Paul Foot and the Lockerbie case

[On this date in 2004 the Pakistani newspaper Dawn published an obituary of the journalist Paul Foot, who had died ten days earlier. It was headlined A credit to his profession and reads in part:]

Another cause that Foot embraced was that of the Lockerbie victims' families, repeatedly expressing concern through much of the 1990s that in their supposed investigation of the case, the British and US governments were motivated by the need to score political points rather than a desire to find out the truth about the destruction of the Pan-Am flight over Scotland in 1988.

He noted that in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe, the official line was that the bombing had been orchestrated by a Syrian-based Palestinian group at Iran's behest, in retaliation for the unprovoked shooting down of an Iranian passenger airliner by the US navy the previous year.

He wrote in 1995: "An interminable series in The Sunday Times in late 1989 named the gang, its leader, its bomb-maker and the Palestinian who had bought clothes in a Maltese boutique which ended up in the bomb suitcase."

Two years later, the blame suddenly shifted to Libya. By then Syria had signed up to the 1991 version of the coalition of the willing; it's co-operation was symbolically significant, so Hafez Al Assad could no longer be alienated. A different culprit therefore had to be selected.

Foot returned to the subject time and again, most recently in March this year, after the families of British Lockerbie victims complained that they had been taken for a ride by the government.

The families had backed Tony Blair's groundbreaking visit to the Libya on the grounds that it would yield some more details about how the attack was executed.The prime minister returned without any new information, nor any indication that the subject had even been broached with Libyan officials. In Foot's view, there was a simple explanation for this: Libya had nothing to reveal.

Making it clear that his opinion wasn't necessarily shared by the families, he concluded that Abdul Basit Al Megrahi, the former Libyan diplomat convicted and imprisoned for the bombing, is innocent "and his conviction is the last in the long line of British judges' miscarriages of criminal justice.

“This explanation is also a terrible indictment of the cynicism, hypocrisy and deceit of the British and US governments and their intelligence services. Which is probably why it has been so consistently and haughtily ignored."

Whether or not Foot's suspicions were well-founded, his dogged pursuit of the matter means that should the whole truth about Lockerbie ever emerge, he'll deserve a certain proportion of the credit.

[RB: Paul Foot’s Private Eye special report Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice can be read here.]

The date of the Malta purchases

[What follows is excerpted from a long article headed Evidence reconsidered: date of clothing purchase posted in January 2010 on Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide:]

1) A choice of two days

Tony Gauci's initial recall of the date of purchase was vague - late November or perhaps early December, or a few weeks before the bombing. It was a football game played on the day (see below) that really narrowed it down to 23 November or 7 December 1988. He recalled the purchse as on a weekday, and specifically "mid-week." In his 2000 testimony, Gauci clarified this meant, exactly, Wednesday. [Day 31, pp 4820-21] Both possible dates were Wednesdays, so that's no help, but the distinction is crucial; as Marquise points out, Megrahi was on Malta on the 7th and so could possibly be the buyer (or to some minds, he clearly is).

If, on the other hand, this supposed purchase occurred two weeks earlier, it had to be someone else; Maltese immigration records and all sources on all sides agree Megrahi had a solid alibi for 23 November. We know the official decision - the purchase happened the 7th. And we know how that helps the prosecution case. But what does the actual evidence offered by Tony, and his brother Paul for that matter, and others, actually say on the subject?

2) Christmas lights

Paul Foot's amazing 2000 booklet "Lockerbie: The Flight From Justice" reports:

On 19 September, 1989, Gauci asserted in a statement to police: “At Christmas time we put up the decorations about 15 days before Christmas. The Christmas decorations were not up when the man bought the clothes.” On 10 September, 1990, Mr Gauci told DCI Bell of the Scottish police: “I’ve been asked to try again and pinpoint the day and date I sold the man the clothing. I can only say it was a weekday; there were no Christmas decorations up, as I have already said, and I believe it was at the end of November.” [p 21 - emphasis mine]

But ultimately another day was needed, a day by which the town would normally have its halls partly decked. By the time Mr. Gauci made it to trial in 2000, judging from the stretches of Q and A I’ve been going over, he was taking every opportunity to fudge the two versions closer together, on this issue and others. The Court’s summarized final opinion document (31/1/01) stated:

“In his evidence in chief, Mr Gauci said that the date of purchase must have been about a fortnight before Christmas. He was asked if he could be more specific under reference to the street Christmas decorations. Initially he said “I wouldn’t know exactly, but I have never really noticed these things, but I remember, yes, there were Christmas lights. They were on already. I’m sure. I can’t say exactly.” [paragraph 56]

Of course among the first things he remembered, that helped mark the memory, was the decorations “were not up when the man bought the clothes.” After this contradiction “had been put to him” by the defense, the Court continued, “he said “I don’t know. I’m not sure what I told them exactly about this. I believe they were putting up the lights, though, in those times.” [para 56]

