real timer boards, but failed to investigate.

Our SCCRC was also aware of this anomaly, yet despite their special 53 page report on 'PT35b' they claimed to have found nothing to show that it was not genuine.

We now know through the foresight of Megrahi's latter day defence solicitor (now Professor) Tony Kelly of Glasgow, that it is not possible that this fragment could have come from a genuine Zurich timer board.

That is unassailable scientific fact.

It is now clear that others, outwith Scotland were determined to pin this terrible crime upon Libya and chose Megrahi as their scapegoat, using hi-tech subterfuge to create the illusion that the bomb, through its timer could have survived the interval between Luqa and Lockerbie. What a price Megrahi has paid for his adultery.

It still remains perfectly possible that Gaddafi might have played a role in facilitating the atrocity for he had a deep hatred against America for that country's attempt to assassinate him in 1986. Perhaps if the current Lord Advocate persists in his plan to send investigators to Libya, evidence will emerge from the fog that follows civil war there, but many are those who would try to save their own skins by alleging the guilt of others, not least Sennousi.

I hope that anyone reading these lines will consider the responsibility which Scotland carries for the failures that emerged in the delivery of Justice at Zeist. We were responsible for the contents of that police evidence bag, we were responsible for analysing 'the fragment' fully, to discover whether it was genuine or not, we seem also to have been responsible for failing to produce evidence of the break-in at Heathrow which may have indicated a much simpler solution than the premeditated,contrived, cruel and criminal perversion of justice reached at Zeist.

Somebody created that clever deceitful fragment, someone intended that our court should seem to incriminate Libya, but surely our compassion, of which the Cardinal spoke in 2010 should now extend to an immediate setting aside of the verdict against this man Megrahi, accompanied by a profound apology. 

One MSP, Christine Grahame (MSP) has long realised the deception carried out here. Now that we all know that this was a premeditated framing of Megrahi, it is time to lobby your own MSP,  to see if we can lift the terrible burden of false incrimination against this individual and his family, for which our court was in part responsible, before he dies.

We may only have days or weeks to do so if he is to be alive to hear of it.

Surely we owe that to him and to his family, currently cast as pariahs throughout the world.

We also owe the truth about all that is known about the real killers, to the relatives of the victims.

Once we have done that we should be slow to attribute individual blame for how this disastrous case was conducted, instead we must urgently seek ways by which such a disaster can be avoided in future, starting with the obligation of our prosecution service to share all relevant information with the defence. Let us use the past with all its errors to learn how to do things better in future. Our criminal system got this case terribly wrong, we need to take transparent steps to minimise the chance of repetition of this disgrace. That would be a real benefit for all of us to extract from this whole miserable business.

Finally we might wish to consider what role our increasingly independent country should adopt towards the International Criminal Court, should a crime of international dimensions occur in our land again. As we consider that question, we might remember the words of Nelson Mandela issued in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was announced.

Letter 2
Thanks to the book by Lockerbie defence researcher John Ashton, we now have a clear account of how the conviction of Megrahi was achieved.

It was not achieved because some alien group wanted to pervert the course of Scottish justice,  nor did it bear any relationship to the simple needs of the relatives of those killed at Lockerbie to know the truth as to who the murderers really were and why they were not stopped.

It was achieved in order to pin the blame specifically upon Libya, presumably in furtherance of perceived political advantage for the country contriving the deceit.

We now know that the famous timer board fragment PT35b was fabricated to match the circuit boards in a set of professional timers sold to the Libyans in the days of Gaddafi.

The patterns traced on PT35b were near perfect copies of those on the real Swiss/Libyan circuit boards, only human error in treating the surface of the copper tracks on them has now revealed the truth through scientific analysis. PT35b simply could never have been part of one of the Libyan owned and Swiss made timers.

It must be clear to all who are not 'blind because they do not wish to see', that the purpose of this slight of hand was to incriminate Libya in this dreadful mass murder, using the hapless Megrahi as scapegoat. 

In Scotland we too are guilty by association. Our prosecution authorities knew before the Megrahi trial had started  that the fragment had 'turned up' inside a Scottish police evidence bag with its label clumsily altered. They knew of the anachronistic insertions in the forensic record for PT35b. They knew that PT35b was not in fact 'similar in all respects' to the circuit boards of the Libyan timers, because the forensic officer who had made that claim had already pointed out that  in fact metallurgical differences existed.

Both our prosecution service, before the trial, and later our SCCRC after the trial knew, (or at least had access to, evidence which clearly showed) that in reality there were differences in the metallurgical details between PT35b and the real Libyan circuit boards. Both failed to investigate these differences, despite the SCCRC's special 53 page special report on the fragment.