Clearly the earlier version, before he became muddled with an awareness of contradiction, is more trustworthy, and the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission, announcing a possible “miscarriage of justice” in 2007, found support for this. Among other alarming problems, they unearthed additional specific evidence giving a start date for the Christmas light erection – the 6th of December:

New evidence not heard at the trial concerned the date on which the Christmas lights were illuminated in the area of Sliema in which Mary’s House is situated. In the Commission’s view, taken together with Mr Gauci’s evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, this additional evidence indicates that the purchase of the items took place prior to 6 December 1988. In other words, it indicates that the purchase took place at a time when there was no evidence at trial that the applicant was in Malta.

3) Weather records vs Gauci's evidence

Gauci’s first statements to the police cited the weather as a clue to the day of the purchase. When the mystery shopper came in, it was raining enough for him to buy, in addition to the memorably random assortment of clothing, a single item of utility; an umbrella. From his first statement, 1 September 1989:

“I even showed him a “Black coloured (umbrella?) and he bought it. … The man said he had other shops to visit and he picked up the “umbrella” and he said he would come back shortly … [and] walked out of the shop with the “Umbrella” which he opened as it was raining.”

Remnants of a black umbrella were found in Scotland and presumed to be from the bomb bag. This looks like a good connection, but the items bought are covered in a separate post. For this post it establishes that Gauci’s story, however true or relevant it really was, featured significant rainfall.

During the 2000 trial, the issue was raised by defense for the first accused (Megrahi). They called as a witness one Major Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese meteorologist who gave evidence on 5 December 2000. He discussed rainfall records kept at the airport. Every three hours (usually), there was a measurement taken, entered in the "Rainfall" on the charts, showing as some entries discussed:

6 Dec 21.00 GMT - "Nil"

7 Dec 00:00 GMT – “Nil”

7 Dec 06.00 GMT – “Nil”

7 Dec 09:00 GMT – “T/R” Mifsud explained the mark “TR” as “a trace of rainfall, less than 0.5 of a millimetre.” This reading refers apparently to a one minute light shower recorded from 8:44 to 8:45 am GMT, ten hours prior to the alleged December 7 purchase. The closest time to that, for 18.00 GMT, Mifsud clarified, showed “a nil entry” for the airport. [Transcripts, Day 76, p 9192-93] All other samples aside from 09:00 were equally dry.

Above: Police records for Malta, December 1988. From Foot, Flight from Justice, p21. Maj. Mifsud testified to records the airport at Luqa (highlighted) and recorded TR (trace rainfall) Dec 7. Rain in Silema (highlighted) Dec 7 is the issue and it, like all others aside from the airport, was left blank. December 6 is similarly dry-looking - these blanks mean either “nil," or everyone else just took these day off.

Note in the chart how these are daily totals, and do not reflect changes in rainfall at points during the day, so the “TR” at Luqa could be used to argue for light rain at Silema around 7pm, even though its daily total shows as blank, or nil. In fact, Foot noted how some did argue “the blank referred to the period from noon on the previous day (6 December) to noon on the 7th. So it could still have been raining at the time the clothes were sold – at about 6.30pm on the 7th.” But this is obfuscation. The As foot noted, Mifsud was quite clear on what the hourly returns meant:

"Q. Just confirm with me, please, apart from the trace of rain that we discussed that fell or was measured at 9.00 in the morning of Wednesday December 7, did any rain fall at Luqa?

A. No, no rain was recorded. No, no rain was recorded.

Q. Up to midnight?

A. Up to midnight." [Day 76, p 9201]

The prosecution asked the witness it could rain in Silema, which is right on the coast, but not the airport, approximately four miles inland (southwest). He admitted “I do not altogether exclude the possibility that there could have been a drop of rain here and there,” and estimated “the possibility that there would be some drops of rain, about ten per cent possibility.” [Foot 21] It’s precipitously less likely to have been enough to warrant buying an umbrella, and only a major screw-up in records-keeping could explain such a rain on the 7th not being recorded.

It can’t be ruled out that Gauci was eventually made aware of this disconnect and pressured to shift his story. One can observe subtle changes in the witness' recall of rainfall over subsequent statements made to DCI Harry Bell, who was leading the Scottish police effort on Malta and was Gauci’s usual contact. Two of these later read in court include:

21 February 1990: “I have been thinking about the day the man bought the clothes, November, December 1988. He left the shop after having made the purchases and turned right down Tower Road. At that time, he had the umbrella raised and opened. When he returned to the shop, he came from the same direction, but the umbrella was down because it had almost stopped raining, and it was just drops coming down.” [p 4815]

10 September 1990: “I have been asked about the weather conditions that night the man made the purchase of the clothing. Just before the man left the shop, there was a light shower of rain just beginning. The umbrellas were hanging from the mirrors in the shop, and the man actually looked at them, and that is how I came to sell him one. He opened it up as he left the shop, and he turned right and walked downhill. There was very little rain on the ground, no running water, just damp.” [emphasis mine] [p 4817]

A decade later Gauci tried valiantly to minimize rainfall further in his pivotal trial testimony. The Court summarized his take into this finding, from paragraph 56 of their final opinion: [OoC 56] “When asked about the weather he said “When he came by the first time, it wasn’t raining but then it started dripping. Not very -- it was not raining heavily. It was simply dripping...” What the actual transcripts show is a little weirder. It was delivered in his native Maltese, and translated for the court.

”Q Do you remember what the weather was like when the man came to the shop?

A When he came by the first time, it wasn't raining, but then it started dripping. Not very -- it was not raining heavily. It was simply -- it was simply dripping, but as a matter of fact he did take an umbrella, didn't he? He bought an umbrella.” [Day 31, P 4741]

“Q … on the 1st of September of 1989 your memory was that the man purchased the umbrella, he didn't leave it for you to bundle up with the other things he had bought in the shop, but he left with the umbrella and put it up outside the door of the shop because it was raining?

A Exactly.” [p 4815]

"A It wasn't raining. It wasn't raining. It was just drizzling.

Q We'll come to --

A I can't remember the dates. I don't want to say -- I don't want to give out dates if I am not that sure, sir.

Q Indeed. What I am endeavouring to do, Mr. Gauci, with your help, is to illustrate --

A I always thank you, sir. I am here to help you, sir." [p 4816]

"A I don't want to cause confusion. I don't know dates." [p 4820]

It was barely raining, had just started, just stopped, drizzling, ground barely wet, etc. None of it fits well with December 7, when rain on Sliema would be described as “maybe a few drops, but not that I noticed.” The records for November 23, not surprisingly, are a direct fit for his freshest memories. Major Mifsud, again, from the transcripts: [Day 76, Pp 9207-09] “Light intermittent rain at noon” was recorded, a condition that “persist right down the column until 16.15,” onto the next page to at least 18.00 GMT, 19:00 local, almost the minute of any alleged 6:50 purchase that day. This slot measurement shows .6 of a millimeters of rain was taken at the airport.

Results in Sliema, a bare four miles distant, were likely the same - light but notable. And the buyer noticed enough to buy and use an umbrella. What this evidence shows then, is the unknown purchaser of 23 November, if he really existed, was a bit of a pansy regarding rain. (...)

5) Why doesn’t November 23 work, aside from Megrahi not being there?

I almost left this section blank, to emphasize that I’ve seen no reasonable excuse yet offered as to how these clues add up to 7 December. Paul Foot’s 2000 booklet brilliantly outlined the evidence for 23 November, which I've drawn heavily from, and summarized:

But this evidence was no use at all to the prosecution of Abdelbasset Megrahi, who was certainly not in Malta on 23 November. Was there any other day he was in Malta and could have bought the clothes? Yes, he was staying in the Holiday Inn in Sliema on 7 December, 1988. So the thrust of the prosecution inquiries about the sale of clothes shifted from 23 November to 7 December. [p 21]

This may sound cynical, but in point of fact, DCI Bell, head of the Scottish police investigation in Malta, tacitly admitted as much in a 2006 interview. Speaking with the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission, these excerpts were found in the Megrahi defense team’s grounds of appeal [pdf link  - p 229]

DI Bell SCCRC interview (25-26/7/06)

"...The evidence of the football matches was confusing and in the end we did not manage to bottom it out..."

"...I am asked whether at the time I felt that the evidence of the football matches was strongly indicative of 7th December 1988 as the purchase date. No, I did not. Both dates 23rd Nov & 7th Dec 1988 looked likely.

"...It really has to be acknowledged how confusing this all was. No date was signficant for me at the time. Ultimately it was the applicant's [Megrahi’s] presence on the island on 7th December 1988 that persuaded me that the purchase took place on that date. Paul specified 7th December when I met with him on 14th December 1989 and I recorded this..."

“Applicant” here refers to Megrahi, applying for his second try at appeal, which the SCCRC wound up granting. Note two aspects of his citation of Paul's 12/89 statement: it's mentioned immediately after the admission that it was Megrahi that decided it, as a supporting afterthought. Also this being an oral interview, he had the date of that meeting memorized, ready to call up. This is interesting, but inconclusive, evidence of a memorized and rehearsed spin. Paul’s “specifying” the 7th on that particular day conflicts with his own words, from two months earlier, that "the 23rd November 1988 was the date in question.” Do note that Mr. Bell deceptively places the days as equals, creating some unwarranted “confusion,” when the 23rd is clearly the better fit in all the regards addressed above. But whatever “fog of war” effect he may have suffered on the investigative front lines, Bell admitted he saw no good reason, aside from Megrahi’s absence and one mention by Paul, to dismiss the earlier purchase. And he and the investigation and ultimately the Zeist Court all dismissed the earlier purchase.