It took the detailed diligence and foresight of Professor Tony Kelly of Glasgow (for Megrahi's defence), and John Ashton his researcher, to reveal that the differences between PT35b and the real Libyan boards were irreconcilable, and to show that even if the fragment had really been in a Semtex explosion, this gap was unbridgeable.

In addition we neglected the far more credible story, in view of PA103's flight time, that a Syrian pressure sensitive bomb with their inevitable flight time of 35-45 minutes might have been introduced at Heathrow, avoiding the detailed examination of exhibit PI/1588 which may have been the remains of a pressure sensitive switch from the wreckage field, and if so, pointing to Syria and Iran, not Libya. If that were not fault enough, the evidence of the break-in to Heathrow airport 16 hours before Lockerbie, investigated in January 1989 by the Met. was completely denied to the Zeist trial court. Only last month (Feb 2012) Lord Advocate Mulholland told us that he had still 'been unable to discover' why that evidence was not made available at the trial.

The determination to use this trial as a vehicle for deliberate deception, presumably in pursuance of international political ends did not come from within Scotland. But the multiple failures by our prosecution service responsibly to use the available material and share it with Megrahi's defence did.

For more than a decade some of us, the relatives, have realised that we are being denied the truth about what is really known about this horrible slaughter. We have had to watch Scottish justice twisting and turning to avoid blame for the way its manifest failures contributed to a foreign based wicked and premeditated perversion of justice. We were astonished by the defence position taken in Megrahi's first appeal in Zeist and have squirmed in front of the deliberate delaying tactics exhibited in Megrahi's second appeal in Edinburgh. Now we have learned that even our SCCRC were not astute enough to realise the real origins of PT35b despite their 53 page special report on it.

In contrast to a declaration from 10 Downing Street made just before Ashton's book had even been launched or read, that his book was 'an insult to the Lockerbie relatives', it throws light upon a devious and profoundly dirty aspect of international politics, which on top of our bereavemen,t has burdened us, like some noxious parasite for more than 23 years.

Is Scotland now man enough to investigate these failures, outclassed though they were by the malevolent misuse of our system by a foreign power? Justice delayed is justice  denied. Specially for Megrahi. In the end our system compounded the insults heaped upon the memory of those who died.

It has never been our policy as relatives to seek vengeance against individuals who failed us. Rather let us seek a full inquiry as requested by the group 'Justice for Megrahi', to see how we can do things better in future.  We cannot change the past, but we can and must learn from it. The people of Scotland too need to have faith in their justice system restored, all the more so as they perhaps approach independence.

There is also a middle class Libyan dying in great pain in Tripoli. It is thanks to the compassion built into our justice system that this innocent scapegoat is back home. Perhaps if we hurry we can give him the relief of knowing that his conviction was wrong, and that the incubus is lifted from his family.

We have the power within Scotland to remove this unjust verdict and issue an apology for the part our justice system played in this dreadful miscarriage. How wonderful if our compassion, displayed in allowing Megrahi home to his family could now extend to telling him at last, before his disease finally claims him, that we acknowledge his innocence.

Finally we might wish to consider what role our increasingly independent country should adopt towards the International Criminal Court, should a crime of international dimensions occur in our land again. As we consider that question, we might remember the words of Nelson Mandela issued in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was first announced: 'No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge'. 


[Dr Swire also has a letter in today’s edition of The Scotsman.  It reads as follows:]
My visit to Tripoli in December 2011 showed the interim government there already assuming Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s guilt, without any apparent knowledge of his case.
The atmosphere was one of a determination to blame everything possible on the hated Gaddafi regime.
It would surely be best for truth and justice if Abdullah Senoussi, Gaddafi’s head butcher, were to be arraigned in front of the International Criminal Court (ICC), remembering Nelson Mandela’s famous comment in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was first announced, that: “No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge.”
Bullies are usually cowards when cornered. Senoussi will want to oblige with information blackening the Gaddafi regime (except for his part in it all, of course).
Funny how he surfaced just after John Ashton’s book had revealed beyond any doubt that the central forensic evidence, (the alleged fragment of an exclusively Libyan timer), which the Lockerbie court had relied on to implicate Malta and Megrahi, had been deliberately fabricated to incriminate the Gaddafi regime.
Could there be any connection between “extraordinary rendition” and Senoussi’s appearance? After all, it seems the UK was providing information on selected UK citizens for “scourging” by Senoussi and Co.
It would be almost poetic to reverse the process and “render” him indirectly to the interim government.
What a pity that over the years the US has tended to be antagonistic to the ICC.

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