Further, Paul's apparent story change between mid-October and mid-December hints at - but far from proves - an intention somewhere to shift the scope onto Megrahi (and thus the date to 7 December), an intention that had somehow influenced Paul to report the other day despite everything. (...)

7) Harry Bell's First Reason

Considering the quote above by DCI Harry Bell, the date 7 December was clearly chosen to fit Megrahi. One must presume this decision was made prior to his citing it, in his police diary, as reason #1 to identify Megrahi. On the day of Tony's "ID," February 15 1991, Bell wrote in support that "He arrived in Malta on 7th December '88. This was the date of the purchase of the clothing." Nabbed. Bell that is, using criminally circular logic he thought would never be exposed. (This is explained in a separate post.)

George H W Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Paul Channon

[On this date in 1989, a significant event in the Lockerbie story took place (and quite possibly two). Here is what Paul Foot wrote some five years later in a review in the London Review of Books:]

The American investigative columnist Jack Anderson has had some scoops in his time but none more significant than his revelation – in January 1990 [RB: 11 January 1990 in The Washington Post] – that in mid-March 1989, three months after Lockerbie, George [H W] Bush rang Margaret Thatcher to warn her to ‘cool it’ on the subject. On what seems to have been the very same day [RB: 16 March 1989], perhaps a few hours earlier, Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon, was the guest of five prominent political correspondents at a lunch at the Garrick Club. [RB: They were Ian Aitken of The Guardian, Chris Buckland of Today, Robin Oakley of The Times, Julia Langdon of the Daily Mirror and her husband Geoffrey Parkhouse, then of the Glasgow Herald.]  It was agreed that anything said at the lunch was ‘on strict lobby terms’ – that is, for the journalists only, not their readers. Channon then announced that the Dumfries and Galloway Police – the smallest police force in Britain – had concluded a brilliant criminal investigation into the Lockerbie crash. They had found who was responsible and arrests were expected before long. The Minister could not conceal his delight at the speed and efficiency of the PC McPlods from Dumfries, and was unstinting in his praise of the European intelligence.

So sensational was the revelation that at least one of the five journalists broke ranks; and the news that the Lockerbie villains would soon he behind bars in Scotland was divulged to the public. Channon, still playing the lobby game, promptly denied that he was the source of the story. Denounced by the Daily Mirror’s front page as a ‘liar’, he did not sue or complain. A few months later he was quietly sacked. Thatcher, of course, could not blame her loyal minister for his indiscretion, which coincided so unluckily with her instructions from the White House.

Channon had been right, however, about the confidence of the Dumfries and Galloway Police. They did reckon they knew who had done the bombing. Indeed, they had discovered almost at once that a terrorist bombing of an American airliner, probably owned by Pan-Am, had been widely signalled and even expected by the authorities in different European countries. The point was, as German police and intelligence rather shamefacedly admitted, that a gang of suspected terrorists had been rumbled in Germany in the months before the bombing. They were members of a faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Ahmed Jibril. The aim of the gang was to bomb an American airliner in revenge for the shooting down by an American warship of an Iranian civil airliner in the Gulf earlier in the year. On 26 October 1988, less than two months before the bombing, two of the suspects – Hafez Dalkamoni and Marwan Abdel Khreesat – were arrested in their car outside a flat at Neuss near Frankfurt. In the car was a bomb, moulded into the workings of a black Toshiba cassette recorder. In the ensuing weeks other raids were carried out on alleged terrorist hideaways in Germany, and 16 suspects arrested. One of them was Mohammad Abu Talb, another member of the PFLP, who was almost instantly released. Even more curious was the equally prompt release of Khreesat, who was suspected of making the bomb found in Dalkamoni’s car.

The finding of the bomb led to a flurry of intelligence activity. It was discovered that the bomb had been specifically made to blow up an aircraft; and that the gang had made at least five bombs, four of which had not been found. At once, a warning went out on the European intelligence network to watch out for bombs masked in radio cassette recorders, especially at airports.

[RB: Further details of these incidents can be found in Paul Foot’s Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice, pages 3 to 5; in this article in the Executive Intelligence Review of February 1990; and in John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury, pages 52 to 54.]

Shocking admissions about date of Malta purchases

A long journey, followed by a power cut, made it impossible for me to post to this blog yesterday, 22 January. Here is what I would have posted had circumstances permitted:

[On this date in 2010 an article headed Harry Bell and Paul Gauci on the date of purchase: two shocking admissions was published on Adam "Caustic Logic" Larson's blog The 12/7-9/11 Treadmill and Beyond. The admissions relate to the date of purchase in Mary's House, Sliema, of the clothes that, in the official explanation of the Lockerbie disaster, were in the brown Samsonite suitcase along with the bomb. It was essential to the prosecution case against Megrahi that the date of purchase was shown to be 7 December 1988 (when Megrahi was on Malta) and not 23 November (when he was not). The following are excerpts from the article:]

Detective Inspector Harry Bell, who headed the Scottish police effort on Malta and was the main contact point for the Gaucis, was interviewed in 2006 by the SCCRC [Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission]. Some extracts were re-printed in Megrahi's rock-solid grounds of appeal.

Excerpts from there:

DI Bell SCCRC interview (25-26/7/06)

"...The evidence of the football matches was confusing and in the end we did not manage to bottom it out..."

"...I am asked whether at the time I felt that the evidence of the football matches was strongly indicative of 7th December 1988 as the purchase date. No, I did not. Both dates 23rd Nov and 7th Dec 1988 looked likely.

"...It really has to be acknowledged how confusing this all was. No date was signficant for me at the time. Ultimately it was the applicant's [Megrahi’s] presence on the island on 7th December 1988 that persuaded me that the purchase took place on that date. Paul specified 7th December when I met with him on 14th December 1989 and I recorded this..."

The bolded is a shocking admission of just what many had guessed. And then, almost as an afterthought (and a quick one I'd venture) "Paul specified 7th December" as the right day, during a meeting of "14th December 1989." He even has the date memorized! No direct quotes provided there of this meeting. But two months earlier, in a 19 October meeting with the same Harry Bell, he clearly specified the other day. In a police report obtained by Private Eye and published in Paul Foot's 2000 booklet Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice, Mr. Gauci said:

“I was shown a list of European football matches I know as UEFA. I checked all the games and dates. I am of the opinion that the game I watched on TV was on 23 November, 1988: SC Dynamo Dresden v AS Roma. On checking the 7th December 1988, I can say that I watched AS Roma v Dynamo Dresden in the afternoon. All the other games were played in the evening. I can say for certain I watched the Dresden v Roma game. On the basis that there were two games played during the afternoon of 23 November and only one on the afternoon of 7th December, I would say that the 23rd November 1988 was the date in question.” [Foot, 2000, p 21]

Lockerbie – the murder of Scottish justice

[This is the heading over an interesting article posted on Friday on Richard Haley’s blog. It contains a very useful summary of the Lockerbie case and of the flaws in the proceedings that led to the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi.  It reads as follows:]

The 25th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing is prompting renewed  interest in who – or perhaps who else besides Abdelbaset al Megrahi – could have been responsible for the crime. Some of this may turn out to be  important. But irrespective of any leads pointing to other suspects, it’s time to recognise that Megrahi cannot reasonably be held to be guilty.

Scotland’s Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland says he welcomes the recent announcement that Libya has appointed two prosecutors to work with the Scottish and US authorities over the bombing.

They will be seeking to establish whether there are people in Libya who could be brought to trial in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988. Libyan citizen Abdelbaset al Megrahi, who died last year, is the only person to have so far been convicted for the attack.

The bombing cost the lives of all of the 259 people on board the aircraft and 11 people from the town of Lockerbie. It was, and remains, by far the deadliest act of terrorism ever to have occurred in the UK.

The problem with the ongoing Scottish investigation into the bombing  is that it is built on a legal fiction. Megrahi was convicted in 2001 by three judges sitting in a specially built court operating under Scots law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. He should not have been found guilty on the evidence presented to the court. Journalist Paul Foot, writing shortly after the trial ended, demolished the judgement in a special report for Private Eye magazine entitled Lockerbie: the flight from justice.

Paul Foot concluded:

“The judges brought shame and disgrace to all those who believed in Scottish justice, and have added to Scottish law an injustice of the type which has often defaced the law in England. Their verdict was a triumph for the CIA, but it did nothing at all to satisfy the demands of the families of those who died at Lockerbie – who still want to know how and why their loved ones were murdered.”

Dr. Hans Köchler, nominated by UN General Secretary Kofi Annan as international observer at the trial, said in his report that he had:

“reached the general conclusion that the outcome of the trial may well have been determined by political considerations and may to a considerable extent have been the result of more or less openly exercised influence from the part of actors outside the judicial framework – facts which are not compatible with the basic principle of the division of powers and with the independence of the judiciary, and which put in jeopardy the very rule of law and the confidence citizens must have in the legitimacy of state power and the functioning of the state’s organs – whether on the traditional national level or in the framework of international justice as it is gradually being established through the United Nations Organization.”

Further evidence has emerged since then, particularly in the book Megrahi: You are my Jury by John Alston (published in 2012), that catastrophically undermines the already unsound conviction. Worse yet, there appear to be grounds to suspect that Scottish Police and the Crown Office were involved in presenting the court with evidence they knew to be false.

The book reveals  evidence that a fragment of a circuit board said by the prosecution to be a timing device for the bomb and to have been  found at the crash scene could not have come from a batch of circuit boards supplied to Libya by their Swiss manufacturer. The claim that it had done so was central to the case against Megrahi. The evidence contradicting the claim had not been disclosed to Megrahi’s defence team.

In other words, Megrahi was framed by specific actions of the police and the Crown Office, as well as through the general conduct of the trial and the expectations placed upon the three judges – Lord Sutherland, Lord Coulsfield and Lord MacLean.

The result of all this is that we are no closer today than we were 25 years ago to understanding what happened in the Lockerbie sky  in December 1988.

Allegations that Libya was involved in the Lockerbie bombing were in the first place a surprise. It was widely assumed that the bombing was the work of one or another group with links to Iran, and that it had been carried out in revenge for the attack on an Iranian airliner by a US warship in July 1988, which had resulted in the death of all of the airliner’s 290 passengers.

In the first couple of years after the Lockerbie bombing, evidence seemed to be emerging to implicate a group called  the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) . Both Iran and Syria were thought to make use of  PFLP-GC to carry out terrorist attacks.

Then in August 1990 Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded Kuwait and the US began moving towards war with Iraq. The following month, a French newspaper reported that Libya was a possible culprit in the Lockerbie bombing. It now seems that some US investigators had been looking at a Libyan connection as far back as September 1989.

In November 1990, British media repeated the allegation against Libya. In the same month, Syria was taken off the US list of countries harbouring terrorists and joined the military coalition that the US was assembling against Iraq.

Support from Syria – a country by no means regarded as a US puppet – was an immense political asset for the US. It must have greatly eased the path towards UN Security Council Resolution 678, which effectively authorised the use of force against Iraq and was adopted on 29 November.

It is difficult to doubt that the lifting of the allegations against PFLP-GC was an essential step in securing Syria’s place in the coalition. Even if  Syrian President Hafez al-Assad had been prepared to overlook the allegations against his regime, the US Congress would not.

The lifting of the allegations may also have helped to ensure the quiet acquiescence of Iran in the US war on Iraq, though Iran in any case had compelling strategic reasons to take that position.

The US-led attack on Iraq began in January 1991 and resulted in the rout of the Iraqi occupation forces from Kuwait during February, with the US declaring a ceasefire at the end of the month.

In November 1991, Scotland and the US made a joint announcement alleging that Libyan citizens Abdelbaset al Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, acting  on behalf of Libyan intelligence, had planted the bomb that destroyed Pam Am 103. Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, told the House of Commons that no other country besides Libya was implicated.

In March 1992 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 731, which in effect required the extradition of the two Libyan suspects and imposed sanctions on Libya until its government complied with the demand.

But suspicions over Iranian involvement in the bombing won’t go away. ExaroNews, for example, reports today that a US Defense Intelligence Brief released under the Freedom of Information Act  and dated  February 1991 – several months after US accusations focussed on Libya -  names Iran’s former interior minister Ali Akbar Mohtashempur as having paid for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The same Defence Intelligence Brief was referred to in December 2011 in an article by Dr Davina Miller.

Much more importantly, documents released today reveal that Syrian sources told a CIA agent in 1995 that PFLP-GC was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.

The problem for Scottish justice isn’t that there are other, perhaps more persuasive, hypotheses about the Lockerbie bombing than the one adopted by the Crown Office. It isn’t even that there is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that the re-targeting of investigations towards Libya after the autumn of 1990 was prompted by foreign policy needs rather than by the requirements of justice. It is simply that Megrahi hasn’t been proven guilty, except in the eyes of those who believe that a legal conjuring trick is the same thing as proof.

Truth is sometimes surprising. Possibly it will one day be found, despite all the indications  to the contrary, that Libyan intelligence was indeed responsible for the destruction of Pan Am 103. Possibly it will even be found – stranger still – that Megrahi was somehow involved.

Perhaps, at some point between December 1988 and September 1990, US and British intelligence came across unexpected evidence that persuaded them of Libyan guilt. And perhaps,  for reasons of their own, they were not prepared to present the evidence in court, but instead instigated the manufacture of a collection of false but presentable evidence. It’s a scenario that might please people who believe that the US and British intelligence services work tirelessly for the good of the world and  sometimes have to act outside the law.

That approach works nicely in the movies. But in the real world, evidence that seems utterly convincing to groups of like-minded people viewing it in secret is apt to seem  a lot less useful when examined in daylight.

Perhaps – irrespective of the truth of this hypothesis – the Camp Zeist judges guessed that something like it must lie behind the insubstantial evidence they were presented with. Maybe they took for granted the good faith of the hidden hands that framed Megrahi. Maybe, when they bent their judgment to deliver the verdict that the government expected, they really believed they were doing justice even as they undid the law.

All this is just speculation. In the absence of a proper examination of the facts by a court or a public inquiry or both, it’s neither better nor worse than any other speculation.

The false conviction of  Abdelbaset al Megrahi took a lot of effort. But the fix was in by the time that the negotiations over the trial of Megrahi and Fhimah came to an end  in 1999.

“Fix” is a difficult word to use of negotiations that came about through the intervention of Nelson Mandela and were conducted, amongst others, by Professor Jakes Gerwel, secretary to the South African cabinet. The best that can be said is that the negotiators believed the isolation  of Libya by the UN sanctions regime to be wrong and were prepared, in the end,  to take an optimistic view of Scottish justice in order to restore normality. They must by then have been near despair. Nelson Mandela had proposed in 1994 and again in 1997 that the trial could be held in South Africa. On each occasion the British Prime Minister of the day – John Major, and then Tony Blair – had  rejected the offer.

The deal that the negotiators reached meant that Megrahi and Fhimah would be tried in the Netherlands by a “Scottish court” – three Scottish judges sitting without a jury. But Scottish courts do not try murder cases without a jury.

Robert Black QC – a law professor at Edinburgh University, born and brought up in Lockerbie – is generally credited with having devised the unique format of the Lockerbie trial. His proposal was made in January 1994. He suggested that “a trial be held outwith Scotland, perhaps in the premises of the International Court of Justice at the Hague,” under the law and procedure followed in Scottish courts. He suggested that the jury, normal in a Scottish court, should be replaced by a panel of judges. Crucially, he proposed that this would be “an international panel of five judges,  presided over and chaired by a judge of the Scottish High Court of Judiciary whose responsibility it would be to direct the panel on Scottish law and procedure.”

Ibrahim Legwell, the Libyan lawyer representing the suspects, wrote to Robert Black to say this scheme was wholly acceptable to his clients, and the deputy foreign minister of Libya wrote that his government would not object to the arrangements. The British and US  governments ignored these developments and continued to insist that Libya must simply hand the two suspects over the the UK or the US.

By 1998 it was becoming clear that African and Arab support for efforts to isolate Libya could not be obtained. Nelson Mandela’s diplomacy gave this fact of life a face that could not easily be dismissed.

On 24 August 1998 the UK and US governments wrote to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan saying that they were willing to arrange for the Lockerbie suspects to be tried in the Netherlands by a court following Scottish law and procedures, but with the jury replaced by a panel of three Scottish High Court judges. This is the proposal that the international negotiating team supported by Nelson Mandela persuaded Libya to accept.

It meant that the suspects would have neither the rough and ready protection of a jury, nor the more intricate safeguards provided by panel of international judges, as Robert Black had proposed in 1994.

The location of the trial in the Netherlands and the involvement of a panel of judges gave  it something of the aura of an international court, without offending the traditional US hostility to such institutions. For the Libyans, the absence of a jury seemed to offer protection from the risk of prejudice against them. But in the legal traditions of the British Isles, dispensing with a jury is not normally done for the benefit of the accused. No one ever supposed that the  jury-free Diplock courts, used for terrorism-related cases in Northern Ireland, were invented to protect the rights of suspects.

Legal dogma insists that judges may sometimes err over difficult legal puzzles, but that they are magically immune from the prejudices that afflict people who serve on juries. It’s nonsense, of course. Judges sometimes affect disdain for popular sentiment. But anyone who has successfully climbed the career ladder to the judiciary is likely to be at least as sensitive to  political undercurrents as a typical jury member.

Political undercurrents were presented to the Zeist judges in unusually concrete ways. They were sitting in a court room built specially for the trial. The case they were dealing with had been brought before them by unprecedented international negotiations. It carried high hopes of closure, not just for the families of the Lockerbie victims but also for the wider public, especially in Britain, Spain and the USA.  A jury might, if justice required it, have been able to set all that to nought and let the system take the blame. A judge doing so would  have had to face government displeasure and media opprobrium.

Political power stalked the court-room in other ways too. US state prosecutors, unlisted in any court documents, sat next to the Scottish prosecution team, checking notes and passing on documents. For international observer Hans Köchler:

“this created the impression of “supervisors” handling vital matters of the prosecution strategy and deciding, in certain cases, which documents (evidence) were to be released in open court or what parts of information contained in a certain document were to be withheld (deleted).”

A Libyan defence lawyer – appointed not by the defendants, but by the Libyan government – was present  in addition to the Scottish defence team. In Hans Köchler’s view, this man “had to be perceived as a kind of liaison official in a political sense.”

In the end, the judges decided that Megrahi was guilty and that Fhimah was not guilty. Fhimah’s acquittal was unavoidable. The case against him depended crucially on testimony by Abdul Majid Giaka, a former Libyan intelligence officer paid by the CIA. His performance in court was dismal. The judges found his evidence “at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue” and “largely motivated by financial considerations”.

The prosecution case involved the joint action of both Megrahi and Fhimah in Malta, where the bomb was allegedly put on a feeder flight before being transferred to Pan Am 103 at Heathrow. Giaka’s testimony formed part of the case against Megrahi too. The prosecution’s decision to call Giaka as a witness suggested, at the very least, an unscrupulous approach to the case and a degree of desperation. So it was rather odd that the judges did not consider that their acquittal of Fhimah fatally undermined the case against Megrahi.

Odd, but not impossible. There was one other witness – Tony Gauci  -  whose testimony the Crown relied on to identify Megrahi. Gauci’s evidence was very unconvincing, but not so blatantly unacceptable  that the judges had no choice but to exclude it. That left them free, in their judgment, to note the “substantial discrepancy” between Gauci’s original description to police of the man he was identifying as six feet tall and 50 years of age,  and 37 year-old Megrahi’s actual height of five feet eight inches, and then to go on to conclude that the identification was “entirely reliable”.

Evidence has subsequently emerged that appears to show that the US Department of Justice promised Gauci “unlimited monies” if Megrahi was convicted.

In finding Megrahi guilty, the judges did the very best with the prosecution case that could possibly be managed, short of declaring the rule of law to be irrelevant.

When the verdict was announced, Robert Black said:

“I thought this was a very, very weak circumstantial case. I am absolutely astounded, astonished. I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish judge would convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such evidence.”

He has subsequently campaigned for the case against the Libyan suspects to be re-examined. In 2005, he told the Scotsman:

“If they had been tried by an ordinary Scottish jury of 15, who were given standard instructions about how they must approach the evidence and standard instructions about reasonable doubt and what must happen if there is a reasonable doubt about the evidence, no Scottish jury could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence led at the trial.”

The Zeist judges must have understood that, by sitting as both judge and jury, they  had made it very hard indeed for Megrahi to have his conviction overturned within the Scottish justice system.

Scotland’s Court of Appeal might not find it too hard to rule that a Sheriff, trying a minor offence without the benefit of a jury, has misdirected himself. But it would be a bold appeal court judge who could reach the same decision about three senior judges deciding the most important case to have come before a Scottish court in modern times.   Megrahi’s legal team would instead have to show that they had new evidence that could have changed the outcome of the trial had it been known at the time. But how could that be shown, when the Zeist judgment had been built from leaps of faith, with scant regard for reason?

As it turned out – and rather against the odds -  evidence was indeed available by 2009 that might, just possibly, have made headway against Scottish judicial conservatism. But by then Megrahi was dying from prostrate cancer. He dropped his appeal – a slow process with an uncertain outcome – and thus cleared the way  for the Scottish government to release him on compassionate grounds and allow him to return to Libya.

Scottish compassion provoked apparent outrage in the US, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying she was “deeply disappointed”. But there was probably no other way, except through utterly illegal interference in the judicial process, that the Scottish Government could have been certain that Megrahi’s conviction would not be quashed. And that would have left Clinton even more deeply disappointed.

At a performance of the play Lockerbie: Lost Voices in Edinburgh last summer I met Marina de Larracochea, sister of Maria Nieves Larracoechea, who was one of the cabin crew on Pan Am Flight 103. I said something anodyne and rather thoughtless about the slow struggle for justice. She said that the families of the victims no longer have time on their side. They are getting old.

The British and US authorities and the Scottish Crown Office understand the problem, and evidently intend to exploit it. The current flurry of interest in investigations in Libya looks like a delaying tactic.

Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, head of the Crown Office, was dismissive this week of concerns over the soundness of Megrahi’s conviction. He says that he believes in the rule of law. It’s rather late in the day for the Crown Office to discover an interest in the rule of law.

The families of the Lockerbie victims are not the only people with an interest in these events. Five million of us, here in Scotland, are living under a justice system that has been subverted from top to bottom to meet the needs of British and US intelligence agencies. It’s worth remembering the words of  Hans Köchler in his report on the Zeist trial:

“proper judicial procedure is simply impossible if political interests and intelligence services – from whichever side – succeed in interfering in the actual conduct of a court.”

The Scottish Government says that it cannot set up an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie affair because that would involve looking into international issues that are beyond its power under the current constitutional arrangements.

Scotland urgently needs an inquiry to determine how the investigation, prosecution and conviction of Megrahi under Scottish jurisdiction went so badly wrong, and how we can ensure that nothing of the kind ever happens again. That lies well within the current powers of the Scottish government.